Author: Kelley

Jennifer’s Body

Fox is putting a trailer of Jennifer’s Body in front of Bruno this Friday. Great, right? Only problem is it’s not our trailer. It’s kind of a straight horror preview and while we’re sure it’ll appeal to many of you, we wanted to make sure you guys got to see our cut … Lets call it the “filmmaker’s cut”. We think it captures the comedy and scares of the horror films we grew up on — a kind of nostalgia for when horror films were fun. Can’t wait to show you the whole film… In the meantime, here’s the red band trailer we wanted our fans to see.
 
— Karyn Kusama (director), Diablo Cody (writer/executive producer), and Jason Reitman (producer)

I don’t believe I’ve ever known filmmakers to release their own trailer on a viral basis to compete with the studio’s trailer, but I’m certainly happy to help out from my little corner of the internet. Nicola and I were talking last night about how much it sucks to have one’s work misrepresented by the folks responsible for distributing it: this happens in publishing all the time, and it’s not just frustrating, it’s potentially career-damaging. This is not to say that publishing or studio marketing/publicity people are Evil (that would be Jennifer, as you’ll see in the trailer) — rather, that they are often overworked, often under-informed about the work they are tasked with representing, and honestly, sometimes it’s just easier to take the well-worn path. It’s a horror film, don’t confuse people by making them laugh! It’s a science fiction book, put a spaceship on the cover!

Part of that impulse, I imagine, is to try to reach the widest potential audience. I get that impulse, but here’s what I know: you cannot fool people into liking your work, at least not for very long. If you set people’s expectations for pizza and give them peanut butter instead, there is no guarantee they will ever come over for dinner again.

It’s far more effective in the long term to market a work as clearly, as specifically, as possible, so its audience can find it. Sadly, neither New York publishing nor Hollywood studios are working for the long term these days: books and movies have become a volume business, driven by and focused on Amazon pre-orders and first-weekend ticket sales. But when artists put thousands of hours of work into making a project that represents their particular voice and vision — which I think is the case with Jennifer’s Body — it’s miserable to see that vision re-spun into peanut butter. It hurts.

Apart from artist solidarity, I’m also posting this trailer because it’s made me want to see the movie (Hey Fox, their trailer worked!). It looks funny and smart; it also looks like the kind of film that either stands all the teen sex/women in horror film cliches on their heads, or ends up reinforcing them sideways. Given that it’s a Diablo Cody film, I’ll assume that headstands are the order of the day…

This is a red-band trailer and so is totally Not Safe For Work.

Enjoy.
 

A little insane…

A self is deciduous, it leafs out as one grows, changes with one”™s seasons, yet somehow stays briskly the same. The brain composes a self-portrait from a confetti of facts and sensations, and as pieces are added or removed the likeness changes, though the sense of unity remains, thanks to well-furnished illusions. We need illusion to feel true.
 
A medley of different selves accompanies us everywhere. Some are lovable, some weird, some disapproving of each other, some childish or adult. Unless the selves drift too far apart, that solo ensemble works fine and copes well with novel events. As the psychoanalyst Philip M. Bromberg writes in Standing in the Spaces: “Health is not integration. Health is the ability to stand in the spaces between realities without losing any of them. This is what I believe self-acceptance means and what creativity is really all about — the capacity to feel like one self while being many.”
 
— Diane Ackerman, from An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain

I love these ideas: they reflect my experience of myself as a person and a writer, and I so admire when I see other writers working with them. And so I thought of them again as I was reading screenwriter Craig Mazin’s post about the insanity necessary to create good characters — which I imagine as standing between the spaces of my selves in order to create a self that isn’t me, and to make her so real that her story becomes real for you too.

And of course it’s not only writers who do this. As Mazin points out, we all do it when we dream (hmm, well, okay, I know people dream differently, but I tend to assume that things like this are hardwired…). And I suspect that there are many folks in the world, like me, who spend part of our lives enjoying “waking dreams” — for me, these are an odd but very enjoyable balance between seeing a private movie in my head and feeling/behaving as though I were really living it. It happens a lot with music, which is one of the reasons I love music so much. But these moments can come anytime, and I know they aren’t “real,” but they sure are real to me.

Is that insane? I don’t know. If it is, then it’s even better for me that I’m a writer and have made accommodation with it, have put some skill and framework around it. Have made a door for it to more safely open and peer out into whatever it is we mean by the “real” world. (More safely for whom, you ask? Well, that’s the real question, isn’t it?).

