DVD Review: The Book of Eli

By on June 30, 2010 ·
Eli
Image by scriptingnews via Flickr

This is a Spoiler Alert people!  This movie has a bit of a ‘twist’ ending which I will talk about.  If you haven’t seen it and don’t like spoilers you might want to watch the flick before reading this.

Anyway…I was born and grew up during the Cold War.  Ah, the good ol’ days.  Younger readers might not know it but we were reasonably certain that the whole world was going to be blasted into the Dark Ages with Nuclear Missiles. 

Sound scary?  More like awesome!  At least according to the scads of movies I watched like A Boy and His Dog and The Road Warrior and Steel Dawn.  There were enough of them that post-apocalypse was a whole genre and they all had the same tag line–“In a post-apocalyptic world a lone warrior…” 

Of course the Berlin Wall fell and then the Soviet Bloc fell and I had a basement full of canned food and a crossbow I would never use to fight off gasoline pirates.  After the Cold War ended movies stopped being about nuclear winter and started being about horrible diseases (Outbreak, Twilight).  But then the Hughes brothers go retro and give us a classic post-apocalypse movie.  Written by Gary Whitta and starring Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman. 

Everything is as it should be.  We have a blasted skeleton of a world where human life is cheap and soap and water are valuable.  We have the Lone Warrior walking through the desert.  No surprise that Denzel is both calm and cool but tough and menacing.  He fights and kills when he has to but tries to avoid trouble and just “stay on the path.”  In addition to his pump shotgun, bow, and sword, he carries a book.  He reads from it every day before locking it and carefully wrapping it up. 

We then meet Carnegie the Overlord of a small town.  Carnegie just happens to have road crews out searching for books.  For one book in particular and it’s not hard to figure out that book is the very one carried by our Lone Warrior.  It’s also not hard to figure out that the book is a Holy Bible.  The two men meet and when Carnegie finds out about the book he’s willing to kill to get it.  The Warrior fights his way out and retakes his Path.  He’s followed by a young woman named Solara (Mila Kunis) who’s curious about him and why the book is so valuable. 

Of course Carnegie and his henchmen pursue them and eventually the Warrior is cornered and has to give up the book in exchange for Solara’s life.  Carnegie takes the book and shoots the Warrior, leaving him for dead.  He doesn’t die though and manages to keep up his quest despite his grievous wound.  With Solara’s help he travels West to Alcatraz and finally names himself (Eli, of course) and tells the people there he has in his possession a King James Bible.  Alcatraz is apparently a sort of armed monastery where a small group of literati are saving books from the world that was. 

Of course as soon as the bad guy gets the book and the good guy just lets it go; savvy movie goers know that something’s up.  They start trying to figure out the twist and there is one.  Normally I don’t like to spoil endings but I’ve already gotten into an argument about this ending so I’m just going to say it.  Eli is blind.  When Carnegie gets the lock open on the bible it’s written in braille.  Back at Alcatraz Eli recites the book he’s read every day without fail for thirty years to be transcribed. 

This is how to do a ‘twist’ ending.  It’s a trick and a payoff to be sure but it isn’t a gimmick.  It affects the story but it isn’t the point of the story.  It’s subtle enough that I had to go back and watch it and say ‘I’ll be damned, that dude was blind the whole time.’ 

The movie obviously deals with religion and faith but this too is subtle.  By moving the story to a world where nobody has religion or faith, the storyteller can move past contemporary ideas of both.  In fact there’s no real preaching to the story.  The book means one thing to Eli and another to Carnegie.  Carnegie is the ‘bad guy’ no doubt but he’s not evil.  He wants the book to give people hope so he can rebuild a civilisation with safety and order.  Sounds kinda reasonable actually. 

So what we have here is a well paced and beutifully shot action movie with a couple of strong leads.  We also have an engaging story about what’s worth fighting for beyond mere survival.  The Wasteland Warrior character brought full circle to his archetypal roots of a knight on a spiritual quest.  In short, some good Storytelling.

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Reading Like a Writer

By on June 25, 2010 ·
Francine Prose by David Shankbone
Image via Wikipedia

Can creative writing be taught? It’s a loaded question, and one which Francine Prose, the author of the 2006 book Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them, tackles in the opening passages. Given the popularity of creative writing programs across the country, it would seem heretical to answer “no.” Ms. Prose herself has led plenty of such workshops, and as she notes, “A workshop can be useful. A good teacher can show you how to edit your work. The right class can form the basis of a community that will help and sustain you. But that class, as helpful as it is, was not where I learned to write. Like most, maybe all, writers, I learned to write by writing and, by example, from books.”

