Is It March Already?

As anyone can see, I've slowed down quite a bit on Real Life/Real Death. I haven't had much time to devote to it, but rest assured, I have been busy. By the end of the month, I should have my webcomic up and running. It's been a long time coming, but it's all worth it because I have been working with some wonderful artists. But once everything is up and running, I should be able to get back to a regular schedule for RL/RD. I've got the next chapter nearly complete, which is good because I'm finally getting to all the superhero stuff. I saw Watchmen the other day, and regardless of how good a movie it was, it was inspiring in the same way that everything I read by Moore is. In a way, Real Life Superheroes started with Alan Moore.

Speaking of Watchmen movie, hrrmmm. Have thoughts. Wasn't great, but was maddeningly not terrible. Enjoyed watching movie enough just to see great scenes played out on big screen, but was disappointed with various missteps throughout movie. Can't say was actually great. Simply put, worst aspects of movie were all the Zack Snyderisms he decided to inject into story. Didn't really have problem with gore and violence in regards to Rorschach, but when Dan and Sally are breaking bones out of arms and killing thugs, kind of defeats whole purpose of everybody, even heroes, being afraid of Rorschach because he's violent killer. That was monumentally stupid decision, completely detracts from characters and story, can only assume was added because Snyder likes to glorify violence to show how edgy he is. Wish New York would have been more of character, give minor characters more scene time, show how society was about to erupt, self destruction. Changed ending almost works in weird way, but not as well as original. Opening montage with Dylan almost completely makes up for whole movie. Really like Bob Dylan. Only thing that really embodied feeling of Moore's book.

My favorite thing about seeing Watchmen was the interesting event that happened after the movie. Once the movie was finished, a sizable portion of the audience made a bee line for the restrooms. Now this Men's bathroom had a basic three urinal set up, two big boy urinals and on the right a kiddie urinal. There were two people at the urinals, one on the left and one on the right. The middle urinal as empty as can be. Now remember, we all just got done watching a two and a half hour long movie with copious full frontal male nudity throughout, and afterwords there were about fifteen to twenty guys all refusing to step up to the empty urinal, nestled between the two occupied urinals. Now, i respect the guy code, "never take the middle when the sides are empty," but this was a weird occurrence. I don't even know what it means. Guys are weird.

REAL LIFE/REAL DEATH Chapter Four

I'm a little disappointed in myself, it's been a month since I last worked on Real Life/Real Death, which was meant to be a weekly exercise. But my attention has been pulled back and forth between some other projects, that coupled with my extreme laziness has really crippled my RLRD output. But I was able to jump back into it tonight. It's a short chapter, but it felt good to get back to it.

"THE SHAKEDOWN"

Okay. Okay. Okay.

I repeated that to myself for a few minutes. A cop car was parked outside my building. That doesn't mean anything, not just yet anyway. This is a terrible neighborhood. They're around here all the time. I took a few breathes. I could see them, the cops, they were still in their car. I wasn't sure what they were doing. Probably waiting for somebody. Waiting for me. Damn.

I took a deep breathe. I knew the law, there's nothing to be afraid of. I didn't even do anything wrong. So, what's the matter? Quit being a spineless little shit and walk over there.

I then repeated that to myself a few times before taking that first step across traffic.

Just as I made it to the other side of the street, I heard the click of car doors opening. Could of been anyone, I didn't turn around.

"Mr. Calico. Frank?" I heard from behind. Damnation. I turned around and came face to face with the officers. I recognized the older one, I think his name was Kowalski or something like that, he was on the force when I was still a detective. I didn't recognize his partner, some young kid.

"Koslowski," I finally said after scanning his uniform for his name, "Haven't seen you in a long time. What brings you round these parts?"

"Just wanted to ask you a few questions," He said, forcing a weak amount of charm.

"You finally get promoted to detective then?" I asked rather wickedly.

He narrowed his eyes, "No."

Koslowski was a bad cop. Not just a dishonest cop, which he was, but he was bad at being dishonest. He wasn't the only dirty cop on the force, not by a long shot, but he was the only one stupid enough to get caught by Internal Affairs. Long story short, he took the fall for everyone, which allowed him to pull enough strings to keep his job, but it was clear he wasn't going to be promoted any time soon. Since then he's been a bitter, intolerable man, I feel sorry for his partners.

