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What I Learned From A New Hope

What I Learned From A New Hope

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Star Wars A New Hope-smallI was seven years old when the first Star Wars movie, A New Hope, hit the theaters. That was a magical summer in my childhood, a time when the future was gigantic bubble of fun and optimism that seemed to be moving closer to me day by day.

Years later, when I started penning my own stories, I flailed about like most fledgling writers, not really sure what I was doing. Eventually, I got my act together, but it wasn’t until later as I looked back on what worked, and what didn’t, that I started to realize that the most important lessons about storytelling were the ones I unwittingly learned at the movie theater, watching heroes battle an evil empire in a galaxy far, far away.

Motivation

It’s vital for characters to have deep and compelling motivations, so when I think of this topic, I always go back to the basics. Luke, our main hero, begins the movie yearning to get off his desert homeworld and find adventure among the stars. That seems simple, and it is, but it’s also a motivation that so many people share. Who among us didn’t yearn for personal freedom when we were growing up, the chance to get away from our ordinary lives and do something exciting?

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An Addendum on Tie-In Fiction

An Addendum on Tie-In Fiction

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I wanted to add a couple comments to John’s brief post about tie-ins. Much of the commentary revolved around Alan Dean Foster. He’s a favorite of mine and influenced my writing and career. He and King were the only two authors I took with me to college, and those battered collections are still on my shelves. I’ve corresponded with him over the years, but the only personal contact was when my wife and I shared a pizza with him at Archon (Stephanie did most of the talking, I was hopelessly tongue-tied at sharing pizza grease with a guy who wrote so many books I read to bits). I though I’d expand a little on him as well.

First, to get the curmudgeonly “back in my day” village elder/idiot stuff out of the way . . .

alien-alan-dean-fosterSome of the younger readers of Black Gate might have a hard time imagining how starved we were back then for more of our favorite SF movie worlds. These days, well before a major movie or game comes out, there is almost always a web presence filled with “Would You Like To Know More?” media goodness. But even for a big 20th Century Fox production like Alien, we didn’t have anything beyond a few brief TV spots, reviews, and the same press packet that went to every major paper in the country. If we wanted to know more about the movie’s world, rather than how Sigourney Weaver got along with the cat on-set, all we had to cling to were the tie-ins.

In this, we were very lucky to have a guy like Foster writing the tie-in. In most of his books, he filled in plot holes he spotted with a little business somewhere or other (like why putting the crew of the Nostromo in a single, relatively safe location and turning the rest of the ship into a vacuum wasn’t an option). He also liked to add some flavor to the movie universe, the Alien tie-in memorably begins with a description of the business of recording dreams for entertainment. Since he was usually working from a script, his tie-in also served as a form of “additional scenes” for those days before the advent of DVDs with bonus features. It was from Foster that I first experienced Ripley finding Dallas in the alien’s cocoon, with Brett turning into a facehugger egg next to him. It’s also the only place, even today I believe, where you can get the full scene of the crew getting lucky for a change and Parker almost blasting the damn thing out of an airlock. No need to tell you who sabotages that, I’m sure.

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Weird of Oz: Hallowe’en Postmortem

Weird of Oz: Hallowe’en Postmortem

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more ghost storiesHallowe’en always passes, for me, with a waft of melancholy, like a chilly breeze blowing down the last few clinging maple leaves.

Leaf 1: R.I.P. Hallowe’en 2013

This October was a busy one for me. Five days out of seven, I was hosting a ghost tour, accompanied on many of those nights by a bona fide “paranormal investigator.” The thirty or so guests we conducted into the shadows each night had quite a time and I must admit — note that I characterize myself as an “open-minded skeptic” — I may have had a paranormal experience or two myself. After having been “Haunted Master of Ceremonies” for these tours the past three years, dozens of evenings, that was a first. Maybe I’ll write about it sometime, somewhere. I have to process it a bit more first, try to debunk it and exhaust alternate explanations.

