I don't like television. As a general rule, I find it flabby, unwholesome, dissatisfying, crude, and pointless.
So when I tell you that my favorite television show is Firefly, you should understand that the show itself is none of those things. It is, in fact, pure awesomeness incarnate.
Tragically, it was canceled after a measly 14 episodes had been filmed, due to Executive Meddling. More's the pity.
In an interview, Firefly's male lead Nathan Fillion stated that, if he had $300 million on hand, he would buy the rights to the show, and probably continue it, free of interference from the powers-that-be.
That got me thinking. What would I do if I had $300 million?
I'll tell you what I'd do. I'd start up my own movie studio.
On-Target Productions, I'd call it. Or maybe Faithful Studios. Something to convey my sententious but entirely truthful belief that Hollywood is incapable of producing a piece of cinema which is in any way faithful to the source material, and that my studio, by virtue of its firm grounding in literary value (and complete disregard for monetary gain), is.
Anyway, the name isn't important. What's important is that I'd outfit this studio with the best equipment my limited budget could buy, hire the most hardworking personnel I could find, write a bunch of screenplays (the way I like 'em), and make some movies that are entirely accurate and complete interpretations of the media upon which they're based.
I mean that quite literally. Entirely accurate and complete. No chopping or dissecting or mulching being done here; if I mean to make a movie out of a book, I'm using the whole goddamn book: every scene, every line of dialogue, every sentence if needs be. There'll be no "lost characters" like Tom Bombadil from The Lord of the Rings or Peeves the Poltergeist from Harry Potter. And there'll be none of this cutting-out-minor-scenes-because-they-don't-advance-the-action-fast-enough-and-we-can-totally-skip-those-scenes-anyway-because-all-they-do-is-reveal-minor-nuances-of-character-that-we-can-gloss-over-in-the-third-act malarkey. These are going to be faithful interpretations, like I said. That means every little scene, no matter how insignificant a two-bit brain-dead Hollywood screenwriter might consider it, will be reproduced in exact facsimile. No exceptions.
Having my own studio (and not giving a fig whether my productions are marketable, or even if they will be marketed) will give me room to breathe. I don't have to worry about length, or mass appeal, or tone, or censorship, or any of that other crap that the Gilded Mulcher has to worry about in order to sell movie tickets. I can reproduce these great source works as I see fit, with complete creative control, and revel in the realness and truthfulness of the results. I can bring my imagination to life for myself and a few other acolytes to enjoy. Everyone else can go spit.
I'm not saying these films will be unwatchably violent, sexy, or disgusting. There's practically no sex in any of the works I have in mind to adapt. And the violence won't be worse than anything you'd see in a typical action flick. As for the darker, scarier stories...well, it all depends on what you think might blast your soul from your body with cosmic horror.
by Pete Amachree
And mind you, I won't object if a few independent-minded cinemas agree to pick up my works and release them at a few small drive-ins and dollar theaters. Those are the kind of folks I'd want watching my films anyway, not the bigwigs from Hollywood and Cannes.
But that's beside the point! Aren't you curious to know which books and stories I will be adapting for the screen?
I thought you'd be. I have some very specific ideas on that score. They include, but are not limited to...
Several tales from Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian mythos. If you haven't read any of Howard's original Conan tales, it's time you started. Howard's barbarian makes Arnold Schwarzenegger look like a pantywaist choirboy. The stories are gritty, bloody, sweaty, and hard-boiled, bursting with darkness, danger, hideous evil, swashbuckling adventure and testosterone. Some of the stories I have in mind are Beyond the Black River, The Tower of the Elephant, Iron Shadows on the Moon, and Red Nails...as well as a weird Western tale, unrelated to Conan, The Horror from the Mound.
