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June 30, 2008

Screwed

Remember the co-op? Remember how I described it as part-sales-pitch, part-new-age-feel-goodery? I had an uneasy feeling about it from, let’s say, day three. Basically, after Big-Shot Producer’s initial pitch — which made it sound pretty good — he began ladling on the creepy gravy until I felt very uncomfortable about the whole prospect. I wanted to know what happened to the mild but very much existent promises that some crazy group of foreign investors would read Dying Proof and have a response in three weeks or less. I wanted to know what happened to the co-op concept of getting 20-30 (maybe even up to 50) individual pieces of feedback on my script.

Instead, what little information I did receive — which reached a standstill by mid-April — consisted of nothing but impersonal marketing-speak. Gone was the producer who encouraged me despite his reservations about my pitch-black sense of humor. In his place stood a pod person. I didn’t like where this was headed.

Now, it’s not unusual for a screenwriter — especially one near the bottom of the food chain — to be ignored by Big-Shot Producers for months at a time. I believe the reading turnaround for successful screenwriters is about eight weeks, so my having to wait six months, while frustrating, isn’t unusual. I continued my usual pattern of calling and/or e-mailing at least once a week, but I continued to get stonewalled; again, frustrating, but you sort of get used to it. On the one hand, there’s the principle that I should wait for them to call me; on the other, I’m nobody. I have to remind them that I exist.

Finally, last week, I received an e-mail from the Big-Shot Producer. He apologized all over himself and made two excuses: (1) server crash on the co-op’s files, (2) he’s busy producing movies. That old chestnut! I didn’t really believe him about the server crash, but I suppose it’s meaningful that he’d go out of his way to lie to me. Then again, considering what happened, I suppose it’s not that meaningful.

What he offered, in the e-mail, is what he perceived as an olive branch. Not that he needed one — this was just more sales pitch. See, before communication dropped off between us completely, this co-op sounded less like a free exchange of ideas among working professionals and more like a scam, under the guise of a distance-learning class, designed to screw novice writers out of money they likely don’t have, guaranteeing some sort of foolproof method to succeed as a screenwriter. It only lacked two components: a fee, and a money-back guarantee. So I just kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And so it did. Big-Shot Producer offered, as a “gift,” to send me “a few assignments” from the co-op. I had no clue what he meant about assignments — I’d read the marketing-speak he’d sent and spent far too much time trying to parse it for any sign of humanity or hostile intent, so I got that it was supposed to be like a “class,” but I thought the “class” was: “Read other people’s shitty scripts, cover them, and receive periodic inspirational e-mails.”

Yet, referring to them as “assignments” — not scripts or coverage or anything — confused me. Was this more semantic mumbo-jumbo, or did he really believe giving me homework assignments was a gift?

With reservations, I told him to send the assignments. My curiosity had gotten the better of me. Besides, I have the craftiest known safety net to avoid getting bilked out of money: I don’t have any. So the joke’s on him!

He did send me an assignment, which was long and tedious and involved reading an inspirational speech (good guess!) and answering a variety of lit 101 questions about how it applies to my “career,” followed by a request to sum up my autobiography in between five and 10 pages. The fuck?

Oh, he also included the long-promised, never-delivered coverage on Dying Proof. Remember that whole “20 or 30 (maybe up to 50!)” thing? I got one person’s coverage, and not to sound too harsh, but it wasn’t exactly constructive. The reader clearly didn’t like the script, which I guess is helpful in itself, but everything the reader wrote in response felt like they’d read McKee’s Story for the first time ever just before reading my script, and because it’s not a textbook example of his methodology, it’s the worst thing ever.

I hope that doesn’t come across as defensive. I don’t think Dying Proof is a great script, and in fact Preity read it and also disliked it quite severely. I was pretty frustrated with her take, but receiving the coverage from this other person crystallized the difference: she gave me valuable, valid feedback. Preity may have said a few things I disagreed with in terms of the storyline and structure, but she did give me a couple of ideas that are worth their weight in gold — in fact, I’m planning a rewrite based solely on those few suggestions, because they’ll make Dying Proof that much better.

However, it didn’t come across like the reader, who seemed to hate the genre more than the story or characters, had anything constructive to say. It’s basic, basic, basic “I learned this in fifth grade” argumentative structuring: topic sentence tells what’s wrong, rest of the paragraph explains why they feel that way. Even if they don’t give notes on how to improve it, which I usually do, explaining why they disliked something helps me figure out how to fix it on my own. Knowing only what without the why doesn’t help anything.

So yeah, I’m planning another draft of Dying Proof, but I had hoped I’d have a wide range of feedback to look at, so I could gauge how a wide cross-section of people feel about the story. Instead, I get some useless advice from one anonymous person.

What else did Big-Shot Producer include in the e-mail? Oh right, a brochure for the co-op, which is so professional it only contains one egregious misspelling in the first sentence (“amateur” is spelled “armature”…yeah, I wish I could make up something like that). I paged through the brochure to understand what I was truly in for, and then I hit the pricetag: $4500 for the basic course, $6500 for the advanced course, $15,000 for the “professional” course. Bear in mind these prices are only for the first four weeks. I half-expected a “…plus 99¢ for each additional minute” disclaimer at the bottom of the page.

Granted, Big-Shot Producer has not, as of yet, hit me up for money, but I know it’s only a matter of time. He’s giving me the “free” assignments not as a “gift,” but in the same way a new drug dealer always gives his prospective client an initial free hit. If Marked for Death is accurate at all, taking one puff of marijuana will lead teens to immediately try crack. The free assignment is designed to get me hooked on the crack of the paid course.

Even if I could afford it: look, I’m both dumb and gullible, but I had one lesson drilled into my head repeatedly by everyone I’ve ever met associated with the film industry: do not give anyone money. People asking for money for anything — especially something as tenuous as a “surefire” way to make a living as a screenwriter — are full of shit unless they’re booking the Whisky, in which case they just need you to sell some tickets, come onnnnn. Just don’t do it, contrary to the teachings of Nike.

I’m honestly pretty insulted. Not so much by the wasted time, the endless aggravation, and the general obnoxiousness of stringing me along for a few years only to offer me up as a ritual sacrifice for his own, private moneymaking enterprise — no, what really gets my goat is that he clearly thinks I’m dumb enough to fall for this. I have another friend who has done rewrite work — unpaid, but still — for Big-Shot Producer. He’s never heard of the co-op, of “assignments,” of anything.

Preity suggested I string Big-Shot Producer along, doing the assignments until he starts asking me for money, then give him my tale of woe and beg him to give me a job. I don’t know. It seems like a lot of effort for, potentially, nothing in return.

Posted by Stan on June 30, 2008 10:34 AM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Career-Based Rambling

June 27, 2008

My Knowledge of Reading

Yeah, so I got that reader job.

I sent Preity the coverage samples, hoping the ones I’d chosen weren’t too long or too short. And yet, despite my desire for brevity, I couldn’t resist sending the epic. It’s long, but it’s the best example I have of rolling up my sleeves and digging deeper, which I’ve been asked to do on several occasions. It has a plot so convoluted, it requires both a long synopsis and a long analysis, so you can get into the nitty-gritty and explore just why it doesn’t work — even the writing problems are convoluted.

Besides that, everyone seems to have different coverage policies. The last two places I read for wanted longer analyses than synopses, yet I’ve also done work for companies that seem to want longer synopses with a brief, “three biggest problems”-type analysis. I guess this is fair, because I’ve read plenty of scripts where if they fixed the biggest problems, everything else would fall into place. So in the three samples I sent, I tried to get the wide range: biggest problems, digging deeper, and one that’s kind of in the middle. I didn’t know if Preity wanted three so she could choose what she, having worked at the company for a year, thought they’d prefer. If she showed them all three, I wanted to show what little range one can show in analytical writing.

I have no clue how they felt about them. Instead, she sent me the shooting draft of an upcoming remake of a once-iconic (if not what you might call good) movie to give them a coverage sample. I figured they’d do something like this, but I wasn’t sure. Because they don’t just want competence — who knows how many months I slaved writing the samples I sent? — they want speed. So they send the script, I tear right into it, synopsize it, and analyze it. I try to do this in under two hours, but almost always it ends up being around two and a half. Synopses are deceptively tricky — if I didn’t have to write one, I could definitely cover any 100-page script in less than two hours.

Time is not always of the essence, but when you’re effectively “auditioning” for the job, you want to show you can do it if they need you to. Probably the funniest part about the experience is that I didn’t get Preity’s e-mail with the script until about 90 minutes after she sent it, and they still raved about the incredible turnaround time.

But raving is one thing. Paying is another. Preity e-mailed the next day, saying, “They loved your coverage! You’re hired! But here’s the thing…” There’s always a thing, isn’t there?

