Sam's blog

Avatoss

2010-01-18T02:36:00.000-08:00

Cinema and indeed all fictional narratives are about the immersion of the audience in an imaginary world. Lose yourself amongst the rich tapestry of storytelling as the film-maker weaves another world around you, laugh and cry with the characters as their foibles and traumas poke at your emotive receptors. That's the theory anyway. I saw Avatar last week, an event in itself so over-hyperbolised it's easy to forget that the crux of this medium is supposedly story. Quite a decent premise; greedy imperialist industrialist corporation invading and subjugating the indigenous population of a planet to rape its natural resources (the somewhat farcically named Unobtanium, this is perhaps the subtlest idea in the whole film) The plucky natives fight back and along the way we see them as people too thanks to the crippled ex-marine who interacts with them and learns to appreciate their culture. Okay so I lied, its a hackneyed and obvious idea done better numerous times before by better film makers. But, you don't focus on the social commentary you gawp like slack jawed dolts in the face of the 3-D experience. Gasp! As anything to hand looms threateningly out from the screen. Marvel! at the rich and dense landscape in 3-D so realistic you can feel the alien bracken under you feet. Sob! At the rainfall leaves you wiping you face in belief it's precipitating in the auditorium. To be fair the film looks great. It really does. Unfortunately it's a turgid, slog through the barest and flimsiest excuse for getting your money in a long time. Not for James Cameron the boring and lengthy process of characterisation, instead everyone is a two-dimensional construct. This guy's legs don't work-he wishes they did. This woman empathises with the natives - we can learn from them. This guy's in charge of the corporation - Boo, hiss. etc. ad nauseum. With the all too predictable result that I couldn't give a toss. I didn't feel like I was watching people just barely scribbled pitch ideas. They all felt like 'the one who...' so the inevitable death of several protagonists again just felt like a passing exposition point to move us to the next set piece CGI wonderment. In short it felt like a bad video game. At one point the lead actor even had to undergo a series of 'tutorial' style tests to learn how to interact in the world. The problem with this being there is no control in cinema, a lack of depth can be forgiven when you get to interact with the world and explore it yourself but this felt like a late night college halls night from a decade ago slumped with a mind addled by various intoxicants staring blearily at someone with the motor skills of a squashed weasel playing Sonic the Hedgehog.
Avatar could have made some interesting and brave points; instead it chickened out. There was seemingly no serious consideration of different cultures peacefully co-existing through understanding and dialogue. Instead the message is 'if I've got a bigger stick than you then this is my land' a worrying message in these troubled times. Also the native people only triumph through the help of the plucky white man who falls in love. The subtext here being that without inside intervention they are intrinsically doomed. There was no talk, no negotiation, no interaction just a lot of fighting.
Gandhi once said that you should open all the windows of your house and let other cultures in without them blowing you over. Know your culture and heritage but understand and empathise with others. James Cameron seems to be propagating the message that we should bolt all our windows and doors and sit watching them with a shotgun. Oh and people of different colours can't co-exist in harmony without losing their own identity.