Selected works of H.P. Lovecraft, including At the Mountains of Madness, The Thing on the Doorstep, The Shunned House, The Haunter of the Dark, The Shadow Out of Time, The Whisperer in Darkness, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, and The Dunwich Horror. It'll be interesting to see if Lovecraft's works translate well onto the screen. A lot of the horror and suspense in his stories is conveyed through description and inarticulate mentality, not through dialogue or action. Many of the horrific implications and disgusting monsters are best left to the realms of the imagination, too, rather than put up on a screen in CG and pixels. Still, I'd be willing to give it a shot.
Most of H.G. Wells's full-length works, including The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, and The Island of Dr. Moreau. Most have been made into films already, but none of them have been done correctly. That's not my opinion, that's fact. I'll treat 'em right if no one else will.
Many of Jules Verne's classic tales, like Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and Around the World in Eighty Days. Can you imagine what giant squids, raft-rides through lava tubes, and thrilling heroics on speeding steam trains would look like on a humongous theater screen? It gives me the chills!
Dozens of science fiction novels and short stories by writers such as Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, A.E. van Vogt, Arthur C. Clarke, C.M. Kornbluth, L. Sprague de Camp, Lester del Rey, and Fritz Leiber. Here are a few I've got in mind.
The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood
The Novel of the Black Seal by Arthur Machen
The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein (a respectful interpretation); also The Roads Must Roll and Universe
The Empire of the Atom, The Wizard of Linn, The Weapon Shops of Isher, and Black Destroyer by A.E. van Vogt
The Hammer of God by Arthur C. Clarke
The Big Front Yard by Clifford D. Simak
Baby Is Three by Theodore Sturgeon
A live-action film adaptation of the superb and underrated Hanna-Barbera cartoon Thundarr the Barbarian. A fur-clad warrior with a magic sword wanders the post-apocalyptic Earth in the year 3999, after a rogue planet cast human civilization in ruin. In his ongoing quest to save the scrawny, ragged survivors from evil wizards, mutants and strange monsters (many of which are holdovers from the 20th century), Thundarr is aided by the beautiful Princess Ariel, a sorceress, and a huge, furry Mok named Ookla. I'm thinking some big-budget disaster scenes and a lot of Scenery Gorn.
Some of the video and computer games I've played have definite potential, such as Crimson Skies. Maybe if I'm in a really fun-loving and goofy mood I'll do Serious Sam.
Yes, I know I've railed against remakes on this here blog. But I can't help it. I'd redo a few of the old stop-motion monster flicks, not because I think CG would make them better (certainly not; Ray Harryhausen has no equal and never will), but simply because I'm curious to see what they'd look like with a technological makeover. Just curious, is all. I can't help but wonder what a reboot of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, The Valley of Gwangi, Them!, Jason and the Argonauts, and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad would be like. Specifically, the monsters. You know how much I like monsters.
And that's it. I think it'd be a lot of fun. I've always wanted to try my hand at screenwriting. And I'll bet I could hire an assistant until I got good at it. Then I'd just go to town. My studio would crank out these films, and they'd go for limited theatrical release or direct-to-DVD, and whoever was interested in real, faithful, true adaptations of good books and cartoons and movies could buy 'em and watch 'em. That's all I want. That's what I'd do with $300,000,000. Maybe a few bucks to charity here and there, but for the most part I'd launch my vendetta against Hollywood and revel in unmitigated artistic license.
What would you do with $300,000,000? Buy a monkey?
I know, I know. This is the Sententious Vaunter. I should be penning you a panegyric, not a philippic. But sometimes I discover things which make me want to scream, and the only place I can scream eloquently enough is here on this blog. So strap yourselves in. It's ranting time.
I'm drawing attention to this subject because (a) it bugs me and (b) to my knowledge, the phenomenon has only recently been named. Finally, we have a label for all those teen romance books that involve vampires, werewolves, zombies and aliens.
I first saw the label at Barnes & Noble. Two whole sections of bookshelf had been given over to the genre, whose individual components were earmarked by the Goth-looking teenagers on the covers, the sinister titles, the dark colors, and their universal, superficial resemblance to the Twilight series. The placard over this section indicated that these works were "Teen Paranormal Romance."
