The Sleeper Life of Walter Mitty

I’ve always like Walter Mitty.  I saw part of the movie on TV once at my Great Aunt’s house and then read the short story and then watched the whole movie.  I can relate to Walter.  And I’ll argue with anyone who says that he’s about escapism, pure and simple.  There’s a far more complex motivation.  But that’s neither here or there.

I finally watched the remake this past weekend and it left me torn.  I didn’t think it had anything to do with the original.  That disappointed me.  But it was a fun movie to watch.  In the end, I liked it.  I would probably enjoy it even more a second time because I won’t have the expectation that it should be different than what it is – sort of like the Bourne Supremacy which I didn’t really care for the first time because I couldn’t get passed how much they ruined one of the best espionage novels I’ve ever read.

You may think watching a movie like Walter’s more than once to be rather dull since you already know what’s going to happen and there aren’t exactly exciting chases/fights/CGI migraine inducing flights of whimsy, or even the cleverness of the original’s fantasies.  You would be mistaken.  If I had any honest complaint with the film it was how incredibly predictable it was.  To be fair, it wasn’t as clear to the rest of the family so either I was in tune or they were content to sit back and enjoy it.

That’s also not much of a complaint.  You know exactly where it’s going from the moment you decide to watch it.  It wasn’t as funny as you’d expect from a comedy, and it wasn’t nearly serious enough to be drama.  Sort of exactly kind of like, well, you know… life.

Walter had a wonderfully portrayed arc.  Sean Penn let me down but that could easily have been his dialogue.  It didn’t matter.  This was about Walter and the movie took time to let us enjoy his adventures.  I mean, really, what other movie would invest so much time in long boarding down a deserted mountain highway in Iceland?  And make it worthwhile?

It was also very funny in places.  Clever funny and smart funny and bumbling funny without ever being gross.  The shark and porpoises.  It’s worth watching just for that.

Part of what made Walter so special before was his tendency to drift off into dream worlds all the time.  That happened a little bit in this version but really not very often.  It was talked about a lot, but we stayed with the real Walter most of the time.  That bothered me at first but it worked.  This was a different telling for a different time.  And it drove his arc.

If you think that Transformers 2 was the greatest movie ever made you will likely find The Secret Life of Walter MItty to be dull.  Otherwise you will discover a man you can root for, the quintessential introverted nice guy who learns it’s okay to chase your dreams.  Walter is different at the end of the film than the start, but unlike most other character stories like this, the difference is on the inside and his life really only changes for him.

The rotten tomatoes rating is overly harsh.

"It's a snow cone maker?"

I did a notes exchange last week for Falling Star.  Got some good suggestions which led to a few structural changes.  I think that I’ve increased the contrast and stakes for the conflicts.  We’ll see what my opinion is a year from now.  An interesting side effect was that I got to read a script for half hour cartoon – not something I would have read otherwise.  It’s not my story to tell so I won’t share the details here, but I wish the author well.  It was entertaining.

Also entertaining was Godzilla.  Not amazing, not mind blowing, not anything of the sort of thing that would get a headline were I to write for a newspaper.  It was exactly what it said it was going to be.  A Godzilla movie.  The fact that it made so much money during the first weekend is a statement about 1) how many people love Godzilla movies, 2) The incredible marketing that made people think they might love a Godzilla movie, and 3) how hungry people are for real action movies rather than CGI demo videos.

The most startling thing for me about the film was the restrained way in which the CGI was used to advance the story rather than using this film as a resume for the next project.  Yes, there was a lot of CGI but if you remember Jurassic Park, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  As Eric Clapton said, “It’s in the way that you use it.”  There were no high-speed, shaky camera, Disney World rollercoaster action sequences of giant insects eating fighter planes.  You could actually watch the film without getting a headache.

I was not expecting a story so I was pleasantly surprised.  There is a story.  With arcs and everything.  It wasn’t complicated, there were no twists, but it bore us along without being boring.  Everything made sense, in a “this is a universe that has Godzilla” sort of way.  I didn’t get pulled out of the story saying, “What?  That’s dumb.”  Maybe it was my low expectations but I don’t think so.  I think it was that there was actually a relatable story.  I might have done it a little bit differently but I haven’t been hired yet.

