Thinking About Walt

Walt Disney Animations Steamboat Willie

I've made my creative bones over the years largely writing about very dark, scary, gruesome things.  One of the things I've always felt about the horror genre is that it's that rare story that can encapsulate the full range of every emotion - fear, love, hate, surprise, suspense, disgust, triumph.   But, as I've recently spent more time looking at the work of Walt Disney, I have to make a concession:

Even the full range of great, dark stories still have a cloud that hangs over them, by design.  And, while they have their place and serve an important purpose, Darkness, in the end, has only one shade.  Light contains the full spectrum.

Greatest Disney Moments

Just a thought, but maybe those of us who mine the dark corners should peek a bit more often into the more brightly lit spaces.  In some ways, it requires more courage than lurking in the shadows.

Review: Lawrence of Arabia

There are some movies that you just take for granted that they're supposed to be great, but that most people have probably never seen, let alone seen in a theater.

Lawrence of Arabia is one of those films.  I consider myself very fortunate to have had the opportunity to actually catch it on the big screen for the very first time over 10 years ago at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood as part of the American Cinematheque's 70mm Festival.

What was really amazing to me is just how utterly, overwhelmingly beautiful this film is as a purely visual, cinematic experience.  The size of the canvas, the sheer scale of the storytelling, yet the exquisite, meticulous attention to detail in every frame is just breathtaking.

So breathtaking that, honestly, I really had no idea what was actually happening in the movie.  I had no idea and, frankly, I didn't even care because I was enjoying the experience of the cinematic journey so much.

But, at the end of the day, I'm a storyteller, and it always nagged at me that I didn't actually get the story of such a great film.  So when the opportunity came up again to watch it on cable (albeit with my beautiful but not quite as grandiose HDTV), I lept at the chance.

Now, if you only watch the first half of the movie up through the intermission, it's this incredibly uplifting tale about how one man was able to challenge convention to achieve amazing results and possibly remake a world for the better.

 Very typical, Oscar-worthy fare.  Very inspirational.

But if you stick around long enough to watch the end of the film, I gradually began to realize that it's actually a much more sophisticated story about the hubris and self-delusion inherent in the colonial system, and how even the most well-intentioned colonialist is still a supremacist.  To see T.E. Lawrence brought so high as to be nearly deified, only to be literally thrown face-first into the bloody, mud-filled pit he'd dug at the bottom of his own soul is really surprisingly deep and moving today for a story so large.  The journey is very deep and personal, while at the same time magnificantly broad and grand.

A great, complex movie.  Oh, for the days.

David Lean clearly knew what he was doing and saying about his own home country, and I applaud him, Peter O'Toole, and their whole team.  We should all be so bold in our storytelling.

Video of the Moment - 01-09-13

Daily Nerdgasm - 01-04-13

@cmdr_hadfield Are you tweeting from space? MBB
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) January 3, 2013

@williamshatner Yes, Standard Orbit, Captain. And we're detecting signs of life on the surface.
— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) January 3, 2013

Picture of the Moment - 01-03-13

"Lincoln" reads Lincoln in The Lincoln

The Future? It's yours.

As 2013 is getting underway I'm drawn to consider all of the different ways people talk about how they're going to change their lives, bring in new things, turn over new leaves, etc.

My word of advice? If you want to have something you've never had before, you have to DO something you've never done before.

It would seem simple and obvious, but I suppose I shouldn't be shocked by how many people act like Jerry Seinfeld in "The Bee Movie".


And the operative word in my first piece of advice is "DO".  It's so easy to fall under the spell of things like the so-called "Law of Attraction".  After all, what could be more seductive than a philosophy that tells you that you just need to pretend that you have something to get it, and if you didn't get it, you just weren't pretending hard enough.  I can tell you from personal experience that I wasted years of my life vibrating but not actually going anywhere.  Yes, we're spiritual beings having a physical experience, but my life didn't start to become more prosperous until I got off my duff (with a nice assist/kick in the arse from my wife - thanks, sugar).  If you want physical things, you have to perform physical deeds.

My next word of advice? Never take advice from someone who's made their primary fortune giving people advice.  It means that the best thing they know how to do is give advice.  So, unless you're planning on getting into the professional advice-giving business (which is apparently ridiculously lucrative - just look at the Rich Dad guy, or the people who wrote The Secret), they clearly don't really know much about doing anything else lucrative or useful.  If they did, they'd be doing that.

In my humble opinion, you're better off listening to the words of the people who've succeeded on a path similar to the one you'd like to tread.  As a producer, I think a lot about George Lucas.  As a writer turned director, I look at Francis Coppola.  As an author, I think a lot about Clive Barker.  As an engineer, I study Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey.

