My Dark Places

Weekend away, visiting the nation’s capital, or more strictly speaking, its suburbs.  Kanata, which from the passenger seat appears to be an accretion of business parks and corporate headquarters, was a  5 hour drive so plenty of time to be catching up on some reading. Managed to polish off two books on the way, both of which freaked me out. The first was The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson, a book about small town cop with a ‘sickness’ that is just starting to resurface.  Thompson makes a point of not steering clear of the violence perpetrated by his protagonist; but then what is told comes with such subtle turns of phrase, such intelligence that sometimes you have to  slow down and read a sentence again just to really believe what you think just happened, did. It also rides on such terrible insight into the killer; who gains the same enjoyment out of needling someone with clichés in conversation as he does actually knocking people around.  Dobb’s reactions to his own shocking violence, can seem wildly inappropriate to the situation, but perfectly fit to the mind of this sociopath. It’s these moments that show the power of the first person narration, to place the reader in an alien situation, a skin that’s not their own. Anyway, I devoured it.

The second book was one recommended to me by Mark Askwith, after I told him I was trying to crack the structure of short horror fiction. Twentieth Century Ghosts by Joe Hill is a book of contemporary short stories, throwing the gauntlet down to be a successor of literary/horror cross over fiction, in the vein of Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker and more recently Kelly Link. Much to learn here along the lines of how to screw a tight story together; how to bring out the gore; how to up the spook factor; what human dramas to tap to make something that has a pulse (hint—your own!). Self-consciously written in parts, grotesquely detailed in others, particularly in the lead story “Best New Horror”, the anthology seemed to take a genuine delight in all the different contradictory aspects of horror: its trashiness, its literary aspirations, and the freedom given when writing in that space in between. Made me wonder what his comic books Locke & Key are like too.

All of this is to say, I’ve got some new stuff I’ve been working on too. I’d heard about Thompson’s book for a while but picked it up because I’ve been experimenting with that mode for a comics short story. It’s called The Push and it’s being drawn right now by Eric Kim for an upcoming Popgun anthology.  It’s shorter, more suspense than horror, but should push you off in a dark place when it comes to its stop. More to post on it soon.  I’m liking it, but wow, wish I could say it went as far as The Killer Inside Me; that sucker goes to the end of the line.

Whazamo!

Department of Things I’ve been doing lately:

Not a lot to knock out here other than that.  This is a big deal! Weekly videos! Bloggers! Profiles! Polls! Contests?!? All under the Vepo label.  Now how about that?

Meanwhile, Freelance Blues remains on hiatus.  But the new pages are coming in and I have to tell you they are sweet.  Hopefully we’ll be opening shop up again in early June.  Things’ll get ugly. Guaranteed.

Always Be Closing

Late night head crazed again for us boyee. Nothing too cagey, just too many different things jumbled up in our brain-box for sleep. Or perhaps it’s taking a nap earlier in the evening. Don’t fuck with sleep– sleep always wins.
Where we at. Juiced up on Mad Men two nights in a row; staying up till 2 in the morning watching essentially the entire first season in two sittings. Also saw the Soulpepper production of Glengarry Glen Ross last night with my brother-in-law. Now that was fucking something. Just watching salesmen tear each other to ribbons, each one yo-yo-ing, sling-shoting back and forth between triumph and despair. That Mamet, he’s got, and can I finish, he’s got, just a second, he’s got a way with, just wait, he’s got a way with words. Curious, I’ve never seen the film all the way through, just about all I’ve seen of it is this:

Which isn’t in the play at all. From the dead tone of the film I also expected something a lot more grim; a lot more hopeless; but there’s something weird when you see this desperation played out live in front of you. It was actually hilarious, cathartic, even at it’s most biting and cruel. I can’t really understand how that works. Maybe its just relief not to be on the receiving end. Doing some sales myself these days for the new studio, but I’ll try not to take their lessons to much to heart. But besides the ABC’s, there’s one I’ll remember: “Never open your mouth till you know what the shot is.”

Return of the Repressed

I’m working on a couple pitches right now for comics anthologies. Since I’m generally interested in the gruesome these days, that’s where the pitches are leaning. Horror stories. So I been thinking about ‘em. Reading old DC Comics’ House of Mystery stories. Watching freaky flicks recommended by friends. Just generally getting in the mode you know? It’s been pretty natural coming up with freaky, ooky, grotesque concepts. That seems to be the easy part. Nailing down that ick factor. That sort of unusual angle on something familiar that makes you squirm. But what’s the motivation behind it all? What’s the trick that makes these things tick?

So I saw a couple of horror-ish flicks that made me think about it, how they each had a weird world that they are developing, but needed to come up with some reason behind it. The Machinist follows a freakishly skinny Christian Bale as a factory worker who hasn’t slept for a year, and is watching his life fall apart around him. He gets caught up in a Lynch-ian mindfuck mystery of paranoia, which is you know, great. Freaky dude, trying to figure out who’s fucking with him, that’s a fun ride for a narrative. But what’s the why motivating him?

