Monday, August 29, 2011

does it ever get easier to call yourself a writer?


I got my first payment for something I'd written almost thirty years ago. It didn't involve a lot of dollars but I remember thinking at the time, 'Oh-KAY! Now I'm a REAL writer.' If I'd thought about it, I guess I would have assumed that I would never again have that horrible experience of not knowing what to say when someone asked me what I did. Like so:
People at parties:   Pleased to meet you! And what do you DO?
Me:                        I'm a ... well ... I work in a deli actually. 
People at Parties:  Oh, how utterly fascination, darling!
Me:                        (desperately) But I'm also ... well... I'm PRIMARILY ...  a writer. 
People at Parties:  A writer! Well! Now I'm really utterly fascination! Before I was pretending. 
Me:                        That's fine. 
People at Parties:  (intimately, leaning in) Have you written anything I'd recognise? 
Me:                        Um. (long pause) No. Probably not. 
People at parties:  (leaning out again) So, do you have good kabanas at your deli? 
Me:                         (double desperate) My short film did play on SBS three times. Very late at night. 
People at Parties:  What about your fish? Which market do they come from?

Since then, I have at times, made a living from writing. Yes, they were short periods of time and it certainly was not a grand living - nevertheless, there were no sneaky bar-maid gigs, no black-ops in retail. I have two books published by well-known publishing houses and one self-published. I edit and I ghost-write. I do web copy. Nevertheless, I still find it just as hard as Simon Keck does to reply unselfconsciously to that awful question, 'So, what do you do?' 
From Simon's blog:
The volunteer at the box office flashed me the usual puzzled expression I receive when I tell people my surname.
“Keck? That can’t be right.”
“So it’s not on the list?”
“No, I mean it doesn’t sound right. Is it a real word?”
“No, it’s a real name."
“Oh… Is it like your nom de plume?”
"Just the nom really”

Honestly, this is just gorgeous. Simon Keck is definitely a Real Writer.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Conan the Barbarian, Sean Hood, writer tells us what it's like to watch your film tank

You know, I never thought I'd find such inspiration from anyone with anything to do with any version of Conan the Barbarian...

When I first read this piece, I nearly cried. It reminded me so much of a dear friend who was recently chewed up and spat out by the cold and unforgiving film industry. He worked day and night for years to produce his film which has a well-known cast and an experienced director in a tried and true genre. Devastating marketing errors torpedoed the project from the day of its premiere and he still struggles to regroup as the DVD sits prettily on JB HiFi shelves all over the country. He's still working in the film industry ('practising his trumpet' as Sean Hood shares so poignantly here about his father)  but he's not yet ready to try out for the orchestra again.

I have failed big creatively - not Conan the Barbarian big - but many many tens of thousands of dollars of a publishing company's money on a book that turned out to be a critical success but not the commercial one we were all expecting. Failure's never fun.

Look, when I reposted this, I meant to only include a couple of paragraphs and then link to its original location as is customary. But all of it is so good, I couldn't choose! Besides, I hate the thought of chopping up a great article like this; it should be read all in one flowing go.

Follow the link anyway - there's a couple of great responses from other filmmakers there who also talk about their experience with falling down and getting up again.

LINK: What's it like to have your film flop at the box office?


When you work "above the line" on a movie (writer, director, actor, producer, etc.) watching it flop at the box office is devastating. I had such an experience during the opening weekend of Conan the Barbarian 3D.
A movie's opening day is analogous to a political election night. Although I've never worked in politics, I remember having similar feelings of disappointment and disillusionment when my candidate lost a presidential bid, so I imagine that working as a speechwriter or a fundraiser for the losing campaign would feel about the same as working on an unsuccessful film.
 
