So the other day I officially entered my late 30s. It’s… it’s a complex thing to process. And tends to spark a certain amount of reflection. We’ll get to how I moved from writing about plays to writing about comic books soon. But for now, I hope you’ll forgive me if I switch gears and allow shit to get real for a moment.
Feel free to skip this and come back next time. For now… if you’ll bear with me, there’s an old pain I’d like to try to let go of. An old friend to say good-bye to, even though she will almost certainly never, ever read this. Anyway. Let’s begin.
A long, long time ago
Has it really been nine years since I first saw you? In the parking lot outside the theatre. I don’t know that we spoke. Not for long. But there was something about you, even then. I liked you right away. Not that I told you that. Not that I could tell you that. I can jump out of a plane, I can give a group of people something I wrote and watch them tear it to pieces so I can improve, and time and money permitting I would happily hit the airport and jump on a plane to anywhere with an hour’s notice. But I cannot run a marathon, climb Everest, start a conversation with strange women or tell someone that I like them. Never learned how, and while the process seems easy enough to pick up (just run now and again, and each time try to run a little further, how hard is that), I can’t get past the notion that the training process is going to be savagely unpleasant. Seems so valid when I say it. Never seems as valid when I hear it.
I didn’t talk to you that time. Or the time after, at your coffee shop. But then you were in the show, and I got to see you three times a week. At least. And we’d talk. We’d bond. I liked you the moment I saw you, and I liked you more as I got to know you.
I should have told you.
I should have hugged you when you were sad about being stood up at a performance. I should have driven you home from the wrap party like you thought I was going to. But more than that I should have told you how I felt. We talked until six in the morning one night, I should have said one thing that mattered. The only thing that mattered.
Because you deserved to know. Because hiding it was dishonest. Because keeping it to myself was killing me. The vending machine and the bear. But back then, sometimes it seemed like I was only happy when I was talking to you. Seemed a shame to ruin that by inducing the gut-churning terror of even thinking about telling you I was falling in love with you.
But I should have told you. Before it was too late. And I believe, I do believe that there was a time before it was too late. A time of hugs and hangouts and extremely late-night chats. A time when I could have taken you out and gone for the kiss and I think I might have succeeded. But there was most definitely a time when it was too late. And a time when it was way too late. And that’s the time I picked.
And now you’re gone. Far away. Not too far, a person could drive there in a day if they started before dawn, but it feels farther than it is. Because it’s not the physical distance. It’s the fact that I can never talk to you again. Over four and half years later and it still stings sometimes. I wish I could call you. Text you. Visit you. Know how you’re doing. But I can’t. And I have no one to blame but myself, my own cowardice, my own failures.
I don’t think of you often. Not every day. But sometimes. And I miss you when I do. I never wanted things to end this way, with sudden silence and a farewell you’ll never see, and yet somehow I managed to do everything necessary to make sure it couldn’t end any other way. And if our friendship had meant something to you, and I think it did once, then I took that away from you.
So I’m sorry. I’m sorry for lying, if only through omission. I’m sorry for hiding behind excuses. I’m sorry I didn’t give you the respect you deserved. I’m sorry that I hurt one of my best friends enough that I’ll never see you again. And I’m sorry that I couldn’t even be bothered to learn something from this and did it all again two years after I lost you forever.
Some regrets haunt you, kids. Some regrets haunt you and you’ll never really be free of them. And it’s the things you didn’t do that really get to you. Guess that’s the moral.
If this were an “inside baseball” examination of plays I have worked on, the actual performances, this would be when the story gets dark. This would be when my first theatre company split in two, like the Mystics and the Skeksis in Dark Crystal. Fortunately it is not. Just talkin’ about the scripts. So, without further ado (my stores of ado are low today anyhow) here’s Pride and Prima Donnas.
What’s it about?
Okay. New leaf here. No angels, demons, or shadow governments. Just normal people with normal people problems. Shouldn’t need Premise Beach at all.
Director David Locke has returned to his home town after a stint in New York, and is back working for his old theatre company alongside his producer friend Jacob Garrison. For David’s first show back, Jacob’s picked out something special… Dance Into the Fire: The Duran Duran Rock Opera.
Here we go.
So close. I was so close. But, since we’re here… Doctor Simon Duran builds himself a love android, Electric Barbarella, but then falls for Rio, who he sees dancing on the sand. In a fit of jealously, Electric Barbarella kills Rio, then Duran, then herself. A tragic love story set to synth-pop hits of the early 80s. What’s not to like?
Anyhoo, before long David’s been introduced to his crew, stage manager and loyal soldier Caitlin Markov and tech director Ted O’Shea, and has to assemble his cast. As Doctor Duran, Monroe Morrison, veteran of the dinner theatre circuit prone to clowning around and ad-libbing. As the Baladeer, arrogant Method actor Shane Thompson. As Rio, former chorus girl Lena. And as the android, Tiffany Neuworth, whose bubbly, cheerful, seemingly airheaded exterior masks the fact that she’s a gifted performer and possibly the smartest person in the company. It doesn’t take long for the cracks to form.
Shane and Monroe hate each other immediately as their acting styles mix like cheese and diesel. Jacob is trying everything he can to get in bed with Tiffany, or at least get her naked on stage. Lena and Ted start an affair that quickly turns sour. And David has difficulty masking his contempt for the show and everyone in it. Well, except Caitlin and Tiffany. Tensions build to a head as rehearsals continue.
So why’d that happen?
David Locke was my first spin at an archetype I’d play with a couple more times over the next few years: the guy who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else and expresses that through hopefully amusing angry rants. I’ll cover why I gave that up later, but at the time, David served as a vehicle to satirize the theatrical process.
Write what you know, they say, and theatre was what I knew, what I’d known for nearly all of the 90s. I’d seen shows threatened when the lead actors broke up, last minute recasts, successes and failures of differing acting techniques, and the beautiful miracle of a cast coming together and making something wonderful. So I decided to try writing about it.
As to the show within the show. My musical upbringing was… difficult. I missed out on the popular music of my youth as my parents were trying to raise me on country and folk music. My rehabilitation was… difficult, and involved some regrettable choices in the late 80s, but the point is that I didn’t actually get into the pop music of my youth until university. Toto, Soft Cell, Thomas Dolby, maybe I’d heard them here and there back in the day, but they were all like new discoveries. And my favourite? Duran Duran. So I conceived a musical based around their hits to serve as the backdrop for the script.
