Author Archives: Bob Evans

Little Shop of Horrors and the Importance of Knowing Your Ending.

Last year I picked up the blu-ray release of the musical film Little Shop of Horror and with than I owned copies of every film version (Original, Theatrical Cut, and Director’s Cut) of the story. The original film was a very low budget affair, written and shot in just a few days. It is notable for the first film appearance of screen legend Jack Nicholson, it is an amusing dark comedy. The film spawned a stage musical and that begat a film adaptation of the musical. When Director Frank Oz screened the film for test audiences they hated the dark ending and he rushed to film and edit a ‘happy’ ending for the movie. The movie never did big box office though it found a small devoted following and the original ending remained unseen at large until this blu-ray release. Now it is possible to view both versions, theatrical and Director’s cut, judging the merits of each. Spoilers follow, naturally.

In the stage and Director’s Cut the principal character die and the monstrous blood eating plant wins, taking over the world. Frank Oz has said that the film taught him the power of the close up and that audiences after living so closely with the characters were unforgiving of their callous deaths, but I think he learned the wrong lesson when they rejected his first cut. It is not the close ups that doomed his vision, but a lack of commitment to the ending and what that ending demands from the characters throughout the story.

If you purchase the original motion picture soundtrack for the musical there is a key song that differs quite a bit from the film version, The Meek Shall Inherit. During the course of the song the main character Seymour realizes that achieve his dream and maintain his sudden financial success he will have to participate in an unending stream of murders and mutilations. At first he rejects this, bt then quickly reverses himself believing that without riches he can never hold on to the lobe of the woman he adores. Committing himself to a future of murder he signs away his conscience as the songs intones ‘The meek are going to gets what’s coming to them.’ The song Foreshadows that Seymour will pay a terrible price for his decision. In neither version, the Theatrical or Director’s cut, is this crucial character turn present. Without this the character’s death at the end is needlessly cruel.

I remember reading in interviews at the time that the production had admitted to filming the deaths and murders in such a way to keep Seymour innocent preserving an alternate ending where he does not die, but they makes the entire premise weak.

As a writer I must know how my story is going to end before I write it. It is in the ending that the themes and plots are resolved. If your story has several different ends possible then your themes are muddled and you are less likely to strike a strong emotional cord with your readers or audience.

One other aspect also seriously damages the Director’s Cut ending – seven minutes without a single named character is the climax of the film. Everyone we have followed and cared about is dead and for seven very long minutes we are treated to a kaiju movie without a plot or a purpose. People engage in a story by engaging with the characters. Remove the characters and you left with very little.

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Latest Blu-Ray Acquisition

So people have seen me write about this film before, and I will not defend it as a well made or well written film. However, Xanadu is my personal emotional favorite film. There are wonderful associations tied to seeing this film in the theater, I adore the music, and the theme that Dreams Don’t Die, We Kill Them is a guiding principle for me. Now, just this week, we got a blu-ray release. Spare on the bonus materials, but with lovelyt picture and sound. That is enough to make me happy.

1-Xanadu (1980)104643_f

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Thoughts on Death

Nothing terribly deep or novel here, just a few meanderings on me and my relationship with that terminal dirt nap.

All of my life thoughts of death and mortality occasionally surfaced into my forebrain. Of course, there are the usual childhood incidents, such as when your puppy dies, that can provoke contemplation, but there have also been other instigating factors. I am not talking about the passing of my father when I was a child; though that naturally impacted my thoughts and mental balance considerably.

Even before that, I can remember thinking about death and thinking specifically about my own demise. Strange and unusual thoughts for a child.

One example can be recounted in a simple prayer I was taught.

Now I lay be down to sleep

I pray the lord my soul to keep.

Should I die before I wake

I pray the lord my soul to take.

My parents raised me as a Southern Baptist. (Time has shown that it did not take and I am a religious non-believer now who thinks that all religions look equally silly from the outside.) Reciting that simple rhyme at night sometimes sparked my imagination.

Could I die before I wake? Did that sort of thing really happen? Where people just go to bed and for no reason never wake up? I can remember clearly have nights where I feared going to sleep because it was possible I would never wake up.

It had to be possible, it was right there in what I was saying.