The magic formula of this film, in my opinion, is that it didn’t pretend to be something it wasn’t.  It promised a story about Godzilla and delivered that in spades with polish and style.  I haven’t seen much of that in the action genre over the last few years.  Earlier this month I was complaining that CGI has destroyed movies because you don't need any ingenuity in the writing or effects department, you just need some screwball idea and a computer whiz.  There has been nothing in any of the Marvel “blockbusters” that even comes close to True Lies.  Terminator 2 had computer generated effects, but it was also filled with amazing stunt work that gave the picture a more honest feel.

**Spoiler Alert** in case you haven’t read the papers that said a Godzilla sequel was ordered the Monday after opening weekend.  Godzilla gets up at the end of the movie and goes back into the ocean.  Like another famous Californian, he’ll be back.  Will it be as good?  No.  It will be the most expensive film made that year and will flop horribly because they’ll insist on “the same but bigger” rather than what works.  It’ll be Jurassic Park 2 all over, a big budget brand name rushed to be released in a lucrative time slot.

Did you know that you can have Rejected and Alone delivered to your inbox?  Click on subscribe and never have to worry about missing a post.

Greetings and salutations from rural America.  That’s right, I’m on a road trip.  Not just any road trip, either.  This is the full blown, 1k in a day, dawn to dusk, variety.  To paraphrase Danny Glover, “I’m getting too old for this.”

You may be wondering why I would undertake such an incredible journey on a day off before a major 3 day weekend.  I’m going to take a page from J. J. Abrahams’ book and stuff that bit in the mystery box.  But no worries, you won’t have to wait three or four seasons to find out (or in the case of that one show, never find out because it was canceled).  I’ll tell you tomorrow when I’m back and fresh memories of our highway system.

Today I’ll make up for missing yesterday with an excerpt from Washington’s journal.

3/18/1983,  Dearborn, MI

I met up with the man who invented soda pop this afternoon, Winward Iacocacola.  We had stopped at the same roadside diner and struck up an immediate friendship.  He told me that one of the most difficult things for his company was transitioning from the expensive and unreliable glass bottle to the economical and practical can.  To solve the problem he partnered with a Japanese firm (Mitsubishi) to help with the manufacturing.  In exchange for access to his secret formula, the conglomerate would receive a small percentage and, in 100 years, get to name one of the Iacocacola products.  (Current plans are to call it Coke-Zero after the most successful products of both companies.)

While we were talking, the counter girl interjected that she liked the old glass bottles and had a terrible time with the cans. Winward asked her about it and she related story after story of cans being shaken and then exploding when she popped the tab.  He said that the trick was to shake a shaken can even more until it was very firm in her grip, then squeeze as hard as she could while popping the top.  Stops the explosion every time.

I will have to try that and let my new friend know how it worked.

"Privacy. Absolute myth. There's no such thing."

**update - I won the 5 minute fiction contest this week.  Seriously, you should try it.  It's fun and it's free and there are prizes.

It turns out that our local meteorologist doesn’t have schizophrenia.  (I spelled it right on my first try.)  His forecast was accurate.  I can’t imagine being an actual productive member of society and being outside through all of these changes to grow food or construct buildings.  Nothing like a good office job to keep you safe.

Unless you are Liam Hemsworth and you work for Gary Oldman (or Harrison Ford) in the film, Paranoia.  It was not a bad movie.  Much like Abduction wasn’t a bad movie.  But as any parent or teacher can tell you, not being bad is very different than being good.  Paranoia wanted to be a better film and I think that if it had been envisioned as a film from the start it would have been but it was based on a bestselling novel.

The overall story was pretty good and it did have some exciting moments to string us along between scenes of Liam Hemsworth not wearing a shirt.  There were two “music videos” that stretched just a little bit past infinity.  Maybe there was supposed to be some deep emotional message being conveyed but I missed it.  I just listened to a long song while two people did stuff in slow motion on screen.  Not bionic man cool stuff.  Just stuff.