See, when she e-mailed, she told me they were hiring readers because they needed readers. But they don’t need readers — they want a reader, but the load won’t be heavy until later in the year. Basically, this will be a nice supplemental income, but it’s not exactly solving my financial woes. I received an official e-mail from the person who is now technically my boss, telling me that if they get anything in the interim, they’d send it over to me, but who knows what that means?

I had really hoped I could get a decent volume — something like three scripts a day — and just turn that into a full-time thing. Instead, I’ll be lucky if I get one a week. Things will be different in August, but it’s not August.

In the meantime, I’d been scheming to parlay this work into something akin to what my pseudo-Net-nerd hero, Darwin Mayflower, used to do — write longer, movie-review-style analyses and convince some crazy film website to pay me for the trouble. I don’t know if I’m allowed to do that or not, but if I’m careful enough, the shroud of anonymity afforded by the Internet might help me pull a fast one, making double the money for half the work.

But alas, if I’m not getting scripts, I can’t do shit about shit.

Posted by Stan on June 27, 2008 3:20 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Career-Based Rambling

June 25, 2008

New Blogging Schedule

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve switched from blogging all day, every day to blogging at least three times a week. This is a conscious effort because, frankly, blogging takes too much effort. It’s both a combination of time management — lately, I’ve spent more time than I’d like thinking about what to blog about, or trolling the Web for blog topics, and subsequently writing the post. Worse than that, in case you couldn’t tell, I’m losing steam in terms of subjects. I can only blog about screenwriting, invasive medical procedures, and standardized tests so many times before readers rebel.

So yeah, if I think of something worth blogging about on an “unscheduled” blog day, maybe I’ll write it; maybe I’ll save it for the next scheduled day. Who knows? Just don’t expect daily blogging. I had a good run, but I’m officially out of gas.

Posted by Stan on June 25, 2008 1:20 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Creative Works!

June 23, 2008

Reader

Ugh…well, I hope it works out, but I haven’t heard anything all weekend. Preity e-mailed me on Friday to tell me her company is looking for paid readers — decent money for the scripts, but no details on volume or whether or not this will come close to being permanent. She just wanted me to send her some coverage samples to give to her boss; I did, and I’m hoping for the best. Also, of course, preparing for the worst.

Posted by Stan on June 23, 2008 1:19 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Career-Based Rambling, Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em, Job Shit

June 20, 2008

Mark’s Site

Immediately after the porn review site incident, my friend Mark e-mailed me with a website idea of his own. He e-mailed less about the idea (which he believes is solid) than about the technical background required to create/run a website. I told him, shit, if I can do it, so can he.

But here’s the concept: defending movies that are universally bashed (most often by people who haven’t seen them) and arguing against movies that are universally loved. It struck an immediate chord with me, a closet Hudson Hawk fan who enjoys a great deal of tasteless, lowbrow entertainment that I find contains more substance and artistic merit than many critical darlings. What I’m trying to say is, National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets is 1000 times better than Juno. The sad thing is, Juno is so bad that that only puts Book of Secrets at “fun but forgettable.”

But beyond my own tastes, it sounded to me like the kind of site that can take off. The Internet has become a magical place where you can find people of similar mind, band together, and take over the world. Or, at least, get movies like Snakes on a Plane released. My most-read and most-commented-on post of all time is my analysis of Juno, 2007’s most overrated movie. It’s only partly because I’m so damn smart and insightful; mainly, it’s sought out by people looking for a comfortable environment to dislike something that’s beloved by all their friends, coworkers, family members, the media at large, etc…

The one hitch I could see is that he, apparently, wants to write all the content himself. That’s fine, and that’s his prerogative, but I think it’s a serious limitation. For instance, he loved Juno, and he’s part of the reason I went to see it. The previous year, he loved Pan’s Labyrinth and was the only reason I went to see it (I hadn’t even heard of it prior to him telling me of its profound emotional effect on him). I’m not saying he has bad taste — these two are probably the only movies we’ve had differences of opinions on — but, like I said, his love of those overrated crap factories will limit the success. I didn’t want to be presumptuous and toss my hat in his ring, but I’d gladly volunteer for it if he decided he wanted more writers or a broader perspective.

As I said, I don’t know much about the commercialization of the Web, but he’s a smart guy, a great writer, and this concept could take off. I’ve seen several sites with occasional dissenting-from-mainstream opinions or regular columns devoted to unsuccessful films (Nathan Rabin’s great My Year in Flops column at the A.V. Club is a good example), and I’ve seen sites like the Agony Booth that revel in badness, but I don’t think a site exist that’s solely devoted to defending supposed bad movies.

I’d like to see it succeed. I’m sure I’ll mention its progress in the future.

Posted by Stan on June 20, 2008 5:18 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em

June 18, 2008

The Porn Review Site

For nearly two years now, I’ve done glorified volunteer work on a former college professor’s film site. It started as a pretty basic thing — he needed someone to help him post reviews once a week; in exchange for that, I got free screeners and the opportunity to have published reviews in a semi-legitimate location — but gradually I wormed my way up to a full-fledged web guru, spending a shitload of time using my limited web-design knowledge to bring the site into the 21st century.

Despite the lack of substantial payment, I’ve found the work rewarding enough to not bail. I mean, there are a lot of things I look to get out of the experience, and as long as I get a few of them, I’ll be okay for awhile.

And then The Webmaster sent me an e-mail that, for lack of a better phrase, made my brain explode, then melt.

He sent it to myself and three others — the supposed site leaders. Apparently I’ve scaled the wall into the upper echelon, reserved only for founders of the site, each of whom has been involved with it for nearly a decade. I’d feel a little better about it if this somehow padded my wallet, but okay, I’m one of the site leaders. Now what?

“Let’s make a porn review site.”

That’s an abridged version of the e-mail. Essentially, The Webmaster has little interest in it other than the financial aspects — he believes it’ll be a huge moneymaker, for reasons he did not expound on — so all he really wants to do is set up a WordPress blog, plug in a customized template, and then start reviewing hardcore porn.

While I sat there, baffled and wondering how one even reviews porn. Full disclosure: I have a few friends who will discuss, in detail, certain clichés found in porn that they can do without, but that’s more of an all-encompassing, universal thing. It’s a little different when one has to account for certain things like specific, personal sexual peccadilloes, meaning I may find a particular film incredibly arousing while others look at it in disgust. Sexuality, I’d argue, is even more subjective than art. And, to that end, pornography is even more disposable than mainstream cinema.

Here’s what I know about porn: it’s the cheapest, most disposable commodity on the planet, and therefore it is worthless. A review of something worthless, in turn, doesn’t have much value, either.

You can find pornography all over the Internet, for free, within seconds. You can dig a little deeper to find something that’s actually good, but it’s still free. It’s as simple as downloading a wide array to sample, deleting what you don’t like, keeping what you do. I don’t need to read a review to know what I like, and I’m sure I’m not alone on that assessment. I have actually seen reviews of porn movies, but I’ve only ever used them as a guide to find out the scene order, so I know when a particular star (if that’s why I’ve downloaded it) appears.

Which brings me to my next point: porn is all about fast-forwarding to the good parts. Why should I, as a reviewer, have to sit around watching the entire thing for the small percentage of people who are titillated by the anticipation of fucking, the boring talky scenes I always skip because I don’t like knowing how rock-stupid the stars (of either gender) are. I also don’t like the gimmicks most of these movies employ to create the illusion of variety. Nobody’s going to sit and read a review and say, “Wow, it has ‘surprisingly good cinematography considering it was shot on handheld’?! Must-see!” Few will read it and say, “Yes, it’s loaded with suspense before the actual magic begins!” Nobody wants to know about the “plot,” if it even attempts to have one — they just want you to concentrate on the act itself, and if they’re anything like me, they don’t even want to know how you feel about the level of eroticism present, unless it’s something generic like, “This is a pretty hot DP scene!”

Keep in mind, also, that I’m the youngest of these “founders,” all of whom are approaching 50. So, you know, I just have this mental picture of middle-aged computer spazzes thinking, “You know how to make money on the Internets? Porns!”

I don’t object to it out of hand; after all, I’ve reviewed my fair share of erotica. I just wonder who the prospective audience is, what they’re looking for, and whether or not we can meet their needs. If we can’t, I question the possibilities of the site as a sure-thing moneymaker. The only thing I can see as being a moneymaker is the type of site that reviews pay sites, but unfortunately, one would assume the advertisers would be said pay sites, and they might expect some kind of favoritism. But I’ve seen a couple of sites that exclusively review paysites and judge them solely on the basis of content: is this worth paying for?

The Webmaster sounds like he’s more interested in reviewing movies, but maybe that’s only because he doesn’t realize what’s out there that’s worth reviewing.