My final word of advice?  There are no short cuts.  Period.

If you want to be rich, start a business.  If you want to be fit, join a gym.  If you want to be smarter, crack a book.  Whatever it is you've resolved to do this year, you need to make a blood oath to yourself to do it every day because that's what it takes.

I once heard a story about a high school basketball coach who had a bunch of players who thought they were NBA material.  He took them to Philadelphia to watch a practice by Temple University's varsity basketball team.  The Temple players asked the high schoolers how many practice free throw shots they take in a day.  The kids guessed dozens, many a hundred.  The truth was that they took close to a thousand.  Every day.

And Temple hasn't been to the Final Four since 1958.  Imagine what they do at Duke.

In closing, here's a little pep talk for the mission before us all this year that, given the day today and the speaker, couldn't be more appropriate:

2013 is yours.  Go take it.

About The Year That Past

Some truly amazing things happened in 2012 (Obama, Felix Baumgartner, SpaceX, Curiosity, The Dark Knight Rises, Game of Thrones) and some truly horrible things also happened in 2012. But, for me, personally, they all pale in comparison to one singular event.

I got married.

And it was frakkin' awesome.

But not nearly as awesome as her.

If you can feel me smiling a bit more than usual in 2013, that's why.

Happy New Year, folks.  Let's get to it!

The Future in 2012

After all of my crying and moaning, it looks like someone finally got the message and started bringing some true sci-fi back to the movie theaters.  They weren't all successful, or even always good, but at least we're opening ourselves up to new possibilities again.








2013 looks just as bright






Not to mention Neill Blomkamp's follow-up to "District 9", "Elysium", and Alfonso Cauron's "Gravity", it should be an awesome year in the cineplex.

Review: Lincoln

One of the best things I've seen in the last year was Ken Burns' excellent Civil War documentary, but I was always fascinated as to the way all of the combatants referred to each major battle as, simply, "a fight".

Which is why the opening scene of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln is so effective: it is, essentially, a fist fight between hundreds of Confederate soldiers and Black Union soldiers in the middle of a muddy, blood-soaked field.

More than anything else, I was moved by the intimacy of this film.


 The war wasn't masses of nameless, faceless regiments moving along a chess board. It was a back breaking street fight to the death, fought among millions.  The debate in the congress over these lofty issues like personhood and citizenship immediately descends into a raucous shouting match full of insults and clever name-calling.  Average citizens come to the office hours of The President of the United States to settle a land dispute.

I was also particularly impressed by the rawness of the politics.  For something so lofty and noble as the abolition of slavery, Lincoln and his cohorts employed every conceivable trick in the book - brides, coercion, misdirection.  I'm reminded of a line from "The Kingdom of Heaven": "maybe one day you'll do a little evil to do a great good."

Reminder, again, that all politics are not just local.  They're personal.

I have some issues with the end of the film.  Frankly, I think the last five minutes are totally unnecessary and hurt the tone and style of the film.  But it's still exquisite.

Thinking about Newtown, and Portland, and College Station, and Oak Creek, and Aurora, and Tuscon...

Across this country, there were 16 mass shootings in the past year.  And, yes, while there is definitely a conversation to be had about gun control laws, I think there's also something else here.

What is going on inside of these men (and they are ALWAYS men) that they feel that the only solution is to go out and kill a bunch of complete strangers before killing themselves?  Yes, some of these guys are clinically unbalanced, and a handful are involved with hate groups, but it seems like the majority of them are just frustrated and upset with the circumstances in their lives.

How did being frustrated and upset become an acceptable justification in, apparently, a growing number of young men's minds for mass murder?  How is it that so many young American men are identifying with Patrick Bateman's final confession.


What is going on here in our country that this feeling is becoming increasingly common?

Fanning the Flames

Another plug: if you've been enjoying the odd dropoffs to Amazon's Kindle store from my crooked imagination, take a moment to like and share my new Fan Page at http://www.facebook.com/damonyoungwriting.  As always, your support is appreciated beyond words.

Thanks!

Chillin' like a villain

Chill.com is a website where videophiles like me can curate and share all of the gloriously messy videos on the web that they love and share them with the world at large.

Someone at Chill thought it was a good idea to name ME as the curator for the videos that appear on their front page all week.

I think I'll make it my mission to make them regret this decision.  :-)

Check out my own Chill collections at http://chill.com/Dayfornight.

And for a taste of what I'm liking on Chill, check out this link.

2016

 Paul Ryan versus Martin O'Malley.

You heard it here, first.

4more

Whew!

That was a close one.  At least it felt like it.

