Authorian Adventures in the Ether

RE:tooling

As I approach my 100th episode, (this is 92) I have been reflecting on the craft.  The Pitchfest re-affirmed what I consider to be the writers prime directive, “distinguish YOUR work”.  All the query letters, log-lines, elevator-pitches, and publicity stunts in the world will not allow your work “to be singled out for honor or special attention” unless it is truly “characterized by your individual features”.

Even though another Star Trek-Terminator-X-Men-Transformer-Night-at the-Museum reruns on the silver screen and the latest in a series of  Mystical-Tell-All-Self-Help-Vampire books suck the life from our retailers, WE will only be adequately compensated if we create discernable work.

Michael Jackson WAS VERY different but when his work failed to continue delivering a refreshing new approach to entertainment, we quickly lost all respect for the “man”.  In between this weekend’s constant tributes to the orginal Michael, I came across a tribute to Nikola Tesla on the History Channel.  Here was a man who’s creative differences with his employer, Thomas Edison, caused him to quit working for the “Wizard of Menlo Park” and take a job digging ditches.

A few years later, HE literally electrified the Chicago world’s fair with HIS Alternating Current and the forerunner of HIS florescent light bulb.  Edison did everything he could to make DC our standard, but Tesla’s current was clearly a better alternative.   Tesla could have stopped there and become one of the richest men in the early 20th century living out HIS VERY different lifestyle in opulent bliss.  But instead he released Westinghouse from their significant financial obligations to him, and began to work on different approaches to… just about everything. 

While I am not sure that I would rather be different than rich, distinguishing one’s self  is something we control and it can be very rewarding.

It’s not all Blah, Blah in La La

Take 100+ Hollywood Production Types put them in a big room just down the road from Burbank Airport.  The day before this, take 500 would be screenwriters with heads firmly in the clouds and whip them in to a frenzy by teaching them how to summarize their BIG ideas in a 30 second “log line”.  Then smash the two together in five minute increments and you have the Great American Pitch Fest 2009.

“I have a story about the last five days of a utopian experiment that was founded by a homeless man who was allowed to win the lottery”  said I, to one dozen carefully selected movie moguls allegedly looking for unique ideas.   This was universally followed by 5-10 seconds of silence as they attempted to mentally process and categorize a concept they had truly never heard before.  I got 8 “tell me mores”,  3 “Wows…Go On!” and one “What was that again?”.   It turns out, once you have their attention,  there is no standard way to continue.  Some want to hear about characters. Some need to know more about the plot.  Others want to know the message of the film.  So you pick one and hope you guessed correctly or that your silver tongued oration will sufficeintly entice them to ask for your contact information and your “one pager”.  I apparently did this correctly 33% of the time as I left the event with 3 producers wanting to know more and 1 wanting to read the script.  I also got 4, “this is a really great idea, BUT not right for our company…make sure you talk to…this is the kind of thing they would do”

There is much more to tell, but I am still a bit bleary-eyed from the emotional intensity of the weekend.  I had a graphic on the front of my 1 pager showing the cover of my book, the log line and a request for them to consider SomeplacElse.  On the back was the script for the opening scene wherein homeless Mike Allen is told to “Give them Hope”…I didn’t realize the irony until just now.

What are they Smokin?

I received and email from WhiteSmoke software today.  I get a daily mailing from them containing tips, tricks and specials. For some reason, this one caught my eye.

Are they serious?  As you get older you allegedly write less and less? 

Back in the 60s I certainly wrote more than the average 16 to 25 year old, cranking out sheets of erasable paper on my typewriter. But that could never match the output of a 56 year old B.L. armed with multiple computers.  Of course this is a question of hours spent writing, not words generated. So let me think about that for a few minutes.  
In college years, I would spend about 3 hours writing a 1500 word essay properly formatted for submission.  I wrote maybe two or three such papers a month coupled with 5 or 6 handwritten letters of maybe 500 words and an hour each.  Lets throw in a speech or two every month and we are looking at a maximum of 21 hours a month.  
Now, 35 years later I easily spend that much time every week crafting emails, presentations, and documentation.  Add to this, blogging, scripting, and noveling and some weeks, I probably double that mark.

So, if this survey is to be believed, for every one of me, there are dozen or so over 50 not writing a word.  Additionally, those 16-35 year olds out there are either sending a whole lot of  TXT MSGS or they are cranking out ALL the Novels, TV Shows, Movies and News Stories we see…maybe it’s both and they are tweeting the next War and Peace right now. 

