I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script

Josh Olson was cornered at a party by a young man and his girlfriend. The young man recently spent a year of his life writing a screenplay, and was about to submit it to a contest or whatever--but he wants a professional opinion. Is this any good? Who better to ask than someone who's been nominated for an Academny Award for his work on A History of Violence, right?

Olson knew he should have said no. He barely knew the guy but he knew the girlfriend, and so took the 2-page synopsis, read the crap, and tried to thoughtfully put down words on paper. The e-mail took him longer than several movie rewrites, and later, another mutual friend comes up to him. "I heard you pulled a dickmove on Whatshisface."

This is why Josh Olson--and any sane writing professional--will not read your fucking script:

Which brings us to an ugly truth about many aspiring screenwriters: They think that screenwriting doesn't actually require the ability to write, just the ability to come up with a cool story that would make a cool movie. Screenwriting is widely regarded as the easiest way to break into the movie business, because it doesn't require any kind of training, skill or equipment. Everybody can write, right? And because they believe that, they don't regard working screenwriters with any kind of real respect. They will hand you a piece of inept writing without a second thought, because you do not have to be a writer to be a screenwriter.

Screenwriters never really get the respect they deserve. Olson relates an anecdote about Picasso, who was approached by a guy at a party and asks Picasso to draw on a napkin and he'll pay him. Picasso does it, hands the drawing to the man and asks for a million dollars. "What, but it took you thirty seconds to do that!" Picasso shrugs, "Well, it took me fifty years to learn to do that in thirty seconds."

The anecdote underscores the fact that writers are never really perceived as professionals. Olson compares this with asking a house painter friend to paint your living room on his day off, or asking a surgeon to take out your gall bladder over coffee. Writers get paid to read someone's work and give their professional opinion on it. Nobody really just wakes up and goes to the gym, and suddenly realizes, "But, oh, I can do a triple bypass on someone right now." The same way with writers.

Elsewhere, a really bizarre internet true story by Olson: The Life and Death of Jesse James.

Campbell's Sticky Tape Soup

Eddie Campbell with God: "I knew it! All of existence is held together with paper clips and sticky tape."


While waiting in the dentist's office last weekend, I realized I didn't bring any books with me. I snuck into the Powerbooks branch downstairs and went through their sale pile. And there, waiting for me was a copy of Eddie Campbell's The Fate of the Artist (New York: First Second Books, 2006). At 85% off and Php119--and a first edition at that--it's a steal and very much worth it. Managed to finish it over two dental visits.

The book's title page declares that this is "an autobiographical novel (1) , with typographical anomalies (2), in which the author does not appear as himself (3)."

What this means:

(1) The author has suffered a kind of "domestic apocalypse." He has disappeared, and what's left on the floor of his storage space was this scrawled picture of god as a smiley. We hear about Campbell's various neuroses through vignettes told by his daughter Halley, old Honeybee comic strips which portray the travails of a married couple from the last century, and other passages which portray the author as a hypochondriac, depressive, obssessive artist. But then again, which artist is not like that?

(2) The book is a collage of sorts. You have the aforementioned Honeybee strips, the interviews with Halley, the brief prose passages which are bookended with found objects, and sections which look into the tradition of comedy, humor and obscure artists, and even a comics dramatization of O. Henry's "Confessions of a Humorist" featuring Eddie Campbell who is not exactly played by Eddie Campbell.

(3) It's not Eddie Campbell because there's a guy named Richard Seigrist who appears as Eddie Campbell.

It's a very playful book. At 96 pages, it's a short one, but manages to give us a sustained meditation on "the lonely demands of art amid the realities of everyday life."

You can read an excerpt here.

The Ex-Future First Lady

This comes from the Professional Heckler and reminds me so much of the stories I heard before:

Top 10 Messages Left on Korina Sanchez’ Answering Machine

No. 10: Hello ‘nak, si Nanay Cristy Fermin mo ‘to. Isaisip mo sa tuwina, ang Poong Maykapal ay hindi nagbibigay ng pagsubok na hindi kakayanin ng Kanyang nilalang. Malalampasan mo ‘yan ‘nak. Teka lang, ‘nak, ‘yong pangako mong sobre, ‘di ko pa natatanggap.