Which brings us to emotional content.  The love story was rough, even by MTV standards.  It was either lazy writing or blatant chauvinism.  For a film that wanted to be Bourne Identity, they didn’t do their homework on how to write female characters.  If your characters don’t have a realistic response – even to unrealistic situations – they lose credibility and the audience falls out of the picture and back onto their couch.  Period.

Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman were good – I’m thinking they’ve not been together since Air Force One but I could be mistaken.  Liam Hemsworth did a good job too.  The three characters were distinct and fairly believable.  The surprise for me was Richard Dryfuess who brought incredible life to a fairly small role and turned a plot device into the only decent person in the film.  The take-away?  If you’re going to write cliché, get a really good actor who will make it look fresh.

I don’t want to be too down on Paranoia, it really wasn’t bad.  But the genre has seen better.  I don’t know if the problem is corporate espionage (remember that Julia Roberts fiasco?) or a studio system that’s afraid to film anything that hasn’t already been successful in another media format.

At the end of the day, would I recommend it?  If you enjoy flashy spy v. gritty spy, go for it.  If you like Liam Hemswoth without a shirt, go for it.  If club mix dub step fills you iPod, go for it.  If you thought The English Patient was the greatest film of the 20^th century, why are you reading my blog instead of plotting your escape from the asylum?  It’s worth streaming on Netflix.  Not $9.99 in Wal-Mart’s blue-ray bin of bargains even with Harrison Ford’s head shaved.

"A machine can't reconcile that."

We went to the movies last Friday night.  Like up off the couch “no liquid cholesterol additive to the popcorn please” in a room full of strangers going to the movies.  The original plan was to see Divergent but we waited too long.

We settled on Transcendence.  The plot sounds good, the trailer gave the impression of a competent film.  It’s got Johnny Depp so we knew it would be a little quirky but we’ve enjoyed him in everything from PotC  (part one only, I’m afraid) to Chocolate.

It was not a bad film.  I think the negative press is about missed opportunity or great expectations.  It could have been better – just by being shorter, actually – but it did accomplish what I believe the goal was.  To make us consider matters of the soul, what is it – exactly – that makes us who we are?  And how could that change?

I’ve read a bit that says the film is about fear of technology but I don’t think so.  That was a plot device to give meaning to the action.  It wasn’t done especially well because this is a philosophical film first and a thriller second.  More of a Gattica than Blade Runner.

It was a remake of The Lawnmower Man.  I don’t know if it was intentional or not.  I don’t actually care enough to Google it to find out.  It doesn’t matter.  It’s the same question rolled into the same amazing special effects.  There are a few differences, but they are secondary and relate to the “thriller” side of the story.

I liked The Lawnmower Man – it did have James Bond in it – and I have written short stories using many of the ideas that were presented in Transcendence asking the same sort of questions.  For me it was an easy film to watch.  I liked it despite some fairly serious inconsistencies on the thriller side because it did what truly great SciFi always does – ask serious questions through a challenging situation that demonstrates one possible solution without preaching that solution as right or wrong.

It makes you think.

Transcendence is not light faire, but it isn’t Lincoln either.  You can put it in your queue and enjoy it on your iPhone just as much as the theater.  But if you do want to head to the Cineplex and don’t care to watch a superhero film, this is better than most of the other options.

Cut me some slack, it was 1992!

"His best friend is his backpack."

My journey to the dark side is nearly complete.  I went back to the audiologist this morning to get my new hearing aids adjusted and wired up for blue tooth.  They are awesome.  I’m a huge fan of being able to hear.  Everything.  And wirelessly.  My goodness.

If you can’t hear well, go see your doctor.  Try out these cybernetic enhancements.  Talk about life changing.

Along the same vein of completely changing your life, my wife and I have started watching “The Middle.”  Four episodes in and we are hooked.  Actually, four minutes into the pilot we were hooked.  Totally our humor.  (Humor.)

Initially we were concerned about seeing Deborah in a different role.  How could she be different?  I mean look at the logline.  It’s a sitcom about a family and she’s the wife/mother.  Not sister/wife.  That’s a different show.

