Wednesday, November 4, 2015

IWSG November 2015

Technically I've more or less completely broken from the blogging community (except pesky Pat Dilloway), so linking this post to the Insecure Writers Support Group might be wrong, even though this is the traditional first Wednesday of the month to check in. Pretty sure even the omnipresent Alex Cavanaugh finally quick checking in on me. 

All the same, I've been getting back into the swing of blogging, whether people are reading me or not, and continue to wonder what it is about me that seems to set me so much apart.  A month or so back, I watched True Grit with my father.  No, not the John Wayne version, but the Coen one.



Both of which are based on a book, by the way.  My dad's a big John Wayne fan.  I thought he'd get a kick out of seeing the new version.  Afterward, I asked him what he thought.  His main reaction was that, all things considered, the story was more or less how he remembered it.

You've got to know, as far as I'm concerned there are huge differences between the two movies.  I grew up watching John Wayne because of my dad, so I'd seen his version as a kid, but that was the last time.  So by the time I saw Jeff Bridges assume the role of Rooster Cogburn, I was seeing the story with fresh eyes.  I was riveted.  I haven't seen all of the Coens' movies, but I've long admired their skill as filmmakers.  They're very much part of the generation that has helped, so far as I'm concerned, make film the truly dynamic art form it has long waited to become.

Which is to say, I believe films as a whole are today better than they have ever been.  Film is that rare art form born in the modern age.  We've seen the whole development unfold before us.  Although there have been artful contributors throughout its history, the whole of it has really come together in recent years.  It's less and less possible to see the seams.

Which is to say, it's always worth retelling a familiar story.  It always was, mind you.  That's how storytelling began, even when it was merely a matter of preserving a memory.  Stories inevitably change in the retelling.  It's more probable than not (sorry, Patriots fans!) that Homer's version of the Trojan War differs wildly from how it originally unfolded.

My greatest sin as a writer is allowing people to say around me, constantly, the fallacy everyone accepts as fact: that Hollywood has nothing new to say, that remakes and sequels dominate the box office because there's no originality.  Every single time I should be vigorously arguing this point.  Because every single time, these movies are saying something new, even when they're hinging on something you already know.

Because the story changes every time, changes in how it's told, in story and in style.  John Wayne's Rooster Cogburn is similar to  Jeff Bridges' mostly in that they both have eye patches.  I know Wayne won an Oscar for his performance, but there's no question who put more work into their version, and who had better filmmakers around them.  Or at least there shouldn't be.

Except there are those who don't see the difference.  I've long had a problem understanding that.  People view things differently.  This is something everyone knows in theory, but in practice very few of us take this into account.  Usually, we take such distinctions only in whether we love it or hate it. 

But that's just not good enough.  Part of what drove me away was getting into a dispute I simply walked away from.  The person in question brought up something that had happened here on this blog, that I had to go back and reference myself just to see if I understood what had happened.  Turns out I might have been misinterpreting something that had been said, but there wasn't any clarification at the time, and really, there's no point.  That's the sort of problem that would lead to someone hating something, and someone else loving it.  The truth is somewhere in-between, as it usually is.

When I blog, I tend to write about the things I love, and often, it seems, I love things that have garnered otherwise poor reactions.  This tends to put me on the defensive.  What people crave, rather, is a certain uniformity, or, certainly, not being contradicted.  That's why most comments on blogs are people agreeing with whatever was originally said.  Well.

I can do nothing for you, son.

16 comments:

  1. You march to your beat and there's nothing wrong with that. I do think it's human nature to want at least one other person to agree with us, even though that really doesn't validate us as a person.
    I thought the remake of True Grit was great.
    And if you're not on the official IWSG list, sign up! You might have a kindred soul visit you today.

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    1. Maybe I should stick it back on (assumed it was dropped since I haven't done one of these since May).

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  2. You'd probably have more visitors to your other blogs if you didn't change the address.

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    1. The problem is anyone caring what I write, not whether they're reading.