No. 9: Hi Korina, sa ABS-CBN newsroom ‘to. We’re all here! Guys, altogether now. One… two… three! Ang saya-saya!

No. 8: Hello Korina, Cynthia Villar here. I don’t expect you to believe me but… ramdam kita. Andun ka na eh! Todo-effort ka na eh! Nag-leave ka pa nga ‘di ba? ‘Tapos, biglang uurong?! Ang sakiiiiiiit! Ang sakit-sakit! Tisyu! Penge akong tisyu!

No. 7: Hi Ma’am, si Abby po ito, secretary ni Dr. Palayan. Gusto pong malaman ni Doc kung gagamitin n’yo pa ang luma n’yong pisngi. Naiwan n’yo raw kasi sa clinic last week.

No. 6: Korina, this is Mel. Yup, Mel Tiangco. Wala lang.

No. 5: Hi Korina, si Sharon ‘to. What you said about Kiko was hurtful. You were never his partner. You are not his wife! Kaya ‘di mo siya nirerespeto. Madrasta ka lang! Madrasta!

No. 4: Hi friendsheeeeeep, this is Kris. Alam mo, I heard your interview sa radio last week and in fairness to you huh, may potential ka sa drama. Promise! Sabi ko nga kay Ms Charo, i-guest ka sa MMK eh. O sige, need to go. Nangungulet na si Josh eh. Humihingi ba naman ng one gallon of ice cream. Gosh, he’s consumed two gallons already ‘noh. Ahah-ahah-ahah! Bye sis! And give my regards to Vice President Mar.

No. 3: Korina, it’s Conrad De Quiros of Inquirer. I just realized, I might have erred in saying that Mar was power hungry. He’s not. But you are!

No. 2: Hon, alam kong nandiyan ka. Alam kong nakikinig ka. Sagutin mo naman ang tawag ko oh. Bakit ba ayaw mo ‘kong kausapin? Ilang beses na ‘kong nag-sorry sa naging decision ko ‘di ba? ‘Tsaka sabi mo sa press, okay lang sa ‘yo ang nangyari. Hon, hello? Hon? Tang-ina hon, ‘pag ako napikon si Noynoy ang papakasalan ko.

And the No. 1 message left on Korina Sanchez’ answering machine…

Hello Korina! Apologies for what happened last week at Club Filipino. Nagmamadali kasi ako kaya nabundol kita. Siyanga pala, si Karma ‘to.

And from Good Times Manila, news about the "strange guttural noises" from Korina Sanchez's house.

Bibi on a Mission

A bunch of stories that we took up in Creative Writing 10 recently all had to do with stories of childhood and how they handle time: Snow by Julia Alvarez, Reconnaissance by Tara Sering, Forever Overhead by David Foster Wallace (no photo), and Pet Milk by Stuart Dybek (also no photo.) So the class was divided into four groups, one for each story, and they had to figure out the story's plot and timeline and present it to class.

Since the reporting happened after the long break, I didn't really expect a spectacle, but was pleasantly surprised to find out that all the groups were huddled and ready to go. There should be four pictures, one for each story, but the kids with cameras in the class managed to "accidentally" delete the photos so these are the only ones I have.

If you're part of this class and you *do* have photos, please share with the class. Thanks.

The rest of the album is here.

Mixed Bag

Since I opted to check out the Manila Design Week's Public Art exhibit at Bonifacio High Street on Saturday, was only able to make to MCC on Sunday. Got there early enough--not too many cosplayers were around yet. Went around the venue. There were too many stalls selling toys, and not enough stalls for comics. The stalls for comics were relegated to the very back of the hall, beside the pancakes and the siomai. And by 3 in the afternoon, the place was overran by people in costumes. Not that there's anything bad there, but my friend Carl and I were asking ourselves: If it weren't for the cosplay event, will there be as much people in attendance?

Here's my loot from the recently concluded Metro Comic Con held at the Megamall last August 8 and 9:



There were some reissues which I'd seen from the last two Bahay ng Alumni Komikons. "The Last Datu" by Trese team Budjette Tan and Ka-Jo Baldisimo was interesting. Also got me thinking: Is this somehow part of Trese's mythology? "Aswang Files" won the Best Indie back in 2006. They still haven't come up with Issue # 2, which is bad because I thought Issue # 1 was interesting. The manga influence was quite clear on that one: boy gets beaten up by bullies, a mystery in a tunnel under a bridge. Reminded me of the Inio Asano's Nijigahara Holograph and moody Korean horror movies.

