Tag: I Love Hollywood

Deconstructing Marty Supreme

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I did not like the movie Marty Supreme. I think my dislike comes from how peripatetic the storytelling was. It was just event after event after event without any time for the beats to properly land.

This is different from a similar movie, One Battle After Another, which was far more of a slow burn. There were major beats, then a little bit of a breather and so forth.

Also, I really did not like the hero. I get that that was part of the point — that he was a snot nose kid making a lot of mistakes and the “hero’s journey” was him sort of spiraling out of control. But I just did not like or care about him.

Yes, he leaves a wake of interesting disasters behind him, but…so what? Why should I care?

I will admit that some of my annoyance with the movie comes from thinking it was going to be a rousing, crowd pleasing tale about ping pong. Sort of a “miracle on ice” only with ping-pong.

Instead, meh. Just meh.

Given how…low stakes…ping pong is, you’d think at least we would be given a likeable hero who, against all odds, won the big championship. I left before the very end, so….maybe in some sense he did? But from what I’ve read on Wikipedia, that does not, in any real sense, seem to be the case.

I just found the whole endeavor grating on my nerves. There was a good to great movie lurking somewhere in the plot of Marty Supreme, but too bad we got what we got instead.

I Really Did Not Like The Movie ‘Marty Supreme’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Where to begin with this one. I went into Marty Supreme largely blind. I knew it was a movie about ping-pong and that was about it. Well, jokes on me because it turned out it was more about the disastrous life of a 23-year-old asshole.

I was expecting a rousing, audience pleasing tale of a young man making it big in the world of professional ping-pong. But, lulz, that’s not at all what happened. It just seemed like a succession of poor decisions on the part of the hero.

I didn’t care about the characters. I didn’t care about the sport. So about 90% in I walked out. Maybe the last 10% of the movie gave me what I expected, but I had better things to do, so I don’t know.

Anyway, I struggle to understand why people think Marty Supreme is such a great movie. Every time I think I’ve gotten a handle on it, it slips through my grasp. The ending must have been a lot better than I expected for everyone to love the movie so much.

I just found the experience tiresome and grating on my nerves.

‘Wake Up Dead Man’ Was Pretty Good!

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I was impressed with the latest Knives Out mystery. It was a pretty good and it was interesting how the movie threaded the needle when it came to touchstone “woke” issues.

It was able to address “woke” bullshit in a way that did not consume the plot, which was good. There were some light allusions to “woke” stuff, but it was played for comic effect.

Anyway. I really enjoyed the movie. More of that, Hollywood!

Hollywood’s Last Transformation Before The AI Singularity

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

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.

A Little Uneasy

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

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.

But, while there’s life, there’s hope, I suppose.

How To Fix ‘Jay Kelly’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

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.

Update On My Scifi Dramedy Novel For October 30, 2025

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

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.

For Shame, Atlantic Radio

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

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.

Deep Breath

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

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.

Someone May…Care?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

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.