Tag: Burn Hollywood Burn

Movie Scenario: China Using ‘Inception’ Technology To Avoid The Thucydides Trap


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Before you call the dudes with the butterfly nets on me — I’m just running a scenario. I’m kind of crashing after writing and developing on four novels all day and I have some nice whiskey next to me so you get a post like this. I do not think any of this is happening now, but think of this as wargaming a potential way that China could become a hyperpower like the USA without firing a shot.

I once read a book called “Brothers” when I was young which was so fucked up that it really did a number on my wee little mind. And, yet, that book was so out there and so wild in its conceit that I often find myself thinking about it whenever I come up with some wild plot point for the four novels I’m working on. I think to myself, “Well, if people bought the premise of THAT book, they’ll be cool with this…”

Anyway, something eerie happened recently to me that is difficult for me to explain. You see, I was really thinking about how I need a second creative track. The four novels I’m developing and writing are going really well — if slow — and I just need something to turn my attention to when I get burnt out with writing.

Then something weird happen.

I started to get pushed videos on my Tik-Tok FYP about how to shoot really cool pictures. I didn’t think anything about it until at some point things came to a head and I was like, “Huh, I think I’m going to save up the money to buy a really nice Nikon camera and see about becoming a fashion photographer.”

Then it hit me — something about the lead up to this “ah-ha!” moment felt…unnatural. As I was being gently guided towards that decision. Again, I’m just letting off some steam by saying that. That is such an abstract observation that there are many, many no-Inception-necessary that would easily explain it.

In other words, it’s bullshit to think Tik-Tok using real-life Inception technology was fucking with me.

But, having said that, let’s run that scenario. What if the next war isn’t a cyber war but a Singularity War. And it would be a war that we didn’t even know was being waged against us.

Here’s my bonkers scenario. China is a rising power. We’re rushing towards the Singularity. Let’s propose that in dribs and drabs Big Tech in both the United States and China have figured out not just Digital Telepathy, but fucking Inception.

They’re not just eaves dropping on our minds, they’re actually implanting concepts into our minds in some way. It’s easy to imagine China, not wanting to blow the world up, begins to, at some point, wage Singularity War against the West to the point that we never have a direct conflict with them because, lulz, strangely, things keep breaking the Chinese’s way at critical junctures

Again, I’m just running a scenario. I don’t believe this is happening. This is way too bonkers for even me to believe in anyway. Think of this is a free Hollywood movie concept, if you will. I’m dropping more log lines than truth bombs. At least in my own mind.

Or, put another way, if I was the Chinese leadership, that’s how I would do it. I would have something akin to Digital Telepathy Manhattan Project where I threw a $1 trillion at weaponizing the technology so I could avoid the Thucydides Trap.

Thankfully, no one listens to me. I’m just relaxing by doing some brain dead writing. Lulz.

Burn Hollywood Burn: Somebody Put Emily Ratajkowski in A Remake of ’10’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve written about this before, but I feel like ranting about it again — we’ve been through Covid, we deserve to see Emily Ratajkowski play the Bo Derek role in a remake of the Dudley Moore classic “10.” The two women are both stunning and both of them have the, “What, you think I’m hot?” type personality that audiences love.

I’m not saying she can act — we have proof that she’s not all that great in “Gone Girl.” But I’d pay $10 bucks to see her ask Seth Rogen, “Have you ever done it to Bolero?” It’s the part she was born to play. She’s extremely laid back and extremely sex-positive — just like Bo Derek — so Ms. Ratajkowski could knock this specific role out of the park.

Double dees, double dees, as they once said on SNL.

9/11, Negative Polarization & Why Superhero Movies Continue To Be Popular


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Traditionally, at least within my own mind, superhero movies have been popular the last 20 years because of the lingering collective trauma of 9/11. We all just want a superhero to save the day that fateful moment in time and make the bad memories go away.

Given that it’s been 20 years since 9/11 now, I think it’s time to move on. And, yet, superhero movies now play a different roll — their value free nature make them the perfect tentpole move. Negative polarization has so consumed every aspect of American life that the idea of watching a movie that doesn’t preach to us and simply tells the story of a bunch of caped crusaders is very appealing to average person.

