For posterity’s sake - and for anyone else who might be reading this and interested, check it out:
No Death, No Fear - quotes for atheists (and Buddhists)
As a bit of side research for the show I’m on, I read through this brief philosophical manifesto from Thich Nhat Hanh which delves into Buddhist outlooks on death - and how to comfort someone who is approaching their own. He goes at great length to explain how his teachings fit in with any religion or lack thereof and I found his claims to be legitimate by the time I finished the book. Hanh is incredibly prolific, having written over 40 books on these sorts of subjects. His prose is simple and beautiful and his messages comforting, and warmly delivered.
The research was for the sake of grounding some of our characters’ perspectives. Specifically, they are militant atheists — and various characters approach their own, or witness another’s, death. So we wanted to understand how they might look at it. Much of the book is too empathetic and grief-related to be relevant to the show, but there were many quotes that concisely describe a Buddhist’s understanding of death, as well as why fanaticism - even of the Buddha’s own teachings - is to be avoided. Here are a few:
“We believe that we are born from nothing and that when we die we become nothing. And so we are filled with fear of annihilation. The Buddha has a very different understanding of our existence. It is the understanding that birth and death are notions. They are not real. The fact that we think they are true makes a powerful illusion that causes suffering. The Buddha taught that there is no birth, there is no death; there is no coming, there is no going; there is no same, there is no different; there is no permanent self, there is no annihilation. We only think there is. When we understand that we cannot be destroyed, we are liberated from fear. It is a great relief. We can enjoy life and appreciate it in a new way.” (P.1)
“The Buddha said that if you get caught in one idea and consider to be “the truth,” then you miss the chance to know the truth… So if you are committed to an idea about truth or to an idea about the conditions necessary for your happiness, be careful. The first Mindfulness Training is about freedom from views: Aware of the suffering created by fanaticism and intolerance, we are determined not to be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory or ideology, even Buddhist ones.” (P.9-10)
“I prefer to use the expression of “manifestation” to the word “creation.” Look deeply, and you can understand creation in terms of manifestation. Just as we can understand a cloud as a manifestation of something that has always been there, and rain as the end of the cloud manifestation, we can understand human beings, and even everything around us, as a manifestation that has come from somewhere and will go nowhere. Manifestation is not the opposite of destruction. It simply changes form.” (P.30-31)
“When we lose someone we love, we should remember that the person has not become nothing. “Something” cannot become “nothing,” and “nothing” cannot become “something.” Science can help us understand this, because matter cannot be destroyed – it can become energy. And energy can become matter, but it cannot be destroyed. In the same way, our beloved was not destroyed; she has just taken on another form. That form may be a cloud, a child or the breeze. We can see our loved one in everything.” (P.61)
“After you have touched the wave, you learn to touch the water… The wave does not have to die in order to become water. The wave is water in this very moment.” (P.165-166)
A poem Hanh has written, adapted from Sutra to be “Given to the Dying”:
This body is not me; I am not caught in this body,
I am life without boundaries,
I have never been born and I have never died.
Over there the wide ocean and the sky with many
Galaxies
All manifests from the basis of consciousness.
Since beginningless time I have always been free.
Birth and death are only a door through which we go in
And out.
Birth and death are only a game of hide-and-seek.
So smile to me and take my hand and wave good-bye.
Tomorrow we shall meet again or even before.
We shall always be meeting again at the true source,
Always meeting again on the myriad paths of life.
(P.179-180)
Jeremiah Johnson
Here’s a link to some early version of the screenplay for Jeremiah Johnson - starring Robert Redford, directed by Sydney Pollack. It’s an Edelson house favorite.
Here is a most excellent and epic interview with one of the writers, the inimitable John Milius.
