This is Reggie. He is a bird. He is very sensitive about it.

The premiere episode of The Fourth Wall, “Clipped Wings,” will run on Wednesday, September 27th. Therefore, over the next several weeks here on the blog we’ll run brief introductions to the characters for the show. Two weeks ago, we discussed the series’ lead, Abigail Westing. Read all about her here. Last week, we caught up with the aging sidekick to Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, MD. Read all about him, here.

This week, I must offer an apology to the memory of Edgar Allan Poe. While his poem, “The Raven,” is a classic, he got it all wrong. The bird that haunts poor Lenore’s widower never meant to scare anybody. He was just seeing if he could borrow a cup of Nevermore Brand Absinthe.

His name is Reggie, if you please, and that “poem”* is one of the great miscarriages of literary justice. He’s tried to move on from that fateful midnight dreary, but only more indignity awaited him when he started his new life at The Fourth Wall. When he arrived at The Wall, he thought he’d find a life of adventure and wonder.

Instead, he has to work in the mail room. Where else would a bird find gainful employment in the world? Having spent the last 170 years making sure inter-office memos reach their intended recipient, he’s developed a caustic sense of humor and a deep skepticism about the stoicism displayed by Director John Watson, MD and his Fourth Wall agents. 

And yet, his bravery can not be denied. Having singled-wingedly—and at great personal cost—repelled a recent attempted invasion from the vampire Dracula, Director Watson has little choice but to give Reggie an opportunity to prove his mettle among the agents of The Fourth Wall. He agrees readily, although he may yet live to regret the decision. Now, the hours are terrible, the work is hard, and he’s in mortal danger nearly every week. Some may think he’s not up to the job, but few can deny that he is the very heart and soul of The Fourth Wall.

Reggie is voiced by Mac Bayle. I’m sorry, that should read Boyle… as he is, um… Me. Why would I have decided to play one of the main characters, in addition to co-creating, writing, directing, editing, and overseeing all of the tie-in material for The Fourth Wall? Because I’m a deeply broken person, that’s why. Really, folks: Seeing all those posts written out like that makes even me question my sanity.

But seriously really, of the few acting roles I’ve taken a stab at, Reggie is the closest to my own personality. Not only that, but of all the characters I’ve written, he is the closest to me, feathers and beak notwithstanding. Sorry, Orson.

I’d write more about Reggie in this space, but guys… I’ve got to finish the actual radio show that all of this is leading to. Currently we have two episodes in the can. That’s some runway for when the show starts running on 9/27. But I gotta get more. I just gotta. Can’t stop. Can’t ever stop.

Ahem.

Next week, we’ll wrap up our pieces on the characters of The Fourth Wall with a warning. Dracula is already all around you. He’ll strike when you least expect it. In the mean time, find where to subscribe to The Fourth Wall podcast here.

*Reggie made me put that in quotes. He’s very particular on that matter, even if I think “The Raven”—at the very least—does not need quotation marks around it. That is, unless we’re talking about the title. Punctuation is super hard folks. That’s why I’m working in audio now. Also, it should bear mentioning that Reggie The Raven™ is not—to my knowledge—real. I think. Ahem.

(Re)Introducing John H. Watson, MD

The premiere episode of The Fourth Wall, “Clipped Wings,” will run on Wednesday, September 27th. Therefore, over the next several weeks here on the blog we’ll run brief introductions to the characters for the show. Last week we discussed the series’ lead, Abigail Westing. Read all about her here.

This week, let’s catch up with John H. Watson, MD. At the tender age of 165 years, he suspects that he might have lived a bit too long. At this point, he wonders if he even can die. Many years have passed since he last cracked a case with Sherlock Holmes, but he is busier than ever. 

He currently serves as the Director of the Fourth Wall. He maintains the fragile peace between the fictional and real worlds, and protects both your lives, and those of your heroes. His days are also filled with a litany of bureaucratic tasks for which he hadn’t bargained, like breaking up fights between frightened villagers and kindly monsters, or enduring the complaints of the anthropomorphic birds working in The Fourth Wall’s mail room. It certainly isn’t the life he envisioned for himself when he first met his old friend Sherlock during the “A Study in Scarlet.”

Guilt from a lifetime of mistakes dominates Watson’s thoughts. His only comfort is knowing that Merlin made far more errors in his day. He is possessed of one purpose: either destroy, or bring to justice the creature who once lived as Vlad the Impaler, and now travels as the vampire, Count Dracula.

One element is crucial to the completion of what might be his final case, and that is to ensure that Abigail Westing—a person from the Real World—joins the ranks of The Fourth Wall. A real person has never been allowed access to The Wall, but Watson is insistent on keeping his reasons for the exception to himself.

Watson is cranky and irascible, yet grandfatherly and protective. The people of The Fourth Wall trust him with their lives, and he does not take that trust lightly. And yet, he still dreams of the days where he chased murderers into the night with a volatile genius, and the love he had to leave behind in his story.

Watson is voiced by Bill Fisher. As I’m writing this, I am editing a key scene in Episode 2. Move over Nigel Bruce, Jude Law, and Martin Freeman. Bill Fisher is John Watson. I keep feeding him pages of exposition, but he keeps knocking it out of the park. By any reasonable measure, he has been with Party Now Apocalypse Later Industries longer than anyone else. Way back in the day, he played Really Good Man in our first film. For some reason, he keeps coming back when I’ve got a new project in the hopper. He’s my oldest friend, and I find it nearly unfathomable to not have him involved in a project. In addition to playing the role, Fisher did the artwork on the covers for The Devil Lives in Beverly Hills and Orson Welles of Mars. He also designed the logo for The Fourth Wall, and did the art for one of the forthcoming trading cards (more on that next week).

Speaking of next week: Watch this space, as we’ll take a little trip that famed midnight dreary. While there— 

Squawk!

Sorry, what’s that? 

That “poem” is a one-note caricature of the many-layered splendor that is me, okay? 

Uh, sure. Can we talk about that next week?

I suppose.

And the week after that, we’ll stay the night in a lonely, ruined castle high atop the Transylvanian hills. Will we survive to tell the tale—

Squawk! HE’s not here, is he?

Reggie?

Squawk!

Be quiet.

Caw-CAW.

Can’t remember the last time I was interrupted in the middle of a blog... Anyway: until then, friends. In the mean time, find where to subscribe to The Fourth Wall podcast here.

Meet Abigail Westing

With enough completed product to give us here at Party Now, Apocalypse Later Industries, I can say with 100% certainty that the premiere episode of The Fourth Wall, “Clipped Wings,” will run on Wednesday, September 27th. Therefore, over the next several weeks here on the blog we’ll run brief introductions to the characters for the show.

This week, let’s meet Abigail Westing. She’s both a former professor of literature and a soldier. Currently, she is the latest recruit to the ranks of The Fourth Wall. Hailing from our world—that is, the non-fiction one—she is unique in the history of The Wall. Since the days of antiquity when Merlin built The Fourth Wall to cover for his own grievous error, no one from the Real World has been allowed to work—or, for that matter, know about—The Wall.

Why has Director Watson broken this long-standing rule? Only he knows, and he is not about to let others know his reasoning. Despite receiving no answers as to why she is here, Westing has left behind the friends and life she knew before to join the eclectic crew of The Wall. It can be a bit of a challenge growing accustomed to living among fictional characters. Her mentor is Sherlock Holmes’ best friend, her best friend is the bird from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” and Count Dracula wants her dead. She can meet the Connecticut Yankee from King Arthur’s Court, travel via H.G. Wells’ Time Machine, and call upon any fictional hero to help her out in a pinch. It’s a good life, despite the dangers and frustrations. She’s found the one job that uses all of her training in equal measure, and the stories she has immersed herself in all her life are now a reality.

In all honesty, she’s had far worse jobs.

Now, some of you might be wondering why on earth I would want my main protagonist to be a woman…

If you’re really wondering that much, maybe don’t listen to the show? You’ll be missed, sort of…

Anyway, for those of you still around, in the radio show, Westing is voiced by Jill Sutton. Jill majored in Performance Theater in college and brings a polish and professionalism to the proceedings that is vital to Abigail’s essence. Here’s what she had to say about taking on the role:

Now this is a story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside-down. And I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there and I'll tell you how I got involved with a group called The Fourth Wall…

She added, after we got her some guacamole:

Abigail brings a sense of innocence to The Fourth Wall that I feel the veteran members lack. In reading for Abigail, I really tried to capture the sense of awe and wonderment that a "real person" may experience when entering a world where your favorite character could come walking around a corner at any minute. She is able to provide real-world solutions to (fake-world? fictional-world? help me out here!) problems. She is fiercely loyal to her old friends and her new family, and has a no-nonsense attitude when any of them are threatened.

Next week, we’ll learn a little bit about what John Watson, MD has been up to since the days of his adventures at 221B Baker Street. Before the premiere of “Clipped Wings,” we’ll make quick stops into the work of Bram Stoker and Edgar Allan Poe. In the mean time, find where to subscribe to the show here.

Introducing The Fourth Wall OR Reality is a Dreadful Place. I Try to Spend as Little Time There as Possible.

Growing up, I had a reputation in our house for having… let’s call it “trouble”… with the difference between fantasy and reality. 