One joins a movie production, the same way one might join a campaign, years before the actual release/election, and in the beginning one is filled with hope, enthusiasm and belief. I joined the Conan team, having loved the character in comic books and the stories of Robert E. Howard, filled with the same kind of raw energy and drive that one needs in politics.
Any film production, like a long grueling campaign over months and years, is filled with crisis, compromise, exhaustion, conflict, elation, and blind faith that if one just works harder, the results will turn out all right in the end. During that process whatever anger, frustration, or disagreement you have with the candidate/film you keep to yourself. Privately you may oppose various decisions, strategies, or compromises; you may learn things about the candidate that cloud your resolve and shake your confidence, but you soldier on, committed to the end. You rationalize it along the way by imagining that the struggle will be worth it when the candidate wins.
A few months before release, "tracking numbers" play the role in movies that polls play in politics. It's easy to get caught up in this excitement, like a college volunteer handing out fliers for Howard Dean. (Months before Conan was released many close to the production believed it would open like last year's The Expendables.) As the release date approaches and the the tracking numbers start to fall, you start adjusting expectations, but always with a kind of desperate optimism. "I don't believe the polls," say the smiling candidates.
You hope that advertising and word of mouth will improve the numbers, and even as the numbers get tighter and the omens get darker, you keep telling yourself that things will turn around, that your guy will surprise the experts and pollsters. You stay optimistic. You begin selectively ignoring bad news and highlighting the good. You make the best of it. You believe.
In the days before the release, you get all sorts of enthusiastic congratulations from friends and family. Everyone seems to believe it will go well, and everyone has something positive to say, so you allow yourself to get swept up in it. 
You tell yourself to just enjoy the process. That whether you succeed or fail, win or lose, it will be fine. You pretend to be Zen. You adopt detachment, and ironic humor, while secretly praying for a miracle.
The Friday night of the release is like the Tuesday night of an election. "Exit polls" are taken of people leaving the theater, and estimated box office numbers start leaking out in the afternoon, like early ballot returns. You are glued to your computer, clicking wildly over websites, chatting nonstop with peers, and calling anyone and everyone to find out what they've heard. Have any numbers come back yet? That's when your stomach starts to drop.
By about 9 PM it's clear when your "candidate" has lost by a startlingly wide margin, more than you or even the most pessimistic political observers could have predicted. With a movie its much the same: trade magazines like Variety and Hollywood Reporter call the weekend winners and losers based on projections. That's when the reality of the loss sinks in, and you don't sleep the rest of the night.
For the next couple of days, you walk in a daze, and your friends and family offer kind words, but mostly avoid the subject. Since you had planned (ardently believed, despite it all) that success would propel you to new appointments and opportunities, you find yourself at a loss about what to do next. It can all seem very grim.
You make light of it, of course. You joke and shrug. But the blow to your ego and reputation can't be brushed off. Reviewers, even when they were positive, mocked Conan The Barbarian for its lack of story, lack of characterization, and lack of wit. This doesn't speak well of the screenwriting - and any filmmaker who tells you s/he "doesn't read reviews" just doesn't want to admit how much they sting.
Unfortunately, the work I do as a script doctor is hard to defend if the movie flops. I know that those who have read my Conan shooting script agree that much of the work I did on story and character never made it to screen. I myself know that given the difficulties of rewriting a script in the middle of production, I did work that I can be proud of. But it's still much like doing great work on a losing campaign. All anyone in the general public knows, all anyone in the industry remembers, is the flop. A loss is a loss.
But one thought this morning has lightened my mood:
My father is a retired trumpet player. I remember, when I was a boy, watching him spend months preparing for an audition with a famous philharmonic. Trumpet positions in major orchestras only become available once every few years. Hundreds of world class players will fly in to try out for these positions from all over the world. I remember my dad coming home from this competition, one that he desperately wanted to win, one that he desperately needed to win because work was so hard to come by. Out of hundreds of candidates and days of auditions and callbacks, my father came in....second.
It was devastating for him. He looked completely numb. To come that close and lose tore out his heart. But the next morning, at 6:00 AM, the same way he had done every morning since the age of 12, he did his mouthpiece drills. He did his warm ups. He practiced his usual routines, the same ones he tells his students they need to play every single day. He didn't take the morning off. He just went on. He was and is a trumpet player and that's what trumpet players do, come success or failure.
Less than a year later, he went on to win a position with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he played for three decades. Good thing he kept practicing.
So with my father's example in mind, here I sit, coffee cup steaming in its mug and dog asleep at my feet, starting my work for the day, revising yet another script, working out yet another pitch, thinking of the future (the next project, the next election) because I'm a screenwriter, and that's just what screenwriters do.
In the words of Ed Wood, "My next one will be BETTER!"

Saturday, August 27, 2011

The Incidental Bookseller

I am a bookseller.

