Frankbeaton.com

Found via Ivan’s forum.

INT. THE BAT CAVE - THAT DAY

BRUCE WAYNE is standing in front of a mirror, flexing his sculpted, shirtless torso.

BRUCE
Let's do this.

Cue AC/DC's "Back in Black." A series of quick shots show BRUCE gearing up: putting on the boots, slapping on the gloves, a brief glance across those beautiful pecs. Finally, there is no longer BRUCE WAYNE, but BATMAN standing before us.

BATMAN
Back in black.

Pyrotechnics erupt in the distance. Guitar solo.


More…

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I splurged last week and bought all three seasons of DEADWOOD on DVD (they’re pretty cheap on Amazon right now). I won’t bother telling you how brilliant the show is. If you’ve seen it, and “got” it, you already know.

One of the special features in the first season set is a 45-minute interview with David Milch, conducted by Keith Carradine, who played Wild Bill Hickok in the first few episodes. It’s an amazing interview, and Milch proves to be one of the flat-out smartest writers I’ve ever seen interviewed. His understanding of human behavior and social dynamics — and, by extension, character development — is absolutely mind-blowing at times.

At one point, the conversation turns to the nature of celebrity, and the way people feel toward famous people — that fine line between adoration and contempt. It’s a subject I’ve been really fascinated by lately (which will someday manifest itself as a story) and I was anxious to hear Milch’s thoughts on it.

In particular, they were discussing a scene in which Wild Bill, busy doing carpentry work with his new friend Bullock and enjoying a rare moment of peace, is interrupted by an annoying fan. Hickok is exasperated. He suffers the idiot for a minute, then he just can’t take it anymore and tells him to go away. Immediately the man, who had up to this point been heaping praise on Wild Bill, turns on him and screams “I hope you fucking die! And I hope it happens in this camp!” (Very similar to that scene in THE KING OF COMEDY, where the sweet little old lady wishes cancer on Jerry Lewis’s character after he apologetically denies her an autograph.)

Milch’s comment:

“Nathaniel West wrote, I thought, beautifully about that syndrome, and W.H. Auden, the poet, wrote an essay about West’s analysis of that syndrome, which he called ‘West’s Disease.’ It’s about people who, for whatever reason, are unable to turn wishes into passions in their life, and lacking that capacity, sit passively in mute outrage, anticipating disasters. They go to fires. Any sort of natural disaster attracts them. And in the absence of a natural disaster, they sometimes try and create disasters. And they hate the people whose lives, whether successful or not, are pursued with passion. At first they idolize them, then they want to destroy them. They want to appropriate the vitality of those people.”

Pretty damned astute, no?

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OUTLAW TERRITORY is a full color western anthology coming this summer from Image Comics. You will like it.

Here’s a page from my story, “Craftsmanship”. Art and colors by Turkish badass Melike Acar.

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You wanna really mess your brain up this holiday season? Decide you’re going to write a story that requires you to spend three straight days watching conspiracy documentaries for research. Then supplement that research by reading every crazy-ass You-Are-Being-Lied-To website you can find through a cursory Googling, taking copious notes the whole time. As far as the relative level of traumatization goes, this course of action ranks just below being raped by a monster.

So have a good Thanksgiving, everybody. If you need me, I’ll be cowering in the corner of my basement fallout shelter, sipping grain alcohol and weeping softly while I check for RF implants.

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Brilliant op-ed piece in the Times today by the co-creator of LOST:

I am angry because I am accused of being greedy by studios that are being greedy. I am angry because my greed is fair and reasonable: if money is made off of my product through the Internet, then I am entitled to a small piece. The studios’ greed, on the other hand, is hidden behind cynical, disingenuous claims that they make nothing on the Web — that the streaming and downloading of our shows is purely “promotional.” Seriously?

Most of all, I’m angry that I’m not working. Not working means not getting paid. My weekly salary is considerably more than the small percentage of Internet gains we are hoping to make in this negotiation and if I’m on the picket line for just three months, I will never recoup those losses, no matter what deal gets made.

Full article.

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Well, in short, I support it. (Come on, politically I’m just to the left of Lenin — what did you expect me to say?)

I’m not a guild member myself, as you may have guessed by my astonishing lack of film and TV credits. But as someone who can certainly see himself working in Hollywood at some point during his career, I do have a stake in the outcome of this action. Also, working in digital content distribution — as I have been, off and on, for the last five years — I can tell you right now that this strike is absolutely, 100% necessary. And now is the perfect time.

