Tromatic upbringing

Am now currently reading and enjoying Make Your Own Damn Movie!, a nonfiction book by Lloyd Kaufman. Am I planning on making a movie myself? No, not necessarily. On the other hand, being able to write one and get it made is the kind of goal that could spur me on to other things I want to do. And thus far there has been some useful advice, especially about finding financing.

In the early chapters there are quite a few swipes at Harvey Weinstein. Apparently back in 2003 when the book was written, Weinstein was the rival that Kaufman could never catch up with. With Weinstein's troubles now I'd bet that Kaufman is quite a bit less envious. After all, no one's ever accused him of raping anyone...EXCEPT YOUR MIND!

Whatever

If you have any interest in writing, you probably know that there is plenty of advice out there to be had: lots of classes, how-to books, specialty magazines. For me only a small percentage of these are of any use at all to a creative individual, and after a certain point they become actively harmful. The problem is that the authors pass along things that have worked for them in terms of output and sales. These methods may or may not have helped them do their best work as well. In either case, the problem is that it's not a replicable skill where the same things will work for everyone. The consumers of these lessons fall under the category of "everyone" so they wish that this were not so.

Perhaps the prime example is the emphasis on creating conflict in your fiction. A story isn't a story, they say, unless two or more people are at odds, or one character has a goal and a problem in achieving it. Perhaps. But telling a writer that they need conflict is like telling someone they need to breathe. If you produce 1,000 words on any topic, some kind of conflict will be present. And in writing conflict, as in breathing, if you concentrate on achieving it you're going to run into more problems than if you just don't think about it.

In witch we...

Are Alfred Hitchcock episodes starring James Franciscus about to become the focus of this blog? Sad to say, I don't think there are enough of them to keep the concept going. Still, it's a nice thought.

"Summer Shade" is one of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes that came after Rod Serling made a splash with The Twilight Zone, and it's not shy about swimming in the same pool. A married couple (Franciscus and Julie Adams) drive around Salem, Massachusetts, looking for a home where they can raise their daughter (Susan Gordon). Just as they're ready to give up, they find a quaint house that the owner (Charity Grace) is putting up for sale. The daughter is happy there, but the parents are concerned that she's spending too much time with her imaginary friend, a friend whom she seems to have made up after reading an ancient tome on Puritan New England.

Going further into spoiler territory would do nothing to elucidate what makes this story work. It's just too weird, and that's what makes it work, partly. The setting is Salem, and while the Witch Trials took place in what is now known as Danvers, most fiction has always found that irrelevant. In this case the city of Salem is presented, albeit tacitly, as a tourist trap where the reputation of black magic is as vital to it as the beaches are to Atlantic City. Real estate signs show witches on brooms, and the woman selling the house wears a witch hat, which the protagonists don't even think anything of.

Everyone commits to the weirdness, and I would make an educated guess that this starts with Nora H. Caplan, who wrote the original short story. The weirdness isn't random. It points in a certain direction. And it defines everything, even the details that seem mundane. That's what it means to have a vision.

Glad rags

Burlington Coat Factory is open again. After an extended period in which clothing stores around here had to close, this is a good thing. The thing is, speaking as an adult male shopper, their selection has been nonexistent since reopening. The socks and underwear sections have been bare, heh-heh. And I've looked to buy a couple of new short-sleeved shirts, but there's nothing in Large. Medium would have worked for me in high school, but not now, and for Extra Large I'd have to gain 60 pounds. So someone must be buying up all the clothes that would fit me and smoking them.

This is the year that isn't

From a story attempting to add a little perspective to the current crisis, the number of Americans who consider themselves "very happy" appears to be at an all time low, at least while these things have been measured. How much of that is down to their extremely constricted social lives? Quite a bit, I would guess.

I'm fairly lucky. As a natural introvert, I need to be in contact with other folks some of the time, but not all or even most. I have family and friends that I've been able to keep in touch with some way or another, and that includes at least a couple of friends I've met with in person all the way through. On walks outside I catch sight of people and sometimes exchange greetings. Today I dined in at a breakfast place I like a lot which just recently reopened.

The only thing that really bothers me is that we're still hearing the rhetoric of "can't do this, can't do that, everyone will die." The evidence that COVID-19 was an unprecedented plague was always thin on the ground, and at this point the idea is completely in tatters, yet some people want their deadly pandemic and will have it. Even there, it's not so much the people lying that depress me as those who've fallen for it. Or just haven't thought about it, somehow.

The joke's on you

So as to this story...You can see the skit above, unless YouTube removes it, which who knows? I think it's pretty funny. The cop played by Keegan-Michael Key has a lot to do with that, doing a...you know, it's not even a slow burn, just total bafflement with what this guy's deal is.

In a year where nuance seems to have crawled off to join the pile of corpses, it's not too surprising that Netflix has pulled it from their service. What is surprising, and kind of encouraging, is that Cross and Odenkirk have managed not to grovel. They actually expect their audience to show some understanding of where they're coming from. This is more sensible, if less fashionable, than claiming they were ignorant of the existence of racism when they wrote a comedy skit about racism.

Atsa real good

Yeah, another video post. Sue me.

I heard this scene on a radio station a little earlier tonight and had to dig up where it was from. Animal Crackers, an early one.

You have to hand it to Chico. It's hard enough to keep up with Groucho, one of the funniest men to have ever walked the earth. But Chico actually gets a chuckle out of Margaret Dumont. Italians tended to like his portrayal as well. He sort of codified the bad Italian accent.