Who needs pictures?

I did some video of Niagara Falls, on Sunday, and figure this is a better idea of how intense they are...

I'm on a quickie job in New Jersey -- hop down, pick up some books and a painting and return to Buffalo. All last minute. Drove all day and am tired.

April's gonna be a busy month...

Amazing trash...

I watched Attack of the Giant Leeches and The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues...and tried to watch The Beast with 1,000,000 Eyes, but that one was too self-important to be trashy fun and the opening monologues bored me. The first two had some amazingly bad acting and ludicrous scripts, not to mention hysterical monsters -- the leeches looked like men in Hefty garbage bags with donuts along one side -- but they were quick and merciless, and they reconfirmed my belief the most important parts of a film are its script and actors.

So to clear my mind of them, I watched a special program on Acorn about David Suchet's years as Hercule Poirot. It discussed how he's played the little Belgian detective in adaptations of all 70 of Agatha Christie's books and short stories, including a darker version of Murder on the Orient Express. It was a lovely little program, and I've seen some of his work in the series; he does do well as Poirot.

I'm enjoying Acorn. I signed up to watch the new And Then There Were None and stayed on, since it cost me $5 a month and I've seen some interesting mysteries -- like Vera, with Brenda Blethyn playing a Detective Chief Inspector who's anything but lovable -- and some that were questionable -- like their take on Miss Marple having modern sexual mores worked into the plots -- and one that was awful -- the reworking of The Witness for the Prosecution. But they've all been well-produced...probably on minimal budgets.

I also printed up a copy of The Alice '65 -- 246 pages, 62,000 words. Having a printed copy in front of me usually helps me settle the story. I'm not working on it till Saturday, but it's important to me to actually see something tangible to show how much I've done...and here it is. Next comes the slashing and trashing and gnashing of teeth...

...which I think calls for a bottle of wine...yes...

Odd day...

I drove the long way to Niagara Falls, today, along the 384, then walked around and took some photos and video (will share some, tomorrow). After a couple of hours, I drove to Rochester for BBQ. There's a restaurant called Sticky Lips that's fairly good...well, good enough for a 60 mile trip each way if you're dying for decent brisket; there's nothing like that in Buffalo. But it felt right, getting out of the apartment and just wandering.

What made the day odd was...I started thinking about a couple of short scripts I'd written and how they would work nicely up in this area. One's called I Watch You and is about someone obsessed with a young married couple, with a twist -- it's a woman focused on the husband and not caring the wife is pregnant. I've been told this is the creepiest thing I've ever written.

I was trying to a form of video poetry mixing words and images and such but let it go because it's over 20 pages long. It would still probably wind up as a 15 minute piece, but it would be a lot of work to produce...and probably not cheap. I'd need a maternity store, a fine-dining restaurant, and a print shop to shoot in, not to mention a townhouse. And there's an alley behind the restaurant, which in and of itself isn't so difficult, but it all needs to be as if shot off an iPhone and spyware. At least 3 dozen short, quick setups.

The other is Unfinished Business...which I had almost decided to blend into my script, Mine To Kill. And may, yet. MTK is about an empathic-intuitive intern who was fired from his first hospital because he sensed the cop he was working on was a bastard. The man died and he was blamed. He gets another chance at a hospital where his cousin works as a resident, and he falls into the same situation -- this time with a cruel lawyer and his wife, a brilliant research doctor who was obsessed with the man. The lawyer dies and the wife thinks she can bring him back to life...but only if she kills the intern.

It was a bit too incoherent to work, really. A friend of mine said it was two movies -- the intern's and the wife's -- and I ought to pick one or the other to tell. I tried, and lost interest.

UB, however, is also about a young intern, though this one just lost his first patient. Then he is forced to save the live of a wounded criminal or be killed...and do it without any tools or medicine. He barely manages to. I tried to make it as suspenseful as I could...and think I did. Got some good feedback on it.

Anyway, IWY kept nudging me throughout the day. As I walked around the Falls. As I drove to and from Rochester. I'm not sure why since I have so much to work on with my books...but it didn't stop.

And I'm halfway wondering what it would cost to make...and make good...

Another preliminary first draft done...

I just finished another run through The Alice '65 and now have no idea what the story is about. After all the cutting and adding and rearranging throughout what I'd already done, I don't even know if it holds together, anymore. All I can do is keep working on it and honing it down till it begins to make sense.

I'm taking tomorrow off from writing. I may watch a bunch of bad movies -- like Attack of the Giant Leeches and Phantom from 10,000 Leagues and crap like that to clear my head. I saw them as a kid in San Antonio, on Midnight Movies -- that was the precursor to Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (who actually made a fun movie in 1988 with a hunk of a guy who couldn't act but was lovely to look at), and would actually start at midnight on a Saturday night.

