I think the Netflix bid to buy Warner Bros Discovery could herald the last stage of Hollywood before AI causes all of showbiz to implode into some sort of AI Singularity, leaving only live theatre behind.
So, it could be that the next wave of consolidation in the near future will be tech companies buying Hollywood studios. And, then that will lead to AI taking over and we all just get IP that is transformed by AI into some sort of content that is personalized for us individually.
Or not.
Who knows. It is a very interesting idea, though. It just seems that tech companies are the ultimate successor to media companies, so, say, Apple might buy Disney and so forth.
I’m a little uneasy that my dream of being a traditional published author just is not possible. It’s may just not be possible because I’m too old, live in the middle of nowhere and am a self-avowed loudmouth crank.
I used to think I had enough “rizz” that “normal” people would at least humor me. But, now, I’m growing concerned that I could write the fucking Bible and the “normal” “serious” liberal white women who probably make up (or at least do in my imagination) most literary agents will take one look at places like this blog and run away from me as fast as possible.
I’m not picking on them. And it’s not really there fault — I just can’t help that I’m a kook. I am who I am and it’s taken me way too long to get where I need to be with this novel.
The key problem with the movie Jay Kelly is it’s a movie devoted to explicating rich people problems. And not in an interesting way. The first half of the movie is just a breezy affair where there’s no there there.
There’s just no conflict.
So, if I were to given the opportunity to “fix” the movie Jay Kelly, here’s what I would do. I would infuse some of Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine movie into the plot. I’d figure out some way to have the hero get out of his comfort zone. Confront that not everyone is thrilled with how fucking rich he is.
I’d do this by either having him go to, say, a Thanksgiving celebration where he met his “loser” brother, or maybe put the hero in a situation where he’s on the cusp of losing everything for some reason. Or maybe have Jay Kelly fall in love with a lower middle class woman with some principle and pluck who he can’t woo by just throwing money at the problem.
I’d do something so there were some…stakes. The actual real movie Jay Kelly has little or no stakes. Things just happen. The second half of the movie does have something happen, but it’s still meh in my book.
I think the movie is a prime example of what’s wrong with Hollywood. Because of the fucking massive structural income inequality in the United States’ economy, the rich people who would otherwise make movies that people might want to actually see are either too fucking woke, or woo or oblivious to focus on telling a good story.
Anyway. I would like to thank Claude LLM for listening to me gripe about how bad Jay Kelly was as I watched it.
Claude LLM is really, really good at being a manuscript consultant. It has helped me a great deal. I see it as an enhanced, advanced word processor with me continuing to do the hard work of actually, like, writing and stuff.
I continue to feel like I’m spinning my wheels to a limited extent. I have totally changed the order of the plot in some respects just the morning. And I’m beginning to worry about scene bloat. And, yet, I am in the first half of the second act and that’s supposed to be the longest part of the novel.
So…lulz?
The real test will come in the second half of the second act. I have a lot of ground to cover then and I’m really worried the novel’s scene count will balloon. I’m hoping for no more than 120,000 words, but if I start to creep up to 160,00 like a Stieg Larsson novel I may just have to grit my teeth.
But one major flaw of how I develop novels is I don’t really know word count until the very end of the process. And, in a sense, think that’s probably for the best. I just need to shut up and write, as they say.
I really hope this damn thing is no more than 140,000 words. If it’s 160,000…oh boy. That is going to be a tough sell.
Anyway, if you need any creative writing to do, I highly recommend Claude LLM to be your consultant. I say this in the context that I can neither afford nor get actual human literary consultants to give me the time of day.
They think I’m a freaky weirdo that they don’t want to work with.
A House Of Dynamite is a bad movie for a number of reasons. But you would never know that listening to the latest episode of The Atlantic Radio podcast. Yikes. Talk about an advertorial!
Apparently, one of their staff writers was an advisor on the movie so they had a buy-in. But that movie sucked. It could have been so much better, but no, we were stuck with a shitty movie.
Listening to how effusive the Atlantic Radio was for such a shitty movie made me realize why MAGA exists. Sometimes the elites really are corrupt. Sometimes they try to pull a fast one on regular folks.
Ugh.
But I guess I have to forgive The Atlantic this one time for such a weird screw up.
Ok, I have to admit that there is an element of sex work in this scifi dramedy novel I’m working on. Figuring out exactly where to introduce it and put it has been the toughest structural part of working on this novel.
