Tale of Two Train Wrecks

(Lessons from failure, with a brief digression)

C.S. reminded me this week that it's Mardi Gras season again. I know a lot of tourists see the holiday as little more than three B's: Booze, Beads & Boobies. They're right of course, but at the same time, sadly wrong.

Mardi Gras (or Carnival if you like) is a dance of death. It's a final and frenzied revelry before the symbolic death of Lent. (Well, technically, I seem to remember Lent is an extended symbolic suffering before the symbolic 'death' on Good Friday, but that doesn't change Mardi Gras's 'Gather Ye Rosebuds' metaphor.) And yes, we must die before we can be born anew at Easter. Denial. Death. Rebirth. It's a powerful and blood-soaked symbolism.

Of course, now the symbolism has changed, deepened. The city's death was real. Its rebirth is real. Every Mardi Gras since Katrina is a raging cry, a proof of life.

I only lived in New Orleans for a year and a half. I didn't know it then, but that was all the time the city needed to burn itself into my soul.

But I digress. Long story short: I got a bit homesick and rented a pair of New Orleans movies.

Sadly, those movies were The Big Easy and Heaven's Prisoners. Two of the most godawful train wrecks imaginable. Really. Ouch!

So as not to waste a valuable opportunity, I put my Storyteller's hat on as I watched. After all, we can learn as much or more from bad work as from good.

The Big Easy:

About 45 minutes in, I nailed the problem: SLEEPWALKING!!! Just about everyone involved sleepwalked through their patch. The script was okay. It had the mystery, the action sequences, the meet-cute and a little sex. There were the usual twists and reversals and by-the-numbers-surprises in the pacing. It was... okay.

The photography was... nice. In 1988 (or whenever), it wasn't hard to get a beautiful shot in New Orleans. You could shoot some nice stuff without thinking about it. And the DP (director of photography) didn't.

Neither did the director. He did some nice things with blocking (that's how the actors move around the set), but not enough imagination went into camera angle.

And the actors, don't get me started. Almost the entire cast treated their roles as a paid vacation on Bourbon Street. The extras all but waved at the camera and mouthed 'hi mom'.

But you know who shined? Ellen Barkin and John Goodman. Both were relative unknowns at the time, and by God, they got their chance and ripped into their roles with claws and teeth.

Lessons for Storytellers:

a) You can't phone it in.

b) An exotic setting and exciting events aren't enough.

c) A few clever moments aren't enough.

d) It's possible to make powerful work out of a stale plot, if you have the passion and the drive.

e) You CAN'T phone it in!

Heaven's Prisoners:

Almost the exact opposite of The Big Easy. Every frame of film showed a great deal of caring and commitment. The actors all brought their A game, as did the director. And the DP... wow. New Orleans has never looked so good!

So what went wrong?

They tried to be too faithful to James Lee Burke.

Burke's novels are gorgeous, elegiac, poetic and wise. They're everything that film is not. Yeah, the movie caught the steam rising from the streets after a summer rain. It caught the improbable wealth and grinding poverty. It even managed to convey the powerful swirl of self-destructive energies that threaten all of the principals, Dave included.

Sure, they made some changes. Fan favourite Clete Purcel was written out in favour of a now-African American (and more politically correct) Minos Dautrieve. Fair enough. What I seem to remember as a shootout in Algiers ended up somehow as a brawl on a 'speeding' runaway streetcar. (Old joke about the streetcar: if it passes you by, just walk on down to the next stop and catch it there!)

But they tried to keep the wrong stuff. They tried to keep Dave's PTSD dreams. His phone calls from the dead. They tried to stuff JLB's lovely narrative prose into the mouths of characters as dialogue. All of these are sequel. None of them are what film does well.

Lessons for Storytellers:

a) Use your medium. Novels, graphic novels, spoken word and film all have their own unique strengths and weaknesses. Learn them. Use them.

b) Without the right tools, passion just isn't enough.

Sure was a pretty movie, though...