Did the prayer start the thoughts or did I have an innate fascination with the end of life?

I can’t say. The details are lost to me in the far reaches of hazy and untrustworthy memory.  Nature or Nurture I will never know but still, to the day, I don’t react the same way as most people when I hear of a death.

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Post Convention Update

Well, Condor XXIII went very well. Despite a nasty and persistent cough I made it through all my panels. I am happy with how they all turned out and there were loads of good discussions.

Now a few days out the cough has nearly disappeared, just in time as yesterday I had a dentist’s appointment. Missing a few molars I need bridges and we have now started that work. I am currently wearing my first temp bridge and my mouth is getting used to the new architecture.

Work proceeds on the outline for my new novel. The outline alone is now more than 5600 words long. In addition to that I am thinking about trying to knock out a few short stories.

I went in my library of short I had written about 2002 and shocked myself with just how far my prose has come. Man, I was in love with the past progressive tense. Many critiques will call that passive voice, but technically it is not, though both weaken your prose and its impact.

 

Anyone know anything about StokerCon?

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Condor XXIII – This Weekend

So I will be participating at San Diego longest running SF convention, Condor, this weekend. If you are in the area drop by, it is a small but fun conventions. Here are a list of pnael evets you will be able to find me taking part in.

Friday

12:00 p.m. The Internet Generation: For better or for worse, the Internet has profoundly changed our lives. Some say it’s turned us into media zombies who go into withdrawal without our social media fix. Just how addicted are we, anyway? Windsor Rose (D. Gerrold, R. M. Evans *, B. Benson)

1:00 p.mRPGs as Fanfic: Basing a campaign on your favorite book, comic, or movie. Brittany (R.M. Evans, J. Swycaffer*, W.H. Stoddard, K. A. Murphy)

2:00 p.m. The Bromance of Star Trek. Yes, Kirk was the Captain and Spock was the First Officer, but wasn’t a lot of the series just a buddy adventure show? Brittany (J. Trimble, R. M. Evans.)

4:00 p.mArt, Eroticism & Censorship: Implied and explicit sexual content in the visual arts. When is it a valid theme and when is it exploitation? Is there ever a justification for censorship, or for rejecting the claim that something is “art”? Clarendon (S. Dawe, L. Maudlin*, R. M. Evans.)

Saturday

2:00 p.mWorkshop: Read and Critique headed by Robert Mitchell Evans Bring 1500 words of a story. Le Sommet. 2hr.

 

Sunday

11:00 a.m. Crossing Genres:  Science fiction westerns, horror romances, fantasy mysteries. Crossovers are hot these days, especially in the YA markets. What works? What doesn’t? And how do you come up with something fresh enough to sell? Clarendon (J.L. Doty*, J. Robinson, K. Thompson, R. M. Evans.)

12:00 p.mI Don’t Want to be Eaten: Zombies, vampires and werewolves: is the trend of these stories fading or will I have to continue to sleep with garlic and carry a shotgun loaded with silver buckshot? Brittany  (J. Robinson*, R. M. Evans, T. Dawson.)

2:00 p.m. Self-Publishing: Reality vs Myth- the Good, the Bad & Ugly How to succeed and avoid the traps. Clarendon (J.L. Doty*, D. Welch, R. M. Evans.)

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My trip to Fire station 45

So for the past year my sweetie-wife and I have watched as the city built a new fire station near our home. Today, after several months of operation, Firestation 45 hosted an open house for the public, and while my sweetie-wife need to work I managed to attend. Here are just a few picture and thoughts from that visit.

Bunkhouse

This is the area called the bunkhouse. It is the ‘living room’ for the station for the people on duty. Off to the left is a big screen TV and a stack of DVDs. ( I was informed because that cable and internet access has yet to be connected.) Now you can see that those recliners look quite comfy, and they are, but they are not a product of your tax dollars. The city provides utilities and  toilet paper, everything else including the food, the personal pay for themselves. They work 24 hours on, then have 24 hours off, after 4 work periods they get 4 days off.  I learned that smaller stations the people on duty just brown bag it, but at larger ones like 45 they chip in each day for a grocery run and buy the food communally.

kitchen-2Here is the kitchen. It’s very nice and ultra modern, but then again this is a brand new station.