But, given the President's coattails, squashing some of the worst ideologues, partisans,  chauvinists, and intolerants in the process, I can't help but wonder if he didn't intentionally throw that first debate just to keep the dark money invested in a losing Romney campaign instead of many other winnable Senate races.

Like Andrew Sullivan says, "meep meep".

Now, let's get back to work.

Episode VII

George Lucas and Kathleen Kennedy on the Future of Star Wars

My earliest memory from inside a movie theater is watching Princess Leia dissing Luke Skywalker for being too short to convincingly impersonate a stormtrooper.  I always remember the scene differently from how it was actually shot: some how, my 3 year old brain knitted together the stark black and whites from the hallways of the Death Star with this scene, so I always remember what is actually an all-black room as a high contrast black & white.

Weird, I know.  Maybe it was just a bit of information overload for my developing cranium.

Point being, while I'm a much more rabid Trekkie than Star Wars fan, I basically know the dialogue from Episode IV by heart.

I remember when the Star Wars movies were good.  Sadly, there's the kernel of a good story in the most recent trilogy, but the difference, as always, is in the storytelling details - the everyday choices made by a director on dialogue, on performance, on camera position, on edits.  SOMEONE could have made "The Phantom Menace", "Attack of the Clones", and "Revenge of the Sith" into good movies.

There was a time that the film snob in me completely dismissed the idea of someone else making Star Wars movies because they're really George Lucas' magnum opus, but clearly George Lucas doesn't agree with me, and he's probably right.

So, my thoughts?

1. Hire JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof.  Unlike me, they really do froth at the mouth about Star Wars.   And my namesake has gone on record on more than one occasion about why this whole Mitichlorians garbage completely defeats the entire point about The Force.  A great starting place.
2. Do as many things practically and in camera as you can. The CGI is killing the dramatic tension of the action and it's distracting from the drama.
3. Two words: Mark Hammill.

Let's DO THIS.

Why Reviews Matter On Amazon

Admittedly, between work & weddings, I haven't had nearly the time to devote to Macroscope that I used to, and many of my missives have been creeping into Facebook and Twitter more frequently.  But this blog has been my creative, opinionated home for over 10 years now, so it will always occupy a place of reverence for me.

It's also the best way for me to reach people who I know dig my work directly.  So, if you're reading this blog, I'm assuming you're a fan of my writing.  For that, I am eternally grateful.

You also probably know that I've been redirecting my writing energy towards pure fiction over the last year, in the form of my ebook shorts, all of which I'm selling exclusively on Amazon.com for the Kindle, iPhone, iPad, web browsers, etc, including:

• "I'll See You In Hell", about a pair of hitmen who take a blood feud where angels fear to tread.
• "The Worst Place On Earth", about the unspeakable secrets hidden away inside a foreboding old money mansion.
• "The Monster That Ate My Summer Vacation", about a father staring down the face of evil during a rest stop on a family road trip.
• "The Trick-or-Treaters", about a self-centered girl who learns there's really no way to escape Halloween.
• And, most recently, "33 Ways To Kill My Husband", which, I think, is pretty self-explanatory.

I'm sure many of you aren't surprised to hear that, far and away, my best selling short story is "33 Ways To Kill My Husband" - even though it's still, clearly, in a similar vein to my other work, it has a much broader appeal, is not really scary, and, honestly, is probably quite funny (at least, I think it is).

But what I've noticed is that, when we do these free promotions on Amazon, "33 Ways" vastly outsells the other books, and my theory on it is that a big part of it is the reviews.  I have easily 10x the number of reviews for "33 Ways" as for the other books, and I suspect that Amazon's internal recommendations algorithm chooses to suggest it to more viewers because more people have taken the time to write a review (the vast majority of which are positive).

So, again, my theory is that the other books could reach a larger audience if they had more reviews.

With that in mind, I have a request:

I've you've had the chance to read my other books, and you enjoyed them, I would really appreciate it if you took a second to give them reviews.  It could be as simple as "I loved it!" or "It scared the crap out of me!"  One or two sentences is probably enough.  But it could be a huge way to help me reach an even larger audience.

You can find them all online at this link.

Thank you all for sticking with me for the last decade.  And who knows what the next ten years may have in store...

American Made Music to Haunt By

You all know this is my favorite time of the year.  You also know that storytelling and film is my true passion.  But one of the things I always loved to do when writing a screenplay was adding music cues to help tell the story.  As I think I've mentioned before, the band Godsmack played a big role in my Boogieman screenplay, "Nite-Lite", and my love for '90's R&B is everywhere in my original AFI screenplay, "My Own Lily".

And even though, these days, all of my creative energy is going into by ebooks (for now), I can still hear the guitars playing in my head.  So, this time, I thought I'd share it.

