Believable character change and likable in Ruby Sparks

I recently watched Ruby Sparks, the updating of Weird Science and parodic deconstruction of the manic pixie dream girl archetype.

Or something.

Calvin Weir-Fields (Paul Dano) is a sad sack of a genius, wunderkind author: his first book is beloved, but he's never been able to follow it up. The film doesn't really pull punches about Calvin's sad-sackdom: his brother is a successful professional (lawyer?) who has a good but realistic marriage and whose primary hobby seems to be hanging out with Calvin and getting him to go to the gym. Calvin is friends with some other famous novelists and has a supportive (and demanding) agent. And he's got a therapist who lets him vent about his ex-girlfriend and gives him a stuffed animal to cuddle. Calvin lives in a nice house, has a cute dog, and apparently is well-supplied with typewriter ribbons, since he's still typing on one of those. Also, girls throw themselves at him.

And he can't write.

What do we call a character who has every opportunity but can't get anything done? We might call him a loser, or a sad sack, or depressed, or lazy, or traumatized. Is this a flaw in him we can identify with? A flaw that makes him unlikeable? Or something that was done to him?

Ruby Sparks doesn't exactly want to pathologize Calvin by diagnosing and dosing him, which leaves us with someone who has an unidentifiable situation for most people (he's a wunderkind, with a beloved first book and/or a wealthy family that apparently allows him to live a life of relative luxury) with a semi-identifiable problem (he's blocked, procrastinating, self-loathing, whatever--which is why the problem is only semi-identifiable, because it's only semi-identified by the movie).

Which means that we're watching a movie about someone we don't really like.

Eventually, he's confronted by his problems--his ex-girlfriend points out that he's a self-centered jerk, he uses his magical writing power for completely self-centered reasons by turning Ruby from a person into a puppet for his amusement. And he... changes?

I mean, that's what the movie should do, structurally: take an anti-hero or man with a flaw and allow him to fix himself. That's what the movies wants us to believe in some ways: he gives Ruby her freedom, finishing his book and putting it out into the world, to do its own thing.

And yet, it's not really believable and Calvin has already built up so much ill-will that it's hard to give him a break here. On top of that, it doesn't help that he doesn't actually pay any price or give anything up to make things right: he writes a book, keeps his house, gets along with his family, and even gets the girl again in the end.

So, in a way, I found it hard to get into and harder to swallow.

Think of another movie that swirls around similar issue: Scott Pilgrim. That movie/comic does something smart in making Scott likable and then confronting him with his issues in a way that recasts his protagonist status--and then allows him to fix them. Or take 500 Days of Summer: another likable schmo, with a narration and heightened reality to give us some distance from him, whose problem is easily sketched out and whose course runs him through a ringer of punishment.

Frozen, part 2 (random lessons for aspiring writers)

While I was writing some thoughts on Frozen, I had a whole bunch of other thoughts. Which serves as a lesson: don't write your thoughts out, because it will just make more work for you.

And here's some other lessons from Frozen:

Hiding exposition:
Frozen does this nice trick where it hides exposition and boring plot points in dialogue that seems like something else. For instance, when Hans tells Anna that he has 12 older brothers, they do so simply in a bonding scene that quickly gets to Anna's unhappiness with her sister. And the fact that Hans has 12 older brothers is a crucial plot point for his motivation. So Anna will say yes to his proposal because she's lonely (which we already knew), but we'll learn later that Hans only proposes because of this issue.

Similarly, Kristoff drops the information about this winter coming from the North Mountain in small talk about the weather. Is there anything more boring than small talk? And yet, Kristoff does this in front of Anna, and it's crucial that she knows this. Hmmm... so this example isn't so much "hiding exposition" as "getting crucial information out in a natural way."

Set up the turn:
Dumb snowman Olaf is given some of the important revelations in the movie--that Kristoff loves Anna being the most important. It might seem like a cheat to have this sidekick suddenly provide the revelation. Except we've seen that Olaf is very observant, even if he doesn't know the significance of what he's observing. For instance, he talks about how Elsa is probably very warm and sweet right as he walks into some impaling ice lances and then he comments that he's been impaled. And so on: Olaf observes constantly, so it's not surprising that he's the one who observed Kristoff's affection.

Make a joke of it to get double the fun:
When Anna comes to Elsa's ice palace, she hesitates to knock, which shows--for once--some hesitation in her action. (Usually she's a charge ahead person; but where it comes to her sister, she's... a little torn.) And then Olaf makes a joke of it--"Does she know how to knock?"--which gives the scene another source of entertainment: Anna's character and the joke.

Repeat problems:
A hallmark of film structure is that you give your hero the same situation, with some crucial differences. Usually the difference is in the hero: he used to think his job was important, but now he realizes, blah blah blah. Frozen does some of this, but it also changes the world. So, we meet Anna at the beginning as someone who is locked out in the hallway while her sister is on the other side in the room; at the end, we see Anna locked in the room by Hans and rescued by... we'd expect her sister, but really it's Olaf, a representation of the sisters' childhood love.