But I'm not primarily a bookseller. My highest calling is that of Creative Genius but unfortunately the world hasn't yet realised this and so I'm forced to supplement my meager living by selling books. It's not so bad. Quite sexy in fact, at times, when the new stock comes in and there are all those luscious taped up boxes full of unsullied books wanting nothing more than to give up their retail virginity to me. To me! Ooh, it feels so GOOD! Suck it and see for yourselves, all you green eyed book monsters out there. A writer who is also a bookseller. Maybe there is a god after all.

Still, satiating as it can often be, being a bookseller is not an afternoon at the beauty spa. Selling books is hard work. It is at least as hard as writing them - this I know because I have done both - and it is most certainly much harder than reading them. Well, most of them anyhow. I'm sure we all have a difficult book in our past, the reading of which was the frustrational equivalent of having your eyes sandpapered out of their sockets by an angry soccer hooligan. But that is food for another blog...

Now, to the specific aspects of the general difficulty of selling books.

1) Physically, the most difficult thing is that BOOKS ARE HEAVY.  Carrying one lonely book from the kitchen to the front veranda to sit in the morning sun and sip a fresh made coffee is no great imposition, it's true. But now I want you to close your eyes and imagine carrying ten or fifteen of the suckers from the back of the shop to the front and then carrying the ten or fifteen that were at the front down to the back for no apparent reason except to participate in the mysterious ritual  of 'rotating the stock'.  When I first heard of 'rotating the stock', I tried cheating by just picking up a few books at a time and  turning a quick circle. But it didn't seem to help sales at all so I stopped doing that - I felt a bit silly.

2) Emotionally, the most difficult thing of all for a Creative Genius like myself is DEALING WITH THE PUBLIC. The Public, in case you didn't know, is a seething mass of crazy idiosyncrasy*. They want the impossible yesterday. When you offer to order it for them by tomorrow, they huff and they puff and they finally grudgingly agree to wait the extra day for whatever impossible thing it is that they can't live without. So you run around like a cat with a dead rat strapped to its tail and procure the preferred impossibility for them. You dutifully, smugly even, have the impossible sitting there waiting for them to pick up and while they're about it, give your ego a quick but hearty touch up. You know, say something like, "Holy shit! How the HELL did you ever manage to get this impossible thing for me so swiftly? Who are you really? SuperBookGirl? You're astonishing! You're fantastic! God, let me slip you an extra tenner just for being so damn clever" and other suchlike things.

Now keep in mind, this is only what I think should happen, what I am expecting to happen, what God has decreed should happen to all diligent book sellers who go beyond the call of duty for a customer who desires the impossible.

What actually happens is a good bit different. What actually happens is that they don't even bother to pick it up at all.

After a week, you put it back on the shelf sadly. Another week later and you feel glad when someone else buys the impossibility - it hurts too much to see it there, a reminder of your magic-making gone unappreciated. Another week later again and the original customer comes back and wants to know where their impossible to find book is. When you tell them that you sent it home with someone who actually wanted it enough to give you money for it, they call you names and walk out, vowing never to return. It's cruel and unusual and I don't know how I go on sometimes.

3) Finally, spiritually, the most difficult aspect of selling books, the roughest, the most soul destroying, is that you somehow have to stop yourself from standing around all day reading the stock. 


Or not.


* Why don't we just cut out the middle man and spell idiosyncrasy with a z? Idiosyncrazy. That says it all.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Everything is over-rated...

I remember once, a guy came into The Incidental Bookshop looking for a calligraphy set for his daughter. He was a funny man and we kind of chatted a little as I tried to find the set for him amongst the piles of new stock that came in the day before. "It should be in the craft section," I said.

"Oh, forget it then," he said. "I've already got craft."

I raised an eyebrow at him, not really understanding what he was saying.

"Craft. Can't Remember A Fucking Thing."

Haha.

I found his calligraphy set and as he paid, he said, "Calligraphy. You know, good handwriting is over-rated." I wasn't going to argue about it even though I happen to be heavily in favour of beautiful penmanship.

A philosophical look came over his face. "Well, just about everything is over-rated really. DEATH is over rated."

I raised my eyebrows again as though to say, "Oh, really?"

"Yep. I've been dead. It's not as scary as everyone makes out."

"Hmmm..." I said. "Did you see the white light?"

"It was more of a blue really," he said. He picked up his calligraphy set and left.

