A Writer's Game: Tell Me The Story I Never Wrote
Today’s a tense day as I wait for a friend’s MRI results, so I figure mise well distract myself with something that was A Hoot last year. So here goes my attempt to recreate 2006 LiveJournal:
Tell me about a story I haven’t written, and I’ll give you one sentence from that story.
Movie Review: Captain Phillips (Mild Spoilers)
Every year, before the Oscars, Gini and I see every Best Picture nominee. This involves us seeing a lot of depressing movies that we don’t want to. Why do we do this?
Because occasionally, we get a winner like Captain Phillips.
Captain Phillips didn’t look good in the trailers – noble white guy fights off Somali pirates – and Tom Hanks in the role wasn’t a draw either, as Mr. Hanks is good but too Tom Hanks. He’s like his own moon, eclipsing himself, where you’re watching a movie and thinking, “Boy, that Tom Hanks is doing some damned fine acting pretending to be someone else.” (A reaction I had with him as Disney a few times during Saving Mr. Banks.) So I didn’t think it would be interesting.
Actually, Captain Phillips is two interesting films, and maybe as many as three.
The first film isn’t as engrossing, because sure enough you have Tom Hanks affecting a Bashtan accent, which is conspicuous because you know he doesn’t have one, as a captain getting up in the morning, headed down to the docks, getting his ship ready. Likewise, the Somali pirates get up in a much lesser house, go down to the shoreline, and pick out the guys who are gonna be pirating for the day. Pirates, inevitably, meet ship.
And what you get here is something I haven’t seen done well since The Wire. The Somali pirates aren’t smart, but they are goddamned bright – which is to say, like the gangsters in The Wire, they may not have a fine education, but they have raw brainpower to maximize their limited resources and cause significant trouble for anyone in their path. When they board the ship, the crew’s job is to hide the rest of the crew so they don’t get ransomed and/or killed, and the pirates’ job is to search the ship to find them. And there’s a surprisingly tense Die Hard-on-a-ship segment where Tom Hanks, lying his ass off, with the Somalis knowing he’s trying to lie his ass off, does his desperate best to mislead a bunch of clever guys who have the significant handicap of not knowing how a big boat works.
That’s fascinating, watching two smart segments facing each other down.
Then the second segment starts, and this isn’t a real spoiler because it’s based on a real-life event – but it is, to my mind, the more fascinating part of the film. The US government gets involved. The Somalis had no reason to think the US government would get involved. They’d ransomed a Greek ship for six million dollars a few months ago (and where’d all that money go? Straight to their bosses), and past US MO has been to just pay the cash, but the unspoken bit in all of this is that the US has finally decided that it’s too damn easy to pirate, and this is where we show people that there’s a cost to fucking with the US.
And when the Navy warships show up, it’s all over.
The movie goes on for an hour after that.
And it’s weirdly sad. Because these Somali pirates are vicious, and scared, and prideful. They do not want to acknowledge how little power they have left, because they barely had any to begin with, and now they’re facing down billions in equipment and training versus their stolen-lifeboat-and-automatic rifles. Tom Hanks stops talking in a Boston accent as he’s reduced largely to gibbering and weeping, and what we see here is how fucking impossible it is to fight the US if they know where you are and they decide to lay the hammer down.
You don’t hope the Somalis will escape – they’re vicious, unrepentant, they’ll do it again. But you wish there’d been a better way for these poor sonuvabitches, because what you’re seeing is the tail end of their lives where they’re making things as difficult as possible for the US Navy, but literally nothing they do can make it difficult enough. It’s an exercise in pure ultimate impotency, where the only thing you can do to display power is to kill an innocent or two on your way out – and they’re of mixed emotions on that.
…or maybe not. What I suspect a lot of red-staters saw was, “FUCK YEAH, EXTERMINATE THOSE PIRATES WITH OUR FABULOUS TECHNOLOGY,” and the movie is distant enough that this, too, is a valid interpretation. For me, there was a lot of “Christ, what do people get driven to?” and that twinge as you realize that it’s not wrong to shoot Old Yeller in the head, but there’s got to be something wrong with delighting in it.
And in the end, Tom Hanks brings the Oscar. He has a very brave scene at the end, and I’ll say no more than that. But I forgot the accent, forgot that it was Tom Hanks, forgot everything, because he lost himself in the role in a major way, and that scene alone might have been worth the film.
It wasn’t the best film, but it sure kicked up a lot more feelings than I thought it was. And that’s why we watch the Oscars.
Why Worldbuilding Is Increasingly Important To TV Shows
So Dan Wells wrote an essay on the terrible worldbuilding behind Almost Human, which really pulls apart all the lazy ways in which JJ Abrams set out to create a TV show.
It’s good. Go read it even if you don’t watch the show. It’s a very good explanation of how and why worldbuilding matters.
