April 27, 2012
Script Reviews: A Double Dose of Dumb — Safe and The Raven
Safe by Boaz Yakin
J.J. Abrams didn’t invent the cliché, but he certainly did perfect it. You know how every other episode of Alias opened in medias res, and Syd seemed like she was about to get taken down for good. Smash cut to: Credit Dauphine, 48 hours earlier, and the first half of the episode builds to that moment, while the second half expands on it. Abrams shows frequently overuse this device — he even used it, albeit effectively, in Mission: Impossible III — and their popularity (among creative types, moreso than “the masses”) led to widespread abuse of a flawed narrative device.
Nowhere have I seen it more poorly used than in Safe, an unmitigated disaster brought to you by the same writer as the equally sloppy Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Boaz Yakin, whose name is more entertaining than much of his career output (low blow, sorry), managed to craft an in medias res opening, a “how they got here” flashback, and the resolution to the opening in the space of the first ten pages. You might think, “Wow! Breathless action!” If you read it, you’ll think, “Wow! Where’s the suspense?” Isn’t the basic narrative premise of this type of opening to keep the audience in suspense? At the start, we get to see the metaphorical bomb, which should leave us guessing at every turn. Is that bagboy at the grocery store the guy who’s going to stick him with a paralyzing drug and dump him off at the shady Chinese chemist’s dirty lab?
After a dizzying opening that barely makes sense even after the flashbacks, Safe rewinds a year to show Luke’s (Jason Statham) motivation: for unclear reasons (until later), the Russian mob kills his entire family in front of him and hopes the subsequent guilt and despair will cause him to commit suicide. They’re all surprised when Luke — who, by the way, is a master assassin — decides to take revenge instead of taking his own life.
This should be a great dumb-action-movie twist. You know me: I love dumb action movies. However, I find it personally offensive when a dumb action movie doesn’t know what it is and unsuccessfully sets its aspirations higher than its genre will allow. Such is the case with Safe, which shackles psychopathic loner Luke with adorable Chinese moppet Mei (Catherine Chan), whom he needs to keep safe (get it?) from the Chinese Triad, the Russian Mob, and corrupt New York cops and politicos. Yakin wants us to believe a sort of father-daughter relationship exists between these two characters, and that Luke changes for the better over the course of the script. It uses the line “I didn’t save you — you saved me” without irony.
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Posted by D. B. Bates at 11:31 AM | Print-Friendly | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Blog Posts, Script Reviews, Reviews, Current Posts
April 25, 2012
Evaluation
[Originally posted 1/10/04.]
I was sort of bummed Thursday because I got a fairly mediocre performance review from Jenna, who stopped in briefly and gave it to me. Like most evaluations on the planet, it had an assload of categories with a “rate 1 to 5” deal. I got straight 3’s, except for 4’s (above average!) “interpersonal relationships” and “punctuality.” I guess it shouldn’t bug me, even though it means I’m mediocre, because the sheet says “satisfactory,” which means that, even though I ain’t “outstanding,” I don’t “need improvement.”
I guess, overall, that’s not even what bugs me. The specific comments really frustrate me. Under “areas in need of improvement” (which, incidentally, contradicts her marking me satisfactory in the multiple-choice section), Jenna wrote, “needs to work on obtaining a better understanding of the job requirements and attendance.” Yowza, that smarts.
Posted by D. B. Bates at 2:50 PM | Print-Friendly | Comments (1) | Blog Posts, Fall 2003, Student Activities
April 23, 2012
Teach: Tony Danza: A Story of Nope
Last week, I didn’t really have the time to ramble about how great it feels to have someone pursuing me for an opportunity, instead of scratching and clawing my way into opportunities the way I usually have to. Here’s the short version: after unsuccessfully applying to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s MFA creative writing program, I found myself being pursued quite intently by the MA teaching program. I have no teaching experience whatsoever, but I have made it clear that I’d like to move in a teaching direction because, frankly, I feel good helping people who strive for improvement. I don’t feel good begging stupid people to make smart decisions for the first and only time in their lives. And yes, former movie-industry employers, I am calling you all stupid. And boy do I ever mean it.
At any rate, here’s the functional difference between the MFA creative writing program and the MA teaching program: SAIC never got my transcript from Columbia. Why? Because, evidently, Columbia College Chicago still has the world’s worst administrative staff. (That’s right, I’m calling everyone out today.) Nobody contacted me from the creative writing program regarding this fairly serious issue. I received a rejection notice in early March, and that was that. Per usual, nobody gave any hint as to why I was rejected. It may have nothing to do with my transcript; they may not have pursued the transcript issue because they already knew I wasn’t desirable for their program.
