I recently read an article from an online writers collective all about how to write your perfect title. Now, personally I’ve always found this a completely torturous process racked by insecurity and mostly concluded with luck or great help from loved ones (at this point, I think I’ve lost track of how many titles my wife has ultimately come up with that stuck). The article suggested not obsessing over perfection, and starting with a fill-in title that acts as a sort of reminder and thesis statement to yourself about what the story is truly about. And then, they suggest going back to your inspiration - your guiding influences as it were, to model after them. Not to be curt, but I think I’ve always done all of this and it never helped. There’s some truly ephemeral about a title that both surprises the audience and draws them in, that grows with meaning and resonance as you experience the story behind it for the first time. This isn’t just something you plunk together based on core story facets and influences. That might make for an apt title, but not a great title. I need to continue marinating on this especially because it always holds up my process. Now, perhaps this article was centering on certain types of fiction titles. And a novel’s title behaves differently than a TV show’s title to be sure. But I think my criteria applies to both just the same. A TV title perhaps is more of a compass for the show. Every single episode expands on its meaning, gives it further resonance - reminding the audience why they keep returning to this particular world. Whereas a novel’s title can sometimes be like a key, that unlocks the book as a one-off effect. More on this later…
Meandering Thought: the Most Famous Minds
Why does it seem like many of the greatest modern minds in history come attached with massive personality issues - and why do they fail to confront their own issues? Is it just because their egos inflate beyond reconciliation?
One stray thought I had is that, I think, it is because these minds are so sharp with their knowledge and incisions of the world (whether in politics, creativity, science, etc.) that they know that if they turn it on themselves it will hurt more than they can imagine. Because their fear is proportional to their ability to tear things down with truth. This lack of self examination combined with a outsize pressure to self examine makes them act more extremely?
(As per usual, since this is a sort of minimal and dry post - I’m including the NatGeo photo of the day for entertainment)
The Art of (Writing) the Con
Great little video snippet from the producers of BETTER CALL SAUL at the NYT.
I love the idea that the most important aspect of a good con is making the mark feel smart, like they’ve seen past it - when really they’re diving farther into the illusion. And that this is, at its essence, what makes good TV viewing. The audience is the mark, and you want to dupe them into wanting to figure it all out - only to walk farther into being misled and happily surprised.
The Outsider by Stephen King
Been a busy week (coming through from the weekend too). I rushed to complete my Lone Wolf & Cub essay (see previous post for that struggle) and then immediately dove into some freelance coverage work. Specifically, summarizing The Outsider by Stephen King for a production company. I covered the 600 page novel in two days and turned in the summary and character index. To be honest, I can’t remember the last time I read a Stephen King all the way through, let alone did a full day speed immersion. It’s left me a bit dazed, but I like the experience! I guess my first observation is that, obviously, the man is just insanely good at his craft. Like, mystically good - I don’t get it. How he turns these out so quickly, such fully formed characters, worlds, plots. The investigative stuff (and this one is quite procedural throughout) probably becomes second nature after years of plotting novel after novel. But things like the chapter structure really struck me. How he developed a rhythm of micro chapters and extended chapters. Many times, the deepest emotional moments were built up to and fully earned across a long chapter. You wouldn’t even notice by the time they were over. Then, the next chapter would be micro - like a 20th of the length - and give you a totally mundane but necessary bit of info along with a little bit of forward plot movement. Really interesting, I have no idea if he organically just improvises his way through that or methodically plots the rhythm in advance. On a broader level, he really works hard to transition the reader from super-intense whodunit straight-police story into full blown horror. And the way he does it, I think, is by focusing on the belief system of one of the main detectives — who turns from the reader’s adversary into our surrogate (after some horrid and shocking twists). Once he’s our surrogate, we realize how pragmatic, passionate, and just he is — but he’s also the holdout non-believer of the superstitious element. It’s through his investigation, and a recurring Stephen King character, that he’s finally convinced. By that time, the reader’s seen more than he has - but his crossing the invisible-Indiana-Jones-bridge threshhold is a serious climax of the story. I’m still absorbing it, the assignment was purely plot coverage based anyways, but I think it was a great read.