How’d it turn out?
This is another script that’s been put up a couple of times. As such, it’s had some revisions, but unlike Apocalypse it was ultimately a case of adding rather than cutting or replacing. Additional moments to further flesh out the cast and crew. Additional chaos to the end of act one, where everything truly begins to collapse. The scene had opened with four simultaneous arguments, each taking turns playing out, a device better suited to television or movies, something where cuts and edits can happen, rather than stage, where people have to stand awkwardly until it’s their turn to talk again. So I blended the dialogue together, making them all flow into each other. Much better effect, but way harder on the cast. Which one day I might be persuaded to care about.
Ultimately I think it works well. It’s not a full on farce; too many breaks in the pacing, especially with the new material. In order to fully explore the characters I needed to take the occasional breather from rehearsal antics and just let the cast talk to each other. And, reading it now, those are some of the better scenes, so trying to push it to full farce would be a disservice. It’s the moments when David stops yelling at his cast and starts being a person, revealing his passion for theatre, that the audience gets any investment in Dance Into the Fire being a success. And without that I’d just be wasting everyone’s time.
So by and large I’d still call it a success, but there is one detail, one flaw I refused to see throughout both productions. For the climax, I included a montage of scenes from the musical to show that they’ve pulled off the show. Various people suggested cutting it over the years. I didn’t listen. It didn’t help that one of the primary voices suggesting the sequence be cut had a tendency to equate “simpler” with “better,” the same logic that led to a blown sight gag when I directed Two Guys the season Pride was remounted. After letting that logic screw up the horde of ninjas, I was in no mood to hear anything remotely similar to “don’t do it, because it might be hard.”
In addition, one other factor drove me to include the scenes from the play. In Kevin Smith’s film Jersey Girl, Ben Affleck steps forward at a town hall meeting to deliver an impassioned speech to the townsfolk. As he starts talking, his voice fades out and the music swells up, and his big speech is not heard, but simply implied in the reactions of the crowd. Which to me felt like cheating. Cheating, and a little bit of cowardice. I was convinced that to make a show about a Duran Duran rock opera and never show any of it was like doing a Star Trek movie with no spaceships in it. However, after the second run was complete, another writer friend, whose first novel is great and available for purchase right this second, explained my error.
In the end, the show goes spectacularly. So everyone claims as they rush off stage to the sound of applause. By deciding to show clips from the play, I put the responsibility of earning that conclusion on the show’s cast. In short, the selected scenes actually have to be spectacular or the entire ending feels hollow. Whereas if we don’t see the actual production, it can be every bit as amazing as the audience can imagine. So, yeah… the smart thing would have been to use cheering and applause as a sound cue, and let the assume assume it all worked out.
Would you stage it again?
Probably, yeah. I’d revisit David’s dialogue a bit. If he must be angrily ranting at the cast the whole time, I’m convinced it can be better. And I’d take all the scenes from the show within the show and scatter them throughout the rehearsals. That way, we still get to see bits of the show, avoiding that feeling of copping out on the premise, but still leaving the final product up to the audience’s imaginations.
Overall though, I’m still fairly happy with it, and it’s part of a cycle of connected plays that starts with Two Guys and continues through two more scripts we’ll be talking about down the road, all sharing characters who are part of the theatre group staging Dance Into the Fire.
This show also tends to spark interest in seeing the rock opera itself. I’ve never given it a whirl, but that has less to do in my interest in writing the show and way more to do with my interest in not getting sued by Simon Le Bon. If I thought there were a way to stage it with the blessing of the band (and their label, who likely hold more sway over the song rights), I might go for it, as I do have a vision of how it might go. The actress who played Caitlin (both times) had a different vision, and took a shot at getting the rights to make it, but it proved a stickier wicket than she’d hoped. I think she used an internet site to apply for the rights to use the necessary Duran Duran songs, but got told that the rights to the works of Queen were unavailable. An answer that’s like the movie Tree of Life: confusing and of no use to anyone.
Repeated Theme Alerts
“Man and Woman Can Never Be Friends.” It’s not enough for David to respect Caitlin professionally, he has to ask her out in the end. She says no. He takes it well.
“Plays about plays.” The second time this trope reared its head, and the only time where none of the characters are writers. I can only assume it’s because in 1999 I hadn’t yet become a devotee of Aaron Sorkin and his fondness for writing about writers.
Next time in this series… the superhero/supervillain period. It starts better than you’d think.
I accidentally forgot to blog for like two weeks after my “I’m a white dude and here’s why I’ve failed to care about non-white dude problems” post. Clever, Dan. Leave that one up just as long as possible. So to make it up to you, gonna try to burn through a few “Danny G Writes Plays” posts all quick-like.
Also I want to rinse Illuminati in Love out of my brain. Blurgh.
And so, ladies and gents, Apocalypse Soonish.
What’s it about?
Twin siblings Michelle and Gerhardt “Gerry” Olin-Gellar learn that they are the Gog and the Magog, destined to lead the forces of Heaven and Hell in final battle at the end of time, scheduled for Thursday around 4:00.
Again with this nonsense, Gibbins?
Alright alright alright. We’re currently at the apex of my “wacky premise” period. Anyway. The angel Uriel and the demon Uziel descend/ascend to Earth to inform Michelle and Gerry (and Michelle’s amorous best friend Steve) of their roles as Magog and Gog respectively, and introduce them to their generals: Azrael, the Destroyer, head of the Heavenly legion, and Kraken, the Other Destroyer (the perils of being introduced second). However, the prophecy is unclear over who is fighting for which side, and both sides find that they’d rather have the driven, focused Michelle and not the goofy slacker Gerry. Thus Michelle must choose which side she will fight for, with Uriel and Uziel trying to sell her on Heaven and Hell and Steve trying to convince her that neither side should get to rebuild the Earth in their own image.
Also, Azrael and Kraken are totally hooking up. Have been for decades if not centuries. I’d just seen Shakespeare in Love for the first time and was in the mood for some star-crossed romance.
And the Horseman of Death, referred to as Mr. Black, is keeping an eye on things.
So why did that happen?