I don’t think I was ever more upset than when—in the summer of ’89—I flashed my Batman™ flashlight into the sky, and realized that the bat symbol would not illuminate the night sky. 

Totally reputable scientists can tell me that time travel is impossible as many times as they like, but I’m never going to quite believe it, mainly because I don’t want to. 

I had little aptitude for math or foreign languages, but I had enough of a working knowledge of warp drive that I could probably finagle an acceptance to Starfleet Academy. 

In truth, I think I had an overdeveloped sense of fiction vs reality, and I mourned that immutable boundary*. I fully understood that I couldn’t vote Jed Bartlet for President, or join the Ghostbusters, but I never quite liked it.

When Michael Burris** talked about a radio show that was Sherlock Holmes meets Warehouse 13, it absolutely lit that same part of my imagination on fire. What if that border became mutable? What if—in a world where the difference between the fictional and the real meant little—we are subjected to a new slate of dangers? Who would protect us?

For the past year I’ve been working on that show, and while I’ve been alluding to it for months and am still working on the final touches, I'm excited to start sharing it with you now.

The Fourth Wall is a six-episode***, full-cast**** audio drama. The episodes will run each week starting in late September. The show will be available from the iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher podcast platforms. Subscribe now! The Fourth Wall isn’t going to stop at just the radio show, though. There’s going to be a “Pick-The-Plot*****” tie-in book, trading cards, and a line of sugary breakfast cereals******.

I’d go into it all more, but I want you to hear about The Fourth Wall directly from the people that live there. You can subscribe now and listen to the first season trailer on any of the above-listed platforms, but you can also hear it here:

While I might pitch the show as Men in Black meets The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen*******, the place is far more than that in my head. It’s a bit Babylon 5, and a little bit Deep Space Nine. At times, it can feel like Casablanca at the height of the war; at others it will be as madcap as Greendale Community College. Frankly, if it turns out The Fourth Wall is real, I want to go to there.

Give me a few more weeks, and I’ll show you around the place, too. In the meantime, I’ll be posting a lot about the show in the next few weeks. Artwork, bonus material, the recipe for that breakfast cereal. At The Fourth Wall, we’re just getting started.

*Although, I will admit when Chandler briefly moved to Tulsa in the ninth season of Friends, I had to work through some stuff.

**Without question, there would be no The Fourth Wall without him.

***Don’t worry; it won’t end there. I already have ideas for a second season and… ahem… a Christmas special.

****In fact, I had the privilege to work with seventeen separate voice artists over the course of the season, and I only had to play eight or nine roles.

*****Similar to, but legally distinct from Choose Your Own Adventure. Ahem.

******I’m only lying about one of those. Which one might surprise you.

*******The comic book, not the movie. We’re not animals here.

An Endless Series of Disclaimers.

As I continue to finish other projects, my contributions to this blog become more and more of a chore. Some weeks, I manage to hit the target, others I miss. The only time I have truly whiffed—outside of hiring someone to do a guest blog—on getting an entry was shortly after the election. Things didn’t make any sense then, and they haven’t exactly started making more sense.

And yet, every time I try to run blog topics through my mind, they seem either ill-timed, or crass, or I’m not the right guy to make the point. I’ve come at this week’s entry from several different angles, and none of them work right. All I’ve managed to do is come up with a bunch of disclaimers to go in front of blogs I probably won’t write.

I wrote enough of them that, as fate would have it, they became a blog post all their own. 

—————

DISCLAIMER #1: At the end of the last week’s blog I promised some stuff coming down the pike. We here at Party Now, Apocalypse Later Industries are still waiting for some clearances on a few things. When that is done, we’ll get into it here. I’m anxious to share it with you. Deeply anxious. If you look into the directory here at the website, or (as of press time) go searching for certain terms on Stitcher, you might find some of the things idling in wait. The wheels are moving and they can’t be stopped now. But, it is another Sunday, and a blog must be posted.

—————

DISCLAIMER #2: Speaking of wheels that can’t—and by all rights shouldn’t—be stopped: As a child, I attended Robert E. Lee Elementary School. At the time, it never seemed like an issue to me. We were fed a regular diet of the historical anecdote that Lee was the gentle giant of the Lost Cause, and that he was so tragically torn about the issue of slavery and the Civil War. He was kind, and gentle to all people and all the woodland creatures. We even sang a song about how great he was.

It feels sort of nauseating now. However, when anything more than a cursory glance at history became available to me, I wasn’t terribly offended that I had been at such a place. It seemed eclectic. I went to Lee Elementary, George Washington Carver Middle School, and Booker T. Washington High School. Only in Oklahoma, amiright?

The more I think about it, the name needs to be changed. There are generations of children who had to sing songs in praise of this man whose sole claim to fame was spending a longer-than-average amount of time internally debating whether or not he should commit treason… and then went ahead and committed the treason anyway. A hero, indeed.

Maybe the pro-confederates and I can reach some sort of compromise (although we shouldn’t). We could change the name of the school to John Wilkes Booth Elementary School, so that we can lionize the legacy of a man who shot another man in the back, only to pause his escape to deliver a quick monologue to a captive audience. Or maybe we could change it to Jefferson Davis Elementary School. He was captured in a dress!

—————

DISCLAIMER #3, part one: That Davis felt comfortable in women’s clothing should be celebrated.

Part Two: He wasn’t actually captured in a dress, but if we’re going to fudge history, let’s reach for something better than Lee.

—————

DISCLAIMER #4: On some—possibly unearned—level, those last few felt a little glib. I like to keep the writing—especially on this blog—on the lighter side. It’s where I function best. Indeed, in my relatively few public speaking engagements, I’ve never been more unnerved by a stretch where the audience isn’t laughing. When I imagine you reading these posts or pages of the books I’ve written, I need you to be laughing. That’s my own hangup, but one I’m more often than not content to put to some kind of productive use.

Except, if I were tempted to write something about current events, there wouldn’t be a lot of funny to find out there. It makes me feel as if there is not much to be said at all. It’s easier to retreat back into work other than this blog. So, I’m sorry about that.

—————

DISCLAIMER #5: And yet, staying silent about any of this is capitulation. I understand that.

Nazis (and White Nationalists, and KKK members…) are bad, absolutely. People who are opposed to them are good, absolutely. There is no moral equivalency on this issue; any claim otherwise is a delusion. Oh so many things in life are a grey area; this is one of the few times when there is an absolute right and an absolute wrong. 

I deeply resent the fact that we live in a world where that all needs to be said. And yet, I also acknowledge that complaint is a profoundly minor one in the grander scheme of things. If it needs being said, I am content to say it.

If you believe otherwise, then you are free to do so. We are under no obligation to celebrate you, and laws dictate that we ought not punch you in the face.

And yet… You have such punchable faces.

Again, sorry.

—————

DISCLAIMER #6: I’m not actually so sorry about that last one.

Watch This, Not That: Adventures in Overthinking Bingewatching

My parents recently asked me if they would like Doctor Who. I mean, they probably, definitely would not like it. It’s a show about a guy* who travels throughout time and space fighting monsters and dragging fifty-plus years worth of weirdness and mythology with him wherever he goes. But then again, he** also gets into charming madcap adventures with people all throughout history, so maybe?

They asked me to recommend a few episodes to watch to see if its something they might be able to get into. This presented an interesting dilemma. How do you distill a multi-year (and in this case, a multi-decade) series into just a few episodes? In the age of binge watching, do I just tell people to watch the show and make up their own mind? That seems dismissive. Indeed, one of the best TV shows of all time, Star Trek: The Next Generation didn’t produce a begrudgingly watchable episode until its second season and wasn’t regularly interesting until its third. It’s hard to curate that watching by only saying, “Stick with it for a year and half, then it will get very good.”

Maybe we need to start making TV show mix tapes with episodes that symbolize the very best a show has to offer, and prime others to see what captured your imagination so completely. When it came to Doctor Who and my parents, I could really only come up with a few episodes that might capture their attention, from series 2’s “Tooth and Claw***” all the way to series 5’s “Vincent and the Doctor****”. So, no, my parents would probably not like Doctor Who.

But it got me thinking about other shows to make these mix tapes out of. Every hour of the first four years of The West Wing is near perfect, but I think I can come up with 22 episodes over the course of all seven seasons that can give viewers the experience of the entire show, except only the length of one season. Don’t believe me?

1. "Pilot"

2. "Let Bartlet Be Bartlet"

3. "What Kind of Day Has It Been*****"

4. "In The Shadow of Two Gunmen" (Parts One and Two)

5. "Noël"

6. "17 People"

7. "The Fall’s Gonna Kill You"

8. "Two Cathedrals"

9. "Manchester" (Part One and Two)

10. "Bartlet for America"

11. "Debate Camp"

12. "Game On"

13. "Election Night" 

14. "Red Haven’s On Fire"

15. "Commencement"

16. "Twenty-Five"

17. "The Dogs of War"

18. "Third-Day Story"

19. "Faith Based Initiative"

20. "2162 Votes"

21. "Election Day" (part two)

22. "Tomorrow"

Or Deep Space Nine.