Avoiding explanations:
I don't quite understand why Sven the reindeer makes Kristoff go back to rescue Anna from Hans. After all, Sven doesn't know the danger Anna is in; and he's not been set up like Olaf as the observant one. But just as the movie avoids talking about magic and trolls in this world (they just are, here are the rules you need to know, get over it), the filmmakers make a smart move here by giving Sven some agency--especially since he doesn't talk and can't explain himself. (Also, very smart of them to give Sven the personality of a dog, so that the reindeer-less viewers can understand their relationship a bit.)

Rooting for both sides:
When Hans goes to confront Elsa, the film pulls a good trick on us so that we can root for both Hans (the heroic prince, we think) and Elsa (the soon-to-be gay rights icon): they give us secondary characters that we can root against. So between Hans and Marshmallow, the giant scary snowman, we root for Hans; between Elsa and the evil duke's thugs, we root for Elsa. No one has to really suddenly change their personality totally--Elsa still wants to be left alone, Hans still wants to do the right thing (we think)--but we're able to root for both of them.

Interrupt a scene to change the direction:
When Kristoff and Anna are being married by the trolls, they don't have to totally object and start talking about how they don't want to be married. No, just give Anna an attack of her magical cold. (How convenient.) When Anna and Elsa are arguing in the ice palace, have Olaf or Kristoff walk in. Have Hans show up. Olaf discovers stairs so Kristoff and Anna don't have to argue. There are a lot of ways to keep a scene from just spinning its wheels over one issue by having another character interrupt, either changing the direction or giving weight to one side.

The importance of theme:
Sure, this movie is about sisterly love and how terrible it is to fall for the first guy you see; but both Anna and Elsa are struggling with parallel thematic journeys, from fear to love (Elsa) and from false love to real love (Anna).

Frozen, part 1 (move forward and songs)

I was going to try to write a whole series on Frozen, a la my posts on Sneakers; but after listening to the Scriptnotes podcast interview with the screenwriter Jennifer Lee, I'm not all that sure it's worthwhile. I mean, they have such a good discussion and talk about most of the things I would want to talk about.

It's also interesting to hear the background/production issues and see how that affects the writing and making of the movie. For instance, I read the script, and I noticed that there's a lot of things that are not really explained or described. So the first scene, of the ice harvesters, describes them simply as "dressed in traditional Sami clothing." What does that mean? Well, if you were writing a spec script, you might have to say more to help the reader picture it. But this script gets away with being less descriptive because most of these elements already have art work. So when we first meet Elsa and Anna, they have no description other than their age--but these characters are probably already drawn up and these drawings are available to anyone who needs to know what they look like (casting directors, voice directors, actual animators, etc.).

That said, it's also worth noting (as they do in the podcast) how this script and this movie doesn't spend a lot of time lingering over things; it's always moving forward in some way. So, the ice harvesters sing about how dangerous ice and cold are AND we get introduced to the solitary group of Kristoff and Sven; then we see how Elsa and Anna love to play together AND that Elsa has magical powers AND then we see Elsa hurt Anna with magic. And so on: every scene moves.

Which is why, instead of the sisterly confrontation being at the end, it's in the middle. Which is why, instead of filling in backstory explaining why Elsa is magic, all we get is one line from Papa Troll asking "Born with the powers or cursed?"

(Side note for academics: there's a dozen papers to be written about this movie along some semi-traditional lines: class (do you play with snow like royalty or work with ice like the Saami?); gender (ice is stronger than 100 men according to the song, but it's under the power of one girl); etc.)

In addition to how fast it moves, Frozen would also be a good movie to study for transitions. Some of its transitions are pretty plain--like fading to black and then fading up with the title card "Three Years Later"; but other transitions are a little more organic: the use of the king's narration about the plan for the future blending in with seeing those plans put into action; the fade between a fountain frozen into a threatening ice-form to the threatening mountains that Elsa trudges up; the visiting dignitaries talking about the princess's beauty to a smash-cut of her napping messily; etc.

Following on my recent post about the narrative weight of action scenes, it's also interesting to look at the songs as action scenes. As we'd expect in a musical, many of the songs are primarily useful for telling us about characters. (That is, in many traditional musicals, you break into song when words can no longer do your emotions justice.) So we learn about Olaf's innocence-to-suicide when he sings about summer; and we learn about Anna's excitement and Elsa's dread in "For the First Time in Forever"; and we learn about solitary Kristoff's feelings on society; etc. There's also the pure spectacle of the songs, as when Anna and Hans dance in an entertaining way (their shadows cast on a ship's sails, them doing the robot with mechanical clock figures). There's also a lot of theme work going on in those songs; for instance, in Olaf's song, which is fun (spectacle) and gives us his cracked perspective (a snowman who wants to see summer?), we also get hints of the thematic struggle in the movie between desire and fear.

