Compared to fanfiction sites, it’s just not cutting it. When you look at all the free sites out there, the numbers don’t add up.
Oddly, I can’t fault Amazon for trying. This is an obvious market, it’s nice to get approved fanfic, and I can see some companies going for it as a way to find middle ground.
However the issue simply is that the limits are against what fanfiction is about. It’s often crazy, freewheeling, contrarian, extrapolatory, and at times sheer nuts – or seems to be. I know enough fanfiction authors of many ages and part of the goal of fanfiction is going outside the property – or inside it in a different way.
And I don’t think you can manage that inside the legal concerns of many major property holders. Or minor ones. Not without some serious community involvement and outreach.
So what’s next? That’s what I wonder – is this a failure, or will some new idea emerge? Will companies give up? Will this meander along? Don’t know.
But still, it’ll be interesting.
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
A small change in plans. With the passing of Robin Williams, it seemed to be fitting to look at something of his. A look at his filmography, though, shows a large number of potential reviews, from Popeye to Good Morning, Vietnam, based on Adrian Cronauer’s experiences on Armed Forces Radio, to The Birdcage, a remake of the French-Italian film La Cage aux Folles, and to Insomnia, a remake of a Norwegian film of the same name. A wealth of possibilities to choose from showcasing his range as an actor. However, one of his iconic roles channelled his stand-up comedy – Disney’s Aladdin.
The part of the Genie in Aladdin was written specifically for Williams, but he almost turned down the role. It wasn’t until he saw one of his stand-up routines animated with the Genie did he accept. The result was animated magic. Williams almost stole the movie as the Genie. And while the part was written for him, Williams performed his manic improv throughout the movie.
The original story of “Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp” is a folk tale from the Middle East, passed down through oral tradition before being recorded in writing. The tale was added to 1001 Arabian Nights by translators in the 18th Century, becoming one of Scheherazade’s stories keeping her alive. Aladdin, according to the tale, was recruited by a sorcerer to enter a cave filled with traps to retrieve a special oil lamp. To help, the sorcerer gave Aladdin a magic ring. Stuck in the cave, Aladdin rubs his ring, summoning a djinn who helps him escape with the lamp. At home, he cleans up the lamp, summoning a more powerful djinn. The new djinn helps Aladdin become rich and marry Badroulbadour, the Emperor’s daughter, despite her being betrothed to the vizier. The sorcerer finds out about what has happened, though, and tricks Badroulbadour into trading for the lamp. Aladdin tracks down the sorcerer with the help of the djinn of the ring. After a fight, Aladdin triumphs, retrieves the lamp, and returns to Badroulbadour.
Disney’s Aladdin follows the general story closely. There are a few changes. The sorcerer and the vizier were rolled into Jafar, the Grand Vizier, and there was just the one Genie. There was no room for a second Robin Williams in the movie. The Emperor’s daughter received a name change, from Badroulbadour to Jasmine. While Badroulbadour means “the full moon of full moons”, an name implying great beauty, the name doesn’t flow naturally to an English audience, thus Jasmine. The story was moved from the far east to the fictional sultanate of Agrabah, a land with classic Arabic stylings. The changes are minor, though. The core of the story still focuses on Aladdin and his dream to become rich. Disney added a few morals to the film, but again the story could absorb the additions with no loss to the core.
With the main plot already handled, other subplots were added. The Genie wants freedom. “Phenominal cosmic power! Itty bitty living space.” Robin Williams turned in a performance that made the Genie larger than life but still human. He took a character with absolute cosmic power and made him funny, made him sympathetic, made him memorable.
Disney’s Aladdin works as an adaptation. It only adds to the story, not removing anything from the core of the tale of “Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp”. Robin Williams, though, added to the story, using his talents to entertain, thrill, and enchant a new generation. He will be missed.
Some time ago I began thinking over the fact that it seems complaints about lousy media and bad technology fell on deaf ears. It almost seemed complaints were expected and ignored or worse. But after chatting with some friends, I realized that one solution is to promote good work. How many of us know a good author, writer, product, movie, etc.? So I wrote down some tips on promoting it – and I figured the Sanctumites would get be able to put this to good use.
- Boost The Signal – Want to see better technology, comics, and movies? Boost the Signal for good works. The basic philosophy of the series.
- Be The Ambassador – Want to Boost the Signal on someone and their works? You need to be an Ambassador.
- The Basics – Ways to help Boost The Signal most anyone can do.
- Advanced – Ready to take it further? Here’s a way to real dive into helping someone get seen!
