Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

I want Ryan Reynolds to play me...

When I become famous (or infamous) and there's a movie made of my life. I don't care that we look nothing alike (did Alexander Graham Bell really look like Don Ameche?) or that he's Canadian and I'm from California or that he doesn't even have red hair (Clairol #16 is close enough of a color). He'd bring integrity and strength to the role, something I can find myself lacking in, all too often.

You see, I just watched his elegant PSA for clean energy, making so much better a point and offering a better suggestion on how to end this oil nonsense than any other news story or commercial or anything dealing with the destruction of the Gulf of Mexico has...all in the space of 35 seconds.

Here's the link -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNaD-tjYvHs

I admire people who put themselves up front like this. And while I may make my liberal, card-carrying-member-of-the-ACLU comments on other blogs under my real name (or my nickname...and I really AM a member) it's done from a safe distance. No one really knows my face or how to get hold of me except those whom I want to. But now Ryan Reynolds will get blasted by some right-wing nuts for daring to put forward a "librul" agenda, and never you mind that it only makes sense. Hell, he may even get death threats. Hey, if the freaks on the right send them to Paul Krugman for pointing out simple economic reality, they'll send them to anybody.

Ryan, I know there's no way in hell you're gonna read this, but I still have to say -- love ya, mean it...and not 'cause you're beautiful.

Hmm...I must be feeling better. I did nothing today because it seems I actually did get a small sinus infection going on top of working my butt off. So I self-medicated. Slept till 11 and even took a nap, this afternoon. Ate light. Didn't go out, at all. And now I'm back to making political comments, even on my own blog. Helps that I've only had two sneezing fits, and both were much earlier, today.

What days like this help me do is think. My favorite film of all time is "The 400 Blows" (which some so-called film school graduate on a film shoot I was helping out on actually wondered, aloud, if that was gay porn...and he wasn't joking; he was honestly freaked that I might be discussing gay sex on the set, the backwoods little fuck). Anyway, it has lots of humor in it, following the antics of Antoine Doinel as he goes from being a rambunctious kid to winding up in a reformatory thanks to his parents' casual disinterest in him. And my favorite book, "War & Peace", has humor in it. So why am I such a humorless writer?

I mean, I can do witty, sometimes...which is a poor substitute. But even my farce -- "The Lyons' Den" -- doesn't really generate laughs in people. I think I have a couple of good ones in "The Cowboy King of Texas" and "The Lavender Curse" -- but those will depend so much on the readings of the actors and how the directors present them, I can't say they're really mine. I just suck at writing humor...and I can't figure out why. Kyle Cicero works it into his books with no effort.

That said...humor makes for more realistic humanity, and that's what I want in POS. So...how do I add it? How do i FIND it?

Okay, Kyle (me not the other guy), did you really need to add another level of impossible to this story?

4 comments:

G said...

So, you want Ryan Reynolds to play you. I want Ryan Reynolds to do me. Just saying...

G said...

BTW, why are there no photos of yourself?

JamTheCat said...

No question, Ryan is a cutie.

And I got no pics to hold me down
Or make me laugh or make me frown.
I had pics, but then I'd see
How folk would scream in shock at me.
Hee-hee.

G said...

Well, OK, I'll still come and visit.