Probably a bigger problem: who does he think will write this stuff? Right now, he has a pretty large group of reviewers for mainstream and indie movies — all of them unpaid, doing volunteer work because, like me, they have various things they want to get out of the site. Even The Webmaster himself said that he’d separate his name from it; I know I’d do the same, so that begs the question: what do they get out of it?

A legitimate place to publish clips? Yeah, I’ll be sure to put my review of Malibu Ass Blasters 7 in my portfolio of writing samples next time I go in for an interview.

The fact is, if he’s going to start a porn review site, he’s going to have to start paying people. How much does he think this site will make? Is it worth it after he considers how much he’ll have to spend? I know almost nothing about web commerce, but I’m going to have to go ahead and doubt it; if he intends to support this with per-click advertising, and you believe my theory that even if someone did read they reviews, they wouldn’t be buying porn — who’s going to do the clicking? If he intends to set this up as a pay site in and of itself — holy shit, who will pay a monthly fee to read reviews of porn. Almost every recent title listed on the IAFD has links to free reviews just below links to purchase the movies. That’s all anybody needs, so why would they pay for the luxury of reading the review?

Have I told The Webmaster any of this? Nope.

To be honest, I’m a little concerned. It’s not that I have a problem shitting all over his ideas, especially when what I’m providing is the “young-person’s” perspective (e.g., their demographic), and that perspective is “waste of time” — no, my problem lies in not feeling like part of the gang. If they’re going to go ahead and do this, that’s fine. I’m not really going to help, I won’t waste the time reviewing any of the movies, but I harbor no ill will. (But I will secretly say “I told you so” when it makes $0.) But who am I to come in and say, “Even though I’m the youngest and newest member of this ‘leadership’ group, I have too huge reasons why this is a flawed idea, so you should at least consider them before going ahead with it”? It’s not my place.

Really, I’m just baffled they’re even considering this. They all seem like pretty straight-laced guys, married, affable. I dunno, maybe that’s the demographic to appeal to — aging codgers who don’t get much nookie and have to rely on porn but don’t have the time or resources to waste on just anything. It has to be special.

And suddenly I’m wondering if this isn’t such a bad idea, after all…

Posted by Stan on June 18, 2008 1:17 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Job Shit

June 16, 2008

The Writing Sample Prompt

So here’s the thing: the LSAT writing sample isn’t graded, but it is sent to every law school you apply for, so you do want to give it your all. Even though I’d consider writing (and especially writing under pressure/deadlines) a major strength, my stupid prep guide scared me shitless.

So there are two types of essay prompts: “decision” and “argument,” as my Kaplan prep guide so helpfully calls them. “Argument” is simple — you get a short paragraph or two where somebody lays out an argument, and you have to judge whether or not the argument is sufficient. “Decision,” I feared, would be downright impossible. Here’s one of Kaplan’s samples, supposedly culled from a past LSAT:

The Daily Tribune, a metropolitan newspaper, is considering two candidates for promotion to business editor. Write an argument for one candidate over the other with the following considerations in mind:

1. The editor must train new writers and assign stories.
2. The editor must be able to edit and rewrite stories under daily deadline pressure.

Laura received a B.A. in English from a large university. She was managing editor of her college newspaper and served as a summer intern at her hometown daily paper. Laura started working at the Tribune right out of college and spent three years at the city desk covering the city economy. Eight years ago, the paper formed its business section, and Laura became part of the new department. After several years of covering state business, Laura began writing on the national economy. Three years ago, Laura was named senior business and finance editor on the national business staff; she is also responsible for supervising seven writers.

Palmer attended an elite private college where he received both a B.S. in business administration and an M.A. in journalism. After receiving his journalism degree, Palmer worked for three years on a monthly business magazine. He won a prestigious national award for a series of articles on the impact of monetary policy on multinational corporations. Palmer came to the Tribune three years ago to fill the newly created position of international business writer. He was the only member of the international staff for two years and wrote on almost a daily basis. He now supervises a staff of four writers. Last year, Palmer developed a bimonthly business supplement for the Tribune that has proved highly popular and has helped increase the paper’s circulation.

Now, maybe it’s because I don’t know as much about business or writing for newspapers as I pretend to when applying for jobs, but this question is tough. Both candidates have strengths and weaknesses, but they’re pretty evenly matched. You can basically flip a coin to choose, but mainly what you’re going to be doing is cutting down the other person, downplaying his or her accomplishments while illustrating why the others’ qualities make him or her perfect for the job.

I can do that well enough, but answering a question like this filled me with fear. And that’s the “easy” sample they give while teaching you about these different questions. The practice questions in the book and on the CD-ROM are even more difficult. I do think the practice tests, including the multiple-choice sections, were much more difficult than the test itself, which is a plus.

But nothing could have prepared me for the ridiculous, laugh-out-loud easiness of the essay prompt I received.

Right now, I am going to make up a question using different adjectives that is otherwise identical to what I received. I only do that because, honestly, I crammed so much information into my head that I can’t remember if the little agreement I signed said that I wouldn’t talk in detail about the test while the test was taking place, or if I can never, ever talk in detail about the test, like it’s Fight Club or something. So here it goes:

Kara needs to hire a director for a new movie her studio wants to put into production. Write an argument for one candidate over the other with the following considerations in mind:

1. At least one-third of the audience must consist of the coveted 18-to-34-year-old demographic.
2. Kara would like to continue her record of films she developed making back three times its pre-marketing budget.

Cliff Stern is a cutting-edge independent filmmaker who is gradually gaining a reputation as one of the most fearless, innovative directors working today, which has made him exceptionally popular among 18- to 34-year-olds. His last film handily earned three times its pre-marketing budget, but the film cost half as much as Kara’s production will. His next film, a remake with a built-in audience, will see release two months before Kara’s production is slated for release. If successful, the remake may make Stern a household name.

Judah Rosenthal has directed popular films for 20 years. He has a consistent track record of great opening weekends and his films frequently make back triple their pre-marketing budgets, including several films budgeted higher than Kara’s production. His most recent film saw a resurgence in popularity among 18- to 34-year-olds; market research indicates that this demographic made up 20% of the overall audience.

Seriously? Seriously?! This might be the most loaded “decision” question I’ve ever seen. In fact, it was so loaded that I read and reread the question 10 times to make sure there wasn’t some kind of trick hidden in there. Really, to me, the key to the decision lies in the last sentence of the first sentence. “If” and “may”? Come on, you have somebody who’s barely proven — he’s on the verge, but he could just as easily flop as have a hit — versus not just a veteran, but an extremely popular veteran who recently had a popular hit among the important demographic? There’s no contest.

I was tempted to challenge myself by defending the first one. I really did, too; I made an outline showing the strengths and weaknesses of each director, but I didn’t think I could make a compelling enough case for Cliff Stern.

It’s amazing, though. I really went into this thinking they’d be so evenly matched, I’d have an impossible time cutting one down in favor of the other; instead, the prompt answers itself.

Posted by Stan on June 16, 2008 10:49 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | School Rants

My Day in Evanston

Today, I took the LSAT. I had originally signed up for the February test, which would have allowed me to (barely) squeak in applications for Fall 2008, assuming I did well. Unfortunately, in January I suffered a debilitating wrist injury as a result of comical stupidity. A note for readers looking for free medical advice: no matter how strong and manly your forearms and hands are, do not lived a narrow, 40-pound box of kitchen tiles with one hand. When you feel that strain and think, This wasn’t my best idea, just drop the box, pick it up with two hands, and carry it. By no means should you keep going, grinning through the pain. It will require you to wear a splint for six weeks and, if it happens to coincide with your dominant hand, may prevent masturbation.

I had the February test scheduled at Wheaton College, a stone’s throw from my house and a drive that I knew would not be a pain in the ass, especially on a Saturday. It was perfect — but it’s pretty difficult to spend six hours doing a multiple-choice and essay test when your dominant hand is fubar’ed. I was pissed and annoyed, but I had to reschedule for June. The June test was unavailable at Wheaton (either because they weren’t hosting it or because it was full), so I got stuck with Northwestern. It may be a classy university with a prestigious law school, but getting there is a pain in the fucking balls. My general disdain for the North Shore area is well-known if not well-documented, so let me say, for the first time on this blog: fuck the North Shore. Difficult to get to, full of assholes, and worse street parking than anywhere in the city proper. It’s so bad, it might as well be Lake County (okay, some of it is).

Provincialism aside, I mostly just hate traffic. It might not have been so horrible on a Saturday, but check the calendars, folks: today’s Monday. I could lament the fact that they scheduled the test at 12:30, meaning if they didn’t hustle (spoiler alert: they didn’t) the hour drive would quickly turn into two or more, but what’s the point? If they’d scheduled it at 8:30 on a Monday, I’d have to suffer the same traffic at a different time of day. Ten o’clock would have been the sweet spot — I could roll out at nine, clipping the tail-end of rush hour, and probably get to Evanston with time to spare, then get out around three and (hopefully) avoid the slow rush-hour build.