- The Professional – A fellow professional? Here’s how to use your professional abilities to help someone’s work you want to promote.
- The Hate Is Built In – It seems critique of media or technology and so on doesn’t work – is it possible because our hate of lousy stuff is built into culture?
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
The hijinks of the proverbial fish out of water has been the source for many works in entertainment. The idea of taking someone from his or her element and then dropping them in an entirely new setting has great comic potential. Even Shakespeare has used the device, in such works as A Midsummer’s Night Dream and As You Like It. The latter even had the dichotomy of country and city life, one of the first being The Beverly Hillbillies.
The Beverly Hillbillies had a simple premise, as explained in its theme song – Jed Clampett, played by Buddy Ebsen, finds oil on his land, gets rich, and buys a home in Beverly Hills. Being a dirt poor farmer, Jed never saw modern conveniences. His family, Ellie Mae, Jethro, and Granny, played by Donna Douglas, Max Baer, Jr, and Irene Ryan, weren’t much better; Granny didn’t take to the advances like Jed had, like motor cars. Having a big cement pond, known to most people as a pool, was a source of amazement. Fortunately, Jed had the help of his financial advisor and next door neighbour Milburn Drysdale, played by Raymond Bailey, and his secretary, Jane Hathaway, played by Nancy Kulp. Episodes revolved around the cultural conflict between the Clampetts and the Drysdales, ascerbated by schemes by either Jethro or Drysdale. Jethro’s scheming was more to get the pretty girls of Beverly Hills; Drysdale’s scams involved using Jed’s money to get richer. Not everyone had a conflict. Jane Hathaway was friendly with the Clampetts, even with Granny, and Ellie Mae soothed some rough patches by being her charming self.
The series ran for nine years, from 1962 until 1971, switching from black and white to colour in its fourth season. Despite negative reviews from critics, The Beverly Hillbillies was a ratings hit, being the number one show in its early years. Even when it was cancelled, it was in the top third of TV series on the air. CBS, however, bowed to pressure from advertisers who wanted a younger audience and cancelled many of its shows with a heartland theme in what became known as the Rural Purge. Along with The Beverly Hillbillies, other long runners cancelled included Green Acres, Mayberry RFD, The Ed Sullivan Show, and Hee Haw, making way for new series All in the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, and M*A*S*H, shows that reflected the social mood of the early 70s. Rural series would return, such as The Dukes of Hazzard in 1979, but they wouldn’t dominate the airwaves as before. The Beverly Hillbillies had a reunion movie in 1981, catching up on where the characters went over the decade since cancellation.
The Beverly Hillbillies did make an impact on the mind space of audiences. Even if someone hadn’t seen the show, difficult in the age of syndication, the theme song could easily become an earworm. Even “Weird Al” Yankovic would make reference to the show, releasing the song “The Beverly Hillbillies/Money for Nothing” as part of the soundtrack for 1989’s UHF. Jed Clampett represented the rags-to-riches dream, something that appeals to a wide audience. Naturally, a TV series that had such a wide audience was ripe for being adapted as a feature film.
In 1993, that’s exactly what happened. The Beverly Hillbillies was released by Twentieth Century Fox, introducing the Clampetts to the big screen. Casting was a strong point for the adaptation, with a number of comedians and comic actors playing the major characters. Taking over the role of Jed was Jim Varney, best known for playing the character Earnest in the various ads and movies. Meanwhile, Cloris Leachman played Granny, Lily Tomlin portrayed Jane Hathaway, and Dabney Coleman was Mr. Drysdale. Rounding out the cast were Diedrich Bader as Jethro and Erika Eleniak as Ellie Mae.
The movie starts in the Tennesee Smoky Mountains, showing the Clampetts at home. Ellie Mae fends off a bear to get wild honey for dinner while Ol’ Jed’s out hunting for food. The hunt is straight from the TV series’ title credits, with crude oil bubbling out where Jed’s missed shot discovers the patch. The first ten minutes of the movie is spent recreating the events of the opening credits, including the theme song, which has one small change. In the original series, Jed’s farm was worth $96 million, in 1962 dollars. The oil crises of the 70s, in 1973 and in 1979, occurred after The Beverly Hillbillies had been cancelled. A barrel of oil, worth $2.85 in 1962, was worth $16.75 in 1993. The movie Jed didn’t become a millionaire; he became a billionaire, and the theme song was modified to reflect the change.