I saw most of the Hammer horror Films and Corman's crap on those shows, and enjoyed them even though they were silly...well, for the most part...but the latter two were all about the comments and remarks made by the hosts. Which were also silly but a blast.

I also saw some pretty good B-grade horror/suspense films -- like William Castle's I Saw What You Did and The Tingler...which was obviously influenced by Henri-Georges Clouzot's Diabolique -- but I didn't know that till I got to see Diabolique at the Olmos Theater after it became a revival house and played it on a double bill with Wages of Fear...and the only reason I went is because I was taking French in college and wanted to test my ability.

Anyway, trash is good for someone like me, who has a lofty idea of what film should be, even though half the time I just want to see if a good-looking man's in a tighty-whitie. (Snork)

Off to NYC...

Got a last-minute pickup in NYC, next week, and solidified a job just outside Oklahoma City, of all places, for the end of April. Another job is set for late July or early August in San Francisco, and another is happening in Daytona Beach, Florida. I'm back to flying around, again...and I can't wait. I do not like being in the office.

I don't feel I'm doing much. I try, but the woman I work under is one of those people who thinks it's better if she just does things herself. Even when I get her to to give me a task, if I don't do it fast enough for her, she just takes it back. It's an odd feeling, like you're a total incompetent. Which makes me think I have to be even more careful when I set up a shipment...which usually makes me prone to mistakes.

I'm not really all that in tune with how things work in logistics -- it takes someone who's heavy into detail, which I am not -- but I've handled a few shipments all on my own and they've gotten where they needed to go. That's good.

Ahh, the hell with it. I did a quick check of last year's income and profit, and worked out that I paid for myself with the packing jobs we had...so at least I'm not a drain on the company. I'd love to be back in LA...sometimes I get so homesick for it...but it doesn't look like I'll have anything happening there anytime soon...and you do what you have to in order to make your way, don't you?

And the truth is, if I were still there, I'd still be writing scripts instead of books. The Vanishing of Owen Taylor would never have been completed, and I'd never have developed A65 into a story. I can also use the isolation of this town to help me focus on getting P/S done, once I've finished this one. I'm actually ready to get started and build a full first draft.

But God I miss LA.

Another story in the manner of A65

This is the full movie if you want to see it; the opening dialogue is a bit out of sync, but once Hildy gets into Walter Burns' office, it's fine.

This is a comedy revolving around the pending execution of a man and the disgraceful actions of a group of reporters and politicians and an editor and his ex-wife spar over their previous marriage. It's also a suicide attempt in it, and a crazy little guy who shoots a man as he's escaping...in the ass, granted, but still...

Okay...so let the games in The Alice '65 begin.

Not sure about this...

The Alice 65 has taken a pretty dark turn, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's not a major part of the story -- just deals with a difficult relationship Adam's having with one of his brothers, Connor -- but it's got me wondering if I should adjust the whole family dynamic.

Right now, Adam is the youngest in the family...but I'm thinking of switching it so he's the oldest. Then comes Beryl. Then comes Connor, with David last of the brood. Connor is always getting at Adam and angering him and flustering him. He even almost got Adam drowned, when they were kids. At the end, after it's already been splashed everywhere about what happened to the book, Connor calls Adam to berate him. People in his office are laughing at him because of Adam.

Now that, in and of itself is no big deal; it's Adam's reaction that startled me. He as much as suggests Connor tell people they aren't really brothers. That Adam's a mentally defective child who was adopted by the family. And he does it in such a casual way, it's like he's decided he and Connor are no longer related...and Connor, being all about himself, runs with it.

I'm not sure how I feel about that. This was supposed to be a romantic comedy but it keeps dragging shadows into it...and not at my urging. I'm halfway tempted to fight them...but then I think of a movie like The Apartment, that's a dramatic comedy about a twerp who lets his bosses use his apartment to cheat on their wives in hopes it will help him get ahead...and it does. Until he falls in love with a girl on the elevator only to learn she's seeing his uber-boss, who's married and wants to use his apartment to fool around on his wife...with that girl.

Parts of it are very funny with some wicked lines, but it's got a vicious attitude about morality in America and there's a suicide attempt treated full-on honestly. Everything about it is grounded in the reality that its lead character is a brown-nosing pimp who needs to become a mensch...a nice guy...in the face of the casual corruption around him. And yet, it's fun.

Maybe that's what my characters and story are aiming for...

Cutting...rearranging...

I'm at the point where I'm trimming out some bits of nonsense and shifting other bits to other places. I'm also removing repetition and finding there are other sections that, while they don't exactly repeat they are a bit too similar to work well.