1. "Emissary"

2. "The Jem’Hadar"

3. "The Search" (Part One and Two)

4. "The Die is Cast"

5. "The Way of the Warrior" (Part One and Two)

6. "Paradise Lost"

7. "Apocalypse Rising"

8. "By Inferno’s Light"

9. "Call to Arms"

10. "A Time to Stand"

11. "Sacrifice of Angels"

12. "In the Pale Moonlight"

13. "Tears of the Prophets"

14. "Penumbra"

15. "Til Death Do Us Part"

16. "Strange Bedfellows"

17. "The Changing Face of Evil"

18. “When it Rains…”

19. "Tacking Into the Wind"

20. "Extreme Measures"

21. "The Dogs of War"

22. "What you Leave Behind"

These aren’t even my favorite episodes. They merely cut through to the quick of the overarching storyline. You could do it with any number of shows (as long as they aren’t particularly episodic, I’m looking in your direction TNG******). Buffy, Babylon 5*******, and certainly LOST could all benefit from the treatment.

Under normal circumstances, I might apply the process to some of these other shows, but I’ve been a bit busy this weekend. I’ve been making plans and working like a dog (or a bird) to get my own show up on its legs. I keep promising more on this topic, and next week I just might deliver.

Until then, my friends.

*And soon-to-be-a-woman. #whyisthissomethingthatmakespeoplemad #ifyouthinkthisisoverlypcyouareaverydumbperson #yesmythirteenthdoctor Although, to be fair she will be the fourteenth doctor, to get technical. #gallifreystands #RIPJohnHurt.

**And soon-to-be she. #yesmyfourteenthdoctor.

***Even though it features werewolves.

****Even if it includes the Krafayis monster (which…krafays things), everybody should watch that episode.

*****Not to be confused with the episode “What Kind of Day Has it Been” featured in Sports Night, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and The Newsroom… For the uninitiated among you, it might be best to prepare for Sorkin to repeat himself from time-to-time.

******I often want to condense the rewatching experience for episodic shows, but the best way to do that is if Netflix got serious about innovation and adopted the “random episode” function in their platform. The FXX app’s Simpson World has it, WHY CAN’T YOU? End of rant. Although, if I’m honest with myself, I think I’ve made that rant on this space before.

*******Just skip the first season and you’re halfway there.

Guest Blog: Inadequacy by Z Lee Schulein

This week, we have another guest blog from a new writer, Z Lee Schulein. You won't be able to find their work anywhere at the moment, as this is their first published work, but you will know their name soon. They've been struggling lately with an overwhelming feeling that writers new and weathered (and people in other artistic fields) deal with all of the time: the feeling of inadequacy. I can tell you without a doubt that Z Lee is MORE than adequate, and I am happy to share with you their thoughts on that scourge we've all had to deal with before.  

A few weeks ago I submitted a three page piece of fiction (a very small fraction of a larger novel) to my writing critique group. I've been putting off asking the group to critique this particular work because I've been writing and re-writing it for the better part of my life* and it has become my baby. 

I wasn't hesitating to submit it to the group because I thought they were not going to like it. I hesitated because I was sure that these people, who I knew could be trusted to give me their honest and professional opinions about my work (and have done so in the past) would tell me exactly what I feared and secretly did not want to admit to myself: I'm wasting my time with this idea and I'm a shit writer. I was worried they would hate what had become my life’s work.

Nobody said anything like that. Not even close. 

And yet, no one seemed terribly impressed with the idea or interested in the rest of the story, either. To be fair, they didn't have much of it to begin with. It’s nearly impossible to tell what you feel about a novel after only reading three pages. None of that mattered at the time, though; when one settles into a state of feeling relentlessly inadequate, rational thoughts are only worth their weight.

So I took to Facebook in the wee hours of the morning, convinced I couldn't bring my concerns to any of my friends and also needing an outlet to complain through. A half dozen vague** posts and several sugary treats later, and I didn't feel any better. I would have to worry about my complete lack of skills another day. 

Only, if I really lacked skills, I would have quit a long, long time ago. And I know that--friends told me so in the comments. Why then, does imperfect creativity breed an unending sense of failure in some people? I actually didn't think I was going to have an answer to this question when I started. I thought I'd just type up some snarky self-deprecating piece that might be weirdly cathartic.

Art isn't supposed to be perfect, and yet artists put themselves under such pressure to remove every flaw. It can sometimes turn what was once a hobby into a chore. Most people who pick up creative habits don't do it because they think they'll make a quick buck off it. They do it because it brings them some kind of joy, and if at some point along the way they can share their work with others (perhaps even turning it into a career) then all the better!

I started writing because I wanted to keep track of the fantasy world and adventures my neighborhood friends and I were creating. As a kid I didn't know what plot holes were. I didn't care about themes or genres. I just made something up and did what I could to make sure I would remember it. At some point along the way, it stopped being for me and my friends, and started being for "the publisher"***.

The realization that writing isn't much fun anymore shouldn't have been a shocker. Writers will tell you all of the time to just write the story you want to write so that it's still enjoyable. Maybe the reason it's the most common advice isn't because people think I need to hear it, but because this sense of inadequacy is so normal, everyone needs the reminder.

Mac asked me if this was the end of my writing career. I hesitated before answering. I still feel like my writing is shit. Maybe it's not as shitty as I first felt after the critiquing process, but it is still hard to open that novel and do anything with it. What if nothing helps? What if everything I've done to preserve the memory of those popsicle-sticky, humid summer nights a decade or so ago, when we raced to have as much fun as possible before the street lights came on, has been utterly useless? What if I wasted all of the countless hours trying to improve my writing-style so others would appreciate our game as much as we did?

I submitted the piece in the hopes of getting a serious critique, and that's what I got. But is this the end? I've been with this story for so long that I'll be damned if anyone is going to call me a quitter over it. I've put it down in the past, sometimes for a year or two at a time, but I've always come back to it. If there was only one story I'd ever be able to put out there for others to read, it would be this one. So it might be a bit before I continue with it, but no one has seen the last of the story I have to tell.

Especially not me.

*This makes me sound older and wiser than I am. I started writing this at age 11 and I am now 23.

**Here I’m using a word which would typically mean "communicating in an unclear or imprecise way". If you had seen the actual posts, you would agree this is a gross understatement.

***Which I don't even have, by the way.

I have this Glowing Thing on my wrist and it tells me to do things.

I turned 33 this month. On my birthday, before taking in my traditional birthday movie*, I ventured to Best Buy in an effort to “treat myself” and buy something I wouldn’t normally get for myself.

So, in a wave of frivolity that sent shivers of fear into the bones of the collected Geek Squad, I got a fitbit. 

Is this how people in their 30s treat themselves? I can’t imagine how I’m going to treat myself when I’m in my 40s, but I hope that whatever it is comes as a swallowable pill**.

At any rate, I begin my 34th year staring at what essentially amounts to a buckled rubber band with a detachable accelerometer with five lights on it***. My immediate instinct was to think that I may have made a mistake. I’m not exactly a fitness buff****, so I could easily imagine this doohickey quickly languishing forgotten in a desk drawer along with a first generation iPod Touch***** and a copy of the soundtrack from The Cable Guy (1996).

Except, that didn’t happen. 

Instead, in the two weeks since I bought the little trinket, it has come to unquestionably rule much of my life with an iron fist. I haven’t been away from the device for longer than it takes to charge it every several days. It buzzes at me, and I must respond. 

Many is the time in the last several weeks when I have ended a conversation in mid-sentence, because I needed to walk around in a circle so I can get my 250 steps in before the end of the hour******. Abbey the Cat originally thought I was trying to imitate her by walking around the house in a perpetual, aimless circle, but after two weeks of doing it regularly, even she doesn’t know what’s going on anymore. Last week, I thought I had lost my fitbit, and then completely lost interest in any kind of exercise whatsoever, because, well, if the machine isn’t tracking me, then what the hell is the point?

Now, before you go thinking that I have—in the span of a few weeks—gone from being a “sitting enthusiast*******” to being some kind of health nut, I can assure you that some of the other pre-set goals for the device are a little Herculean for the blubbery magnificence that is my frame. 10,000 steps in a single day? What am I, some kind of Kryptonian Batman? Eight full hours of sleep every night? Now I believe you have me mistaken for some manner of squirrel*******. Log every little thing I eat in hopes of getting a better idea of my calories ingested in relation to calories burned? Get a warrant, then we’ll talk.

I don’t know if I’m even particularly interested in getting really fit. If I did that, I’d have to buy a whole new wardrobe, and I don’t think the Target menswear line is quite what it used to be. I suppose I just want to not let my body go completely to hell. 

Maybe as time goes on, I will get more fit in this process; I’m certainly getting there. Last week, I made my goal 6,000 steps every day, and hit it. This week, 7,000, and if I can finish writing this post, I’ll probably get that done, too. Eventually, I may hit the American Heart Association minimum requirements for an active human lifestyle. I also get 7 hours of sleep, which may be under the recommended amount, but is well above any realistic expectation. One day, I may even start paying more attention to what I eat. I mean, I probably won’t, but last month I would have said I probably wouldn’t start walking every hour just because my wrist buzzed, but here we are********.

*It was the latest re-boot of The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise. On spec, it would appear to be a mix of a lot of things I like. The actual film—while not quite deserving the toxic word of mouth surrounding it—is still no better than a C+.