On the other hand, the teaching program contacted me near the application deadline and announced that they’d never received my transcript. I badgered Columbia into actually sending it instead of just sending me a receipt that they’d charged my credit card for something they didn’t actually do. When they received the transcript, they called to schedule an interview with the program director.
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Posted by D. B. Bates at 10:24 AM | Print-Friendly | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Blog Posts, Current Posts
April 20, 2012
Exes on a Train
[Originally posted 1/10/04]
I’m not fatalistic by any stretch of the imagination, but sometimes coincidences occur that make me sort of shudder, briefly contemplate the nature reality, and then dismiss it. One such fortuitous incident happened on Thursday night, after I got off work. I walked down to LaSalle Street, as I always do, and waited for a train at the Clinton station.
Posted by D. B. Bates at 2:52 PM | Print-Friendly | Comments (0) | Blog Posts, Fall 2003, The Ex
April 18, 2012
J’Accuse!
In which the U-Passes go missing.Posted by D. B. Bates at 8:45 PM | Print-Friendly | Comments (0) | Blog Posts, Fall 2003, Student Activities
April 13, 2012
Malicious Glee!
[Originally posted 12/31/03]
Not too long ago, I cried and whined to Sara when I found out The Ex was in some band. A few months later, I found out that the band broke up, and I said, “Tee-hee,” but it never really resonated. I think this was because I still assumed that, even with the band broken up, she was still sleeping with all the former members (hehe…members).
Posted by D. B. Bates at 11:29 AM | Print-Friendly | Comments (1) | Blog Posts, Fall 2003, The Ex
April 11, 2012
The Girl Who Hates Me Strikes Again
[Originally posted 12/27/03]
Julie, the girl who hates me, talks to me now. She does it grudgingly and disdainfully, but she talks to me. Something weird happened a few days ago, though. I was working the front, and she was the only other student worker around, so she came up to me, looked right at me, and said, very slowly because I’m retarded, “I have to leave for a few minutes. If anyone calls the back looking for Julie or Leigh, that’s me. Tell them I had to run an errand and I’ll be right back. It’s very important.”
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Posted by D. B. Bates at 12:16 PM | Print-Friendly | Comments (1) | Blog Posts, Fall 2003, Student Activities
April 9, 2012
The Forgotten Fake
Several years ago, as I watched the burgeoning self-publishing market grow in both popularity and quality, I came up with a brilliant idea: what if I created a small press so convincing, nobody realized it was 100% fake? What if I made a charming, professional-looking website, created book covers for nonexistent novels, and then buried my own, actual writing within it? Operating under the theory that as long as a con looks convincing, the mark won’t look too deeply at it, I invested in a domain name, whipped up a nice-looking web design, and then got to work on the artifice of the actual company.
The Backstory
I decided the company, Idle Valley Press (named for the elite town Raymond Chandler modeled on the San Fernando Valley in The Long Goodbye), would be based in Lafayette, Indiana, founded by bitter Purdue grads looking to make their mark. Their first decision was to purchase the entire back catalog of an obscure, long out-of-print author named Greenfield McKenna. Who is Greenfield McKenna? Somebody I made up, inspired by the words I hear when Lafayette native Axl Rose squeals “Down in the gutter” in “Back Off Bitch.”
The focus of Idle Valley Press was satirical novels — social satire, political satire, literary satire — to coincide with my own satirical agenda and the fact that I found very few small presses that would publish humor novels. In that spirit, McKenna was a Beat poet who had a sense of humor and was ostracized by his San Francisco community because of it. I’m pretty sure the founders of Idle Valley Press only liked him ironically, but their strategy of reprinting his old books paid off and gave them enough seed money to take on new projects.
Over the course of five years, they developed a reliable stable of writers. In my ideal life, I would continue to perpetuate this company’s existence and write all the books I made up and ascribed to these fictitious writers. I didn’t spend much time or energy on spewing out these ideas, but I kinda started to fall in love with them, especially when I started writing the excerpts.
Posted by D. B. Bates at 9:42 AM | Print-Friendly | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Blog Posts, Writing, Current Posts, Short Fiction
April 6, 2012
Accidental Narc
[Originally posted 12/9/03]
After my screenwriting class, I went to talk to my adaptation professor. I’m floundering in that class, and I’m extremely incompetent, and she’s cool enough to not let me slide my fat ass by because I’m a decent enough writer. I wanted to talk to her about several ideas I had and asked her if I could turn in the (pitiful) first draft I’d already finished, since I wouldn’t have time to write another draft with the newer stuff.*
Posted by D. B. Bates at 7:31 PM | Print-Friendly | Comments (0) | Blog Posts, Fall 2003
April 4, 2012
Limit: 3 Per Day (3)
[Originally posted 12/9/03]A guy came in today and immediately dunked his hand into the condom box, pulling out no less than 478 million condoms and shoved them into his pocket.