Bacon In Winter

2009-12-21T14:27:00.000-08:00

I love winter. The crisp cold air, the clear sharp shine of a frosty morning, the hot steamy trails of breath escaping from the mouths of people hurrying about red-cheeked and head down with the daily purpose and focus enviable and so often lacking from self-employed creatives such as me. Even though personally I have to wrap myself up like Shackleton with man-flu in order to walk up the road for a paper I still love it.
As I battle my way through the elements (In my mind I picture myself as striding purposely through the snow looking like a ramrod straight, stiff-backed example of debonair flair. In reality I look like an overstuffed giraffe on roller skates wearing a hippo costume two sizes too large) I take immense joy in picking my way across the obstacle course of ice and slush stomping like a toddler in my winter boots.
I love it. So much better than the summer, what with everyone walking around sweating and hypocritically spending the annual British day of decent weather complaining about the heat whilst melodramatically fanning themselves with those ridiculous little fans that look like mouse Spitfires without wings. (It should be legal to punch anyone in the face who uses one of them in public with their smug buzzing and their faux orgasmic expressions of coolness looking like they’re waving their mountain spring washed hair around the place in a shampoo commercial, the self-satisfied bastards)
I love the sharp pain in your cheeks when you walk into a warm room and my glasses steam up providing temporary sensory deprivation which lifts with a warm glow and leaves me eagerly anticipating that first warming glow of single malt wending its lovely, illuminating way through to my frost-bitten extremities.
I love my wife and me taking our regular weekly act of worship to our local greasy spoon for what my sleepy wife terms as breakfast and her starving wide-eyed husband refers to as a late lunch. My insomniac tendencies mean I am hauled from slumber half a day before my wife. I am then compelled to spend the morning pretending to be busy getting on with all the jobs I always complain she gets in the way of me doing until hunger forces me to wake my wake her up. Dangerous as this sounds (I wouldn’t advise trying it without protective clothing, a chair and a whip) she is usually mollified by the allure of the Noshery and we trek up the road (Her grumbling about lack of sleep me chain-smoking)
Upon entering, my nostrils are assailed by the smell of frying bacon; I know now with complete certainty that we’re about to have quality silent time dissecting the papers and escaping whatever catastrophe is about to befall our weekend plans. We snuggle into the warm familiar hardness of the chairs and gaze upon the chipped Formica warming our hands on mugs of tea thicker than tarmac safe in the knowledge that we have a half hour of good food, news and coupley-alone-time ahead of us.
As a Jewish vegetarian I have always found the odour of bacon slightly distasteful. Not any more, now it sends me to a happy place. A warm oasis of calm and reassurance in an otherwise cold and bleak winter is provided by one simple olfactory experience.

Busy busy.

2008-11-28T03:22:00.001-08:00

It's been a busy time hence my blog inertia.
When last I wrote we were in the midst of a frantic search for a penciller. Happily since then the very talented pencil squeezer Mr Andy Blundell has been signed up, had his ego massaged and been inducted into the gruelling work schedule of the Pianofreakz comic world. At this stage we're up to page thirteen of pencils and awaiting the colours being daubed about the place.
We also have a very exciting proposition for our cover art which I'm not at liberty to divulge as yet but all in all we are moving at breakneck speed for a fiscally-challenged indie creation and as we scale the dizzying heights of pre-production several members have had nose bleeds and tantrums. Having finished most of the year one scripts and now being absorbed by the management side of things I feel at times more like a nanny than a creator.
All in all though nothing can dampen the mood of optimism and satisfaction felt by all as this comes together like a snowball bouncing down the alps, gathering speed and momentum on a scale which can be at times be both frightening and inspiring.
Highlight of the week was however non-comics related but playing some of my original compositions at the London Jazz Festival with the LJC large ensemble.
So I sit here straddling mediums (Although sadly not of the Jennifer Love-Hewitt persuasion) I feel very much a content but fraught and bleary-eyed sleep-deprived being.
So until Marvel kill off Pete and MJ's marriage and wreck the best decade of Spidey for ages make mine......oh hang on. Make mine mine. (I know it's not topical but I'm still angry)