You might say I have a little Scully and a little Mulder in my head. Not that I have split personality disorder or anything, but when something happens, these two sides of my mind — the rational, scientific side and the childlike-wonder side who “wants to believe” — begin laying out their competing narratives to explain the event. Which side wins out? Both. Neither. This world is a mysterious place and no one’s gotten to the bottom of it. I certainly won’t.

I’ll just keep celebrating the mystery and fastidiously trying to avoid ever getting bored by it. Boredom is the end; it’s death; it’s deciding you don’t really care what’s going on. Whenever that starts to happen (and it does, friends, as you creep along toward gray hair and creaky bones), I retreat to the proverbial “black gate,” to the wellsprings of fantasy, to the towers of science fiction, to the tombstones of horror. Visiting imagined worlds reminds the disenchanted traveler how endlessly bizarre and fascinating and surprising is this world in which we live.

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Five Vampires

Five Vampires

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janosI suspect it’s not uncommon for a person to look back on the era of his earliest days and deem it the “perfect” time to have been a child; I certainly do. I regularly tell my own children how grateful I am to have been a kid in the 1970s. I say this not out of any particular love of plaid, shag carpet, or disco, but for two rather different reasons.

Firstly, ’70s were obsessed with the weird, the occult, and the apocalyptic. From The Exorcist to Soylent Green to In Search Of, there was clearly something in the air during that decade, something that had a profound effect on my youthful psyche and planted the seeds for many of my lifelong preoccupations. Secondly, the 1970s (at least as I experienced them in suburban Baltimore) was a time when contemporary television programming couldn’t keep up with demand, resulting in lots of reruns of older shows and movies being shown to plug holes in the schedule. The happy consequence of this for me was that I got to see tons of stuff made before I was born – including lots of great horror movies.

My imagination was thus founded on an unholy combination of old school horror films and Me Generation shlock – and I mean that in the best possible way. As a bookish kid with macabre sensibilities (owing perhaps to my being born two days before Halloween), the 1970s provided me with the raw materials needed to fuel my dreams and nightmares for many years to come. This is nowhere more apparent than when I look back on the various vampires I first encountered in those heady days.

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In the Mouth of Madness on Blu-ray and Other Reasons to Go Stark Raving Mad

In the Mouth of Madness on Blu-ray and Other Reasons to Go Stark Raving Mad

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In the Mouth of Madness Blu-ray cover“Believe me, the sooner we’re off the planet, the better.”
— John Trent (Sam Neill) in In the Mouth of Madness

John Carpenter is a master filmmaker, one of the most influential genre directors to emerge from the cloudburst of creativity of the 1970s. You’d be hard-pressed to find a science-fiction or horror fan who doesn’t have one of Carpenter’s movies in his or her list of Top [Fill in Number] Films list.

But Carpenter’s popularity has created the illusion that his films achieved greater financial success when first released than they did. The unfortunate truth is Carpenter has had only a few outright hits: Escape from New York, Assault on Precinct 13, and Halloween are the most notable. Halloween throws off the curve: Carpenter’s third feature, it grossed $65 million during its initial domestic run against a budget of $325,000 — and it continues to generate revenue to this day. Halloween also influenced genre movies immediately, igniting the massive “slasher boom.”

But many of Carpenter’s finest and most beloved movies did middling-to-flop business when they premiered. The Thing, rightfully considered his masterpiece, was a financial disappointment for Universal in the summer of 1982. Big Trouble in Little China was an outright box-office disaster. And through the ‘90s, Carpenter could not catch a break with anything. After 2001’s Ghosts of Mars did a spectacular belly flop (a worldwide — yes, worldwide — gross of $14 million against a $28 million budget), Carpenter went into semi-retirement to play video games and watch the Lakers. He has only returned to directing for two episodes of Masters of Horror on Showtime and the barely released and very uninteresting feature The Ward in 2011.

However, the march of appreciation for his movies in their post-premiere years continues. I believe we can now safely deposit one of his 1990s movies in the vault of John Carpenter Classics: In the Mouth of Madness, which debuted on Blu-ray last week. [Update 2018: Now we have a special edition Blu-ray from Shout! Factory.] Carpenter fans have often dubbed it the director’s last great movie, and although I hope that’s incorrect and he still has a surprise waiting for us, the title seems apt. I certainly haven’t seen anything Carpenter has done since that remotely approaches it in quality.