A Shadow of Film History
I’ve recently stumbled onto some Ennio Morricone scores that I hadn’t heard before, which may be an experience I’ll have again and again for the rest of my life (the man has 521 listed credits on IMDB alone). And it came to me, who the hell was the Whistler? The man who actually did the whistling for The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.
Turns out it was a childhood friend of Morricone’s, Alessandro Alessandroni, a fellow composer and the guitar player as well as whistler on most of Morricone’s immortal songs. Here’s a link and another - the man’s ability and tunes are haunting, beautiful, a truly unique skill set.
Meandering Thoughts: Emotional Connection Disruption
Having finally finished the Lone Wolf & Cub project, and submitted it, I found myself shocked by the emotional effects of the process. It almost was like I had an angry writer’s block throughout, and then a solid layer of stress through the editing process, and experienced some weird variant of sadness after I submitted it. Sad that it was over, difficult as it was? As my wife pointed out, it’s probably because Lone Wolf & Cub is so important to me — more emotionally resonant with me than any previous story I’d written about on assignment. I’ve read the nearly 9000 pages across 28 volumes three times in my life so far, and re-read certain stories countless times. It's an incredible, sweeping, emotional epic that’s taught me a lot about how to write and how to think about ethics in my own life and also how to be inspired to create something ambitious and new. Perhaps I just felt I wasn’t going to be able to do it justice. But I think more than that, it was confronting something that’s accrued such importance to me, on a unconcious level, over the years. To pick it apart or make definitive statements about it didn’t feel right, like it might disrupt the relationship or diminish the relationship I have with it in some abstract way. I had to really become self-aware and examine my process in order to get through it. Well, now that it’s over I’m starting to realize I can just look at this as a positive start — one can tackle their favorite stories (or histories/people/topics/etc.) and just know that even if they fail or betray themselves in some slight way, they’re still adding to the dialogue about the thing, still marching towards a better understanding of the thing, and training oneself. I wonder if this will make other projects of similar emotional resonance easier, or if it’ll be difficult in its own unique way each and every time.
Deborah Eisenberg
Just wanted to share an interesting interview with a prolific short story writer I had never read / heard of. Loved the excerpt lines from her stories and her quotations on the mysterious nature of one’s own writing.
“For months or years on end, you’re just a total dray horse, and then you finally finish something, and the next day you look at it and you think, How did that get there?”
East of Eden
(still working on that Lone Wolf & Cub essay - so this one will be relatively short too. It’s funny how something (LWC) you’ve loved so intensely for so long, you’ve thought about and re-read, becomes that much harder to work on once the time comes. Sometimes a personal passion gets in the way of good writing. Hopefully it’ll come out the stronger for it, eventually when I’m done!)
But anyways…. East of Eden
My friend, one of the truest cinephiles I’ve ever met, hosts a weekly film screening at his apartment — wherein he chooses classics across the spectrum from Filmstruck (highly recommend). He’s screened things like Johnnie To’ MISSION to Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN and, as I previously posted, ADVISE AND CONSENT.
This week was EAST OF EDEN by Elia Kazan, adapted from the Steinbeck novel. This was James Dean’s first real role — coming on the heels of bit work and minor TV roles. He was amazing, though I was more taken with Julie Harris’ sensitive, self-aware yet raw emotional performance to be honest. Dean was fascinating to watch because of his physical discomfort, his sort of manic shyness and bursts of rage while Harris was the glue of the film, the glue that held all the characters together.