"No, we're not here on an investigation. You know how it is, the detectives get backed up on dead end cases, so they have us start asking around. Keep our ears to the community, you know?"

"Well, what the hell does that have to do with me? I asked.

"You were out at that budget hotel last night, weren't you? Bargain Hotel? Budget Rooms? What was is, Jerry?

"Budget Hotel," his partner replied.

"Budget Hotel, that's the one. Word has it you were in the area, weren'tcha?

They knew. They knew everything. They had to. They're going to arrest me for some stupid shit like jaywalking(did I use the crosswalk or not, I can't remember) and then pin the murders on me. Kidnapping too. Oh fuck, I'm so fucked. And too sober to be clever.

"Yeah," I said as calmly as possible, "working a case, cheating husbands use cheap hotels. What of it?"

"That all you saw last night? A cheating husband?"

"What the fuck are you implying?" I snapped.

"Easy, bud. Weren't implying nothin. You know there was a murder over there last night? No witnesses either. Thought you mighta seen something out of the ordinary, being that you were in the area."

"People get murdered on the North side all the time. S'why you guys won't set foot in there unless you're called in. A few gunshots really aren't all that out of the ordinary."

"Heh," he chuckled, "Well, this was a particularly peculiar case, I think you'dve noticed something, had you seen it."

"Well, I don't think I did, otherwise I'dve reported it. I used to be a cop, remember."

"Yeah, 'used to be' bein the key words there." You keep your eyes peeled. You see anything, you let us know. Heh, maybe Detective Ross will hire you for a little freelance work. Haw," his single laugh bellowed out like a cannon shot blowing up in my face. His partner chuckled a bit, unsure of what to make of the joke. Poor kid.

"Yeah, maybe," I said completely straight faced, pretending not to get the joke.

"Right, well, good luck with your investigations and all," he said, the sarcasm pouring out of him like so much sewage.

Then they left. Those mother fuckers. Those sons of bitching mother fuckers. I used to be a fucking detective. That asshole wishes he was as good a cop as me. And now he shaking me down for information like a fucking crackhead. Goddamnit!

Thank God I got that bottle of Scotch.

Daddy Wants a Shine Part Three

Stephen King purportedly hated Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining, which is of note because he is usually pretty apathetic toward other movie adaptations, acknowledging that they are "apples and oranges." But something about The Shining rubbed him the wrong way, and I think I can see why, for all the reasons I stated before, I don't think it was a good remake either. Likewise, King confessed that The Shining was somewhat based off his own struggles with alcohol, so I can see why he'd be a little more protective of this particular story than any of his others.

So, what does he do about it? Well, he waits about twenty years and makes his own adaptation, this one a three episode mini series. I watched this series with great interest because much of it seemed to be filmed in a direct response to Kubrick's version. But sadly, I don't think it's superior to Kubrick's movie, and worst of all, that great of an adaptation to boot.

When talking about movies with friends, I've always held steadfast to the opinion that the writer is more important than anyone else involved in the project, including the director. Of course, I've always maintained that the best directors are also writers, and a good writer can't singlehandedly make up for poor directing and acting, but without a solid writer to craft a good story, we get Michael Bay movies. Since watching Stephen King's The Shining, I've softened on that position a little bit. To do this series, King employed his longtime collaborator, Mick Garris. Now, Garris does a perfectly presentable job with this series, but I wouldn't say it's anything inspired. It's very "made for television" directing. It doesn't even approach what Kubrick was doing in his movie. And filming for television is no excuse, one only has to look at any random episode of Spaced, to see how cinematic a television show can be(it's no wonder Edgar Wright would go on to direct Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz with his writing partner and star actor Simon Pegg). But as I understand it, Garris was under close supervision by King, who I imagine was pretty specific with what he wanted, considering he was so disappointed by Kubrick's film. But King is not a director, he's a writer. What's more, he's a prose writer, not a script writer.