As you know, this week, in anticipation of Halloween, I'm offering my horror short, "The Trick-or-Treaters", for free, exclusively on Amazon.com.  But, for a little extra something to take your reading experience to the next level, here's my semi-unofficial Trick-or-Treaters soundtrack, featuring the likes of Rob Zombie, Type O Negative, Outkast, Korn, DMX, and Diana Ross.

Yes, Diana Ross.

Kick back, relax, and let it scare the Hell out of you.

Trick or treat. Or else.

They're back.  And, this time, they're free.  Check out "The Trick-or-Treaters" for free all week long, exclusively at Amazon.com.

 

Maniacal Laughter, or why I wrote "33 Ways To Kill My Husband"

Years ago I saw an interview with one of my artistic heroes, the great filmmaker John Carpenter, where he was asked what did he think of the "Saw" series.  "I think they're tremendously funny," he replied with a completely straight face.

It's hard to explain what makes me laugh.

When I think of my favorite comedies, movies like "The Naked Gun" and "Monty Python and The Holy Grail" immediately leap to mind.  I love "Airplane" and "Top Secret" and "Real Genius" and "Revenge of the Nerds" and "There's Something About Mary" and "Dumb and Dumber" and "Zoolander".

On the stage, I love Christopher Durang and on the page I bow at the feet of Douglas Adams.

I could go on and on about the stories that everyone else thinks are funny that I also think are funny.

But then there are the other stories.

Like Mary Harron and Christian Bale's version of "American Psycho".

Like the Paul Verhoeven trifecta: "RoboCop", "Total Recall", and "Starship Troopers".

Or "Re-Animator" or "Creepshow II" or parts of "John Carpenter's The Thing" or even "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre".

And let's not even get into the local news.

There's absurdity and irony and excess all around us every day.   While most people would shake their heads and turn their eyes away, I honestly cannot help but laugh.  It's almost involuntary.  The bigger the crazy, the more over the top, the louder I laugh.  And the more serious the people in these situations take their absurdity, the funnier it is.

What's even funnier is that most people are so hyper-aware of the circumstances, but so incredibly unaware of the very irony they create.

I'm reminded of a joke from Bill Maher about the proctologist who complains that he has to look at asses all day.

But even as I write these things, I feel like they could be coming out of Heath Ledger's mouth in "The Dark Knight".

Maybe, in the end, the biggest joke is on me, after all.

Wouldn't that be funny?

I guess my own lack of self-awareness is part of the genesis of my protagonist in "33 Ways To Kill My Husband ".  But the honest truth is I owe a big debt on this story to my fiance.  I just hope she doesn't take it to heart.  :-)

For Trayvon

A while ago I had a conversation with my fiance about this screenplay I wanted to write about some super secret geopolitical thing that I thought wasn't widely known and didn't get the attention it deserved, and she just looked at me, incredulous.

"Of course no one's written about it!  Do you think you're the first person who thought of this?  How do you think they keep it secret?"

Sometimes, I can be really stupid.

But the point she made was that I'm becoming a family man now.  I had to start considering how my actions effect my family.

Family.

For most of my life before now, that equation equalled "Mom+Dad+Brother+Nana+Me", or some broader combination of aunts, uncles, cousins, and the like.  But now, the most important version of that term, the one for which I'm directly responsible for, is the one I'm building personally with my better half right now.  Children are very important to both of us.

And the idea that a grown man could look at my child, literally walking down the street minding his own business, and KILL them, and then walk away without even an arrest, let alone a trial to even determine if  a crime has been committed just terrifies and infuriates me.

I think of Emmett Till.

I think of Ennis Cosby.

I think of the legions of Black boys who have their lives stolen from them every day because of someone else's irrational fear and hatred.

It's a delicate balance, because I don't want my future children to live in fear, or to expect any less from their home, their community, or their country than any of their white classmates.  Yet I also don't want them to be blind to what I perceive to be the realities of race in America.  I'm struggling to see past the years of learned behavior to find the appropriate level of paranoia and mistrust in a world where most people are good and decent and honest but there are still people out there who will take your life just because you're Black and male.

And it's the callous disregard for that life that horrifies me even more.  Who gives a drug test to a corpse?  Who takes the word of the man with the smoking gun in his hand that the dead guy had it coming as "evidence"?


Even if Trayvon Martin struck first (which I think is a ridiculous claim), doesn't the evidence show that he, too, could have legitimately claimed self-defense under the "Stand Your Ground" law?

Discretion is the better part of valor, people.
 

I'm trying not to get off on a rant about law enforcement and Black Americans, so let me just say two things: paraphrasing Ice-T, your authority is not a license to kill.

And God is watching.