Onto the subject at hand…

Recently, I found myself in a short debate on the nature of villainy.  What makes an interesting villain?  What doesn’t?  Is a colorful villain the same as a more subtle villain?  Stuff like that.  Rather than repeat it all, I recommend you check out the comments on my Opinions Vary blog entry.  Some ideas are shared, and it makes some interesting reading.

Near the end of the exchange, I noticed something.  I’m a writer.  A needless observation since, if you’re visiting this website, you probably know me first and foremost as a writer.  Safe to say, if I wasn’t a writer, you wouldn’t give a damn about what random thoughts were crawling through my head at any moment, no matter how well-expressed.  So I am indeed a professional writer, and I have the check stubs to prove it.

But more than being a pro, I’m actually a writer.  I think about stories, about characters and plots and premises and everything that makes a story up.  If it’s a book, you know I’ve thought about the sentences, considered how they all fit together, about what they say and what they don’t say.  If I’m reading the book, I’m analyzing it (even against my will).  And if I’m writing it, I’m trying to make sure it does what I want.  Oddly, even when I’m not sure what I want it to say.

If it’s a movie, I do the same thing.  Except I’m not really concerned with cinematography or subtleties of direction that I’m sure are there but usually go unnoticed except for a feeling of something great when it’s there and something off when it’s not.

I can turn this off to some degree.  I saw Legion this weekend, and while there are many questionable plot choices, I also was willing to overlook it because there’s a fight between archangels that is totally badass, and really, that’s the whole reason I’m there.

I have a pet peeve of using the term “storyteller”.  It just seems pretentious.  I also hate the phrase “craft of writing”.  It just bugs me for some reason.  But I do believe storytelling is an art and that writing is a craft.  Though maybe I’d be more comfortable with “trade of writing” because I’m a tradesperson, really.  But instead of making houses, I make stories.  It takes some of the romanticism out of it, but if you ask me, that’s a good thing.  Because novelology isn’t glamourous.  It’s mostly sitting in front of a computer and typing.

Being a professional teller of stories, I still sometimes get confused about it.  Recently, at the DFWWW’s after-IHOP gathering, a rollicking conversation about Transformers 2 and racism erupted.  The conversation is far too complicated to get into now, but it was fantastic.  It was great because we were all discussing a movie about giant robots and racial perceptions far deeper than one movie about giant robots and about the nature of stories themselves.  One of the most memorable discussions I’ve had in a long time, and one not soon forgotten.

More than an interesting diversion though, this was me discussing storytelling with fellow storytellers.  Really not any different than a bunch of carpenters sitting around discussing hammers and nails.  It’s why I keep the receipts from my IHOP gatherings because it is a business expense.  My writing benefits immensely from these discussions.

People think writing is easy.  Heck, I think it’s easy.  It’s certainly not as hard as breaking your back for minimum wage.  Or manning the counter at McDonald’s.  Or any number of thankless jobs that demand so much and give back so little.  But writing isn’t easy.  You have to think about it.  And if you do a good job, most people aren’t even going to notice.  And if you do a bad job, many people aren’t going to notice either.  People really don’t care that much about stories.  They tend to take them at face value.

I’m often amazed at how often people talk about the story without ever thinking about the writer behind the pages.  That’s how it should be.  I think only bad fiction draws attention to the author, just as bad directing tends to be all about the camera movements and stylistic shots rather than what’s happening on the screen.

But I am a writer.  And I do care.  And I do think about it.  Just do me a favor.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

I’m really jazzed about this, gang.  While I think Dreamworks Animation has always been tops in the quality of their animation, it was really with Kung Fu Panda that I think they hit their stride.  I absolutely loved Kung Fu Panda, every bit as much as Pixar’s Wall-E.  I don’t know if Panda topples The Incredibles as my favorite movie ever, but it is still a fantastic, beautiful, wonderful film that deserves more respect than it generally gets.  And often lost amid the funny animal characters, the wild kung fu action, and physical comedy, there’s a great story there that a lot of people miss.  Great characters, terrific story arcs, and subtleties that any writer should be proud of.  So I couldn’t be happier that anyone associated with Dreamworks in general or this fine film in particular are associated with a Gil’s movie project.

Obviously, Dreamworks won’t be going R on this.  And I’m cool with that.  It’s true that Gil’s has swearing in it.  And violence.  And sex.  But these elements don’t define Gil’s for me.  I never imagine Gil’s as a gruesome place to visit.  And the sex is so mild that an article in the Chicago newspaper detailing all the lurid “controversy” over the book reprinted the most graphic scene word for word.  The swearing is part of Earl’s character, but there are ways of showing a character is cranky without having them curse every other sentence.

Does it sound like I’m compromising?  Depends on how you look at it.