OK, I have a few more lessons to learn from Frozen, but that's long enough for now.

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 217: Edith Wharton, Autres Temps... (#217)

Edith Wharton, "Autres Temps..." (1911) from Edith Wharton: Collected Stories 1911–1937:

I didn't mean to read the whole thing standing here. It's a 30-page story about complicated social mores of the past, featuring less than five major characters, none of whom is particularly funny or interesting on their own:

• the older (widowed?) Mrs. Lidcote who broke off her marriage to run away with another husband and has since been unwelcome in American high society--and has internalized that feeling till now she always expects people to cut her (socially, I mean--to avoid her); 
• her daughter Leila who has just tossed over one husband and picked up with another, but who seems to have gotten away with it because times have changed and whose major personality trait is that she's happy; 
• Franklin Ide, the suitor of Mrs. Lidcote who tries to convince her that times have changed and that they can now marry without any social problems;
• assorted family members--Leila's new husband and her cousin-aunt-majordomo (a standard family position for an unmarried older woman, as the helper to someone with greater status/money);
• and a bunch of society people, including the powerful and old-fashioned Mrs. Boulger (who can help Leila and husband get a post in Italy, near Mrs. Lidcote), and many others.

And yet, despite the fact that this has so little plot, with so much time spent in and around Mrs. Lidcote's head--as she tries to figure out whether times really have changed--I read the whole 30-page thing in one standing. (OK, I shouldn't make too much of this standing issue: I have a standing desk set-up on one of my bookshelves that I try to use every day. So really, I read this whole thing standing here because I'm supposed to be standing more.)

Or maybe I read it all in one go because it's such a slow, thoughtful piece about a period that's long gone. (Which is what the title refers to: "Other times, other manners" is both the reference in the French phrase "autres temps, autres mœurs" and also the original title to this piece in 1911; Wharton retitled it in 1916.) Because it doesn't really speak to our time in its particulars, we might be able to see how the general trend of it fits in with our lives.

Or let me put it this way: in Mad Men, there's a gay character (Sal) who is deeply in the closet--constantly talking about women, married unhappily, the whole sad nine yards. Then, a few years later, Sal meets a young up-and-comer who explains quite undramatically that he's gay. And the look on Sal's face--the "that's an option?" look--is pricelessly shattering.

I get a very similar feeling here, when Mrs. Lidcote (at first) can't quite get her mind around the fact that her daughter is really fine--that everyone in society is fine with her leaving her old husband, that her old husband is so fine with this that he's trying to help Leila's husband. And then, after Mrs. Lidcote makes that turn to understanding that maybe things are different, Wharton pulls the rug out from under us again: things have changed, but not for Mrs. Lidcote. And everyone else understands this thing that Mrs. Lidcote needs to figure out. It's a murder mystery story--but what's been murdered is Mrs. Lidcote's chance for happiness and just because she was born at the wrong time.

Almost Human: Too far, too close

He's a curmudgeonly cop with a tragic backstory; his partner is a young gun from a despised minority, itching to make the world--and his partner--better; the chief has her eye out on the curmudgeon, helping to nudge him along towards health; the cute tech has an eye on the curmudgeon--but will they or won't they?; the weird tech is good comic relief; and the other cop at the precinct is kind of a jerk; and every week, some strange new murder or crime comes up that they have to solve--and some of these crimes are ripped from the headlines.

Does that sound like every cop/procedural show in existence? Probably. But I'm talking about Almost Human, the science fiction cop show where the curmudgeon goes to a "recollectionist" to recover his lost memories about an ambush that nearly killed him; and the young cop is actually a recently re-activated robot of a model that was de-activated for mental health reasons.

And the crimes they deal with every week (with spoilers):

1. evil Syndicate that ambushed the old cop tries to break into police headquarters
2. people are being skinned to use their skin on super-real sexbots
3. the cops face a hostage situation that is really a cover for a heist
4. the cops have to clear the good name of an undercover cop by tracing a new drug to its source--within the police department!
5. witness needs protection from brilliant philanthropist-killer--whose associates are all his clones! (Bonus: the witness underwent some brain-enhancing surgery which has turned her into a psychic who can talk with the dead. No, that doesn't really work)
6. black-market synthetic organs are leading to deaths
7. to get the equivalent of YouTube hits, a bomb specialist straps bombs and cameras to people and makes them do things
8. the cops track down "smart bullets" that can hit people anywhere (and that use the surveillance network)
9. a killer robot is on the loose!
10. genetically-engineered perfect kids ("chromes") die of drug overdose, connected to a normal who died of the same (because she felt too much pressure to keep up with the perfects)
11. after a smart house kills a kid (shades of Trayvon Martin), some hacker takes revenge by turning the smart houses against the people
12. an ugly man is murdering people to steal parts of their faces with nano-technology
13. --haven't seen this one yet--