“Hey!” I shouted as he walked away. He froze. “That looks like more than three to me!”
He fidgeted, then jammed his hand into his pocket for about 30 seconds, feeling around. All I could hear were the weird plastic sounds of the zillions of condom wrappers rubbing against one another. Finally, he pulled his hand out with three condoms.
“No way, man!” he yelled. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
He turned around and kept walking.
Sigh. They don’t pay me enough to even bother.
Posted by D. B. Bates at 9:06 PM | Print-Friendly | Comments (3) | Blog Posts, Fall 2003, Student Activities
April 4, 2012
Limit: 3 Per Day (2)
[Originally posted 12/4/03]A girl came into the office today. She noticed the “Limit: 3 per day” condom display and said to me, “Jesus! Three per day? What the hell are these people doing?” Then she paused for a second, looked at me, and shrugged. “Oh, I guess we pretty much know the answer to that.”
Posted by D. B. Bates at 9:00 PM | Print-Friendly | Comments (0) | Blog Posts, Fall 2003, Student Activities
April 2, 2012
Vacation
Briefly: I don’t know why I trust Rolling Stone and PopMatters anymore. Maybe it’s because I Want To Believe. In this case, I wanted to believe Springsteen had made yet another staggering return to form in the vein of Magic (his last truly great album, now five years old). I was heartened by reports of a bold new sonic template and new energy fueled by the economic collapse. Instead, it’s a 50/50 mix of slowed-down rewrites of “Devils & Dust” (a great song, but not with the new pandering lyrics of the handful of Wrecking Ball songs that ape it) and bland Irish drinking songs with new lyrics about blue-collar jobs. In effect, Springsteen has turned into a stereotype of himself, which is disappointing.
Posted by D. B. Bates at 2:06 PM | Print-Friendly | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Blog Posts, Current Posts
March 30, 2012
South Side, or: The Culture of Fear, or: I’m a Big Wuss
[Originally posted 1/24/04]
Longtime readers of this blog have, I’m sure, drawn many strange and accurate conclusions about me. Chief among them: I’m sort of paranoid. I like to think of myself as “cautious,” but I’m apparently not a very good judge of character. So, when I learned two weeks ago that my Fiction Writing II professor was having a going-away party today (she’s moving to Maine) at a house on 77th Street, I decided to cautiously not go.
Then, my friend Anne said, “I think I’m going to go to that party.”
I said, “Yeah, me too.”
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Posted by D. B. Bates at 11:59 PM | Print-Friendly | Comments (1) | Blog Posts
March 28, 2012
The Girl Who Hates Me Hates Me Less
[Originally posted 11/24/03] As I’ve mentioned, this girl Julie can’t stand me. But lately, she’s been somewhat more pleasant. In fact, now she actually talks to me. And when I say something to her, she doesn’t just grunt noncommittally and pretend she’s invisible — I actually get a response! It makes the job less stressful and irritating, if nothing else. Also: it’s snowing right now, and the wind is blowing strong, and it’s pretty fucking cold. I know it’s supposed to warm up the rest of the week, but I’m so fucking happy that winter is wedging itself into the city. I love winter!Posted by D. B. Bates at 1:35 PM | Print-Friendly | Comments (0) | Blog Posts, Fall 2003, Student Activities
March 26, 2012
Dark Shadows
I hate that juvenile feeling of ownership I sometimes get, which hasn’t really manifested in negative behavior since junior high. Remember that? When everybody was deemed a poseur because they discovered the exact same thing you already liked, but they found out about it two months later through MTV or some magazine, instead of stumbling across it organically like you did, Mr. or Ms. Unique. At the time, it was very serious and only made sense to call out the posing plebes for not enjoying Metallica on as many levels as you do. Now, it seems really stupid. But once in awhile, I do have that annoying feeling of “I saw it first”-style possession.
Such is the case with Dark Shadows. I started watching the original soap when I was 13 and didn’t stop until I was in college and couldn’t find the time to continue watching it. With few exceptions, I watched two episodes a day, every weekday afternoon, and saw the entire series about two and a half times. Long before Buffy or The West Wing, Dark Shadows — low budgets and melodrama aside — showed me the possibilities of television as an artistic medium, and it made me want to write. Numerous sci-fi and horror stories I wrote during this period were “inspired” by Dark Shadows, and it inspired a love for flawed characters and lunatic plots that I’ve carried over into less derivative writing. In other words: everything I write, whether it seems like it or not, stems from the influence of Dark Shadows more than anything else. I cut my teeth on Stephen King and Quentin Tarantino — what a poseur! — but I didn’t start eating solid food until Dark Shadows.
Posted by D. B. Bates at 12:21 PM | Print-Friendly | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Blog Posts, Current Posts