I cannot deny the influence of David Belke’s Blackpool and Parrish. I want to. I have tried. I made the mythology more complex (the Gog and Magog angle having come pretty directly from the classic graphic novel Kingdom Come), created my own character dynamics, ensured that each character was my own creation and not resembling anyone from B&P… but there are still two people learning they’re leading the Apocalypse later in the week, and still a normal human caught in the middle trying to get the whole thing called off, and I even borrowed the (false) realization “I’m the anti-Christ” as a punchline bit that I’d loved when Belke wrote it, so… no. I cannot deny the influence of Blackpool and Parrish.
In the end I just thought the biblical apocalypse shenanigans were going to be a fun playground to write in, and I was basically right. Also, after Trigger Dandy, the Two Guys and their superspy Dirk Rhombus, Gary asking for dating tips from the Devil, and Alex Payton ruling the Destiny Syndicate, I decided it was high time for a female protagonist. A strong one if possible. I concocted an idea where a woman falls for and starts dating her best friend’s guardian angel, but it never really clicked and I abandoned it. Instead, Michelle Amy Georgia Olin-Gellar, MAGOG for short, came into being.
From there, it was about developing an angle, which eventually became primarily about free will, and the thesis that it cannot truly exist in a world of pure good or pure evil. From there, I found ways to make Hell seem more sympathetic than you’d expect, and Heaven much less so, while never quite painting either as a good choice for rebuilding the Earth.
How’d it turn out?
The first flaw people pull out is that “Gerhardt,” correctly pronounced with a hard G, would not shorten to “Gerry” with a soft G. My bad. After Gary and Greg in the last two plays, I was short on G names and needed one to spell “Gog.”
At the time people loved it. Said it was the best thing I’d ever written, which felt great as I was then unaware just how low the bar was. It’s still very jokey, and there are still pop culture references*, but less easily dated than Illuminati. Hell, we were able to remount this one almost three years later without having to rewrite every single pop culture reference to be more current.
But I did have to do some polishing for the 2002 production. I cut some of the jokes, smoothed out some bits that had made me cringe, added more free will stuff, and cut the Star Wars monologue in half, keeping the bit about the importance of choice and losing all the fluff and nonsense that had preceded it. And the director cut the Dragnet-esque “What happened to everyone” bit I’d had at the end on day one. The end result was smoother, sleeker and funnier, and created at least one decade-long fan.
Neither production ever played Mr. Black (Death) the way I’d envisioned. I’d always intended, as I wrote in the stage directions, that Mr. Black basically look like Agent Smith from the Matrix. Dark suit, very formal, slow and precise in speech. But since stage directions are the first thing any competent director throws out (I ignore stage directions that I, myself, wrote down, so why shouldn’t anyone else), both productions went the full Grim Reaper robe-scythe-hidden face route. That’s nothing to do with the script, just thought I’d mention it.
I dunno. In the end it’s… okay. Moderately funny, and funny is 90% of what it’s trying to be. It’s awfully talky, but then everything I write is fairly talky. It’s how I roll. Usually I make it work. Some of the ideas are neat, but the jokey feel to the dialogue is a bit smothering. It’s a distinct improvement over the last two, but looking back there were clearly still miles to go.
Repeated theme alert: “Man and woman can never be friends.” Michelle is and remains happy just being friends with Steve, but he wants something more. In this script, Steve’s hopes of a romantic relationship end up presented as harmless. To Michelle, anyway. Not sure I’d be able to play it that way again.
Would I stage it again?
A new feature I hadn’t thought to include before now, since the answers seemed so obvious to me. Trigger and Two Guys? I would and have remounted them both. Angel and Illuminati? No way. Apocalypse Soonish?
I once said that I wouldn’t be done staging this script until I’d played all the characters I could. See, after the vanity project that was Date With an Angel, Coffee With the Devil, I adopted the policy “Never write a character you wouldn’t play yourself,” and after giving it a whirl in Illuminati in Love I think I came way closer to pulling it off here. They’re all fun in their own way.
But I don’t know. The dialogue is just kind of awkward. I’m not certain how well the story or the climax holds up. In one script we’ll get to soon, I decided to only way to fix it was to burn it down and start over with the core concept, but I’m afraid that if you strip this one down you’re just going to end up with Blackpool and Parrish.
I’m way more fond of this script than the two that preceded it. But it’s still a clear product of my early period, before I learned some important lessons about humour, story, and character, and I’m not sure I’d want all those old bad habits dragged back out for people who’ve started to actually respect what I do to see. I think this script is like the old friend you meet for a coffee then don’t talk to for another 11 years. You don’t have anything against them, but… you’ve just moved on since then.
Next time… we encounter a whole new Danny G trope, “plays about making plays.”
*This time I made it all the way to page 54 before throwing in a Simpsons quote. Progress?
Okay. Now it gets real. Trigger Dandy and Two Guys have been performed enough and enjoyed enough I feel justified in calling them “classics,” and more to the point they’ve been done recently enough that I can remember them pretty solidly. But that’s over for a while. Now we’re at the point of my writing career when we’re not only talking about plays I’m less than fully proud of, but I have to read them first to discuss them properly.
Because I no longer have a copy of Date With an Angel, Coffee With the Devil, that’s why I didn’t read that one first.
Right. So. Illuminati in Love.
What’s it about?
We are solidly into the “wacky premise” period of my writing. So, here goes. Alex Payton is the current chairman of the Destiny Syndicate, a group of five people who form the shadow government that secretly controls the Earth. Alex rules North and Central America. Ariana Rigaldi rules Europe, Arcady Rachmaninoff controls Africa and the Middle East, Kimiko Takahashi handles Asia, and Vincent Hoffman gets what’s left of the southern hemisphere.
Wacky premise, anyone?
In terms of my classic story structure, 1) Establish premise; 2) Hijinks ensue; 3) With sexy results, it goes like this. 1) Alex is secret ruler of mankind, a fact that is giving his best friend Greg an ulcer; 2) Alex meets Janice, a prosecuter, and they have their first date right as an unknown country tests a weapon of mass destruction unlike any the world has ever known; 3) Alex tries to win over Janice while discovering which of the Syndicate allowed this weapon to exist.
Hoo boy.
So why did that happen?
Two reasons. First, I wanted to create a character for Chris Munroe, who’d proven to be a comic asset in Two Guys and Date With and Angel. Specifically, I wanted to create a brandy-swilling Eurotrash supervillain type character for him, and that became Arcady.