While the hills of the Smoky Mountains might not have changed for Jed between 1962 and 1993, Los Angeles had. Culture shock occurred using the modern LA. The iconic image of the Clampetts in their old truck on the LA freeways remained, but the reaction to it by drivers changed. Jethro’s truck caused a traffic jam, and while drivers may have fumed in 1962, things got ugly in the early 90s. Shooting incidents between drivers on the freeways hit the news. The movie picked up on it, and one irate passenger in a car that Jethro had cut off was quite willing to express his anger with the aid of a pistol until Jed trumped him with his own shotgun.
Meanwhile, Mr. Drysdale is trying to make things welcoming for Jed’s money and for Jed. His assistant, Woodrow Tyler, played by Rob Schneider, also has plans for Jed’s money, plans require Jed to not have it. Tyler and his partner in embezzlement, Laura Jackson, played by Lea Thompson, hatch a scheme when they find out that Jed is looking for a wife to help refine tomboy Ellie Mae. Laura becomes French etiquette teacher Laurette Voleur, despite not speaking French, to infiltrate the Clampett estate and woo Jed. Granny discovers the plot while making a batch of her special brand of medicine, known to Revenue Agents as “moonshine”, but Laura and Woodrow kidnap her to have her committed to a retirement home. Miss Hathaway suspects something is up, but is unable to get Jed, who has seen Granny disappear before a wedding before, or the police involved. Jane turns to one of LA’s top private detectives, Barnaby Jones, played by Buddy Ebsen himself, to locate Granny and get her back to the estate before Jed commits to a terrible mistake.
While Jed’s the subject of several matchmakers, other subplots are also playing out. Ellie Mae heads off to high school, with Morgan Drysdale, played by Kevin Connolly, showing her around. The high school allowed the film to contrast the Clampetts with the residents of Beverly Hills. The bullies took travellers’ cheques and wire transfers, there was a cappucino vendor in the hallway before class, the girls all had cell phones*. One girl even had a FAX machine in her Porsche. In a movie that could have relied on, “Hey, look at them yokels,” humour, Ellie Mae’s subplot turns the culture shock around, adding the audience’s own shock and expectations to the mix.
One of the movie’s main strengths is that it respects the characters from the TV series. While there is some fun poked at Jethro’s lack of smarts, that element existed in the original. Jed is still the calm, wise centre of the family, doing what he can for his loved ones despite his lack of education. And, even with the lack of education, Jed is portrayed as a smart man. The contrast comes from Woodrow Tyler, an educated man without wisdom.
The cast was well chosen. Talented comedic actors who understood the role plus promising young actors presented the script well. The actors suited the roles. Dabney Coleman was ideal as Mr. Drysdale. Cloris Leachman channelled Irene Ryan as Granny. Diedrich Bader turned in a dual role, as Jethro and as his sister, Jethrine, just as Max Baer did in the original series, without turning Jethrine into a charicature. The script captured the feel of an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies, right down to using the closing theme at the end. Tropes that haven’t been used in some time, like the speeding of the film during especially frenetic scenes, were in use as they would have been in the TV series.
The cast and crew showed great respect to the original material and actors. The film played out like an episode of the TV series, taking advantage of the 92 minute running time to add scenes of culture shock on the part of the Beverly Hills locals. In short, The Beverly Hillbillies movie was an almost perfect adaptation of the original show.
Next week, Ocean’s 11
* Today, that’s a given. In 1993, cell phones were mostly used for business purposes, and usually by the higher executives instead of the rank and file. The critical people usually had pagers when they had to be on call.
This post originally appeared at The Oak Wheel on July 31st, 2014.
(Dear Reader, you may also consider this article’s title to be The Secret History of Fandom, because that’s also what it is)
Fandom has a long history. A long and secret history, which common men are not permitted to know, since the days of ancient Babylon. And today, young grasshopper, I shall teach you to how to harness this power, the power of Fandom, but only for good and not for evil.
Okay, that’s not all true. Fandom really only dates back to the 1887 (people have been raving about Sherlock forever), even if fanfiction, as such, dates back even further (Hello, Willie Shakespeare). But in these two articles I will be teaching you how to harness this mighty power of the gods, and why you should even bother.
First of all, why write fanfiction?
Because I do think that you should at least consider it. It may not be your cuppa, but don’t discard the tea before you give it a good look over.
Now, not everybody think that it makes sense. Take George R. R. Martin for perhaps the most famous example: “But don’t write in my universe, or Tolkien’s, or the Marvel universe, or the Star Trek universe, or any other borrowed background. Every writer needs to learn to create his own characters, worlds, and settings. Using someone else’s world is the lazy way out. If you don’t exercise those ‘literary muscles,’ you’ll never develop them.”