Artists and Postmen

2008-10-15T14:33:00.000-07:00

I’ve been a curmudgeonly, grumpy old thing for the last couple of days. I’ve been pottering about like the bastard offspring of Eeyore and Ebenezer Scrooge. Sadly a hangover from a hedonistic lifestyle involving a vat of Martinis and numerous scantily clad dancing girls are not to be blamed. My bad mood is the culmination of much more mundane and trivial affairs.
Firstly I’ve spent the past two days hanging on the promise of some pencils for the Piano player comic book. Despite obsessively refreshing the inbox of my hotmail every five minutes no artwork has yet materialised, TARDIS-like, to alleviate my gloom. As my drafts for issues 6-12 are in the hands of my co-writer at present and 1-5 are polished and in the hands of the penciller I’m at bit of a loose end.
I’ve practiced my trumpet till my face hurts and tinkered with all the writing in the inbox.
This inertia has consumed me to the point where any kind of activity seems futile as I obsess about getting those pencils.
I fall back to my rainy day bought but as yet unwatched DVD pile (Films too violent or comic booky for my sensitive fiancée to countenance watching) I’ve worked my way through both Hostels, The Fantastic Four and Planet Terror in the past couple of days. Even this positive deluge of cinematic offerings from some of my favourite directors (and The Fantastic Four) failed to raise my mood.
So as it swung round to tonight I got proactive and phoned up the pencil squeezer. I got fresh promises of imminent art and got excited all over again. Two hours later I reflect that I really should know better.
The other constant source of annoyance at present involves Amazon marketplace. By placing my order for “Trial of A Timelord” boxset I thought I’d been a cunning boy, managing to save a measly amount of shekels. I now know I’m paying in other ways, a week after those more-money-than-sense friends of mine have been banging on interminably about the quality of the extras and the Vervoids looking like penises I’m still waiting for mine. And then as I leave the house for ten minutes to buy a paper the bastard thing arrives and leaves again in a Royal Mail van.
Deep down I know this is completely insignificant in any real sense but having slaved away for months on those scripts I’m just gagging to see my characters visualised. Having the promise of it dangled in front of me constantly but never turning up is worse than all those months looking at portfolios picking an artist.
It could be worse of course the way my karma’s working out the pencils will get posted and I’ll spend the rest of my life chasing a Royal Mail van down the street sobbing and swearing alternately.

Scriptwriting Jump Jive and fandom

2008-10-11T04:05:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting watching Attack of the Clones; As far as mindless entertainment goes this has to be some kind of zenith. A sprawling construct containing two dimensional characterisation, atrocious and unbelievable dialogue (which seems only to exist to move us to the next set piece of CGI scenery) and dubious and patronising moralisation.
The whole thing seems like a two hour toy commercial that leaves me drained and frustrated. I'm not writing this to bash Lucas and the prequels. That has been done to death already and on a ferocious scale that spans from the eloquent and informed to the usual demented fanboy rantings of four letter disappointment and the anger that a creator has dared to infringe upon their own fevered ramblings of wet-dream induced geekdom.
Now, I'm massively in favour of geekdom and slavish fanboy attention to detail (I cheered when the Macra appeared in Gridlock) but I'm not deluded enough to believe George Lucas, Joss Whedon, Joe Quesada, Russell T Davies, Stephen Moffat etc etc actually care what I think.
The writer's only responsibility is to tell their story.
I don't like the prequels (I still feel a sense of loss when I consider what could have been) but I recently slapped twenty five english pounds on the counter and bought the box-set. Why? Because I don't own it.
That's the truth about fandom. We will spend our money on it regardless. And I guess George Lucas is the one laughing now, whatever he does we'll buy into it. Even if we're whining and bitching all the time about how we'd have done it better and how Han shot first (he did) we still see it in the cinema, buy it on DVD and then buy another box-set when he releases a super-dooper special edition with a minute of cut footage and a documentary about the boom operator.
We're fans, not consumers and as fans that's what we do.

It's the same with comic books; every week I trawl Orbital, Forbidden Planet and Gosh and exchange yet more money for an armful of four-colour fables. Most of which I read, then phone my best friend, co-writer and hetero life-mate Andy and we proceed to dissect and moan about them and the falling standards of lazy writers.

Then when the trade paperbacks are released I buy it all again.