This is best exemplified by Danny Torrance's psychic powers. In the book, when receiving visions of the future, Danny goes into a trance and he is "shown" the visions by his imaginary friend, Tony, who is described as looking like some kind of combination of his mother and father. At the end of the book, it is revealed that Danny's middle name is Anthony. So yeah, Tony is really just Danny's subconscious. In the movie, as I already stated, they ignored this, instead choosing to make Danny look possessed, by rolling his eyes back and having him speak in a creepy voice, rather than bothering with the visual of his subconscious. In the King's series, they go for a straight adaptation of the book. Meaning that Danny's invisible friend Tony shows up to warn him about the future. Now, in order to make him look like Danny's psychic subconscious rather than just a guy, they present him as floating in the air with an aura of light surrounding him. Again I say, this looks silly. It could just be that it's done on a TV budget, but it's silly looking, and either doesn't seem to take the visual concerns of such a spectacle into consideration, or (more likely) genuinely thinks it looks good. Which if that's the case, all I can say is this is why I don't watch lots of horror movies.

But the visual of Tony Torrance is small potatoes compared to the actual vision Danny is shown. In the book, it was actually one of my favorite scenes. King describes a vision of Danny frantically running down a foreign hallway, while a hulking, ambiguous monster chases him, yelling at him in a ghastly voice. All the while a continuously deafening thud is heard as the monster approaches Danny. Danny finds himself trapped in a dead end and sees the ambiguous, unrecognizable monster turn the corner, trapping him in certain doom.

This presents an interesting dilemma on how to present the scene for a visual medium. The monster, of course, is his father, Jack. Except that Jack is possessed by the Hotel, which is why Danny doesn't see his father chasing him, but rather a monster. In a book, it's quite easy to describe something as Danny's six year old self sees it, and it's up to the reader to determine what it could be. But in a movie, even if you present the scene that Danny sees, you are no longer seeing the scene through Danny's eyes, and we as adult viewers can easily see what the monster is. Without some very clever filming or special effects, all you have is Jack Torrance steeping around that corner. This removes all ambiguity of the scene, which isn't entirely bad. The scene works by just having Danny see his father turn the corner, ready to murder him, that certainly is frightening, but it changes the scene, and that's important to the narration. Danny(as well as the viewer) now knows for certain that Jack is going to try to kill him. Again I say, this can work as a type of foreshadowing, but it cancels out much of the tension that builds up to the climactic scene, where Danny is finally living out the vision, but instead of the monster stepping around the corner, it's his father.

Kubrick decides to avoid the whole thing by not bother with the visions, and instead focuses on Danny's repetition of "Redrum." But in King's version, he does his best with the foreshadowing, and what we get is exactly what I described, Jack Torrance stepping around the corner, albeit with some make up on to give him a grayer complexion and no pupils in his eyes. Now, as I said, this isn't expressly bad, if you want to go with the changed scene, especially since, because of Kubrick's movie, the story is already famous for Jack going crazy and trying to kill his son. But as I said before, I think it kills some of the tension, which gets a lot of focus in the series, and makes it seem to drag on unendingly, since we already know the outcome.

For the most part, the rest of the series follows suit and tries to retell the entire book, leaving out only a few of the more superfluous scenes, which is all well and good, until we get to the ending.

Now, I already complained about Kubrick's ending to the movie, which was nothing but a hackneyed attempt to add another level of supernatural suspense to an already sufficiently suspenseful concept. One of the big differences between the movie and the book is Jack's redemption. In the book, just before Jack is about to kill Danny, he regains his composure long enough to apologize and let Danny escape. He beats himself mercilessly in an effort to fight off the possession, but eventually the Hotel takes back control and hurries down the basement in order to prevent the boiler from exploding(which it does, just as he finishes turning down the pressure, proclaiming, "I win! I win!").

In the movie, there is no exploding boiler subplot, Jack never redeems himself, and he dies a murdering psychopath, freezing to death having gotten lost in the hedge maze.

