Danielmedley.com

Monday, August 27, 2007

Tumbleweeds A Blowin’

It’s true. There are literally tumbleweeds blowing in, about, and through Danielmedley.com. This summer has been amazingly eventful for a relatively uneventful summer which has left very little time to do almost anything superfluous, including regular updates to this website.

Just when things started to get on an even keel something came up that sent everything askew once again. Now, I’m not bitching about this, I’m just voicing what’s going through my head. What sent my world reeling once again is not a negative thing; far from it. But it could potentially result in some serious changes in my life. I’m not going to get in to it extensively at the moment. All I will say is that I’m doing something that I’ve not done in years which is studying in a formal, regimental manner with a specific goal in mind. Anyway, enough about that.

Side note:

My wife and I watched The De Vinci Code last night. What a pathetic, banal, gut wrenchingly bad piece of cinematic dog poop that film is. The reasons that it was so bad are too numerous to even discuss.

Last week, we went over to Justin and Julee’s house and watched 300 on their big, fancy, schmancy 53 inch HD flat-panel. Now, that movie was so good that it gave me wood. The reasons that it was so good were as numerous as the reasons that The De Vinci Code was so bad.

Just perusing the net, I see that Owen Wilson may have tried to commit suicide. Don’t know if that’s true or not, but if it is my message to him would be to buck up, trooper. Not that he’s likely to stop by this website anytime soon to see what I have to say.

Speaking of famous people, what the hell is up with Amy Winehouse? Man, I was in to her latest album before it was even released in the states. If you haven’t done so yet, go out and buy it. It’s truly a great piece of work. It’s too bad she’s in a quick, downard, spiral. My advice to her would be to stop being an idiot and lay off of the heroin, crack, and cocaine immediately after she eats a couple of meals heavy in carbs and protein and a bit on the largish side. In fact I’ll be specific in advising her first step to recovery be that she jump on a plane to Vegas and take up residence at a 24 hour all-you-can-eat buffet and do nothing but eat for a couple of weeks.

I’m just saying.

Ok, I’ll stop with the juvenile mental meanderings concerning others and wrap this up so that I can go pick up my son from his first day of school this year. Hopefully the building is still standing.

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Waiting For A Heartbeat

Yeah, yeah. It’s been a long time. I’ve been busy, though. Busy with summer crap. Actually, it’s been a pretty good summer. We went to Idaho, visited and had fun, and then a few weeks later we were off to Vegas with some friends. That was fun as well although I did get to experience up-sale techniques from a waiter in a French restaurant that would’ve made a used care salesman blanch. That’s a whole other story.

Man, I’m sitting here—typing of course—and I have Vh1 Classic playing in the background. Don Johnson has to wish that he could get his hands on every copy of Waiting for a Heartbeat and purge the earth and his life of that debacle.

Friday, July 13, 2007

The Vacation

Driving into Council I was amazed at the local Shell gas station’s price of 2.42 per gallon of mid-grade gasoline. The same stuff in Salt Lake was 2.28. Supply and demand my ass. Tell me, how can the demand be higher in a town of just over 900 people than it is in a metro area of over a million?

Anyway, I digress.

One of the highlights of the vacation was our camping trip with a couple of friends; Rob and his wife Kim. We drove up to an area out of McCall, Goose lake road to be exact. We went above Hazard Lake, kept to the right heading towards Little French Creek towards the Hershey Point Lookout, and found a great camping spot over an area called Elk Meadows.

On the way we stopped in a little antique shop/coffee house for what I believe to be the best damn cappuccino in Central Idaho. For the life of me I can’t remember the name of the place. When I get my credit card statements back I’ll be sure and make note and mention them. Anyway, we stopped and got our cappuccino and I struck up a conversation with the proprietor. He mentioned that he’d just read in the local paper that the Fish and Game department was bragging about dumping a bunch of tiger muskies—a beast that is a cross between a northern pike and a muskellunge—into many of the backcountry lakes in an attempt to deplete the eastern brook trout population. See, the eastern brook trout is not indigenous to Idaho. Some time in the 1930’s they were planted in a few streams and took off like gangbusters. As a result they’ve practically chased out the native rainbow. Sure, in the streams like the Salmon River and Snake, you can catch rainbows like nobody’s business, but in many of the backcountry lakes the brookie is what you are most likely to catch. They are so plentiful that the limit is 25. Yes, 25 freakin’ brookies. Stop by the gas n go, grab a bunch of worms, then go to almost any high mountain lake, and you can catch a shit-load of brookies and have one hell of a fish fry.