**And is covered by the roulette wheel that will pass for health coverage after 2024, but I digress.

***One of the few times in life when there are, in fact, not four lights.

****Don’t everybody look so surprised.

*****From a time before the thing could load apps! We were just so dumbfounded by the notion of a touchscreen that we would do just about anything Steve Jobs would say.

******No joke. The machine buzzed a reminder about my 250 steps just as I typed that sentence. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep my train of thought going when I get back.

*******™ Party Now, Apocalypse Industries.

********Squirrels being notorious for needing an inordinate amount of sleep, that is. #themoreyouknow

*********I keep trying to think of another conclusion for this week’s post, but it’s 5:50 and the fitbit just went off again, so I better get my steps in and call of the rest of this post for the week.

Is it possible Justice League will actually be good?

San Diego Comic-Con is all around us, and with it comes the torrential downpour of new glances and first peeks into the litany of movies and TV shows we’re going to spend the next year or so of our lives probably complaining about. 

Ready Player One will be the mishmash of disparate intellectual properties that only Spielberg’s clout could realistically wrangle, while at the same time feeling like the wrong movie for him. The story worships at Spielberg’s altar; he shouldn’t be the one to make it.

I’m still not sure why the world needed Blade Runner 2049, but there’s no harm in letting Harrison Ford continue to work. Maybe it’ll be great, but frankly, I’m still waiting for those ultimate entries in the line of HFord reboots, the CGI-laden Witness: Revisited, or the Netflix animated series “Fugitive Babies”.

I can’t muster more of a reaction to Disney’s Marvel’s Netflix’s The Defenders* other than to accept there will soon be a show that is actually a brand new season of four different shows, none of which I’m caught up on.

In the few hours that have passed since I wrote those preceding paragraphs, even more new trailers have dropped, covering Thor: Ragnarok, the second season of “Stranger Things”, and a much fuller trailer for the upcoming new Star Trek series, “Discovery”**. But these are topics of discussion for blogs at a different time. 

The big surprise—so far—out of Hall H is the trailer for Justice League, due out this November:

I’ve been as down on the DC Extended Universe as the next person. I kind of liked Man of Steel (2013) despite itself. I thought Suicide Squad (2016) likely suffered from studio meddling in post-production that left the editing disjointed and sloppy***. 

Then there’s Batman v Superman: We Didn’t Market Test This Title (2016). The bloated, incomprehensibly plotted introduction to the larger DC world suffers from some bad casting (primarily Jesse Eisenberg’s portrayal of Lex Luthor as if he were Mark Zuckerberg on a sugar rush), a preoccupation with setting up future movies****, and the single worst third-act turn in a major motion picture. Yes, that would be the whole “Martha” debacle.

There are more than a few things to like about the movie. Affleck is genuinely good in the role of the Dark Knight, and his interactions with Alfred (Jeremy Irons) proved to be the highlight of the film.

Indeed, whatever form Affleck’s solo turn at the Batmobile, The Batman, ends up taking, I think it’ll still be a good movie that has plenty of room to explore parts of the bat-mythos that the previous ten live-action films depicting the character haven’t approached. That being said, the seemingly inevitable Justice League has failed to elicit any sort of enthusiasm from me. Indeed, for the first time in my life a forthcoming film would feature Batman as a character (with or without LEGOs) that I’m not ravenously excited about.

And yet…

With the one two-punch of the actually watchable Wonder Woman and the trailer linked above, I’m just beginning to believe that Batman can be great again.

I want to believe that.

Just, seriously, Warner Bros.? If the plot of the whole movie hinges on people’s mother having the same name, please, please re-work the movie. You have time before November.

*Feels like their should be another apostrophe here, but alas…

**Please be good. Please be good. Please be good. You’ll be good. I know you will. It’s fine. You’re going to be fine.

***Oh, and Jared Leto is the worst. The worst. I don’t care if you liked him in “My So Called Life” ninety-thousand years ago. He’s a douchebag. The Joker is many things; he is not a douchebag.

****Which is the common thread of the least-enjoyable Marvel equivalents Iron Man 2 (2010) and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015).

Guest Blog: "The Name Game" by Jessica Coplen

Here I am taking two weeks in a row off from the blog! Unprecedented! Thankfully, I do have something to present to you this week while I continue to work on some of the larger projects we have planned for this year. Jessica Coplen once again regales with her thoughts on that elusive and mysterious topic, the television show title.

I'm on the verge of finishing up some big stuff in the next week or so, and plan some big announcements for next week. In the meantime, it is my fondest hope to host more guest blogs here on the site in the weeks to come. Got an idea? There's fifteen dollars to be made, here folks!

Now, take it away Jessica!

If you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, then you shouldn’t judge a television show by its name. But of course, that’s exactly what we do. 

A common negative response to tv shows is “it sounds dumb.” Part of this is in response to the synopsis of the show, but the title—like a book cover—is a gate keeper. If the title isn’t interesting or appealing, people may not read or look any further. 

Take the show Cougar Town (ABC/TBS) for example. It managed to stay on the air for six seasons, but only after swapping networks halfway through and launching an ad campaign that literally admitted that it was a “crappy title.” This is a bit of an extreme example, though. Do you remember The Event (NBC)? It was about an event that happened, and that event was a mystery. So while the title is on point, it’s so generic that it couldn’t stand out from other Lost-esque shows that flooded the networks.

So what makes a good—or successful—title? 

If you check out the list of longest running tv series, the answer is this: straight-forward, non-generic, and short (typically one-word, sans The). 

The longest running scripted series is The Simpsons (FOX) at twenty eight seasons so far. This fits the bill, as it’s a straight-forward title that tells you it’s about the Simpson family. It’s not the most unusual name, but it’s enough for people back in 1989 to at least get past the title. It also falls in line with the tradition of early television series that were the names of the performers or main character. The Jack Benny Program (CBS/NBC) came out in 1950 and is the tenth longest running scripted tv series of all time at fifteen seasons. The list of longest-running shows is littered with similar titles, and many have a single word title. For instance, Bones (FOX), Frasier (NBC), Rosanne (ABC) and Coach (ABC) all had at least nine seasons. 

Single word titles are so popular that six and a half of the top ten series have single word titles. I say half because Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (NBC) is commonly referred to as ‘SVU’ to distinguish it from its predecessor Law & Order (NBC). Even in ad campaigns, the network will call it SVU. Why are one word titles so prevalent? Because they are easier to say in a conversation around the water cooler. “Hey, did you see ER (NBC) last night?” “Did you hear Timeless (NBC) was renewed after it was cancelled?” And despite the fact that NCIS (CBS) is four syllables, it is still the second ranked television series behind The Big Bang Theory (CBS) for the 2016/2017 season, and currently the seventh longest running series of all time. Perhaps it is because in our mind an acronym is the same as a single word.

But what about current tv champ The Big Bang Theory? That’s not a short title at all, but it is a phrase that is already engrained on the American psyche, and the world, as a scientific concept. The same with Law & Order and Family Guy (FOX), two terms that well existed before their shows did. Also, The Big Bang Theory is easily shortened to Big Bang and doesn’t lose its notability. 

Short titles, or titles with an easy acronym, are the way to go. Current favorites Orange is the New Black (Netflix) and Game of Thrones (HBO) are referred to as OitNB and GoT respectively. HBO even uses GoT as part of its ad campaign, just like NBC and SVU. Battlestar Galatica (ABC/Sci-Fi) and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (Syndication) are called BSG and DS9 more widely than their full titles. It’s the same concept as giving people nicknames; the easier and shorter, the better. 

The television market has exploded, from three networks in the 1940s, to the hundreds that are accessible today. From network channels, to basic cable, to premium cable, to streaming services, the lists of new shows are endless. The battle for the audience’s attention is at an all time high. It’s important to stand out from the pack with titles easily transferred through word of mouth and viral marketing.  A TV show’s chosen name becomes the nexus in which the show will evolve. In the end, to paraphrase Shakespeare, the title doth maketh the show.

Cheat Week, Volume Two, Part Four: Here we are, Spiderman. Again.

We* here at Party Now, Apocalypse Later Industries are busy putting an army of projects together, and are taking a week off.

In the meantime, I saw Spiderman: Homecoming this weekend. It's great! I was as surprised as anyone to realize that it's actually better than the previous acme of the web-slinger's escapades, Spiderman 2 (2004). It's surprising. It's funny. It has a great post-credit scene. It doesn't feel beholden to much of the previous Spidey canon, and in that is free to be as delightful as it wants to be. Maybe Martin Sheen isn't Uncle Ben anymore, but I think I can live with that.

If you didn't like it--and you are out there--I don't know what to do with you. Seriously. You can go now.

*It's just me. I don't know why I try to go for royal we when I refer to the company. But I do, and am likely to continue to do so.

Do You Want to See Something *Really* Morbid? Why the Ends Almost Never Justify the Means

I’m a big fan of The Twilight Zone. I’m such a big fan of the show that I’ve been known to suggest fisticuffs whenever the honor of Rod Serling is impugned*. “To Serve Man,” “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”, “Time Enough at Last”. These are truly great episodes of television.

And yet, efforts to re-capture the magic of the original TV show have often floundered. Sure Zone inspired a pinball machine that is the absolute pinnacle of that art form, but both attempts to bring the television series back—in 1985 and 2002—are less than memorable. Maybe the advent of color removed all magic from the concept**.