Then I watched Bug. This was about a paranoid woman, living by herself in a crappy motel, hiding out from her ex-con husband who may or may not have been released on parole. But then this strange drifter comes into her life who may or may not be infested by bugs, of both the creepy crawly and the spook variety.

Both these flicks were, well, weird as hell, surreal at parts as their characters took em to increasingly gross places. But what held them together was that smash of real, that fragment of motivation in the back of each of their protagonist’s life that they were trying to find. A bit like Memento, how he’s trying to find that piece of himself. Each of the main characters, in this case the machinist, and Ashley Judd’s bug-ridden heroine, each of them were recovery from some real-life trauma in their past. Something human. Something cripplingly real in the way tragedy strikes the lives of any normal person. And for each of them, the resolution of this mystery is I think what made them work, or not.

This is what I think is part of the glue of a good horror story; that element of real repressed trauma from life, which then are extrapolated and metaphorically enacted by the fantasy elements of the story. But it always returns to that trauma. The return of the repressed. We need to know that awful things happen for a reason. Which makes horror movies sort of therapy, as the characters reach for the light at the end of the tunnel, the recognition, the reconciliation with their shattered pasts, even if means embracing their death.

How much more crippling would it be if they failed in their journey, perhaps which could be said to seen of a film like The Descent. Or perhaps if the horrible, the metaphorical forced upon them was without cause at all? I can’t tell which would be worse. The link to the real makes it something you can relate to. Hits close to home. Gets you in the guts, in the way that pure causality might not be able.

Anyway, see Bug and you tell me.

Shaun of the Fuzz

Up but not productive with more early morning awakening. One thing I’m thinking about– Edgar Wright is in town, making his Scott Pilgrim movie. Now that’s a job–getting up everyday to make a comic book movie. Saw the double feature of his films on the weekend, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. I hadn’t seen either of them since I saw them in the theatre. And they are both still really good. You can see how he’s pushing what he could do with film technique and having a really good time doing it. Whip pans, extra-long takes, music montages, playing with all of the film language to create something new. Thematically I get where he’s coming from as well, as each film feels so true. It’s that same kind of feelings that inspired Freelance Blues. Wright was at the screenings introducing each film, and he explained their autobiographical roots, as Hot Fuzz was actually shot in his hometown. What’s more apparently his first job was at the grocery store that is run by the evil Timothy Dalton in Hot Fuzz. From these small seeds huh?

Drink Deep!

Some gulp, some savor. Some chug, some sip. Could be an entire way of being, a way of approaching life. “Drink deep, or taste not the plasma spring!” as Seth Brundle would say. Or perhaps not. When it comes to drinks and to books I find I’m going more into the savor and sip. The pinch and save. Which is why I now seem to have incomplete, oh, over a half-dozen books. I just can’t finish them! I want to space it out! But then I get bored, or distracted flit about and pick up another, think something else will inspire me more, and pick it up, or feel I need to feed a different part of my brain. Or it’s just what happens to be lying around. So here’s a sample of what’s lying around:

The Angry Island by A.A. Gill, a collection of essays by a brilliant, particular, Scottish writer about England. Gill writes incredibly well, with long-big-dick swinging sentences of such keen observation and, I’m trying to find a word that means with a “wide ranging vocabulary” but I’m just not quite as skilled a wordsmith. My mom’s Scottish, My Dad’s English, so to read this guy’s words is like hearing them fighting in my head. Which actually has me LOL on more than one occasion, like, LOL like I haven’t since I’ve read Dave Sedaris for the first time. How many writers can you actually say that about? He nails it just by isolating what after a lifetime of observation he has found to be the central English characteristic: a stoically but barely controlled rage which is burbling beneath their politeness, their accents and their pint glasses. Now that I know about this guy I’m keeping an eye out for his byline in what, Vanity Fair, or The New Yorker or what have you. Very funny. Keen. Like a knife.

Writing for Comics By Peter David & Writing for Comics by Alan Moore. Well yes I’m now reading two how-to-books by two of my favourite comic writers. One’s a lot shorter than the other, and surprisingly, it’s Moore. Not much more to say about these, then hey, I should probably get back to them.

Nuclear Madness, by Helen Caldicott. After completing the Mining Hall of Fame, I thought it was safe to contemplate the other side of the equation. This was loaned to me by my friend Steve after I was passionately defending the nuclear industry one night, most likely at a bar, which is where I tend to get all uppity about these sorts of things. (“Hey I actually know something! Hey! Hey! Listen to me!”) Anyhow, it’s terrifying. And um. Well. If I finish it I’m sure I’ll be very informed about the issues.