Here is a reverse angle of the rest of the kitchen.

Kitchen-1

 

 

 

 

I learned that station 45 is the Hazardous waste specialists for San Diego County and so they are on call for any Hazardous waste issues county wide. Fire department personnel also suffer cancers at a higher rate than the general population due to their continual exposure to burning chemical. Because of this the department goes to great lengths to reduce exposure whenever and as much as possible. Those bulky protective uniforms are washed after every use and each person has two sets of ‘turn outs’ so that one can be in the process of being cleaned while the other worn on a call.

Here is a [picture of a fire truck and a fire engine. The truck is one the left, the yellow hose is Truck and Engineconnected to the exhaust to reduce carcinogen exposure. The difference between a ‘truck’ and an ‘engine?’ A fire truck carries a tank of water, this one I think has 500 gallons, while an engine doesn’t carry water but carries ladders and equipment. Essentially a Fire Engine is a giant motorized tool box.

 

 

I mentioned that the people on duty are on duty for 24 hours at a stretch, so of course there has to be living spaces. They don;t live, at least not at this station, in a giant barracks style room, butquarters here you can see that they have private rooms. The one picture is unoccupied. There were two wings and the occupied wing was off limits to the public.

 

Now in case you were getting sentimental about Firepolethings and felt that traditions were dying out, here for your pleasure is the fireman’s pole. Yup, they actually use that pole for quick transits from the upper floor to the ground floor. One thing that did surprise me, though it makes sense from a middle of the night safety thing, is that the pole is actually inFirepole door an enclosed space behind a door. This is of course so that you don’t stumble and fall through it by accident. (And no they were not letting us use the pole.) The display above the door is a ticker tape sort of thing that during a call continuously flashes the call and which units are responding.

I’ll end this post with a panoramic view from the second floor balcony.

panorama 45

 

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The Two Most Influential SF Films of the 2000s

So here I have come to the end of my occasional series. I started with the silent era treating it as a single decade, most unfair, and the  decade by decade I have laid out what I think are the two SF films that influence the genre and movies in general. With the years 2000-2009, there are no more complete decades to review. I honestly thought that this would be one of the hardest because it is the most recent. Sometimes,m it can be very tricky seeing the lasting influence amid the noise of fads, but surprisingly I found it easy to make my selections.

1-XMen1posterX-Men (2000) My first pick popped out right at the start of the decade, Byran Singer’s superhero film, X-Men.  Awash in superhero movies it can be hard for a modern viewer to appreciate just what a groundbreaking movie this was.  Before X-Men superhero movies always operated in a world of camp and with winks towards the camera letting the audience know not to take the subject too seriously. And while films like Superman: The Movie and Tim Burton’s Batman made big box office, they remained in that slightly campy quarantine. X-Men, from it’s gritty start amid the Holocaust through it’s epic finale grounded itself in realism, treating the subject and inviting the audience to treat the subject, seriously. These were real characters with real motivation talking about real human conditions, but using the fantastic as their vehicle. Without this movie both in its style and in its success, it is unlikely we would be in our current riches with both the Marvel and DC cinematic Universes.

1-sky captainSky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. (2004) Set in an alternate history where Zepplin travel remained popular and pulp heroes battled mad scientists Sky Captain was a wild ride that never quite found success at the box office, but like another of my picks, Blade Runner, its influence it outsized to its ticket sales. This film pioneered for feature films the wide scale use of virtual sets.  Of course Lucas was doing this already with his Star Wars prequel movies, but I do not think Lucas, with his endless piles of cash and reputation for being a technophile, produced the impact that Sky Captain did. By making this film with a modest budget, Kerry Conran illustrated that these techniques were available to all sorts of production that did not have ILM behind them. It also did not hurt that Conran shot Sky Captain with flair and style, making a film that had a distinct look over the flat perfect seen in Lucas’ Star Wars prequels.

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Movie Review: Hail, Cesar!

So, despite the mild flu that came along and bushwacked me out of attending the 3rd day of the Southern California Writers Conference here in San Diego, yesterday my sweetie-wife and I went out for a matinee movie and lunch. (A light lunch as my appetite had not yet recovered.)