I like WhiteSmoke and I won’t hold these bogus facts against them. However their software  is not working correctly with the Microsoft Internet Explorer version 8 that was automatically installed for me and apparently can’t be uninstalled.  I would write a letter of complaint to both of them, but apparently I am way over my quota of words for this year.  

Challenging Assumptions

 In my email today is a message from the Buckminster Fuller institute announcing the winner of their 2009 Design Science Challenge. And, as was the case in 2007, I didn’t win.  Of course I didn’t enter this year, so that may have impacted the judges decision.  I didn’t enter in 2008 either but I was among the hopefuls in the 2007 contest.  The rules simply state propose something that will “support the development and implementation of a strategy that has significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems”. The prize is $100,000 to be spent on implementing the winning strategy.  This year there were over 200 entries, up from the 50 or so in the 2007 inaugural contest.  The brain power(present company excepted), both academic and activist, behind the submissions is awe-inspiring.  So much so that I find it incredulous that these problem solvers have to compete for a mere $100,000 while problem creators are receiving hundreds of billions of dollars to perpetuate their way of thinking.

My entry, proposed that the best way to solve the pressing problems of humanity’s future was to encourage humanity at large to share their ideas about the way things should be, just as Bucky had done.  My modest plan called for the construction of a Web Site to collect AND PROMOTE these ideas without editiorial comment.  I included a disclaimer indicating I knew full well this was not the kind of plan that was worthy of a $100,000 prize, nor was it meant to compete with the wisdom found in other proposals.  However, I did suggest to them that they should set aside $1 in prize money for every entry submitted and award it to all runners up along with a “Trim-Tab“ certificate.  This would then allow all the worthy ideas presented to be honored.  

While I never got my dollar or my Trim-Tab award, I am proud to say that the Idea Index is now a part of the BFI Site and they saw fit to name a runnerup this year.  Now we just have to get the promotion side of this off the ground and we’ll really have something.  I intend to promote the idea of idea promotion at the upcoming 2009 Hollywood Pitch Festival.  In the meantime feel free to spread the word and maybe even submit your own ideas in the 2010 competition.

Original Copies?

In my closet is a large plastic container of “retired” T-shirts.   You see I have a sentimental attachment to the sentiments expressed on these too-worn-to-wear-again cotton symbols of my persona.   There are easily 4 dozen faded garments containing hundreds of very vivid, extremely comfortable memories.  Someday I will have to pull them all out and reminisce but I digress.  One of my all time favorite shirts is a tattered too-short long-sleeved gray, declaring Levi’s “American Original”.

On Friday night of this Memorial day weekend I attended a screening of Night at the Museum 2.  I found myself laughing out loud at Hank Azaria’s dead on imitation of Boris Karloff as well as some of the subtly hysterical lines delivered by Amy Adams characterization of Amelia Earhart (never thought about that before, her name is Air-Heart).  On Saturday, the Terminator was back for a forth go round.  While a class action suit is probably pending for advertsing that Christian Bale ”starred” in this movie  and I felt real pain when “I’ll be back” and ” Come with me if you want to live” were uttered by non-Arnold, non-Terminator characters, the re-run of the factory battle from Terminator One, complete with CGI enhanced Govenator body double,  clearly demonstrated to me that Hollywood needs to terminate this kind of salvation.

We, so, need to stop memorializing what worked the last time and get American Original back in style.

Pitching WOO HOO to Who’s Who

Pitch is defined as “to put, set, or plant in a fixed or definite place or position” but then it also means “to throw, fling, hurl, or toss”.  (Seems a bit oxymoronic)
You can have perfect pitch, and you can pitch a perfect game.  The roof above you has a downward pitch and, occasionally, we all pitch in to achieve an outcome.
Golfers have a pitching wedge to loft their ball into the air and out of the rough.  Rockets pitch and roll when rough air is encountered.
The word pitch is tossed around in so many connotations it is nearly impossible to place it in a fixed or definite position.