But no, it had to be 12:30. I left at 11 for fear of getting stuck in some kind of crazy lunchtime jam, but I managed to breeze into Evanston (barely) before noon. Still, it was good that I came early because parking was a bitch and a half. I thought the term was over — why were there so many people?! So I drove around for awhile until I found a nice street lined with permit-required parallel slots. I parked illegally for six hours and did not receive a ticket, perhaps my biggest accomplishment of the day.

So I walked over to the test building, in the School of Engineering, and found myself stuck in a line that wrapped around the corner. I sighed and queued up.

I’m usually a big fan of nervous small-talk while waiting in long, motionless lines, but nobody around me seemed particularly interested in talking. I guess they handle nerves differently, or perhaps the Appetite for Destruction T-shirt and the general “just-rolled-out-of-bed” aesthetic I’d cultivated made them decide I was too lowbrow to engage. Who knows?

Eventually, the line started to move. I finally got to the lecture hall, where they took my thumbprint (no, really) and ushered me to a left-handed desk. In retrospect, since I spent my entire college career with righty desks, taking the test lefty may have put me at a disadvantage. I still feel like I did pretty well (the test was a lot easier than I thought), but in terms of time management, I wasted too much trying to figure out ways to adjust to the backwards desk. Alas…

But getting seated is where things started to get interesting. I don’t know if it was my refreshing lack of college-related sportswear or the fact that I’m just unimaginably studly, but every woman I encountered either flirted with me or gave me googly eyes, starting with the assistant proctor who was seating people. I’d say she was just trying to be friendly or something, but why? To what end? And at what point does general friendliness trump actually doing the job? She got so distracted by my incisive wit and throbbing johnson that the group of people waiting to be seated started to stack up, and I was the one who had to tell her to keep going.

A few minutes later, a girl in a different section made direct eye contact at me. At first, her eyes were petrified saucers. I made some goofy faces at her, and suddenly she softened and was all giggly and weird. This is a girl I did not say a single word to the entire time, and you know, I get the vibe she was laughing with me, not at me.

All told, I got three phone numbers simply from taking a standardized test. Three. Did I miss my calling? When I was a lad, my dad always told me, “Bag yourself a rich one.” Even if I do poorly on the LSAT, I may consider signing up for every conceivable test until they ban me just because it’s the place to meet women who will potentially be rich at some point — or, at least, it’s the place to meet women who will potentially be rich at some point and who will also talk to me and hook me up with digits.

The test itself, as I said, seemed fairly easy. I don’t know, maybe it was the prep work, but the hardest part was the endurance. I tried to simulate the conditions of test day a week in advance, but I didn’t get it right — I didn’t realize I’d be waiting around for an hour for everyone to trickle in and get registered and seated, that it would take 45 minutes for a 15-minute break because they collected and redistributed all the test booklets, that it would take another 30 minutes to collect all the multiple-choice booklets and distribute the essay prompts, that the proctor would keep us for another 30 minutes because a few bad apples didn’t properly fill out their Scantron forms. In my home, I could not possibly simulate what felt like 40-degree windy weather or the harsh fluorescents. I couldn’t simulate the uncomfortable seating or the awkward lecture-hall desks.

I don’t think much of this affected me adversely. I brought a flannel for the “weather,” which was fortunate, but nonetheless by the fifth section I got a little logy from the combination soul-crushing fluorescent light and spending the three previous hours doing intense mental gymnastics. I still don’t feel like I did too badly on that section, but maybe I just wasn’t thinking straight.

I stepped back into my car at 6:10, exactly six hours after I’d originally left it. As I said, no ticket. The rush-hour traffic was surprisingly smooth once I got out of Evanston, until I got to fucking Des Plaines (apparently every one of that shithole’s roads are under construction). By the time I was cruising through the industrial park, it was empty. It reminded me of my college days, cruising home from Rosemont, using all my little shortcuts and tricks. Good times.

When I got home, I just crashed for an hour. It’s amazing how sitting around doing nothing for several hours can tire you out as much as (or more than) strenuous physical exercise. But hey, I got through it, and I lived to blog about it.

Next up: writing sample prompt comedy!

Posted by Stan on June 16, 2008 8:27 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | School Rants

June 11, 2008

Write What You Have

Now, look, I know I’m pretty hard on Stupid Blogger, because, well…I think it’s pretty clear. Maybe I’ve only devoted one officially sanctioned Stan Has Issues™ post to her, but I still read her blog daily and mock her to pretty much anyone who will listen. I won’t start some kind of blog jihad because that’d make me look publicly crazy. I’m really only prepared to look crazy in private, where my friends can assemble behind my book and discuss how worried they are about me and my obsession with people I find intellectually inferior.

But she wrote something recently that, while comically moronic, gives me a good subject to broach from a screenwriting standpoint.

It goes like this: she’s written a short film she intends to shoot herself. She intended this all along, but suddenly she finds herself going haywire because one particular shot — difficult to just go off and get, because she lives in Los Angeles and this involves snow and evergreen-covered mountains — seems impossible to achieve, yet for reasons unknown but apparently very important to her, the shot cannot be changed or altered in any significant way.

So, you know, I’m not really a qualified expert on anything, but I did cut my professional teeth writing short scripts with the intention of shooting them. I don’t know where I picked up this advice, so I can’t attribute it to anyone (for the sake of argument, let’s say I just figured it out on my own — therefore, I get all the credit), but I started thinking of it like this: “write what you have.” A little play on the old “write what you know” philosophy; I have complicated feelings about that particular sentiment, but now is not the time.

“Write what you have” is pretty simple: what or who do you have access to and/or what can you find easily and inexpensively? If, for instance, you need a sleepy, snow-covered village in the Pacific Northwest, planning to shoot it in L.A. in July is not writing what you have. Maybe it works for that particular story, but the point of writing what you have is to take stock of everything you have and conceive a story utilizing everything to its fullest.

Every short script I’ve ever written, if it has a scene that takes place in a house, I picture the layout as my house. The decor changes, the people living in it change, but the physical floor-plan is always identical. Because I know I can get it. If somebody wants to donate a cooler looking space — or a different looking space, just for the sake of variety — it’s easy enough to revise, but if you look at all my old short scripts, I guarantee every single house will have the same layout details.

If you’re working in film and don’t know any actors whatsoever, you’re doing something wrong. So I’m taking it for granted that you, budding filmmaker, know some actors. How many? What can they do? Play to their strengths or play to their desires — if, for instance, he’s been cast as Biff Loman in 30 different productions of Death of a Salesman and he’s sick of the role, no matter how well he plays it, you don’t want to cast him as a seething cauldron of filial angst. If he loves embodying that type of role, go for it. He’ll give it his all.

Try to accommodate yourself so you aren’t wasting shitloads of money on things that aren’t feasible. Although I didn’t write it with the intention of ever shooting it, I developed a pretty strong desire to shoot “Bessie,” but I’m not made of money. How am I going to afford to rent a soundstage to build a barn replica with a retractable floor that hides a Saturday Night Fever-style light-up floor? The Vietnam sequences are almost plausible with the aid of a good Army surplus store, but how am I supposed to direct the actions of a cow? Even if animal trainers worked cows (I’m not sure if they do or not), again, it’s more money shit.

So it gives you two easy options: either rewrite the script or don’t shoot it. It’s easy as that. A third, less-easy option is to find a way. A friend suggested going down to Southern Indiana, which has many haunted forests that have an eerily similar feel to Southeast Asian canopy jungle (I’m not even joking — it’s more like Vietnam than it is like Colorado). I could contact a few open-minded farmers who might help wrangle the cow. I mean, half the joke is the cow just stands there like a lump. I’m pretty sure you don’t need a trainer to coach a cow to act inert. Bottom line: I could try to make it happen. I didn’t have the ambition for all that, though, but it is possible.

At the time I shot my masterpiece “The Love Switch,” I had fairly limited resources. Most everyone I knew was out of town for the summer, so I relied on an actor/friend, a classmate, and my dad. I was the one-man crew, and that was that. It turned out much better than I expected considering it cost a grand total of $50 (for the two blow-up dolls). I originally had a much more ambitious idea for the story — primarily revolving around the protagonist attempting to “get off” with a blow-up doll before a big date, but getting his dick stuck in the doll for some reason — but I didn’t have the time, money, or resources to pull off my original ideas, so I abandoned them in favor of what I could accomplish, and I think it’s a better film for it. Maybe you’ll disagree, but fuck off.