Having just re-watched the film very closely, for the sake of inspiration for a new feature I’m going to write, I couldn’t help but notice how crazy different the script was from the finished product. Obviously that happens a lot in film, and no doubt even more so with crazy on-location shoots like Jeremiah Johnson. But was interesting to me, looking at this earlier draft, is what was undoubtedly Milius’ voice and how it made it through into the film. The script reads like Moby Dick almost - this heft novelistic compilation of scenes, lots of dialogue with these absolutely mythological, larger-than-life characters. It seems to me that Pollack decided to harness that crazy energy and unique tone and use it only at choice moments, rather than populate the entire film with scenes with it. I wonder, if it had been Milius’ film - would it have seemed utterly ridiculous? More Conan like? Pollack sheared it down and Redford gave the largest character of them all a sensitive and tragic grounding.
Car-fu, Exploding Heads, The Re-Naming Death
As we head into holiday/year-end break, I’m going to extend the vacation to my daily blog post rule. Will give this old diary a rest for a bit, and see if I can focus what remaining energy I have entirely on writing some new things. Before I take my short leave, I'm going to recount three hilarious little moments from the writers’ room just to have to look back on and laugh:
1) Car-Fu — our showrunner bumped on the idea of two “landers” (like low-flying vehicles) battling in the air in any way. He casually said, “nah, that’d be too much car-fu” to which all of us were like, “huh??” He then explained that his friend, who wrote some of the Fast & Furious movies, coined the term. Once you know the context it is kind of self-explanatory — vehicles executing tricky manuevers while battling each other… Too much car-fu!
2) The showrunner recounted a funny scene from a big production meeting he had with the network and the director/EP of the first couple episodes. This director is huge, really huge is all I’ll say. And when it came to the sequence where an android will explode some dude’s head the director said - “You know, I’ve seen a lot of exploding heads in my day. We’re going to do this one differently.” And when he said it, you believed him. The man has seen some exploding heads. So, what will come across on the screen will be unlike anything you’ve seen before, I assure you.
3) Last little lesson - the showrunner is staunch believer of the notion that if you are forced to rename your project then it will die. They tried to get him to rename this show and he refused, and here it is going (he reasons) while multiple shows and films of his apparently died in development after he renamed them. Another show that he actually made, he was forced to rename it right before it started shooting and apparently that killed it for him! Must be an omen…
Alrighty, well, happy holidays!
Snark Dark
Had a long conversation in the writers’ room yesterday about different TV brands and how they’re attempting to survive by asserting a particular taste. We decided that FX does indeed have a solidified style (even if their subparent company, FOX, couldn’t be more amorphous) — and that is, snark dark. It’s dark drama stuff, but it’s winking too. As our showrunner said, you care but you don’t care - you don’t laugh, but you smirk. It’s just self-aware enough to be cool rather than earnest. Quite an interesting brand to have established, but it seems to work amidst a sea of other options that aren’t so specific.
Quotes From Nowhere
“Money can’t buy happiness, sure. But in America, it can at least ensure it as a possibility.”
Roma - Industry Followup
I came across an interesting, albeit limited article in the NYT. I was drawn to it because I thought it would be a dive into this moment in cinema history when a film like Roma is subsumed by the streaming world. Instead, it ended up being more of a bio on Scott Stuber, the head of film at Netflix. It was interesting to learn his career path and philosophy, as well as how certain famous auteurs like Scorsese feel about Netflix (very positively, it seems). Stuber asserted that they had no qualms with theaters, but instead that they wanted to make sure people could access their films even if they couldn’t make it to theaters due to time or money constraints. That’s a nice idea, in theory, but I find it contradictory with the limited windows they give even their most cinematic films - to the point where it feels like he’s trying to equivocate while still cutting theaters out of the equation. Their big Sandra Bullock horror film Bird Box will be released in 4 theaters for a short window. Roma will only be in theaters for something like 3 weeks. It doesn’t give them much of a chance. And yet, people like Scorsese don’t seem to mind how or when their films are released as long as they get the budget to make the films the way they want to make them. It seems an odd disconnect, to jump at creating your dream movie when it won’t be show in a way that does it justice. I guess this is me self-discovering that I am a theater snob after all?