This brings us to the “Sales Pitch”; an attempt to convey such compelling information to a potential customer that the pitcher is able to hit a home run.
In this “Pitch” words must be carefully selected so as to plant a fixed idea without being so definitive that the seller cannot easily roll out of an unintended trajectory.
In my experience, delivering a sales pitch, ranks right down there with tossing my cookies.
Therefore, it came as a great surprise to me when I decided to register for “The Great Ameircan Pitchfest“.  A conference described as “an annual event where screenwriters can meet with producers, agents, development executives, managers, and other industry professionals to pitch their TV show and movie scripts.”

I have convinced myself that this is not so much about throwing words at buyers who may choose to hurl, but rather an opportunity to deliver some very specific ideas to players who may want to take a swing at them in an attempt to knock us all out of the ordinary.   I’ve got 4 weeks to tune my pitch and ensure I am assuming the right angle.

Considering Mutiny on the Charmin

On Saturday morning, I awoke to a plumbing incident and an apparently Spainish film with English subtitles.  I chose the latter.  It was called “Don’t Tempt Me” and starred Penelope Cruz as an agent of the Devil competing for the soul of sleazy boxer with little moral fiber.  Now, the movie itself is not something I would recommend you rush out and rent, but, for me, seeing a woman represent God and having the soul of an unrepentant male be a pivotal plot point,  made me smile the smile of an author who knows something about the value of these characters.  After being led to this ego massaging temptation, I now had to deliver us from the evil drip.

I returned to reality and proceeded to make my first two of the six required trips to the Home Depot in search of plumbing supplies. Several “this isn’t going to work”s later, I found myself lowering my blood pressure by watching the end of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn.  The host of AMC came on and stated that Errol Flynn was not the studios first choice for this role.  It was supposed to be Jimmy Cagney.  Now I, truly enjoy Jimmy Cagney in most of his movies, but WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?   Fortunately for all of us, circumstances did not allow Yankee Doodle Dandy to stand on “top of the…trees”  in green tights and harass Prince John with arrows from a sapling gat.

I was about to set out on plumbing trips 3 and 4 when they announced that the original Mutiny On the Bounty would be shown next.  I have never seen, nor read Mutiny on the Bounty and this 1935 version contained three best actor nominations (Charles Laughton, Clark Gable, and Franchot Tone).  Apparently, they didn’t have a supporting actor category in those days.  BUT, most importantly, James Cagney was an uncredited extra in this film.  Coincidence?  You’ll never convince me.  Clearly, I was destined to stage a rebellion against the tyrannical waste water containment system and strike for more cerebral endeavors.  It was, indeed, time for “Mutiny”.

Here again, the soul(or absent soul) of an unrepentant male was a pivotal plot point, but this time, there was no female agent of God only two male agents of change.  One who longed for the utopia of Tahiti,  the other striving to, more pragmatically, alter the real world.   In the end, the bad guy received little come uppance, and the good guys were allowed to pursue their dreams.  Hmm, this sounds kind of familiar too.

Suddenly, the pipes cried out in enormous tears, and Iwas forced to pursue the requisite trips 3 through 6.  Late in the evening the plumbing incidents and associated rage that came with them had subsided. Naturally, the seemingly clairvoyant tube now displayed “The Incredible Hulk“.   Again, not something, I would recommend, but Ed Norton (not the sewer worker in the T-Shirt) a seemingly credible actor, said he wouldn’t have done this 3rd remake, if it hadn’t been for the excellent script.  Perhaps he was misquoted, or perhaps it was  the sewer worker in the T-shirt  that said this, but regardless I found myself looking for the flush handle, I designed for my remote control.   Coincidence?  I think not.

In conclusion, we have to deal with a lot of  waste in our lives and many times the bounty is not immediately apparent.  The trick is to know when it’s time for mutiny and when it’s better to just flush it away.

After the Swine Flu

When I was about 8 or 9 my best friend was a very asthmatic, non-conformist individual named Kenneth.  Kenneth knew a lot of stuff the average 5th grader hadn’t even been taught, and we were only in 4th grade.   So, when I look back on my early education, I realize that most of the important stuff that I, truly, learned started with or was significantly re-enforced by the words and deeds of my friends.