That’s all there is to it — take stock of what you have, what you can get (either with ease or difficulty), and figure out what you’re willing to do and spend to make the dream happen. Maybe Stupid Blogger will get her snow-covered shot. Maybe she’ll wait until February to truly finish the film, if it’s that important to her. For my money, that’s the most plausible action; the comments left on that post from industry folk were fucking retarded, ridiculous and convoluted and more expensive than simply waiting.

Take my advice, young filmmakers: write what you have, then what you know, then what you really wish you could do if a million dollars and professional crew dropped in your lap for your 30-minute short.

Posted by Stan on June 11, 2008 1:13 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Career-Based Rambling

June 9, 2008

“You’re Better Than This…”

I have this friend, who I have yet to add to the cast. We’ll call her Preity because she’s Indian and it’s shorter and easier to remember than Aishwarya. We go back a few years; in fact, believe it or not, she’s the infamous “coworker” mentioned here, but we remain friends in spite of that. But, you know, you can sort of glean from her behavior in that post that she’s both blunt and considered more with commercial aspects of a movie than anything else. Admittedly, she has pretty good tastes in movies, and she’s sort of like me in that she wants better movies, but she’ll work within the system she’s stuck with until she has the power to make better movies.

That said, I sent her a copy of Dying Proof a few weeks ago. She expressed some interest in reading it after I told her I had a producer interested, although “I had a producer willing to read it to make me go away” is probably more accurate.

She finally read it, and her analysis was spot-on in some areas, foolish in others, but hostile overall. One statement in particular jabbed me like a warm butter knife (which are more painful because they are not meant for stabby-stabby): “Stan, I’ve read your stuff, and you’re better than this.”

Ouch.

This especially stung coming from someone who has a sharper eye for the market than I do. I was insecure enough working outside my normal comfort zone — it’s a straight thriller with what I think is a glossy Hollywood sheen, far from the traditional unsellable comedies I write. Before I sent it to the Big-Shot Producer, I sent it to a group of four people go gauge as many disparate opinions as I felt I needed. I sent it to:

• Mark, who has turned into my “first reader,” I guess — we’re always e-mailing back and forth, although seeing each other in person is a rarity, so he’ll e-mail me anything from a screenplay he spent five years on to a short story he banged out in 10 minutes. I do the same with him, and I guess we trust each others’ feedback. He’s a great horror writer, and while I don’t think I could write any legitimate horror, I guess I’m enough of a fan to understand the conventions and judge his work accordingly; he has a great sense of humor, which I imagine helps with my weirdness. In fact, I don’t think we’d be friends today if not for one comment I made in a class we had together. We’d read the original screenplay for The Parallax View. One of my favorite movies ever, this early draft (which adheres to the novel more rigidly, I guess) isn’t what you’d call good. My comment on the ending made us friends for life: “It feels like a CHiPs episode!” At which point I mimicked the final line — which is Frady, having uncovered another layer of conspiracy, shaking his fists and yelling, “Aw, hell!” — followed by the trademark CHiPs credit freeze/unfreeze gimmick. Because I am that awesome and shameless.

  Anyone who can respect a good CHiPs reference is like a blood brother, so there you go. Among other things, we also share a peculiar fondness for ’70s conspiracy thrillers, which in large part inspired Dying Proof. So I still think he’s a pretty good judge, but maybe he’s a little too close to it.

• A female writer who, basically, I wanted to tell me whether or not I’m hitting the right emotional nights with the “feminine” aspects of the story. She’s also someone who has no interest in male-oriented action movies/thrillers.
• A female movie fan who has no real interest in writing or screenwriting. I just gave her the script and asked her to try to imagine it’s a movie, something she’s watching on the screen instead of reading on paper. This was also beneficial because she got on Instant Messenger while she read, so I actually got realtime reactions to the story — that honestly helped more than her overall feedback. I could tell which surprise moments worked, which frustrated, whether or not the characters stayed consistent, etc.
• A guy, also a non-writer, but also someone without much interest in the movies. I actually told him the opposite of what I told the female movie fan: read it like a novel and tell me how it comes across.

I’m always told not to get perspectives from non-screenwriters, for reasons like “they don’t understand the form” or “they can’t judge whether or not something can go from the page to the screen.” I split it with two screenwriters and two non-writers to get a wider perspective, but I say fuck any asshole who doesn’t think a non-writer can give a valid opinion on a screenplay. They may not give you something specific to the business, but it’s foolish to think their input is invalid.

I’m not ready to put too much stock into the opinion of one person when four others thought it was pretty damn good. It’s interesting because some of the time, she had valid points that were well-reasoned — and that I mostly agreed with and will address in the next draft — but more often, she stumbled into poorly reasoned “this didn’t make sense, so it sucks” territory. I don’t want to find too much fault with that, because the fact that a reader — even if it’s one of five — misses valuable pieces of the puzzle, it means something. It means I’m not getting certain things across. Part of me wants to champion subtlety and mystery, especially when the subtlety was understood and the mystery didn’t annoy other readers, but another part of me says, “Yup, she’s right; I should explain the whole thing right off the bat and have the rest of the script be about getting away from the pursuers.”

There’s yet another part of me that’s really irate with the fact that she did such a sloppy reading job. Much as I want to champion subtlety, I was actually frustrated by how obvious and ham-fisted the foreshadowing and big revelations have become in rewriting it. If she couldn’t put the pieces together with this, I’d hate to see how she’d react to the first draft.

But that’s kind of defensive, huh? I’m mostly just smarting from the “you’re better than this” comment and want to dismiss everything else she said — legitimate or not — as crap. Yet I can’t — separating the wheat from the chaff, she did have a couple of ideas so indisputably good that I’m chomping at the bit to incorporate them into draft five.

Does this mean I’m turning over a new leaf? I’m taking the time to think hard about a person’s opinion and considering the many shades of gray before developing a clear but complex reaction. A new leaf, or just worn out and malleable?

Posted by Stan on June 9, 2008 8:08 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em

Beggin’

So I got a professionally printed brochure from my alma mater…

…begging me to donate money.

Hey, here’s an idea! Maybe, when begging for money, you could try showing that you aren’t wasting money on full-color brochures by just sending me a sheet of standard white paper with a form letter? I still won’t donate money, but at least I’d feel a little guilty.

(And let’s not even get into the fact that I’m unemployed — I don’t blame the college for that, but their “job-placement program” isn’t exactly coming through with any hot leads.)

Posted by Stan on June 9, 2008 4:34 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Random Musings

June 6, 2008

Battle of the Sexist

As a longtime purveyor of filthy music, I guess it didn’t seem all that offensive when I came up with my latest idea, part of a personal project I’ve been working on for too long. The genesis is pretty simple: a few nights ago, I ran into an ex-girlfriend, who had ballooned up in weight to a staggering degree. Now, I’m not one to talk, but I couldn’t help inflating with as much glee as she had donuts. Part of it was schadenfreude — it made me happy to see that she no longer possessed the physical attributes she once held so dear. But I won’t deny that most of it was pure egotism: I wanted to believe that I was the cause, that her dumping me had as much of an impact on her as it did on me, that it so devastated her that she started binge-eating, which is actually what I do when I’m depressed.

I’m certain this isn’t the case, although I can’t exactly figure out a better cause. When we dated, she was always body-conscious and fitness-obsessed, and I was usually the frightening, doughy albatross who made it seem like she was “dating down”). At any rate, I started to think about this as the subject for a song.

It’s kind of rare that I think of songs in serious, vaguely literal terms. I know song lyrics are poetry (really shitty poetry, in my case), and poetry is mainly about imagery and symbolism, but I almost never write what you’d call a “personal” song in a literal sense. They’re always under the guise of a third-person character (or a first-person character who is not me), so while deep down they’re rooted in something very personal, they don’t appear to be. This is also how I approach straight fiction and screenwriting — I’m a big believer in “write what you know,” but it’s also not terribly hard to merge what you know with shit you’re just making up. I know what it’s like to feel trapped and isolated; I don’t know what it’s like to have every person I’ve ever known killed, or what it’s like to be on the run from the government, but I can imagine.

So before I even got the chance to gussy this up with metaphor or obscenity-laced sexual-inadequacy diatribes, a chorus popped into my head while I was trying to fall asleep last night — fully formed and annoyingly catchy. So catchy I thought I ripped it off from another song, but I’ve spent days thinking about it and can’t come up with one. (Ironically, when I fleshed it out with a verse, I discovered that section was completely ripping off “The Ascent of Stan” by Ben Folds.) I leaped to my guitar plunked out the melody, figured out the chords and the various fills and harmonies I kept hearing, wrote it all down, and went to bed.

Once I got the chorus, I started thinking about the real meat of the songs — the true thrust of my emotions. It’s mean-spirited and bitter, obviously, but at the heart of it, the idea of the song is first about how people handle breakups in different ways. It’s also about misplaced hostility, the aforementioned egotism and schadenfreude, really portraying the first-person narrator (i.e., me) as much, much worse than the ex, whose only crime (other than breaking up with “him”) is plumping up — to the extreme!

