EPISODE 306: BY THE BLUE PURPLE YELLOW RED WATER

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

Last weekend I planned to see Annihilation, the new Natalie Portman sci-fi movie that is apparently good and part of a book series about which I am ashamed to say I know nothing. (Scifi fans, I am turning in my nerd card. Please feel free to launch me out the cargo bay door into the unfeeling vacuum of space.)

I had a couple hours before the movie, so I tried catching up on my reading. My To Read list usually feels like a What I Haven’t Done List. (In the modern world Sisyphus does not push a boulder, he tries to keep up with his online Reading List. He could actually be happy if he’d just walk away from his computer.) Warren Ellis’ newsletter also comes in on Sundays.

Suddenly as I’m reading his newsletter I can hear my own starting to form in my head. This should not surprise me, as I’m as much a writing thief as anything else. (“Priest” actually comes from an ancient Greek word for “Steals other people’s stories without attribution”.)

Also, reading great work from other writers tends to spark my own writing, if more often than not in a Fat Elvis impersonator sort of way. (I actually have to be careful about what I’m watching when I’m writing a script– or, let me correct that, I should be careful—as the voice of the thing I’m watching will almost certainly find its way into my text.

I once did a script about a guy having survived an apocalypse (because there aren’t enough of those). When the outline was done I passed it to my class. After digesting it they turned to me en masse with that polite, emotion-suppressed look of “I have so many strong reactions to this but I’m not sure you can handle them.”

Their first question: You’ve imagined a world in which 99% of the world is dead or dying, and your hero has just watched his ex-wife die screaming as she dissolves into a pool of blood. (My attempt to avoid a world of rotting corpses.)

“What is with all the comedy?”

In my defense, I did want the script to have some lighter shades. I’m so tired of the relentless seriousness of shows like The Walking Dead.

But it’s also true that in between writing bursts I was binge-watching How I Met Your Mother. And late series HIMYM to boot.

What? Why are you looking at me that way?

Long story short, I didn’t go see Annihilation after all. Instead I wrote.
(I’m sorry Natalie. We’ll always have Menace.)

++

It’s been a bit of a hard go since I returned from Australia. I have regular deadlines for America, but it’s been tough to get into the strongest rhythm.

But inspiration comes from unlikely sources. I was out a few weeks back with a friend who worries I’m Screwing Up My Life (the new hit show from Freeform!). Honestly, I tend to keep those folks at arm’s length, because I’ve already got that tune on autoplay in my head, thanks so much.

But this guy has always been a good friend. And I get the concern: I don’t sit in an office. I don’t teach classes. And right now a paid job for me can go years and still result in nothing that anyone will ever see. (Trust me, it’s no treat for me, either. Someone was telling me a story about a guy who had an entire career selling projects in Hollywood without ever having a single one actually produced. On the outside I smiled; on the inside I was Edward Munch painting silent screams while also silently screaming.)

During dinner, there he was, coming to kill all my dinosaurs and the futuristic space technology that we’ll never know they had (dinosaurs totally made it to the moon, y’all) with a well-thrown meteor of concern. I’d had plenty of time and prior adventures to set up force fields. But still, he always seemed to find the frequency to get through.

“You’ve been here eight years....”, he said out of the blue, with just the right amount of embarrassment for me. Oof.

People think the real concern about space rocks is the size.

It’s not. It’s the delivery.

But rage can be a great motivator.

As can dinosaur astronauts. ++ One of the biggest challenges I’m finding as a freelancer is that my eyes are always bigger than my capacity. Every new idea is exciting and worth pursuing. The “drag” of other, already started projects gets missed until two weeks after I’ve committed to the new shiny thing and suddenly I’m lying in bed wondering am I ever going to finish that other rewrite, am I ever going to try and submit one of my short stories some place, am I ever going to try and talk someone into letting me write that book.

And even as I’m slowly self-frying in that skillet (don’t forget the Pam!), I’m seeing other pretty shiny things to pursue.

Some say insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Me, I’d say it’s doing the same thing over and over and continuing to expect it’s going to be awesome.

An image that keeps coming up: Say you have a glass jar filled with sand, pebbles and bigger rocks. You pour it all out. Did you know, if you put the sand back in first, you’ll be unable to fit the full set of pebbles and rocks? There just won’t be room.

But, if you start with the rocks, then the pebbles, and save the sand for last, everything fits just fine.

Moral of the story: If you focus on the little stuff first – let me just get my chores done and then I’ll do my pages –without a doubt your bigger projects will not get the time they need. But if you start with them instead, it’ll all work out. The little stuff will always find its place and get done.