So let's break it down:

• doesn't need to be science fiction at all (5): 1 (break-in), 3 (hostages), 4 (drugs and corrupt cops), 6 (botched black market surgery), 7 (thrill kill camera version of Speed), 
• doesn't really need to be science fiction (1): 9 (super-trained soldier works instead of combat robot), 
• too stupid to take seriously (3): ~5 (psychics?), 11 (tries to rip from the headlines, but ends in this ridiculous hacker-vs.-hacker story), 12 (why not just get regular plastic surgery? why do the nanobots really have to kill the people?)
• interesting use of future technology used to discuss contemporary issues (4): 2 (exploitation of women?), ~5 (cloning), 8 (surveillance), 10 (genetic alteration, haves vs. have-nots).

So out of 13 episodes (12 that I saw), roughly half don't really take advantage of the science fiction world; and only about a third do so in an interesting way.

And that's one of my big problems with this show so far. I like all the characters fine--I like all the actors more actually--but the whole show just feels too close to an ordinary buddy-cop show. It's Castle without the sexual tension or witty banter or fun secondary character tensions. I can definitely see this as a purposeful idea: rather than scare away people with weird s.f. trappings (says the producer, in my fantasy), let's keep things grounded in what they know.

But the result isn't a show that's relatable, but a show that's a little bland. Despite my newfound love for Karl Urban and Michael Ealy.

What do you think?

(For an alternative take, I think Lauren Davis makes some excellent points in this io9 post, especially about the strangely consequence-free world they seem to be living in.)

Los Angeles Report, part two: Is LA livable?

Yes, LA is totally livable.

Though it depends what you mean by "livable," really. I'd heard that LA was less a city and more a collection of towns--a sort of never-ending sprawl with the occasional town center. The downside to that is that, traffic being what it is, once you're in a place, you might stick there. So, you leave on the east side but your friend is having an awesome barbecue on the beach at Santa Monica... chances are you're not going. I mean, you could if you wanted to--if you had to. But you probably won't.

Or as one friend put it, when he visited, he went out every night and saw people and it was super social; and then he moved there and he hasn't seen anyone since.

So, while there's probably a lot going on and a lot of scenesterism (i.e., you have to go to this bar, it's where everyone goes, there's no parking, but you'll get a valet, it'll be fine), there's probably also a bit of homebodyism, too. Or at least close-to-homebodyism, where you stay around your home or you stay in a certain area or in a well-trodden path.

It's basically like that one story in Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, where everyone sticks so closely to a certain repeated path of life that they can spin these different cities off into their own cities, thus relieving congestion.

Which brings me to the worst and most easily managed part of LA: the traffic. It is terrible. Not always--there were times when I zipped along the freeway pretty easily. Then there were times when I was stuck on a city street for a long time. You can see how people, shuttling between this feast and famine condition, would grow a little harried and shitty as drivers. And you do have to watch out for drivers being shitty drivers. Not evil--just incompetent, short-sighted, with blinders on. Thank god I was driving a newer rental car and not my 18-year-old Honda.

But here's the mantra: this too shall pass. I was stuck in one spot for five to ten to fifteen minutes--the worst traffic I've ever seen, and I've driven in New York, Boston, and London. And eventually, I moved.

The other mantra for driving in LA: some time, some one will realize this is their exit and will need to cross three lanes to get it; and some time, that some one will be you. So treat others as you wish to be treated on the freeway.

So, yes, with the terrible traffic, there is a chance that you might move to LA and discover that you aren't always up for gallivanting around the city to some improv show (probably sold out, plan in advance) or to some dinner party (though you want to go because there's a guy there who works for Laika and you want to make that contact). Sometimes you will be not in the mood to take advantage of the advantages offered by this advantage-stuffed city.

But at other times, you will be--and then it's good to have those advantages at your fingertips.

In short: LA is very livable.

In slightly less short: I'm not sure when or even if I'll be moving there, but I'll be perfectly happy to give it a chance.

And I may even take one of those "learn a foreign language in your car" courses with me. Sehr gut? Çe n'est pas mal.

Fights, sex, and other action scenes

(Note: I'm really thinking out loud here, so I might be wrong about any of these ideas, and would welcome your thoughts.)

I was just listening to the most recent Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff podcast and the first discussion about making fights meaningful got me to thinking about something:

Why are the fights in Buffy so often boring?

And this is true of a lot of action-adventure media... and true of sex scenes in romance/rom-coms.

Now, there are differences between action scenes in different genres: in romance (books), sex is often the reward. After the presumptive lovers beat the final obstacle at the climax, they, well, the pun is too obvious to be rewarding. This isn't universally true: some romance (books and movies) include sex or sexual scenes as both climax and often as act breaks/before other problems arise. "We've rushed through the rain to this abandoned manor house and I can't keep myself away. But now we've had sex and my mother who hates you shows up, so here's another obstacle." So how do writers/makers keep the action meaningful?