So when I talked to Lucy and she asked what I was up to, I mentioned the song and the whole idea behind it, and she said, “That’s sexist.”

Which is 100% true. Not that it’d ever get airplay because (a) I’m nobody and (b) the chorus contains liberal use of the word “fuck,” but if it did, I’d imagine a significant chunk of the female demographic would tune out as soon as they realize the chorus also contains liberal allusions to such large, balloon-like objects as the Goodyear blimp and the Hindenburg. Beyond the general sexism, it reenforces body-image dilemmas among chicks, as they like to be called. I don’t like doing that. I wouldn’t want some chick who looks into my sunken, crooked eyes and falls in love to listen to my shitty song and say, “Huh, time to develop bulimia. Where are the empty mason jars?” Which, again, is more egotism on my part. On so many hilarious levels.

So what do I do? I could say, “Fuck political correctness,” because I know I’m doing my damnedest to portray the narrator as the bad guy. I could say, “The underlying point of the song is the sexism, and the fact that this person feels — because of their own personal quirks — that her getting fat, when fatness (or at least extreme sloth) may have contributed to her pulling the plug on the relationship, is a minor victory in his eyes.” It’s not about right or wrong; it’s about the emotion of the moment, and the reflection on the moment and realizing that, even though he knows he’s a total dick, he still feels awesome that she’s a gargantuan lardass.

And then it makes me wonder crazy shit, like, “What if Springsteen’s ‘Used Cars’ was originally about running into a fat ex-girlfriend, but he rewrote and rewrote and rewrote until it became a bittersweet, semi-nostalgic snapshot of working-class life, with the fat ex turning into a used car but both of them representing something once desired and currently rejected?” Which leads me to the obvious conclusion:

I’m overthinking it. I should just write. Let the amateur-night crowd at that hippie coffee shop separate the wheat from the chaff.

Posted by Stan on June 6, 2008 11:01 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em

June 4, 2008

Free Work’s for Suckers

For nearly two years now, I’ve been “working” for a semi-legitimate film-criticism website that has, so far, earned me a broken computer that I can’t fix (which was supposed to be a bribe that I could either use myself or sell on eBay — hard to do either when I can’t make it work). In my defense, I don’t do that much work for it, and when I do it’s pretty much self-satisfying. In the beginning, the guy who runs it would send me the shit cluttering his desk, which nobody else wanted, and I’d happily review it. I haven’t done that in a year; he still sends me the clutter, but I don’t review it.

The advantage I have is that the man remembers absolutely nothing. Case in point: if you’re wondering how I hooked up with this guy in the first place, he was one of my professors in college. I wrote a paper in that class that he apparently felt was so good, he scrawled in the top margin of the first place, “Please make a copy of this for me to keep in my files.” This filled my already hyper-inflated ego to capacity, only to burst when I came into class a week later with a fresh copy for him, only to be greeted with befuddlement and mild amusement. He had no idea why I was presenting him with a blank copy of a paper he’d already graded (at first, he assumed I was turning it in late) and refused to take it.

I’m astounded by how little he retains, but most of the time I find his bewilderment in the face of things he should already know advantageous. The first thing he had me do — and really, the only thing I still do regularly — was update one guy’s weekly column using GoLive and templates that have existed since about 1999 (that’s not exaggeration for comic effect). I realized how inefficient and inept this system is, and how it’s caused these pages to become bloated and useless (dig into the source code and find metatags promoting Ghost World that has no business being there, not to mention 750,000 div tags because GoLive adds them for every paragraph you generate but doesn’t delete them when you delete those paragraphs).

I’m not what you’d call good at web design, but I’m a pretty devout hand-coder, much more willing to fuck around with trial and error until I get things right than leaving it in the hands of a WYSIWYG program that does nothing but bloat. So one of the first things I did was pitch the idea of switching over to some blogging software as kind of a rudimentary CMS. I know it’s hard to tell by looking at this place, but I’ve developed an alarming knowledge of MovableType’s templating architecture and, when I find something can’t be done, inevitably there’s a plugin that’ll make things work. I knew that with their templating engine and my HTML knowledge, I could replicate the entire site, as-is, without any fundamental differences in its look and feel.

Boss Man disagreed. He saw the word “blog” and instantly dismissed it, saying he didn’t want his “professional” website to look like a blog. We exchanged a few argumentative e-mails before I gave up, knowing by that time that if I waited a few months, then took a different approach, he’d be more receptive.

So when he presented the idea of buying the Adobe Creative Suite, which costs a ridiculous amount of money (even with his educational discount), I told him no, he shouldn’t do that. Avoiding the word blog entirely, I noted that there are free “content management systems” available online that can do what he wants to do better than Dreamweaver, and since all he’d use the other programs for is image resizing, and he already has an older copy of Photoshop that can do that, he’s wasting his money.

He liked the CMS idea, but I guess he was asking rhetorically because he’d already bought the Adobe software. Suffering from pangs of buyer’s remorse, he sheepishly asked if Dreamweaver could be used with one of these free systems. I said, “Of course,” without knowing whether or not it’s even true.

Springing into action, I took the time to dummy up a few new pages and a new graphical theme, all using MovableType, to show him what it can do. I sent him the URLs to the demo pages, explained to him what this architecture can do — almost entirely self-reliant, he’d never have to waste all that time hand-updating pages full of archive links, he’d never have to fuck around with fonts; all he had to do was copy and paste from MS Word. I knew this would appeal to his underlying laziness.

He loved both the redesign and the sales pitch, so I started to go ahead with it, expanding the layout to encompass the full site, then importing articles. A couple of weeks later, he took me by surprise when he e-mailed me and asked to send him the raw HTML pages of my redesign so he could use them.

I wrote him back, “Uh, yeah, it doesn’t exactly work like that,” and re-explained the way the new system worked, what would have to be done to launch it, and then once it is, with a new system founded on MovableType and CSS (yeah, the old site is so old and creaky, it’s all tables and font tags despite the endless div tags), we’d never have to worry about cross-site inconsistency again. You’d go back to articles from 1999, and they’d look the same as the ones from today. I’m certain I’m alone on this, but I often get a creepy, haunted-house vibe when I wander a large, old, ineptly coded website that has all these old, out-of-date pages with mismatched design, broken images and links.

I knew I wasn’t getting paid, but by this time it was more about me and my friend Mark, who I’d cajoled into writing for the site. He expressed some frustration that he wrote what he felt were pretty good articles but were embarrassed to put them down on a resume because he didn’t want people clicking on the site and seeing how ugly, sloppy, and unprofessional it looked. It occurred to me that, without consciously thinking about it, I felt the same way. That was the motive for the redesign — the writing from certain other reviewers was bad enough; at the very least, a fresh coat of paint would create the illusion of a high-class site. Besides, shortly before really digging into the redesign, I was told by Google that I needed “more projects experience” before they’d consider me; since I have exactly 0 “projects” to my credit, I figured this would be something big, elaborate, and impressive to work on.

And that’s what it’s become. I know I’m not a coding god — shit, 80% of the time I’m flying by the seat of my pants, and Googling solutions from other people to rig it up — but what I’ve done with the website so far is impressive. Every section has its own stylistic quirks, which in theory doesn’t play nice with MovableType, but it’s easy enough to trick it with plugins. By now, I’ve reached a point where very little is left to do, and I’ve spent the bulk of my time importing articles — nearly 1900 in, with about 1800 left to go. I’ve done this single-handedly for two reasons: adding more people, especially techno-spazzes like Boss Man, would just make things too confusing. Decisions need to be made to get the articles imported as quickly as possible. What’s going to happen if they freeze up every time they encounter something like Boss Man’s misguided decision in 2003 to have “dual reviews,” using columns with one person’s review covering one half of the page and another’s covering the other half. (A decent enough idea in theory, and I’ve seen it in practice on other websites and magazines, but it’s one of those things that only works when the writers have different opinions. When both reviewers of a movie love it or hate it, for roughly the same reasons, it’s not exactly a clash of the titans.

Although I’d told all this to Del and gotten his okay before I did all the work, he still e-mailed me about a week ago with a confusing suggestion: first, he guided me to a website of costly WordPress templates without seeming to realize WordPress is dreaded blogging software; second, he’d once again forgotten something pivotal and useful — I’m already working on it.

So I wrote him back and told him to save his money — everything with the redesign is already in place, with the exception of one or two kinks I’m still working out, so it’s mainly a process of importing articles. I glossed over the total uselessness of Dreamweaver in my redesign but did mention the consolation prize, that templates can be edited via Dreamweaver using an extension (which may not even work — I haven’t even install the copy of CS3 he burned for me). Instead, I focused on singing the praises of MovableType, both in general and as a superior product to WordPress (whether or not that’s true is irrelevant; I stuck with MT because it’s the program I know, and I’m far too lazy to learn another one to do free work).

