What I Learned's blog

Write about poop? I have a degree, damn it!

An animator I've been working with asked me to come up with some R-rated jokes to animate. He wants to sync into the popularity that comes from Family Guy and especially Seth McFarlane's private channel.

I already created a character who plays movie-based video games and makes fun of them. So, all right. He wants adult humor. Fine. What terrible movie should become a video game?

“2 Girls, 1 Cup.”

Yes, the 4-year-old Internet meme that won't die...it just keeps on going...If you haven't watched it already, don't. Seriously. It's disgusting. This isn't reverse psychology.

So, I came up with a few jokes and wrote it. It took me an hour, probably. I figured the idea was worth an hour. I have a college degree. I've been a professional writer for about 10 years. I didn't want to spend any more time on this than I had to.

Then came the actual production. It takes a lot longer to animate, and the back-and-forth e-mails as we narrowed stuff down took quite a long time. We had to agree on character and background designs, an intro to the series, and I did the voice acting.

End result: NINE hours to create this video. And that's just my half.

So, watch the video. Let me know if it was time well spent.

 

2 Girls, 1 Cup the video game

Lady Gaga is a nerd

Looking at her face during American Idol, I imagined that without all the make-up she'd look just like Marilyn Manson without all the make-up.

She was an art student, reportedly, and it seems that she's got a Warholian gift for transforming her performances into talking points.

But deep down, beneath the meat dresses and the music, she's a nerd. She's a student of art, and a student of how to draw attention to herself. She puts the same amount of work into creating her "Lady Gaga" character as I would creating a half-elf paladin.

 

What I Learned: Maybe the word calculating has too strong a negative connotation, but if I was writing a character based on that kind of a media-savvy performing/performance artist, I would make her a very calm, very focused thinker. The outlandish performance artist is an act, and it's origin is an Annie Lennox-styled contemplation on how to reinvent yourself and how to challenge people's perceptions.

PS: I really like the idea of her donating $1 million to charity, and having people choose where it goes.

 

 

 

Disclaimer/background: I'm a traditionalist. I don't think people should break rules of storytelling unless there's a good reason. I write comic books, short fiction and children's books. Just to put my comments in perspective, these are my interests and favorites: My favorite superhero is Spider-Man, and I also like Justice League and Batman. My favorite comic writers lately have been Kurt Busiek, Peter David, and Geoff Johns. I am a huge Transformers fan. In children's books, I go either simple or meta: either really simple stories or books about stories. In movies and books, I am more impressed with something small that makes me feel something rather than something I'm told is a "must-read" or a must-see."

I make silly videos and post them here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/verylittleknowledge

Bin Laden's Death: Book and Movie Deal

Osama bin Laden's Death-The Movie.

It should be interesting when the soldiers involved in the bin Laden raid start telling their stories. Unless they're sworn to secrecy about the mission itself, it should make some interesting book and movie deals.

A lot of guys don't want to talk about what happens in a war, until long after, if at all. But I figure there was a lot of fist bumping and slaps on the back after that one.

Bin Laden is practically a mythical figure. He was the great white whale for every soldier. After 9/11, everyone who lost someone wanted him dead. (Except for the most forgiving people.) When he was shot, it was probably pretty surreal. "My God, this chapter's over."

But what of the inner turmoil of these soldiers? President Obama said that AFTER a firefight, bin Laden was killed. Shot in the head. Executed on the spot. Not exactly taken to court like Saddam Hussein.

Yes, this is what the soldiers were told to do, but it doesn't make it easy. They are trained to shoot when someone has a gun. In bin Laden's case, his mouth is more dangerous than any gun. But still, they don't teach execution at a military academy.

Who pulled the trigger? Was it based on rank? Was it a soldier who lost a loved one? What were the last words bin Laden heard?

 

People have said just because you cut off the head, the snake's not going to die. But, if the U.S. troops can find bin Laden - albeit after 10 years - then they can find any lieutenant who rises to power.

I'm also a little jealous of the reporters who got to break the news...

 

 

 

 

Disclaimer/background: I'm a traditionalist. I don't think people should break rules of storytelling unless there's a good reason. I write comic books, short fiction and children's books. Just to put my comments in perspective, these are my interests and favorites: My favorite superhero is Spider-Man, and I also like Justice League and Batman. My favorite comic writers lately have been Kurt Busiek, Peter David, and Geoff Johns. I am a huge Transformers fan. In children's books, I go either simple or meta: either really simple stories or books about stories. In movies and books, I am more impressed with something small that makes me feel something rather than something I'm told is a "must-read" or a must-see."