When the movie powerhouse of Steven Spielberg and John Landis attempted to make an anthology film based on the series, the reaction to the film was equally tepid. 

In some cases obliquely, and in others much more directly, Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) offers remakes of four classic episodes of the TV series to varying degrees of effectiveness, and for that matter, sheer horror. 

The strongest segment among them is the last: a manic, claustrophobic redux of the Richard Matheson classic “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” with John Lithgow as a naturally neurotic replacement for William Shatner. The gremlin on the wing of the plane in this version is far less laughable than the demented Lamb Chop of the original episode, and is more a terrifying, self-aware wraith ready to set up a homestead in your nightmares.

Moving backwards both in chronology and quality, Kathleen Quinlan stars in a re-constructed “It’s a Good Life”, the tale of a young boy with nigh-omnipotent powers and the destruction he leaves in his wake. Joe Dante (Gremlins, Innerspace) brings his penchant for cartoonish malevolence to bear here, but it is an aptitude that doesn’t come to full fruition until Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). The ending Dante and company choose for the tale—wherein the kindly school teacher (Quinlan) tries to temper the god-boy’s misanthropy—falls short of the ending that appears in the original episode and skews a little too close to the happy-happy Spielbergian ideal so prevalent in the 80s.

Which makes sense, given that Spielberg’s own entry for the film is such a concentrated package of pathos that it almost warrants a dosage of Humalog packaged with every DVD. Scatman Crothers gives a group of residents at an old folks home the opportunity to reclaim their childhood, quite literally. It’s precious. And that’s all fine. Spielberg’s gonna Spielberg, especially pre-The Color Purple (1985), but you should at least be prepared.

And then there’s director John Landis’ (Animal House, The Blues Brothers) opening entry in the movie. It’s the least conceptually sound of all four stories. One imagines that this is because it has the least to do with one of the original TV episodes. Bill Connor (Vic Morrow) is an unrepentant racist and basket case who finds himself tumbling through time. With each Quantum Leap like jump, he finds himself as a different oppressed minority. At the end, he watches his friends shrug through his disappearance as he is taken away to a concentration camp in Nazi-era Europe.

It’s kind of a muddled mess, although it does have the virtue of having the classic hopeless-turn-as-moral ending that made the TV series famous. There is a reason both for its messiness and its bleak ending. It’s more horrifying than any moment in the finished film, I assure you. 

I made reference to the incident in <last week’s blog>, but in the early hours of July 23, 1982, on the final night of filming for the segment, an accident occurred that took the lives of three actors.

Accounts vary, but these are the generally accepted facts. The final shooting involved a massive sequence that would find Morrow’s character saving two Vietnamese children from a village under attack by American helicopters, after which he would be redeemed and return to his life reformed after only a half-hour or so of trauma. 

With a helicopter hovering nearby and explosions igniting all around them, Morrow crawls out into a small lake with a child in each arm. One of the pyrotechnic explosions caused the rear rotor on the helicopter to fail. The craft spun out of control and crashed into the nearby lake. The pilot and other crew members on board the chopper survived with minor injuries. On the ground, the helicopter decapitated Morrow and one of the child actors, 7-year-old Myca Dinh Le, and crushed the other child actor, 6-year-old Renee Shin-yi Chen. Rolling cameras from at least three different angles caught the whole sequence of events. The internet has archived this footage for all time, because of course it has. Several industrious online editors have even managed to enhance the footage frame-by-frame, because of course they have. I don’t recommend seeking out the footage for yourself. Just… Trust me.

Under “normal” circumstances, this would be a horrifying tragedy, but it gets worse from there. Some insist that Landis—in complete disregard of any semblance of safety—tried to order the lethal helicopter to an altitude even lower than the already dangerous 25 feet it maintained above the ground. Landis denies this, and instead points to the error of a special effects technician and a mis-timed explosion as the sole causes for the accident. The producers and director further disregarded safety and labor laws in a number of other ways. Child actors weren’t supposed to work in such close proximity to that degree of pyrotechnics; the filmmakers did anyway. Child actors weren’t supposed to work at such a late hour; the filmmakers paid their parents under the table. Landis copped to this much but, again, insists to this day that those factors had nothing to do with the actual accident.

NTSB inquiries labeled the event an accident, although they significantly changed their rules regulating helicopters on film sets. Civil cases took several years to settle with the families, while Landis and four other crew members were placed on trial for manslaughter. Amid some degree of controversy in the pre-OJ world, the five were acquitted of any criminal wrongdoing.

Even if I accept Landis’ side of the story and that every moment of the incident was beyond any reasonable control, I can’t imagine having blood on my hands for one of my own silly projects, regardless of how it turned out. Maybe it’s a shocking, potentially overwhelming story, but whenever I think about the Twilight Zone movie and the accident that accompanied it, I try to find some object lesson in the events. Maybe it’s that being creative is great, but being a human being is probably far more important.

*Don’t believe me? I issued just such a challenge on Friday. Twice. I will defend Mr. Serling’s honor, so help me Krom.

**To be fair, I think conversion away from black and white not only diminished attempts at remaking the Zone, but television, film, photography, and the entirety of human civilization. I’m willing to admit I might be alone there.

Han may have shot first, but Greedo got the credit due to guild rules.

For months, I have seen nothing but eye-rolling when it comes to the still untitled* Han Solo prequel movie, but I’ve been the first one to defend it.

ME: Come on, guys (and ladies)! Phil Lord and Christopher Miller will be directing it.

YOU (as in, the royal you): But it’s such a dumb idea for a movie.

ME: Did you like The Lego Movie?

YOU: Yes…

ME: Didn’t that sound like a dumb idea when you first heard about it.

YOU: (defeated) Yes…

ME: Did you like 21 Jump Street?

YOU: (even more defeated) Yes…

ME: And 22 Jump Street?

YOU: Can you move on with your point?

Sure can, you! The thing that the Han Solo movie had going for it was Lucasfilm hired the two guys who have an unbroken track record of turning stupid movies into strangely watchable movies.

And now?

Now we’ve got Opie**.

This would all be upsetting enough, if—like in the case of Edgar Wright and Antman (2015), or Patty Jenkins and Thor: The Dark World (2013)—the film had lost their director sometime in pre-production. Unfortunately, this rather seismic change in comes about when the film had—according to most accounts—only a few weeks left in production.

Naturally, finger pointing has spiked on the internet in response to such a colossal production calamity. Some of those habitual bellyachers have pledged undying loyalty to Lucasfilm and supporting their desire to ensure that their production is made to their specifications. These people seem to think the powers that be at Skywalker Ranch*** can do no wrong. Which, I mean… How short are our collective memories? Others have expressed rage that once again filmmakers with actual vision have been summarily removed from bringing their perspective to a beloved property. Some of those people have misdirected that anger towards some pretty nasty attacks to current Lucasfilm President, Kathleen Kennedy, which is gross and stupid. Gentlemen—and I am just speaking to you gentlemen out there with this admonition—I am sure we can find a way to discuss the weirdness of this story without descending to our worst traits.

But seriously, when has something like this ever happened in the past? 

Selznick fired George Cukor several weeks into the filming of Gone with the Wind (1939) and replaced him with Victor Fleming, who then had to temporarily bow out in favor of a pinch hitter due to “exhaustion”****. At almost that very same time, The Wizard of Oz (1939) went through three changes in directors during the first few weeks of production. First, Norman Taurog, then Richard Thorpe, then George Cukor (remember him?) before eventually landing on Victor Fleming (remember him?). But those shifts in production crew took place very early in the process, not after the film was complete! Also, film directing was a little different back in the pre-Orson Welles era. The studio heads would simply kidnap hapless hobos from LA soup kitchens and hand them a shot list*****.

Plenty of other people weren’t fired while a movie quickly went off the rails. Coppola and Apocalypse Now (1979)? Jerry Lewis and The Day the Clown Cried (1972?)******. Hell, even John Landis was allowed to finish his segment for Twilight Zone: The Movie (1982), and that set killed three people, including Vic Morrow. What crime could Lord and Miller have been guilty off that the plug had to be pulled?

The world may never know, but we can all imagine what that movie might have been next year. The Solo movie has gone from a bad idea, to an intriguing one, to an absolutely fascinating case study in the debate about the auteur theory.

*And, for that matter, unfinished, but we’ll get to that later.

**Now, allow me to contextualize the above dismissal of Richie Cunningham. He’s done some great films. Apollo 13. I’m sure there are others, but they escape me at the moment, but ultimately he’s a very milquetoast director, especially for a movie that’s a little bit in need of a rationale for existing.

***After a quick google search, I’ve now come to realize that Lucasfilm no longer has its headquarters at the ranch, and have instead moved to the Presidio in San Francisco. So, what do they do at the ranch anymore?

****Which, to my mind, in 1939, had to be a euphemism for a drought of uppers suddenly befalling the lot.

*****I’m kidding. A little bit.

******Yes, the movie was never released. But unlike Lord and Miller and their Solo movie, Lewis was allowed to at least finish Clown.

If you’re afraid of failure, then you might not have any fun at all.

