Some random thoughts on Dune's latest film incarnation ...

Director Denis Villeneuve is a visionary — in a literal sense. When I saw the film's rendition of an Ornithopter, I thought, “Yes! That’s exactly what it should look like!” Same reaction to the Worm. This is the way it’s done. 

Frank Herbert’s SF novel, “Dune,” has an incredibly dense backstory. How can you explain it all in a film adaptation — without choking your movie with exposition? (c.f. David Lynch) Denis Villeneuve & Co. solved the problem by leaving out a ton of the exposition. There’s no explanation of the Mentats, the Butlerian Jihad. He doesn’t shoehorn in a scene where the Navigators explain how they fold space. He just drops you into the story, first from the oppressed Chani’s POV, then from Paul’s POV. He trusts you’re smart enough to figure it out as you go along.

In both David Lynch's adaptation and the TV miniseries

The screenwriters stick very close to the novel. They distill it, but change very little. The changes they make are smart and give the story more power. 

A few changes airbursh some of the novels un-PC blemishes. So, the “jihad”: becomes a”holy war.” “Mood is a thing for cattle and women,” gets clipped, too. 

Unlike the film or TV series adaptations, this film version doesn’t down play the precognitive horror of the holy war Paul’s going to ignite. In Frank Herbert’s world, Messiahs and their cults of personality get a lot of people killed. The other adaptations totally missed that. And pretty much sold Paul as Mr. White Savior Jesus from Space.

Pau’s trippy flash-forwards also keep the story moving. It’s also clear they’re glimpses of possible futures. (The other adaptations missed that, too.)

Drive-by Review: “James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction.”

James Cameron has earned some grudging respect in the SF community. The man knows his SF. More importantly, he knows from whom to steal. Just ask Harlan Ellison, Ursula K. LeGuinn, Roger Dean … ah, but I digress.

Cameron has this online series. It’s packaged under the humble title, “James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction.” Yeah. Slick as greased snot, but worth watching. 

And I get to the second ep. AKA … “Season 1, Ep. 2 Space.”

About 23 minutes in, James Cameron (in ass-kissing, I-defer-to-the-prophet’s-ego mode) is interviewing George Lucas …

James Cameron: You single-handedly revolutionized science-fiction and pop culture with “Star Wars” in 1977. ‘Cause it had been three decades of downer stuff — dystopian stuff, apocalyptic stuff — and science fiction was making less and less and less money every year, and all of a sudden, you came along with another vision. One of wonder and hope and empowerment — and boom!

George Lucas: “Star Wars” is a space opera. It’s not science fiction. 

OK, Lucas is (rightfully) self-deprecating and not claiming to have revolutionized a genre he has no claim too. Cameron on the other hand …

Grrrr. Argghh.

[Insert scene of projectile-vomiting here.]

OK, right. Let me get this straight …

Cameron, after offering a suck-up, tribute to George Lucas (the living filmgod!), dismissively pisses on “A Clockwork Orange,” “La Jetée,” “Quartermass and the Pit,” “Colossus: The Forbin Project,” "La Planète Sauvage,” “The Planet of the Apes,” “Dark Star,” "The Stepford Wives,” "Westworld,” “Silent Running,” “Zardoz,” “Soylent Green,” “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (both versions), and (hardy-har) “THX-1138” …? Why? Because it’s “… downer stuff, dystopian stuff, apocalyptic stuff.” And even worse? Bad box office numbers! Said SF “was making less and less and less money every year!” 

[Insert scene of projectile-vomiting here.]

On top of his vicious disrespect to the dangerous visionaries of the 1960s and ’70s, Cameron is a hypocrite to boot. “The Terminator” was no shot of “wonder, hope and empowerment.” It was a grim, punk-rock, slap in the face. Downer stuff, dystopian stuff, apocalyptic stuff, one might say. The kind of thing Harlan Ellison, might write, you know? “Aliens” was just as alienating. My point …

[Insert scene of projectile-vomiting here.]

… just a visceral, Pavlovian revulsion to Cameron’s lack of class. I might mention Harlan Ellison’s “Luke Skywalker is a nerd and Darth Vader sucks runny eggs,” but that would seem classless on my part. Lucas never lied about his sources. Or pissed on other artists, either.

A post-modernist post-mortem

Sooner or later it had to happen. Post-modernist art is dead. Long live post-post modernism! Do I have a handle on the new flavor? I do not. I’m still catching up with the post-mods. Let’s start with my dim understanding of that …

Post-modernist art was all about self-conscious, thumb-in-your-eye artifice. Illusion of life? F*ck that shit. “Look, Ma! This is a painting! It ain’t real!” Post-mod novels, plays, and performance art were equally unreal. (Post-mod architecture was just really ugly.) 