Well, let me say something, Mr. Martin: You’re very silly and I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. (Also, if I can make a brief tangent? What is Martin going on about talking about creative laziness, when half of the crap in the fantasy genre is still taking its cues from Tolkien?)
There are two benefits to writing fanfiction that I can think of right off the bat:
- You learn how to write within the constraints of someone else’s world. Constraints, friend. Maybe you’re not even very good at building worlds or characters and you want to practice just writing stories first, taking it one step at a time. That’s good.
And even if you don’t have any trouble with building worlds and characters, it’s still good practice to write within certain limitations. You can set these constraints any number of ways, but there’s something to be said for seeing if you can write specifically within the bounds of an already-existing personality.
- Building your own fandom. Yes sir, visiting someone else’s playground can help you build interest in your own. Take Joe Ducie, for example. He got his start writing fanfiction like Harry Potter and the Sword of the Hero and Harry Potter and the Wastelands of Time until, sometimes getting thousands of reviews for each story, he transitioned to writing original works and even appeared on a Worldbuilders video. Fanlore has a page about this phenomenon.
- Full disclosure here, I don’t really know how I feel about this, but if I’m going to be comprehensive then dang it, I’m going to be comprehensive: You can use your fanfiction to test the waters, as it were, and then translate it into original fic form if it makes a huge splash. You may be thinking that this is totally ridiculous and nobody could possibly think it could work, but… Well…
You know that City of Bones movie that came out August last year? Cassandra Clare was once— brace yourself, because this is a very inventive pseudonym— Cassandra Claire, writer of The Very Secret Diaries (Lord of the Rings fanfiction) and The Draco Trilogy. The latter is more relevant, because The Mortal Instruments recycles numerous characters, plot elements, and even text from Draco.
Exhibit B is— get ready now— 50 Shades of Grey. E. L. James really takes the cake, as she originally wrote it as Master of the Universe, a sordid Twilight fanfiction, under the penname Snowqueen’s Icedragon. What did she do to translate the story into original fic format?
Just changed the names, actually…
Fanfiction gets a bad name, but it’s honestly been going on for a freaking long while. “Derivative work” or “Transformative work” might be better names, and under that auspice you can see a whole bunch of literature in a different light. The Aeneid steals Aeneas from the Iliad.WilliamShakespeare’s work was heavily derivative or transformative, especially in the first stage of his career. Bram Stoker’s Dracula gave birth to Nosferatu and basically every other story that ties Vlad Tepes to the vampire myth.
Heck, even The Matrix is not too far off from a cyberpunk-skinned rendition of Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles (as Morrison says in a Suicide Girls interview, “They [the Wachowskis] should have kept on stealing from me and maybe they would have wound up with something to really be proud of”). And the 19th Century story Edison’s Conquest, as Cracked tells us, gave birth to some of the most fundamental tropes of science fiction.
Look, we’ll just stop here and say, “Fanfiction is so embedded in our history that Cracked wrote another article on the topic.”
If I seem like I’m talking an awful lot about fanfiction, it’s because it’s very, very important. Even if you don’t write fanfiction, encouraging others to write fanfiction of your work will be a very important part of growing a fandom, so any moral imperatives against fanfiction have to be handled before we can move further. Because math proves everything, we’ll turn it into an equation:
No fanfiction = no fandom
(Exceptions may exist, sure, but you wouldn’t bet your career on rolling a “1” on a twenty-sided die, would you?)
Your turn: Whether you agree or not, what do you think about fanfiction, and why?
Prohibiton still affects American life, despite the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment by the Twenty-first effective December 1933. The War Against Alcohol meant that law-abiding people were not allowed to drink. For some, that was enough to not touch a drop of anything except de-alcoholized beer. For others, this was an opportunity. Organized crime made hundreds of thousands a day supplying illegal hooch. The penalties for violating the Volstead Act, the law that proscribed the crimes and penalties regarding alcohol, were a slap on the wrist at best; up to $1000 for a first offense of making or selling booze and up to $2000 for subsequent offenses, with the fine increasing to $10,000 in 1929. The Untouchables went after Al Capone for tax evasion instead Volstead Act violations for this reason; the Volstead Act just didn’t have the teeth needed to stop the gangster.
When Prohibition was repealed, many rum-runners and bootleggers were suddenly out of a job. For many, part of the thrill of bootlegging was outrunning the Revenuers. They modified their cars to get as much speed without sacrificing space for moonshine. Without the chase, they had to find something else to do. They did – they started racing each other. The ultimate result of the racing was the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, or NASCAR. The effects don’t stop there, though. Even with Prohibition gone, counties were still allowed to ban alcohol within their boundaries. Bringing booze through one could get a person fined or imprisoned, depending on the volume. Smokey and the Bandit was based on this idea, forty-four years after the end of Prohibition. Television, where trends are picked up and run into the ground, picked up the idea of former bootleggers doing car stunts two years later, in 1979 with The Dukes of Hazzard.