I make silly videos and post them here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/verylittleknowledge

 

Homosexuality as a character trait

Just watched part of "Praying For Bobby." I say "part of" because it didn't hold my interest long enough. That's not a damning criticism; I have the attention span of a gnat.

But more to the point, I found the characters difficult to believe (which is funny since it's based on a true story), let alone care about.

The first and most glaring problem was Bobby.

I remember reading an article about gay celebrities. The advice given to them was "If you don't want people to talk about you being gay, make yourself more interesting than your sexuality. Give them something else to talk about."

And that was the problem with Bobby. He had one character trait: He was gay.

Granted, the whole point of the story is a gay young person (failing to) come to terms with his sexuality conflicted with his religion.

OK. He had two character traits. He was gay, and he was also very Catholic.

Now, that kind of dichotomy raises an interesting internal conflict, but one we just didn't see enough of in the movie. Maybe a novel could reach those depths, but not a 90 minute movie. Or maybe not this 90 minute movie.

His opposite number was an overbearing mother, one that you're only slightly more likely to encounter than the mother from "Carrie." The mother was arguably the main character.

And when they argued, they spouted out lines that seemed like they were talking points of either camp: Her quoting well-worn scripture versus, and him shouting "I can't choose who I am!"

But anyway, I didn't care about the characters because there weren't any characters there, just talking heads.

What I Learned: It's difficult to have an extreme (the mother) be the main character. Some of the Sherlock Holmes stories were told from Watson's point of view, after all. Sometimes it's more interesting to have a middle of the road character react to them.

I was much more interested in Bobby's distant father, or his protective big brother. These people weren't as extreme, and so I was always interested in what they were going to say. I wasn't surprised by anything the mom did. She was too extreme. She did exactly what I expected.

The father and brother were very religious, but not all fire and brimstone, and so I always wondered what they were going to say.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. If you're writing about a minority portion of the population (like people with autism http://whatilearnedbywriting.wordpress.com/2011/03/04/autismaspergers-isnt-a-character/), you don't do them any justice by making them token minorities. A character has to be more than just gay to be a three-dimensional character.

What I Learned: Be sure to make your character more than just gay. Let's say you have five characters: Mark, Tony, Bruce, George, and Tyrone. If you think of Tony, and the first and only thing that pops into your head is "Tony's the gay one," then you're doing it wrong. Give that character a third dimension.

 

Autism/Asperger's isn't a character

A lot of movies and shows seem to have a character with autism, or more specifically with Asperger syndrome, and the characters are all more or less the same.

In "Mary and Max," Max turns out to have Asperger syndrome. All the charm, for me, slipped away from the character. He stopped being a quirky recluse with no social skills and instead became a textbook.

At the point it is mentioned that he had Asperger's, it was no longer a story about Max. It was a story about Asperger's syndrome. The condition became the character.

A commercial I saw advertised an episode of "Parenthood" with the boy asking about Asperger's, because he was apparently just diagnosed. It felt like "A very special episode of..."

I never thought I'd blog about "Dear John" twice (Here's the other one: http://whatilearnedbywriting.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/%E2%80%9Cdear-john%E2%80%9D-and-how-weakness-defines-character/), but at one point, John's father is determined to have Asperger's syndrome. My wife, a special ed teacher, had it nailed already, of course. Especially because they had already introduced a boy with autism earlier.

"Dear John" wasn't about Asperger's. That was just a subplot. "Rain Man" was definitely about autism. But "Rain Man" was based on a real person.

 

I think writers try so hard to paint these characters in a positive light, and be accurate, that they stop making them characters and just make them cut-outs. They have their little obsessions, which are interchangeable from character to character. And they have their odd way of looking at the world. In sad movies, they are constantly at odds with the way the world works. In reassuring movies, they look at the world through the eyes of a wise and noble child.

Writers have two audiences in mind. The first is someone who knows someone with autism. These people they are trying not to offend. The other are people who don't know anyone with autism. I think the writers are trying to educate these people.

These are all good goals, but they don't really make for good storytelling.

 

Here's a thought I've had before and I've got to say it again: The only way to make movies inclusive of people who are different is to make the movie not about the difference. If the whole movie is about a character with autism, you're not building bridges. They are still the "other." Studied. Under glass. If you want to show autism as a part of life, show an autistic family member in the movie, but don't have the whole movie be about that.

 

I have a comic book super hero whose brother is autistic. Will that fact be the center of stories at some point? Undoubtedly. However, until then, he's just Jake's older brother Ronnie, who likes to play video games with him and keeps his mom on her toes.