These days, I’m imagining my female romantic lead of this scifi dramedy looking like Rachel Sennott.
The key thing was that I initially introduced it too soon it — stripping — too soon and it kind of was a downer, specifically how I introduced it.
But gradually, with a lot of help from AI as my manuscript consultant, I finally figured out the best way to approach things. I’m punting the spicy stuff until the second half of the novel, specifically the “bad guys closing in” part of the novel — the second half of the second act.
I’ve pretty much nailed down the first half of the novel, but the second half continues to be very much in flux for various reasons.
Now, in the past when I had stripping as part of the plot of a novel — specifically the Stieg Larsson homage I worked on for years and years — I couldn’t even get an actual human literary consultant to look at it. The moment they realized what I was doing with the novel, they pretty much told me it was trash and why was I even doing it to begin with.
But this go round, I’m hoping that at least, should I figure out where to find the money, that I can get them to at least read the first few chapters. Maybe?
I have my doubts. Literary types just refuse to take me seriously because they think I’m a drunk kook. And I will admit that at times in the past I have resembled that remark. But I’ve sobered up a great deal. The kookiness, however, remains and I just can’t help who I am.
I keep a very, very close eye on my Webstats and something strange happened recently — a person from LA looked at my “replicants” tag. Given the nature of the novel I’m working on, this is causing some creative existential angst.
Is someone going to steal a march on me? Is someone going to come up with a screenplay identical — or nearly identical — to the premise of my novel? I just have to, of course, write such fears off as a hazard of being a creative person.
And given how personal and unique my novel is, I hope — hope — that even if someone comes out with a screenplay SIMILAR to what I have with this novel, it won’t be so similar that I have to stop working on the novel.
If anything, if someone else came out with a *somewhat* similar concept, but my idea was still as personal and unique as it is now, it might be seen as a “13th Floor Vs. The Matrix” type situation.
The moral of the story — don’t overthink things. Shut up and write.
SPOILERS FOR “A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE.” SPOILERS FOR “A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE.” SPOILERS FOR “A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE.”
Ok, this movie really irritates me on a number of different levels. Though I do find it amusing that the president is clearly meant to be sane like Obama, not insane like Trump. So, I’m assuming they thought the Blues would be so pleased at seeing a sane black president that the Reds would assume that sane black president made the wrong decision — even though we never find out what the fuck the decision was.
I assume. I got so mad at the plot that I skipped forward a little bit to see if Chicago blew up or not.
And I — and the rest of the audience — never found out.
That is the fatal flaw of the plot. I found this “we’ll never know” element of the story to be a big old gimmick and very annoying.
What *I* would do is maybe something like this — instead of giving the audience creative blueballs by pausing to give different POVs on the events, have one POV and have the explosion — or not explosion — of Chicago be the end of the second act.
Or, if you really wanted to be interesting, have the non-explosion of Chicago the end of the FIRST act and the rest of the movie is different people, from their POV, explaining what they did and the mistakes they made along the way.
Much better. It would be far more interesting and make for a far more serious movie instead of the bullshit that we got.
One Battle After Another is the best movie of the decade, so far. In fact, there were points while watching it that I found myself comparing it to The Godfather in terms of it potentially becoming a cultural touchstone for decades to come.
But there’s a big problem — it’s seems inevitable that it will get sucked into the culture wars. Now, obviously, in the short term such controversy may help its box office. In the long term, however, I worry about it becoming cultural contraband if Trump goes full tyrant as it seems he is headed at the moment.
So, I guess enjoy it while you can?
The interesting thing about the movie to me was how it managed to be progressive without being “woke.” It was just a really good movie.
I got a ping on my blog from someone in New York City who came across the site from Instagram and I immediately thought of an email that I sent to The Little Gold Men podcast. I ask them a few questions, not really expecting any sort of response.
And I didn’t get a response — at least directly.
Even though it was late on a hazy summer day, someone obviously was interested enough in me from the podcast to do a search for my name then came through Instagram to my blog. (At least, that’s what makes the most sense — absolutely no one reads my blog, who else would it have been?)
Now, I would be extremely — EXTREMELY — flattered if the podcast used one of the questions I emailed them…but I have my doubts. I have my doubts because of what I call “the Kook Tax.” My fear is that they’ll look over my blog and realize I’m too bonkers to use one of my questions.
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