What? What the hell is teen paranormal romance? I thought.
Then I realized. The resemblance to Twilight wasn't superficial. People—grown men and women, not just teenage girls—had gotten so infatuated with the type of story which Twilight offered that the series had sparked an entire genre: teen girls (and, in some cases, teen guys) falling in love with eldritch monsters.
Oh jeez, I thought. That's ridiculous. Thanks a heap, Stephanie Meyer. You really started something.
As you can probably tell, I don't approve of Twilight or anything remotely resembling it. Specifically, I take issue with the manner in which Twilight has degraded and diluted the definition of masculinity. Instead of being rough, hardy, muscular, forthright and boisterous, like real men ought to be, Meyer's ideal man is a skulking, pale, sensitive, soft-spoken freak of a pretty boy. I don't consider that manly at all. And yet scores of swooning teenage girls have gone wild for Edward Cullen; Indiana Jones, Conan the Barbarian and James Bond are chauvinistic fossils by comparison.
This is not the kind of world I want to live in.
The problem is simple. The very fact that this disturbing trend has been labeled means that it's entrenched. Teen paranormal romance is here to stay, at least for a while. It's the big thing in fiction right now. The Twilight movies are slaughtering the box office and paranormal romance of every variety is infecting the shelves of booksellers nationwide. There's no way to dislodge the phenomenon. It makes me cringe to think of what might come next.
As always, I shall be the lone voice of sanity in these insane, chaotic times (boy, ain't that ironic). While teen girls (and, I suspect, a generous sample of middle-aged women) ooh and aah over the pencil-necked vampire boys, I shall continue to write stories which feature musclebound guys, ball-crushing badasses, and suave, straight-talking champions. I shall let the purity of the masculine ideal speak for itself in my fiction. Bold adventurers, quick-thinking rogues and rock-hard heroes will never go out of style, and though some distressing trends in fiction have arisen of late (and will do so again), I shall remain a bastion of artistic integrity and truth.
There shall be a good deal of romance in my books, and no street-smart, gorgeous heroine of mine is going to fall for any pale, bloodsucking pretty boy.
Well, it's forty-six down and four to go in 50 Great Short Stories. I'll be sad to see the back of that book, but glad that I have a compendium of literary greatness (and brevity) bound up for later reference.
In the meantime I've broken my customary one-book-at-a-time rule and dived into the third and final Conan volume, which my folks so magnanimously sent in their last care package: The Conquering Sword of Conan. So far it's shaping up well: the first story, The Servants of Bit-Yakin, concerns an ancient lost valley and a treasure worth more than all the rest in the world, the Teeth of Gwahlur, hidden away in it. An ancient sorcerer once dwelt there with his inhuman servants, and when he died he took the secret of the treasure's location with him. Now the trail has grown hot again, and Conan is hot on it. His claims are hotly contested by a neighboring kingdom and its greedy, corrupt priest, so Conan has his work cut out for him...no less so because that sorcerer's inhuman servants are still alive and well!
Depending on how soon I finish 50 Great Short Stories, I might even start in on the next book: it's nonfiction for a change. Marco Polo: Venice to Xanadu by Laurence Bergreen is technically a biography, but the way the critics tell it, it plays the tune of a travelogue and an adventure story at times. I hear it's a splendid book, the best work so far on the life of the renowned Venetian explorer. I can't wait to get into it. I'd like to emulate old Marco. Imagine it! An enterprising Westerner travels far to the east by the longest and most famous trade route in history and gets into the good graces of a barbaric conqueror, Genghis Khan...or wait, was it Kublai Khan? This is why I need to read the book. It's flabbergasting and dumbfounding when you stop and ruminate. How dangerous that undertaking was! How deep into the unknown that man's travels penetrated, and how gutsy he was. I travel today with the assurance that I'm going to make it back alive, and in a timely manner. Marco Polo went deep into the heart of the uncivilized unknown, on the road for months and years, in danger of his life at every turn from wild beasts and savages and imaginary but nonetheless imposing monsters. What a way to live one's life! I think I was born in the wrong millennium.