This is apparently the fourth time the WGA has had to resort to a strike, and those strikes are the reason writers are now fairly compensated for reruns (1957), feature films broadcast on television (1965), and home video sales (1988). This one is about Internet broadcasting and purchased downloads. Right now there are no residual payment models in place for digital sales (iTunes), ad-supported streaming (NBC’s HEROES), or video-on-demand (Vongo). These distribution methods unquestionably represent the future of home entertainment — industry pundits are already heralding the death of physical media in favor of online delivery systems in as little as 10 years — and if the studios (or, more accurately, the corporations who run them) have their way, the men and women who created that entertainment will get nothing. Which is exactly what they’re getting right now.

So, yes. I support the strike wholeheartedly and without reservation. Consider this me honking my horn and raising my fist in support. Or, what the hell, me picking up a sign and joining in.

You tell ‘em, Sally.

[For comprehensive, up-to-the-minute information on the strike, go to UnitedHollywood.com. Also, check out these awesome strike-related essays by Joss Whedon and Brian K Vaughan.]

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Found out this screenwriter I really like has a blog where he talks about writing, analyzes scripts, etc.

So I clicked the link.

The most recent post was a “be back soon” notice from the guy, saying he’d be away from the blog for a couple weeks because he was at Burning Man.

And just like that, I was no longer interested in hearing anything he had to say.

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About a year ago I got an email from a woman representing something called the Writers Research Group, asking me for permission to reprint my Alan Moore interview in some kind of literary journal. I said sure, signed the form they wanted me to sign, and honestly didn’t give it another thought until yesterday, when this cinder block of a book arrived on my doorstep:

I’d never heard of it, so my reaction was something like, “Huh. Cool,” but Jill, being much more familiar with the world of Academia than I am, completely froke out.

“Oh my God! You’re in the CLC! You didn’t tell me it was the CLC! This is… God, this is prestigious!”

Apparently it’s prestigious.

Apparently there are copies of this book in every decent library in the English-speaking world.

Apparently lots of betweeded lit professors require their students to use the CLC when writing their papers.

“College students are going to quote your article in their term papers, Frank, and cite your name in the bibliography section! This is awesome!”

Huh. Cool.

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Gaiman blogged this earlier, so some of you may have seen it already, but I have to post about it.

WIRED magazine challenged a large and impressive group of sf and horror writers to come up with six-word short stories. The whole list makes me smile, but these are my personal favorites:

The baby’s blood type? Human, mostly.
– Orson Scott Card

Gown removed carelessly. Head, less so.
– Joss Whedon

Computer, did we bring batteries? Computer?
– Eileen Gunn

and

Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time
– Alan Moore

*****

Sounds like fun. The comments section is open, writer-buddies. Let’s see what we come up with.

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Thinking a lot about writing lately. The theory of it. Now that my writing partner Matt has moved to Portland, I’ve been talking about it, as well. May as well start writing about it. So bear with me while I try to figure out what the hell I’m doing.

Saw a short documentary about J-Horror on IFC tonight. Brief history of Japanese horror, discussion of some of the big tentpole films in the genre, interviews with important directors and film historians — pretty standard stuff. The most interesting part was a discussion about the fundamental differences between Japanese and American horror, and how those differences reflect the religious beliefs of each culture.

In Western (read: Judeo-Christian) horror, things are extremely straightforward. Light is good, dark is bad. The Devil has a face, and it’s more or less like ours. Plus, in Western horror, there’s the promise that if you say the right words or perform the right action, you can banish the Devil — or at least trick him.

The predominant religion in Japan, Shinto (which I freely admit I know little about), tends to view the spirit world as something huge and rather beyond our ability to comprehend. Shintoists also believe that ghosts and spirits are everywhere — thousands of them, millions of them — and all we mere mortals can realistically do is hope that the good spirits do whatever it is they do to keep the bad ones at bay. That feeling of helplessness and incomprehension is really the hallmark of J-Horror — the idea that ghosts, demons, etc., are going to do whatever the hell they want, and you don’t have a hope of even understanding it, much less stopping it. It’s the same idea that makes Lovecraft’s stories so unsettling.

Okay. I’m too tired to write a conclusion. Luckily this is my blog, so I don’t have to. You may now commence with calling me names for not understanding how Shinto works.

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