What's wrong with Hollywood -

Got on a kick in the last month where I’m reading the original James Bond novels.  It started when I was watching Moonraker and decided that I needed to see how close it was to the original book.  It wasn’t even close enough for government work folks.  Which got me to thinking why does Hollyweird do that?  They buy a property that has sold well and has a solid fan base, then throw out everything that made the property popular in order to tell their own story.  I get throwing out characters that have one or two lines – writing is overall a lot cheaper when it comes to hiring characters for your story, but gutting the structure and then wondering why it collapses without making your money back is something I don’t get.

Having said that, let’s look at how the novels and the movies compare, shall we?  I’ll try to avoid spoilers on sixty year old novels and fifty year old movies.  Oh, the hell I will.  I’m also going to talk about the books in order of publication, not in movie order.

Casino Royale – First Bond Book, and it first got a treatment for TV in 1954 for CBS’s Climax! series.  Given the time of the adaption, they did what they could with the material – there is a lot missing, but in 1954 you couldn’t show someone getting their testicles smashed with a rug beater on TV.  Hell, you can’t show that on TV sixty years later. 
Woody Allen did a pastiche of the novel and the movies in the 1960’s – but there were already better Bond Pastiche’s out there – Matt Helm and the Flint movies come to mind.
The reboot of the Bond Movies with Daniel Craig is probably the closest to the book but there are still some changes that Hollywood made in order to do something.  What, I don’t know.

Live and Let Die – First Roger Moore Bond film.  First descent into what has been called Bondian High Camp.  Some major changes to the storyline – Heroin smuggling rather than gold.  Lack of the Soviet anti spy group SMERSH as villians.  Moved the major center of the movie from NYC to New Orleans.  Decided lack of Felix Leiter getting attacked by a shark and losing an arm and a leg.  Addition of redneck sheriff to appeal to ‘Muricans.

Moonraker – Movie centers around plot by Hugo Drax to wipe out humanity and repopulate the world with his select few.  Book centers around plot by Nazi holdout Hugo Drax and fellow members of Werewolf to destroy London as revenge for Germany’s defeat in WWII.  Method of destruction?  Atomic warhead on a missile.  I’d have much rather seen the story from the book than the overly complicated plot in the movie.

Diamonds are Forever – Movie revolves around a plot by SPECTRE to use stolen diamonds to seize control of Willard White’s space company to build a laser to shoot down space hardware.  Last of the Sean Connery Bond films until they remade Thunderball as Never Say Never Again.  The book revolves around a SMERSH plot to fund activities in the US and abroad using stolen diamonds.  The book also features the return of Leiter with his prosthetic arm and leg, driving a Studillac – a part Studebaker, part Cadillac automobile. 

From Russia with Love – The movie revolves around a plot by SPECTRE to assassinate James Bond in a public, embarrassing manner, so as to sow discontent and fear in the western spy agencies.  The book revolves around a plot by SMERSH to assassinate James Bond in a public, embarrassing manner in order to sow discontent and fear in the western spy agencies.  WAIT A MINUTE THEY ACTUALLY FOLLOWED THE BOOK IN THIS ONE?  Yup, they did.

That’s the first five.  Next week I’ll go over the next five or so.

And now for something completely different -

Thought I'd give ya'll a bit of poetry today -

Linear Motion

Black bags lined up in the road

waiting for their people to find them and move on

Brown dog sniffing long lines of black bags

 looking for that special something

someone always tries to bring back in country from R&R

Sand and heat, a haze over the airport

I swore I'd never leave your side for again

Here I sit on the bus waiting to line up

to go up country again

Fruitful search to find my bags

then on line again into the Terminal

Passing through Security –

Boots off, pockets empty, pants held up by a prayer

through the metal detector

Grabbing my stuff and drag it all to the end of the stainless steel slab

contorting to get redressed

while keeping in mind local

paranoia involving shoes 

Line up one more time to recheck the other checks,

then on to the gate

to wait – 0800 in the morning and its already

80 degrees and climbing inside the terminal

Sweat and doze, waiting on someone to say the Magic Words

Flight time and one more line to recheck that we're not smuggling Dinar

we could only have gotten in the terminal to Al Asad

The air on the flight line is dry and hot a dragons kiss with no promise of resolution or restitution

SAAB built prop driven chariot awaiting us in the haze of dust, dreaming of the gentle lands of the north

We board to fly north by north west

Sand so thick in the air it can be walked upon we travel onward skimming through the haze sometimes above it sometimes in it headed for an Oasis where we will work for the next year

Circling once at our destination, we return to

Baghdad, the landing conditions not right

Just so we can do it all again tomorrow.