To be fair, The Dukes of Hazzard owed far more to Moonrunners than to Smokey and the Bandit, at least as far as themes and setting goes, thanks to Gy Waldron, creator of both. Bandit, however, was popular enough to get people wanting to see more car chase scenes. The opening credits set up the series, with the Balladeer, Waylon Jennings, singing “Good Ol’ Boys“. The titular Dukes, cousins Bo and Luke, were on probation for bootlegging after their Uncle Jesse had promised to stop making moonshine*. To round out the cast, Daisy Duke helped Jesse on his farm and, to help make ends meet, worked as a waitress at the Boar’s Nest. Daisy was originally meant to be Ms Fanservice on the show, but the writers developed her beyond just that. Since the show depended on car chases for the main action, it would be negligent to not mention the General Lee, the Duke boys’ Dodge Charger. Of course, if that was all to the show, it’d be dull. Enter the antagonists, Boss J.D. Hogg and his right hand man, Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltraine. As villains went, they weren’t evil or destructive. Boss Hogg wasn’t power hungry as such; power was just a means to get money. Roscoe even had his limits on what he would do for Boss Hogg. Adding to the light drama, Boss Hogg and Uncle Jesse were both bootleggers themselves in their youth, rivals. The main difference between them was that J.D. was there for the money while Jesse was there for the thrills and challenges.
The series ran on CBS from 1979 until 1986. Most episodes focused on the Dukes thwarting a ploy by Boss Hogg to pull a swindle, to get the Dukes arrested, or to get the Dukes’ farm. The other episodes either had the boys or Daisy working on their own goals or had an outside threat arrive in Hazzard that the Dukes and Boss Hogg had to work together to defeat. Car chases occurred, with vehicles racing around and over obstacles. Over 300 Chargers were destroyed over the course of the series, making replacements hard to find by the last season.
The series spawned off the spin-off Enos, based on the character of Deputy Enos Strate, and an animated series. A reunion movie, aptly titled The Dukes of Hazzard: Reunion! and also known as Reunion in Hazzard, brought the surviving actors back in 1997 after the series gained renewed popularity through reruns on The Nashville Network. The reunion allowed viewers and fans to find out what happened to the characters; Bo had become a NASCAR driver, Luke became a fire-jumper, Daisy returned from Duke University with a Ph.D, Roscoe became the new Boss of Hazzard County after the death of J.D. Hogg**, and Cooter, the mechanic, arrived from Washington, where he represented Hazzard County***.
In 2005, Warner Bros. released The Dukes of Hazzard, a big screen remake of the TV series. The film was a bit of an origins story, changing some of the background of the characters. Bo and Luke, now played by Seann William Scott and Johnny Knoxville respectively, weren’t parolees, nor was Uncle Jesse, now played by Willie Nelson. Bo was looking forward to racing in the 70th Annual Hazzard County Road Rally****, trying to get his fifth consecutive win. Luke, meanwhile, was just trying to avoid getting shot by irate fathers. Jesse still distilled moonshine, the boys making the deliveries and Daisy, played by Jessica Simpson, helping when she wasn’t working at the Boar’s Nest. Bo has a few obstacles in his way to winning, one being the return of Billy Prickett, who also is a four-time winner.
The second obstacle was the damage to Bo’s car, an orange 1969 Dodge Charger, after having to outrun yet another shotgun-weilding irate father after Luke. Fortunately, Cooter, portrayed by David Koechner, was able to fix up the car, adding a hemi engine for extra power and giving the Charger a new paint job. The biggest obstacle in Bo’s way, though, was Boss JD Hogg, played by Burt Reynolds. JD and his right hand man, Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane, played by M.C. Gainey, have a scheme to take over all of Hazzard County, including the Duke farm. JD has Rosco plant a still in the Duke’s barn, mainly because the Sheriff can’t find the real one there, to give pretense to arresting the Dukes.
Bo and Luke escape, and start digging around. They discover samples that were kept in Boss Hogg’s safe and, after recovering the General Lee and making a fool out of the Hazzard County Sheriff’s Department, the cousins head to Atlanta to find out what the samples are. Being Dukes, they get on the wrong side of the law early by not maintaining the speed limit. In a twist, they were two miles per hour below the speed limit of 10mph when the campus police pulled them over. The boys, though, reacted as they normally do and leave the police golf cart in the dust.