Now, it’s not that Almost Human is bad – well, actually, it kinda is. Basically, it’s a show with one element that’s so strong it almost makes up for the rest of the show’s terrible decisions. The chemistry between Karl Urban and Michael Ealy is delightful, that kind of practiced banter that makes you want to follow them around. They get all the best lines, and they’re great actors, and I like welcoming them into my living room once a week.
But in the end, it’s like Almost Human didn’t get the message about what television is these days.
Television is investment from fans.
Which is to say that back in the 1970s, there was no way to re-watch an episode of television. There were no DVRs, no VCRs, no DVDs, no Torrents – once that episode of Incredible Hulk aired, if the network chose not to re-run it, that was it. Your ass was either in the seat at the moment the show started, or you weren’t seeing it. TV was as transient as live music.
So every show had to be encapsulated. You couldn’t rely on anyone knowing what the hell had happened last week, as there was no Internet you could use to catch up. So each hour of show was designed to be a start-to-finish experience, like a little mini-movie, simple and formulaic, enjoyable if you’d never seen the show before. Complex storylines simply didn’t happen – except in soap operas and kids’ serials, and even then they had lots of redundant exposition to ensure that nobody was lost.
Then recording happened.
And the Internet made research easy. Enjoyable, even.
And suddenly you could rely on viewers to keep track of what happened, and shows started to become more complex.
None of this is new, obviously; many essays have been written on this topic before. But the point is that Almost Human is weirdly wrapped in this candy shell of “Oh, this is new and different!” but its core is very much that “Hi, we don’t expect you tuned in before, so let’s explain everything and not have any real continuity.”
Yet what you don’t see discussed was that the worldbuilding was often built on that premise, for the few sci-fi shows that existed. Basically, if a writer had a good pitch, it went in the show. Didn’t matter if this week’s super-premise was at odds with what we’d been told last week – it’s a cool idea, stuff it in, nobody cares whether it makes sense in context as long as it makes sense for this hour we’ve got to fill. The reason Star Trek was so crazily popular was because it actually had nods to past history and a semi-consistent framework – the Klingons, the Romulans, Harry Mudd – but it still had a lot of random one-time Things that should have changed the nature of the universe that were quietly forgotten because this episode wasn’t part of a contiguous whole, but rather every episode was a singularity.
(I mean, seriously, Scalosian Water has no usage elsewhere? I want to write the story of the super-secret Black Ops team that finds these universe-changing technologies and quietly removes them to prevent horrendous wars and imbalances of power.)
Which is how Almost Human treats the speculative elements. Hey, is there a burgeoning market in sexbots? Well, I mean, cops traditionally have marital issues, wouldn’t some cops be seriously addicted to the sexbot fulfillment? Wouldn’t we see people walking around with sexbots, taking them out for coffee to the disgust of their fellow Starbucks patrons? How would the semi-sentient robots deal with that evident facet of their slavery?
No, no, man, we have a story about sexbots. We don’t want to think about all that other stuff, or even reference it in another episode.
Sexbots are just a way to kill this next 43 minutes.
But while you can go with that “worldbuilding is episodic” that’s an error, in these days. I’m not saying every show needs to have the insane storylines of Sleepy Hollow (though ratings might suggest otherwise), but rather that if your universe introduces a technology, we should see how that universe is shaped by the technology. People get off on that.
And it gives your show a more unique feeling. I mean, the #1 complaint I hear about Almost Human is that it feels generic, and it is. It’s a buddy cop show with science fiction trappings. And while that might have worked back in the old days, these days viewers are searching for a world they can get hooked into – they don’t want just an hour, they want to fall in love with the whole season.
And when you skimp on worldbuilding, you skimp on an element that draws them in. It’s a fannish hook: if you show how sexbots are treated in society outside of this singular element of the procedural, then you get fans going, “Hey, how do sexbots work when you’re a single guy dating?” and they start trading theories on Tumblr and expanding parts of your universe in their head, and suddenly they are rooted more deeply in your universe – in your show – than they would have been otherwise.
For Almost Human, what happens is that you rapidly come to realize is that nothing matters except in the context of this episode. And that’s meh-see TV. You wind up tuning in if you’ve got the spare time – and Gini and I work at home, we’ve got spare time – but it’s not the kind of thing where you hunch in front of the television going, “Aww, man, how’s this going to start?”
And that’s tough. You’ve got to plan – not something TV shows are known for, mainly because it’s not necessarily rewarded. If you’ve got great worldbuilding and crap characters, you’re doomed. If you’ve got great worldbuilding and awful actors or poor plots or unfunny dialogue, you’re doomed. Great worldbuilding alone will not save you.