He seemed pleased with it, especially the part where I said writers would be able to post their own shit (which I think would breed anarchy, but I knew it’d appeal to his laziness). I gave him his login and password to play around in the system a bit, but he…didn’t. Instead, he did nothing for almost two weeks, then e-mailed me this morning to say he’d really rather just pay the $75 for the templates — again, not realizing that these templates have nothing to do with Dreamweaver. They’re for WordPress, so even if we switched over, it’d be the same goddamn mess we’re already in — only we’d be starting from scratch instead of from 1900 entries into it. Oh, and did I mention he wants templates that will make his “professional” site look exactly like every blog on the planet, the very thing I’ve painstakingly avoided?

I don’t even know what to say when confronted with situations like this. It’s like, I think everything’s all worked out, and then suddenly he’ll throw a curveball that makes absolutely no sense. I know the only solution is to keep arguing for MovableType, reexplaining the benefits (and the amount of work already put into it) ad nauseam. He wants a different look? Fine, I can edit the templates that already exist. The system is in place, and as I already told him months ago, once we establish the basic concepts, we can change anything we want. He wants a horizontal menu, not a vertical one? Fine. But don’t tell me I’ve wasted six months of free labor, and don’t tell me it’ll be another year before we launch the redesign because of all the time required to import all those articles, just because he had a whim.

Posted by Stan on June 4, 2008 1:23 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | “I’m a living joke!” - Horror Stories from the Workplace

June 3, 2008

The CT Scan

So because my recent endoscopy/colonoscopy didn’t turn up much, my doctor recommended getting a CT scan of my abdomen and pelvis. I know this doesn’t sound like much fun, but believe me when I say, “Well, it wasn’t as bad as liquid-shitting.”

The plus side is that the hospital makes you pick up this barium goop to drink before the test, which allowed me to get the rough location of where I needed to be. See, the genius who decided our local hospital apparently felt like it’d be a really good, non-confusing idea to make it a giant circle. It strikes me as kind of odd, since most of the people frequent this particular hospital seem to be in their mid- to late-hundreds, that they’d go with a layout that can confuse a person who has reasonable mental faculties (sort of).

So I got the barium stuff, which is labeled “Berry Smoothie.” I dunno, I guess that’s a good name, but if you’re going to give somebody this chalky crud with a slight tinge of berry flavor, isn’t “Berry-Yum” the obvious choice?

Anyway, this evening I went in for the procedure. I was a little alarmed and aroused by how flirty the young, perky receptionist was. I mean…you don’t tip receptionists, right? This really was legitimate flirting? I dunno, maybe they secretly have to get dudes all bonered up before they do a pelvic CT scan, so this was all an elaborate ruse, but whatever. I’ll take what I can get. So after about 20 minutes of that excitement, she sent me to a “men’s waiting room,” even though I didn’t have to change or anything. I just sat there like an idiot.

Two magazines sat on an old coffee table: Ebony and Better Homes and Gardens. I would have laughed at how out-of-date the Michael Jackson cover on Ebony was, except that it was only December of last year. That alone piqued my interest, so I picked it up and thumbed to the cover story, an interview with the man himself, in which he appeared suspiciously less insane than he usually does. The interview actually engrossed me, as Jackson described his strange, celebrity-surrounded youth and the magical fact that, unlike most songwriters who are lucky just to hear finished albums or maybe see a concert, his inspirations were usually sitting across the room from him. How insane would it be to literally sit and watch from across the room as something like Songs in the Key of Life is being written and recorded?

Then, the doctor’s assistant showed up. A youngish African-American woman, she gave me a puzzled look when she saw the Ebony in my hand. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t embarrassed, but should I really be embarrassed? I know Ebony is targeted at the black community, but shouldn’t I be allowed to read it without getting funny looks from people of any race?

She took me into the mystery room where the magic happens, then she jabbed me with an IV that was considerably more painful than the one from the colonoscopy. It wasn’t so much the general needle pain — which was indeed painful and, considering my extreme fear of needles, didn’t exactly put me at ease — as the pressure. The IV itself was connected to this weird, looped tube that went to a…thingie that would eventually distribute iodine into my system for the contrast. I know the loops existed to extend the tube’s length and prevent pressure, but it honestly had the opposite effect. It’s exactly like a phone cord — you can stretch it out, but as soon as you let go it snaps back to normal. That’s pressure.

It got a little worse when she told me I had to raise my arms over my head as the little bed thing moved in and out of the giant radioactive donut that scanned me. Also, in terms of putting patients at ease, it’s less fun than you might imagine to see a giant red sign reading RADIATION ON that illuminates every time the scanner is working its magic. Worse still, the bed rolls up to eye level of the mystery laser, right above which is a sign that reads DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY INTO LASER. Come on!

After all the waiting, though, the whole thing took maybe 10 minutes, and the hardest part was the whole “don’t breathe while we keep it rolling for 20 years” thing. I have pretty solid lung capacity, but they tested me. Even if I had shitty, shallow lungs, they did a horrible job of preparing you for it. It has this automated recording that says, “Take a deep breath” — then, before you even have the chance, it shouts, “Hold your breath!” as the scanner revs up. Come on!

But hey, it wasn’t so bad. And now that I know where radiology is, maybe I can come back and flirt with the receptionist some more. It’s not weird for non-ghosts to hang around a hospital, is it?

Posted by Stan on June 3, 2008 10:28 AM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Stories of Pain and Humiliation

June 1, 2008

How to Make ‘Grand Theft Auto IV’ Not Suck

I have talked almost nonstop about my distaste for Grand Theft Auto IV. You can watch the marked progression from “good but problematic” to “ass factory.” So with a couple weeks’ distance between finishing the game, I’m just going to come right out and say it: it’s an awful, awful game.

If you ignore the rampant bugs, the hilariously inept implementation of a cover system, and the legendary pop-in glitches and poor frame rate (all of which — including, if you want to get technical, the poor implementation of new features — are hallmarks of Rockstar game design), it’s impressive from a technical standpoint. But not that impressive — not so impressive that I can ignore the myriad flaws in gameplay, story, and just…well, I always hear about how this amazing Euphoria technology. You know, the thing that takes cold and sterile Lieutenant Commander Data and fills him with vibrance and emotion unlike anything seen in a machine.

Euphoria is supposed to randomize things like reactions from passersby, even reactions from Niko and other characters. Which is fine, except for how unamazing it is. You’re in a game where the prime reaction to Niko running — something he has to do at all times because walking is totally fucking useless — is a horrified gasp, arms raised in the air, an O of shock on the pedestrian’s face. Niko doesn’t have a gun out, isn’t charging into people, isn’t starting fights — he’s just running. You might find it hard to believe, but I have run around in large cities. Like, Niko-style running. This is not “put on the jogging shorts and the silly headband and go jogging.” This is “I have a 10-minute break and need a fucking cup of coffee, stat!“-style running — just a normal guy in street clothes, running a couple of blocks to a coffee shop, then running back.

Here’s approximately what happens: maybe one or two people will give you a second glance, but otherwise nobody gives a shit. Nobody’s shocked or horrified. Nobody’s diving to the ground for fear that you’ll hit them. Nobody’s shouting a limited range of prescripted responses. I swear to God, if I hear somebody yell what sounds like “cheesy vagina!” one more time…well, fuck, it’s a moot point since I’m done with story mode and have listed it to sell on Amazon. I’m done with this piece of shit.

So is that clear? The game is not amazing from a technical standpoint. It has some nice-looking graphics in a lot of spots, but have you ever gone exploring? Certain areas are loaded with rich detail; others are bland and detail-free. They created a large city, but they did not create a living, breathing city, which is why I wish they’d concentrate less resources on “realism” they will never achieve with current technology and had instead put their eggs back in the “fun, engaging gameplay” basket.

I didn’t really care about the technology, though. Sometimes I’ll play a game to marvel at the technology; mostly, I just want to play the fucking thing. Like special effects in movies, the technology in a game — graphics, control, sound, gameplay mechanics — all exist to serve the gaming experience. Making a game that isn’t fun to play but boasts some impressive visuals won’t win any awards in my book. I’m more concerned with the overall gameplay than with how it looks.

I didn’t really want too much from GTAIV. In fact, I only had one hope, which the game fell spectacularly short of fulfilling: I wanted it to be better than San Andreas. When I heard this would be a more serious, dramatic game, I thought it could work. San Andreas had a few moments of legitimate drama within the goofy/fun story, and like I said, while playing Saints Row I thought about the idea of how interesting, engaging, and landscape-changing a game that brings the depth and complexity of The Wire to a console would be. It didn’t do that. At all.

