Tag: Burn Hollywood Burn

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.

We Live In A Cultural Vacuum


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The interesting thing about the modern era is, well, we’re not in an era. I guess the argument could be made that we’re in either the post-Trump Era or the pre-autocracy era or even modern Antebellum era. But, really, when it comes to culture none of those are true.

We’re not in just a cultural wasteland, we’re in a cultural vacuum.

The current era began, I would posit, with the introduction of the first iPhone. In a broader sense, I guess, we’re still in the post-9/11 Era. I thought Rona would do something to jiggle our culture, but that really hasn’t happened.

If I want to make myself feel better, I would get all excited and say we’re one unexpected hit in music, movies or TV for some sort of major shift in our culture perceptions to occur. That’s usually how such eras begin. Some young outlier produces a song, or an album or whatever that is so unexpectedly popular that it shakes everything up.

I guess, in a sense, I am looking forward to a new Nevermind or Pulp Fiction to pop out to really rattle hyper modern pop culture. In a sense, maybe, you might say that Tik-Tok is a precursor to what I’m talking looking forward to. Tik-Tok is making new era stars in a currently unnamed era.

Tragically, of course, the Something Big that changes everything might be some huge news event that is the Day The Earth Stood Still, like 9/11. We’re just about due for something like that to happen.

But I can’t predict the future. I have no idea that is going to happen.

Taylor Swift Will Never Be A Movie Star


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Taylor Swift is one of the best entertainers of her generation. She has millions of rabid fans who analyze and debate her every statement and action. Swift has all that and will likely have it for the rest of her life. But there’s one thing she will never have: a movie career.

The reason for this is simple — Swift is never going to do a sex scene and she’s never going to show any T&A. Never. Never. Even in this post-#MeToo era that we live in where mainstream Hollywood movies seem more interested in screeching about lesbian sex positions than entertaining an audience, someone as drop dead gorgeous as Swift would inevitably have to drop trou to get the type of movie role she might want to start a serious Hollywood career.

Given what most of her fan base is made up of — liberal white girls and women — the idea that she would do something as out of character as do a sex scene in a movie to further her Hollywood career is just not applicable for Swift. I’m not saying this is a bad thing — you do you, Tay-Tay — but Swift definitely seems like the type of ambitious young woman who would otherwise have at least a chance of having a serious Hollywood career.

The only out for Swift on this front is when she is in her 40s and she’s had a 20 year residency in Vegas and even the youngest members of her fanbase are in their 30s, she probably could get away with a traditional Hollywood sex scene. Her fan base will be so jaded by this point that they, at last, won’t care. And Swift herself will be old enough that she will want to prove she’s still got the goods.

As an aside, I will note that Swift is in the exact middle of pop culture. She is the center of pop culture. She never went through any kind of wild, crazy period in her career where she came out as bi and dated a woman or a rapper or whatever. The thing about her music career that I have noticed is she apparently has decided to do exclusively fan service from here on out. She’s never going to challenge her fans, or change, or mature or anything. Another thing about Swift is she’s hot but not sexy. She’s about the most chaste pop star out there. She never, ever has ever had an accidently on purpose nip slip or flashed a bit of butt crack on Instagram.

She’s training bra music and will spend the rest of her life producing some variation of that theme.

Let’s Address The Quentin Tarantino Comment About Chevy Chase Verses Bill Murray Movies


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Quentin, I love you bro, but this time you’re full of shit. The reason why his statement that Chevy Chase movies are better than Bill Murray is personal to me is I remember when the movies in question came out. For someone who is so attune to the nuances of storytelling, Tarantino is strangely totally wrong on this issue.

What’s worse, his very bad hot take on this subject is gist for Chads who want to get all worked up about how Cancel Culture is depriving us of a good Star Wars franchise or some such. The idea that Chase movies are better than Murray movies because Chase’s characters are “allowed” not to redeem themselves by the end of the movie is nothing more than horseshit. The whole point of a good movie, generally, is there is some redemption or change on the part of the protagonist. Something has to change.

There’s just no excuse for such a bad hot take on Tarantino’s part. Also, in general, Murray movies are just better, period. I mean, Chase’s career was very scattershot in quality, while Murray has, over the years, been in classic movie after classic movie.

Why Tarantino would make such a weird, erroneous observation about the two men’s careers is very curious. The weakest Murray movie between 1980 and 2000 is far, far better than Chase’s strongest movie between when he left SNL to when his movie career fizzled out in the late 80s. I mean, when it comes to cultural relevance the first Fletch movie is probably all Chase has. I think there may have been a Chase movie or two in the 70s that was pretty good, but they’ve faded into the historical shadows.

Edit: I totally forgot the Vacation movies that Chase did. Which, I think, tells us how bad, in real terms, they were.

Anyway, lulz.

Axis Of Red Pill Derp — Joe Rogan Interviews Quentin Tarantino


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m a huge Tarantino fan. I think he’s one of the last great auteurs out there, but he can also sometimes be tone deft when it comes to cultural issues. I haven’t watched all of his interview with Alt Right Lite hero Joe Rogan, but what I have seen is very interesting.