Roma
A lot of beautiful pieces have been written about Roma and that is because it is a truly beautiful film. Beautiful in its humanity, its technical expertise, and its original vision. So, I won’t write too much about it here - because others have said it better elsewhere. Even Manohla Dargis loves it! But I will say it is a damn shame that it is a Netflix movie. As such, it barely got a domestic theatrical run, and in many countries there will be no theatrical run. Yet, this is a film that absolutely must be seen on a large screen. That sentiment doesn’t come from a place of snobbery, I swear. There are plenty of action films I am happy to watch on an airplane seat screen. But with Roma, it’s in the DNA of the experience. Whether Cuaron places you in a tight corner of the main character’s shared servant’s quarters, or you’re watching a massive tableau of chaos and violence erupt (one that took weeks of rehearsing on a football field, I’ve since learned)… practically every frame is planned in such a way that you need to take the time to absorb every detail in every corner. It just can’t be done on a screen at home. Cuaron revels in, and plays with, the staged framing styles of European classic cinema. As a result, the frames are long and meticulously set-up. It’s less about tracking quick movement and quick cuts, in the Hollywood style. And all this style is more than style, it’s essential to the rhythm of the film and the rise and fall (and rise again) of our protagonist, Cleo, played by Yalitza Aparicio. You experience intimacy with her as well as the terrifying sublime - being a small invisible piece of a monumental sweep of history. And as far as I can tell that effect will only be felt on the big screen.
Industry in My Dreams
Well, it finally happened. This industry has cracked and slithered into my literal dreams. Last night, my subconscious brought me a scene: I’m entering a library and I picked up a book. As I read it, I was plunged into the world of those words — yet the words on the page occasionally flashed intermittently throughout the dream, like Buster Scruggs or something like. The dream within the dream, aka the film adaptation of the book, was something like an action thriller. A family vacation that goes awry when international covert political forces intersect the family (my family, it felt like). The sad and surreal thing was that the narration from the book, the text itself that flashed in and out, literally read like the author was pitching book to be adapted into a film. “This would make a great action sequence” or “They just barely made the plane. A wide shot would be good here.” It was absurd. And yet, the way that books are read by people within the industry - and probably by many more beyond it - isn’t that far from such a situation. People speed read to consume the minimum story and nothing else. Books aren’t necessarily meditative windows for internal exploration — they can be quick entertainment. Which is fine! But I guess I’ve been reading too much Deadline & Variety because the book-to-film adaptation stuff is starting to mess with my dreams.
To Name a Robot
Attempting to help out the writers on the show by coming up with the meaning behind the name of a robot character. I’m going to play it safe and not mention the robot’s actual acronym - but I have found this to be a great writing exercise so far. And here’s some robots I’ve come across for reference:
HAL 9000 ("Heuristically Programmed Algorithmic computer") from Space Odyssey
EDI ("Extreme Deep Invader") from Stealth
KITT ("Knight Industries Two Thousand") from Knight Rider
WALL-E ("Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth-Class") from WALL-E
EVE ("Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator") from WALL-E
HARLIE ("Human Analog Robot Life Input Equivalents") from When HARLIE Was One
S.A.M. ("Super Automated Machine") from Sesame Street
BEN ("Bio-Electronic Navigator") from Treasure Planet
H.E.R.B.I.E. ("Humanoid Experimental Robot, B-type, Integrated Electronics") from Fantastic Four
R.I.C. 2.0 ("Robotic Interactive Canine") from Power Rangers SPD
S.O.P.H.I.E. ("Series One Processor Hyper Intelligent Encriptor") from Power Rangers SPD
D.A.V.E. ("Digitally Advanced Villain Emulator") from Batman
SHROUD ("Synthetic Human, Radiation Output Determined") and SHOCK ("Synthetic Human Object, Casualty Kinematics") from the novel V. by Thomas Pynchon
CHOMPS ("Canine HOMe Protection System"), a robot dog from CHOMPS
Mr. R.I.N.G. ("Robomatic internalized Nerve Ganglia") from Kolchak: The Night Stalker