I guess King was disappointed that Jack never got his redemption in the movie because man, does he ever hammer down the point in the mini series. Firstly, what hurts about the ending to the mini series is how all the momentum seems to stop. The one thing that Kubrick did in the movie was, once Jack went crazy, the movie sped along, building momentum and Jack chased his family around. But the series, like the book, meanders about as Jack goes back and forth between beating his wife and chasing his son. This is another thing that works fine in the book, but in a movie, where it's all meant to be watched in one sitting, it's kind of a chore to sit through. But we eventually get to Jack's redemption, which is nicely done, albeit without the self beating(television movie and all), but King isn't satisfied with just letting Jack redeem himself by not killing his son, he tries to make him the actual hero. Danny meets up with his mother and Halloran and informs them that the hotel is going to blow, so instead of getting out of the hotel as quickly as possible, they run up to their rooms to pack...as quickly as possible(another momentum killer). Jack runs down to the boiler and, encouraged by the ghosts, successfully turns down the pressure, preventing it from blowing up. Then, just as the Danny, his mother, and Halloran are leaving, he has a psychic conversation with his father saying that only he can stop the hotel. Jack then turns the pressure back up, much to the dismay of the hotel ghosts, preparing to kill himself in the eventual explosion. Then, for some reason, the ghosts become solid enough to do it themselves, and Jack has an actual physical struggle with one of the ghosts as they fight over the pressure gauge. Danny is able to...take away some of the ghosts power and Jack turns it back up. They have a really corny "I love you" scene and Danny et all escape just as the Hotel explodes. Then we skip forward to Danny's graduation where we see that Tony was really his adult subconscious because adolescent Danny is played by the same actor as Tony. After he receives his diploma, he sees the ghost of his dad and they have another "I love you, I'm proud of you" scene and everyone cries because it's so touching. Overkill. This has nothing to do with being a poor adaptation, it's just bad, and I get the impression that King was so over the top with Jack's redemption specifically because it wasn't in Kubrick's movie.

Ultimately, I disliked the series because it felt like I was watching the book, which just doesn't work. A book is designed to be picked up and put down, but a movie, even one that is split into three episodes, controls exactly how much you experience in the given amount of time(unless you're one of those people who walk out of movies or changes the channel...) As with most things, I think it's all a balancing act, which is a separate skill in and of itself.

Well, it's a new year.

Well the holidays are gone and with them my seasonal depression. I'm not one for making New Years resolutions, I mean, I'm practically perfect in every way. So, no, there's nothing I need to change about myself. But I did make a list of things I need to do this year.

1. Play more gigs. I like playing music, and I always want to do more. There's really not much more to say about this one.

2. Organize my comics. This is a tough one. I buy lots of comics, but I've really gotten away from "collecting" comics, as it were. For me, bags and boards are just an extra expense. So the comics have just been piling up in the spare room, as you can see in the picture. But more than anything, this conflicts with the organizational OCD part of me, so I'm going to have to suck it up and get it all straightened out. Oh, I certainly do take care of my extra great comics, the comics that aren't going to show up in trades anytime soon, like Kyle Baker's Plastic Man, or those extra special comics that just plain deserve preservation, like Rex Libris or Planetary, but on the whole, the average Bendis Marvel comic isn't worth the expense. Also, I've been making the shift toward trade paperback reading. I'll always buy single issues as long as they're being published. Books like Criminal and Cassanova are always going to be on my pull list. But for the most part, if Marvel(and anyone else for that matter) is going to organize their books for trade paperbacks(not just the writing but with the art too) then that's how I'm going to buy them. This also helps me be more selective about what I buy. I'm definitely going to break myself of the "well, I'm 8 issues in, I might as well stick it out for the remaining 4" mentality that had a stranglehold on me.

3. Clean the out the junk closet. No picture for this one, suffice it to say, it's time to get rid of all those old toy backboards, collectible card games, and spare cd cases.

4. Get published. This is a really easy one, since I am secretly including "on the internet" after the "get published" part. Hahahaha. I'm pretty excited for the following year, as I am nearly ready to launch a webcomic. This one also includes the supplemental 4.5. Write more. I actually surprised by the amount that I actually have written in the last year, but it's never enough.

5. Fix the toilet. Yeah, I been meaning to get to that for a while now.....

Daddy Wants a Shine Part Two

For those of you too lazy to scroll down, part one can be found here.

When it comes to film, there's few directors that I am in as much awe of as Stanley Kubrick. There's really not much I could say about his genius that hasn't been said elsewhere, but out of all the Kubrick movies I've seen, The Shining is the only one that isn't very good, despite the fact that it's incredibly entertaining.

So how does a guy like Kubrick fail at adapting The Shining, especially when he takes the same approach to adapting the novel that he took with all his other adaptations?

I think, quite simply, it's because Kubrick had no interest in retelling the story and decided to film a straightforward horror movie chock full of cliches. To be clear, I have no qualms with Kubrick's approach. I think it was a fantastic idea to strip out all of the back story. Films are not books, and as such, have to get the point across in a much shorter time than a book does. Likewise, replacing some of the more fantastic elements with practical ones, such as replacing the topiary with the hedge maze.