As expected, there was a lot of Red Pill derp going on between these two guys. I don’t think the average person appreciates how a huge swath of the young adult male population has grown alienated from the existing media narrative. In fact, on YouTube, there’s an entire on-boarding system designed to hook such individuals into getting “Red Pilled.”

So, while in Tarantino’s mind, he was just dropping truth bombs in the context of how he’s one of the last great Hollywood directors, a lot of young men see his interview as validation for their “women and minorities control everything” narrative.

Thing about all of this that is so aggravating is how difficult it is to pin down in concrete terms what things like “cancel culture” even mean. One person’s “cancel culture” is another person’s “well, we live in a new age where audiences really aren’t as accepting of the gratuitous sex and violence that Tarantino is know for.”

Red Pilled young men are a lot like most MAGA people — they are spooked by abstract changes in modern American society. Both groups can’t really articulate what bothers them, they just know they hate liberals. Red Pilled young men hate things like Kathleen Kennedy and love the earnest masculinity of Joe Rogan.

A lot of the problems in American culture are so nebulous and abstract and yet so powerful that they’re even more intractable than they would be otherwise. As such, I suspect they’re only going to be solved when the United States finally becomes a MAGA autocracy — or we have a civil war.

Either way, a lot of difficult-to-pin-down fears that people on both the center-Right and center-Left may have will become very, very moot.

A Modest Proposal: End The Superhero & Woke Hollywood Movie Era


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Movies are a reflection of our collective fears and hopes. As such, the last 20 years — a whole generation — of movies has been dominated by the superhero trope. The general consensus, it seems, is the rise of superhero movies is a response to the tragic events of 9/11: as part of the grieving process we all want to believe that 9/11 could have been prevented if superheroes were real.

But it’s been 20 years, guys, give it a rest.

It’s time for us to move on. We need to stop having two options when we go to the movie theatre: a big budget superhero movie or a “woke” movie that preaches to us.

We need to start thinking about telling human stories like we did between say, Midnight Cowboy to about The Shawshank Redemption. We need to turn the page on superhero movies and start telling stories that don’t involve people running around in capes.

Now, it’s possible this is just not possible anymore because of issues with the marketplace and not the audience — all the types of stories I want to see are now on a streamer. Or, more ominously, it could be that just like rock and pop music are no longer one and the same, audience tastes have changed for whatever reason and this is The New Normal.

We’re never going to have another God Father, or Dear Hunter or Deliverance or whatever. From here on out, we’re stuck with Woke Hollywood that alienates audiences with strained efforts to cram a liberal-progressive agenda down our throats.

It could be possible that audiences from here on out will be subjected to movies like Book Smart where unattractive people screech about lesbian sex positions and that will be that. Once traditional Hollywood stars like Tom Cruise shuffle off this mortal coil, we’ll just have Woke Hollywood producing preachy movies that only serve to alienate us into Blue and Red echo chambers.

Do I have any hope that I’m wrong? Nope. Rock is dead and, so, too, it could be that, in a sense, Hollywood is dead too.

An Update On The Novel I’m Working On


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The novel is shaping up to be an even bigger creative project that ROKon Magazine which totally consumed my life for about eight months in late 2006 to early 2007. I’ve been working on this novel for what feels like forever, but I think it’s probably close to about three years.

Finally, finally, things have clicked.

But I still have a huge amount of work to do. I’ve learned a lot about how to structure a novel over the last few years and one thing that’s becoming clear is you need to read your stuff as you write it. If you do that, then you catch problems with pacing before you show it to other people.

I’ve spend all day today getting the sequence of events in this novel just right. It’s been exhausting, but well worth the hard work. I really feel like how I felt with ROKon Magazine at its height when I was lugging a backpack full of magazines around Seoul. It felt as light as air.

So, spending about 12 hours throwing myself at this novel today was a breeze. I know why I was working so hard — I have something I need to do and I was avoiding doing it by working on the novel.

Another thing I’ve learned is you need to map out scenes. At least I do. Mapping out individual scenes before you write them is a great way to force your characters to do what you want them to do. They don’t have any opportunity to do anything unexpected.

The key thing I’m focusing on with this novel is readability. I want these two novels to be such fast, easy reads that you zoom through them. I want you to look up from reading these two novels and realize it’s 4 a.m. on a Thursday morning and you’re willing to stay up all night to read them.

The last time I felt that way was while reading the book I’m using as my “textbook:” The Girl Who Played With Fire, by Stieg Larsson. The two novels I’m working on are so different from Larsson’s stuff in some ways that you would be hard pressed to believe there’s any connection between what I’m writing and what he wrote

He was a better storyteller than I am (at least at the moment). But I’m getting a lot better. I still think I might need to do some character studies to make what I understand about my characters to be more concrete. Right now, everything is pretty much in my mind. This lends to a huge amount of flexibility, but it also leads to problems of canon management.

Anyway, I hope to get into the second act of the first draft pretty soon. Hopefully, in the next few days. I’m trying to write these two novels as one big story that just happens to be told in two self-contained novels. Then it will be easier to sell both books.