 

Post-mod artists suspended the suspension of disbelief from the gallows, and replaced the author’s “voice” with a mechanical larynx box. But the voice was never there to begin with! Like God and Santa, the “author” doesn’t exist, so how could they have a voice? The “author” is a fiction! (Especially fiction authors!) Their “voice” is a clever ventriloquist’s trick. What you’re really hearing is the System talking. It’s the voice of capitalist mind control bending you to its all-consuming will! Oh you think that’s a painting of a pretty flower? Put on these post-mod sunglasses, pal.

 

CONSUME! OBEY! REPRODUCE!

 

Yeah. Now you get the picture.

 

A little post-mod trick called “deconstruction” exposed the hidden manipulation lurking behind the sappy bourgeoisie commodity of art and literature. “That story you just read. It would’ve been really sad if it actually happened, huh?” Shit like that. This gimmick was invented by cranky French art critics who pissed in every punchbowl they could find. Artists of all descriptions drank the Kool-Aid.

 

Novelists realized they had nothing to say. And said it in 900 pages.

 

Visual artists with nothing to paint, sculpt or draw captured the screaming emptiness across a range of mediums.

 

Hey, the post-mods weren’t all bad. (Thomas Pynchon and William Gibson flipped the one-sided Mobius strip of media and power. They took you into a funhouse mirror maze. But they still had stories to tell.)

 

Ah, but the bulk of post-mod art was sterile and boring. It was a one-trick pony. A dead end. A series of jokes with the same stale punchline that was old in Shakespeare’s time. “This play isn’t real.” How clever. What a clever artist you are.

 

That illusion-killing cleverness was the point—and the post-mod artist’s payoff. You chumps are trapped in a false narrative? The clever arteest will spoil the show and ruin the ride. That sounds mean, but it’s a victimless crime, people. It’s like attacking the audioanimatronic bears at Walt Disney World’s Country Bear Jamboree with a sledgehammer. The artist smashes them to bolts and bits. So what? They don’t feel anything. These “bears” are just stupid machines. They’re not even alive—so can tell your kid to stop crying, OK? And stop looking at me like that! F*ck you—you assholes should thank me! I just set you free from this corporate bullshit. Now go home and do your taxes.

 

This post-mod, bait-and-switch buzzkill got very old, very quickly—about the time it popped out of the womb, in fact. Like any intellectual fad, it wasn’t defeated by an opposing philosophy. The post-mod artists and critics just got old and started to die.

 

Now what?

 

Sigh.

Now ...

 

Like some shiny, polite beast, post-post modernist art struts to Bethlehem to be born. And there’s music, too! God … where's that repetitive beat coming from? Augggh … it’s a retro drum machine. And now the beast is singing. That warbling voice … Oh Christ. It’s autotuned!

Book Review: John Shirley's "Stormland"

A Hard Rain is Going to Fall

 We have met the future and it sucks. The forecast is brutal in John Shirley's "Stormland."

The hellish opening pages of John Shirley’s Stormland remind me of Escape from New York. Bang! Shirley’s protagonist is on the move to a very shitty place. How shitty? As shitty as it gets. Aye. It’s a sea voyage, matey. A murky, slime-streaked trip! A bad trip, obviously. Shirley's magical misery trip begins with no draggy exposition, just a few clues and offhand comments. But the character's destination is clear …

 

Welcome to hell. Contrary to popular opinion, it isn’t hot. It’s wet and soggy.

 

Stormland is set in an unspecified future. Maybe 25 years from now, maybe 75. The uninformed reader might think it's a scary "sci-fi" book about climate change. The novel's protagonist (Darryl Webb, an ex-US Marshal, turned bounty hunter) thinks he’s going to nab a shitty, mass-murdering fugitive hiding out in a shitty stretch of the South Carolina coast called “Stormland.” Webb arrives at his shitty destination in a shitty underwater vehicle called an “amphisub.” (By this point, attentive readers will have noticed the prevailing "shit" theme.) As Pvt. “Pyle” observed in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, “I am in a world of shit.” Webb knows exactly how the man feels. But changing this shitty world isn’t even an option for him. Abandon all hope ye who enter. Webb did, a long time ago. Along with everyone else who had a grain of sense.

 

That’s what you find out. In just the first few pages.

 

Shirley doesn’t lecture or preach in the pages that follow. He grabs you by the throat and drags you into his drowned hellworld. Webb and the other inhabitants of that world don’t find it particularly hellish. It’s just their world. Climate change isn’t an issue anymore, at least to them. The climate done changed a long time ago. 