But I think right now, we’re seeing a real schism. You have the procedural TV shows wrapped in nerdy bits – both Almost Human and Agents of SHIELD have some stabs at ongoing plotlines, but really it’s all about this episode – and both are ratings disappointments. Meanwhile, you have the bull-goose looniness of Sleepy Hollow, which may turn out to make no sense but goddammit we’ve got all of American history tied up in this shiz, a great mystic conspiracy that’s evoking George Washington like he was some sort of Abdul Al-Hazrad, and people are all like, Whoa, I have to see what happens.
There’s a lesson here. Television is still evolving, rapidly so, from the concept that viewers might not just be able to follow a dense storyline, but might be eager to do so. That’s shifted television from the simplest visual medium to its most complex, and shit like Almost Human doesn’t get a pass any more. If you’re going to do something sci-fi or fantasy, you’ll have to put a bit of thought into it – or at least front like you do (*cough cough LOST cough*).
It’s not about this episode. It’s about how this affects everything. And if Almost Human had looked at the script pitches for all the planned episodes, and said, “All right, how do we put in a sexbot reference here, how’s this remote viewing thing for the jury work here, how do mechanical organ transplants work here?” and put in little nods in all the prior and future episodes, I almost guarantee you Almost Human would be doing better in the ratings. Because we’d still have that Urban-and-Ealy chemistry, but it’d be backed by a world that felt like it was more than just a stage to stand on.
And we’d be watching. Watching with intent.
New York City, February 20th, 4:30 p.m. – Wanna Meet Up?
So February 20th is going to be a hell of a day for us, thanks to our new plan of romance.
See, Gini and I spend so much time visiting with people that we don’t get any time for ourselves; our 14th anniversary passed last year with zero fanfare. And we’ve also felt a lament because we love fine dining – some of our fondest memories are at the Aureole in Las Vegas and Victoria & Albert’s in Disney.
So why not combine the two? We decided once a quarter, we would travel to a Michelin-starred restaurant and do what Michelin says a Michelin star is for – eat a meal so good, it was worth planning a trip there just for the experience.
And so, on February 20th, we’ll be in New York, eating at Joe Bastianich’s restaurant Babbo for lunch. (Why Babbo? Because we’re addicted to Master Chef, because his book Restaurant Man is the second-best book I’ve read on what it’s like to run a restaurant, and because of his New York restaurants it has a slight edge on the best food.) We’ve decided to go all-out and book tickets to The Book of Mormon in the evening, because why not do a Broadway show?
But that does leave a gap – and when our dear friend Nex0s asked, “When can I see you?”, rather than scheduling a million individual dates with all the people we want to see in NYC, we figured we’d do the Jay Lake thing and show up in a public place. Want to meet a Ferrett and a Gini? Then come to us, we’ll welcome you with open arms. No prior physical meeting necessary, as we live largely online.
The problem is, I no longer know New York well enough to know where that place should be. I need someplace flexible enough to allow an unknown number of people to hang out, close enough to Broadway that we can stay fairly late there and still get to our show on time, and warm. Some munchies for folks would probably be nice, but I assume I’ll still have the warm afterglow of Babbo.
So:
a) If you’re interested, lemme know.
b) If you’re local and can suggest a venue, that would be awesome.
(Future plans: Graham Elliot’s restaurant Graham Elliot, Chicago’s Alinea, and Philadelphia’s Morimoto. Other suggestions within a six-hour drive welcomed.)
The I-Shoulda-Seen-That-By-Now Movie Marathon: This Saturday
So periodically, Gini and I hold the I-Shoulda-Seen-That-By-Now Movie Marathon – a gathering where people get together at our house to watch movies. The next event: this Saturday.
The rules are:
1) EACH PERSON GETS TO CHOOSE ONE MOVIE, THE NAME OF WHICH THEY MUST PROVIDE IN ADVANCE. In keeping with the “I Shoulda Seen That By Now” theme, this can only be a movie which you yourself have not seen. There are to be no recommendations, no “I haven’t seen it in a decade,” no outs – only movies that you personally have never seen (and preferably feel guilty about not having seen).
2) I CHOOSE WHICH MOVIES ARE ACCEPTABLE. Left to their own devices, everyone chooses long depressing movies. A full day consisting of The Godfather, Schindler’s List and Gone With The Wind is not only going to be really long, but soul-blackening.
So if you’re attending, I’ll be asking what you plan to watch. You may be asked to provide another choice.
3) YOU MUST PROVIDE YOUR OWN DVD. Do not wait until the last minute to rent it, for these are the kinds of movies that RedBox tends not to have. Netflix it or purchase it for $9.99 or poll your neighbors to see who has it, but if you arrive empty-handed with your movie, you can watch the show from the front yard.
4) THERE WILL BE BREAKS IN BETWEEN MOVIES. These go so much better if we have time for breaks and pleasant chat.
This weekend’s ISSTBN looks tragically small, as many people had other plans, but we’re going through with it anyway. If you’re local and interested, check the Evite. I think my choice may be Weird Science.