In action-adventure media, from Buffy to superhero comics, fights are often climactic (Buffy vs. Spike after she finds his base) and often run throughout (Buffy fighting Spike's minions, getting closer to the source). And while each fight brings Buffy closer to the climax, there's usually a rote-ness to the action. Kick, kick, punch, stake. Ta-da!

In roleplaying, Ken Hite and Robin Laws point out that some fights in D&D can be a little bit like "tolls" on the way to some meaningful end. So how do we make those fights narratively meaningful?

It seems to me that action--sex or violence--follows the same basic structural rules as most scenes. It's not enough to have conflict. To have readers/viewers care about that conflict, we need some sense of stakes, of consequences. The same old fear and hope that structure most scenes.

If Buffy loses this fight, she'll die--except, even in a Joss Whedon show we don't expect the titular character to die (with some notable exceptions in season finales). OK, so we don't fear that, so add some other fear. If she loses the fight--or wins in the wrong way--some other bad thing will happen: she'll fail to get the antidote to a poison, she'll lose a chance to get a clue to the bad guy's lair, someone else will die, etc. These are the things that happen at the best fights in Buffy, but not all of them.

For romance/sex, fear and hope are a little different, I think. In many cases, the reader may fear the lovers won't get together and hope that they do--but once they're actually having sex, those fears/hopes are answered. And since these moments are often the reward (and not always on screen), I'm not sure you'd want to introduce more fear. I mean, let's be honest: people are reading this to emotionally get off and introducing fear will get in the way. Maybe at the beginning you could have some worry, but that's probably going to go away.

So maybe some scenes are fine just as spectacle. You have some awesome wire-fu fights or wire-fu sex--and then you take that scene and think about how that affects the characters/plot. Some people just did something very intimate and now are feeling pretty vulnerable--how is that going to change them? Or not change them? Maybe for a brief moment, these characters could forget their hopes and fears--but they come back pretty quickly.

Let's also add that fights and sex are useful scenes for expressing character: is your character a risk-taker or risk-averse? Self-centered or other-centered? Serious or funny? All of these issues can come out in any sort of action scene.

(Other options added by Ken and Robin for creating structure/stakes in RPGs:

• consequences: winning gains you favor/access to other adventure; loss cuts you off;
• consequences: winning changes the world in some way (now that the dungeon is empty, someone else moves in; now that they've killed the monsters, townsfolk react differently to them, etc.);
• give the fight emotional weight by giving the players a chance to avenge some previous loss/problem*;
• associate the random fights into some larger structure (i.e., give all your enemies the same badge or heraldry, so the players get a sense of some coherence);
• fights that answer questions/ask questions.

*As someone who used to roleplay--and misses it terribly--I can attest to the effectiveness of this. In college, my gaming group's most hated foes were characters who had previously messed up our plans. It didn't have to be a fight; even an evil lawyer springing someone can make for an effective villain you want to beat on next time he shows up.)

At Long Last, Gilmore Girls (Season 7)

Yes, I know the Oscars were last night; and no, I don't have any particular feeling about the winners. In fact, except for Gravity, I'm not sure I've seen any of the major nominees.

Instead of going to the movies to see ::checks online to see what's playing at the local and only theater, realizes that nothing nominated is playing:: some movie, Sarah and I recently finished the last few episodes of Gilmore Girls. And I have thoughts.

Part of me wonders what this last season would have looked like if Sherman-Palladino/Palladino were kept on as writers/producers. I... am not sure. When the season started, I thought I detected a shift in both plots and writing--some things were a little more melodramatic, while the witty banter wasn't quite as witty. And yet, I wonder if that was more my bias than any objective shift in the show. After all, sure, Sherman-Palladino had left and was a unique creative force; but it's not like the new writers had to start all over. All the actors were still there, all the crew too, probably. So when Lorelei and Rory have a walk-and-talk through the town in season seven, there's probably more things that have stayed the same than have changed.

Still, even though the last few episodes wrapped things up nicely in many regards, I'm still not entirely thrilled with the season seven treatment of Christopher.

But looking back, and after talking it over with Sarah, I think Gilmore Girls has a nearly perfect balance of low-stakes angst and low-stakes joy.

Low stakes?
I mean, there are no world-destroying storms or soul-sucking vampires. What's the worst that can happen in the Gilmore Girls world? There's no murder or rape. The worst thing that can happen is that people occasionally get into fights. And they're serious fights about serious issues and real feelings. But they're not blowing up relationships. Things will go on--at least among the main relationships, the Gilmore women.

