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horizondawn · 4 years

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I got so much more from my experience playing The Last of Us Part II than "revenge is bad". It's something I've literally and heavily been dealing with just this past month. I have a lot of deep thoughts here, so here we go. This isn’t saying you’re horrible if you didn’t like the game, but after sitting on it for a while after finishing, these are my thoughts of the series from my perspective through my real life experiences and own personal morals/beliefs and how I try to grow as a person. Key word: Try.

I have a family member who was murdered over 3 decades ago, and it still haunts me and my family to this day. I've had night terrors similar to the ones Ellie had in the game, even if I didn’t see the actual act, so I can only imagine how traumatizing it is for her. The murderer has been locked up and on death row ever since, and for a while I was set on going to the eventual execution. My anger fueled me for an awfully long time, but it wasn't until a few years ago I realized that is not me. Killing him (or in my case wanting satisfaction by watching a live execution) won't bring that family member back, and I would lose a part of myself if I actually went through with what I intended and held onto those feelings. And that was identical to what was happening to Ellie. I didn't want her to lose herself, because going down that destructive path means you come out in the worse possible way. Even worse than the ending we got. I was frustrated with Ellie because I understand her pain to an extent even if the situations are nothing alike, and that is the reason why I bonded, cared, and loved her even more, and I didn't think that was possible. The killing we committed as Joel didn't bother me as much in the first game because they were a bunch of hunters we never really understood. The one time I sat there unable to pull the trigger for a good while was when I was forced to shoot the surgeon, who was later revealed to be Abby’s father. I didn’t want to do it, but I had to in order to finish the game. In Part II we saw so many perspectives on top of knowing Ellie was losing it by deliberately going after these groups of people. The further on I played, even before getting to Abby's perspective when I hated her, I still didn't want Ellie to go through with it. From the very beginning, even though it was going to be brutal, I absolutely did not want Ellie to accomplish this goal. That’s mainly because I know the feeling, and it really does consume you.

It fucking hurt and I was so frustrated with Ellie when she left Dina, JJ, and their life together, but it was because I care so much for her and desperately wanted her to let her anger go rather than the actual writing. I felt for her as a real person rather than just a character who was written. Even if she has lost everything she ever had though, Ellie didn't lose herself or her humanity and ability to care in the end, and that sliver of hope made me feel relieved. The symbolism of her leaving the guitar Joel gifted her, that she could no longer play properly, was a sign of her forgiving him, and letting go.

And that's only from Ellie's perspective. I had to stop playing for a bit the moment I had to start playing as Abby, the biggest emotional whiplash ever. Holy hell though did my perspective change and I eventually loved her as a character. Even if I still hated her I love getting to see different perspectives. Seeing Abby’s story as well contributed to why that final fight made me sob. I stopped controlling Ellie and had her just standing there on the beach because I knew what was about to happen, and I did not want that. I really didn’t know if Ellie was actually going to kill Abby or not. And I cannot describe how many of the tears that were shed were from relief when she didn’t. I would literally love to play a game just focused on Abby and Lev though and see where they go as their dynamic was absolutely amazing and I will fight anyone who hates on Lev; he is such a treasure. And even though I will never forgive Abby for what she did, I’m tired of hanging onto that kind of anger, even if it’s for a fictional character. I want to understand everyone better in reality, because we are all human, and that makes things so very complicated. Add a fallen society after a world wide pandemic that has wiped out most of humanity and it makes it even more complicated. The human experience is insane and no one will ever be able to understand everyone else’s experiences and pain, and that’s what makes individual lives so vast and important.

