» Fringe Blog – Writing on Film, Culture, and Things on the Fringe

My Life As An Almost Am

jelewis8 — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 20:39:10 +0000

I know I risk alienating a large portion of my readers by continuing to post updates on my life. Who wants to hear that kind of stuff, right? You want intrigue, sex, scandal, and violence, right? You want the sordid details of my adventures on Skid Row, or the story of my run-ins with celebrity and pseudo-celebrity, not the minute and crinkling musings regarding the completion of my first major novel without going completely mad, whilst editing a feature Ethiopian film in the hope of getting it into Sundance this year and forging a bi-coastal relationship with the best girlfriend I could have ever hoped for–all without starving myself or losing too much sleep and risking turning into a smelly, decrepit, shell of my former self, which incidentally, may have been a shell of its former self. So really, when I put it in those terms, I’ve got quite an exciting life.
It plays like an episode of Giada De Laurentiis’ Everyday Italian, unfortunately. If my life was a television show, it wouldn’t make it past the pitch.
Speaking of pitches, I came back from my pitch meeting on Friday wondering if I had stepped into some Bizarro World where high concept commercial plots are dismissed out-of-hand, and B-Grade material is substituted like Splenda for sugar. Then I realized it was just Hollywood, and so my faith in the system was restored. Can’t talk too much about what happened, but I will say there is a difference in philosophy when it comes to entertainment in the movies. I tend to derive pleasure out of well-plotted stories with good subplots, exciting supernatural drama, tantalizing mystery, and thrilling climaxes. Other people prefer stories involving this band of killer circus freaks that travel around the country leaving bodies in their wake. The characters, there’s this seven-hundred-pound fat lady who has a way of seducing guys, gets them in her trailer– (Get the reference? Leave a comment.)
But seriously, that’s what it was like. I didn’t quite know how to respond, so I came back and played Mario Kart 64, which always has a way of recentering me. Thanks, Nintendo!
Because I was sick last week, I did not meet my goal of finishing my book by the end of August. I think it was the fear of finishing that put me under. Really, what do I have left after it’s done? Editing, but what’s that? A few weeks? Then what?
Oh yes, query letters. To New York agents. People who hold the power of the sun in the palm of their hand. People who have the ability to ignore my pleas with little more than a tight lipped response to their assistant that they’re done with the recycling for the day, send the rest of it to the incinerator. Yet I am hopeful. The biggest push for me is to finish, which I shall do within this week, and then a few weeks of editing and careful perusal for typographicals, then a print run of a dozen, which I will then begin to use for marketing myself as the next genius futurist writer.
That’s the plan, but I will of course offer it for sale–the full book, for sale at a low, low price, complete with custom cover art and a brand new forward. I’m even considering illustrations. Just a few maps, maybe a few inserts. Not sure quite how I want to proceed. But it’s really going to be huge. Not huge like Janet Jackson nipple huge, but pretty big. Like Boise, Idaho big.
Seriously, I think you’ll love it. And I’ll love you for buying it.
Oh, speaking of celebrity sightings, I went to a new church this weekend. There I met Danny Bonaduce, the grizzled former Partridge Family member who has apparently a dozen black belts in various martial arts disciplines and recently spent time as a victim/corpse in the season opener of CSI. Not sure which variety of CSI. Maybe Des Moines. I was amused when he stepped outside to take a smoke. I think he may be a Christian.
You gotta love Hollywood.

Hell’s Customer Support Line

jelewis8 — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 02:40:47 +0000

I am aggressively pursuing buying a home. In the current market, and given my current location, this means roughly $666,000, give or take a few thousand. Incidentally, that figure also doubles as the phone number for Hell’s customer support center. If Hell had a customer support, that is. I sincerely doubt it’s any good.
HARRY: Hey, it’s really hot, and I have these worms of fiery death biting me and crawling in and out of various bodily orifices. Is there…is there anything you can do for me here?
WORMSCREW, SUPPORT STAFF 666: Let’s see. Harry T. Peters. You were basically good when you were still alive, if I’m reading your file right.
HARRY: Yeah, yeah! Totally good. Straight as an arrow.
WORMSCREW: Okay. Oh wait. Hmmm.
HARRY: What?
WORMSCREW: What’s this mail fraud note? You went through people’s garbage and used their social security numbers to get free credit cards?
HARRY: What? That? No, that’s a mistake. Gotta be. Look man, I’m really dying here. You gotta do something about these harpies…
WORMSCREW: Oh, and this says you loved yourself more than your fellow man. That’s your problem.
HARRY: Look, all I’m asking is for a little relief. Is there anything I can do about it? I’m serious, these scorpion stings are breaking out into flaming pustules of leprosy. I think I can see the inside of my torso.
WORMSCREW: Well, that sounds distinctly like you denied Christ. And you were a vegetarian.
HARRY: Well I’ll be damned.
WORMSCREW: That about sums it up.
Still, it’s better than AOL. I once called AOL. Not because I was a customer, but because I got one of those free discs and I wanted to find out if I could get removed from their mailing list. I told them I didn’t want any more frisbees. They weren’t amused. But I stopped getting those cd’s.
I’m at day 28 of my freelance indentured servitude. It was originally a month-long tenure, but I was sick for two days, throwing my guts up into my toilet, which was a fun experience, and set me back by two days. Freelancers don’t get no sick days, like my daddy used to say. And it’s true. So I have to make up for ‘em. Which means I’m on til Monday. I’ve been offered a chance to go fulltime with the company, but I haven’t received an official offer yet. I’m praying about it and considering what might convince me to go with them. I might do it if the money’s right, because they also offer health benefits, which is a big bonus for me. But a lot will depend too on whether what they offer matches or exceeds what I currently make freelancing.
The nice thing about freelance work is you make your own schedule. The downside is your paycheck makes its own schedule, usually about the time you’re running out of your last paycheck. Which means you’re constantly on the downward slope, and getting ahead in the money game is about as difficult as going uphill on a bobsled (obligatory Olympic reference quota now a quarter way satisfied). Ultimately my decision will be as mercenary as I can manage. Natch, I will inform you when it happens.
The blog-a-versary celebration was filled with vodka and Veronica Mars. Much fun was had, and the martini gave me a nice buzz, due to the extra vodka I used for the affair. I think I could love vodka martinis for only the simple reason that they afford me the opportunity to ingest gigantic green olives the size of bubonic boils. You don’t know what a pleasure that can be, if you are in the right mood. Of course I love them for other reasons. That’s just reason #128.
How’d you celebrate?