The Fish and Game department stated in the article that they wanted to kill off most of the brookies with the tiger muskies then gill the tiger muskies out of the lakes. Then they planned on planting rainbow trout back into the lakes because that’s what anglers wanted. This was much to the chagrin of the coffee house proprietor. He, like most locals, prefers the brookies to the rainbow simply because they taste better. The Fish and Game, however, is interested in catering to the pompous catch and release crowd who live in the cities and come in from other states. They spend lots of money buying fishing licenses and then lots of gas money to drive into the mountains, commune with nature, catch a rainbow and then throw it back. This is something that to most locals is patently absurd. They sure as hell aren’t going to go traipsing about the wilds to catch a fish simply to throw it back. It’s fuckin’ goofy. And, most of the locals prefer the taste of a brookie over a rainbow.

Just mere days before we left for this camping trip my dad was reminiscing about all the brookies in those lakes and how it was such a pleasure to eat them right out of the lake; roasted on an open flame and how he hated catching rainbows because they taste like shit. I actually began to struggle with how I was going to inform him that that was all about to change.

When we got to Hazard Lake we stopped for a little break and I was amazed at how things had changed since the last time I’d been to Hazard Lake proper some three decades prior. Then it was truly a back-country lake requiring what seemed an eternity on rough road to get to. Once there you could find a secluded, shady camping spot pretty easy in and among the thick timber that surrounded the lake. The road is still a bit slow-going in spots, but now there are developed camping spots around the lake that require a fee. I’m talking paved pads and a handicapped equipped hand-crank water pump. The place had a few campers parked like a small city in the making and I saw at least two people carrying what appeared to be thousand-dollar fly rods. Also, the lake was just shy of a moonscape in that most of the trees had been burned back in—I believe—1993 when 330,000 acres went up in the Corral Complex fire. That was the one where then President Clinton dropped in via helicopter to give a pep talk to the thousands of firefighters and National Guardsmen. The fire burned until the snow fell.

We continued past Hazard Lake and towards Hershey Point, to the head waters of Little French Creek, traveling through what seemed an endless landscape of burned forest. The scope of the burn is almost incomprehensible. Intermittently among the vast acreage of carnage there would be an inexplicable patch of forest that had somehow survived the inferno; a gray, dead sea of burned landscape speckled with an occasional patch of pristine beauty. Just off the road we found just such a spot along side of a creek coming from the snowmelt in the mountains above. It appeared to be a hunting camp with an ample stock of split wood. Rob and I agreed that this place would be perfect to set up camp. Besides, everyone, with the exception of my son, had a strong hankering for a beer which could only happen once camp was set up.

Ok, I’m lying. The beer didn’t wait until after camp was set up. By the time we got there, I’d already put away three.  New Castles if I must admit; the best damned beer God ever created.

After we set up camp and put back a few more beers we decided to load up in the truck and do some exploring to see how far the road might take us. The biggest impediment was the prospect of wind-fallen burned trees that had landed across the road. Since we’d managed to forget to bring the chainsaw with us, it was a concern. About two miles up the road from the camp we saw 7 wolf pups in the middle of the road. They were romping about, playing grab-ass and then stopped and gawked at our appearance. I figured them to be around 8 to 10 weeks of age and they didn’t seem overly concerned with our presence. As we got within 40 yards or so they split up; 4 going up the hill from the road, and 3 heading down the hill. Over the last ten years or so, since the reintroduction of wolves to this part of the country, they have done quite well. Better, in fact, than I think anyone had anticipated. So good in fact that they have become a bit of a nuisance to the point that there will be a hunting season on them to thin them out. Seeing 7 pups made me understand their voracious appetite for reproduction. You will very rarely, if ever, see that many coyote pups. The most I’ve ever seen are three and coyote pups have a much larger mortality rate than wolves. Think about that and than consider that coyotes are almost always shot on sight, and then realize that there are more coyotes there than there are crooked politicians and you get an idea of just how well the wolves have done since reintroduction. Ask the cattle and sheep rancher too. Especially the one who lost 30 calves to a pack just outside of Council.