Within 30 seconds it was clear there would be no confusing the Long Island mom with the Indiana mom.  In fact, the transition was so complete that I hadn’t realized it was her as the mom in a clip I use from the show for a class I teach.  Admittedly she has a very small part in the clip – it’s mostly about Bric (Bric) – but still, I felt rather silly.

If you haven’t seen the show, watch it.  Very funny.  I mean, “Must eat today!” chicken, a basset hound with emphysema, and 3 extremely well written caracterature of children?  When you consider TV comedy, there’s over-the-top, there’s on-the-floor, and then there’s The Middle.

I’m still laughing at it.  “Find a can that sounds like peas.”  HA!  (Ha.)

"What're you, crazy, that's lemming talk!"

We’re off to the big town.  A couple of weeks late a few metro cards short of the cherry blossoms, but it’s still spring.  #4 doesn’t understand why anyone would want to go to a botanical garden.  I had a similar thought when I was his age but that first visit – in the midst of Prince Charles marrying Dianna – convinced me that being able to walk from desert to rain forest was cool enough to visit any garden out there.

On a completely unrelated note, I’ve had a bit of a breakthrough on the concept for the next script.  Found a new idea that really bolsters one I’ve been kicking around for a year.  Might be go time as the next project, when this draft of Falling Star is finished.  Hopefully in a week.

"They weren't expecting me."

This week has been a bit off for my blogging.  Today appears to be no exception – I’m late getting to press.  It’s been a full morning.

Thank you to everyone who voted for me this week.  I lost in the last fifteen minutes but it was encouraging to have so much support.

We tried a new show on Netflix this week – Continuum.  Its logline made me cringe, a time traveling cop from the future hunting terrorists from the future in our present.  They pull it off.  Surprisingly.  Time travel can be very good when it’s done right but my goodness it so hardly ever is!

There’s a bit of language and the fighting is brutal.  It’s a Canadian show and is either cable or they have different rules.  Either way, it watches a lot like a movie.  Lots of action and great use of technology.

The writing is very good.  The characters are well drawn, unique, and memorable.  The two worlds have been created efficiently.  You know just what you need to know for it all to make sense.  It doesn’t beat you over the head with anything and the setting is NOT a character.  This is a show about people.

"I worry about our daughters and the men they choose."

First things first, we crossed over 9k hits this morning!  Thank you.

I have had a chance to spend some more time with two TV shows that I covered a few months ago – “Leverage” and “Last Man Standing.”  Both improved dramatically after the first couple of episodes.  LSM actually makes me laugh out loud which is quite a feat for Tim Allen, I was never a “Home Improvement” fan.

There is no depth to LSM.  It’s a sitcom.  But there is also no pretention.  A solid entry along the lines of “Home Improvement” (obviously – you might even consider it a reboot), “Rita Rocks,” or “Everybody Loves Raymond.”  There are children in it, but it’s about the adults.

“Leverage” does episodes rather than chapters.  There are occasional hints of recurring characters and storylines, but the show doesn’t run on them (as far as I am in the first season).  It’s like the “A-Team.”   Or “Airwolf.”  Woot.  I like that the characters are well drawn and the world rules are pretty consistent.  It’s a far-fetched show but isn’t that why we used to watch TV?  Before “reality” shows became the norm?

One thing that both of these shows have is a great cast.  The actors really bring out their characters.  That’s important.  I read the pilot script for “Glades” and it’s funny.  But it isn’t the show and as I read it I thought about how important casting (and directing and camera work and post production…) is to the finished product.

I’m hoping that my work gets a great cast.

"That's a debt I'll never be able to repay."

There is something promising about a warmer day -- with sunshine, a big moon, and lots of fog -- on the first day of spring.  I'm certainly ready for winter to be over.  The older I get the less I enjoy it.  I like there to be sunshine when I'm not in the office.

Today's tales from the script -- I'm going to have to change the name, turns out there's already an entire blog by that name which predates my "spontaneous creation" of said same -- but today I'm going to look at "Catching Fire", the hugely successful sequel to "The Hunger Games."

There will be high level spoilers, but nothing you can't figure out on your own anyway if you saw the first film and understand Hollywood.  Gee, that was cynical for the first day of spring.