At the moment, it seems as though you have big tentpole movies and little woke movies that make you feel bad for not being progressive enough. (I still can’t get over being shamed into seeing Booksmart. I still fucking hate that fucking movie. Give me Heathers instead, any day.)

But, what sucks is we’re kind of stuck in a cultural holding pattern now. It does make you wonder what will come next. I honestly don’t know. I would like to think that at some point a random movie will be a huge hit — like The Matrix way back when — and that, in itself, will herald a New Age of movies that don’t involve people wearing masks and running around in Spandex.

Reboot The ‘Escape From’ Franchise With Jennifer Lawrence


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about the Escape From movies is they are much beloved, but they’re also ripe for a reboot. As I recall, at the end of Escape From LA, the world came to an end, so, lulz.

So, I would take the general conceit of the movies and make the first movie in a new franchise — staring Jennifer Lawrence as a female Snake Plissken, natch — would be Escape From America. In this movie, Trump finally got his fucking wall — a real wall, not the dumb fence he wanted to call a wall — and our intrepid protagonist has to escape from the United States by getting over the wall.

It would be so cool!

You could have all the guards and maintenance crew of the wall be Mexican. You could root around in the practical implications of such a fucking dumb idea becoming reality.

Burn Hollywood, Burn: My Hot Take On The ‘Death Of Movies’ Discourse


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There’s a lot of buzz of late about the “death of movies.” And, sadly, I fear some of it may be right. American culture is facing something of an existential crisis because the very idea of any sort of “mainstream” is now beginning to melt away. Identity politics is now so absolute that the legitimacy of any heteronormative story is up for debate in the overwrought conversations of Twitter.

I know I sound a little too Joe Rogan with the above, but it comes from a place of love — a love of movies as an art form.

You know it.

Here’s what I think is going to happen — movies are going to continue to drift into culture insignificance until one of a few things happen. If we stop being force fed movies about people running around in capes, then, maybe people might sit up and take notice. But this is unlikely to happen because you can make a shit ton of money with movies like that, so, lulz.

Another way to “fix Hollywood” would be to end “Woke Hollywood.” Instead of trying to make us more woke, tell us a good story. Don’t worry about identity politics — tell a good story. I want less Beanie Feldstein screeching about lesbian sex positions to a Plain Jane lead in Book Smart and more, I don’t know anything. I only keep ranting about how much I fucking hated Book Smart because I was shamed into seeing it by my center-Left echo chamber and the movie is the epitome of preaching to the audience about how being woke is so important.

But, as I always say whenever Book Smart is brought up — I wasn’t the audience. So if you’re a bi-curious high school girl in the suburbs of LA, you probably loved that movie.

Yet another way that movies may come roaring back is because of technology. It could be that once we fully transition to MX (VR and AR) or, hell, even some sort of Strange Days-like MindCap technology, that movies will, like vinyl, make a big comeback as young people grow disillusioned with immersive media.

The crux of the Hollywood’s current problem is a combination of industry dynamics and the need for it to suck its own cock when it comes to there being a “message” in movies. America is so tightly wound at the moment, that a huge segment of the potential viewing audience is turned off with Woke Hollywood, hence the popularity of message-free MCU movies.

I only get a little upset about this specific issue because I love movies. It’s not that hard to tell a great story in a movie. Hell, *I* want to tell a few of those great stories so bad that I recently bought Final Draft. So, lulz.

But are movies dead? Yes, in the short term. Long term, however, I believe they’ll turn out just fine. We just need a New Era of story telling that harkens back to the early 70s.

Potential Fast & Furious Movies


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It seems as though each Furious movie grows more…furious. They’ve gone to space, what could happen next?

It’s my impression that a Fast & The Future cross over with Transformers is at least being thought about. But, why stop there? Why not have them time travel to save The Rock’s life? Maybe bring Dr. Who into things. They could set the entire movie inside the TARDIS.

They could fight dinosaurs.

How about a Fast & the Furious with clones? They all have to fight cloned versions of themselves.

So, I’m Moving Towards A Second Creative Track: Screenwriting


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m not getting any younger. And I do have a shit tone of screenplay concepts rolling around in my mind. So, I’m going to begin to move towards getting to the point where I have something of a second creative track of screenwriting.

There are so many downsides to this that I’m well aware of — I’m going to be drawing energy away from the novel series. It’s kind of dumb to even start given my age and where I live. And, yet, my own mortality is definitely staring me straight in the face.