Don’t get me wrong. Unlike most people in that area, I’m not of the mindset that wolves should be exterminated like they almost were over the last century. Notice I said almost. That’s because it’s a myth that the wolves were exterminated from Central Idaho. Oh, they tried to exterminate them for sure, but there have always been wolves there. Not many, but they were there. Now, after the so called reintroduction, they are rampant. Love it or hate it, the fact is that people live there now and always will until some global catastrophe or meteor or whatever occurs. It will never be like it was before humans come around. That’s the reality. Since that’s the reality, it means that there has to be some middle ground. In fact there will be middle ground no matter what some government lackey tries to do or say. I guarantee it. The thinning has already begun.

Anyway, I did rather enjoy seeing those wolf pups. The next morning when we woke up and crawled from our tents, we noticed two sets of adult wolf tracks that had paid a cautious visit to the parameters of our campsite. Something, we aren’t sure because we couldn’t verify with immediate tracks, pissed all over Rob’s tent. I can’t imagine a wolf coming in our camp to do it, but because Rob is a rancher and there is a natural hatred of wolves in him, well, hell, maybe the wolf thought to itself, I’m going to piss all over this asshole’s tent. Ok, I’m starting to sound like Shirley McLean.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Zoetrope And Triggerstreet

I’ve got accounts at both Triggerstreet and Zoetrope. At Zoetrope I participate in the short story, novella, and screenplay parts of the website. At Triggerstreet, just the screenplay. I’ve reviewed three screenplays at Zoetrope and the only thing I can say is, ouch. Man, I haven’t read one screenplay there that doesn’t suck. I’m not talking, “sucks, but there are good aspects to it.” I’m talking sucks in every way imaginable. I’ve read a couple of novellas too and they are every bit as bad. Over on Triggerstreet I have managed to read a couple of screenplays that are pretty decent. But even so, the majority are just horrible.

Now, I’m not trying to come across as some Know it all who is a great story teller, or who has written a bunch of screenplays, but I can tell you that I do have a pretty damn good understanding of story plus I have at least a modicum of understanding concerning the screenplay form.

All this said, I must say that I absolutely love these sites because I love to read other people’s work. Even if it is like pulling teeth. The reason for this is that you can learn a lot from deconstructing a story or a screenplay. It’s gotten to the point where I can tell early on why something isn’t working. I can see it as plain as day. In fact it’s easier to see why something doesn’t work than it is to recognize why something does work. Even so, knowing why something doesn’t work is very helpful.

OK, I’m through babbling.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

About Screenwriting

Lately I’ve been consuming as much screenwriting material as I possibly can between sleeping, family life, and actually writing.

If you are even thinking of writing screenplays I heartily recommend going over this site with a fine-toothed comb. The columns by Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio are worth paying good money for. On a regular basis you come across gems such as this:

A full theater is far smarter than the average studio executive.

In fact—I’ll go so far as to say, there are NO EXAMPLES of solid story-logic stories that were too difficult or demanding for the audience to understand.

The irony of most studio notes is that, in an effort to ‘simplify’ the story for the sake of the audience—so the audience will ‘get it’—the story is made nonsensical. And then no matter how smart the audience is, they will never be able to find the logic—because it isn’t there.

There is so much to be learned here.

Friday, May 11, 2007

I’m Just Saying

Almost finished with the first draft of below mentioned script. Now, lest you assume that I simply had an idea pop into my head and then pounded it out in three weeks, you couldn’t be more wrong.

I’ve been thinking about this story longer than I at first thought. I came across notes from five years ago. I was shocked, really.

One thing I realized is that many of the problems that needled me for some time didn’t get resolved until after I just sat my ass down and started tapping away. What this means is that you don’t necessarily have to have everything all figured out before you sit down and get to work. Actually working on it will provide a variety of ideas from which to choose to solve a particular problem. In fact many of the ideas will not even be apparent until you start working on it.

On a somewhat related note, I read a couple of screenplay newsgroups on a regular basis. In response to one poster I mentioned what I believe to be Hollywood’s creatively incestuous nature. What I’m talking about is the fact that, for the most part, Hollywood is not exactly a bastion of creativity. Oh, sure, some great, creative stories do come out of Hollywood, no doubt about it. But the ratio of crap to gems is pretty high. I believe much of the reason is because Hollywood is mostly interested in creative talent that resides in Hollywood. Writers living in Hollywood mingle with other writers in Hollywood. They talk, they network. By its very nature, it can’t help but be incestuous to a degree. The incestuous part can be best exemplified by the fact that you can count on that right now, at this very moment, there are probably hundreds of people sitting at their desks frantically working on the next 300 or variation thereof.