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  3. I am not the biggest Coen brothers fan out there, but I did like True Grit. I never did see the original though, so I have no way of knowing which I'd prefer. I have no problem with remakes per say, provided they try try to improve on the originals, or at least attempt to shed a different light on an otherwise familiar story/character.

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    1. Yet I find even the idea of the shot-for-shot remake of Psycho fascinating. New actors invariably introduce new interpretation. Theater has done that for thousands of years.

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  4. Interesting thoughts on movie and remakes! I'm not a big film fan, but I was thinking about remakes recently, in a sense--retellings of traditional stories, or familiar ones (think Grimm's fairy tales). An author will always re-envision things and if any good at all will leave a mark on the story.

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    1. Grimm's (or, Grimms') is indeed a wonderful example. Without them, Disney, for one, would have a very different history.

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  5. I haven't seen the original True Grit but I love the recent version. I like John Wayne so I suspect I will like the original as well.

    I completely agree with you that remakes are not inherently bad. Movies have been remade or based on other material for as long as there have been movies (how many Bond films are there? How many 47 Ronin movies are there in Japan?) As you say, the same thing happens in theatre all the time. It also happens in books. How many takes are there on Dracula? Or Pride & Prejudice?

    I think the problem is the "reboot" word. It implies that "we did something wrong last time, now let's make it better!" which really takes away from stuff that people genuinely enjoyed the first time around. It also doesn't help that blockbusters these days are very formulaic so these reboots just feel like cookie-cutter cash grabs.

    When there are people who genuinely seem enthusiastic about a project and want to make something fun, I'm all for it. That's why I'm looking forward to Paul Fieg's Ghostbusters. On the other hand, I don't think anyone though the new Fantastic Four movie was a good idea, but they went ahead and made it anyway.

    IWSG November Post

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    1. The whole reason they redid the Fantastic Four was because not many people liked the two previous attempts. The same went for why there was a reboot after Spider-Man 3, and Batman & Robin. One out of three is still a pretty good average...

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  6. I agree that there's nothing wrong with remakes as a concept - everyone will tell a story differently, it's fun to see a new version of a story you love, and even if you hate it it'll rekindle your love for the original. Shakespeare hardly came up with any original storylines, but his tellings of previously existing stories have become the definitive ones because of his flair with the language. Most people just want to see/hear/read a good story, whether it's original or not.

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    1. Another excellent point, bringing up Shakespeare. It's a problem of what our default public conversation is. It's so common to hear complaints about this sort of thing. But it's useful to remember that it's been far more common to tell and retell the same stories.

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  7. I think that every time a story is retold (look at the many, many versions of Cinderella from The Egyptian Cinderella as the oldest version known to the newest movie) that there is something new and profound. Each perspective, each re-take has something fresh inside of it.
    And, that happens with blogs and writing. We all often write about similar things on our blogs - our insecurities, our misunderstandings, etc, and yet, it's slightly new every time because we each have a unique perspective.
    I'm glad you made it back to IWSG - and I'm sorry if I haven't stopped by before this.

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    1. One of the most clever things I know about but would probably find difficult to appreciate personally is what Phil Rosenthal did with Everyone Loves Raymond, which was bring it to a Russian audience, totally transformed into a Russian version. I mean, that just blows my mind. It's one of the most clever and daring creative challenges I've heard of. It's one thing to try and succeed once. Some writers have found great success adapting their own work for Hollywood. This is something else. You could argue that a lot of family sitcoms are basically the same thing anyway. I wouldn't. There was a specific appeal to Raymond that Rosenthal needed to preserve. You don't take away Krypton from Superman's story, for instance. I've seen plenty of variations, but Superman is always from an alien world. And yeah, Superman is sometimes identified with Moses, the baby in the basket and a grand destiny. But Superman isn't Moses.

      Don't worry about not visiting here previously. What I've got to become comfortable with is having visitors, not having visitors, visitors who come but then go. That's definitely my biggest insecurity...

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  8. I'm woefully under-educated regarding the entire Western genre. I didn't even realize there were two different True Grit movies.

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    1. And two different 3:10 to Yuma as well. It would be interesting to see the other one.

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