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Adventure On Film: Planet Of the Apes

Adventure On Film: Planet Of the Apes

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original.0I missed nearly all the seminal pop culture of my youth. When in eighth grade Andy H. asked me which I liked better, AC/DC or Pink Floyd, I honestly couldn’t answer the question. I was also much too tongue-tied to ask Andy if he’d ever heard of Doctor Who, which I’m quite sure he had not.

Anyway. One of the major events that I missed was Planet Of the Apes. True, Planet is from 1968, and I was only born in ’67, but even so, kids at my school through at least my sixth grade year sported Planet Of the Apes lunch boxes, thermoses, backpacks, and t-shirts. Planet Of the Apes (whatever it was) was cool.

My hipper-than-I friends informed me that Planet regularly played in re-runs on TV, and of course there was the short-lived spin-off series made specifically for the telly (1974). How was it that I had missed all this? Simple: I was building dams in the tributary streams of the Olentangy River, using whatever was handy: stone knives and bearskins, that sort of thing. I knew better than to explain.

Now that I’m older than Methuselah, or at least rapidly catching him up, I figured it’s time to see precisely what I’d missed.

And you know what?

If it weren’t for the execrable presence of Charlton Heston, it’s not half bad.

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Excuse me, Are you Using that Plot Device?

Excuse me, Are you Using that Plot Device?

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Crossing LinesThe other day, I was watching a new Canadian show that I’m not sure is even airing in the US called Crossing Lines. It stars, among others, William Fichtner and Donald Sutherland, and promises to be a kind of Agents of Shield without the Marvel universe – a group of police officers from different countries come together to solve international crimes as an arm of the International Court. So far so good, except for . . .

In the second episode, a tender moment occurs where two characters bond over similar family issues. They look warmly into each other’s eyes and promise to talk about it later. I call out “Dead man!” And of course I was right. One of them was dead by the end of episode, leaving the other feeling bereft. And leaving me rolling my eyes.

While “Dead man!” can be fun to play (as can “She did it!”) it’s a sad commentary on the state of narrative that these games can be played so often.

Okay, I hear you say, so it’s a plot device, and maybe it’s a bit overused (where “a bit” means I’m understating). Is that really so wrong? Yes, yes it is. The problem with this kind of thing is that because we recognize it, we feel manipulated, and when your viewers, or your readers, feel manipulated, you’ve lost them. You’ve reminded them that not only did you make this bit up, you’ve made all of it up. When your readers start considering the structure of the narrative, they’ve taken a step back from it. And bang, as they say, goes your willing suspension of disbelief.

We could argue that this kind of manipulation doesn’t happen as much in novels or short stories as it does in television and movies. Maybe not. Novels, for one, have time enough to make readers genuinely care about a character before she gets killed. And plot devices are actually useful things; both as readers and writers we love them, except when we hate them.

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When Niels Bohr Met St. Thomas Aquinas: Prince of Darkness on Blu-ray

When Niels Bohr Met St. Thomas Aquinas: Prince of Darkness on Blu-ray

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Prince of Darkness Blu-ray coverPrince of Darkness (1987)
Written and Directed by John Carpenter. Starring Donald Pleasance, Victor Wong, Jameson Parker, Lisa Blount, Dennis Dun, Alice Cooper.

“Are you asking me about the backstory of the movie? I have no idea.”
— John Carpenter on the commentary track for Prince of Darkness

This week, with the release of In the Mouth of Madness, all of director John Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy” movies will have reached Blu-ray. The Thing came out a few years ago (from Universal Home Video, doing a better-than-average job), and at the end of September, right in time for the crisp joys of October, Shout! Factory released 1987’s Prince of Darkness — one of Carpenter’s most underrated films.

(His most underrated film? In the Mouth of Madness. More on that in a week or so.)

The apocalypse trilogy films have no connection to each other aside from Carpenter’s interest in events that could bring about the end of the world, a hangover from his childhood fascination with the wild n’ wooly contents of the biblical Book of Revelation. The Thing threatened the globe with a shape-changing alien nasty capable a rapidly assimilating the human race. In the Mouth of Madness brought the Great Old Ones back in full Lovecraftian form, but also undermined all of reality through the power of fiction.