"Catching Fire" was a good movie, but...  I have great confidence that the book will be much, much better.  I plan to read it when I finish with the Robert Crais novel consuming my attention.  The reason I believe this is because there were a lot of suggestions of deeper story in the film accompanied by a sense of rushing.  Not exciting rushing, more like being at a staff meeting with a lot of agenda items that need to be checked off so we can go to lunch already.

I really felt like I had just watched the same movie again, but not quite as good.  A remake rather than a sequel.  It was fun, but totally lacked the greatness of THG.  Part of that is sequelitis, obviously.  The world had been created so of course we saw the same goofy clothes, same squalor, same train and forest, etc.  But the other part was that it had the same plot points.  Like it had the same plot points.

I did learn a valuable lesson about pacing.  We watched it in the living room as a family and as a family we had to pause it several times for everything from restroom breaks to getting more chips.  Each time the movie was paused I stopped to think about what I'd been watching and then made a prediction about what was going to happen.  The end result was that the film seemed obvious to me.  There's nothing inherently wrong with being obvious if you're telling a good story, but if the audience gets there before you do it ruins the experience.  I was surprised that such a big budget, award winning film could be so close to the line.

Then my ego took over and I decided it was because, as a brilliant storyteller myself, the best plot line was obvious to me even as it remained occluded from the bourgeois.

"No. It's the same as it ever was. The weak get taken."

Spring suffered a terrible setback last night.  I'm hoping this is the dramatic part of the fight, where it looks to Adrian and all the world like Rocky is going to lose but then he pulls out all of the stops and in a slow motion dance accompanied by a stirring rock ballad, he punches his way through blood and sweat and defeat into the final page's happy ending.

Wait a minute – Rocky lost.  That’s a terrible analogy.

Speaking of terrible, I caught another episode of "The Walking Dead."  It wasn't hard, they're zombies and they don't move very fast.  In this case, neither does the story and I'm sorry, I know there are a lot of people who absolutely love the show, but I just don't get it.

Go For a Walk Instead.

I mean, I get the show.  It's about survivors after the Zeds show up.  What I don't get is why so many people are in love with it.  I have to go to enough staff meetings that watching a bunch of aimless, brain eating creatures wander around doing nothing isn't entertaining to me.  (No offense boss, if you're reading this.  You're meetings are more like Fire Fly.)

The root of the problem for me is that I don't find zombies fun.  I don't like zombie movies.  (Except Shaun of the Dead.)  I don't play zombie video games.  (Except Plants vs. Zombies (but not the sequel, that one isn't as much fun.))  I don't read zombie books.  Or comic books.  I wonder how many people who are so infatuated with Zombies feel the way they do because of their friends, or the inertia of our culture.  That would be ironic, if they are fans because they want to stay hip, they embrace it as cool because they've been told it is.

Give me an alien invasion, an ancient nuclear winter, or even a computer taking over everything. Those are stories that bring out humanity, hope, a sense of purpose.  Zombies are just about falling to our own hunger - one by one.  You can't have a positive message in something about the zed.  Every fight is against someone who was human.  We are the enemy.  Depressing.

So I watched Arrested Development afterward to cleanse my palette.  Oh those silly Bluth boys.

"I want to know if I have to shoot you, is all."

I did it.  I switched stations.  Now the trick will be getting off where my truck is instead of where I usually do.  I also had a tweet informing me that I had won the 5 minute fiction contest this week.  I wonder what else this crazy day has in store.

We watched "Cahill: U.S. Marshal" this week.  It wasn't "True Grit" but it was pretty good.  Which is to say it was exactly what you'd expect from a film released in 1973 starring John Wayne.

At one point I started singing "Rain Drops Keep Falling on my Head" -- the pop song that somehow found its way into "Butch Cassidy" -- because I could just feel a 70’s song coming.  My wife had just enough time to give me a funny look before the Cahill song began.

Don't rob banks, Daniel san.

It wasn't all `predictable though.  Despite the title, this wasn't a story about the marshal.  It was about his children.  John Wayne's character was the "trickster" -- he both aided and hindered the protagonist who was the eldest son, Daniel.  Despite not being the star, or the Cahill the film was named for, he had the deepest character arc, was at the core of the story, and was the only one who changed.