Thus, the central premise of Prose’s book is the notion that writers learn to refine their craft by paying close attention to what good writers do in their work. As she states, “This book is intended partly as a response to that unavoidable question about how writers learn to do something that cannot be taught. What writers know is that, ultimately, we learn to write by practice, hard work, by repeated trial and error, success and failure, and from the books we admire.”

Prose examines the subject of good writing by focusing on the following topics: Close Reading, Words, Sentences, Paragraphs, Narration, Character, Dialogue, Details, and Gesture. She also includes three additional chapters entitled “Learning from Chekov,” “Reading for Courage,” and “Books to Be Read Immediately.” (After all, how could she write a book about learning from the masters without including a list of illuminating books?)

What I find most useful about Reading Like a Writer is the quality and scope of the examples she draws from to illustrate her points. The passages range from Flannery O’Connor and Katherine Mansfield to Samuel Johnson and Henry Green. This is not a book which will teach the fast track to literary success or how to create a marketable plot, but for people seeking to bolster the quality of their writing, it is well worth a look.

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Palimpsest by Gore Vidal

By on June 25, 2010 ·

Palimpsest is Gore Vidal’s first memoir. Early on in the book, he makes the point that this is not an autobiography, but a memoir. Too many autobiographies read like an excuse for the author’s failings and a platform for their supposed triumphs, as though they are getting their two cents in before someone else gives the final accounting. Vidal offers no excuses, even admitting in the beginning that he chose the title, and later realized he had been mispronouncing the word for years, and didn’t fully understand the origin of its meaning.

In Palimpsest he plays with time like a magician, deftly moving from one place to another, never losing the reader, an uncommon fluidity where most memoirs follow a strictly age based progression. There was no prose for prose sake, or lyrics over substance, yet his writing draws the reader in as though you were spending an evening listening to incisively funny repartee. He had me chuckling in the first few pages. Essentially, he’s the guy at a cocktail party you’d most like to spend the evening with.

He has an almost clinical insight into people and it doesn’t hurt that he’s known some of the icons of his age. His slant on Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Jackie Onassis (they shared a stepfather) and countless other characters of his time are priceless. There is no lack of dysfunctional family dynamics, either. Though he doesn’t use his upbringing as anything more than a travelogue of how he got where he is. He continues to be the most erudite voice of the anti-establishment. You can catch vintage Vidal on YouTube sparring with William F. Buckley on a sixties talking head show in a game of wordsmanship.

For all his wittiness and fascinating stories, the real value is that his memoirs chronicle how his life as a writer evolved. At a critical juncture early in his career, he decided to go ahead with the publication of his third novel, The City and the Pillar, over the objections of his agent. It contained overt homosexual overtones and true to form, the publishing industry blackballed him for the content. That he chose truth over conformity, and the commercial success that comes with it, was a defining moment. It seems the writers who only give their audience exactly what’s expected end up being trapped by their success.

His decision led to Hollywood and Broadway, experiences that ultimately made up for the early rejection. It is what allowed him the freedom to produce a wide range of work, from Myra Breckenridge (a one finger salute to the entertainment industry), to Visit to a Small Planet, and historical fiction, Lincoln, being his most famous.

Palimpsest is a gift from Vidal.  He shared the essence of who he is with clarity, style and honesty. Isn’t that what art is all about?

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Books for the Writer

By on June 18, 2010 ·

Continuing with many writers on one theme we’re each going to talk about a book that has influenced our writing.  Influence is fortunately a broad category.  It could be true inspiration such as wanting to capture the vivid savagery of R. E. Howard‘s ancient world tales or even ‘reverse’ inspiration.  Many writers can tell you the exact book that they put down and said ‘I can do better.’  It could be that how-to book that finally made sense or had the exercises you finally stuck with. 

I’m gonna split the difference with Stephen King‘s On Writing.  It’s subtitled ‘A Memoir of the Craft’ and it is that but it’s also a concise how-to.  I believe I’ve mentioned before how I had two distinct experiences reading this book.  The first time was before I started writing and it was the first half of the book (the memoir) that I focused on.  An interesting glimpse at the life of a writer whose work I’ve enjoyed for a long time.  The second half (the how-to) was quickly skimmed over.  After I had been writing for a while I picked it up again and it was exactly reversed.  I grew impatient with the anecdotes of college life and skipped to the meat of the matter–the craft of writing.  The book has three things going for it that you need in a ho- to book.  Honesty, applicability, and permission. 