If anyone is interested, its from Dusk at Tikrit by yours truely.

Why go out in public.

After a couple of weeks sitting around in pain, I decided to go out tonight.  The wife wasn't up for it, and the da in law asleep, so I got out of Dodge and down to the local twenty four hour watering hole.  I went in part for food, in part to quit seeing the same four walls, in part to work on some issues with the timeline for my novel, and in part to people watch.  It's the last one I want to discuss.

Why in the name of all anyone holds sacred do people go out with other people and then sit there mindlessly scrolling through email on a phone?  Admittedly I had my Kindle with me - but I was alone.  I don't get going out to spend time with another human being and spending the whole meal looking at a phone or texting.  But I'm old, I guess.

Storytelling

Humans tell stories.  Its what we do.  We've been doing it since Gog and Ogg sat down by the light of the firebeast they had tamed and talked about how the hunting was over the next ridge.  Gog probably embellished the encounter he had with a wolf, and Ogg had to one up him somehow. 
The oldest know literature is around five thousand years old.  Think about that for a minute.  Depending on your point of view, humanity (anatomically modern humans, that is) is between six thousand (the Bishop Usher estimate) and 200000 years old. I fall in the second camp.  So, out of 200,000 years of human existence, we have six thousand years of writing down our stories.  What I find interesting is we still tell those stories.  We still read them.  Although, I will admit, I'm going to be looking for a copy of the Instructions of Shuruppak for my Kindle.
So, what's the oldest thing you've read?  I've read bits of the Epic of Gilgamesh - not the parts that were stolen and reworked into the Bible, which is 3900 years old, give or take.  Then my reading jumps forward about 1100 years - the Illiad and the Odyssey. 
How does all this tie into writing?  Well, if you want to write well, you need to read.  The more widely you read, they better you will write.  I've read modern versions of the classics - David Drake has re-written the Odyssey and the Argonautica as science fiction.  Drake has also taken ancient Sumarian forms and used them as the basis for other works.  There are reasons that we continue to look at these writings, even in an age when writing without gender bias and getting away from gendernormative literature is supposed to be the norm.  They're wonking great stories at the core, and that's what you want to write.

Quick note

Sorry no posts lately - been sick.  Hoping to get back on track next week.

NYT and the State of Life

In today's New York Times there's a full page ad by 900 authors telling Amazon to stop putting authors at risk.  Because, you know, only Amazon is at fault in the whole Amazon vs Hachett kerfluffle.  Yesterday, there was a love piece (having read it I can't really call it journalism) with Douglas Preston - the man behind the ad in today's NYT.  You can read it here.  Others have fisked it in other places - the best being in my opinion here.  I'm not going to try to even break it down.  Instead I want to look at something Mr. Preston said in the NYT article -

About half his book sales used to come from Amazon. But since the retailer started discouraging orders, his paperback sales are down 61 percent and his e-book sales are down 62 percent.

Lets look at this for a minute - Amazon, a retailer, is discouraging sales.  Being of some small journalistic training, I went to Amazon, and found Douglas Preston.  Wait, if Amazon is discouraging sales, wouldn't they not have any material for him on their site?  I can get his books on Kindle and in dead tree format.  I can't pre-order his books.  Perhaps this is how they are discouraging his sales?  Amazon and his publisher don't have a contract - Amazon doesn't know that they'll be getting his latest book when it comes out.  Why should they try to sell something they may not get?  More importantly why should Amazon even be carrying his books currently except as used materials?  They don't have a contract with the supplier.  They can sell what stock they have in paper back and hard back format and sell what's on their servers in e-book format, if they're feeling nice about it.  They don't have to sell his materials at all. 