Angst and joy
Lorelei and Rory may be fantasy figures in several ways--all that eating, no exercise--but for most people, they're fantasy figures because of their close mother-daughter/friend-friend relationship. Not everyone has that relationship. More likely, your average viewer sees a similarity between her own mother-daughter relationship and the rather more angsty Emily-Lorelei relationship. And by giving us both relationships, the show poses us between an aggravating truth and a pleasant fantasy. We can fear that Lorelei and Rory will descend into Emily and Lorelei land; or we can hope that Emily and Lorelei will turn into Lorelei and Rory. Either way, we're engaged with our hopes and fears, between what we don't want to have (but probably do) and want to have (but probably never can really imagine).

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 216: Ring Lardner, Carmen (#216)

Ring Lardner, "Carmen" (1916) from Ring Lardner: Stories & Other Writings:

About the whole middle section of this piece is pretty much the definition of light comedy: a not-so-well educated man gives his rendition of Bizet's Carmen, mangling the names and plot, with some jabs about the unreality of opera (the knife that kills Carmen goes nowhere near her, so she musta died of heart problems). It's amusing if you know something about opera or Carmen (the implication here is that I do--the truth is I know very little); but it's very light--there's nothing serious or important or even laugh out loud funny about this section.

More fun (and in Lardner's wheelhouse) is the frame story, about a nameless narrator and his wife and their friends, and how they kid each other--sometimes not so nicely--about their cheapness and ignorance and all the other fun things that lower class people like to tease each other about. It's less jokey than the middle section and more painful and funny at the same time.

Los Angeles report

Note: I wrote a whole post on my time in LA, but apparently it didn't get saved correctly, so here's a recreation/summary:

I just got back from 10 days in Los Angeles. Well, I'm in LAX [not any more!] and of those 10 days, two were devoted to travel. That's my commitment to truth right there.

I came to LA partly as a vacation--a chance to do all the things that I don't get to do in my day-to-day life in San Angelo. So I went to some museums and planned to go see some limited-release films and ate lots of vegan Thai food. [I never actually went to see the films I wanted to see; also, I failed to ever go see improv.]

And partly I went there as a recon trip, to see if I found LA to be a livable place: after two year in San Angelo, would the crowds and the freeways overwhelm me? Would the people be nice? Would the weather be too pleasant?

But first, here's some highlights:

Sunday: After high school friend Christine picked me up at the airport, I bought tickets for the Nerdist Writers Panel and we raced over to that. We popped into a nearby cafe beforehand and they were doing standup in this tiny space for just a few people. [Thanks, Marc Maron--now everyone thinks they can do stand-up.] The Nerdist Writers Panel was a lot of fun and I wish I had the energy to stop afterwards to introduce myself. (Lesson: don't leave immediately after things, say hello.)

Monday: I went to LACMA, the LA County Museum of Art, which was having a free day from Target and a kid-full day thanks to Presidents Week. Also, for the first few days, I was car-less and taking mass transit and it worked out OK. I mean, I'm used to Chicago-style mass transit--cars and buses and some uncomfortable waits. At least in LA, you're not walking through freezing puddles and waiting in killer wind for the bus/train.

[Here's where my saved post ends; begin the summary:]

LACMA was fun, though all that walking took a toll on my feet. But that didn't stop me from walking to the "Farmers Market" (which is more like an outdoor mall) and the Trader Joe's (a recurring theme of my trip) and even walking around Amoeba Records.

Tuesday: A busy, social day: I met a screenwriter for lunch and had a really nice time; then I saw high school (and Hebrew school) friend Jason for coffee; then I went to a talk with the Molyneux sisters, who write on Bob's Burgers. (Though by that time, I was feeling a little antsy: listening to people talk is fine, but I had my own stuff to do.)

Wednesday: A neighborhood-focused day: I hiked up to the Griffith Park Observatory (great, hot), then walked around the Los Feliz area. Later, I rushed downtown to the Standard Hotel to see if they had this particular type of soap that Sarah likes (they didn't) and then went out for a night of bar trivia.

Thursday: Today I picked up my rental car, got all my stuff from Christine's place and got ready to drive to college-era friend Brendan's place. But first: The Getty! It's a fine museum in terms of exhibits and objects. (I have a weakness for ridiculously ornate and mechanical chairs/tables; I have less a weakness for all the Biblical scenes; and I nearly shouted with joy when I saw James Ensor's Christ's Entry into Brussels.) It does have an amazing guide system involving an iPod touch. And, more amazing than anything, the location gives a great view of the city (a sprawl) and the mountains.

Then, that night, due to another friend suddenly being in town, we had a dinner party at Brendan's, which was a lot of fun.

Friday: I had lunch on the Dreamworks lot, which was pretty amazing, but the rest of the day was a pretty low-key, recon-centered day: could I see myself doing work at these coffee shops and libraries? Answer: sure, why not.