In the book, the hotel grounds sports a bunch of hedge animals that come to life and chase the characters around. Now, this is one of the aspects of the book that I flat out disliked. Admittedly, I'm not much of horror fan, and things like anthropomorphic shrubs are part of the reason why. They are just silly. I really liked them early on in the book, when they were just haunting the Jack and Danny, but by the end when Halloran is wrestling a lion bush, well, it's silly. Others may not think so, and that's fine. But I think it's a good example of something that "works" in a book, but would look silly in a movie.

Likewise, in the book Jack chases his family around with a Roque mallet as opposed to the Axe Nicholson used in the film. This allows him to be a truly brutal character by severely beating his wife. It also allows for some haunting foreshadowing with Danny's visions of a monster chasing him down a hallway with the steady thunderous thud of the mallet on the wall echoing after him. But let's face it, an axe is much more immediately frightening. And Nicholson nailed the scenes where he chops through the doors. I think it was a good choice.

Also gone is the history of the Overlook Hotel. As I understand it, the hotel is haunted simply because a lot of people died there, thanks to gang dealings, suicides, and so forth. Trauma such as that leaves behind psychic imprints which people with the "Shine" are able to see. Kubrick sidesteps the various gangster murders by instead focusing on the previous caretaker's daughters whom the caretaker murdered before killing himself the previous winter. This is another good choice. It provides a strong visual that's actually more relevant to the characters situation. I was actually a little surprised King didn't focus more on them in the book.

So, strip out the excessive back stories, the silly bushes, etc, and you have a much tighter story. But Kubrick doesn't stop there, he goes further and strips the characters down to their core. Firstly, gone is Jack Torrance's resentment toward authority figures. This is fine, focusing on just the alcoholism gives you more room to drive home the point. Also, Wendy is no longer the resilient woman she was in the book, but rather a meek, victim, typical of horror films. I don't enjoy this. Seeing a strong female character turned into a typical horror movie "woman victim" is a little disappointing. Likewise, Danny's psychic visions are changed from being his inner self explaining what the visions are to an creepy alternate personality. This presents Danny's telepathy in a more horror film context, making him sound possessed instead of oddly intelligent. I don't mind it so much, as it's basically a shorthand to get across the creepiness his parents feel about his telepathy.

So, I stand by the decision to strip out a lot of the excess and keep the key scenes. But in doing so, you lose the narrative of the story. Now all we have is a bunch of disparate scenes without much motivation behind them, and this is where I feel Kubrick failed, because he couldn't provide a strong narrative for the remnants of the story.

What he does instead, is cram in a bunch of horror movie cliches, such as Wendy being a meek victim mentioned earlier. The hotel was built on an Indian burial ground? Really? Is that supposed to be some sort of an explanation? Halloran shows up and gets murdered in a yawningly "shocking" method. And worst of all, the scene where Danny first encounters a ghost and realises that they can hurt him(because his psychic powers are bringing them to "life") is replaced by another typical horror cliche where upon Jack meets the sexy woman(in full frontal) ghost and proceeds to make out with her, only afterwords to realize that she's suddenly turned into a decayed hag woman. Man, I saw that scene already in movies featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

But I think the worst offender is the fact that Kubrick didn't even bother to try to present Jack as a loving father. The complex Jack Torrance of the book, the man who when drunk accidentally broke his son's arm, who went sober out of fear of hurting his loved ones or anyone else for that matter, who submits himself to humiliation and back breaking labor just so he can provide for his family...is completely gone. Jack Torrance in the movie seems to actually hate his family before he even gets to the hotel. It's so off base, I can only assume it was done on purpose, which if that's the case, I can't fathom why. It takes all the punch out of a strong family unit trying to kill each other. Part of it could just be that Nicholson is just a surly character actor, I don't know, but whatever the case, in the movie Jack is an unrepentant asshole.

Finally, we get to the ending, which...is baffling. In the book, the Overlook Hotel wants Danny to die so that his psychic powers will stay with it, thus keeping it and the ghosts a conscious entity. It uses Jack to do this. It manipulates his vices, coerces him to give into his paranoia and ego in an effort to get him to kill his family. In the movie, I don't even know what Kubrick was trying to say. At the end, after Jack dies, the movie zooms in on a photo of the Overlook staff from the 20's, and featured in the front of the group of employees is non other than Jack Torrance, implying(I guess) that Jack is the reincarnated caretaker or that he was absorbed into the hotel somehow defying space and time. I don't know, it doesn't make any sense and is purposely ambiguous. This just reeks of a scatter shot attempt to provide a horror film ending.