I’m a Published Author (Technically)

jelewis8 — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 04:55:02 +0000

The book is done, incidentally. I spent the day editing and fixing up the file and making it ready for PDF-ifying, which is not as easy as it sounds. Because the PDF file has to be a specific size, with bleed margins and all sorts of embedded font nonsense that eventually makes you realize that maybe the reason it’s so hard to get published these days isn’t the competitive market, it’s the fixing of all those bleed margins.
There’s something very satisfying about creating your own cover art, writing a blurb for the back, and putting it all together in a neat little package, complete with shopping cart goodness for the masses to discover via a random Google search. Oh, sorry, I forgot to link it!
Please purchase The Cold Goodbye!
There’s even a one chapter preview, which should entice you and send small electrical shocks to your cerebellum if you click on the link and then decline to purchase. The second part may not work properly, but it is enticing, like a nice hunk of mutton turning on a spit over an open flame, juices spitting and popping like corkers and fireworks. Why mutton? Because it seems like it’s a Christmas-ey kind of meat, and I’m feeling very seasonal right now.
By the way, this is only the “evaluation” version of the novel. Here’s the breakdown. Readers of this version will tell me if I should write Book 2, because honestly, I don’t know if the story’s any good. I suspect it might be, but the real litmus test is unvarnished responses from interested readers. I expect honesty. Should I write Book 2? Should I condemn the whole thing to the dung heap? And if so, where would I find such a dung heap?
So, once again, please, go check out The Cold Goodbye and if you’re feeling extra charitable, drop me a line and tell me what you thought of it.

The Fog

jelewis8 — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 08:07:46 +0000

The Fog is about as cinematically interesting as pea soup. Which is director Rupert Wainwright’s favourite soup, incidentally. And, perhaps less coincidentally, the film’s muddled plot has the same consistency. When directing a ghost story, it’s not fair to viewers to keep changing the mechanism by which the ghosts enact their fearsome return to the land of the living. Here, Mr. Wainwright makes it a habit. And the result is a disjointed, incoherent, mildly amusing remake of John Carpenter’s more interesting, if still flawed 1980 film by the same name.
Questions abound. Why did this movie need to be remade? It isn’t John Carpenter’s best work, by far. It is a pretty tame story, and hardly revolutionary for the genre. And the premise, whilst interesting, barely holds enough material for one film, much less a “modern” remake. What could induce a studio to back this film? The answer, coming from the heart of Sony Studios, is best summed up as an “anti-Stealth mentality”, in which a studio with a string of misses throws a bone to a few genre faithfuls. Like myself, suckers for a good suspense or horror thriller. Neither describes The Fog, though it clearly tries hard to stand on its own feet and give viewers something worth watching. It even does a few things right. But on the whole, it seems to double under the weight of its own shaky roots and the lackluster studio that it’s trying to support.
The story is set in the quiet seaside town of Antonio Bay, Oregon, a town with a one hundred year history. Its anniversary celebration about to commence, a strangely thick fog envelops the town, and secrets hidden long ago about the town’s sordid beginning surface, putting all its inhabitants, and especially the heroes, in semi-desperate jeopardy. Tom Welling plays Nick Castle, a young ne’er-do-well skipper of the Seagrass, a charter fishing boat. He’s currently dating Elizabeth (Lost‘s Maggie Grace), but she’s been living in New York for the past six months, so he occasionally diddles the town radio DJ Stevie Wayne (MILFy Selma Blair) and generally tries to look as hot as he can whilst not being the hero of Smallville. Elizabeth comes back and discovers her mom still doesn’t like her, the town priest (Adrian Hough) is out getting drunk and painting the cemetery red with Persian words from the Bible, and a strange sea symbol keeps appearing and not getting explained.
That’s when the ghosts come in, courtesy of the titular fog. It kills, it dismembers, it deep fries! All in the name of revenge, which in the ghost world is next to godliness, because cleanliness clearly isn’t, as shown by their rotten, leprous skin. And the plot comes down to one thing–the town forefathers were naughty, and now the ghosts are coming back to tip the scales of justice in their favour by dispatching the less important characters and putting the main characters in peril.
Even more questions abound. Why do the ghosts decide to come back now? Why not fifty years ago, or even a year after they were killed? What about the guy whose skin turned leprous? Did he survive? What about his dogs? What’s with their MO? Some people they burn to death. Others they are content to throw them through plate glass windows. Others get hooked or their eyes gouged out. There’s no rhyme to their crime, and the director has no reason to show all this stuff.
With little to act to, the cast sort of sleepwalks their way through to the somewhat bewildering ending. The music by Graeme Revell is pretty nice, with more moody timpony and underscores of seaborne distress than musical JUMP! moments, which is a nice change from the usual fare. Effects are so-so, though some of the lighting is fairly good.
Like split pea soup, The Fog sometimes tastes good. But the bad gas is more than enough to keep most people away. Keep your nose closed until this Fog rolls away.
Fringe Rating: out of 5