Saturday: Drove to Santa Monica, saw an old friend of my brother's, which was pretty neat. Had a nice time at Brendan's birthday party.

Sunday: The Museum of Jurassic Technology is weird and wonderful and creepy. (They have this one exhibit on Athanasius Kircher, which is kept in a dark room with a cacaphony/euphony of bells. "Is this where I will be axe-murdered?" I wondered.) Then I saw that Lovecraft play (previously reviewed). Then had dinner with Jason and his girlfriend.

Monday: Switched from one Airbnb to another. Had fine experiences in both, though, honestly, by this time, I was getting a little lonely. Drove east to Pasadena, had coffee with an online friend, but spent the night at home getting stuff done.

Tuesday: Emergency! Got an email that there was an issue with my passport application, so I ran around (library, post office, CVS, post office) getting that worked out. Then, went to go see a taping of @midnight, which was interesting and funny. Though it mostly involved a lot of waiting around--and I only got in because someone with a priority ticket had an extra ticket and she noticed I was all alone on the regular ticket line.

Wednesday: All day travel! It was fine until I was stuck in DFW because our late plane had a problem. So instead of getting home at 10ish, I got home at 1ish.

A review of Lovecraft: Nightmare Suite

This is a little late, as I'm still in Los Angeles, running around. But here's a review of a play I saw.

Lovecraft: Nightmare Suite; adapted and directed by Dan Spurgeon; performed by the Visceral Company at the Lex Theatre

Lovecraft may not be the obvious choice for theatrical adaptation, with his SAT-prepped narrators and the indescribable weirdness they face (or run gibbering from before being subsiding into restful oblivion). How can you represent cyclopean buildings and squamous horrors on the stage?

The answer, of course, is: with puppets or shadow projections. If it's weird, keep it weird. And rather than run from those wordy, occasionally logorrheic narrators, you could--as Dan Spurgeon does--highlight them by having them tell us the stories directly. As the playbill essay notes, though Lovecraft's narrators generally seem to be men, some of these adaptations are narrated by women; and I generally agree that this change does bring some interesting depth or at least a new slant to these stories.

Lovecraft: Nightmare Suite features several such full stories, with some interstitial pieces that either help the transitions or merely give the actors time to change costumes, depending on your tastes. It doesn't help that these interstitials are too quick to let their weirdness build into something dreadful; and that the recitation seems somewhat garbled.

In order, the scenes are

1) "Prologue: Dreams": A dapper, self-assured fellow frames the scenes to come with some scattered Lovecraft quotes--a little "Supernatural Horror in Literature" (mankind's oldest emotion is fear), a little "From Beyond" (we'll see what dogs and cats are always going on about), a little "Nietzcheism and Realism" (it would be better not to exist at all). Good mood setting, and probably better if you're not playing "catch the Lovecraft quote."

2) "The Statement of Randolph Carter": Nervous Randolph Carter tells the jury--us--what really happened the night that Harley Warren disappeared. At some point, Harley shows up on the stage and the recital turns into a reenactment. It's fairly faithful to the story, as near as I remember it: they go to a graveyard in a swamp, uncover stairs down, Harley uses a telephone on a long wire, and then tells Randolph to run. As the first full story, "Randolph Carter" nicely shows us the general format--a little narration, a little dramatization--and the nonchalant appearance of Harley is suitably creepy: already looking half-dead, he walks on stage while Randolph is telling the story and just stands there until the reenactment starts, when he pulls two shovels off one wall of the stage. That was an especially nice touch, I thought, since that wall featured a bunch of evocative tools--axe (I think), shovels, saws. And after this, I could never be sure what was just decoration and what would play a part in the scenes.

3) Interstitial: a short poem about a cat, with a puppet cat walking across the stage. Walking, gliding, whatever.

4) "The Cats of Ulthar": Although (3) wasn't very engaging, it did serve pretty well as a transition into this piece, which was all done with puppets and costumes. The people of Ulthar are all waist-high puppets with slightly grotesque papier-mache faces. The "acting" of the puppets may be a little broad, like a pantomime show, but was pretty effective all the same; extra points for giving the gory-silly story some humor through these puppets. The narration was all done from the side, where the actress sat in a sort of pseudo-Egyptian glory. (Did she actually have her face painted with the Eye of Horus or was that just my imagination?) That design, I could take or leave, though the narration did add to the pantomime quality. And when the grand caravan of strange people came, it was authentically odd to see full-sized, masked figures among the tiny, grotesque Ultharites. The back wall of the stage, which was the projection screen, first showed the town--with the cat-killing couple's house off to the side; and then, during the rite, showed a projection of a house surrounded by cats turning around it.

5) Interstitial: a puppet head pops out of a box on the side of the stage and tells us about a tower, which is projected on the back wall.

6) "The Outsider": was cancelled due to actor injury.

7) Interstitial: with a blacklight on, various glowing bits came together to form a house. Was it a witch house? I couldn't say for sure.