So I came up with my three biggest problems, and solutions to all three that could have made this a vastly superior game.

• Niko doesn’t need money by the time you hit “Three Leaf Clover.”

  Don’t try to convince me I’m wrong on this one, because it’s the absolute truth. I haven’t tallied it all up, but I’m pretty sure buying every article of clothing in the entire game would cost less than $20,000. I finished the game with around $750,000, and I had bought most of the clothes, done none of the very few side missions, and spent too much time fucking around with these asshole characters because I thought keeping them happy would actually be worth the effort in the long run (spoiler alert: it’s not).

  From a story standpoint, it’s very difficult to reconcile the “fractured American dream”/”Niko as reluctant assassin”/”he’s doing it all for his family” ideas with the fact that your bank account is packed to the gills with useless cash. More than anything, they needed to integrate the property-purchasing/business-running components of previous games. It’s a fun aspect in general, but it’s the only time in the entire game that having that feature would have made story sense. If Niko has to blow his wad on buildings, houses, and/or businesses before he can start making the money his family desperately needs, it’d go a long way to forcing him into a corner in which he has no choice but to fall back into the life he came to America to escape.

  But let’s take it a step further. What about the utterly pointless, barely exploited time component they added to the game? We have days of the week now that only had any kind of effect for, like, three missions. What would happen if they put a clock on Niko’s earnings? What if he has to earn, say, $5000 each week that gets sent right back to Eastern Europe? What if something catastrophic will happen if he doesn’t get that money?

  “But wait,” you might protest, “weren’t you the one who bitched endlessly about how the heavy scripting in this supposedly ‘sandbox’ game? Wouldn’t this just script it even more by forcing you to do missions instead of fucking around?” Well, yes and no. The whole key to this new component is a combination of time management and money management. First of all, there’s no rigid law saying, “Niko has to do standard story missions to make the dough.” If he wants to spend the entire week punching the shit out of pedestrians until he gets the $5000, that’s his prerogative. Or if you want to fuck around, just do enough missions back to back, then spend the rest of the game week relaxing. Taking it even further: if you don’t give a shit about the consistency of the story or the character, just let the fucking family die. I’m not suggesting that you’d “lose” if you don’t get the money, just that something bad would happen to them. Maybe there’s a three-strikes-and-you’re-out thing. Who cares? Just something to add a little suspense, add a reason to Niko’s actions, add a way to spend vast sums of money so he’s not running around with $600,000 saying, “I’m desperate for money.”

• Shameful lack of mission variety.

  When I’ve talked to people or read nerdy forum posts where people bash the game, 90% of them cite three different missions from each of the three PS2 games, each of which illustrate the general lack of variety in mission structures and the specific lack of variety within the mission. Very few missions give you those delightfully sandboxy “50 different ways to beat it” tasks. In GTAIII, people point out the one where you have to kill Tanner, because you can do it any fucking way you want. In Vice City, it’s the country club mission. In San Andreas, it’s the one where you burn the fields of weed. Granted, in that one you can’t necessarily solve it a bunch of different ways — it’s more an example of the kinds of missions that are unlike anything else in the game, illustrating the wild variety in tasks and mission types.

  Where the fuck did that go? For every mission where you set up a date with a gay guy then shoot him like a dog in the street, there are 10 missions that feature endless amounts of driving around the city, with or without a car chase, to some dingy warehouse or apartment where there’s a cover-heavy shootout. Ooh, the excitement.

  I mentioned to a friend of mine that one of the major things GTAIV lacks is a nice little suburban area. I figured that’d be Alderney, but Alderney seems to mimic nothing but the grimy industrial cesspool of Jersey City without getting into the sprawling, ritzy suburban areas at all. A nice Long Island surrogate would have helped. For the sake of both visual variety and mission variety — people still laugh (no, really) about the hilarity of driving around the soccer-mom crack dealer in her minivan in Saints Row.

  This might sound dumb, but a few days ago I watched the movie Boiler Room, an underrated and mostly forgotten 2000 thriller about an underachiever running a casino out of his apartment who ends up working as a power-broken for a shady investment firm. In addition to containing a performance by Giovanni Ribisi that makes me wonder why his star never got brighter, it also contains the only known good performances from Vin Diesel and Jamie Kennedy.

  It’s a terrific movie, but I don’t want to ruin it. I’m just going to give you the overall story arc of the first two acts: Ribisi’s approached by an old friend and a new acquaintance to join this firm; he thinks it’ll be a great thing for him — getting him out of his life of pseudo-crime with a legitimate job. Rather than working on Wall Street, he’s at some office park way at the end of Long Island (that’s where my brain started cooking, when I decided GTAIV needs some suburban environs), and slowly but surely Ribisi starts to realize he’s working for a bunch of crooks. He’s not sure what they’re doing or how, but he keeps getting more pieces of the puzzle; when he finally puts it together, he decides to pull one over on them.

  Look, I’m telling you. Watch the movie and tell me it wouldn’t work perfectly well as a GTAIV mission arc. Hell, that’s what all of these arcs should have been — Niko, looking to get out of his life of crime, starts doing jobs he thinks are legitimate, but they inevitably turn out to be criminal enterprises. You have variety in the types of crimes being committed, the types of missions involved — not all of them have to be overtly illegal. People who praise GTAIV keep praising the social system, the idea of “just hanging out.” So what about a half-dozen missions that are all about Niko getting and keeping legitimate, nonviolent jobs? They inevitably turn violent, but the “arc” of Niko getting tricked into committing illegal activities usually lasts through the first mission, at which point he’s resigned to continue working for these people. Give us some build-up, some suspense.

  It adds mission variety, and it could even add some fun submissions. One of the only things I’ll praise about this game are the new vigilante missions — they did an excellent job with that. So why not give us some similar missions with Pizza Delivery or Ambulance Driver. Different styles of missions, not just repetitive tasks, with all of them fulfilling that same arc of Niko trying desperately to go straight but somehow getting fucked over. For all the repetitive exposition in the game, the one thing they didn’t highlight enough (or tried to but botched) was Niko’s early attempt to go straight. He should have kept trying throughout the game in different ways.

• With two exceptions, the voice acting is atrocious.

  I think, of all the things I say about the game, this will be the one that catches me the most flak. One of the things I see from people who think all other aspects of the game are failures is praise for the voice acting, and praise for Rockstar using unknowns rather than big celebrity voices (as they have in the past).

  I’m going to be blunt: Niko has one of the most irritating game voices I’ve ever heard. I’ve played hundreds, if not thousands, of games, and too many of them are plagued with shitty voice acting, but nothing like Michael Hollick as Niko. To be honest, if you’re going to do a game with a bunch of immigrants with heavy accents, why not use real immigrants with heavy accents? The only thing more annoying than the accent itself is the inconsistency of its application. And the voice’s…I don’t know how to describe its quality, but there’s something about it that rivals nails on a chalkboard. When I finally got through story mode, I took to just muting it as I ran around achievement-whoring (that lasted about a day before I got sick of the game altogether) so I wouldn’t have to listen to him anymore. He’s awful.

  So the only voices I like in the game are Packie and Brucie. Do not confuse this with me liking the characters. The video game world has never seen a character more irritating and less funny than Brucie. Ever. I actually sort of liked Packie, despite the fact that he’s little more than a rehash of Ziggy on The Wire. But both are well-voiced. They certainly beat the bland, similar-sounding female characters and the awful, awful Alderney characters. I can’t even remember the name of the lame Joe Pesci wannabe, but the only thing in the game worse than that guy was Phil. That guy could not act. Not even a little. He makes Niko sound convincing. The only reason I’m so hard on Niko is because you hear him for so fucking long, but Phil is by far the worst voice in the game.

  Other than the suggestion to use people with authentic accents if you’re going to have that be a characteristic of the game, I don’t have much idea on how to improve it. I mean, I can say, “Just don’t have foreign characters in your game.” That’ll solve some problems. Or, “Get a better class of voice actor.” Who knows? All I can say — and I know I’ve said it before — is that people like Ray Liotta and Luis Guzmán added a great deal to Vice City, and the zillions of celebrity cameos involved in San Andreas really enhanced the quality of that game. Come on — James Woods? That was around the time where you’re sorta getting sick of the game because it’s too long. Then James Woods busts in with comedy gold and some of the most bizarre missions in the game — it’s an amazing rejuvenation late in the game. Even so, I have to give credit to Young Maylay as CJ. He’s a relative unknown, but he did great work…

  …unlike most of the folks involved in GTAIV. I guess the bottom line is: try a little harder. For all its graphical improvements and new ideas, GTAIV just feels like a thrown-together cash-in, on par with the PSP disasters.

If I think of anything else, I’ll certainly continue to rip this game a new asshole. I really, really hated it.

Posted by Stan on June 1, 2008 5:48 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Reviews