Reading Comics by Douglas Wolk. Doug’s a friend of mine from back who I met through Liz when she was working at D&Q. His book is simply the best comics criticism there is. Again a very keen brain approaching the idea of comics without the problem of excess technical or theoretical language nor the excess of geek idolatry. Just a desire to find out what makes these things so engaging and to share that desire that engagement with others. These things are good! You will like them!

Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier. Given to me by Slates. I had no idea how good this book was before I picked it up. Collier is a short-story writer who used to write scripts for the original run of the Twillight Zone. What this man can do in 6 pages is incredible. And the book just does not run out of stories, each one an incredible concept, gleefully executed. There’s lots in here, enough to dive into one before going to bed and marvel.

The Man in High Castle by Philip K. Dick. Much much more to say about this one.
I should probably finish some of these so I can get to it…

What I’m Working On Now…

For real though. Secret Project #2.

You Just Hit the Jackpot

Just finishing up Essential Spider-Man volume 2, where Steve Ditko busts out on some classics: introducing Harry and Norman Osborn, sending Spider-Man to college; getting him to lift off that crazy hunk of machinery to get the medicine to Aunt May. It then passes the torch onto John Romita who delivers more weirdo milestones, like the first appearance of Mary Jane. Stan Lee’s take on her swinging sixties hipster dialogue  is stunningly bad; just awful. I could give more of a refined critique everything going on in it, but I’m happy just to let these stories wash over me– it’s my bedtime reading as much as anything. Besides, others have nailed it much better than I, like this kickass interview with Jason Lutes I just saw at Bookslut:

“To Stan Lee’s credit, at his time, they were trying to make a buck but there was a crazy inventive energy going on there. He would pace down the office and he and Jack Kirby would just come up with ideas. And he’d say, “Draw this guy who looks like a spider.” And Steve Ditko would make a drawing and he’d just dictate what the dialogue was. There’s a real wonderful, there’s a real kind of art going on there both when I read the accounts of it and when I see the finished product. Sure, it’s terribly written in the technical sense, but the kind of energy and creativity there is great. Ninety percent of what they turned out was dreck, but in the midst of all that you can’t help but hit some great inspiring high notes.”

Stealing From The ThieVes

Stolen, with due credit from Katarina’s wicked film blog.

Now, I know it’s late, but it’s time to make something new.

Go make something new. Even if you’ve gotta, you know. Hotwire something to get it started.

Shall We Begin?

Back in black, hit the sack but it’s been so long I don’t remember how to write anymore. I’ve been avoiding freelancing on the belief that it would give me a chance to get caught up on my creative writing. But… that’s not a road that leads to any cold hard cash.  “Ooh I’m Dying Here!”  Also wondering if I need to get back into it just so I can remember how to put one word after another. It’s easy to allow them to tumble out online or in a journal or whatever, less easy when you know they are going to print.

Hit the old insomnia last night from a combination of an overheated apartment and staying up watching Funny Games. It’s essentially an art-film version of torture porn, about a couple vacationing at a summer home who are set upon by sadistic strangers who basically toy with them for the whole night on a whim. It was horrifying… but I think to a point.  The movie is a complicit exercise in cruelty, as the director sets his characters up for the most unimaginable falls through a skillful negating of the conventions of thrillers. All the chances for escape that you hope for an on-screen character are presented to you, and then snatched away, sometimes accompanied by a direct to camera wink by the sadists on-screen.

In it’s own way it’s as much of an anti-narrative sort of film as Monty Python’s Holy Grail; showing the conventions that you expect in a narrative, in on-screen expectations, and then casting them aside. It’s amazing how much faith we put in narrative in the movies; we want people we’ve been ‘invested’ in, the nice couple etc;, to have that last minute timed cellphone call, that skillfully flagged down automobile, that helpful neighbour who arrives just in the nick, but in a story, it only happens because the storyteller wants it to.  Funny Games shows what happens when they decide NOT to give you that relief, and pushes it as far as it can go.

But uh, that doesn’ t mean it’s good. It’s horrifying and intellectual, and forces upon the viewer a level of detachment (ie, realizing these are not people, but a constructed theatre of cruelty). Shit, that’s why I hit the fast-forward button. I don’t know what it is about these French existentialists. I always get suckered in, and I always regret it.  Usually it’s because of the promise of some euro soft-porn but they always mess that up with a splatter of violence. I mean, what the Hell?

While this seemed to service some point in a meta-fictional sort of way, but it’s not one I’d like to revisit. I think I prefer my happenstance from the school of Catholic causality, ie; from the works of Flannery O’Connor. In her short stories,while they usually hit a grim climax, it is always to drive a moral edge; there is something to them that is hard and instructional. There is a sense of ‘there’ there; that in her grim ends, it is not just an exercise in cruelty, but in some moral or philosophical demonstration of the ways of the world.

In the meantime, I’ll try to avoid those French thrillers. Next time I want something that subverts genre and narrative, make mine Hot Fuzz.