I remember one time when we were standing in the milk line;  a hundred or so so kids  discussing the latest in lunch box fashion, meanness of teacher,  or misbehavior of a student while they moved slowly towards the 3 cent purchase of the white elixir.  On this particular day, without any warning, Kenneth decided to announce that, “Nothing is impossible!”.  Immediately, kid scientist Carl, replied with “it’s impossible to make a perpetual motion machine”, to which Kenneth retorted “Nothing is impossible!”.   Now, not knowing the meaning of the word perpetual at the age of 8, I found myself on the sidelines in this debate.  However, I stated that it was impossible to travel through time.  Many others hurled similarly, clearly, impossible tasks at him.  But Kenneth remained adamant.  Finally, as we approached the lunch matron distributing the milk, she wisely quelled the furor, “you will be able to do anything , honey, when pigs fly”.

As I watched the seemingly impossible panic generated by WORD of the H1N1 disease as it infected and affected nearly everyone on the planet, I realized that both Kenneth and the lunch matron were right.

As writers and human beings we must never underestimate the potential power and influence of OUR words.

Postings from the Ends of the Earth? Not if I can Help It!

Long, loooong  before there was an Ashton Kutcher or a CNN to tweat at us, the U.S. Post Office Department delivered between 700 and 800 million short text messages attached to some exotic and/or humorous imagery every year.   These bursts of personal information were called Post Cards.  Now here we are some 90 years later seemingly amazed that 1 million people would be receiving a 150 character TEXT ONLY message in a single day.

On Friday night David Letterman and Michael Keaton stumbled through some  anti-twitter, anti-blog, anti-tech attempts at humor.  Perhaps it was all sarcasm, but to me, it made my generation sound very disconnected.

Next came a reading of Buckminster Fuller’s 1969 seminal work “Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth”.  Bucky’s extremely optimistic forecast of life at the turn of the 21st century reveals how many, many things we prefer to ignore rather than deal with “head on”.

This led me to purchase episode 24 of the original Star Trek series “Space Seed”.  My son and I have long debated which should motivate us more, this episode, or it’s sequel, the movie “Wrath of Khan”.  I argue that the televised Khan was much more thought provoking.  A ruthless dictator from Earth’s 1990s flees into space with a cryogenically frozen group of genetically “superior” human beings.  Apparently, the people of our planet were finding, even, super human tyrants intolerable.  After 200 years of slumber Khan looks around the Enterprise and observes how mankind has effectively stood still while technology has advanced significantly around it.

Finally, came a brief aside from my granddaughter as we shopped for some additional low-e light bulbs, “Why are you buying those?  Earth Day is over.”

I am about to embark on an Authorian Adventure
to prove to my granddaughter that the days of Earth are not over,
to promote a world where 190 years henceforth Khan will be just slightly below average,
to put Bucky’s confusing but ever so encouraging rhetoric of plenty into initiatives all generations can embrace,
and to do it all without a whit of twitter.

Stay tuned for my next not-so-subtle-novel-approach to getting the word out.

Powerless is more?

Last night I was making the final changes on a software module needed at my day job from the comfort of my den.  My granddaughter was chasing something called webkin dollars from her computer.  My daughter, the math teacher, was perusing her internet based gradebook and my wife was virtually linked to her work email, both wirelessy.  The TV was also on providing some mindless escape in the form of the Amazing Race.  Suddenly, the entire house was plunged into darkness.  By the light of our battery powered laptops, we realized we had lost connectivity to the world of external information.  This was a widespread outage our entire block was without power.  I grabbed the cordless phone only to find it too had lost connectivity with its base station.

A cell phone call connected us to a recorded message from the power company, confirming what we already knew. 

With the onset of Arizona heat the inside of our house quickly became hotter than the outside.  We grabbed flashlights and ventured out into the darkness.  One neighbor, just around the corner not only had power but every light in his house seemed to be on.  Was this an episode of Twilight Zone’s “Monsters of Maple Street”? 

We returned home after about 20 minutes of visiting with faceless neighbors who had also fled into the limited “cool” of the evening.  When we returned my very nervous granddaughter had relectantly gone to bed after asking “How can I sleep if we don’t have electricity?”  We laughed about that and then I postulated to my wife and daughter as we sat dimly illuminatd by a lone flashlight, “What if this becomes a regular thing?  We lose power AND connectivity for 2 or 3 hours a night?”

Would that be so bad?  Could we survive?  And if we could find ways to remain productive and/or entertained without power, why don’t we just start doing it voluntarily?  I mean tomorrow is earth day.  What would we lose by shutting down the e-fed barrage for a few hours of moonlit face to face interaction?…

Hmmmm…might be a good way to re-charge, being powerless on a regular basis.