 

By way of analogy, consider the Fertile Crescent. Thanks to the assaults of early human civilization, the Fertile Crescent. Isn’t. It’s a fucking desert now. The people who live there aren’t surprised. Oh fuck! Look at all this fucking sand! Nah. They just live with it. The inhabitants of Shirley’s soggy hell feel the same way about the fucking rain. And that rain has clearly washed away much of their humanity.

 

In clever synechdoche, Shirley tosses you the bones of brutal character details on the first leg of Webb's voyage. A callous remark about a dead brother. A captain who puts a gun in Webb’s face when the bounty hunter sneers at calling his shitty boat a “vessel.” Details like that. These people are damaged and hard. Survival mode is their default setting. It’s not even a choice anymore. 

 

You figure that out after a few more pages.

 

In a nasty bit of brilliance, Shirley then continues his ripping yarn as if he were writing for the people of this lousy time. Yeah, he’s not writing for you. This isn’t science fiction, baby. This is now. Shirley's readers are in 2117 (or whatever), and the drowned world is just background — and in the present tense. These future readers are here for the story — a manhunt, a police procedural, a detective story, whatever. Or so it seems …

 

Whatever you call it, Webb’s bounty hunter’s hunt goes on. Unlike John Carpenter’s Snake Plissken or William Gibson’s Case, Webb isn’t motivated by time-released toxin sacks in his bloodstream that will kill him if he doesn’t complete his task on time. Nobody’s forcing him to do the job. Webb needs the money.

 

Webb’s financially motivated manhunt unfolds with vivid description — always grounded in the character’s phenomenological experience of physical reality. Shirley interweaves this sense data with Webb’s stream of consciousness and expositional info bursts. All these threads come together effortlessly. (At least you might think so if “writer” isn’t your job description. Having fucked up a few verbal tapestries in my time, I can assure you it’s not.)

 

Webb’s brutal quest slogs on to its ineluctable end. Shirley being Shirley, he flips the script several times along the way. I’d be a right bastard to spoil the surprise, so I won’t. But here’s a hint …

 

Heartlessness is a defense mechanism. Hope is the cruelest gift of Pandora’s Box. Ernest Cline danced around the point in "Ready Player One," but let’s speak the plain truth. In a crapsack world, VR is a better rush than heroin. Reality sucks. But it’s the only dance there is. Human beings can adapt to anything! Don’t smile, idiot. That sucks, too.

 

Clear as mud, I know. But it all makes sense if you read Stormland. I highly recommend it.

 

Shirley's at the top of his game in this novel. Stormland is up there with his Eclipse trilogy and City Come a Walking. Simply put, Shirley’s story is great. The words that deliver his story are, too. But unforgiving. Shirley’s prose is as hard as a Dim Mak death punch. How shall I put it? 

 

Shirley can hit with both hands and move around and he will kill you if you are not awfully careful... Mr. Shirley, boy, you are good. 

 

Actually, to be honest, that’s what Hemingway said about Nelson Algren’s The Man with the Golden Arm. I figure it also applies to Stormland, and I couldn't find a better way to put it. And he’s Hemingway, right? I can’t improve on Hemingway, right? Anyway, he’s dead, so who cares? And where was I?

 

Book review. Right.

 

OK. Uh. Bruce Sterling covered some of the same soggy ground in Heavy Weather. Shirley’s novel is more like Heavy Weather, ten or twenty years later. As if the hard rain kept falling. And then got harder. J.G. Ballard took a similar plunge in The Drowned World — a novel he wrote for the money and ultimately disowned. A half-assed thought experiment, at best. But Shirley doesn’t play that. 

 

Stormland isn’t a glass bead game. In plain English, it’s not an intellectual exercise. Or a Waterworld variation of Mad Max for that matter. There’s no winking, no hint of camp. 

 

Shirley is dead serious. His characters are flesh and blood — and that’s the real strength of his writing. Abandon all hope. That’s what his characters do. Shirley gets you under their skin. He makes you feel their hopeless reality.

 

And then you know how it feels.

"I Care a Lot" • Suggested Rewrite

INT, ADULT CARE FACILITY – DAY

Jennifer Peterson’s first glimpse of her new “home from home.” A white hell, straight out of “THX-1138.” Over-medicated elderly guests wander around in a daze. They’re not even that elderly.

Marla's right behind her. Happy. She's led a new sheep to the slaughter.

Marla: Could I have your cell phone? I’ll call my number so you can add me to your contacts. It’s just easier.

Marla reaches out her hand. The woman known as “Jennifer Peterson” hesitates. She knows it’s a trick. She blinks.