8) "The Picture in the House": A bicycling genealogist takes shelter from a storm in a seemingly-abandoned house, only to discover that the ancient and isolated inhabitant obsesses over a book featuring cannibals. I honestly can't remember this story; and the idea of a cannibal hick in a cabin in the woods may not surprise anyone today. But the execution was well done. The authentic frontier gibberish of the Yankee hick was very off-putting, though largely because he kept going on about how that picture of cannibalism gave him queer thoughts. The lighting for this story was very dark, except when the lightning effect played or the book's cannibal-shop image played on the back wall. As with many other full pieces, the narrator here addressed us directly, while the other character didn't, which added an extra tension here: "Stop telling us about your bicycle," I wanted to yell, "there's a guy with an axe behind you!"

9) Interstitial: something about Fungi from Yuggoth, with green, plant-like, pincer-tipped arms reaching in from off-stage to menace a guy.

10) "Cool Air": One of the pieces where the narrator's gender gets flipped, but otherwise keeping close to the story (as I remember it). A woman takes a room at a boarding house, befriends the doctor above her, who keeps his room surprisingly cool, and who mentions something about a terrible brush with death that he had. Surprise! He already died years ago and when his cooling apparatus fails, he deliquesces. Like many earlier pieces, the narrator addresses the audience directly; but what really set this piece apart was that the doctor never appears directly on the stage. Instead, he appears only as a shadow projected on the back wall and never talks out loud, with his dialogue explained in brief through the narrator. Not only does this help to speed up the story by summarizing, it keeps the literally shadowy doctor at one remove from us and from the other people in the scene (narrator, landlady, workmen). I've never found this story particularly scary, or even really creepy, and instead, this version seemed more sad than anything else.

11?) Interstitial: There was something about inner Egypt. My question mark here comes from the fact that this might really have been part of the next scene.

12) "Nyartlathotep": Seemingly based on the original prose poem, this piece starts with a narrator going with a crowd to see a magic show presented by the titular character. Here, Nyartlathotep, the Egyptian-looking sorcerer-god, is a pretty stiff shadow puppet projected on the back wall, and his magic is just a few lights on a dark stage. But when the narrator objects and Nyartlathotep drives the crowd (the rest of the cast) into the street, the scene becomes more interesting: each character has a flashlight and soon they are all in unison jumping at strange sounds and turning their flashlights first left, now right. Then they fall under a magical compulsion that sees them marching out into alien landscapes, until our narrator is left alone again, in a suddenly and totally black stage.

13) "Epilogue: The Thing in the Moonlight": The dapper man from the prologue returns, only this time he introduces himself as Howard Phillips and is almost comically nervous. And he has a lot to be nervous about since he's stuck in an endless nightmare that he can't wake up from, haunted by various shapes. This piece seems to owe as much to Lovecraft's letter (where he recounts a dream) as to the later story written by J. Chapman Miske, which seems like an odd choice. But it does give the actors a second chance to appear as their most interesting characters of the night--the cannibal hick, the Egyptian-style narrator of "Cats," the nervous narrator of "Cool Air," etc. all appear as the shapes that haunt the narrator.

Overall, Lovecraft: Nightmare Suite isn't completely successful and makes some odd choices that lead it into unforced errors--mostly around those interstitial pieces; but the longer stories are generally strong, featuring direct acting and a touch of weirdness and dread through the simple special effects of light and shadow.

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 215: William WellsBrown, Madison Washington (#215)

William Wells Brown, "Madison Washington" (1862) from William Wells Brown: Clotel & Other Writings:

William Wells Brown was an escaped slave who, after learning to read and write, embarked on a pretty successful (and ground-breaking) writing career: first African-American novel (about Jefferson's black children, so I guess that was never really a secret), first African-American travelogue, first African-American play.

And along the way he wrote a collection of short African-American biographies, including one about the escaped slave and revolt mastermind Madison Washington. (Which is the kind of name that seems to push one into greatness.)

Brown retells Washington's story with a mix of efficiency and feeling. We don't dwell on anything too long; we get told pretty quickly about Washington's escape from slavery, his return to rescue his wife, his plan to take over a ship full of slaves being shipped down south. And at the same time, Brown slows down the story enough to add his two-cents, most of which are appropriately melodramatic: Washington is a paragon of African beauty, his wife is the height of interracial beauty, his rescue of his wife shows his devotion, his rescue of the white slavers from the revenge of the escaped slaves raises him to Christ-like status, etc.

It's done well, and you can see how this book, published in the midst of the Civil War, might have resonated at a time when black soldiers were a topic of debate; and the humanity and equality of black people was also a topic of discussion.

Los Angeles

I was really planning on giving you an update about Los Angeles while I was here, but I've been too busy. Last night I watched The Room for the first time and it really is as awful and funny as everyone said it was.

More later.