1-hail-cesarFor me, the Cohen brothers are hit and miss, some of their films work very well for me (I am looking at you The Hudsucker Proxy and Burn After Reading) and other do not live up to the hype (Now I give Fargo and The Big Lebowski the stink eye.) Hail, Cesar! is neither top tier like Burn after Reading, but for me, it works far better than Lebowski.

Hail, Cesar! is the story of Eddie Mannix, the man responsible for making sure the fictional movie stud1io of Capital Studios gets its product turned out on time. He deals with every manner of crisis, taking him away from his family and his life. There are lots of plot line in the movie because Eddie is always dealing with problems. The plot lines do not all converge at the end because the real story here is Eddie and the decision he has to make about the direction of his life. If you watch the trailers you might think that the kidnapping of his lead star Baird Whitlock is the major plot, but it is just one of several problems Eddie has to resolve.

I enjoyed the film, more than my sweetie-wife, but she also had a good time. The more you know classic Hollywood and Communist Theory the funnier the film will be for you.

I think the film also has, within its film in a film conceit, a lovely and moving passage on Christianity that comes off as neither preachy nor satirical. (Though there is a laugh at the end delivered through performance and not smug superiority.) This is interesting considering I am not a Christian but I thought the speech painted a Christianity I wished more people took to hear.

So, knowing that your mileage may vary, I recommend seeing this one.

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A few thoughts on the death of Scalia

This president’s day weekend I was off at the Southern California Writers Conference in San Diego, so I have been busy and light in posting. (The Conference was good, though I have gotten sick and missed the last day as I stayed home without appetite and with a light head.) I was at the conference when I saw the news appear on my phone that Scalia had died.

First I will not take in joy nor will I celebrate in any fashion his passing. His family, his friends, and those close him are in grief and to them I offer my sincere condolences.

I am relieved that he will no longer be influencing the Court, though it would have been better for all if this result had come from retirement and tragedy.

Yes, he was a brilliant man and he was a complex man. (Through back channels advocating for Kagan to be elevated to the court alone shows that he was not a simple caricature of a right wing extremist.) However, his clearly displayed intellect made his failing as a justice even more plain.

He was not a champion of human rights and liberty, he was a champion of states right when the states acted in a manner of which he approved.  If a state moved in a direction that he did not approve of, such as legalizing marijuana or legalizing assisted suicide then his used his considerable intelligence to craft logical arguments designed to arrive at his predetermined and desired outcome even if that flew in the face of his stated beliefs about states’ rights and such. To my eyes, he was not a principled justice, but one who consistently applied the power of government to compel his views on morality. I will not miss his voice denying individuals their liberty.

You are certainly welcome to feel differently.

 

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Video Review: The Seven-Per-Cent Solution

I have been a fan of filmmaker and author Nicholas Meyer since he exploded into my consciousness as the creative force behind the best Star Trek film, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. His other films include Time After Time, The Deceivers, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and many others.  Among the films he has written The Seven Percent Solution is one I have wanted to see for years and  years. Unavailable on DVD, I have been patiently waiting for its release. By a stroke of good fortune I learned that HBO Now had it on their menu of on-demand movie this month and together with my sweetie-wife we watched it.han

The film is set during the period when Holmes (Nichol Williamson) is believed dead, but it actually starts just prior to that. Watson (Robert Duvall) is happy married to mary and is suddenly summoned to Holmes’ side. Holmes is suffering from a paranoid attack brought on my his abuse fo cocaine. Fearing for his friend’s life Watson engages the assistance of Holmes’ brother Mycroft (Charles Gray) and the collude to bring Holmes to the only doctor who might break his addiction, Sigmund Freud (Alan Arkin.)

This film plays within the cannon, but also breaks the cannon, providing an alternative explanation for Holmes’ disappearance after his final confrontation with Professor Moriarity (Lawrence Olivier.) There is a light-hearted tone to the film though not as comical as Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Overall it was enjoyable to watch and I adored Nichol Williamson as Holmes. (Many fans will know him as Merlin from John Borman’s Excalibur.) Alan Arkin is fine as the famous Freud, and most of the cast perform their roles competently. Sadly Duvall’s English accent is a terrible affront to the ears and grated on me throughout the movie.

If you have HBO and its on-demand services it is certainly worth a go.

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