I’m doing research on a couple different screenplays ideas right now. Research can be useful or it can be “Hey, Instead of Writing Look Over There!” But both topics really excite me. It turns out the 1980s are way more interesting to write about than they were to live through. ++ A Random Question: What is the deal with peanut butter? Why do I always want it and why does it makes me sleepy? And how do these things fit together? ++ The Oscars are this weekend. I have one prediction, I am absolutely convinced it will come true:

Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway will not be allowed anywhere near the envelopes for any of the nominees.

Bet me on this. Let me take your money.

That was crazy last year, wasn’t it? I saw a critic recently saying the real effect of the whole “Old Drunk Movie Stars Struggle to Read Cue Cards” debacle was that actual winner Moonlight just ended up getting lost in the nonsense. It’s such an extraordinary film; any movie about kids being kids and trying to figure out life, sign me up.

In that category there’s another contender this year: The Florida Project.

It's about a six year old girl, Moonee, who lives with her single mom in one of the motels near Disney World.

Believe it or not, this is a real thing. Motels have become more and more a stop gap measure for struggling families, and especially in places like Disney World or Disneyland, where there are tons of old hotels that tourists don’t want to stay in.

Florida Project is both about Moonee and her friends fooling around in these downtrodden motels, and about her mother’s attempts to make enough money to keep them there. Willem Dafoe is nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his work as the manager. I’m going to say this is the first time in the history of the Academy that an actor has been nominated for proving he can play an ordinary person. YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORK SO HARD, WILLEM, PLEASE JUST CHILL.

(But he is really good.)

The film probably sounds sad, but it’s actually filled with beauty and joy and the belief that no matter what our obstacles in life we can all make it in this world if we just look out for each other and be brave and dream big.

Just kidding. It’s the story of what it’s like to be one of the millions of kids and single moms without enough money to live in Fat Cat Tax Break™ America. Think Boyhood, but with girls and hardship. Or The Wire Season 4, minus the drugs. Or a horror movie where you spend two hours waiting for the monster to pounce.

This is not a great sales pitch for the movie is it... How about this moment from the film:

It is actually a great story, with some really lovely moments, even as it’s also revealing that most of the stories we see about overcoming adversity are as ridiculous as not being frightened to get your picture taken with an enormous talking mouse. (Seriously people, NO.)

Also, it’s about how that little voice we sometimes notice inside saying “You know, I don’t know about this trickle down economics stuff” is actually the voice of a child from a long distance away hollering desperately to try and get our attention. ++

One other Oscars story: One of my favorite podcasts, The Nod, recently did a piece in its newsletter on Hattie McDaniel, who was the first African-American actor to win an Academy Award for her work on Gone with the Wind.

Today most people know her name. But the story around her nomination and win are themselves pretty incredible.

From the Nod:

At the time of her win, many thought-leaders among the Black community had accused McDaniel of being an "Uncle Tom", perpetuating the stereotypes they were working tirelessly to eradicate.

Today we recognize "Gone With The Wind" as one of the greatest cultural tools in the perpetuation Civil War myths and stereotypes of Black people. (If you've never heard about this, there's a Gimlet Show called Uncivil that's talked about it.) But when McDaniel took the role, "Mammy" was one of the only kinds of roles Hollywood made available to Black people at the time. She also identified with the character; she said her grandmother worked on a similar plantation.
Still, when speaking of famous Black "firsts," Hattie McDaniel is often overlooked.

Hattie McDaniel was born in 1895 to two formerly enslaved parents. When McDaniel won her Oscar in 1940, she was not allowed to stunt on the red carpet, and she was not allowed to sit with the film's cast and crew. But nothing could stop this Black woman from getting as fly as she could, to accept an award that she had worked for.

The night that Hattie accepted her Oscar, she donned what was described as "a rhinestone-studded turquoise gown with white gardenias in her hair." When her name was called as the winner in the category "Best Performance of an Actress in a Supporting Role," McDaniel came rushing from the only "colored" table in the theatre to accept her award. She delivered her speech in tears, in disbelief, and looking regal as hell while wearing the white gardenias in her hair. I will never know what those gardenias meant to Hattie McDaniel, but I presume that films with a cast like "Black Panther" had to be one of her wildest dreams.

"I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry," she said in her speech, choking back tears.

++

I had intended to conclude my weeks on video games with a look at the gamification of life. I even wrote most of it. (Teaser: There will be talk of the new Queer Eye. Oh yes there will.)

But all week I’ve had this nagging feeling about the last couple newsletters.

On the one hand, I’ve loved being able to go back to stuff from my childhood and look at it with older (sagging) (*sigh*) eyes. Also, as hinted at above, I’m always pretty much still a student looking for a cool research paper to write. (Research=The Dessert of School Without the Meatloaf of Grades and Tests.)

But on the other, I don’t know, I’ve had the sense that I’ve been missing the point of what I’m talking about, somehow. Of being the sociologist who watched the ritual and reported it back accurately without understanding it at all.