Dead Horses Beaten, Some Not Enough

Just a few dead horses I want to whup on a little before I move on to other topics.

One final word on scene and sequel: to pep those sequels up, add a little sizzle. Don't just finish a scene and have your characters walk through steps 1-4. Here's some free stage-business to put in your tool box:

Talk it out. Disguise the sequel-steps in dialogue. Elmore Leonard uses this a lot, so did Eugene Izzi.

"You okay?"

"What do you think?" Frank rubbed his shoulder. It hurt like hell.

"Buncha guys in Halloween masks just tried to throw you out a window, is what I think."

"Assholes just wanted to scare me, is all. Fuck em."

"Maybe we should cool it awhile," Eddie said.

"You know we can't do that."

"So, we still going ahead with the plan?"

"Nah. Won't work now they're on to us. We need something new..."

The two men smoked in silence. Eddie watched the models on the infomercial pretend to use the abdominator.

Frank stubbed out his cigarette. He had that look in his eye.

"Your sister still work at the DMV?"

See, all the steps, in order! Or you might try...

Telling locale. Like eye-gouging, location is a cheap trick that WORKS. Put your character in a location meant to evoke their inner state and let the reader draw the parallels. Put your heroine in a big empty room, shivering in front of a window as she looks out at the cold dark night. Tell us her husband isn't home yet. When she picks up the scissors and marches into the closet, we'll fill in the blanks.

Sex and Violence. I could have just called this give 'em something else to do, but notice how I got your attention? Let your viewpoint character work through their sequel-steps during moments of intense other-business to keep the reader flipping pages. James Lee Burke uses sex scenes brilliantly for this, and James Ellroy does a bang-up job using violence.

Maybe the best examples are from the worst medium for sequel: the movies. Luke learns Darth Vader is his father in the middle of a swordfight. He feels the pain, sees the truth, loooks at his options (though we're all pretty sure he *won't* pick join me on the Dark Side) and chooses suicide. The near-climax of Grosse Point Blank, John Cusack's expository dialogue with his ex and her father is just sequel-through-dialogue (since it's all about *his* feelings, thoughts, options and decisions), made *extra* distracting with a gunfight!

My last word on sequel: how much you dwell on the emotion, the logic, the various options open is a matter of taste and context. The REALLY IMPORTANT thing is that your character emerges with a new decision about their next action.

###

Sloppy writing may in fact turn out to be a more serious problem - outright theft.

Now, personally, I don't see the literal transposition of out-of-copyright material as theft: sloppy, lazy and boring maybe, but not theft. The whole point of copyright is that the creator gets a period of time to enjoy the fruits of their labor, *then* that creation passes into the ongoing dialogue that is our popular culture. This helpful video explains it well, and points out how Disney is trying to bollix the whole concept. Ironic, considering uncle Walt built his early empire on out-of-copyright creations like Pinocchio, Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, etc...

But I digress.

My point was, Edwards may have been too lazy to put her research in her own words, but she wasn't breaking the law. Bad writing is bad, but illegal. This matter with the similarities between Savage Dream and Laughing Boy may be a different story.

For me, it's certainly a scarier one. At least some of that *may* have been unconscious.

Looking down those lists of similarities, I see a *lot* of poetic imagery. Good, 'sticky' imagery. Now, Edwards may have been sitting with old books, scissors and paste, gleefully assembling the latest tale with maniacal laughter, or Laughing Boy may have made a bigger impression on her than she knew. I know James Lee Burke once described a 'sky like torn plums', an image so powerful and evocative that it sticks with me long after I forgot which book it came from.

Lines like that can make you want to be a writer. On a bad day, they can make you want to give it all up. What they can't do is show up IN YOUR WORK. You have your own voice. It will be informed and influenced by those you admire, but it must be your own.

I think Ms Edwards's life is about to unravel. I foresee a future of lawsuits and disgrace. It's a harsh price to pay for laziness. Harsh, but maybe fair...