Flashback to a memory from Jennifer’s point-of-view.

Black and white footage. 

INT, SOVIET MENTAL HOSPITAL (Circa 1980)

Objective POV. Jennifer, younger, no lines on her face, but clearly the same person.

All hell is breaking loose. Alarms are ringing, lights flashing. Jennifer has broken into the nurse’s station. She’s desperately punching the numbers of an ugly phone.

A brutal orderly runs up and shouts at her.

Orderly: Nyet telefona!”

The Orderly smashes her hand with a truncheon. The young woman winces her eyes but doesn’t cry out.

Back to the present. Color footage.

INT, ADULT CARE FACILITY - DAY

“Jennifer” opens her eyes.

Like a simpleton who just fell of the turnip truck, Jennifer hands her cellphone to Marla. But speaks before Marla can pocket it.

Jennifer: Just keep it, Marla. Please. I won’t be needing it, hmm? This wonderful place has everything I need.

Jennifer smiles like a happy dimwit.

Marla looks at her suspiciously.

Jennifer’s point of view. Montage, indication that time is going by. She looks at various nurse’s and orderlies in the care facility. She also studies the patients, but mostly keeps an eye on the professionals. Their patterns of movement, attitudes, personalities. She’s studying the chessboard.

INT, MARLA’S OFFICE - DAY

Marla and her flunky study security footage of Jennifer.

Flunky: She seems to be taking it well.

Marla: (Not buying it.) Seems to be.

INT, ADULT CARE FACILITY

Back to Jennifer’s point of view.

The montage continues. More time passes. Jennifer narrows her focus to a caregiver named LuAnn. Sees little acts of warmth, empathy, compassion. Studies her for awhile.

Then, one day, in a blind spot away from the cameras, she palms LuAnn a piece of paper with a number on it.

Jennifer: I need your help, LuAnn.

LuAnn: I’m happy to help …

Jennifer: (whispering) Call this number. 

LuAnn doesn’t take the paper. Afraid of losing her job.

Jennifer: Please, LuAnn. It’s the right thing to do. It’s the human thing to do.

Jennifer’s big, sincere eyes appeal to LuAnn’s humanity. She melts. And takes the piece of paper.

After this set-up, Marla and Jennifer would have a cat-and-mouse game over the course of the movie. The dynamic would resemble "The Prisoner," especially the "Hammer into Anvil" episode. Jennifer would slowly regain control and assert her agency in a battle of wills with Marla. (And Jennifer — who's the real mob boss -- would bring an amazing skill set to the battle. Compared to the Soviet Union, the f**king nursing home is no big deal.) Jennifer's scenes would be intercut with scenes of Marla starting to panic, and Roman and the Russian mob giving her reason to panic. (These could be relatively unchanged, though the Russian mobsters should be more competent.) But they'd be acting under Jennifer's smuggled-out orders, not trying to rescue granny. And Jennifer would have agency. The point of the story would be that Marla bit off more than she could chew.

Review: The Stand (2020 CBS miniseries)

Drive-by Review: The Stand. It doesn’t. Nope, the new CBS adaptation is as limp as a wet noodle. Doesn’t, er, stand up to the original 1994 miniseries. That adaptation had its share of cheese. But it also had an electric sense of dramatic pacing. Its opening scene—where the camera hovers over the instant casualties in a covert CBRN research facility to the tune of Blue Öyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper”—how could you possibly top that? The answer is, you can’t. That scene burned in my brain—along with many others. I could multiply examples—to the point I could sit down and whip out a rough storyboard if so asked. The bad brains behind this latest adaptation didn’t want to go over old ground. They didn’t want to draw from Marvel’s outstanding comic book adaptation. They didn’t even want to give undead life to Rospo Pallenberg’s insanely great screenplay adaptation for a tragically unmade George Romero film. Nah. These geniuses wanted to take a fresh approach—which is to say they started the story in the middle and made a hash out of the various sequentially scrambled scenes. Their dialog bends over backward to avoid repeating the lines from Stephen King's original novel (or any of the adaptations listed above). The screenwriters in question (Josh Boone & Benjamin Cavell) also don’t dig the fact that “The Stand” is essentially a road picture (or “Lord of the Rings” ripoff) for most of the first third. There’s no sense of movement—no sense of scope, or a big, terrifying world surrounding the characters in their respective quests through the chaos. What’s left is an oddly cramped, static, claustrophobic vibe. And no sense of fear whatsoever. I’m only judging by the first episode, true. But I have no desire to see the next one. (That’s kindofa death sense for a miniseries, eh?) It only cost me 99 cents for my first month’s subscription to CBS All Access. But I want my money back.