Second, I wrote this back in 1998. I was not yet 22. But there’s more to it than the foolishness of youth. Two factors influenced this script. First, in my early 20s, I was deeply into conspiracy theories. Not in a paranoid, “they’re out to get us,” “chemtrails are mind control” way. I was just fascinated with the idea that the world might be weirder, more complex, and more exciting than we give it credit for. Second factor? I had just founded my own theatre company, which I was learning would put up whatever I wrote. So, I wrote this.
How’d it turn out?
I made it to page three before the cascade of references to pop culture and 1998 current events started to make me queasy*.
I had a problem with pop culture references for a long time. I thought they were funny. I saw Clerks and thought monologues about Star Wars were great writing. I was wrong. So wrong. I know that now. I did not know it then. I never thought about “will this script still work in twenty years,” just “will it be funny in six months.” And even then some of the pop culture references got stale between first readthrough and opening night. It took a while to give up that crutch completely, but it was never worse than this script. I think. I hope. And there are other problems as well.
Years after this, a friend taught me the difference between jokes and humour. Humour is creating a situation that’s inherently funny. A joke is taking a moment and giving it a punchline you hope is funny. Arrested Development is filled with humour. Two and Half Men relies on jokes. These days, if I want a scene to be funny, I go for humour. Back then, I really depended on jokes. Lots of jokes. I wish… man, but I wish more of them were funny.
Also Alex narrates chunks of the story. I have never really mastered narrators. And if I’m barely competent at it now, 15 years later? Just imagine how bad I was at it then. Actually no. Don’t imagine that. At all.
The meet-cute is weak. I put way too much stock in instant attraction (I was engaged to someone at the time, and it was very much a “love at first sight” story) and had little idea how to build an actual romance. And it shows from every step of this thing, from the fact that I’m assuming this relationship is worth fighting for when they’ve only had two-thirds of one date to the rushed way I get them back together in the end.
Yes, in the end she takes him back, thanks in part to a heartfelt speech in a gibberish language from a newt-like alien named Quoxl. Yeah, you read that right. Quoxl the newt-man. Weak sauce deus ex machina, yet possibly the most fondly remembered part of the whole show. Also Vincent built the super-bomb. The southern hemisphere guy. It’s painfully obvious it was Vincent from the moment he’s introduced and I don’t know why I ever thought it wasn’t.
So there we have it. My second solo script? I giant wad of easily-dated references to current events and pop culture surrounding a barely written rom-com. Ultimately I would call this a cautionary tale of every single habit I’ve worked to shake since. We had fun with it at the time, but it was mostly due to the cast. Several of the cast were great. I wish more of them had stuck around. But given the material we gave them I guess I can hardly blame them.
When next we visit this series, things improve with the end of the world.
*Made it to page 30 before I hit a Simpsons quote. That’s something, I guess.
Preeeeeeeee-senting: quick reactions to controversies and whatnots that have been plaguing the interwebs as of late that I can’t be bothered to write a full post about. Fun times!
Miley something something
So people seem to still be talking about Miley Cyrus at the VMAs. Did she cross a line? Are people slut-shaming needlessly? Is it important that I care? I suggest that it is not.
This is the only opinion I’ve been able to form about this so-called controversy: I cannot think of the last time I’ve seen someone try that hard to be sexy yet fail in so many ways. That haircut was questionable. The bikini was unflattering. And the tongue? I don’t know what that was supposed to be but it did nothing for me.
Should a pop star be allowed to act sexy if she wants, even if that means showing skin on television? Sure. I want to live in a world where that’s not an issue worth talking about. But man. That whole routine was just… unpleasant. But as long as she’s happy.
Blurred Lines
While on the subject of the VMAs… I like Blurred Lines a bit. As a song, it’s adequately catchy. I had it stuck in my head for the entirety of a 13 hour meeting on budget for my theatre company and never really minded. But I will admit: I enjoy the video for Blurred Lines for the exact reason my feminist friends dislike it. Emily Ratajkowski is crazy hot and nearly naked in it.
Does that harm women’s issues? I probably shouldn’t even begin to guess. This topic gets me in trouble. Eventually someone says “male gaze” and I ask “What exactly does that mean, and what is the endgame to making an issue out of it?” and I probably say “Straight men enjoy looking an pretty girls and asking that to not be true is irrational” and then I get yelled at a lot.
Although, on the other hand, I think Robin Thicke abandoned his right to claim the song is in any way empowering to lady folk after he added the lyric “You the hottest bitch in this place.” Pretty much sunk that argument.
I’ve probably said too much already. But as long as I’m in trouble…
12th Doctor
I finally understood why I didn’t get the controversy over Peter Capaldi being cast as the 12th Doctor instead of someone less white or not male. First off, I’d have been fine with a non-white Doctor or a female Doctor, as long as they could be the Doctor. The qualities I’m looking for, cleverness, the ability to inspire, to thrill, to be a force of nature onto themselves… none of these are connected to skin tone or gender. I’m also 100% fine with the rumours that they may be considering a black guy for the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four movie. As long as the character is being done well, I don’t care if they cast someone who isn’t white.
Where I failed was in understanding why someone else might.
Value comes from scarcity. We based economies on gold instead of granite because gold was harder to come by. If you dress up fancy every once in a while it has more impact than if you do it all the time. And that’s why I didn’t immediately lock onto “women and people of different skin tones would like to see more heroes who look like them, and maybe the Doctor could have been one for a change.” Because 95% of heroes, super or otherwise, are white dudes, and I attach no value to that. I don’t think “Hey, the Doctor is Scottish! I’m half-Scottish!”
But I do get it now. People around the world are becoming ready to see the day saved by people other than the League of Extraordinary White Guys. I’m fine with that. Maybe other people (the ones raising hell over a black Johnny Storm, for example) should learn to be okay with that as well.
As for “But he’s old!” well, that’s ageism pure and simple. And as a reminder, it was only four years ago that people were complaining that Matt Smith was too young, and he sure shut us up. I have faith Peter Capaldi will do the same.
Also, Chiwetel Ejiofor turned the role down, so it’s not like they’ve never tried. He’d have been great, though. Pity.
Agree, disagree, think I should shut up and stick to talking about travel and Batman? All valid choices, man. All valid choices.