On a final note, I'm vacillating on whether to hurry up and buy volumes 8-11 of One Piece right here and now in Korea, or save the hassle of trying to transport them out of here in two short months and just order them from Amazon.com when I get to Alaska. Argh, it's an agonizing decision! Luffy's right in the middle of an epic battle with the dastardly Don Krieg, admiral of a pirate armada, who's attacking a seagoing restaurant defended by that swift-kicking cook, Sanji, whom Luffy is determined to have on his crew. Darn, I can't stop now! You know how it goes. You get into a story, the drama gets rolling, the fights explode and the action compounds and you just don't want to stop. You've got to know how it finishes. I know you're supposed to read comic books slowly and savor them, but I swear I get through two volumes a day. That's right, I said volumes, not issues. That's about seven issues in one volume. I'm not a proper comic book fan at all, I know, tell me.
Entries like this always make me feel like a smug, supercilious git. Oh, hey there, viewers! Guess what I did today over here in this marvelous foreign land while you're stuck in the snow and your boring jobs back home?
Regardless, I feel compelled to tell somebody about what a great day I had. So here you go:
I woke up with a hangover. That speaks to what a great night I had last night. Adam, Elaine, Jeff, Charles and I went out on the town, so to speak. It started off as a quiet beer at the Local, and after a few plates of food (fries and jokbal, marinated and boiled pork-leg shavings) and about five beers each (I ordered everything; Charles was showcasing his teaching skills), we switched venues. We first made our way to a restaurant/pub near Adam and Elaine's called Opt, but Charles took one look and reckoned it'd be expensive. We adjourned thence to another pub, whose name I don't remember, next to our favorite sogogi restaurant. It used to be a chicken-and-hof place but now it's all beer. We had some more booze and got so noisy the proprietress had to tell us to clam up. Charles was all for taking us to his place next and cooking us up some more Korean food, but we demurred, for reasons which seemed darn good at the time. I suggested my place; I had the Internet, I had a cocktail bar in the cupboard, and best of all, only one neighbor. We went back to my apartment and caroused for a time with some rum gimlets I whipped up, and Asher Roth and the Chemical Brothers on my laptop.
The party broke up about three-ish or so, long after our inner ears had thrown in the towel.
It took me about two hours to recover the next morning; a trifle. I had a PBJ, a banana, and half a can of baked beans and called it even. I was slated to meet my brother online for a rousing mano a mano game of Impossible Creatures, a real-time strategy game we both like. Unit creation is a gas; you combine animals together to make hybrids and then battle the other player's mutant monsters with them. Unfortunately, it failed to materialize. My brother and I established contact, but for some reasons our computers wouldn't connect. Maybe the Internet works differently in Korea, or our versions of the game (I added some mods) are too disparate to mesh any longer. We promised to do some troubleshooting and try again next weekend, same time.
I started the troubleshooting right off; heck, I had nothing else going. I also put Conan the Barbarian on YouTube and then spent a leisurely hour or so doing my "morning" exercises. I'd opened the windows when I woke up and the warm, fragrant spring breeze had been working on me ever since. Finally I couldn't stand it anymore. I shut off Arnold Schwarzenegger's camel-punching biceps and took a long walk. I crossed the river and attempted to scale the hill (about half as tall as a mountain) that looms over Reading Town; I was turned back. The trail eventually became a dry stream bed (both were extremely rocky; the footing was unstable) and then petered out all together. Every other avenue I tried ended in a grave site. Koreans are now barred by law from burying their dead just anywhere you please, but it still happens anyway. There is an ancient cultural belief that if you find a good, sound, aesthetically-pleasing spot to bury your honorable ancestors, you yourself will be blessed with good fortune. Such a belief has often given rise to "grave wars," with unscrupulous types digging up other people's relatives from preferable locations and interring their own dead illegitimately in their place. The graves on the mountain and most of the island (you can see many of them if you venture into the woods here; wooded slopes seem to be very popular) were probably created before the law came into effect, however. The practical upshot is that a day-hiker can spend all day trying to find the correct trail: that is, the one that leads up the mountain and not to a patch of burial mounds.