Review: "Tenet"

 

Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. Made me think, it did—and thinking usually leads to talking. So what the hell do I say about this movie? Damned if I know. But I better get started ...

Okey-doke.

Based on trailer and track record, I was expecting a whiz-bang, timey-whimey movie. Like Inception. Except it’s time, not dreams. You figure some Big Bad in the future is screwing with decent folks like you and me in the present. The Protagonist will stop him. But there’s a twist, natch. (Heck, maybe the Protagonist IS the Big Bad!) Or something like that.

Yep. Something like that. 

But not that fun.

Tenet reminds me of the flaws in my own writing. That’s not a bad thing. It actually gives me hope.

Aside from his Scrooge McDuck levels of personal wealth and amazing creative accomplishments, director Christopher Nolan and I have a great deal in common. I’m a science fiction writer. He’s a science fiction writer. I’m fascinated with time. So is Nolan. And we’re both also fascinated with complicated, paradoxical plots.

My typical SF story is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, shrouded in an enigma, inside a tiny Russian doll with wheels-within-wheels spinning in its pointy little head. (There’s also a tasty hard candy center.) In a short story you can get away with it—all you have room for is one PhilDickian surprise. (Christ! I am the robot! Auggh!) In a novel, it’s like driving a ten-ton dynamite truck over a tattered rope bridge.

Late in life, I’ve discovered that Joe Reader has limited patience with this Nabokovian nonsense. Especially when it necessitates mind-numbing passages of expository dialog.

“The Cosmic Egg. That’s the key—but they’ve got it all wrong.”

“You mean the Cosmic Chicken came first?”

“No—it’s deeper than that. It’s … Before the Cosmic Chicken … Before that …”

“Take a breath baby.”

“… there was the Cosmic Chicken Ranch. Before that …”

“The Cosmic Colonel Sanders?”

“Yeah. But who’s he working for? Who’s he selling his “buckets” to?”

After ten pages of this, Joe’s eyes roll back in his skull. He immediately pitches backwards in his chair, gouges the back of his skull on a stainless-steel Ikea coffeetable, and has to go to the Emergency Room.

Joe, like the middlebrow non-English-Major slob he is, gives less than a shit for brainy, paradoxical puzzles. This mouthbreather cares more about the mysteries of the human heart. Characters he can relate to and all that shit. 

Knowing this painful truth, I fight to keep the yattayatta to a minimum. To that end, I ask myself a series of painful questions: Is this scene going on too long? What can I cut? What Darlings can I bury in unmarked graves? How can I shake this dull passage up with some left-field surprise? Is Joe getting bored? How can I keep that sumbitch entertained?

Nolan, unwashed phenomenon that he is, has stopped asking himself these questions. 

The scenes go on too long. And then they keep going. 

INT. APPRAISAL ROOM. Protagonist chats with Young Woman. There’s a Goya drawing in a Harrod’s shopping bag. It’s a fake. The Young Woman sold it to her husband the evil Russian something something lover didn’t know something something Plutonium 231 backwards time something.

Sorry, what?

Don’t get me wrong. The movie’s problem is boredom, not a lack of clarity. If you pay close attention, you'll know exactly what’s going on. Nolan is very clear. From premise to conclusion, he builds his logical artifice like an OCD kid with a new set of Legos.

For all its temporal paradox, this is a very linear movie. 

That’s a weakness, not a strength.

Imagine what Quentin Tarantino could do with this material. His hypothetical film opens in the middle—Reservoir Dogs-style. No warning! The Protagonist (yeah, that’s what he is in the script) is waist-deep in some life-threatening shit. Whoa! That car is driving backwards! You have no clue what’s going on—then find out in economical flashbacks. 

This material could also work with the approach Martin Scorsese used in After Hours. Send the character on a pell-mell trip like Alice down the rabbit hole. What the f**k is going on? You’re on the run. There’s no time to answer that question.

Yeah. Two cinematic possibilities, free of charge. But that’s not what you get.

Nolan's movie, for all its puzzle-master, egghead brainyness, is too damn predictable. No misdirection, no swerves. The film’s rhythm creates an expectation—and never violates it.

The fight scenes and action sequences are cleverly choreographed … and fail to grab you by the heart and gonads. The Protagonist is so ultra-cool-competent, he never breaks a sweat. Never lets on: Shit, this could all go wrong. Nah. The man doesn’t worry. You don’t either. 

What’s left is a puzzle. An insanely brilliant puzzle. It's a great idea—entirely self-consistent. I’m in awe of Nolan’s mind. 

But the trailer was better. Hell, if they’d hired me as a script-doctor, I could’ve made this movie better.

And that gives me hope.