I was called to task by a real screenwriter. When I say real I’m talking about a guy who has written a ton of scripts and actually had them made in to real, honest to God movies. He’s quite well known and successful. He stated that Hollywood does not make movies for Hollywood, but rather the whole world. True, but I believe that Hollywood’s version of the whole world consists mainly of those between the ages of about 15 and 25, and whatever hit the mark in that age group last week, will almost guarantee similar coming down the pike next week.

My main point is that I believe that there is a huge market of more mature movie-goers who are interested in a great story more than a high concept, heavy on the FX, BOOM, BOOM, rollercoaster ride.

Not to say that high concept, heavy on the FX, BOOM, BOOM, rollercoaster rides don’t have a place.

I’m just saying.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Looking Forward And Working On It

This morning I read about some big box electronics retailer deciding to fire 3400 of their employees in order to hire cheaper work. It used to be that when people did something abhorrently disgusting on a moral level they would at least try to do it in an underhanded, secretive manner. Not any more. Now, they practically brag about it. “They’re not a charity!” on pundit brayed. I’m certainly no bleeding heart nor am I a socialist, but the concept that big business does not have at least some social responsibility espouses capitalism without conscience which is every bit as destructive as the collectivization villainy in an Ayn Rand novel. When one thinks of the beefy year-end bonus that the CEO of said electronics store will probably receive as a result one cannot help but hope there is a special place in hell waiting for them. If indeed there is a hell, which I’m not so sure of.

Granted, my thinking may be a bit cloudy this morning. After all, I’m working on minimal sleep and winter seems to have returned after a couple of weeks of just enough spring-like weather to force me into a borderline suicidal slump with every falling snowflake. OK, so I’m overstating it. The “suicidal slump” is actually no more than mild irritation, but bitching about shit you can’t change is a particular pleasure of mine when sleep deprived. 

Now I’ve just remembered that my wife and I, along with our little bundle of bilingual joy, will be going on a trip with some friends this summer. We will be spending several days driving along the California coast and visiting that state’s fabled wine country. Suddenly winter’s last gasp doesn’t seem to be the minor irritant that it was just moments ago. Which reminds me, we have discussed creating a travel blog/log of the whole trip and that is something that neither I nor Justin (the taller half of the couple with whom we will be traveling) have done before. I’m thinking it wise to begin educating myself to the ways of travel logs. Car: check. Digital camera: check. Laptop: check. GPS receiver filled with POI’s of wineries: check. Wherewithal: check. Ability: working on it.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Plagiarism On A Grand Scale

I remember reading about Joyce Hatto some years ago and receiving a measure of inspiration by the notion that an average, some would’ve even said lackluster, pianist in her seventies would exit this life leaving behind a library of recordings that appeared would go down in history. Joyce Hatto, it appeared, had more than secured her legacy in a grand, almost too good to be true manner.

There was one catch, however. It was too good to be true.

...her career was already in decline when she was diagnosed with cancer in 1972. She retired to a village near Cambridge with her recording-engineer husband, William Barrington-Coupe, and a fine old Steinway that Rachmaninoff himself had used for prewar recitals in Britain.

Then, one of the strangest turns in the history of classical music. Starting in 1989, Joyce Hatto began recording CDs for a small record label run by her husband.

Beginning with Liszt, she went back to cover Bach, all of the Mozart sonatas and continued with a complete Beethoven sonata set. Then on to Schubert and Schumann, Chopin and Liszt. She played Messiaen. She tossed off Prokofiev sonatas (all nine) with incredible virtuosity. In total she recorded over 120 CDs — including many of the most difficult piano pieces ever written, played with breathtaking speed and accuracy.

I suppose suspicion should have been raised by this:

She gave to the music a developed although oddly changeable personality. She could do Schubert in one style, and then present Prokofiev almost as though she was a new person playing a different piano. It seemed an astonishing, chameleon-like artistic ability.

And, finally, there is this:

Jeremy Distler, slid Joyce Hatto’s CD of Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes into his computer. His iTunes library, linked to a catalogue of about four million CDs, immediately identified it as a recording by the Hungarian virtuoso Laszlo Simon.