While hiding from campus police, the boys go to the university’s geology lab, where they’re told their samples indicate the presence of coal underneath Hazzard. Boss Hogg has several farms already under his control throug his dirty dealings. All he needs is to convene a hearing at the county courthouse, scheduled during the road rally. JD even sponsored Prickett, guarenteeing that everyone in Hazzard would be at the race and not the hearing. The Duke boys figure out a plan, one that has Bo arriving at the race, even with most of Hazzard’s finest and even some of Georgia’s state police trailing.
At this point, I need to point out that my “review copy” was the unrated version, not the theatrical version. Elements that would need to be cut from a PG-13 film were re-added. Fanservice, topless nudity, swearing, PG-13 has limits. However, even the target rating is a small issue. The original TV series was a light family action/comedy. Sure, things could get dire for the Dukes, but things would work out. PG-13, while it does allow a younger audience in, means that there will be portions of the movie not suitable for a general family audience. The humour was much more low brow, with more groin shots and drug humour than in the TV series run.
The approach of the movie was much like the original Dukes. JD had a scheme that needed thwarting by the Dukes. The Balladeer, voiced by Junior Brown, narrated. The movie even included freeze frames at cliffhangers, as the TV series would do before commercials. Risky, movie audiences have expectations about flow and not seeing ads during a film, but the freezes harkened back to the TV show and, just as importantly, they weren’t overdone.
The cast, though, is a different quibble. The Bo and Luke of the movie weren’t really the Bo and Luke of the TV series. The leads were probably better named Coy and Vance, except very few fans of the series would want to see a movie with the replacement Dukes. Even Daisy wasn’t quite Daisy. The role was Jessica Simpson’s first in movies, and like Rihanna in Battleship, the singer didn’t bring that much to a small role other than be a draw for the younger crowd. That said, Burt Reynolds as Boss Hogg brought a new interpretation, a smarmier JD who was more willing to cross the line to get what he wanted. Willie Nelson was as cantakerous as Denver Pyle was with Uncle Jesse, but, again, added his own interpretation.
Despite the younger cast, the movie still felt like an episode of the TV series. The elements were there; JD Hogg’s scheming, Rosco aiding with help of his basset hound Flash, Enos having a crush on Daisy. Where there were issues with the acting and script, the stunt driving more than made up. Cars flew. One stunt involved flinging the General Lee up on to an overpass into traffic. What few 1968, 1969, and 1970 Dodge Chargers that remained after the TV series were used up in the movie, but their sacrifices ensured that at least the vehicular portion of The Dukes of Hazzard lived up to expectations.
The movie did well enough in theatres, doubling their budget domestically before considering the international box office. Critics weren’t impressed, but Dukes wasn’t meant to be more than just fluff. The movie had a few challenges; older fans would be more likely to enjoy country music while the younger audience in because of Jessica Simpson were more apt to listen to pop. Feelings about certain symbols of the American South and the American Civil War are more divided; the movie did have a scene covering the various reactions to the flag on the General Lee’s roof.
Overall, as mentioned above, the movie did feel like it belonged on the TV series. The problems come in with the rating and the sexual humour, so the adaptations feels slightly off. There was respect towards the original, but the movie could have used a little more time perculating.
Next week, The Beverly Hillbillies.
* Moonshine is the popular name for alcohol brewed or distilled illegally. There was no quality control beyond the moonshiner’s testing.
related programming dropped.
** Sorrell Booke, who had portrayed J.D. Hogg, had passed away in 1994.
*** Ben Jones, who had played Cooter, served in the House of Representatives for Georgia’s 4th district from 1989 until 1993.
**** Assuming the movie was meant to take place the year of release, that would put the first race in 1935, about a year and a half after Prohibition ended. If you give the rum-runners a year to race each other due to a lack of bootlegging to be done and get organized, that puts the first race in the right time frame.
Imagine a record shop with records that never were. It sounds like something out of a Neil Gaiman story, but Toby Barlow of Public Pool has his own vision. It’s a project for his art collective where artists submit an album cover for a band that never was. A random L&P will then be labeled and put in these albums – and they’ll be sold (with the artist getting the money). That’s the kind of crazy art project I can get behind, so let’s talk to Toby!
1) Toby, how did you get involved in all of this?