Because when you're as immersed as irretrievably as I am in pop culture it's the ownership and consumption that's important, not the enjoyment. The casual fan will stop reading if he or she doesn't like an arc or an artist, but I soldier on buying the pull list every week in the forlorn and unrealistic hope that same old day will finish and we'll all wake up a la Bobby Ewing and Petey and MJ will be married as usual with Strac writing their lives.

Things I've bought the runs of when I should have known better (Including variant covers)
Ultimates 3, Marvel Zombies (Zombies, I know, I know) 1,2 & now 3, Marvel Apes,Ironman: Legacy of Doom. (This small list is incomplete but represents a casual glance through the longbox) A year's worth of picking up issue one and having a reaction between antipathy and loathing and subsequently buying the whole run just because I own the first issue.
Now because I have the most wonderful and understanding woman in my life she gets this but, I can't suddenly help but feel a sense of guilt as I file away comics in the long box I know in my heart of hearts I'll never read.
I'm not as bad as some, I stopped watching Lost when it played down the fantasy element and every episode contained half an hour of last week's show in flashback, I haven't yet bought Ashes to Ashes because it seemed to pale compared to Life On Mars and I have no interest in the Matrix (Some other time). However I know I will own these and more besides because I collect. That's what I do, that's who I am.

Q:How to make $1,000,000 in jazz
A: start with $2,000,000

When spewing this amount of critical bile it's impossible to ignore the obvious comment, namely, why I don't do something about it? Well I do.

I write and play the music I want to listen to, universally to good response. (try searching for Goldapples, The Underdog Ensemble or The LJC on myspace if you're interested) lost a small fortune in the process. (Worth every penny) and almost made a living a few times, but I've been around the world quite a few times as well.

Most recently I've been writing comic books, like with the music that moves me I roam the dark underbelly of financial destitution and creative freedom that the term indie encapsulates.

Andy and myself have spent the last four months editing and refining our scripts for 1-6 of what we'll call for now the Piano project. (The development was an even more fun process)(honestly, my hair's growing back)
There's a piano player, he lives in London, he has some kind of powers and there's a whole host of old school mythical Gods, angels and deception. Plus evil corporations, mad scientists and a very murky underworld.

Luckily our working relationship of over a decade allows us to relinquish our sense of ego and truly work in collaboration, we're now so immersed and so many draft's have passed between us we struggle to remember who wrote which particular line. (If this sounds like an idyllic love story between two middle aged hetro tubby geeks, it is. Albeit a platonic one) (He lives too far away)
And now with the drafts for 7-12 started and the outline and plotting for 13-24 finished we're sitting back and waiting for that most elusive of beasts the penciller.
Our penciller has started concept drawings for our main protagonists and as project manager I'm thinking of tactful ways to send it all back covered in notes. Us writer types are jealous and protective of our creations and my panel descriptions are longer than most scripts for whole other books. I mention this not in any context of self-aggrandisation but merely as an example of the level of detail and the obsessive nature of my personality. If there's a mug in the panel what colour is it? What is written on it? Where did the hero buy it? Is it chipped and what does that say about the owner hmmm? And this is the inconsequential stuff. We've spent 6 days this pretty much arguing over and refining one sentence. ONE SENTENCE.

So putting the destiny of our characters into the hands of someone else is nerve wracking, horrendously so. Already these people are real to us; we know how they think, talk, walk and go about their lives.
Now we have to let someone else visualise them. Scared? We're terrified.

The thing is though now we are so stoked with the end product. We'd buy it, and although that doesn't mean much if you've read the start of this; we'd buy it, enjoy it and look forward to the next issue. We are writing what we wanted other people to write.
And that's nothing compared to the feeling we have for the other original concepts we're working on. All of which means we're going to need at least three more pencillers so the outlook for my hairline is bleak.

But now I have to get my trumpet out (I've heard them all for over twenty years and I'm not amused anymore) and prepare to go to work this evening. Earls Court, Jump Jive. Lots of horn section dancing and very little artistic input and creativity of the jazz vibe.

I can already taste tomorrow's hangover.