I hope all your selves are having a lovely day.

fear.less

There’s a new kid in town, one of those neighborhood champions who will get in between you and the big bully — the one with the scabs on his knuckles from knocking down a thousand just like you — stick out her chin and say You leave my friend alone! And because it’s not just you anymore, Scabby Bully Kid will sometimes go away.

That bully is fear, and fear.less is the new online magazine that’s here to help us all square off against it. To help us help each other, by giving space for people to tell their stories and spread their experiences, ideas, ruminations, affirmations, and sometimes just raise their fists against all the things that make us afraid.

Fear.less is the creation of Ishita Gupta and Clay Hebert — a place where:

Every story you read is an example of conquering fear, whether an immediate physical danger, the looming threat of failure, the pressure to compete in a changing world, the incessant quest for identity, or the overwhelming uncertainty of death.
 
— from About fear.less

They’ve just put out their first preview of what you can expect in the magazine: from photographer Platon, reflections on fear, honesty, preparation and bringing your own true self to the party. See for yourself in this lovely PDF. If you like it, you’re welcome to save a copy for yourself, and spread copies far and wide.

Life can be so very good, but it’s rarely good in a vacuum of self. We’re here together, and that matters. We’re creatures made of soul, made for joy and love, and anything that gets in the way of that needs to get its front teeth knocked out. We’re all the kid being bullied. We can be the champions too.

(You can also find fear.less on Facebook and Twitter. Ishita and Clay, thanks very much for your permission to make Platon’s story available here.)

Every moment of success

A truckload of thanks to my friend Dave for pointing me to this perfectly true and totally non-boring post by Christine Kane on “the boringness of success.”

This idea speaks to me in all kinds of ways these days. I’ve been thinking about late blooming, and about the 10,000 hours of practice that Malcolm Gladwell discusses in his book Outliers. In a nutshell, the idea is that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve expertise. In anything.

In my opinion, this is So. Fucking. True. In fact, I feel a blog post coming on about how much artists (in particular) who whine about this are starting to annoy me. Ah, but not today (*stepping back from the Ranty Ledge of Doom*)…

Today I want to thank Christine Kane for saying so elegantly what I think is so true, and part of what I was trying to get at when I talked about being gone from the game. Not that success is boring: I read that as, hmm, not hyperbole but shorthand. Of course it feels good to have great abs or see someone reading your book on the bus or have someone say Yes, I’ll marry you, or any of the hundred trillion other things that a human being might define as success. It’s just that it may take 10,000 hours of training or writing or working on the relationship to get to that moment — and that’s not just okay, that’s the point. Success is not the arrival, it’s the fact that we had the stones to make the journey. The arrival is the result: the success happens every single moment between now and then.

Independence

Happy Independence Day to US peeps. To the rest of the world, bear with us today while we get all fireworky, and some of us lose fingers or eyes, and some of us get drunk and hurt each other, and some of us get sunburned and eat way too much potato salad… But it’s not all like that; not just Big Lights Big Noise, but also a day to think about, ya know, the meaning of it all; this Declaration.

Several years ago, someone created this modern-language version of part of the Declaration of Independence. If it’s been a while since you thought about what those founder guys were doing, take a look: it’s about the right of a people not to be dehumanized, marginalized, ignored, or harmed by their government.

Today I find myself thinking about independence, and about the fact that it’s only achieved when we can depend on each other.

That’s why this article about the Make It Right Foundation building homes for Katrina survivors in New Orleans is here today. This article will tell you what’s happening right now, for context: but what I really want to point you to is this long profile of Brad Pitt’s work to make the foundation, and the homes, happen.

This to me is a social-justice issue. And to create something that’™s equitable and fair and has respect and provides dignity for the family within is absolutely essential…
 
— Brad Pitt, speaking about the houses that will be built by the Make It Right Foundation

Yes, it is. It’s the reason we got into the revolution business in the first place. It’s why we have the governmental framework that we do. It’s why we have a new president. And wanting each other to have what’s equitable and fair, wanting to provide each other with dignity, is what will ensure that we all retain the independence that we’re so proud of.

I hope someday we’ll only ever use our independence the way Brad Pitt is doing — as a shield, as a tool, as a tie that binds us all together into community. I hope one day we won’t feel the need to use it as a club against each other and the world. Now there would be a thing to celebrate.

Jukebox

I can only hear Noir in my head, but they are very loud there. The way I work — my way into story and character — is through mirror neurons, and so my people live large within me. To me they are utterly real.