I’ve been working in and around the arts since I was a kid, I grew up at an artists’ colony called Blue Mountain Center in upstate New York. Actually, my first novel, Sharp Teeth, first began as an idea for an art installation. Then I moved to Detroit and the enormous opportunity for creativity here just gobsmacked me. I’ve been going non-stop ever since.
2) Tell us more about Public Pool.
It’s a collective space put together a few years ago now by some artists and art lovers in Hamtramck, which is its own little city tucked in the heart of Detroit. We’ve had great shows with artists like Scott Hocking, Lauren Semivan, Mitch Cope, The Hygienic Dress League and a ton of others.
3) What other art spaces and collectives can you reccomend – and is there a good way to find them?
There are great art spaces all over Detroit. Popps Packing, in our neighborhood, is fantastic. N’Namdi Gallery in Sugar Hill has spectacular shows. Detroit Artists Market on Woodward is really good. And then there are places like Powerhouse Productions that are worth checking out. And, of course, Heidelberg and MOCAD. I’m only scratching the surface here, and I’m not sure the best way to find them all. We should probably have some Detroit Artists Guide on the world wide web (oh boy, great, another project.)
We hatched this plot because we we sitting around talking about art and we realized that, for most of us, LP covers were the first real art we put our hands on. It seemed a tragedy that this magnificent form had devolved into being little jpg images in an itunes store. So we thought we would create a show as a celebration to the actual thing itself, an homage, and a chance to recreate the record stores we loved as kids.
Plus, everyone has band names they play around with, or song names, or entire mythologies that they have spun around imaginary characters. We thought we should give artists and designers a show to play with all that.
We thought it was important too to get people to construct an actual cover that we could slip an LP into. We like the idea of buying a bunch of LP’s from the local used record shop, covering the label on the LP with the label made by the artist, and then slipping it into the artist’s cover. It adds some fun and mystery to the thing, cause no one will know what the actual album is and if there is a relation between the fact and fiction. Maybe there will be, maybe there won’t. That’s when art gets intriguing and mind bendingly fun.
5) How has response been so far?
Fantastic. Boing Boing picked up on it early, and that caught a lot of people’s attention. People seem to love it, and there is, of course, a huge maker culture out there of people looking to create actual things. Obviously in a show like this, the more is the merrier, so we hope people will still get the itch to make their own album.
6) You said if you get enough submissions you may publish a book. Are you planning self-publishing?
Well, we’ll see how many entries we get and what the calibre is, it’s one of those things where you don’t know if you have a book until you’re staring right at it. But if Taschen doesn’t want to publish it, we might have to do it ourselves.
7) How can we help promote this idea?
Tell everyone you know. Make your own beautiful LP. Send it to us. We’ll sell it and you’ll make money.
8) Anything you want to share to encourage artists in this crazy time?
This is an amazing time for artists. Everything is beautiful and tragic. I don’t think real artists need any encouragement. They just need to stay off their iphones and get the work done.
Folks, you know what to do . . . and if you don’t, spread the word and enter the contest.
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
This post originally appeared at The Oak Wheel on July 17th, 2014.
Second Contact? Near-First Contact?
I don’t really know what the best term would be, but what we’re talking about is that time after the first contact has been made between two alien civilizations, but not so long after that they’re well-acclimated to each other. In other words, early enough that even the xenophiles are experiencing culture shock.
As before, humans can play either side of the field in the options presented. (more…)
Experience comes through learning from mistakes. These mistakes can be made by someone else. Lost in Translation has looked at a number of adaptations, remakes, and reboots over the past three years, covering works of a variety of quality. One of the difficult parts of the reviews is differentiating quality of the movie from the quality of the adaptation.
Generally, a bad movie is bad everywhere. Not only does it miss the point of the original, the bad movie also misses the point of pacing, characterization, plot, and entertainment. A good movie, though, may not necessarily be a good adaptation. A good adaptation may not work as a good movie; there could be elements that don’t carry over during the translation between media.
In general, there are nine possible outcomes, combining the degrees of quality. Along with beging good or bad, there’s the middle stage, the decent by not outstanding. The middle stage is the interesting part when looking at adaptations here at Lost in Translation; the work shows signs of understanding the original work while still missing key elements. I can highlight both and show why the adaptation works and why it needs more thought.
Good work, good adaptation is getting more common. With movies, studios are realizing that an accurate adaptation will please the original work’s fanbase. Word of mouth counts for a lot more today than in pre-Internet days; anyone can be a reviewer and can get their views out during the movie. Risk-averse Hollywood needs the fanbase onside. However, it’s still difficult to get a pitch perfect adaptation. The best I’ve run into so far were Scott Pilgrim versus the World and Blade Runner. Neither movie adapted the original fully, instead going with what I’ve called a “partial adaptation”. Blade Runner left out a number of elements from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep just to be filmable. Scott Pilgrim followed one plot line, the seven evil exes, and ignored some subplots; however, the movie used the graphic novel as the storyboard and filmed in Toronto to keep what was filmed accurate.