There's also the mentor -- in this case the gangster played very well by George Kennedy.  He was training our young hero up to be a proper bank robber.  Not exactly the sort of positive role model/counseling you’d expect from that character type.

The most surprising thing of all for me was that all four of my children enjoyed it.  They sat from beginning to end, calling out warnings and encouragement to the actors.  There really is something special about the Duke.

"There wasn't one today. "

I was going to write about Harold Ramis today.  It was to be a study of the similarities between my two favorites of his -- "Ghostbusters" and "Groundhog Day."

But then The Fates conspired, destinies entwined, and the world was turned on its head.  To quote Dr. Vinkman, "Dogs and cats, living together.  We're talking mass hysteria here."

Perhaps that's all a bit dramatic.

But everything is different.  The car traffic is different (took 20 minutes to make a single turn), the train traffic is different (freight, auto, and passenger all moving together), a different person was behind the counter of the station coffee shop, and SOMEBODY SET UP CHAIRS.

40 of them.  Little brown folding chairs.  The tables are all smushed together in a narrow band of "Hey, let's all sit way too close to each other for a few extra minutes today."  But folding chairs?  In a train station?  When is there not enough room without resorting to folding chairs?  They don't even have a stencil on the back claiming to be the property of something or other.

I waited a few minutes before I started writing.  Just in case there was a flash mob.  But there wasn't.

Am I the only human left?

"I once saw a horse kill a clown."

I didn't watch very much this week.  Read a lot and wrote more than usual instead.  [Curious thing on the elevator today – I was the only person (of 6) not wearing earbuds.]

We did catch another episode of "Leverage" and it was the best one yet.  It's been close to a month since we last watched but I didn't have any trouble picking back up with the characters.  Clearly it was better written than I initially gave it credit for.

This particular episode provided exposition on the backstories of 3 different characters.  1 was the basis of the episode but the other 2 were artful additions.  We were introduced to a new multi-episode nemesis (I'm presuming) from our hero's past.  And then there was the flashback.

Flashbacks were over used by "amateurs" in the last decades and are on the list of devices to never use.  I believe that list is just to separate out the people who can think from the people who can't -- sometimes you need a flashback and if you do it right it's awesome.

This flashback was done correctly.  1) There was absolutely no other way to provide the information about the character other than a dull monologue.  2) It was wicked short.  3) It was immediately relevant and was further paid off before the end of the story.  4) It delivered the information visually -- in this case the words, "I once saw a horse kill a clown," didn't describe what really happened but the words over the video made it work on multiple levels.  5) It was the only flashback in the episode.  The other expository elements were addressed using different tools.

All in all, very entertaining with just a hint of Psych's offbeat humor (which I love).

"Maybe in America, Irish, maybe in America."

We've got a snow day today.  I did some writing.  Then some shoveling.  Went to the barn.  Did more shoveling.  Then more writing.  Actually got to type FADE OUT which is why, despite the snow day, I’m late posting the blog.

Fade out is a big deal, but in this case it isn’t quite as big as it could be.  Rather than being a first draft, it’s more like a 75% draft.  I wrote the story, not the back story.  Now that I’ve decided how it ends, I can add in the bits pieces to make that ending both logical and satisfying.  That’s the plan anyway.

The first screenplay I wrote came in at a whopping 180 pages.  Trimming it down has proven impossible for me.  I didn’t want that to happen again so I wrote lean – intentionally and on purpose.  I even deleted a few sections/rewrote scene in progress a couple of times.  Not true editing, but a distinct change from my “no edit until the end” rule.  It didn’t slow me down, this has been a two week journey, and I think it’s a more workable draft.

2 months from now I may be singing a different tune.

"I ain't no flatlander."

I’m hoping to capture some of what I learned from “Captain Phillips” with this script.  That film built and maintained an incredible level of tension throughout.  There was no memorable dialogue, no major surprise plot twists, just people reacting so believably you felt you were there.  I’m going for that immersion – and deep caring about what happens.

I’ll also be sure not have a character attempt a New England accent.