Then I started to notice I had a couple old-timey video game sounds running through my head. The bright spring of Mario grabbing a coin, the somehow organic expansiveness of him mushroom boosting up.

And above all, the high pitched whistle of the Lode Runner as he’s falling.

And the thing those sounds have in common is the amount of satisfaction they bring me. You cannot hear Mario snag a coin and not get a lift in your step. And while I actually have nightmares about falling (especially from planes), there’s something about the sound of a Lode Runner freefall that’s totally reassuring. Forget crickets and mountain streams, that is my nighttime sleeping tape.

It’s okay, just fall. Enjoy the fall.

And then I was thinking about the designs in an early game like Legend of Zelda. The graphics are so rudimentary a middle schooler in the 80s could have done them. But there’s something sweet about them, too. Their simplicity conveys an innocence and optimism. They’re like bird’s eye photos of a fairy tale, but as a kid would imagine it rather than an adult would tell, everything a little small and child-like and funny, not scary.

Game play aside, there is so much to savor in a video game. And I don’t even mean just a good one, or one of today’s super-immersive Who-needs-VR-I-just-spent-the-last-six-weeks-in-Skyrim-and-now-I-am-constantly-looking-for-floating-pointers-to-direct-me-to-my-next-goal (a thing that definitely is made up and did not happen to me after a Saturday spent playing). A game as basic as Space Invaders has specific little touches meant to delight, like the metallic hue of your gun fire, the quietly creeping up on you background rhythm, and the weirdly hilarious hands up-hands-down, legs-in, legs-out dance of the invaders.

Seriously, who thought of this?

*stops writing, begins Googling*

Presto.

Most games are all about pursuing some kind of goal; focusing on the minor touches seems a little like getting to ride the Haunted Mansion and only being excited by the texture of the wallpaper. (What are you even doing touching the wallpaper, keep your hands inside your Doom Buggy at all times.)

But playing a video game is also a little like having to drive alongside the ocean by yourself. Yes, you’re getting where you need to go, but you’re pretty much missing the important stuff.. You start to wonder about your priorities.

Video games are explorations and adventures and challenges of skill and other things that pinball promised to be but never achieved because pinball lies, people, it lies.

I REJECT YOU PINBALL AND ALL YOUR CASINGS AND ALL YOUR EMPTY PROMISES

But I guess what’s hitting me is that these games are also (maybe even primarily?) works of art, sound and image paintings meant to stir not only our sense of adventure but the deeper stuff within us. Maybe they’re an affirmation of our natural childhood instincts towards wonder. And the real power of them is not what they allow us to do or explore or win, but what we allow them to do to us.

(What a strange tension: so much of video game play is about weapons and armoring up and strategy, but to fully appreciate what the game has to offer, at some point you have to lay down your own shields and plans and open yourself to surprise, to the unpredictable effects of beauty, even perhaps to the sting of a good drama.) ++ I once stood before Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night. I know because I have a photo of it. The funny thing is, I can’t remember ever seeing it.

When I die will it matter what percentage of my checklists I got through? Or whether I ever took the time to appreciate the little pink band in Link’s hat?

++

Maybe what I’ve really been writing about for the last three weeks is the world of the late 70s/early 80s, and the way creators and kids back then rejected the cynicism all around them and insisted the world is a lot cooler and more worthy of appreciation than their elders said/allowed/were open to believe.

(Or maybe that’s what I’m always writing about?) ++LINKS ++ Portal is one of my favorite modern games. Instead of shooting people your gun lets you make portals to jump between places. (Teleportation is definitely in My Top Three of “If I had a Super Power” list, tied with flight and just ahead of intangibility.)

(Some people think I’ve already achieved that last one.)

(Why are you look at me that way?)

But it also has this fantastic, fun story of an AI gone murder-y.

After you’ve won, the credits begin over a song performed by the AI. It’s hilariously dark: “We do what we must/Because we can. For the good of all of us/Except the ones who are dead.”

But it’s also kind of beautiful. Check it out.

Also, this short Ray Bradbury story reminds me of a video game in its exquisite level of simplicity and detail.

And my very last link on video games (for now), a great piece on the origins of Nintendo (which believe it or not begins in 1889 -- Super Mario Bros. actually comes from the ancient Japanese game Go.)

Also, Pac-Man is based on an ancient giant mouth-shaped creature that used to live in the forests of Asia.

And there are still dinosaurs on the moon. An actual photo:

Samoas, the champagne of Girl Scout Cookies, are apparently now called Caramel DeLites. Which sounds like an 90s cover band created by people who refuse to spell check.

I am not dealing well with this. If the boxes are no longer purple we riot.

Ready? Here we go.