At the other end of the spectrum, there are few bad works that are also bad adaptations. Few people set out to make a deliberately bad movie. Even Ed Wood* was putting in his best effort to make the movie he envisioned. With today’s blockbuster budgets breaking past $200 million, studios want to see the movie succeed. Still, bad movies happen. The worst I’ve reviewed here was Alien from L.A., a very loose adaptation of Journey to the Centre of the Earth that had problems that go far beyond the script. Movies don’t get featured on Mystery Science Theatre 3000 without going that extra step.
Bad movies make it easy to point out what went wrong, but there’s nothing to point out where there was effort. A lack of effort dooms adaptations, but even works that try can fail. On the flip side, movies that have the deck stacked against it succeed against the odds. The size of the budget is no guarentee; the big budget Battleship suffered from being too tied to the Save the Cat script formula while trying to reflect game play, while Flash Gordon was successful as an adaptation and became a cult classic despite executive meddling. It’s these middle cases that make Lost in Translation interesting.
The good movie/bad adaptation combination comes out when a studio has a vision for the final product that deviates from the original work. Real Steel was a family movie about a man reconnecting with his son through the rounds of a robot boxing league. The Richard Matheson short story “Steel” that the movie was based on, though, was about a desperate man stepping into a ring posing as a robot in order to earn money to fix his own entrant. Yet, Real Steel is worth seeing for what it is. The 2014 Robocop could fall into this category; it eschewed the over-the-top violence and satire of the 1980s, reflecting the New Teens instead.
The reverse, the bad movie/good adaptation, is rare. The effort needed to create a good adaptation would also go towards making a good movie. The eye to detail that leads to good adaptations would also go to making sure that the movie’s pacing suits. Cult classics have the potential to fall in this category; Street Fighter: The Movie might qualify. But, most bad adaptations go the route of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li, missing the point of the original work while still committing sins of the bad movie.
The middle case, the okay movie/okay adaptation, is ideal for reviewing. This sort of adaptation allows for showing what does work and what doesn’t, providing a contrast. These adaptations tend to be shallow, either because the format of the adaptation doesn’t allow for depth or the adapter doesn’t quite get the original. The novel-to-movie adaptation can easily fall here; Dragonlance and Firefox are the exemplars. In both cases, the adapters put an effort into being faithful, but the length of the adaptations prevented from getting deep just to cover the story. Dragonlance also has the problem of a larger cast; in a movie, this prevents the audience from really getting to know anyone. Television, either a regular series or a mini-series, could have been the better choice, something that A Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead have shown.
All the above discussion looks solely at the quality of the adaptation. The original work hasn’t come into play, yet its quality also becomes an issue. With Harry Potter, JK Rowling created a vibrant world that people want to visit all from playing with words. The fanbase expected no less from an adaptation. Meanwhile, the original Battlestar Galactica was seen as a throwback to an earlier for of science fiction, ignoring that the series routinely was in the top ratings until the network, ABC, couldn’t make up its mind whether it wanted the series and moved it around or pre-empted it. The popular view of Galactica gave the remake room to experiment and take a harder look at what it would be like for a ragtag fleet escaping the destruction of its homeworlds. It is very possible for an adaptation or a remake to be seen as better than the original; the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series is seen as an improvement on the movie.
What all the above means for Lost in Translation is that the choice of works to review needs to be diverse. If all I did was review just good adaptations or just bad ones, I’d be missing the full picture. Quality of movie doesn’t matter; neither does box office success. Limiting myself would mean missing on works that would allow for greater understanding on how adaptations work.
Next week, the July news round up.
So I had a dream about a comic adaption of a series of horror fantasy short stories. The art was almost Sepia-toned. I recall a picture of a shrine in a city, and the city and shrine looked to be mostly metal, almost as if the city was made of pipes and plates, though they came together elegantly.
The story was a mix of Lovecraftian and Celtic type legends, and may have been in a pace called Icyth. The first story started the entire cycle, and was about the arising of the Mathulesium, a one-man mausoleum from the depths of the sea. Another story was about a servant race who followed the same religion as their masters changing and possibly rebelling. Ultimately the story ended in the meltdown of the civilization and anarchy reigning.
So, folks, you have your story seed, go for it 😉
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