"This is a small pond and I'm the big fish."

I got to use my sunglasses this morning.  That might not seem like much to you, but for me that's almost as good as fresh crescent rolls.  The kids were off from school again yesterday but I didn't find out until after it was already too late to drive safely on bare roads...

This week's film/tv post takes a look back to one of my favorite action movies of all time.  Die Hard 2.  It was released during the week of July 4th -- I remember because our local theater did a surprise "sneak preview" the day before it was supposed to be released so instead of driving "all the way into the city" we stayed local and only paid about $2.50 each for a ticket and popcorn.

I recently watched a "TV edit" of the movie and when I first got the scrubbed copy I thought, "Wow, Die Hard 2?  What's that going to be, like 20 minutes long without any swearing?"  Even without the requisite 'R' rated content, it was a fun movie.  (See?  Not necessary.)

This time capsule of pagers, corded airline cell phones, and cops that didn't understand faxes, offered some great moments and storytelling panache.  Of course it also had more than its fair share of, "totally not reality," but you expected bottomless magazines for everybody's gun back then.

It poked fun at being a sequel which helped it to stand on its own.  It introduced bits and pieces and then paid them off -- the pagers especially!  It kept offering twists and upping the stakes.  And it used memorably fun characters to provide the” luck and happenstance” needed to reach the happy ending.  For every "Oh my goodness, that's so ridiculous" moment, there was a very respectful, "Now that was good story telling."  Besides, you went to movies like that see how over-the-top they could be.

Sure, the 2nd most famous catch phrase of my high school years was edited out, but the story didn't need it.  It was one of the best at what it was and, even thirty years later, was still better than the current crop trying to capture the same magic.

Doug Richardson penned the film and you can read his very entertaining weekly blog here.

"In Rock-Paper-Scissors, I have a tell?"

I finished "One Man's Pirate" this week -- a short story of adventure and intrigue flying miles above the surface of the ocean.  The first draft came in at 8500 words.  Trimmed down to 6700.  It's amazing how much you can cut and keep the story.  In your own head.

                First reader thought it was flat.  She kept "waiting for the interesting part."  It's an adventure with heavy emphasis on the action side and low emphasis on the character development side.  She compared it to the TV show "Leverage."  It's a fair comparison.

                "Leverage" is the TV version of "The Italian Job" and attempts to capture that same fun and hip vibe for the small screen.  And do it week after week.  We've watched a few episodes and I like it, but she doesn't.  Discussing the short story helped us to figure out the difference in opinion.

                The show focuses on the heist element.  There's a lot of tradecraft and running around and fusion jazz on the soundtrack.  The cinematography is about "cool" and acts almost as another character, certainly like a voice over narrator.  It's reminiscent of  “Mission: Impossible" only the characters are thieves instead of agents.  And that's why she doesn't like it.  The cast is shallow and we have no reason to like them coming in because they're crooks.  I actually think that the first few episodes would not pass the anonymous script test -- any of the characters could say any of the lines.

                There are a lot of episodes so I know the show succeeded and I expect that as we go on the personalities will develop.  However, the engine of the show is not one that she enjoys so, much like the story, it really doesn't have a chance.

"What is a week-end?"

This morning I experienced 7 degrees of separation on my drive to the train station.  As in 7 degrees of separation between the outside temperature and 0 degrees.  Farenheit.  In the immortal words of the Claymation spokesman for Lipton Tea, "That's BRISK, Baby."

Being able to wander around my house in a t-shirt during such weather makes me very thankful that I live in a time with central heating, insulation, and with wealth to squander on staying warm. I suspect that, despite their fortune, the good folks living in Downton Abbey would be freezing on a day like this.

What?  Not a smooth enough transition?  A bit on the nose?  Sorry.

Friends have been recommending DA to us for a while now and after "everyone" was talking up the season 4 premiere, we just had to add it to our queue to find out what the fuss was about.  Now we know.  If you know, you don't need to read my take on it.  If you don't, read on BUT before you watch it, remember, it's English.  Check IMDB before you watch it with the kiddies.