I was going to do an in-depth examination of the joys of being ill this weekend (probably food poisoning, could have been a stomach bug) but it’s now occurring to me that illness is one of those things that’s of profound interest to the person going through it, but nearly impossible to make interesting to other people. Like pain or dreams. There’s only so many times and ways you can say “It hurts, it hurts so bad” before the person you’re talking to can only roll their eyes and reply “Yes, you mentioned that.” Or so I’ve gleaned from paramedics. Not this weekend, that was another thing, and… yeah. Anyway.
So instead, let me tell you about Jam by Yahtzee Crowshaw, because telling people about it one by one is getting tiring.
Jammy Doom
The second novel from Yahtzee, best known for his Zero Punctuation game reviews, is best summarized by its opening sentence: “I woke up one morning to find that the city had been covered by a three-foot layer of man-eating jam.”
Strawberry, to be precise.
Set in Yahtzee’s current hometown of Brisbane, Australia, the novel finds several people trying to stay alive in the middle of what’s known as a “grey goo” apocalypse: an end-of-world scenario in which, in the example it’s named for, tiny nanobots are released that break down everything they encounter into more nano-bots, and the world is reduced to a sea of grey nano-bot goo. In this case, it’s a sea of what certainly appears to be strawberry jam, save for the way it instantly consumes any and all organic material it encounters and its ability to extend tendrils in order to snag any such material that’s just out of reach.
Our protagonist and narrator is the meek, timid and easily persuaded Travis. Travis joins with his roommate Tim and neighbours Angela and Don to try and find a way to avoid starvation and jammy death. (Not gonna lie, half the fun of writing this is using phrases like “jammy death.” “Jammy” is a fun adjective and I’m not sorry.) And in this cast, we begin to see the satire that fuels this engaging, thrilling, and frequently amusing apocalypse.
Tropes vs. Yahtzee
Yahtzee’s been reviewing video games and dwelling on the internet for years, and there are clearly some character archetypes he is out to take the piss out of. And he does it majestically. Tim is the guy who’s a little too excited to see society end so he can build a new one from its ashes. Or jammy residue, as the case may be. Don is his opposite number, driven to extreme lengths to find and protect the video game he’s been designing, because he refuses to accept that the world as he knew it may be gone. Angela is the would-be journalist, out to prove that someone caused all this, even if there’s no one left to prove it to. And none of these tropes are as hard-hit as those of X and Y, the American military personnel who seem to know more than they let on about the jam.
That’s downplaying it. I’d guess that of all the end-of-world, sinister-conspiracy cliches Yahtzee’s been encountering over the years, the one he’s the most sick of is the people pretending not to know anything even though every single thing they do is screaming out “They’re behind this, they know all!” And that is cranked up to maximum with X (called that because she won’t even reveal her name, yet insists she’s trustworthy). Every step she takes, every conversation she has cries out to everyone around her that she knows what the jam is, and where it came from, but each time she’s confronted, she lapses into the same, unconvincing press-agent routine denying any special knowledge. Which causes entertaining friction with truth-seeking Angela.
And yet more than tropes
But what makes this a great read is that, while mocking their tropes, Yahtzee still makes everyone a real character. There are real human motivations at their cores, even X. It keeps their struggles entertaining, keeps you rooting for them to stay alive, when they could have just become parodies we’re waiting to see die in the jammy depths.
On the other hand, we have the plastic people. A religious cult based out of a mall that worship “Crazy Bob” and sacrifice people to the jam for failing him. But it’s okay, because they’re doing it ironically.
Tropes get satirized in this book, but the notion of “doing it ironically” really takes it in the shorts. Yahtzee holds this concept down and beats it until his knuckles break. X and Y are set up to be the least trustworthy characters in the book, and they still look like saints next to Lord Awesomo of the plastic people. But I suspect they’re meant to, because he’s one of the book’s real villains.
Wrap it up
It’s a fun, engaging book. It takes a silly situation (JAMMY DOOM), treats it seriously (millions have died and the survivors’ chances are bleak), but saves room for satire. You should get yourself a copy (Amazon appears to be stocked) so that we can actually discuss it rather than me just saying “Hey! You there! Read Jam!”
That had to be more entertaining than hearing me describe why I know it was illness and not a hangover, no matter what my mother first assumed. Right?
Maybe it’s me. Maybe I nerd wrong. I just… I don’t nerd-rage over casting in movies the way the rest of the Internet seems to. But given that I refuse to buy into the notion of “true geeks,” the idea that being a geek is something that must be earned (see the ridiculous. hateful, “fake geek girls” outrage that I really wish would die in a fire very soon), I’m going to assume I am nerding just fine, and that this is an entirely valid thing to say:
I have no quarrel with Ben Affleck playing Batman.
I shall now share some thoughts that the Internet thinks I’m wrong about. Perhaps I can convince some of you that I am not.
1. I actually quite liked Man of Steel.
I saw Man of Steel opening weekend. I was a little worried that this was going to be another Green Lantern, which I found perfectly enjoyable, but only because I love all things Green Lantern enough that I could ignore flaws others could not. But not so this time. I thought Man of Steel was great. The people I was with enjoyed it as well, even Charlotte, who was there specifically to hate it in front of me. I then spent two months reading, hearing, and absorbing the criticisms people were lobbing at it, then this week, watched it again.
I still dig it.
Some mild spoilers will follow. Skip to point two if you haven’t seen it but wish to. Also call me, we should totally go watch it at the cheap theatre.
Henry Cavill is actually a really good Superman. He captures the inherent goodness, the “I just want to help” nature that Superman should have as well as the “Must keep myself a secret” turmoil that is the first act. Kevin Costner and Russell Crowe were great as his two fathers. I loved the new invention of Lois Lane knowing Clark Kent is Superman before he even is Superman. Lois was tough, clever as hell, and adorable (but I always find Amy Adams adorable, I am but a man). Michael Shannon made one of the better superhero movie villains in General Zod, a man born, raised, and trained with the sole purpose of defending his planet and his people at any cost, who will cross any line and commit any atrocity if it means a future for Krypton. Well, the parts of Krypton he likes.