For the rest of the day, I was thinking, "You know, I REALLY want to know the rest of that story!" 

Monday, August 22, 2011

A Punk in the 21st Century: Part 2 - False Arrest

Continued from August 18th...

So anyway, Sir Punk's name is Jeremy and he's from Woollongong. He told me that he settled on buying Les Miserables because he played Gavroche in a stage production when he was a kid. We had a great little chat and before he left, I gave him the address of the blog so he could check himself out.

What I didn't give him amongst all the chit chat was his receipt of purchase.

Five minutes later, Janelle from The Other Bookshop came in and picked up one of the classics. She brought it over to me and said, "You didn't just sell a bikie looking guy one of these books, did you?"

Oops! They sell the same edition there and he went into their shop straight after mine. She saw him walk out with the one I'd just sold him and called Security. Oh dear. She hotfooted it back to The Other Bookshop and called Security again to say something along the lines of "Abort! Abort! Mission to apprehend the only punk in North Queensland has been aborted!"

I thought it was kind of funny until about five minutes later when up rocks Mark the Security Guard holding a familiar copy of Les Mis. "You didn't just sell a punk this book, did you?" Obviously, Janelle's message didn't reach them soon enough.

Jeez, YES! I did sell the bikie looking punk a copy of Les Mis. But look, if it's so unbelievable that he would buy the damn thing, why the hell would he nick it?

I said just that to Mark but in a nicer way and he said they were holding Punk Jeremy from Woollongong at the Police Beat office. I felt real bad about it; it was because I got chatting about the blog and Les Mis and all of that that I didn't get him a receipt and he walked out without a bag.

I'm known as a bit of a soft touch in the centre - I'm always saying things like, "I'm not that worried about locking up the shop - who's going to go to the trouble of breaking in to steal books that they couldn't even sell at full price in the first place?"

"Mate!" says Paul, the hardened Security Guy. "Mate, they'd steal anything! They'd steal the sole off your shoe if you walk too slow around here."

I don't think Mark really quite believed me that the guy had bought the book. I think he thought I was having a compassion attack and was lying to protect him. I said, "Hey, I took a picture of the man holding up his book!"

Mark said, "You what?"

I struggled valiantly to make my phone cough up the photo in question - usually I would wait to get The Princess Bookaholic to work my recalcitrant tech gadgets for me but she wasn't around and there was a Punk In Distress being unjustly detained.

I got the photo on screen finally and Mark cracked a smile as he looked at it. "Well, that's proof I guess," he said shaking his head at the oddness of me having a photo of The Punk.

When we got to Police Beat, Paul my other favourite Security Guy was waiting outside the door with a look like thunder on his face. Apparently Jeremy had been somewhat aggravated at being dragged into the cop shop and he and Paul had got their masculinities a trifle ruffled; they were in the midst of a little to and fro-ing involving terms such as 'dick-head' and 'fuckwit'.

Paul was NOT happy to be told he had to let Jeremy go. He looked at me and said, "He bought it???'

Yes. For the hundredth time. The Punk bought a book!

"Bullshit!" said Paul and grabbed the camera off me to have a look. "Ok. Give me the book."

I pulled it out of his reach. "Uh-uh."

"I'll give it back to him," he said in the same tone as he might have used to say I'll shove it up his arse. "I'll give it back to him, no worries - but first I'm going to keep him here for an hour so he misses his bus." He grabbed the book off me.

"You can't do that." I grabbed the book back. 

"Why not? He's being a cockhead!" He grabbed the book again.

"Paul! Because he didn't DO anything!" I grabbed the book finally and irrevocably, held it out of his way and headed into Police Beat. There sat Jeremy in the waiting room, leaning forward, elbows on thighs, gazing sadly at the floor. He looked up at me like I was his long lost mother. I bent over and patted his cheek and said, "Oh, I'm sorry about that! It's my fault I didn't give you the receipt."

As we left, Paul and Jeremy exchanged final little zingers. Dickhead. Prick. That kind of thing. Mark smiled and shook his head.

Outside, Jeremy said, "I was saying to them, 'The lady even took my photo!' They didn't believe me!"

"Well, I can't say I blame them - I don't believe I took it either."

What are the odds that the first time I talk myself into asking a stranger for his photo for the blog that I would need it within half an hour? What are the odds that the first time I have any business whatsoever with security regarding shoplifting that I would have photographic proof to back up a story that Paul was disinclined to believe?