For example, I have Casey tell Adam about her father, a swindler who vanished with millions of her money as well as other people's. But then I have Patricia, Casey's mother, also tell some about him...and it's not different enough to be adding details but is more like a different view of what happened. I'm not sure, yet, which one of them should do the talking about that or even if it's necessary for Adam to know. Being written in third person, I can discuss it without telling him.

I'm also still adding details in -- like coming back to a book Adam was archiving at the very beginning. It's a copy of Orlando Furioso in Latin, and he can't figure out if the book was owned by a Pope, who then gave it to a King. An off-handed comment by Casey about Lando helps Adam realize how to determine the truth behind it.

And then there's Lando never not wearing sunglasses, even in the theater during the premier of the movie. And Adam not realizing what's going on during the red carpet word-war between Casey, Lando and Veronica but still managing to say the right thing even though he means something else.

I also need to work Sean and Shawn, the paparazzi twins, into the story better, as well as Adam's relationship with this brothers and sister, since it figures into the story. And...what Casey hopes to achieve by using Adam like she's doing. Man, there's a LOT left to do.

But...it's moving forward, and that's a good thing.

Pushing forward...

I've been working late, all week, and getting home with headaches, so today I focused on nothing but The Alice '65...and it's closer. I'm now at about 60,000 words, with more bits added in that will need to be smoothed over to fit the story. I will have no idea if anything is working until I get to a point where I think I've done enough and decide to print it out and do my red pen thing.

That's when I normally start honing the story. It breaks me out of the screen and I'm almost reading the words as if written by someone else. Then I can edit and rearrange and cut and work with the characters to make it better and tighter and more real.

As of right now, I've just got a lot of action and a bit of truth to the characters. Adam's stumbling along well enough, and Casey's not far behind; it's characters like Vincent and Patricia and Lando who are still not really there, yet. Just involved witnesses to the events when they should be more active participants. Patricia's closest to being developed, since she's Casey's mother and also a lonely woman. I rather enjoy the ending she gets in the book.

The others -- well...Lando still doesn't quite make sense to me. He needs a better through line. And Vincent popped up with something at the end that makes me want to rework his bits at the beginning. Something that also makes him more willing to have The Alice checked to make certain it's authentic. I'm not sure I like it, considering everything else, but I have to let it play itself out.

I'm still approaching this as if it's a romantic-comedy...but by the time I'm done, I have a feeling it will not be what I expected. The drama seems to be pushing its way in, more -- Casey's history and Adam's father's death having an impact on the family, that sort of stuff. So it may wind up merely a romance...I dunno.

Nor do I care, so long as the book is happy.

Different tastes...

I read an interesting article on acting, online, and this guy -- who's supposedly a director and producer -- took issue with what I call stunt acting. That's when an actor does something physically intense and over the top to prove he's an actor. I lump Eddie Redmayne, Dustin Hoffman, Tom Hanks and Jack Nicholson in this category for the Oscars they've won.

Redmayne playing Stephen Hawking was a bit of stunt acting. Good, but more physically impressive than revealing of character. Same for Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot and Hoffman in Rain Man. Both geared to the external limitations of their characters -- one due to his body, the other due to his mind -- that were neither subtle nor revealing.

That doesn't apply to all stunt acting. When I saw Leonardo DeCaprio playing a kid with cerebral palsy in What's Eating Gilbert Grape, I believed him in that character so completely, I think he was robbed at the Oscars.

It sort of fits in with my disagreements with actors about who is good and bad in a film. I once had a long discussion with some friends who thought Brendan Fraser should have been nominated for Gods and Monsters. I thought he was good, but he didn't earn his emotion breakdown near the end. His voice was flat, to me. They insisted I was wrong.

Another one is Kristen Stewart. I've heard her referred to as the best actor of her generation, but what little I've seen her in, she's one-note and boring. I see nothing going on with her or her characters, and her voice is like a drone. She's not interested in bringing a whole person to you.

I like actors who can keep you guessing as to what their reasons are, even as they reveal their characters. To me, one of the best jobs of acting I've ever seen was Sir Ralph Richardson in The Heiress. He's a cold man who probably blames his daughter for his beloved wife dying in childbirth, but at the same time he's trying to protect her from a fortune hunter. Or...he might be doing all he can to thwart her happiness, as punishment for living. You don't know, but he sends you the man's complexity with the slightest of movements -- an arched eyebrow, a polite smile with a subtle change of tone in his voice... It's a master class in acting, unto itself.

Same for Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep in Norman's Room. Both were majors stars when this movie was made, yet by the end of the first act, you forget you're watching actors and instead feel like you're witnessing people's lives, because every bit of their performance was geared to bringing you a whole human being, not just part of one.

Oh, well, I guess this is why I never was cut out for acting -- my reality is too warped to bring anyone else's reality into the world.