Okay, yes, the civic destruction gets a little much in act three. But I disagree with branding the movie “too dark” because of it. Nor the final battle with Zod. Superman is forced to make a choice, forced to do something abhorrent to him in order to protect the world. And I found it an incredibly powerful moment; Zod, blind with hatred after having lost everything, his people, his world, his reason to exist; Superman, begging Zod to stop; Zod’s refusal; Superman’s anguish at what he must do. It was damn near Doctor Who powerful. And no, I will not accept that suddenly this is unacceptable because he’s Superman. If you didn’t complain about Iron Man racking up a higher body count than Freddy Krueger but throw a hissy fit about Superman killing one genocidal demi-god who’s made it clear he won’t stop until either he dies or every single human is dead? Then shut up.
Act three did lack that sense of Superman being a figure of inspiration, a saviour to the people. He didn’t swoop around saving people during the final battle. Well, he did save several soldiers from Faora in Smallville, even while said soldiers were occasionally shooting at him, people forget about that, but the only thing he did to save people in Metropolis was smash the world engine on the far side of the planet and end the massive destruction it was causing. Which, I might argue, was a) kind of important, and b) almost killed him, which he knew was a risk but still didn’t hesitate. And after that he was a little busy getting punched in his face by Zod.
But the infrastructure is there. Jor-El has told him that his purpose is to inspire, to be an example that the people of Earth will one day reach to catch up to. Cavill is playing him to be that figure. He reaches out to earn the trust of the military, a struggle he’s shown as winning through Christopher Meloni’s great performance as Colonel Hardy. The foundations are there, we’re through the origin, future installments can bring that sense of hope and inspiration that I admit this film lacked.
But if you’re going to say “He should have spent less time fighting and more time saving people,” I think you owe Superman Returns an apology. But that’s a whole other rant.
2. Ben Affleck could be a good Batman.
Ben Affleck actually can act. There. I said it. Watch The Town. Watch Argo. Those are great movies and he’s good in them. Ben Affleck had a bad run, made some bad movies (to court further controversy, I don’t count Jersey Girl among them, I just don’t), took a break, let the dust settle, and rebuilt his career with a series of excellent films. Then he gets cast as Batman and the internet starts pretending that never happened while throwing movies from ten years ago in his face. Okay. Let’s look at the arguments against.
1. “Daredevil was awful! Thus this will be awful!”
Um… okay. Yes, Daredevil had flaws. Many. But is it possible those had more to do with the script and director? My issues with Daredevil weren’t with Ben, they with the fact that the movie didn’t seem to actually get Daredevil. And some poor script decisions. But say you disagree. Say you think if Daniel Day-Lewis had been Daredevil that movie would have been Dark Knight good. (You can’t, can you? No you can’t. The idea is madness. But still.) Affleck has given much better performances since then. Why assume he’s going to pull a Daredevil or Gigli? Why would he risk everything he’s rebuilt by not bringing the A-game he demonstrated in Argo and The Town?
2. “George Clooney was an awful Batman and so Ben Affleck will be too!”
The point being, this is a similar casting decision to when they had George Clooney replace Val Kilmer for Batman and Robin, a film so infamously terrible it nearly killed the superhero movie genre. But come on. Come on. That movie was terrible from the ground up. The script was awful, the direction was a day-glo nightmare, that movie was doomed to be a spectacular failure on every level before George Clooney even showed up on set. You cannot blame Clooney for Batman and Robin. He couldn’t have been a good Batman in that train wreck. Nobody could have. Superman/Batman will not have this problem. Why? Because Zach Snyder is better at this than Joel Schumacher. If you disagree, I’ll refer you to my above arguments regarding Man of Steel and inform you that we are fighting. We are now in a fight.
I believe that Ben Affleck could do well in this movie, and I’d rather wait until the movie comes out to debate it further. Which, actually, brings me to my final point…
3. Can we give this nerd raging over casting a rest? Please?
Did I not just go through this with Doctor Who? Is the Internet not still rebuilding from exploding over Peter Capaldi being revealed as the new Doctor? I suffered through the waves of complaint that the 12th Doctor was still white, still male, and, horror of horrors, old. I mean, how dare they take the Doctor in a different direction that isn’t the different direction we wanted.
Actually my issues with the Capaldi backlash and where I think those issues come from would be a large diversion I’ll save for another day. For now, it just comes down to “Anyone who’s seen him act should know he could be an amazing Doctor, so can we just chill until actual episodes start airing?”
But we can’t. Nerds have to freak out over everything, including nearly every casting decision in a superhero movie. Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, and Christian Bale weren’t exactly embraced when we heard they were playing Batman. People freaked right out over Heath Ledger playing the Joker, and they were as wrong to do so as it is possible to be. If you don’t think Heath Ledger’s Joker was incredible, then sorry but we can’t be friends. I kid, we can totally be friends, we just shouldn’t see movies together. The list goes on: Chris Evans as Captain America, Chris Pratt as Star Lord (though we’ll have to wait and see on that one), Idris Elba as Heimdall, Laurence Fishburne as Perry White, the song remains the same, if occasionally smacking of racism. And most of the time all that nerd rage is for nothing. Most of the time the actor exceeds our expectations.
Ben Affleck might not pull off the same triumph as Heath Ledger, but assuming he’ll be another George Clooney is depressingly pessimistic. There’s no need for that.
Look, the movie’s not out for two years. In the meantime we’ll have casting news for the new Star Wars cast, Ultron, villains for the third Amazing Spider-man movie, maybe Lex Luthor, and probably at least one new Doctor Who companion to freak out over. Or maybe just accept with cautious optimism.
I’m telling you, it’s just a better way to live. Keep calm, and watch Argo.
In 1993 I made my first of two trips to an Albertan theatre camp for junior/senior high school students called Artstrek. Perhaps another entry can discuss my times there, but for now, I just bring it up to say that it was here I first heard about the Edmonton Fringe Festival. An annual event where people from around the world come to perform plays of all description, from dance shows to cabaret pieces (simply singing show tunes rather than doing the play itself) to Shakespeare and big musicals to original works and one-person shows.
Many, many one person shows. Because you see, the less cast members you have to split the door with, the more profitable your show is. But anyway.
That very summer my family went up to Edmonton for the weekend to experience the Fringe, and it quickly became an annual event. I would use the Fringe to gorge myself on theatre. If I saw less than five plays in a day, I thought I was wasting my time. Need to eat? There’s food booths all over the grounds, just gruffle some curry or an Italian sandwich while watching one of the outdoor shows (jugglers and acrobats, mostly) then head to your next play.
And now, some highlights of my two decades of Fringing.
First show
1993.
The first thing I saw at the first Fringe I attended was Atomic Improv. Paul Mather and Donovan Workun. They did the Three Little Pigs as a spaghetti western, they did a scene about stamp collecting in Seussian verse, they scattered the names of every other Fringe show over the stage and had to insert them into a scene about gopher racing. I was, in one go, sold on the Fringe and a new fan of Atomic Improv. Which proved quite handy when they joined forces with Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie to do The War of 1812 some years later.
Paul Mather eventually left Edmonton to work in Canadian television. He wrote for Corner Gas, for instance. Donovan is still there and, last I knew, was still a regular part of Edmonton’s live improvised soap opera, Die-nasty, as well as doing Atomic Improv gigs with Commander Shepard himself, Mark Meer. Those are bound to be funny.
I want in on this
1997.
Remember The Amazing and Almost Accurate Adventures of Trigger Dandy, which I mentioned a while back? Jason and I put that show on, and as a side effect founded Mind the Walrus Theatre Company, as part of a plan to take Trigger to the Edmonton Fringe. I’d been going for four years now, and I wanted in. Now, it didn’t happen right away. Fringe slots are handed out in a lottery… well, it used to be that Edmonton residents were able to line up for a “first-come, first-served” option, and in 1998, a group of us attempted to take part in what would be the final Edmonton Fringe application line-up. See, Yuk Yuks comedy club paid a guy to start the line two days earlier than it normally would, so when we arrived, we were already twenty spots down the waiting list. We abandoned the line-up to take our chances with the “rest of Canada” lottery, and by the end of the weekend, the Yuk Yuks placeholder had become so drunk and abusive that the whole thing was shut down, and never done again.
On the plus side, we got in through the lottery, and the next summer we took Two Guys, a Couch, and the Fate of the World to the Edmonton Fringe. We ultimately decided it was a better choice than Trigger. Less act breaks.
First tour
2004.
The previous year we’d taken one of my scripts, The Course of True Love and the Curse of the Jade Monkey, to Edmonton while taking another show, Knoll, to Vancouver. This decision made some sort of sense at the time. And that’s why I now have a full Board of people keeping me from making unilateral decisions like that, because clearly someone should have tried to stop me.
Anyway, Jade Monkey was not a hit. It didn’t help that we were nearly two hours long and had two noon shows and two midnight shows, but I spent the 2003 Fringe looking at all the packed houses at shows I saw, wondering why we couldn’t have that kind of crowd. I eventually decided what we needed was something shorter, faster, funnier, and more portable. And thus began Heracles: the Mythologically Accurate Adventures. And just in time: that fall we got our first Fringe tour. Montreal, Winnipeg and Edmonton Fringe festivals, then back home for a one-week run in Calgary.
I’ll talk about Heracles and Jade Monkey more when we reach them in Danny G Writes Plays, but for now I just want to mention the wonderful community we discovered. We learned how comp exchange worked, a system where Fringe artists are able to swap free tickets with each other by putting your allotted comps under a password you can share with people you meet. We chatted with other companies, went to the Edmonton Fringe wrap party, and started to feel part of something amazing. I couldn’t wait to get us another Fringe tour to be part of this world again.
It took three years, and by that point I had a grown-up job and couldn’t go on the tour. C’est la vie.
David Belke
I have many influences, writers who’ve taught me something about storytelling through their works, figures whose style has inluenced mine. Aaron Sorkin, Joss Whedon, Steven Moffat, Brian Michael Bendis, to name the most prominent. But as far back as I’ve been writing plays, my idol has been Edmonton’s David Belke.
I saw my first Belke show in 1993. Blackpool and Parrish, a comedy about the impending final battle between good and evil. It changed my life. Hilarious, moving, brilliant character moments, I decided then and there that this was the kind of thing I wanted to write. Not this exact play, but this style, this wit, this razor-sharp dialogue, these wonderful characters.
Okay, and at least once, that exact play, but we’ll get to that. To my chagrin.
In 1994, I realized too late that the author of the amazing Blackpool and Parrish had debuted a new script, April and Peril, and didn’t get tickets in time. But it was finally remounted this year, and I finally got a chance to see it: classic Belke.
He’s done two hilarious mash-ups, in which a film noir private eye solves crimes involving Shakespeare’s characters (The Maltese Bodkin, in which Nathan Fillion first played the detective, and two decades later the sequel Forsooth My Lovely). He’s done plays about improv (Inside the Sandcastle), deals with the devil (Soul Mate), the slog of auditioning (The Headshot of Dorian Grey), and a few plays that are uncomfortably similar to plays I would later write (Blackpool and Parrish, That Darn Plot). Nobody on Earth can both inspire me and make me feel like a copycat hack like David Belke. He’s often been a highlight of my Fringe experience.
This year
This year my Fringing was more compressed. Between GISHWHES and rehearsals for Pastoral Paranoia, I could only spare one full day and two half-days. I still managed nine plays, including April in Peril, and improv show with Mark Meer, a comedy with Ryan Gladstone, and more great shows. I did well this year. It’s still a magical place for me, and someday I may yet bring a show there again.
Hopefully soon, an update on GISHWHES. Or something else if it takes my fancy.
This week is a strange week. This week is GISHWHES, The Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen. As a participant, it means this week is filled with bizarre and brilliant things. Things I can’t elaborate on until the contest closes. But trust me, we’ll get into it.
In the meantime, I present the story of my first solo script. Gonna… gonna get embarrassing up in here. Ladies and gentlemen… Date With an Angel, Coffee With the Devil.
What’s it about?
Gary has a secret: he’s in love with his friend Lacey, but doesn’t know how to tell her. Or how to get her away from her boyfriend Trevor.
Huh. In love with a female friend but keeping it a secret while hoping she magically falls for him. Didn’t I just say last time that nobody likes that guy? And he’s the protagonist? Awesome. Great start.
Anyway. The show is told largely in flashback, as Gary tells his story to a sympathetic bartender after it’s all gone wrong. Gary likes Lacey, Lacey’s with Trevor, Gary unloads all of his problems on his best friend Becky (who harbours inexplicable feelings of her own for Gary, the poor thing)… when he gets an offer of help from an unexpected source: Lucifer, the Morningstar, Satan, the Prince of Lies… who insists Gary call him Ted. Ted’s a nice name.
Where you going with this, exactly?
So it’s a romantic comedy in which a man seeks romantic advice from the devil. Naturally, Ted’s advice is ultimately less than helpful, Gary learns too late that Ted was never really on his side, souls are at risk, the Bartender turns out to be God, and there’s some kinda flimsy Deus Ex Machina which results in everyone surviving, nobody losing their soul, and Gary very much NOT getting the girl. Even at 22 I was pretty sure Gary didn’t actually deserve any sort of reward when this whole thing wrapped up, and that the real lesson was “Get over Lacey, you moron.”
So why did that happen?
I had decided, after my annual trip to gorge myself on theatre at the Edmonton Fringe, that the Devil always gets the best lines. Thus, I wanted to play the Devil in something, and get all the best lines. So I wrote a play in which I could do that. I’m not proud of this. In theory, it’s allowable to say “I wrote this play, and this is the part I want,” but saying “I wrote this play and this is the part I shall have” just feels skeevy to me now. But anyway. I wrote my show about Gary’s doomed struggle to win over Lacey, filled it with jokes whenever possible, ensured that Ted was getting some quality one-liners, and handed a draft to Jason Garred for feedback.
How’d it turn out?
Jason’s feedback included the most useful thing I’d heard or would hear before I started taking classes. “If you’d written every character to be your dream role, this would be amazing.”
Ted was funny. Gary was decent. Becky was so-so at best. Lacey and Trevor were paper-thin. Looking back I don’t think it was ever clear what Gary saw in Lacey, or what Becky saw in Gary. I think God as the Bartender worked okay, but I wish I could say I was confident in the ending.
I always try to write women as well as I can. I struggled long and hard to improve on that front. And whenever I doubt my progress, I think back to this script, to Becky and Lacey… and I feel better. Because there can be no doubt I’ve improved since I wrote those two. Yeesh.
This show introduced a recurring theme that would haunt me throughout my writing endeavours, one I didn’t even know was there until a friend spelled it out for me 11 years later when he explained it to the cast of a show I’d written. The theme? “Man and woman cannot be friends.” Simply put, create a friendship between a man and a woman, eventually one of them will want something more. I had no idea this was a central theme of my plays until he said that, but here it is, all the way back in my first solo project. “Man and woman can never be friends” is all over this thing. There is not a truly platonic relationship to be found.
It also fits into my preferred three-phase story structure:
1. Establish premise.
2. Hijinks ensue.
3. With sexy results.
Step three is optional, but that there is the bare bones of good comedy. And, in this case, mediocre comedy.
When we return to Danny G Writes Plays, we’ll see how I took “write every character like it’s your dream character” to heart.
So a couple of years back I began to realize that I had feelings for a friend. Wasn’t the first time this had happened, and this time I was determined not to be a jerk about it. You know, the kind of jerk who hangs around being “just friends” while hiding his true feelings and hoping that one day she magically realizes that the perfect guy has been right in front of her the whole time.
Because man, fuck that guy.
Anyway. Actually having the conversation proved… difficult. I suspect she saw it coming and, being afraid of conflict, did whatever was necessary to dodge it. Which I found weird, because this was going to be a way less pleasant conversation for me. But I’m not here today to talk about that, or the few highs and powerful lows of the year and change that followed. You see, the other day I came across something I wrote that fateful February. My attempt to explain, through a certain amount of self-depreciating humour, what being in my position felt like.
I present that for you now. Enjoy.
And now, a metaphor gets weird
How to explain it. How to say what I’m thinking without actually saying what I’m thinking? Because that’s crazy. Can’t actually say it out loud.Then people would know. What’s the point of secrets if you’re going to let people know what they are?
And this is where we turn to metaphors. Literary code. Yes, metaphors are the way to explain what you find unexplainable.
But this one gets kind of muddled. Bear with me.
Imagine a weight. A pressure, pushing down on you. All the time. As though a vending machine had collapsed on top of you. The weight is a constant. Some days you can manage it, you find a way to distribute the weight or manage to distract yourself until it doesn’t seem so bad, but other days it feels like more than you can handle. You don’t know if you can live with it.
Well, no, of course you can’t live with being trapped under a vending machine, you’re going to run out of food and water, even if you do break the machine open. Also those things are heavy, you’re probably bleeding internally. But that’s literal thinking, it’s what we’re trying to avoid. None of that is germane to the metaphor.
Germane. No, not the Jackson brother. It’s a word, look it up.
So. Stuck under the vending machine. There is a way out, but it’s not exactly ideal. The only way to free yourself is to… and this is where the metaphor begins to get muddled… is to surround yourself with fresh salmon, so as to lure over a nearby bear, which will pry the machine off you to get at the fish.
(Yes, I know. Took a weird left turn there. But muscle through it and it’ll all start to make sense.)
The problem is, you don’t know how the bear is going to react once it’s dislodged the vending machine. It came for fish and found you. What will it do? You want to believe that it will just ignore you and let you leave. Maybe, and this must be wishful thinking, give you a friendly lick on its way? But no. You’re pretty sure you know what’s going to happen. It’s going to maul you. Maybe you’ll live, maybe you’ll die, but that bear is coming at you tooth and claw and it is going to be terrible.
You put it off as long as you can, but the non-stop weight of the machine won’t be denied. You have to do something. You have to make it stop. You’re willing to risk the mauling just to get away. So you summon the salmon. Freedom is close.
Look, I don’t know where the salmon comes from. Maybe it was in the machine, maybe there’s a delivery chute or something, but no, there is no delivery guy that will help you escape. It’s the bear or nothing, and the salmon is on the way so you’d better brace for that.
And so you do. You try to steel yourself for the moment, figure out what you can do to protect yourself if it all goes wrong. The fear builds. The adrenalin kicks in. And there’s that spark of hope, that thought that maybe, just maybe, everything will work out better than your feared. But if you let yourself believe that, the mauling will only be worse. Better to be prepared for the worst.
Only the salmon doesn’t come. For whatever reason, maybe the tube is blocked, I don’t know, you can’t get the salmon when you ordered it. Maybe later. Next week, something like that. There will be no summoning the bear, no mauling, no anything. It’s hard not to be relieved, isn’t it? Your situation hasn’t improved, but for one more day, one more week, possibly, you don’t have to worry about it getting worse. You can just relax.
Except for that weight. Apparently you get to keep living with it. Well, crap.