Just before he went off with his book, now in a plastic shopping bag, he said, "I hate it that just because I look like I do, they think I can't read."

He's not worried that they might think he's a thug. Or that he might scare little old ladies with his blue and leopard print mohawk and his safety pinned ears. He just doesn't like it that someone would have the audacity to think he's illiterate! Bless his little cotton wifebeater.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Anderson Cooper almost pisses himself on camera whilst ...





... delivering a pun filled bit on how Gerard Departwo pissed himself on a plane.

I'd never heard of this guy before now I want to marry him and tell him jokes in bed for the rest of my life. This is flat out the cutest thing I've seen all week and best male giggle I have ever heard in my long career of checking out male giggles.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

A Punk in the 21st Century: Part 1


I was sitting in the Incidental Bookshop one time, tapping away on my laptop and thinking about how I should be be doing more with my blog, The Obsessions of an Incidental Bookseller, when into the shop walked a punk. 


Yeah, for real. Not the Clint Eastwood do-you-feel-lucky-today-well-do-ya-punk type punk. The Sid Vicious type punk. The Vivian-off-The-Young-Ones type punk. I thought to myself, "See? That's the kind of thing I need to put in the blog." I thought to myself, "In fact, I ought to ask this guy if I can take his picture for the blog." 


But I didn't expect I really would. I always think, when someone interesting comes in, that I should have taken their picture for the blog - but that's after they've left. I never actually do it. 


So then, the punk came right up to me and asked where the novel table was. I told him and asked if he was looking for anything in particular. Yeah. He was. Charles Dickens. Ha! There's fuel for your stereotype exploding machine, I thought to myself. I REALLY ought to take this guy's photo. 


I tried to take a long shot of him without his permission because, you see, it's just not that easy asking strangers if you can take their photo. It has the potential to sound really very creepy. But I just couldn't get a decent shot of him with my camera phone as he rummaged around the classics table. 


I watched him walk towards the counter with his book, still debating with myself - will I/won't I will I/won't I ask The Punk for permission to take his photo. It's hard. You're basically saying to someone, "My, don't you look UNUSUAL!" But what the hell! He did look unusual!


He slapped down Victor Hugo's Les Miserables on the counter and I said to him, "My, don't you look UNUSUAL!" No, I didn't. I said, "Hey, I keep a blog about the interesting people who come into my shop and you're one of them. Can I take a photo of you for it?" He gave me a nice smile and said, "Yeah, sure." 


"Hold your up book then," I said and snapped. 


I can't believe I actually decided to ask. I can't believe I actually took that photo. I can't believe even more that within half an hour, due to a bizarre set of circumsatances both he and I would be extremely glad I did!


to be continued...

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

But where is Tripitaka?


This is one of those things where first you think it's funny then you think it's disturbing then you think maybe it's cruel then you think, 'Holy shit, Batman - someone made a million dollars off this!'



Monday, August 15, 2011

Sunday, August 14, 2011

the war on terrible scripts...

God, I know how much it hurts when my bloody computer eats just a couple of pages of my blood, sweat and tears - that is my latest novel, book or script.  But this? THIS?


Beverly Hills police blow up screenwriter's laptop, script

LINK: Eddie Murphy may not be all that funny anymore but Beverly Hills Cops are still blowing shit up



Friday, August 12, 2011

When do we want it? NOW!

Well, having decided to start a union for bloggers - I've been racking my brain for a cool acronym - I discovered once more that there's nothing new either under the sun and more especially on the internet.

In 2007, The Bloggers Guild of America went on strike.

'What do we want? More webdings. You know, more pictures like the letters. ... And those computers in Minority Report...'

Ted. tedsworld.blogspot.com. President, Blogger' Guild.








my coming wealth...

How do I contact the blogging commission? You know, the ones that pay you for writing blogs? I need to put in my time sheet.

They owe me a lot of money. A lot! Not only did I spend all day on this little beauty, but I also have several other half baked blogs hanging around the place filling up cyber space for them, place-holding till the real thing comes along.

It's not that I mind doing it - I don't! It's just that there is a little thing called time that I don't have unlimited amounts of and if I'm going to be spending too much more of it filling up the empty spaces here, the Internet is going to have to get its check book out.