First thing that struck me about it was that my wife enjoyed it very much.  It isn't that she doesn't care for period pieces or actors with strong accents, but both require a compelling story to overcome and the two together make for a Matterhorn worthy ascent.

The second thing that struck me was the brilliant writing that made me actually care about life in a lord's manor house circa 1912.  The logline was not the sort that would pull me in.  But it's compelling drama.  Everything is well done and, despite being a large ensemble, the characters were quickly identifiable and memorable.

I was so completely entertained by the show that I didn't even analyze it as it was going so I'm not sure quite how they did it.  I will have to go back and watch it again, perhaps even dig up a script of the first episode somewhere.  We've watched a dozen episodes of Flashpoint and I still don't know who is who.

"I know you know..."

#3 had another game last night.  They came from behind to win by 2.  Apparently those shirts that tempt you to the dark-side with cookies are a bigger threat than I thought because his coach told them that if they didn't pick it up in the 2nd half there would be no cupcakes.

I'm supposed to write about TV today but I don't feel like it.  I started working on a short story last night (the one last week was a big flop) and I'd rather be working on that.  And I haven't watched anything new lately that I'm prepared to comment on – although I will say that I enjoyed the episode of “Psych” that we watched last night.  But then I always enjoy “Psych” and totally interject obscure 80s references in everything I say too.

"On Any Given Friday Night at 10pm, 9pm Central"

I did have a successful go at the 5 minute fiction contest this week, snatching first of everybody instead of first of the losers during double-dog-dare overtime tie breaker voting.  This was the first week I wrote using a word processor instead of the text editor and even though I use a word processor every day, it was different from my routine and I found it incredibly distracting.

I am expecting my 2014 Writer's Market Guide in the post this afternoon.  I have 9 stories out for consideration.  2 of them in markets that I have aspired to but never submitted because they are the top of the heap (if you don't count fickle markets like "The New Yorker" and "The Atlantic") --  Analog and Glimmer Train.  I always used to think I needed to work my way up to them.  I’ve decided instead to work my way down.

"We're in their homes and in their heads..."

I did coverage notes for a script a few days ago and caught myself starting to write, "This would be fine for TV but it just isn't quite a movie."  I immediately switched courses but it got me to thinking about why I might consider something to be fine for one medium and not for the other.  (The script was well written, it just didn't have the emotional depth or plot to justify a $15 ticket.)

Why are our standards lower for TV than the movies?  Or aren't they?  “Airwolf” vs. “Firebirds” is a dead heat and “MacGyver” copied movie plots for the first season (even using movie footage).

There is clearly a difference in production quality and the amount of money spent per hour.  And, until recently, when a movie was finished the story was finished too, whereas with TV it just sort of kept going as long as advertisers would still pay for it.  And if you were a film actor you didn't do TV -- until about 1998.  So if film is so much better, why even bother with TV?

You could argue availability -- even with videotapes there wasn't exactly an endless supply of new content.  But now there is.  I could log into Netflix and watch a different movie every night for the rest of my life.  Most of them are awful, but I could.  Which brings up the question, if those movies really are awful, why bother with them at all instead of just watching…TV?

I've been reading pundits who argue that TV is now the superior format because you can address more characters with more depth and run a longer plot arc -- (“24”, “Lost”, and “Breaking Bad” all support this thesis).  Others point to CGI tentpoles like “Ironman 3” and say, "As good as ‘Agents of Shield’ is, it's still television.”

I think it depends on the show and the movie.  Any Bruce Lee movie is going to be better than an episode of “The Master.”  By the same token, any episode of “Arrested Development” is going to be funnier than a movie with John Candy in it.  And it won't take nearly as long to get there.

But maybe not.  Maybe what we see is that there are two different ways to tell stories.  “Firefly” was a popular show, but not popular enough.  Yet the movie “Serenity” was a huge hit for a larger audience.  It was a story better suited to film.  Most folks are done with zombies by the end of “Last Man Standing”, but they'll tune in season after season for “The Walking Dead.”

I guess it comes down to the fact that if you pick the right format, you've got a winner.  Pick the wrong one and my Netflix slush pile expands with content that sounds good, but isn’t ever quite good enough for me to get to.