Furthermore, there was a scene in the original cut of the film at the end where Ullman states that Jack's body was never found. This is ridiculous, and just further proof that Kubrick was throwing whatever horror cliche's he could think of to get some cheap thrills in place of the story he cut out.

So why do I think this movie was a poor adaptation. Well, I think it was the right decision to strip the story down to it's bare elements, but unfortunately Kubrick didn't seem to be bothered with trying to present the story at all, but rather present some vivid scene's tied together by horror movie cliches. Scene for scene, it looks great and Nicholson is fantastic, but the movie is so gut wrenchingly weak as a whole, I can understand why Stephen King would want to remake the movie, this time in a series of three hour long episodes. So, how does that work out? I'll give my insights in the next blog post.

REAL LIFE/REAL DEATH Chapter Three

"SO LONELY"

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

I pawed at the alarm clock, trying to stop the irritating noise. Then I realized that I didn’t have an alarm clock. It wasn’t an alarm clock buzzing at all, it was my phone. Ringing. I was cold, where the hell did my good blanket go? How much did I drink last night? Didn’t matter. I picked up the phone.

“Hullo.”

“Mr. Calico.” It was a lady, and she sounded like she was making a statement, not asking a question.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Calico, this is Pamela Shelly. I was calling to see if any…progress has been made…since we last talked.”

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, bitch? Calling me up, checking up on me! You don’t trust me to do my job? Like I’m not going to give you all the information as soon as I get it! Fucking classist bitch, where do you get off?” At least, that’s what I was thinking before I remembered that there HAD been progress made; and that I had promised to call her this morning to let her know if I got the pictures or not. Fuck, I’m a mess.

“Uh, yeah. But I don’t think we should discuss it over the phone. Can you meet for lunch, same place as last time?”

“Yes.”

“Fine, see you there.” And I hung up the phone. Shit, I needed a shower.

I needed to check my camera and see what photos I got. I was too tired and hung over to remember much of the previous night and needed to get myself straightened out before I made any commitments to the Shelly woman. I wandered out of my bedroom to get some coffee. My apartment was small, but I didn’t mind. I don’t own a lot of stuff so what did it matter. Five steps across the living room and I was in the kitchenette, salivating over some instant coffee.

The coffee didn’t do much to wake me up, but I guess it never got a chance to. I turned around and dropped the mug. Landing on the carpet, it didn’t break, which was fortunate because it’s my only coffee cup, but the coffee was going to leave a stain. None of this mattered of course because I was too distracted by the naked girl sleeping on my couch. At least I assumed she was naked under my good blanket. That explains where my blanket went. She’s gotta be naked.

Probably.

She was lying on her side, face buried into the couch cushion. She was nestled up tightly under the blanket, one naked leg sticking out one end and her short black hair ruffled by the pillow on the other end.

I took a few deep breathes and tried to keep from gawking at her leg, but my eyes wouldn’t pull away. Where did this girl come from? She looked much too young to be with a guy like me.
She rolled over. She was definitely too young for me. Her pert little nose twitched uncontrollably, one arm fell out from under the blanket and dangled off the edge of the couch. She had a warm, familiar face. God, I’m lonely. I should go see Sandy. She’d take care of me.

Always has since my wife left.

Of course, it had to be at this moment, the moment of my gawking, horny, resentment, that the girl opened her eyes and let out the appropriate scream.

I stumbled backwards, my feet tripping up in some kind of loose fabric, causing me to come down on my back hard. The girl ran into the bathroom. I laid there for some minutes, afraid to move for fear of having broken something. This would be an appropriate end for me, I suppose.

After a few minutes, I craned my neck up (nothing broken there) to see what I had tripped on.
It was a wig. A blonde wig. The fragmented memories of last night came flooding back. The bodies, the blood, the girl…the costume. Shit, she wears a blonde wig. The girl that I was lecherously eyeballing was the same girl I swore to help last night. What the fuck’s wrong with me? She probably thinks I’m going to rape her now and locked herself in my bathroom. Damn, and I need to get cleaned up before meeting with Mrs. Shelly. Shit, what time was it anyway?

I looked at my wall clock. It read 11:43. Christ, no time for a shower anyway, but I can’t leave with that girl locked in my bathroom.