This past week, we here at Party Now, Apocalypse Later Industries had an important anniversary. On June 15th, 2002, in an event those in attendance remember quite well, Party Now, Apocalypse Later essentially went out of business. A month later, I would turn 18. It would take another 8 years before I got serious about putting the company back together, a part of which is the blog you are currently reading.

On that date, our first—and, to this date, only—feature-length movie*, The Adventures of Really Good Man made its one and only truly public screening at the Aaronson Auditorium of the Tulsa Central Library**.

It was an event two years in the making, and it was a pretty great day. We were a bunch of kids who didn’t know any better, but went ahead and did something that seemed impossible at the outset, for no better reason than we just decided to. We were like the technicians of Mission Control in July of ’69. or the campaign staff at Hyde Park in November of ’08, or the thirteen Doctors returning to Gallifrey on the last day of the Time War… Except, we weren’t any of those things, but damned if it didn’t feel that way.

It was a great day, a day of victory and accomplishment. And for the longest time, I couldn’t come anywhere close to matching it. While it isn’t hard to imagine why I felt creatively unfulfilled during those years. Beyond some light political mischief and a half-filled Justice League coloring book, I hadn’t made much of anything creative in my early adulthood. 

I’m not really sure why I had so conscientiously avoided being creative in those intervening years, but I had plenty of excuses at the time. I couldn’t come up with a good idea for a movie I could produce with a shoestring budget and substandard equipment, and that’s true***. 

I also conned a few people—myself chief among them—that I had moved on from wanting to make things****.

That one was wildly not true. Through politics, law school, and my early years with (DAY JOB REDACTED), I longed for getting back into—it feels crazy as I type it—trying to build a career out of being creative.

I suppose the truest answer to my motivations for avoiding the creative life for so long was that I was afraid of failure. The Adventures of Really Good Man didn’t take the world by storm, despite that great day just a little over fifteen years ago. If even the good days give way to mostly-failure, what’s the point in trying?

That’s just the point. That’s the one thing I should have learned way-back-when, and which I now think about at least a little bit every day. When you’re young, you might be asked what you would do if money is no object, and then told that should be your job, if you’re lucky. 

That’s not bad, but it doesn’t cover everything. I think everyone should ask what they would do if success were not object.

If you were destined to fail at something, would you still do it? If so, that should be your career. It is for me. Success would be nice, but that’s not why I’m here. Really Good Man taught me that. Feel free to watch the movie here on the site if you like, but if you don’t, that’s okay. I still would have made the movie even if no one ever watched it. Why? Because I make things.

*“It’s over an hour long. It counts.” ~ Me, to anyone who might have listened back then.

**We did a whole hullabaloo for the tenth anniversary, five years ago. Besides my more general thoughts in this week’s blog entry, my only new Really Good Man related thoughts on the fifteenth anniversary are a quiet marveling that the last five years have gone by about twenty times faster than the first ten did.

***Although I did make a less-than-valiant effort in the first few months after Really Good Man. The less said about that unfinished project, the better. Which, you know, probably means it will be the central topic of a blog post on this very space in the near, near future.

****See the above-mentioned political mischief.

Ay, There’s The Villainy: the difference between bad guys and *bad* guys.

WARNING: Spoilers follow for Downfall (2004) (and World War II, I suppose), House of Cards, and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Also, and I think we’ve had this discussion before, but if you haven’t seen The Wrath of Khan yet, I’m not entirely sure what you’re doing here.

I’ve been thinking about bad guys a lot lately. It can be a loaded topic.

In trying to put these thoughts into writing, I wanted to avoid politics, because how can you make a quantifiable statement on something like that anymore? We can generally regard someone as odious, but—and I’m not going to say any names here—that joker can still be beloved by (checks recent poling numbers) 38% of the population. 

But, I’m not so much interested in politics but much more to do with the structure of stories*. 

I’m not talking about antagonists, either. Antagony** is completely free of any sort of moral equation. In Downfall (2004), the antagonists are the Allied soldiers, while the protagonist is Adolf Hitler. It makes that movie difficult—to say the least—to watch, but it is the face that launched a thousand “Hitler reacts to…” videos, so there’s something to be said for that.

Although that might be a bit of an extreme example, it’s pretty clear there is a difference between being a bad guy and being a bad guy. Again, people of the internet, for the record, Hitler was a bad guy, emphasis on the bad. Hoped I wouldn’t have to draw that line in the sand, but we live in strange times.

Part of the insidious part of the inaugural season of Netlfix’s House of Cards was the question as to whether or not the protagonist—Congressman Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey)—is evil, or just not very nice. Sure, he has no scruples, no ideology, or sense of anything beyond his own temporarily thwarted ambition.

But he gets a lot done in a day, more than most of us. For a politician, that practically qualifies him for sainthood. It may not matter that he’s not entirely likable, but he seems like a guy who is good at his job, and has an—at times, distressingly—honest relationship with his spouse.

Before too long, it becomes pretty clear that Underwood is evil, but completely comfortable with his evilness. He revels in it. In fact, in the few scant moments that he flirts with something like remorse for the people he has mowed down in his quest for power, he seems the most lost. It’s not even a matter of having sympathy for his actions anymore, as it might have been when watching Breaking Bad’s Walter White (Bryan Cranston). In one moment, Frank is ruthless, and in another it became clear that he had long ago abandoned any semblance of a moral boundary. Five years later, we’re hardly shocked when he pushes his own Secretary of State down a flight of stairs. In fact, we’re surprised it took him this long.

But there are even some characters who are clearly intended to be the bad guy but take a little bit of time to fully live up to their title. Upon discovery by the crew of the USS Reliant, Khan (Ricardo Montalbán) is a man not necessarily consumed by revenge, but a slightly ruthless leader with a legitimate beef. Neither Kirk (William Shatner) nor any representatives of the Federation bothered to check on the exiled former inhabitants of the SS Botany Bay. That might be forgiven, but the Federation wasn’t the least bit curious about the aftermath of one of the planets in the Ceti Alpha system exploding, when their records clearly show that they left a whole bunch of people there***?

And had Khan gone through proper challenges—lodged a complaint with the Federation council, perhaps—he might have emerged as the hero of the piece. In short, he would have had a point. Even when he commandeers the Reliant and leaves its proper crew marooned on Ceti Alpha V, he was probably justified in his actions. However, by the time he engages in wholesale slaughter of the scientists aboard space station Regula I, he’s lost any moral high ground he might have had. No wonder Kirk had to scream out into the cosmos.

So, what finally turns an antagonist from merely the character at odds with the protagonist into the proverbial Snidely Whiplash****? Every character—including antagonists—are the hero from their own prospective. The true descent into villainy for characters—and I suppose, for people as well—is when they take their quest too far. 

There’s probably some kind of lesson in that thought. Although, for the life of me, I can’t figure out what it might be.

*What’s the difference between politics and storytelling? Good question. I’ve been working most of my adult life trying to sort that one out. I’ll let you know when I come to some kind of cogent answer.

**Copyright 2017, Party Now, Apocalypse Later Industries. All rights reserved, assuming I can reserve rights to a word that didn’t previously exist. I’m the wrong guy to ask; I was only in Law School for about forty-five minutes.

***After that little rant, I think we can all agree that its an absolute miracle that any human person agreed to marry me.

****I probably shouldn’t be able to refer to a cartoon character as “proverbial”, but again, we live in strange times.

Crisis, er, *Lunch* With Multiple Macs

Someone recently asked me what I thought my life would be like if I had made different choices, or if events had worked out differently. It’s a natural question to ponder, and I’d be lying if the thought hasn’t crossed my mind on occasion. For many of us, the answers to the all-powerful “what if” are vague and ephemeral. We’re just guessing at what our lives might be had fate turned out differently.

But what if we didn’t have to guess anymore? What if we could see our alternate selves? What if it were possible to talk to—and maybe even understand—them?

Here at Party Now, Apocalypse Later Industries, our R and D department has been hard at work developing technologies* designed to pierce the veil between realities so that we can glimpse the endless possibilities that lie within. In an effort to test this new technology, I have invited my various other selves to sit around for a confab. We sat around for ruebens and soft pretzels at Margaret’s Deli here in Tulsa (Earth 247-a, or “home” to you and me).

There is the Mac from Earth 409-Epsilon, who couldn’t quite achieve escape velocity from Law School. Still thoroughly unemployable, he’s managed to fall ass-backwards into a State House seat. Still, in hushed tones he refers to the State Capitol as a “gulag.” He wears an oversized belt buckle like a droid wears a restraining bolt. He orders six beers, and then asks what the rest of us want.

Seated next to him is the Mac from Earth 13254-Beta Blocker. He comes from a world where humans evolved from jellyfish instead of humans. He sits there like a blob. Occasionally, a bubble floats to the surface of his unusual form when he wants more iced tea. He also took the full-on leap into middle management at (JOB REDACTED). Oh, the things I might have done if I was born without a spine.

Continuing around the table is the Mac from Earth 14. He seems pretty successful, and successful in the way that I might like to see myself one day. He made it out to California, and started working in film. He’s even directed a little bit, but I’d rather not discuss the titles. They’re not good out-loud words, but sufficed to say, they get regular play late at night on Cinemax**. Truth be told, he looks kind of tired.

