I have no inside information, but the so-called “relationship” between Zendaya and Tom Holland seems like a bullshit PR stunt. I’m sure they like each other as friends and co-starts, but I just don’t see Zendaya dating someone like Holland. It doesn’t fit her vibe.
He’s just too nice.
Seems like Zendaya would want an older bad boy with a little bit more edge. And, as I understand it all the Spidermen in the franchise have “dated” their co-stars, so, lulz.
But I could be wrong. I usually am. It just seems like this relationship is a little too pat and convenient for everyone involved.
I have too much on my plate creatively to do anything with this, but here’s a fragment of a movie idea that someone, somewhere should do something with. The idea has a touch of magical realism to in a vein similar to The Enteral Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Same same, but different.
The idea is that there’s an app that not only can read your mind, but also manipulate you. So, what happens is our hero keeps seeing a woman who is perfect for him, the love of his life, on his For You Page, but she lives in NYC. But he knows if he ever met her in person, they would fall in love — or at least he would.
So, the plot is something like, he studies the young woman, travels to NYC and they meet. He uses what he’s seen from her videos to strike up a relationship with her.
Now, this is the point where I don’t know what happens. I like the idea that the couple realizes that the app (a Tik-Tok clone) really is reading their minds and they have some sort of adventure together to prove this to the rest of the world.
One of my favorite easy read novels growing up was the Fletch series of mysteries. They’re a lot of fun and funny. So, I’m keenly interested in what Jon Hamm’s take on the character will be.
Image by EW Magazine
Apparently, he’s working on a new Fletch movie, “Confess, Fletch.” There are a lot of really great novels in the series. My personal favorite is “Fletch And The Man Who.” But all the novels are great because they’re so short you can finish them virtually in one setting and they’ve got a very wry sense of humor to them.
Of all the actors out there, I think Hamm is one of the better suited. But I think in an ideal world, a Fletch movie would be done by someone like Greta Gerwig. The movies have been a little too broad in their humor for my tastes and don’t really reflect the tone of the novels.
The way we’ll know if things are changing with movies is a war movie — or just a more serious movie in general — will suddenly blow up into blockbuster status out of the blue.
If the last time there was a major war in Europe is any indication, there’s a chance that we’re in for not just a War Movie Renaissance, but a Hollywood Renaissance. A portion of the Hollywood Gold Age — as I understand it — was right around 1937 – 1946.
Or, put another way, it’s possible that we’re in the middle of an entertainment vibe shift and we just don’t know it yet. Come to think of it, there were a lot of serious movies that became popular around the time of the height of the Vietnam War.
Of course, there is the risk that the exact opposite will happen — people, seeing how horrible reality is, run away into silliness and comedy. But even that would be better than the now overwrought and self-indulgent superhero movies.
And there are some caveats — because of the changes in showbiz, it could very well be the big streamers that reap the rewards of whatever vibe shift we may be about to undergo. It won’t be like the good olde days — it’s not like we’re going to leave home to go see a very good God Father 4 in the theatres.
Please give us movies that aren’t superhero movies.
The industry has changed so much that there might be a significant lag time between when it becomes clear that audience want something different than superhero movies and when Hollywood actually does anything about it. So, it could be just about when the “Great Reset” or “Fourth Turning” of 2024 – 2025 happens that we get to have a series of great movies to watch again.
All of this is very speculative. But one of my favorite quotes about Hollywood is, “Nobody knows nothing.”
I’m just daydreaming here, but I often find myself thinking about the marketing of these five novels and how that should change the novels themselves. One issue is, as it stands, the Olivia Munn-type character is the protagonist of only two of the novels. Then her son is the protagonist for two novels and then my Lisbeth Salander-type person is the hero of the last book.
This works, at least from a creative standpoint because I see the first three novels as a trilogy and the last two novels as the beginning a new series based around my personal interpolation of the Lisbeth Salander trope.
And, yet, at the heart of these five novels is the relationship between the Olivia Munn-type character and my Lisbeth Salander type character. But I sometimes find myself struggling with how all of this would be marketed. People want a character they know they’re going to come back to once they grow familiar with it and I wonder how marketing would deal with the shift in focus over the course of the series.
I personally think I’m overthinking things. The point is to tell a series of great stories that have an overall theme to them. I can’t get too worked up about the marketing of the stories if I do a good to great job telling the individual stories. And it’s not like people’s favorite character — if she becomes one — will be missing. She’ll still be there, it’s just the focus will be on her son, and, then, later a fucked up woman about Lisbeth Salander’s age in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Imagine Olivia Munn playing this type of character (to some extent) and that would be the protagonist two novels in this series and the series’ overall heart.
And, I want to be clear, my interpolation of the Lisbeth Salander trope is a variation on a theme. The two characters are dramatically different, to the point that, again, only for marketing purposes might their similarities be enough to highlight.
Anyway, I have a long ways to go before I have to worry about such things in real terms. I have to fucking finish an actual first draft, for Christ’s sake. But every time I get closer to a serious first draft, I get closer to not embarrassing myself.
It’s just taken much, much, much longer than I expected because apparently my storying telling ability sucked a lot more than I realized when I began this process a few years ago.
Feeling rather sheepish about this. Rather than talking about this change, I should keep it to myself. But, alas, I have no friends and no one likes me — and I’m 100% extroverted! — so, lulz, here we are.
So, the newest version of this first novel in what I hope will be a five novel series has me go back to what I had before — a female protagonist who in my imagination looks a lot like Olivia Munn. I really need to stop doing this. I really need to, like, finish the first novel so I can, if nothing else, try to get to the next step in the process — have beta readers.
But here I am, starting all over again.