Permission is what a lot of writers (especially just starting out) are looking for.  Of course you really need it from yourself but if hearing it from a successful writer helps, what’s the harm?  On Writing gives that permission to write literally and once given, treats you like a writer.  I don’t think I needed or got permission to write from the book but that tone of writer-to-writer conversation let me think of myself as a writer.  That’s not a small step and I believe it let me open up and improve. 

The importance of honesty in a writer should be self evident and King doesn’t pull any punches here.  He’s a working writer and let’s you know what that really entails and if it doesn’t sound like your bag well, now you know. 

Applicability is probably the most important or at least the most gratifying.  Here’s stuff you can actually use.  This book doesn’t come off as theoretical or philosophical (even though there’s plenty of that there).  The tone is more conversational, the master craftsman expounding to the apprentice over a couple of beers say. 

He doesn’t just say ‘avoid the passive voice’, he tells you what it is.  Gives plenty of examples, actual writing examples.  Tells you in colorful language why it’s so dreadful .  Tells you why a writer might fall into the trap and how to avoid it.  And that’s how it goes really. 

King uses the analogy of a tool-box and I love it.  It shows that this is a craft but also a job and it’s the tools you gather and learn to use that influence your style.  If you have more hammers than precision screwdrivers you’re limited in what you can do.  I’ve tried hard to increase my mastery of the tools I have and increase the range of tools available.  Of course he also talks about developing the craftsman’s skill of choosing the right tool for the job.  After all sometimes what you need is in fact a hammer. 

Working environment, idea generation, editing and revision, submission and dealing with the spouse…it’s pretty much all covered in detail.  Quite a bit of the examples are writing King did for the book and so are in King’s style but it’s not about hisstyle.  He also uses authors as diverse as Elmore Leonard and Cormac McCarthy for instruction.  In other words it’s about learning the craft of writing to find your own style.  At least that’s what I got out of it.  It’s a slim volume and a quick read and yet packed with information.  For me not just a must read but a must own.

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Gender in Magazines: Esquire vs. More

By on March 31, 2010 ·

I made the mistake of turning 40 a while back, and a friend of a friend decided I needed a subscription to More magazine. This generous friend in question is a big proponent of cosmetic surgery. After reading More I understand why.  All the articles proclaim that being in the age bracket between forty and death is so wonderful. There’s this emphatic outward theme that women should strive to age gracefully and reach their potential during this glorious golden phase. The irony is that the message is sandwiched between a plethora of ads for anti-aging products and advice on how to stay young – not just at heart, but young looking. A recent cover had Jane Fonda so blatantly airbrushed it was laughable. Who are they kidding? Message received: a woman’s biggest concerns should be about wrinkles, grey hair, and saggy body parts.

Maybe the comparison wouldn’t have been so striking except for the fact I’ve been reading Esquire magazine for some time.  I had the opportunity to use up a few of those worthless airline miles, you know, when you have enough miles for absolutely nothing the airline offers. So, for a mere five thousand airline miles I got a year of Esquire for free. I didn’t actually understand that it’s a men’s magazine. It was simply a better choice than Self or Good Housekeeping and I’m too old for Cosmo. Turns out, now it’s my favorite magazine, the only one I pay for. The ads are geared toward men’s fears and fantasies, so my eyes roll past them as though they are blank spots, barely registering the content or message since I’m not the target, although I admit detecting a distinctly effeminate quality to many of Prada’s ads. Stephen Marche does a nice rant on a regular basis. Occasionally they offer a short story, mostly Stephen King, but this month’s issue had one by James Franco. Will you be surprised when I tell you there was a subtle but ever so obvious gay quality to his story? There’s plenty of macho stuff like ‘Sexiest Woman Alive’ and ‘Women We Love’, both excuses to take photos of barely dressed young girls in erotic poses. My brain isn’t offended somehow. Maybe it’s because I think I understand why men fantasize about young women.  Older women know what great sex feels like, eighteen year olds don’t.  And, no doubt Esquire has its share of double messages – Dr. Oz next to the article on where to find the most fat laden hamburger in America. But by and large the writing is above par, the humorous parts are funny, the serious articles are fact based, educational, and pertinent to what’s happening in the world, whereas More’s profiles are stuck in a binary mode. One is the accomplished superwomen who, whether the corporate or Hollywood type, must make a presentable graphic regardless of how illustrious their credentials. The other is the regular woman, the one having a make-over with her before and after pics of hair, make-up and wardrobe included.

Small wonder the guy’s have it hands down when it comes to magazines.

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