Kill the Vampire

Entertainment Weekly's Christina Amoroso asks Neil Gaiman how vampires became such a viable cultural commodity through the years, from monsters they have become anti-heroes. Gaiman thinks it has a lot to do with what vampires get to represent. Bram Stoker's vampire was more about repeated seduction in the Victorian era. The next great vampire reincarnation happened when Stephen King wanted to do a vampire story in a small town in Maine--Salem's Lot. The vampire is almost always "The Other," always about "people exiled to the fringes." This is the story of every vampire in popular culture, from Anne Rice's melancholy blood suckers to Sesame Street's The Count. "Vampires," Gaiman thinks, "should be outsiders. They should probably be sexual outsiders. They need to be charismatic. They need to be elegant. They need to be attractive in some way. But they aren’t buying nice suits and calling the shots. And if they are, the book is about something else."

Gaiman thinks that vampires in fiction arrive in waves. From the Victorians to Stephen King and Sesame Street, they have remained viable as figures in ficion because of the constantly renewed figure of the outsider. But Gaiman posits that what changed the game about vampires in fiction, and what gave them a new lease on life and death was AIDS: "You hit the early ‘80s, and suddenly you have something in the blood that is an exchange of blood that kills and is altogether fundamentally about sex. And vampirism essentially came out of the closet as a metaphor for the act of love that kills. Stephen King once said, using the Erica Jung quote, that vampirism is the ultimate zipless f—."

But now that vampires are everywhere, most notably the extreme popularity of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series, Gaiman thinks that the wave reached its crest and vampires should go back and hibernate in their coffins for another 20 to 25 years. "Come out the next time as something really different, that would be cool."

The gazillions of teenage girls who find Edward Cullen cute will surely hate this, but I tend to agree with Gaiman. Someone should drive a stake on the sparkly Cullen dude with the weird hair, and come back out when he has a nice hair day. Curiously, I Googled "Kill Edward Cullen" for an image to accompany this blog post and there are 247,000 hits and 307,000 web results. So I'm not alone in this. But for the sake of diplomacy and to avoid getting flamed by the Edward & Bella fans, I opted for a classic Dracula-with-a-stake-through-the-heart pic.

How to Disappear

Frank Ahearn helps people disappear. For 20 years, he had worked as a "skip tracer," a private investigator who specialises in finding people. He later realized that he could reverse his strategies and instead of finding people, he could make them vanish without a trace.

Ahearn outlines three key steps to a successful disappearance:

First, destroy old information about yourself. Call your video store or electricity company and replace your old, correct phone number with a new, invented one. Introduce spelling mistakes into your utility bills. Create a PO Box for your mail. Don’t use your credit cards and the like. Then, create bogus information to fool private investigators who might be looking for you. Go to one city and apply for an apartment. Rent a car in another one.

The next, final step is the most important one. Move from point A to point B. Create a dummy company to pay your bills. Only use prepaid mobile phones and change them every month. It is nearly impossible to find out where you are unless you make a mistake.

The rules are easier to follow if you are self-employed, but harder if you're on a payroll, like if you're a bus driver or teacher. (Drats.) Over the years, Ahearn's clientele included witnesses to a crime, women who are stalked (for this, he works free of charge), and a lot of men in their forties or fifties who want to be free of their responsibilities and start over somewhere, as an entirely new person. Ahearn explains that "There is something romantic about the idea of starting a new life and walking away into the sunset, but for most people it’s just a daydream." Of the ten people who inquire about his services, only one will seriously pursue it. And like a doctor, Ahearn cannot get attached to any of his clients. Very few them will afford Ahearn with updates of their new lives. He gets the occasional e-mail though, and always a different e-mail each time. They have learned their lessons well.

Sharks Playing Ball

A team of scientists attempted to measure the pain of rejection. It has been a long held belief that such pain is unquantifiable--or perhaps something that targets emotion, ego--but this time, the scientists rigged a system that included small electronic doodads and a group of people playing ball. The ones who were "outed" from the game eventually felt "rejected" and there was a corresponding hit on the gadgets attached to them.