Since then, further analysis by both professional sound engineers and piano recording enthusiasts across the globe has pushed toward the same conclusion: the entire Joyce Hatto oeuvre recorded from 1989 on appears to be stolen from the CDs of other pianists.

I suppose in hindsight it should hardly come as a surprise that she never played a lick on any of the recordings, at least not on any that have been scrutinized so far. This leads me to ponder a number of things, one of which is, what drives people to carry on with artistic fraud on such a gargantuan scale? That’s not to say that any amount of fraud is acceptable, but this type of fraud on such a scale is almost assuredly going to be found out. The other notion that I pondered is the fact that, by and large, we all want to believe a good story, especially one of such apparent inspiration. I mean really; an elderly pianist diagnosed with cancer and spends the twilight of her life accomplishing the impossible, leaving behind a legacy to last through the ages.

Now that we know of the fraud, I wonder about the motive behind it. One has to wonder just what the hell she was thinking. However, in the end, none of it matters because after all, she was simply a fake, a lecherous fraud of the worst kind who prayed upon the most base of human nature of simply wanting to believe.

Friday, March 09, 2007

Stereo Types

Some of the most literate people I’ve ever known where those found in small hamlets and villages throughout the Rocky Mountain West before the advent of satellite TV. I remember as a child, while with my father, visiting a sheep herder in the remote wilds of Central Idaho and being astounded at the number of books that he had stashed away in every available space inside of his little camp wagon. He had books ranging from Louis L’Amour to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey along with various other works from the likes of Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, and even Wordsworth. This is not all together uncommon among the old timers of the area.

Because of the solitary, almost monkish existence of many of these people who wrangled cattle, herded sheep, fixed the fences, and rode the range, they had a literary understanding that I believe rivals that of many Ivy League literati types. Literature after all is quite organic. Someone spending an inordinate amount of time alone, embedded in the natural world is going to be in a position to deeply ponder what is read in a unique way. Keep in mind that many of these people had very little in the way of formal education.

My own father is an example of this. Having dropped out of school in the seventh grade during the Depression to work for the family, he is certainly not what you would call educated. He has lived a hard, often solitary, life of ranching and logging. Even so, he is very well read and is capable of carrying on a conversation of remarkable lucidity on a huge variety of subjects. Very much on par with anyone you are likely to meet. Of course it’s not unusual for the stereo type to be at odds with the reality. I’ve seen this many times, most people have.

Some years ago I was on plane making a final approach into Warsaw. People were already out of their seats and jockeying for position which lead to the flight attendants walking down the aisles imploring everyone to sit down and, once again, stash their carryon luggage. I remember an elderly woman with amazingly sparkling eyes sitting next to me, clutching her bag and acting as if she were warming up for a sprint. When the plane finally touched down, the passengers broke out in applause then headed for the exits. All the while, the plane was still speeding down the runway.  At the time the applause was startling to me. My knowledge of Polish was limited to the signs above the restrooms and the word “kava” for coffee. I wondered if perhaps there was something near catastrophic going on of which I was not aware. Think about it; people in a fever-pitch hurry to get off of a plane and then breaking out in applause when it finally landed. In the states—and most of Western Europe for that matter—you will not see people clambering to position themselves. Usually, they will not even unlatch their seatbelts until the plane is at a complete stop, and the exiting process is quite calm. The point I’m making is that the stereo type is that Americans are always in a hurry and verge on rudeness in demonstrating their impatience. Generally speaking, Americans will go out of their way to exercise politeness and, with the exception of waiting to get inside of Wal-Mart to take part in a day-after-Thanksgiving sale, are remarkably unhurried while establishing a line.

Speaking of breaking out into applause when an airplane lands, as far as I know this appears to be a uniquely European thing. The first time that my wife—who is European—flew within the states, she almost broke out in applause on a plane full of Americans when it landed. When my mother-in-law visited last Fall from Europe, my wife informed her that Americans don’t applaud as if begging for an encore when the plan lands. The thought being that my wife could prevent her mother from experiencing any undo embarrassment, the type of which my wife had almost subjected herself to. Her mother was surprised that Americans don’t applaud upon landing. Her reply was, “Ungrateful Americans” to which my reply was a immense amusement and the acknowledgment that she could very well have a point.