I had no luck. I must ask Jeff how he climbed it. He's been up and down practically every notable slope in this part of the island.
The only reason I'd wanted to climb the mountain, apart from the view and the scenery, was that I figured the summit of a mountain, caressed by the spring breeze and shaded by newly-leafed trees, would be a good spot to sit down and read a book. Thwarted by labyrinths and dry stream beds, I set off down the river to find another spot. I wavered when I reached the picnic table under the portico; the breeze was caressing it quite avidly. I elected to go on. I thought the quay down at the harbor where the Busan ferries berth might be a good spot. I strolled the rest of the way down to the sea and had a look, but it was no good there. Traffic roared past, and the sun beat down with no shade to be had. So I went to my Plan C: return to my apartment complex and go to the small park nearby.
I find shade to be an underrated thing, the most lusciously lovely thing ever created by a simple accident (light being unable to pass through objects). Even its color is seductive. Finding a wide swathe of shade under a broad, branching, leafy tree on a bright sunny day is the closest thing to Heaven on Earth, in my book. Sitting there in the dark, feeling the breeze caress you, watching the sun trickle through the leaves and splatter on the ground, is medicinal for the soul. And it's a damn good way to meditate besides.
I had my book with me and everything: 50 Great Short Stories, edited by Milton Crane, containing the selected works of some of the weightiest Occidental writers: Ernest Hemingway, E.M. Forster, Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner, James Joyce, Rudyard Kipling, William Saroyan, Joseph Conrad, John Steinbeck, E.B. White, H.L. Mencken, Nathaniel Hawthorne, H.G. Wells, Edith Wharton, and Robert Louis Stevenson among many others whom I don't recognize. The volume in which these authors were extolled was bouncing away in one of the saddle pockets of my cargo shorts, bookmarked at Thomas Wolfe's Only the Dead Know Brooklyn. I was anxious to get into that one. It was written in New York vernacular, for starters: "Bensonhoist" and "befoeh" and "dis" and "dem" and "dose" and "A map! Red Hook! Jesus!" It promised to be a good read.
So I pressed on, now homeward bound down the main street. I couldn't help getting a bit distracted by things, though. This was spring, after all. I turned right and went down a cavernous tunnel, one of the echelons of the Gohyeon Market. Vendors were selling everything from snacks to cosmetics, and individuals or small groups wandered in and out of stores. I saw one man, perhaps a shopkeeper, perhaps a customer, standing in the foyer of a spice boutique, holding an oddly bent piece of wood. Before him stood a toddler, a tiny girl in a pink shirt, holding a ball in her hand that resembled a buckeye. The man stood like a batter and urged the little girl to throw. She stared uncomprehendingly, while the sound of feminine laughter echoed from the shop behind. Then I emerged into the brighter side lane that marked the start of the food market. Vegetable heaven: cabbages and kimchi and onions and seaweed and ginger roots and a whole bunch of colon-seducing roughage. This place was brighter but still dimmed by a multitude of awnings and umbrellas. I walked south, the direction of home, and came to the meat market. I was greeted by one of the barkers at the corner butcher shop, busy hollering away about the deals on beef and pork and marinating bulgogi. He said hi and asked where I was from. I said the U.S.A. He said, ah, good, and gave me the thumbs-up. I said Korea was great. He thanked me. I walked on. I came to a mandu vendor. I paused. Mandu is a dumpling, or rather, several different varieties of dumplings, all filled with meat. According to unreliable sources, it was brought to Korea by the Mongols in the 14th century. Some kinds are steamed, others are fried. It goes without saying that one type has kimchi in it. I asked how much it was, in Korean (bless you, Charles, my seuseung). The answer was sam-cheon won, or 3,000 won, a little over two bucks. I went for it. I got a Styrofoam container with eight little mandu in it, four different varieties, a cup of dipping sauce, some slices of some unidentifiable member of the squash family, and chopsticks. Now I was on the lookout for some place to eat and read.