I pulled myself up off the floor and made my way toward the bathroom.
“Listen, uh,” I paused, trying to remember her name,” Jen, Jennifer. Listen, sorry if I startled you. I’m, uh, not used to other people being in my house.”

Silence.

I continued,” Look, I need to go, some work things to take care of. I won’t be gone long. There’s really not much in the fridge, sorry. I’ll bring some food back, though.”

More silence.

“Okay, well…well I’ll be back in like, an hour. Bye.”

I threw on some clothes and grabbed my camera and my coat and made my way out. My apartment was on the third floor of a rundown building sandwiched between two other rundown buildings in a rundown neighborhood. It’s no castle, but it’s cheap. And cheap suits me just fine.
The meeting with Mrs. Shelly went surprisingly well. I hadn’t developed the pictures yet, but I told her what I saw and that the pictures were coming. She took it surprisingly well, she didn’t seem to want to make excuses for her husband at all. Which I don’t mind at all because it makes my job that much easier. The meeting took ten minutes; we didn’t even get food, just some coffee. Truthfully, there wasn’t anything that couldn’t have been said over the phone. But if I hadn’t met her in person, then I couldn’t have squeezed another check out of her.

So that went well. I cashed the check at a gas station and picked up some food for Jennifer, some Scotch for myself, and filled up the gas tank with the leftover money. So I was at least set for another week or so.

I was trying to feel good as I parked across the street from my apartment, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Jennifer. Secretly, I hoped she had run off while I was gone and I’d never hear from her again. But that wouldn’t keep me from worrying about her. But hey, that’s what the Scotch was for, right?

But whatever good feelings I could sum up from a bag full of groceries and a fresh bottle of Scotch were instantly diminished when I saw the police squad car parked along the curb right outside my apartment.

Daddy Wants a Shine

Last month I read The Shining, and these last couple of weeks I've watched both the movie and television miniseries. Like many movies I didn't see until I was older, The Shining was ruined for me by The Simpsons, but in a good way. That was definitely the spark of my interest in The Shining story, but more recently I've become quite interested in the Intellectual Property(as it were) as I think it's a great example of what goes wrong when trying to migrate a story across mediums. The movie and the miniseries both take a decidedly different approach to adapting the story and as far as I'm concered, they both failed in doing so.

Let's look at the book first. Now, this is actually the only book by Stephen King that I've read, so I'm not going to presume to be an expert on him or his writing style, but I've read a lot about him and his insights into writing and I think all those insights are on display in this book(for better and worse). Cheifly, what I liked most about this book were the characters. I think King's greatest strength as a writer is his ability to present the character voices quite distinctly, especially though third person narrative. This makes the book pretty accesable and quite easy to read. Though this, King presents a haunting tale of a man struggling with alchohol and authority issues, driven mad when he's manipulated into giving into his vices. It's a good book, if a bit rambly in it's approach to the climax(which is really good).

In his book On Writing, King states that stories should not be plotted out beforehand, and that the writer should instead focus on the "seed" of the story and let it grow itself. I both stenuously agree and disagree with this(Ambivalence!). On the one hand, I think that a good idea, with well rounded and developed characters should be able to write itself(to a degree, naturally). In that, the writer should never really reach a point where he can't decide what he wants the character to do. If the character is fully developed, the writer should know how the character will react to most situations. On the other hand, I think it's a terrible idea to to write a story without a clear idea of what you want to say and how it's going to be said. Now, keep in mind that this dilema could easily be solved with some strong editing, but that's not always the case.

In the case of The Shining, I feel that some tighter plotting could have made the book much better. The chapters almost seem to hop without any concern for the flow of the book. I don't think it's all that distracting, per se, but upon finishing the book, it felt really long for only having a few (what I would call) key scenes. King also likes to dwell on backstory, which adds leagues of sympathy to the character of Jack Torrance, but the story seems to lose some subtlety in doing so.

But all in all, it's a fantastic story. Ghosts, a madman trying to murder his family, a pshychic child, it's no wonder Hollywood would want to mine this for a movie. But there's no way you could trancribe a suitable screenplay by using everything in the book. It's litttered with backstory, it's a very long, slow build to it's climax, and some of the supernatural elements are seemingly impossible by the special effects standards of the time. So, how does Hollywood do with an adaptation?

More to come later.