In Prince of Darkness, it would seem that Old Scratch himself is the force preparing to annihilate humanity. After all, what else to make of the title? But Prince of Darkness ends up confronting Earth with a destroyer as much imbedded in science fiction as The Thing. Carpenter combines Catholic-themed religious horror with, of all things, quantum mechanics. The resulting film frequently makes little sense — even John Carpenter acknowledges that — but when viewed as a deep well of bizarre ideas and unnerving atmosphere, it stands as one of the most creative horror films of its decade. I now rank it among Carpenter’s best movies, although it took me a few years to grasp its achievements and shrug off its faults.

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Oz Revives The Screaming Skull!

Oz Revives The Screaming Skull!

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screaming skull coverA few years back, I had the pleasure of reviewing B-movies on a page hosted by Nathan Shumate’s Cold Fusion Video Reviews. Yes, I was part of his cabal of Cold Fusioneers — not to be confused with early scientific researchers into the elusive possibilities of cold fusion. Until a “catastrophic server failure” wiped out the main site and all the ancillary sites it hosted, Cold Fusion had been one of the longest-running review sites on the Internet.

Nathan decided to retire Cold Fusion and pursue other popular web projects he has launched, but I still have my reviews safely stored on a hard drive, the only place they currently exist…until now! As part of my October “five weeks of frights,” I’ve dug up my review of The Screaming Skull (1958), a fun film to watch this time of year. Some Black Gate readers will also take note that this film allegedly was inspired by a short story of the same name by classic weird-story author F. Marion Crawford.

[And if you wonder “What’s up with this David guy?” with whom I co-hosted the review, stick around to see my explanation at the end of the post.]

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DAVID: This is a Manning’s Manly Movies review that reaches its climax in shocking horror. Its impact is so terrifying that it may have an unforeseen effect. It may KILL you! Therefore the reviewers feel it necessary to provide free flowers to anyone who dies of fright while reading THIS REVIEW!

OZ:  What are you doing?

DAVID:  A-ha! About time you pulled your head up out of your books long enough to review another movie with me, professor!

OZ:  What were you doing?

DAVID:  I’m borrowing an idea from the producers of this week’s movie. When The Screaming Skull was screened in theaters back in the fifties, the movie opened with a voice-over narrator as a casket lid slowly opened, revealing a burial contract inside…

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Nine Long-Lost Doctor Who Episodes Found in Nigeria

Nine Long-Lost Doctor Who Episodes Found in Nigeria

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The Web of Fear DVD-smallThanks to the BBC’s notorious policy of erasing and re-using video tape, there are still 106 missing classic Doctor Who episodes — and the only reason that number isn’t a lot larger is due to the tireless efforts of fans who have, over decades, tracked down individual episodes in the hands of private collectors or sitting on dusty shelves in overseas television stations.

If you’re a Doctor Who fan, you’re aware of the rumors that have been flying around for months about a new trove of lost episodes found in Ecuador, or Africa, or some such place. If you’re a true fan, you’re probably aware that rumors like this tend to pop up from time to time and most of them aren’t true.

Well, it appears there was more than a grain of truth to this one. On Thursday, the BBC released nine previously lost episodes found in a television station in the Nigerian city of Jos — reducing the number of lost episodes to 97.

The BBC says it believes this is “the largest haul of missing episodes recovered in the last three decades.” It includes the complete six-part serial The Enemy of the World from 1967-68 (only episode 3 had previously been found), and most of the six-part The Web of Fear from 1968 (episode 3 is still missing, and episode 1 was already in archive). Both black-and-white serials star Patrick Troughton, the second Doctor.

The BBC has announced that newly-remastered versions of both serials will be released on DVD, with The Enemy of the World coming on November 25, 2013, followed by The Web of Fear on February 24, 2014. See the provisional artwork and details for both here. Both have also been released online as iTunes exclusives for $9.99 each — see the trailers at EnGadget.