So now there's proof that the pain of rejection is undeniably also physical--gut being wrenched out inch by inch, the bread knife stabbed into one's back and pierced the heart and turned approximately eighteen degrees to the left.

Bonnie Kozek even has an interesting aside to the scientists' findings: "'Why' does rejection hurt? Their concluding theory is that 'rejection' affects the brain because it is deeply-rooted in our DNA. Long ago, mammals relied on social bonds to survive. Broken social bonds put survival in peril. Mammals therefore feared any diminishing of these bonds. And this congenital fear is so entrenched that today’s mammals still see any form of exclusion from social connection as a direct physical threat."

It's not just a physical manifestation of pain then. Even more scary for the mammals of today is the pain of not being part of the game being played out there to celebratory shouts in the field.

Whose Memory Is It Anyway?

Karl Taro Greenfeld has a problem: "Had some of my earliest memories actually been implanted by reading my father's book about our family as a very young child?"

In writing his memoir about growing up with an autistic brother, Greenfeld kept comparing his own memory with that of the already published version--his father's books. He says: "Many of us have recollections that turn out to have been created or nurtured by family photos we have seen or stories we have been told. But most of us aren't writers setting down a life's story. One could argue that the more fortunate memoirist is the one who doesn't have another writer also weighing in on his childhood, who doesn't measure his own memories against those of some external, recorded source."

In a way, Greenfeld is writing his memoir with the conscious effort of not merely echoing the story that has already been told. Later on, he realizes that memory is a tricky thing: there's same game of catch and yet his father's account was similar and in other ways different. Then incident about a graduate student who spanked the very young Greenfeld when he threw a tantrum over dinner. This he remembers with clarity, but his parents cannot recall it ever happening. In the end, he resolves that "The memoirist's ultimate responsibility is to himself, his own version of his life, his truth and reality. If he does not stay faithful to that story, then why is he bothering to write it at all?"

Pomo: A Few Notes

From Megan Fox and cars to Judd Apatow's movies, it seems like anything and everything can pass for postmodern these days. Chris Daley weighs in on the abuse of the use of the term "postmodern" in mainstream media: "When the term “postmodern” is used in major international publications, does it bear any relation to its theoretical roots, or has it been hijacked as yet another hot, empty signifier, like 'iconic' or 'staycation'?"

And Daley should know what she's talking about, as she "pays hundreds of dollars a month in student loans for a degree that certifies she has studied postmodernism extensively ." Ah, the indignation of the Comparative Lit major.

Daley gives us a few things to consider about the term postmodern:

1. It was first used as early as the 1870s, but theorists Jean-François Lyotard and Frederic Jameson are generally credited with making the term "postmodern" popular.

2. When used in an academic setting, “postmodern” usually refers to a sense of style featuring “disjunction or deliberate confusion, irony, playfulness, reflexivity, a kind of cool detachment, a deliberate foregrounding of constructedness, a suspicion concerning neat or easy conclusions.”

3. Postmodernism is more concerned with process than product. This can be seen in the meta “[blank] about [blank]” construction that often identifies the “postmodern”: art about art, writing about writing, architecture about architecture, etc.
It seems like postmodern is the go-to term when you're not sure what else to say but you want to sound smart. I.e., the actress Megan Fox describes her next project, a film written by Juno's Diablo Cody, as "really dark” because Cody’s “like a postmodern feminist or whatever.” Since nobody's really sure what it means anyway, you're free to use it. Ta-dah. Instant smartness.

Elsewhere in the L.A. Times, to ensure that you know what you're talking about when you're blinding us with jargon, they've prepared a list of 61 essential postmodern reads. It comes with a cheat sheet of qualities that pomo writing has.



The list includes David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest (Yep, pomo, that one) but also Shakespeare's Hamlet and Tristram Shandy, which again leads us to ask: How can a text written before the modern period ever be postmodern? (And a tangentially related question: How can anyone say that one of the things they're looking for in a date is "He must be postmodern?" But then again, maybe this is a gay guy thing.) What the hell does that mean? This is why Postmodernism (and I'm tempted to say "and everything connected with theory") is the Root of All Evil.