And, yet, at least I’m starting from scratch for a reason. I hope to do some reading — and development — before I start writing again so when I do I’m going to knock what I do write out of the park.
That, at least is the vision.
And, yada, yada, yada, I sell the novel or novels, the series a huge success and Olivia Munn plays the heroine of these first few novels in the series. You gotta dream, man. Dreaming is free.
It is possible that the Russo-Ukrainian War may evoke a rather abrupt “vibe shift” in American popular entertainment. It could be that the next few years will see the rise of War Movies becoming popular again.
We could see movies set during the various wars the United States has been a part of over the years. And, sadly, we might see more than a few movies set in WW3. So, here’s my pitch for a movie like The Day After.
Act 1
A series of people from all walks of life are seen getting onto a plane in NYC for a cross-country trip to LA. In between their farewells (which would establish each character) we hear bits and pieces of an escalating war somewhere off in some distant land.
Inciting Incident: Now, while they’re up in the air, there’s some sort of emergency. They have to make an emergency somewhere in the midwest.
While there on the ground for what is meant to be a short amount of time, WW3 breaks out and everyone across the US EMPs zap electronics. So they’re stuck in, say, Iowa somewhere. Act 2
So, the first part of the second act would be the different people on the plane making new friends and realizing that suddenly everything is existential. They now have to figure out what to do. A small group, maybe four or five people, are now a group and they head out of the Iowa city they’re in (chaos is beginning to take over.)
Midpoint: they finally find a small town in the middle of nowhere that will take them.
The latter part of the second is about how this diverse group of people begin to deal with their lives are changed forever. This is when one of the people on the plan begins to grow power hungry and becomes a Trump-like demagogy.
The end of the second act is when people start to realize that Nuclear Winter is here for a while and there’s a chance that they’re all going to die. The power hungry fromer passenger begins to kill people and our small group of goodguys from the plane have to figure out what to do. End Things appear to get better when American troops from a part of the country that hasn’t been struck by a H-bomb try to come to save the day. But they come too late — some of the passengers we’ve been focused on have been captured and are set to be killed.
The climax is a Zero Dark Thirty type attack on the villian’s lair.
Our core group of people are saved and the move ends with them heading west to safety and the continue struggle of living in post- limited nuclear exchange America.
Things are going really well with these five novels I’m working on. I’m still struggling with the first novel, ugh, but I do have five solid novel concepts. But in the back of my mind, I have this really, really great screenplay that is about the implications of global climate change.
I have a beginning and an ending, but there’s a huge void where the middle part should be.
And, yet, there is a part of me that always occasionally wants to use this global climate change-themed screenplay as my “second creative track.” Some of the people I’ve told the general story to were rather enthralled by what I’ve come up with.
But I love these five novels too much. Though, I will admit the practical aspects of developing and writing five novels have me stumped at the moment. Should I just focus on the first book and use it as a calling card for the other five novels, or should I make at least an attempt to do one run through through the all five novels on a first-draft basis?
At this point, I just don’t know.
The thing about this screenplay percolating in my mind is so much better than Don’t Look Up. It addresses the implications of Global Climate Change in a way that is far more clean on a storytelling basis. None of the bonkers, scrambled storytelling of Don’t Look Up that I found so grating.
Though, one element that is interesting about the characters I’ve come up with is I like how it kind of switches the gender roles of the Hero With A Thousand Faces trope we’re so used to.
Anyway.
What I think is going to happen is I’m going to really focus on the first book of this five book series, then if I get a literary agent and sell it, I’ll use that foot in the door to sell the other four novels in the series. And, then, maybe, I can figure out a way to sell my far-better interpretation of Don’t Look Up.
So, I walked out of The Batman. Now, let me be clear — I did this not because I didn’t like the movie, it’s just from a storytelling point of view it wasn’t doing much for me. (I must also note that there were some guys in the theatre who were creeping me out and I was being paranoid that they were going to jump me in the parking lot once the movie was over tonight.)
Anyway, The Batman was a good movie, just not good enough to keep me in my seat.
I think some of this had to do with me not being the intended audience. I’ve grown very, very tired of comic book movies. I’ve come to believe that particular market has “matured” to the point that it needs to be sent off to pasture so some other genre can, thankfully, replace it at last.
But another problem I had was I just didn’t really see the point of Yet Another Batman Movie. I just didn’t care. I didn’t care about the characters and I didn’t care about the plot. It was pretty to look — especially Zoe Kravitz — but the whole thing left me feeling rather meh.
And, yet, I’m not saying what I saw was “bad.” It wasn’t all that bad. Just kind of hum-drum. I wish we could get a solid reboot of the Alien or Terminator franchises. I think good scifi should make a comeback.
I am so spooked by the publicity stills from the upcoming romcom “I Want You Back” that I’m beginning to think that either one of the screenwriters or one of the producers was, at some point, an expat in Seoul.
The only reason why this isn’t Nori’s women’s bathroom is the real Nori’s women’s bathroom has just one room and is across from an even more gross men’s bathroom.
And maybe even was a regular at Nori Bar in Sinchon where I used to DJ. This is both cool and rattling. It’s cool because expats in South Korea represent! It’s rattling because I’m doing a huge amount of similar interpolation in these five novels I’m working. (That no one in my family cares about.)
It’s one of those things where it’s not like I have a monopoly on the expat experience. And it’s getting pretty damn close to being 20 years since I got to South Korea the first time in 2004. So, I just have to accept that someone had the same I idea I had, in a vague way.
But as anyone who’s ever been an expat in South Korea can tell you — the place is a goldmine of creativity and human drama.
You must be logged in to post a comment.