I like the idea of having something I can divert my creative energy to on a lark as need be. I’ve been working on these novels — and made such progress as a storyteller — that I like the idea of doing something creative for the sake of being creative.

I’m also, by nature, rather delusional. To the point that I daydream of finishing off a few screenplays and flying to LA for a few days just to see if my natural extroverted personality might get me within pitching distance of a Hollywood bigwig of some sort.

I know, I KNOW this is very, very delusional.

But it’s a fun distraction while I keep slugging away at these novels. Yet, I know that in showbiz it’s often — almost always — who you know, not what you know. But you need a script. So, I’ve kind of vowed to myself that if I’m still interested in this second creative track of screenwriting at the end of the month that I’m going to take a huge breath and get serious about buying Final Draft.

I’m 20 years too old to start this process. But I am creative and have a lot of really interesting movie concepts that, lulz, why not?

Mulling My Personal Delusions About My Potential Success In LA Should I Move There


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I daydream a lot. A whole lot. And one of the things I daydream a lot about besides all the stories about robots, zombie robots and space aliens is how successful I would be if I moved to LA.

One the surface, there is a credible case that I could do really well in LA. I’m a natural extrovert and I tend to become larger than life when liquored up. Being around a crowd of people like one might find at a cocktail party is like emotional meth for me — I’m an extreme social butterfly. At least, I was when I was in Seoul many moons a go. I’m older now, so who knows. (But I’m young at heart, wink.)

As such, if I could somehow overcome the basics — I don’t live in LA, I’m broke and I have no showbiz contacts in town — if I was somehow able to weasel my way into a LA cocktail party everyone would know who I was by the time I left. And, usually, in such situations when I’m drunk and surrounded by a lot of interesting people, I can grow so colorful and larger-than-life that I draw a lot of attention to myself.

So, in my deranged, hyper-deluded mind, I could see a situation where some Hollywood bigwig would notice me at a cocktail party and want to know, “Who is that guy?”

Those few times I’ve been to New York City, it definitely seemed like a city where the metric is NOT who you know, but what you know. In LA, meanwhile, you just never know if some broke-ass writer might be on the cusp of writing a breakout screenplay. (Though the old adage about, “Don’t fuck the writer” is very, very true.)

Of course, there is the huge issue of my age. If I was 20 years younger, then all my LA dreams would be a lot more likely to come true. But, now, oh boy. The only way I would have any chance of success is if I moved to LA full time and had three or four solid screenplays already written and ready to go.

Right now, I got squat.

Anyway. Dreaming is free.

The Agony & The Ecstasy Of Wanting Final Draft


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I want to buy the screenwriting program Final Draft, but there are two things holding me back. One, I’m broke as hell and it’s extremely expensive. Two, if I’m going to spend that much money on it, I’d like to actually use it right away.

So, as such, I know that actually buying Final Draft would be the end of the beginning of any effort to actually write screenplay. I must have at least a dozen solid screenplay concepts rolling around my head at the moment. And, yet, I’m throwing all my creativity at the four novel series I’m working on and I just don’t feel like distracting myself.

And it’s not like I live in LA — any screenplays I write would have to be done knowing full well that they are meant to be pure creativity (at least at first.) I would much rather use all my creative time and energy working on the series I’ve been working on for years now, rather than risk getting distracted and having to start at blow zero working on screenplays.

But, having said all that, occasionally I do grow restless. Sometimes, I feel like just picking a completely different creative direction for the sheer joy of it and see what happens. For the last few years, however, this lasts for a few minutes and then I put my head down and keep working on the novel(s.)

I guess it’s possible that I might sketch out some screenplays in the near future. But I’m going to be on the cusp of actually writing a screenplay if I buy Final Draft. I need to start reading screenplays if I’m going to get anywhere near that stage, however.

The Death Of Cable Channels


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Why, at this point, do cable channels even exist? It would make a lot of sense if the industry collectively gave up and disrupted itself by ending traditional cable channels altogether.

The future is streaming and the cable content is wasting everyone’s time by not getting with the future and making a clean break with the past. But there’s still too much money left in the rotting corpse of traditional cable, so, lulz, this will never happen.

It will be interesting to see what happens when we skip the MX (AR / VR) step and go straight to $1,2000 Mindcaps.