I thought I'd found it a little while later. Approaching Gyeryong Elementary School, I was seized by the desire to stop and watch the soccer game in progress. Koreans are fiends for soccer. Entire legions of men pay money to reserve the school's pitch on the weekends for pick-up games. One was in full swing when I arrived. Sweaty young and middle-aged men ran back and forth on the field, swatting the ball about with intense passion. Impressed, I thought about stopping. I heard a soft voice say my name. It was one of my students, who inexplicably goes by the name Eden. He was sitting on one of those squat metal posts that are supposed to prevent cars from driving somewhere they shouldn't, and watching the game. I asked how he was doing and why he wasn't playing. He smiled and shrugged, thought for a moment, then said: "I am children." He gestured at the players. "They are..." He trailed off. "Adults," I finished. My stomach growled. "Well," I said. "I believe I'll find a place to sit down." I found a bench in sight of the field and sat down. I was surprised to find Eden next to me. He plunked himself down on one of the rocks bordering the landscaping and continued watching the game as I ate. It was delicious, better than any frozen potsticker I'd ever had. Eden and I made a little small talk; he asked where Adam and Elaine were. The students seem to think it odd whenever they find one of us foreign teachers without the others. The squash thingies were disgusting. I regretted not having obtained a libation to wash the taste out of my throat. I dithered for a moment, feeling guilty about leaving a dutiful Eden sitting alone again, but finally gave up the ghost.
"Well," I said, "I'm going to find water. You have a good weekend."
I got up and left. As I passed the gate, I saw Eden leaving behind me. Perhaps he was dutiful enough to wait until I left to leave himself. Good kid.
I snagged some grape juice at a market that was most decidedly not a chain, thank goodness, and against my better judgment some ice cream as well. Hell, it was spring, and Adam and Elaine (by their own prediction) were probably out wandering around sucking on something cold and sweet. So I went in for it. What I got was on a stick, a slab of what was probably intended to be chocolate chip ice cream. It was cold and sweet, however; it fit the bill and hit the spot.
After this, I finally reached my intended park, and sat down to read...but I hadn't reached the third page when I was hit with a wicked call of nature and had to adjourn to my apartment to mollify it. That done, I returned to the park, and read Only the Dead Know Brooklyn and A.V. Laider (the latter by Max Beerbohm). I dozed off in the middle, though. It was just too good. I'd walked a ways, I'd eaten, I was laying down on a park bench (in deference to the discomfort of sitting on it) and the spring breeze was finally having its chance to caress me, assisted by the warm soft sun. It couldn't have been avoided. I awoke, finished Laider, then arose creakily from the bench and stumped back here in the fading evening light and started writing this.
When I started, the person in the apartment across the way from mine (second floor, right-hand window) was practicing The Entertainer on a concert grand; the sound drifts in my window on weekend evenings, ephemeral, bewitching, symbolic of everything I'd hoped for in an expatriate experience, the thrill of being in a foreign land with music in the air and adventure on your mind.
That fragrant breeze is settling down for the evening but I can still catch a whiff. The sun has sunk behind the mountains but there's still an orange glow in the rapidly purpling sky. I can hear the roar of scooters on the main drag and the happy yells of schoolchildren streets away. Down at Top Mart I know Brian will be chopping up another batch of gimbap or pork backbone, shoppers will be buying dinner ingredients, and Western pop music will be emerging, loud and tinny, from the speakers. I sit here in shorts, T-shirt and bare feet on my comfy comforter, my hair still crusty with sweat, a tiny remnant of hangover lingering in my skull, my belly beginning to growl again, mulling over if I should have anything for dinner after all I ate last night and today, and I contemplate what a marvelous day it has been and still is.