The final responder to my trans-dimensional invite is the Mac from Fireworld-7B. He wears camo, a bright red hat—the writing upon which I won’t go into in this blog—and he looks at our surroundings contemptuously.  I get the feeling that there isn’t a whole lot ethnic food on his world. How did this guy get to the party, you might ask? Well, if we look at the infinite nature of the multiverse, then I suppose there’s a version of me that matches this description as well.

…and I would tell you what was discussed, except that would violate the laws of inter-dimensional travel. That, and I just suddenly realized that the conceit of this piece would involve me writing dialogue for several characters that have the same name. I tried a couple of times to do it, but I only managed to confuse myself. So, I think I’ll keep our conversation—or gurgling, as in the case of jellyfish Mac—private. The point I would make is that, the longer I think about these other versions of me, the better off I think I am. I hope the rest of you are living the best version of your lives. If not, there’s always time to make a change. If you need a change of scenery, can I suggest a trip to Fireworld-7B? There’s a guy there that kind of looks like me who has plenty of room at his place, just so long as you don’t mind Ted Nugent records playing non-stop.

*Or, you know a six part full-cast audio drama. Potato, potato. Which, I’m once again realizing is an expression that has almost no meaning in text.

**Cinemax is still a thing, right? Well, on Earth-14, it sure is.

But my, oh my, how delicious the cheeseburgers will be: The Future of Cinema?

Saw Alien: Covenant this week. The movie flew under my radar for the longest time, despite my love for the first two films of the series, and my not-quite-hate for Ridley Scott’s previous re-entry into the Alien universe, Prometheus (2012). But, when the opportunity comes to take off work a little early and catch a matinee, I am helpless against the prospect’s siren song*.

So, much to my surprise, the movie is actually good. It’s not an earth shattering revelation of a movie—for such an experience this year, you’re probably going to have to begin and end with Jordan Peele’s debut masterwork, Get Out—but it certainly irons out some of the more forgettable moments that muddied reactions to Prometheus, extending the philosophical rumination on the origins of man in a bleak universe to its natural, psychotic conclusion. It manages to be the kind of head trip that Prometheus so desperately wanted to be, without unravelling into a pointedly turgid lecture more at home in a freshman philosophy course.

And yet, there’s a lot that’s even more familiar about the movie. An egg opens up. The egg spits out a creature that is equal parts spider and Georgie O’Keefe painting. A little guy bursts out of one of the human guys. The little guy grows bigger, uses it secondary head to eat a few other guys. Acid is spilled, airlocks are blown, and everyone goes back to cryosleep, perhaps never to wake up again. It’s the same old story, a fight for love and biological weaponry.

Yes, I’ve seen this movie before. I’ve also eaten plenty of cheeseburgers before**, but it is rare that you eat a cheeseburger that is exceptionally well made, just as it is equally rare that a fairly basic monster movie is made as well as Scott and his crew made Covenant.

And that’s when a borderline-depressing thought occurred to me: the franchise movie is dangerously close to becoming a legitimate form of artistic expression. Sure, this summer we’ll be waylaid by inevitable crap like The Emoji Movie and Michael Bay’s latest attempt to make a Transformers film that isn’t technically a violation of the Geneva convention. But Ridley Scott—a legitimate and respectable filmmaker—has made his plans known to spend a sizable chunk of his twilight years trying to make more Alien movies, an effort many of us can agree he near-perfected in his first attempt nearly forty years ago. Kenneth Branagh went in a few short years from forging full-text productions of the Bard to making Chris Hemsworth a household name in Thor (2011). Sam Mendes made Oscar-bait like American Beauty (1999)***, then made 1 1/2 great Bond movies. Christopher Nolan moved from indie darlings to Batmen, and continues his quest to put the genie back in the bottle with the upcoming Dunkirk. Hell, movie news sites were abuzz just a few months ago with talk that Aaron Sorkin took meetings with Marvel Studios for some unknown project.****

I suppose this all means that original big-budget movies are going to be harder to harder to find. For every Pacific Rim (2013) there’s going to be a Pirates of the Caribbean: One More and Johnny Can Get The Rest of His Wigs Out Of Australia. That’s pretty measurably bad, mainly because I was holding out for 2Dark 2Shadows: Basically Just Mortdecai With Different Opening Titles.

But, it could also mean that the big tentpole movies will be better, on average. That has to be good, right? I mean, an Aaron Sorkin-penned Iron Man 3 would be… Well, it’d have a lot more references to Gilbert and Sullivan than the rest of the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and that has to count for something, right?

*See my ill-advised venture to watch this years undeniably weird, yet nearly shot-for-shot remake of The Breakfast Club (1985), entitled Saban’s Power Rangers.

**Probably too many; I get it.

***We could go on an on about whether or not American Beauty is a good movie. It’d make a half decent blog, if it weren’t for the fact that my answer would be ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

****Yes, every individual named in that paragraph is a man. That’s another issue entirely, and one that Hollywood is working fairly slowly to fix.

Oops, I Did It Again: Assumptions when reading the News

News kind of sucks lately, except for those rare occasions when schadenfreude can turn bad news for others into something approximating good news for you. I’d go into specific examples, but for the life of me, I can’t come up with any recent ones.

Ahem.

That all being said, there is one reality to the way we read news that is—regardless of our age, our intelligence, or our political ideology—absolutely constant. We amass a reaction when we’re exposed to information, and it sticks. We don’t change our mind… like, ever. 

I’m not sure why we don’t do that. It may be just the way our brains are wired, but that still doesn’t account for everything. Where does our fear stem from? Do we all secretly harbor the delusion that we will one day be a serious contender for the Presidency and we can never be caught in the ignominious realm of the flip flopper*?

Maybe what is newsworthy only speaks to our entrenched sense of right and wrong, but maybe it’s more that most news stories are isolated incidents. Or, at the very least, subsequent details don’t change the nature of the original incident. Occasionally there are newsmakers that change in our eyes, but that’s only because a fall from grace is one of those story arcs that fits right into the news cycle. John Edwards, Ken Bone, and Mel Gibson can both attest to that much, and are starring—I think—in a new sitcom Oops, I Did It Again, airing this fall on CBS.

But it’s so rare—at least, it’s rare for me—for our reactions to a news story change at all. Such a transformation occurred with me this past week, and actually over the course of a couple of days. No, it doesn’t have anything to do with the subjects you might assume. It involves a cell phone, an internet date** and a movie. I thought it was worth a closer look.

It started with this news story posted on the AV Club entitled “Hero sues internet date for texting during Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.” The “facts”—for lack of a better term—are these: Two people go on a date. The woman texts during the film multiple times. In turn, the gentleman*** asks her to take the phone outside. She did so, and left him at the theater without a ride. He sued for the princely sum of $17.31, which—as the article assumes—is the price of the ticket and the inevitable Lyft ride home.

Now, maybe it was because the story used the word “hero” in the headline, but I was immediately on his side in the dispute. Movie theaters are sacred spaces, and this particular Austinite was speaking out for every jackass who wanted to pierce the veil of that sanctuary. A posse had been formed, and we were certain in our righteousness.

Our mob had support from on high, as well. As mentioned in the follow-up article Writer/Director of Guardians Vol. 2 James Gunn even weighed in on the matter, and his loyalties were clear. Now, the title of that follow-up is “Defendant in Guardians Vol. 2 texting lawsuit speaks out: ‘This is Crazy’.” With that title, and the ensuing comments from the serial texter, I may have shifted my perspective a little bit. Yes, pointedly breaking movie theater decorum is one of those things that I wish I could end singlehandedly. But is it worth litigation? I mean, social pariah status sounds right, but I don’t think the lady needs to hire legal counsel. I mean, lawyers are the worst****.

Then the—hopefully—final AVClub story on the issue came out. I’ll let you read it.

And then, I was completely turned around on the issue. First, the woman had every right to do whatever she needed to do in order to get out of the situation. Second, this guy has never been, is not now, and hopefully never will be owed anything by society or the rest of us trying to be a part of it. Third, a tabloid TV show had to be the voice of reason so that this story concludes and this guy can go back to rage-commenting on Breitbart and hopefully be removed from the mating gene pool for all time, forever and ever, amen.

The point is that we should all wait to hear every part of the story before we decide how we feel about it. Filtering all dubiously-sourced media***** is difficult enough, but be sure and get the whole story. People—and I’m shocked I have to make this explicit—might seem like they are on your side, but they probably have their own agenda…

That last part shouldn’t be inferred to to refer to any other newsmakers as of late, I assure you.

*Is that even a problem anymore? I don’t understand the world anymore, and the only comfort is that no one else understands it, either.

**I’m still not entirely sure how that would even work. Internet dating? Like with one of those TV sets that have a typewriter attached? The things people can do today.

***Spoiler alert, but it feels pretty gross using that word in reference to him. Keep reading, you’ll get there.

****Hi, dad!

*****Because somebody—who shall remain nameless—has made “fake news” a joke/gag reflex test as of late.

Guest Blog: "The Mysterious Case of a Popular Genre" by Jessica Coplen

Here we are with a new post from an up and coming author Jessica Coplen! Jessica is one of the premiere mystery enthusiasts in the world, and she knows her Poirot from her Marple. I'm excited to host this blog, and I'll be even more excited when Jess' novel Copper and Gold comes out soon. She should be pretty familiar with my level of displeasure if she doesn't get that book out.