Frankly, while I have nothing against swearing, violence, or sex in cinema, I also realize that most of my sensibilities as a writer are better for animation than live action.  Gil’s is a weird horror fantasy novel about vampires, werewolves, ghosts, zombies, and monster gods.  In the Company of Ogres is all about fantastic characters like ogres, goblins, and demons.  Too Many Curses has nary an ordinary human in it.  The Automatic Detective is about a hulking seven foot robot who fights mutant mob bosses and giant slime monsters in a city of the retro-future.  I like monsters and weirdness and when you get a lot of that stacked on top of itself, after a while, the movie audience will be turned off.

Unless you go animated.  You can do almost anything animated and if it’s good, the audience will play along.  Just check out Up, a moving story about an old man who flies his house with balloons, befriends a boyscout, goes on an adventure where he must help a strange bird escape the clutches of a mad explorer who flies a zeppelin and uses an army of talking dogs.  This would just not work live action.  It would seem bizarre, ridiculous.  But animated…it is the best film I’ve seen all year, hands down.  Touching and beautiful and absurd all at the same time.

Kung Fu Panda seems more grounded in reality to some degree, yet the kung fu element which I so love about the film circumvents all sense of realism.  Characters leap hundreds of feet in the air, punch holes in buildings, outrun gravity, and do things Jackie Chan or Jet Li could never dream of getting away with.  At least not in a thoughtful film.  And, make no mistake, Kung Fu Panda is a thoughtful, intelligent film.  One that I love from top to bottom.

Wall-E is about a robot fighting with / against other robots to save the human race from endless, mindless existence.  Toy Story is about . . . toys.  Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is all about a scientist who invents a machine that makes it rain food.  Monster House is about a monster house.  All these stories are pure, unadulterated fantasy.  And that’s what I love about them.  The fact that they create likable characters and satisfying plots from the absurd only makes me love them more.

Does this mean that in the future I’ll start writing with this audience in mind?  No, probably not.  If swearing is called for, I’ll put it in.  If there comes a time when it’s vital to include a graphic sex scene in a story, I’ll write it.  And, heck, I like violence.  Having monsters and robots beat the tar out of each other is just good fun.  But I can get away with this as a novelist.  The written word gives me more leeway than a visual medium, and I will take advantage of that.  But when Hollywood comes knockin’, you can bet your ass that I’ll hop on board and trust these people to know what they’re doing.  If they do a great job, then I’ll be pleased as punch.  If they screw it up, I’ll still get paid, still get exposure, still benefit immensely.

Also, the paycheck is very, very nice.  I like when I get paid money for things I’ve already written.  It’s like mana from heaven, energon from Cybertron.  But you’ll have to excuse the mercenary in me.

In this case though, I have no reason to expect anything but the best from Dreamworks, who seem behind this project and just as eager as I am to make something great out of it.  I think it’s fair to say that I am the future of both fantasy and animated storytelling, and that, in that future, all film historians will refer to this period as the Pre-Martinez Period, before the world realized how cool slime monsters and raccoon gods can be.

I’ll take my Lifetime Achievement Award now, friends.  Or you can wait until I’m formally nominated.  Whatever.  I got time.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Every time an animated movie like this comes out, I reflect on my own goals as a writer.  Because, when you get right down to it, this is the stuff that I love.  This is the stuff that I aspire to write.  I’ve admitted it before (and I’m sure I’ll admit it again in the future), but this is what I want to create with my own work.

While other writers might aspire to achieve the fame of Hemmingway, the skill of Steinbeck, the paycheck of Rowling, I want to write the next Kung Fu Panda.  In novel form, of course.

Perhaps the weirdest thing about my own pretentions is that I aspire to have fun.  But I don’t think fun is automatically mindless or that dull is automatically mature.  Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is an incredibly fun movie, full of life and joy, and it manages to be both absurd and touching at the same time.  Yes, I said it.  I cared about these characters and their personal struggles.  And, yes, these characters do indeed have a surprising amount of depth and personality.  Even the monkey.

So damn it, I am going to just accept this.  I am going to embrace it.  If this is the writer I am, then I see no shame in that.  Fun, thoughtful, absurd, fantastic adventure is my genre.  It’s who I am.

Your average comic book fan might go on and on about Watchmen or Killing Joke.  I’ll stick with Walt Simonson’s Mighty Thor and Red 5′s Atomic Robo.  Film scholars will discuss the subtleties of Chinatown and Schindler’s List, but I can pass half-an-hour easy explaining just how awesome The Incredibles and Monsters, Inc. are (although that should be obvious to anyone with a lick of sense).  And I’ll take the Godzilla saga over the Godfather saga anyday.

I’d feel awkward about it, but I’m making a pretty good living doing this.  So if these are my influences then they’ve done me good.  A humble novelelogist couldn’t ask for anything more.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee