The Dark Knight
July 24, 2008 I took my oldest son to see "The Dark Knight" last night when my youngest got invited over to a friend's house. My wife and I had decided TDK was probably too dark and violent for a 10-year-old and as of right now, we made the right decision.
Did I like this movie?
Hmmmm.....
I recognize that it was probably great. The script was good, the dialogue was terrific, the action scenes wonderful, the acting fantastic. From all those points-of-view, it was a brilliant movie.
That doesn't, however, mean I liked it.
Oh, let me count the ways.
1. Long. The movie runs 2-1/2 hours and felt like 3 (at least). I kept pulling out my cell phone to check the time. This movie never seems to end. And I don't mean that just because it's long. People have accused "The Return of the King" of having multiple endings, jeez, go see "The Dark Knight." Ian suggested it should have ended back when Harvey Dent gets turned into Two-Face. I'm inclined to agree. (Ooooh, is that a spoiler? Then you don't know much about Batman.)
2. Imagine for a moment that you went to see a gritty urban drama about a crusading public defender and cop who were trying to fight corruption in their city and shut down the mob. Take all the violence and noir qualities of say, a Scorsese film (without the swearing), then throw in Batman. Yep, you got TDK. Now, briefly, imagine taking your 14-year-old to see "The Departed" and imagine your ambivalence.
3. The beginning of "Iron Man" is pretty intense. (Hang with me here, there's a point to be made). Robert Downey, Jr.'s character, Tony Stark, gets ambushed in Afghanistan and is kidnapped by terrorists and with another man, forced to rebuild a missile system from scratch. Instead, he builds the prototype for the Iron Man and escapes, though his faithful assistant gets killed in the process. It's pretty real, pretty grim and yet... "Iron Man" was fun. (I saw it twice. It rocks.) I saw "Hulk" this summer, and although I don't think it's a great movie, it was still kind of fun. Spider-Man movies, of various stages of quality, still fun. The last Superman... okay, that movie just sucked. But my point is, call me old-fashioned, but when I'm watching a movie about a comic book superhero, I sort of expect it to be fun, even if it is dark and "serious." There was precious little fun to be found in "The Dark Knight." I think there's a fairly distinct line to be drawn in making these types of movies that allows it to be "serious" and artistic and yet be entertaining and fun. For me, TDK crossed it and the result was a brilliant, dark, grim and largely depressing film.
4. Who the hell is the audience for "The Dark Knight?" I had to wonder. It had a PG-13 rating, but frankly, I think the directors must have been sleeping with members of the ratings board to keep it from getting an R. Did I mention the part where the Joker places a pencil upright on a table then slams a guy's head onto it? Did we mention dozens of deaths and murders? How about the various scenes of torture? Beatings? How about the guy who's got a bomb sewn into his stomach? How about Harvey Dent, played by Aaron Eckland, going up in flames, then us seeing half of his charred face? So I'm guessing, that despite bringing my 14-year-old to it, the real audience for this movie were college-age males (although there was little or no sex or nudity, so who knows who the demographic was?)
Oh well. Anybody here see it? What did you think?
Cheers, Mark Terry
Thinking About James Lee Burke
July 23, 2008 I was thinking a little bit about James Lee Burke today. In case you haven't heard of him or read any of his books, his dominant mystery series involves ex-New Orleans cop Dave Robicheaux. I discovered him somewhere around his 4th Robicheaux novel, went crazy and hunted down all the rest, bought all his books in hardcover, then abruptly stopped reading him. That's a blog post for a different day, that odd evolution away from a certain writer or certain type of book.
No, what I've been thinking about is Burke's odd career.
You see, a while back on Erica Orloff's blog I wrote once about fearing that I'd had my shot at being a successful novelist and I'd blown it. The Derek Stillwater novels were it, they didn't work out and that was it, show's over, folks. Erica responded that as long as I didn't quit, it was never over.
Maybe she's right. I don't know, given the current state of the publishing industry, but that's also a different blog topic.
So what's the deal with James Lee Burke?
Well, one thing, he had a novel he wrote that was rejected 111 times over nine years that when it did finally get published was nominated for the Pulitzer.
The other thing is, Burke published three novels in the late 1960s and early '70s. Then nothing. He couldn't give his books away. He sold one paperback original between 1972 and 1985.
He essentially had a 13-year dry spell before breaking back in with the Robicheaux novels, which have made him a bestseller and an award-winning author. In the January 1993 issue of Writer's Digest, Burke said:
"Those 13 years were really hard. I wrote a mess of short stories and so many unpublished novels that I can't even remember all of them. "
He later goes on to say: (and by the way, the piece was written by W.C. Stroby)
"My feeling is there's a time and a reason and a place for everything. I'm convinced that my career is not exceptional, but is instead indicative of the rule--namely, that you never quit. You can't be discouraged. But, at the same time, a person should not fault himself for becoming discouraged. It's going to happen, it's natural. But you still have to commit yourself. You have to do something every day for your art, or you'll never be a success at it."
Well, here's the problem. I agree with him. But I don't. Because, hell, we're all grown-ups here, right? We do realize that sometimes you can try your best and things don't work out. That not everybody can be first place? Right? Not every person who writes novels will get published, not every published novel will succeed, that success is different for each person, that success might be "published" for one and "multiple printings" for another and "bestseller list" for yet another and "number one on the New York Times BS List" for another.
Still, Burke's right. When you quit you only guarantee your failure.
To which I would add, "And try to enjoy the process because the goal isn't guaranteed."
Cheers, Mark Terry
How To Make Money Writing
July 22, 2008 Write something people want.
That's about it. Really, that's pretty much what it comes down to. It probably doesn't come down to being a "good writer" because the typical book buyer doesn't care or can't identify it. That's not being snotty, either. I recognize beautiful writing, a Philip Roth, a John Updike, a Norman Mailer, but for me, too often, beautiful writing of that sort gets in the way of the story. From a technical point of view I can say, "Wow, this guy can really write," but mostly I just wish they'd stop glorifying in their own technique. I sometimes read a successful novel by some bestseller and I really struggle with it yet the typical book buyer says they loved it. If I analyze it enough, I often find there's something strange or clunky about the rhythm and word selection of the book that's getting in my way, a tendency for the writer to add in unnecessary detail that should have been deleted, but he/she still tells a great story. (Lewis Perdue comes to mind). Or maybe they're a really terrific writer, but for some reason I think the main character is acting like a total moron in order to make the story work (oh, don't get me started). Still, people don't seem to care, or at least, a big chunk of them don't, which suggests to me they're getting something out of the book that I am not.
I think this is true for fiction as well as nonfiction, although in the case of nonfiction it's generally easier to figure out what people want. People want to be informed about some topic they're interested in, whether it's how to keep their 2-year-old from having a tantrum in the grocery store, how to choose wines that go with steak, how to lose 15 pounds without dieting, or how to choose long-term care insurance.
With fiction, maybe it's not that hard either.
People want to be entertained. They want to spend time in the company of a main character that they like or hate but that intrigues them. They want to be transported away from whatever the hell is going on in their life. In many ways they want to be informed about something as well, whether it's the behavior of an assassin in Asia (Barry Eisler), the perils of some new technology (Michael Crichton) or how the police operate in Italy (David Hewson). They want to live someone else's life vicariously, whether it's a glamorous or non-glamorous New Yorker trying to find love, a spy in the cold war, a private eye in Boston, a cop in Los Angeles, a Homeland Security troubleshooter in Baltimore, a goofy bounty hunter in New Jersey, a child psychologist in L.A. or a haunted writer in Maine.
They probably also want to feel something, whether it's fear, anger, joy, nervousness, lust, humor or all of the above, sometimes all at the same time.
That's all.
Cheers, Mark Terry
The Mythology of Publishing
July 21, 2008 Joe Konrath recently had a post about giving and taking advice and I asked him what thing he believed was true about publishing but which in his experience did not seem to be true. He wrote:
"While I still think it's important to earn out your advance and think of your publisher as a partner rather than as a boss, I'm beginning to figure out that your partner doesn't always feel the same way..."
There sure are a lot of follow-up questions that come to mind there, but as I thought about this, I wondered, what did I once think was true about publishing that I no longer take as gospel and, in fact, might believe is just wrong. So here are a few.
Good writing will win out in the long run. Well, in the larger world of publishing fiction, I think good writing (if you can define it) will get the short-term attention of an agent or editor, but will not necessarily get you published. In fact, I no longer believe that a "good story well told" will automatically get you published. Isn't that depressing? I think it kind of is. Now, unfortunately, my feeling is that the biggest things editors and publishers look for are: does the book have a commercial hook, does the author have a platform, and frankly, there's just a shortage of big publishers willing to take a chance on anything. (Ever noticed how many The Da Vinci Code clones there are out there?) There apparently are so many strong writers out there--and I partly blame computers and word processing programs for this, which has made it easier for people of modest talent to actually finish a manuscript--that "good" or even "very good" is so common that editors are increasingly looking for "great" or "excellent" which is very hard to come by.
Publishers will give you three to five books to grow an audience. I wish, but apparently it wasn't the case for me.
The typical first book advance will be something like $20,000. Hell, I thought $100,000 at one time. My first novel got $0 advance. My second $1500. Those sucked. They still suck. And this was in what, 2005 or 2006? In 1972 Stephen King got $2500 advance for the hardcover of "Carrie" and then $400,000 for the paperback of the same novel. I think the point here is that even back then Stephen King wasn't typical. And in 2005 or 2006, Mark Terry wasn't either... just on the other end of the spectrum. Typical would probably be about $5000 to $10,000 from a major publisher, although there probably is no "typical."
All published novelists are rich. See above.
All published novelists are poor and living in a garret. Maybe more true than the previous one, but what has struck me over the last four or five years is the blunt realization that the majority of published novelists are essentially "hobbyists," and that if I were to actually look at the history of the novel, it's probably always been that way.
Editors want to nurture and grow a writer's career. Probably what they want is someone who becomes an instant bestseller that they only paid $5000 for. My impression now is that editors are under too much bottom line pressure from their publishers and the accounting department to nurture a writer that doesn't have an instantly upward trend in their sales figures.
Publishers will do everything they can to make a book a success. No. Uh, hell no. If publishers have a significant investment in a book (read: big advance) then yes, they will do everything they can to earn back that advance. If they have little or nothing invested in a book--which is most of them--then they do little or nothing except cross their fingers. There are tons of books that get published and the sole marketing done by the publisher involves a mention in their catalogue and sending a few advanced reading copies out to the major trade review outlets--Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus.
How about you? Do you agree with me? Have I just depressed the hell out of you? What are your cherished notions about publishing? Any publishing myths you know about?
Cheers, Mark Terry
A New Blog
July 19, 2008 I started a new blog a week or so ago. It's called Fat2Fit and it has nothing to do with writing. But if you're interested in my ramblings about exercise and activity and this is an issue for you as well, swing on by and let me know what you think. Or if you have a jock friend or someone who needs to exercise or likes to exercise but has problems actually getting around to it, point them my way.
Cheers, Mark Terry
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