But, sadly, not real in the “let me play you this really cool song by Noir” way: so the best I can offer is a selection of what goes through their ears when they plug into other people’s music. Think of it as a random sampler of the iPods of Noir (ouch, that sounds like something from a bad fantasy novel, but never mind).

This is a longer playlist, eight songs — two each from Duncan, Johnny, Angel and Con. You do not need to have read their story to appreciate (or not) their taste in music: but perhaps if you have enjoyed traveling with them, you’ll find some fun here.

To use the E-Phonic MP3 Player you will need Adobe Flash Player 9 or better and a Javascript enabled browser.

Duncan’s always a little dramatic: from him, you get Gotye and Nine Inch Nails, and he’s planning to send an audience right over the edge with them any day now — there won’t be a dry eye or a dry seat in the house. Johnny is the rock poet and the Holy shit, look what you can do with music guy: he likes Bowie and would walk through fire for Patti Smith. Angel is… well, he’s Angel: he’d always rather have more, and he thinks resistance is silly, hence his fondness for Cafe Tacuba and “Super Freak.” And Con loves “Bad Medicine” (although for a while he was sorry because the song made a lot of trouble for everyone), and since he saw U2 and Green Day play the Super Bowl he has dreamed, dreamed of Noir having that moment someday. Because they would kill.

Enjoy.

Parkour women

I think parkour is amazing — beautiful and exciting, combining talent, skill, elegance and pragmatism (a blend I’ve always found compelling). So fabulous to see the human body in use, in motion, in flight.

Most people I’ve seen doing parkour are traceurs — men. Mais aujourd’hui, je vous présente les traceuses. Parkour women.

Actually, first, parkour girls, in a program in Westminster (UK) teaching them to throw their bodies through space. Here’s where parkour can start for girls…
 


 

And here’s where it can go.
 


 

Gives me chills. My entire girlhood, my entire life, might have been so different in so many ways if I’d had any of this when I needed self-confidence, when I needed to be living in and learning my body rather than being so wary of it. Oh, the possibilities.

I want to see us big

Well, the whole big world has a lot of little girls in it, too. And not all of them are princesses — and the ones who are princesses have plenty of movies to watch.
 
And even many of them who do aspire to be princesses are mixing their princess tendencies with all manner of other delicious things. Their tiaras fall off when they skin their knees running at top speed; they get fingerpaint on their pink dresses; they chip their front teeth chasing each other in plastic high-heeled shoes.
 
— Linda Holmes, from her open letter to Pixar

What she said. Go read Linda Holmes’ entire “Dear Pixar” letter on the NPR website. Then come on back and let’s chat.

I’ve talked before about how much I want to write great roles for women, especially those of us who never see stories on screen in which people like us — over 40, not runway models or heiresses or sad lonely spinsters waiting for the right man, but simply smart, competent, interesting women — are the heroes. And in those stories, we won’t be heroes because we are tigress-mommies or loyal resolute spouses who suddenly kick ass to save our families. We’ll be heroes because we are human beings in a situation where heroism is required, and so we step up.

Why is that seemingly so hard for so many writers, producers, directors, and studio executives to imagine? Especially when we have a few shining examples of how much it rocks when a movie gets it right: Ripley in Alien, Sarah Connor in Terminator, Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis in Thelma and Louise, Geena Davis in The Long Kiss Goodnight (okay, she was a tigress-mommy too, but first she was an assassin, so she was by god no cliche).

And a hero is not only someone with killer biceps who leaves no bad guy standing. The hero is the person at the center of the story who must overcome challenges, face their deepest fears, lose their most precious things or people or dreams, strive and fail and still keep on going. Is it really true, as so many industry insiders seem to think, that men can only identify with those experiences if another man is having them? I am inside the hero all the time regardless of whether I’m watching Tom Cruise or Sarah Michelle Gellar. Does having a Y chromosome really restrict that kind of identification?

I don’t believe that. I think if a woman on screen is a compelling, non-cliched human being having big experiences, struggling with big feelings, making big choices, then any of us can identify with her.

This is a big screen issue for me. Television is a veritable paradise of Strong Women Characters in comparison to films. Buffy, Faith, Anya, Willow, Tara, Xena, Gabrielle, Callisto, Zoe, River, Kaylee, Sookie, Tara Thornton, Tara Gregson, Debra Morgan, the list goes on. All different, all with strengths and flaws and their own particular voice, and their own fabulous stories — complex and deeply human and universal.