The other part of this is even more important - his sales have dropped.  According to other articles, Mr. Preston has stated that Amazon has pulled his discounts.  Again, I looked on the page - some materials are discounted, some aren't.  But here's something I've not seen anyone talk about - if it requires a discount for your materials to sell,  perhaps the suggested retail price is to high.  We, as consumers have been taught for years to look for the best deal - the cheapest price.  When you buy a car from "Uncle Ahab's Auto Shop", you don't pay the MSRP - you get the best deal you can from the dealership or you move on to the next one that will work with you.  People do the same thing with their entertainment - if the best price comes at a discount you go for it.  But if the best you can get is what the manufacturer recommends, you're going to think twice about buying it.  Especially when it comes to entertainment - and lets face it, reading is entertainment.  When you're worried about feeding the family, you're not going to spend ten bucks when you can spend five.  And when your publisher insists that the best price for your goods is not something the market will bear, you're going to lose sales.  When your publisher wants e-book prices set high enough that its cheaper for people to buy paperbacks, your sales are going to suffer.  But that's not the retailers fault.  Its basic economics. 

Saturday Snippet.

Been writing dialog for twelve year olds - not sure I got it right, but I was a weird twelve year old. 

Shannon stepped back into the main compartment.  “We’re almost at the LZ dad.  The shuttle is on the ground.  You want to do a direct transfer?”

            “Yeah.  If the air traffic controllers don’t object?”

            “Nah, they said its fine.  They want the shuttle out of here so they can go back to sleep, I think,” she said, grinning.

            “Could be.  Or they’ve got one hell of a raid going on in a game and want to get back to it.  So, pull us up next to the shuttle and I’ll unass this beast through the airlock.”

            “I can even slow down if you want,” she said grinning wickedly.

            “You’ve been talking to your mom about my driving again, haven’t you?”

            “Nah.  Been watching old footage of you making delivery runs.  The one where you offload a rolling truck.”

            “That took . . . coordination.”

            “Uh huh.  I’m going back up front.  Love you,” she said hugging me.

            “Love you too.  Send your sister back, and I’ll get out of your hair as quick as I can.”

            Samarra came back into the cabin.  I waited till she had taken a seat, then gave her a wolfish grin.  And waited.  I love my youngest daughter, but some days she can’t take silence and a knowing grin.

            “Umm dad, I didn’t mean to do it.”

            “Do what?”

            “Whatever it is you’ve found out about.”

            “You mean giving your brother shit because he wants to be a pilot?  Jed, go up front with Shannon for a bit, will you?”  I don’t believe in public humiliation – unless, of course, the inciting behavior is public.  Jed got up and wandered forward.  “And turn off the pickups back here, OK?”

            “Ok, geeze,” he said, slouching his way forward.

            “Oh, that.  It’s just such, such macho behavior.”

            “Did you ever think he wants to be a pilot because it interests him?”

            “But it’s, it’s like he just pulled it out of nowhere.  And it’s fun when he gets frustrated and storms off.”

            “And?  How’d you feel when Shannon was tweaking you about geography over anthropology?”

            “It’s not the same,” she said employing the logic of a twelve year old.

            “How is it different?”

            “Anybody can be a geographer.  Most pilots are male, according to Ms. Davis.”

            “I see.  And she says this is because of?”

            “Gender bias in the selection process.”

            “Hmm.  Has she explained that part of the problem might be that women like herself tell girls it’s hard to be a pilot?  That the perceived bias might be part of cultural norming that says men should be pilots?  Has she talked about the studies that show women are better pilots than men, or the fact that sixty five percent of the pilots here on Mars and out in the belt are female?”

            “No.”

            Great.  Something else to bring up when I got back from Burroughs.  “Tell you what, I want you to do some work while I’m gone.  Research both what Ms. Davis told you and what I told you.  Then make your argument either way, but I want to see the data to back things up.”

            “But dad, I’ve got a ton of work to do for school.”

            “And a ton of work to show you’re going to be someone who thinks, not just someone who parrots what others have told them is the ‘truth’.  Right now, I’m kinda wondering which it’s going to be.”

            “Yes papa.  I’ll get it done.”

            “Good girl,” I said, hugging her.  The truck rolled to a stop.  “I think we’re here.  Want to check my suit fittings for me?”