quick updates

1) Last week I talked about Robert Altman's movie A Wedding. Well, I stumbled on a review of a stage version which as done a while back. As an opera, of all things. Directed by Altman himself.

Well, he did spend his last decades trying to do things he'd never done before.

2) Stephen Watkins had a post called "2013: Movies of Interest," and we discussed our various qualms about the upcoming Iron Man movie. Here's my comment on that: "For one thing, is it actually possible to do the Mandarin in some way that isn’t offensive? Certainly in the comics he was very stereotypical. But my bigger qualm is that, based on the trailer, it’s going to be 'Tony the hero has to man up and toughen up to rescue his beloved Pepper, who’s been tied to the railroad tracks and maybe tortured by the evil Asian guy.' Ish. On the other hand, there is another way they could go. In the comics, Pepper has been known to suit up, too. Which nobody would expect from Gwyneth Paltrow… Could be we’ll be seeing Rescue. That would be cool."

Well, as far as the second point goes, that question has been answered. This puts a smile on my face.

As for the other qualm, I've read enough online to say that it seems this reaction was anticipated and dealt with also. (No spoilers here.)

So, I've got to see this one when it comes out.

3) Tech tip for today;

AKLB. Always Keep Local Backups.

I read this: "Can You Live Without Google?" It shows what can happen when you trust Google with all your vital files, without keeping local copies (always a bad idea), and they suddenly decide to lock you out. One easy "backup" is to email files to yourself, but that doesn't help if you use Gmail.

The cloud is all well and good, but AKLB.

learning from deleted scenes

People always say that writers have to be willing to kill their darlings, to delete their favorite scenes if necessary for the good of the whole, but we don't get to see how this is handled in practice. Think of your favorite novels. What did the author take out in order to produce the book you love? Who knows?

But we do get to see deleted scenes from movies on DVDs, sometimes with commentary from the director about why they were deleted, and I think there are lessons to learn there (novels are not the same as movies, obviously, but they are both ways of telling stories).

First, different directors handle this differently. Woody Allen never saves what he removes from films; he tosses everything once he's done. Nowadays I'm sure directors save things (maybe even especially their darlings) just so they can appear on the DVD.

The most common reason I've heard directors cite for removing scenes is pacing. Especially toward the end of a movie, you don't want to lose momentum. If the scene reveals important information, is that information conveyed elsewhere (or can it be inserted somewhere else, or can we do without it)? If no vital information is being conveyed, save it for the DVD.

Pacing is important, but it's not the only consideration. Clint Eastwood's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil has a scene in the middle where John Kelso, the main character, goes to a very fancy cotillion which is disrupted by The Lady Chablis (who had been very disappointed that Kelso wouldn't take her as his date). This has nothing to do with the plot, and contains no vital information (the relationship between Kelso and Chablis is pretty thoroughly illustrated elsewhere), but it's funny as hell and Eastwood obviously decided to leave it in.

Pacing is important, as I say, but it isn't everything. Some artistic decisions can't be made by following the rule book.

Ben Affleck did an alternate ending scene for Gone Baby Gone, where a voiceover referred back to the film's opening to summarize the point of the film. Fortunately, he had the good judgment to remove it and let the audience think it through for themselves.

By the way, Robert Altman's most common reason for removing scenes was "too sentimental," which says a lot about his films. I will also mention that one of my favorite scenes in Gosford Park was not in the finished film. It was removed because it tied into a subplot that was removed, but it is a great scene and tells a lot about two of the characters. In my mental version of the film, it is there, where it belongs. 🙂

Sometimes scenes have to be removed because the plot shifts and they simply aren't possible. There was a really nice scene in A Sane Woman that I had to remove because it was a conversation that Jan and Marshall would never have had except in private, and at that point in the book the resolution was in motion and they would never have left the suspects alone even for a minute. I should locate that and post it here.

I have posted some deleted scenes here, and this is my favorite. It didn't fit in the book because the plot shifted, or it would be there. Oh, well.

(Of course, I'm sure some movie scenes are removed simply because they sucked, but those aren't likely to show up on DVDs. 🙂 )


For a very different, and more extensive, post on what writers can learn from other media, check out the post "Sleep No More: Novel Writing" post at the blog 80,000 Words.

drinking beer, in new york, in cellars

I'm getting a bit sick of Facebook. It's fun, but I've been feeling the need to read some online writing with a bit more depth, thoughtfulness, and (yes) length. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but wit does not, in and of itself, make for a really nourishing diet.

So, I started to poke around wordpress.com. There are millions of WordPress sites on the web, and over 300,000 of them are hosted at WordPress.com. I almost immediately found this post, which was pretty much about the reason I was there in the first place, the effect of lots of shallow skimming as opposed to "deep reading" (though that phrase itself makes me laugh, since it reminds me of "Deep Thoughts" by Jack Handey, and of course Deep Thought from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy).

And then, in the most surprising bit of serendipity, I went to the Tags page on wordpress.com and, since I had already read quite a few posts about writing, I clicked on "movies" instead. And I immediately found this, a very good review of California Split, an excellent movie by Robert Altman (which I never did get around to reviewing myself). As I said in my comment on that blog, I think I will just link to that review on my movie reviews page, since the author said pretty much everything I would have said, and more.

Plus, my friend Beth has started a very interesting blog here. It's about "all the influences you’ve been told will turn your teen violent: the occult, violent video games, heavy-metal music, and more."

Oh, and I don't know if it counts as "deep reading," but I've started to re-read The Bostonians, which I'm already enjoying tremendously. I can't get through The Golden Bowl or The Wings of the Dove, but many of his earlier novels (before he got his "typewriter") were excellent.

Basil Ransom, on the occasion of his first meeting with Olive Chancellor, his cousin:

He couldn't believe he was one of her kind; he was conscious of much Bohemianism—he drank beer, in New York, in cellars, knew no ladies, and was familiar with a "variety" actress. Certainly, as she knew him better, she would disapprove of him, though, of course, he would never mention the actress, nor even, if necessary, the beer.

possibly I’m weird

Possibly I'm weird. The alternative is that most everybody else is.

It always baffles me that writers generally create a new group of characters for each story or novel that they write. What a peculiar idea. Do characters get used up after only one story? Is that all they have in them?

Robert Altman said, "Mr. and Mrs. Smith get married, they have problems, they get back together, and they live happily ever after. End of the movie. Two weeks later, he kills her, grinds her body up, feeds it to his girlfriend, who dies of ptomaine poisoning, and her husband is prosecuted and sent to the electric chair for it--but here's our little story with a happy ending. What is an ending? There's no such thing. Death is the only ending."

That's what I think. I've been writing about Katherine, for one example, for most of my life, and she's still only in her forties. Probably plenty of good years (and good stories) left in her. And this is even more true of Jan Sleet and Marshall, who are younger than she is. And Vicki and SarahBeth are still in their teens.

But, for some reason, everybody else does it the other way.

[This blog post was continued here.]