If you want to see your own work in this space, take a look here. Big things are happening here at Party Now, Apocalypse Later Industries. Get on board!

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In 1841, Edger Allen Poe invented a new genre, the mystery. Before this, the idea of conflict was nothing new, from the battles in The Epic of Gilgamesh [2100 BCE] to the relationships of Pride and Prejudice [1813]. And proto-mystery stories can even be seen throughout literature, such as The Three Apples [One Thousand and One Nights, 9th Century]. But with Poe’s publishing of Murders in the Rue Morgue, he introduced the world to the concept of a detective story where the central conflict is “who did it?” Then in 1868, Wilkie Collins stepped up and presented the first full-length mystery novel, The Moonstone. Less than a decade later, A Study in Scarlet [1887] by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle introduced the world to Sherlock Holmes, the most portrayed literary character in the history of film and television.

In 1952, The Mousetrap, a murder mystery written by Agatha Christie, opened on London’s West End and is still in production today, making it longest running stage play of all time. On U.S. television, three of the top five longest running one-hour dramas belong to police procedurals [Law & Order; Law & Order: Special Victims Unit; CSI]. Law & Order is the third longest running U.S. show of all time, with the currently airing Law & Order: SVU well prepared to outpace its progenitor. A younger police procedural, NCIS, was the most-watched drama of 2016 for total viewership, and it was second overall. In fact, among the top ten network shows of 2016, five of them can be classified under mystery. 

So how did a relatively young genre become such a driving force of modern literature and cinema?

The answer lies in the relationship the audience has with the story. Most genres are passive towards the reader. Yes, the reader becomes invested in the plight of the protagonist, but the reader is only privy to observe. In a mystery, however, the audience is invited to participate. Throughout the story, clues are left for the reader to follow. They gather them up and attempt to solve the puzzle, racing to find the truth before the main character does.

When the reader gets to the big reveal, there is elation as they can shout “I knew it!” This sense of accomplishment is at the very core of why mysteries, procedurals, and crime thrillers have become some of the most marketable genres in both books and television. Even if the reader can’t guess the truth, or is incorrect, there is that connection of interaction. They played the game and lost, but they will learn for next time.

To this end, it’s not enough to simply lay out breadcrumbs in a short, straight line. The audience wants to earn their victory. Clues must be hidden, but also left in plain sight, so that when the reveal occurs, the reader can look back and see the case as it was built. Simply pulling a character or plot device out of thin air is dissatisfying and makes the reader feel cheated. How could they have possibly guessed the truth if they weren’t given access to all of the evidence? 

This can unfortunately lead to a severe case of genre savviness for the reader. If you pick up a copy of Doyle or Christie’s work, you’ll likely find it sounding very familiar, and you can guess the killer without even trying. This is because through their careers, they created or perfected the tropes that are often seen in today’s media.  Doyle loved a good distraction and also cemented the idea that every detective needs a nemesis pulling the strings. Christie played with everything from a locked room, to a broken clock, to hiding one crime among many.

This is especially difficult for modern visual media. A book can be as long as it needs to be, but a tv show or movie has a near definitive limit. If something seemingly random is shown, then that’s the big clue that tells the detective who the killer is. If the show bothers to hire an actor to deliver three lines that could have been passed on in exposition, that character is probably the killer. If you recognize that actor from somewhere, then they are definitely the killer. It’s gotten to the point where even Nathan Fillion, star of the mystery series Castle [2009-2016], admitted that if you watch the show, then you know who the killer is going to be.

This led to a shift from classic mystery to gimmick mystery and procedural mystery. The gimmick mystery still focuses the story on the mystery, but there is something else to tie things together. In the aforementioned Castle, it’s the fact that he’s a mystery writer and looks at every crime as if it was a story. Sue Grafton wrote the Alphabet Series novels where each book follows the next letter of the alphabet (A is for Alibi [1982], B is for Burglar [1985], etc). But as successful as both of these are, they are hardly new. Castle is a modern update of Murder, She Wrote which was itself a modern version of Christie’s Miss Marple series. And the Alphabet Series takes the title of Christie’s The ABC Murders [1936] and runs with it.

It’s not so much about rehashing an old idea, but modernizing it to match current society. This is what gave rise to the procedural mystery, where the question isn’t so much “Who did it?” but “How did they do it?” These are the books and shows that delve into the science behind both committing the murder and solving the case. In 1997, Kathy Reichs published Déjà Dead, in which a forensic anthropologist uses their knowledge of bones to solve the mystery. This led to a television series, Bones, which ran for twelve seasons from 2005 to 2017. CBS had a powerhouse with the series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation [2000-2015], and its two spin-offs. They spent a hefty portion of their hour showing and explaining the science behind crime solving. It was a more modern, and gruesome, version of shows such as Quincy M.E. [1976-1983]. This is all a throwback to Doyle’s Sherlock, who regularly looked to science, as he knew it, to solve a case—a trope established in Murders in the Rue Morgue.

In an attempt to combat genre-savvy overload, some series would take a different spin on the core questions in a mystery. The hugely popular Columbo [1968-1978; 1989-2003] would tell you from the beginning who the murderer was. The conflict lay in just how Columbo would be able to solve the case and prove the murderer’s guilt. A recent series, Motive [2013-2016] also tells you who the killer is, and the mystery lies in discovering the motive for the crime.

But through all the gimmicks and modernization, the mystery genre has one last trick up its sleeve: its characters. The crime solver in the story isn’t just some schlub who exists to further the story. They’re your partner, or your competition. The audience discovers the clues right along with the detective, both trying to piece things together. Their success is your success. After all, you can’t make the decision to open a drawer or ask a specific question. So, you trust that your partner, and by some extent the writer, is competent enough to observe all the clues, even if they don’t completely understand what they mean at the time. Then it becomes a challenge of who can figure out the puzzle first? There is no fun to be had when you’re playing against someone totally inept at the game.

This is where we go back to the beginning and see why Sherlock Holmes is so entrenched in popular media. He’s a smart, flawed, damaged character who is interesting in his own right, let alone when he’s solving a mystery. Readers have to invest in the characters the same way they do in other genres, but here, the detective’s world is divested of the genre. In a Romance or Horror, the character’s life is the sum of either finding love or trying not the die. The detective’s life can be whatever it wants to be, however it wants to be, so long as they have access to solve the mystery. This is why and how Sherlock has been reimagined in so many ways, from Young Sherlock Holmes [1985], to Sherlock living in modern New York [Elementary 2012-Current], to Sherlock being a cranky doctor [House 2004-2012].

Hercule Poirot, arguably the second greatest detective behind Sherlock, is very interesting to observe because he has what we would now call borderline OCD. A trait that was played up for laughs in Monk [2002-2009] and treated as a serious problem in Whitechapel [2009-2013]. It’s possible he also was on the autism spectrum, a trait that gave depth to the main character of Déjà Dead. The arm-chair detective—someone who isn’t specifically an investigator but finds themselves caught up in a case—was first seen in Poe’s The Mystery of Marie Roget [1842]. But it was Christie’s Miss Marple who set the standard with her little old lady with a sharp mind. In 1989, Cocaine Blues gave us Phryne Fisher, a single woman in 1920s Melbourne, Australia, who bucks social norms, taking down bad guys while wearing couture. And then there is Sam Tyler, the displaced detective of Life on Mars [UK 2006-2007], who is either in a coma, dead, or has truly travelled back in time. 

If any of this sounded intriguing, then it’s easy to understand why the mystery genre has taken off in such a short, relatively speaking, amount of time. People like to solve puzzles. They like to win. To cheer on their favorites.  Mysteries allow them to do all of that, whenever and however they want. And as technology and culture change, there is a plethora of possibilities in how this genre will grow with it. For as long as there have been crimes, there have been those trying to solve them. 

It’s actually quite the mystery as to why it took so long for someone to take the daily life of a detective and place it into words. One might even say that mystery was a genre hiding in plain sight.

Cheat Week, Volume 2, Part Three: The Final Cheat Week?

A few changes will be coming to this space, starting next week.

Yes, you'll still be getting weekly updates from Party Now, Apocalypse Later HQ. I'll still be posting blogs here, but I may not be posting as regularly as I had in the past.

That's where you come in. In the past, we've dabbled with guest blogs on the site, and starting next week, there will be more entries by you, faithful reader. That way, there will always be something new in this space to take in.

Want to write one? We pay. We pay big. Okay, we pay $15.00 per post between 600-1200 words. Send your posts* here:

What should you write about? We're interested in almost anything, but the kind of pieces that will really attract our attention are ones that are along the same lines as the posts we've already done. Deep dives into the stranger corners of pop culturedom, lefty screeds, and the occasional personal essay are all welcome.

Keep in mind that some of the terms involved include, but aren't limited to first printing rights. We'll get into all of that with the contracts that will follow. Have your people call my people**. We'll do lunch.

What are you waiting for? Get to typing.

*Posts should be in either .doc, .docx., or .pages format. Please no PDF's, as they are harder to copy over to different formats, and no .rtf, because to this day no one has successfully explained to me why .rtf is worth a damn.

**Keep in mind, also, that "my people" is a cat that has no opposable thumbs, a terrible telephone manner, and will only allow me to hold her, and that for only brief flashes of time.