So why can’t we do it big?

Well, let’s just imagine that we can. What would you like to see women characters doing on the big screen? I’d love to hear your wish list!

Resting

Here’s another in the series of excerpts from With Malice Toward Some:

Oct 7th
The days melt away like cough drops on the tongue. I brush my hair and take a long walk and type out Henry’s notes and stand for a while in the garden composing my face to look like a Landed Gent, and ping! the day is gone. The Devonshire countryside grows upon me like an obsession; I sometimes suspect that somebody has given me a philtre. Living in England, provincial England, must be like being married to a stupid but exquisitely beautiful wife. Whenever you have definitely made up your mind to send her to a home for morons, she turns her heart-stopping profile and you are unstrung and victimized again. The garden still spurts roses and snapdragons and Michaelmas daisies, which I cut and arrange at great length in bowls and vases. This pursuit I estimate to be about the sheerest waste of time I have ever indulged in. The flowers wilt and only have to be done all over again. Henry, being a native New Yorker, looks pained if his attention is called to flowers. And the flowers in the garden are virtually forcing the house right off the property as it is, without my introducing them into the drawing room to bore from within. But it is principally because it is so fruitless that I like to do it. It makes every day feel like Saturday afternoon.
 
— from With Malice Toward Some by Margaret Halsey

I’m thinking a lot about the difference between relaxation and rest. I’m a champion relaxer: I know how to kick back, share a bottle of wine and talk for hours; spend an hour on the deck with a book; fall so deep into a movie that I forget where I am; sit on a park bench and stare at Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains beyond while crows and seagulls spiral up and down from the beach. I know how to enjoy these moments.

But I don’t know how to rest. I spend my life doing: it’s my response to responsibility (whoa! just made the linguistic connection…), to stress, to challenge, to learning. To life, really. I’m good at doing; but it turns out I have very little skill at stopping. I relax, but in a little back corner of my mind I am already figuring out the next process, making the next mental list, preparing to do the next thing.

I’m lucky; the busy-ness of my life is not the treadmill variety. I like my life; but it is full, and I have a lot to do, and somewhere along the line I learned that my culture won’t give me a lot of slack for “wasting” time. For just spending a hundred Saturday-afternoon-days in a row arranging flowers or sitting under an umbrella on the beach at Musha Cay — those cuffy thing moments that I find I am yearning for more and more these days. I want to do fruitless things just because they are lovely to do. I want the beautiful surroundings just because they are beautiful, and then I want to simply sit and be in them with no responsibility to anyone, not even myself. I want to unhook from all of that results-oriented list-bound doing.

I’m good at being. But always I am being in motion. Now a part of me just wants to be still.

Shindiggin’

We had a lovely gathering of neighbors yesterday — about 40 people met, grilled, drank, ate, and talked in the commons at the end of our driveway. The weather was beautiful, the beer stayed cold, and as far as I know the potato salad didn’t send anyone to the emergency room. It turns out the folk here are relaxed, charming and have incredibly-well-behaved-but-non-robotic kids (I know, it sounds more like Lake Wobegon all the time).

My neighbor Vicki and I have been talking about doing this for so long that it seems strange to have actually done it. A couple weeks ago, we made a flyer and spent a Saturday afternoon walking around the neighborhood knocking on doors, introducing ourselves, and explaining about the barbeque and our desire to connect people in the ‘hood as much as possible. When people weren’t home, we left flyers, and I know there was at least one household that didn’t open the door because they thought we were selling magazine subscriptions or something (yep, Mr. Neighbor Dude, I did see you peering through your fence at us. You missed a good party and if there’s an apocalypse you won’t know everyone’s name…).

The knocking-on-doors thing is actually hard for me: I can be quite shy in situations where I am having to justify my presence/explain myself/”sell” in some way, and although I have good strategies for overcoming that shyness, they take a lot of energy. So how nice to have so many people respond by turning up with their kids and their salads and desserts, and — especially — prepared to have a nice time and meet some new people.

It’s funny how easy it is to remain disconnected even in such a place as this, where people are aware of one another and have good intentions. Connection is a process, and I hope yesterday was a good step in expanding it. We collected contact information, and now we’ll spend some time figuring out how to use it in a way that builds neighborhood bonds without turning into some kind of social club or low-value time suck that makes people disengage again. It’s an interesting thing to think about. But worth doing: apart from anything else, if there ever is an apocalypse, we will need each other. What heartens me above all else is that it seems I’m not the only one here who knows that.