Basically, it’s the re-telling of Cain and Abel (Dean is Cain, ostensibly) in 1917 rural California around Salinas and Monterey, just before the U.S. joins the war effort. The most fascinating thing about the film to me was how conflicting the ending is — I guess I won’t get into spoilers here, but generally, the happiness imposed on the ending really does feel difficult to absorb given all that’s happened leading up to it. One brother is destroyed, self-abused and going to the war (though how good a guy he was is in of itself a difficult question to answer). The father is physically, mortally wounded and disabled. And though there is a love story that comes to fruition, it comes at the price of all this - though Abra (Julie Harris) seems to be the only one capable of redeeming the whole situation, the only one available of giving unconditional love while also understanding the gray zones of morality that Cal (Dean) inhabits. It’s a complicated, almost abrupt conclusion to a very winding and emotional tale. I think I liked it, regardless! It was my first Kazan film, and I’m a big fan — he really pulls the viewer into unique emotional moments by setting things a little off-kilter, but combining angles and unusual character movement on screen (the swing scene, the masterpiece moment). I look forward to watching more of his work - maybe ON THE WATERFRONT should be next… Anyway, it’s worth the watch!
Lone Wolf & Cub (essay excerpt)
I have to jam today on a deadline for my video essay on Lone Wolf & Cub and the recreation of Edo era Japan — so can’t take too much time for a considered post. Instead, going to share the introduction to the essay here:
“Even if you’ve never read Lone Wolf and Cub, you’ve seen stories that are heavily influenced by it. Samurai Jack. Frank Miller. Road to Perdition. Or how about Wu Tang Clan? If Liquid Swords doesn’t ring a bell, Quentin Tarantino probably will…
It’s hard to qualify Lone Wolf & Cub’s influence in Western culture, let alone the revolution it started in Japanese manga and cinema. No dive, no matter how deep, could cover everything in the series’ 9000 pages across 28 volumes from “The Assassin’s Road” to “The Lotus Throne.”
So let’s look at just one essential aspect: setting. Edo era Japan, the time of the Tokugawa shogunate. The country a mosaic of feudal Han domains with ruthless Daimyo lords, the Shogun’s secret forces of shinobi ninjas and Kogi Kaishakunin executioner reign in terror.
So, spoiler alert from here on out… It’s in this complex, unforgiving landscape that Ogami Itto, former executioner for the shogun, turns himself and his young son into assassins for hire in order to seek vengeance on the Yagyu clan, who murdered his wife and framed him in a conspiracy. They become known as the supremely badass Lone Wolf & Cub as they travel across every Han in Japan, carrying out missions and taking the Yagyu down.
Looking at the myriad ways that Koike & Kojima recreate the entire country and era will give us insight into why Lone Wolf & Cub is not only an awesome story, but one that transcends culture and time.
Let’s start with the story itself. In Vol. 1, we learn how the elder Retsudo forces Itto’s fall from grace – entirely through symbols.”
Character Rursus P2 - Odysseus
From Madeline Miller’s Circe:
“I did not see the worst of him. Even at his best he was not an easy man. But he was a friend to me in a time when I needed one.”
“It is strange to think of a goddess needing friends.”
”All creatures that are not mad need them.”
“I think he got the better bargain.”
”I did turn his men to pigs.”
… “All these gods, all these mortals who aided him. Men talk of his wiles. His true talent was in how well he could take from others.”
“There are many who would be glad for such a gift,” I said.
“I am not one.”
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I just find it fascinating how Miller chooses to methodically pick apart the myth of Odysseus as the book progresses. When you meet him, about halfway through her novel, you’re sort of awestruck and curious. He’s out for the rest of the book, after he departs, but we get all sorts of drawn out accounts of him from Telemachus and Penelope and others — things totally original to Miller’s imagination. And it’s interesting how she chooses to gradually ramp up his skewering to the point where becomes a tragic villain. To me, this is a more interesting sort of “Character Rursus” to accomplish — the successful undermining of a mythic hero. And she does it by focusing on the unglamorous and unknown segments of his life rather than flip the famous moments on their head.