I didn’t know any of the spoilers aside from Abby killing Joel, but I didn’t know the specifics, and I didn’t see a single screenshot spoiler. I still have no idea what the spoilers were beyond that. The moment it was announced a sequel was coming out I had a very big feeling Joel was going to die though, so I was okay with that if it happened from a narrative perspective. And you know why? Because the world of The Last of Us is cruel, and people are taken from Ellie in the blink of an eye. One moment Ellie confessed her love to Riley while sharing a sweet kiss and dancing and the next she’s bitten and we know what happened from there. One moment she’s travelling with Joel and Tess and Tess is gone. One moment she’s sharing a wonderful moment with Sam and Henry, and then they’re both gone. In the most brutal and cruel manner that fed her survival’s guilt. And that is why she was so upset with Joel. She lost so many people literally right in front of her. Then she learns the Fireflies are gone because of the one person she was able to grow to love as family, something she never ever had in her life, which also means her previous guardian, Marlene, her mother’s close friend, is gone as well because of him. As Tess quoted, “Guess what, we’re shitty people Joel; it’s been like that for a long time”. Tess was right. Joel was not a good person, and that is what made him unbelievably fascinating as a playable protagonist. But the player grew to know him from Ellie’s direct influence, not from the hardened person he became after 20 years of emotional distance from anyone following the death of Sarah. And that sudden harsh cruelty is exactly what I was expecting in the sequel, even if I wasn’t mentally or emotionally prepared for it. I certainly still got upset with every death there was: Joel, Jesse, Mel, Owen, Yara, everyone. The Last of Us is not focused on happy endings. At all. Of course we wish for that, and the new menu after completing the game shows that there was definitely some hope following what happened on that beach, but the world is more about human emotion and the crazy things we do for the people we love, even if it’s in the worse possible way, and it gives us that bit of questioning wonder with a tiny dash of hope for Ellie and her humanity. That’s exactly what Joel’s actions were for his love for Ellie at the end of the first game. This was Ellie doing the same for her love for him. And what Abby did for her love for her father. And the thing is some people wish we understood Abby from a different order, and I totally understand and respect that. But again, in real life we don’t get the background knowledge of everyone’s pasts either if not for research of some kind, which is why we need to make an effort to learn if possible. That’s all The Last of Us really has to offer, no matter which character’s story we are following, and that is what makes it so special. The second game isn’t driven by hatred alone. It’s about the other gruesome side of things for love.

Now gameplay wise, yes, I do believe structure could have been improved or done differently to help with the flow of the narrative here and there. And there were some moments that felt dragged. But that’s gameplay, not the story itself. I thought The Last of Us was emotional whiplash. That was just preparation to the roller coaster Part II would bring. And I’m not saying Part II is better. Both games are very different stories with very different perspectives, so I honestly can’t compare them. The original game brings the bond of two characters we all grew to fearlessly love. Part II brings what exists outside of the world of those two characters, and that they aren’t the only ones on this teeter totter of having done horrific things in the name of love in this cruel world they live in. Because we’re all only human. In game as Ellie, Joel, and Abby we pick up all of these letters throughout both games about these characters we don’t even see, let alone meet, and yet I want to know more about what happened to them. What are their stories during all of this? And even if you still hate Abby in the end, which is fine, there was that chance of seeing someone else’s story as well that intertwines with Ellie. I personally LOVE it when this happens. And all of us, no matter how horrible the world seems to fall apart, are capable of learning through the knowledge of other’s experiences.

#the last of us part II spoilers #the last of us part 2 spoilers #tlou2 spoilers #the last of us #the last of us part II #now if you are one of those people who threatened laura and her family #fuck you and seek out some real therapy #i made a post before the game came out that even if i ended up not liking it #i wouldn't waste my time letting the dislike consume me #and i will die myself before i threaten anyone with death threats #i tried to be sensitive here because i will not hate or call out people for not liking the game #because i can see why #but there are reasons why people love the game too #and this is my reason

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arecomicsevengood · 4 years

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More Movies I Watched. Should I Just Join Letterboxd?

Is Letterboxd fun? Not really sure if anyone gets anything out of these posts being located here, but also not sure I have any desire to join a website I’m not sure anyone I’m friends with is on, don’t necessarily feel a yearning to be around more people with too many opinions, who are maybe trying to parlay their “expertise” into writing jobs.

Portrait Of A Lady On Fire (2020) dir. Celine Sciamma

I’m going to consider this a 2020 movie as that’s when its wide release was in the States; also, this movie’s great and if considered a 2020 movie is easily the frontrunner for best of the year. Well-shot enough I felt I was in good hands from the very first minutes, which feel vaguely reminiscent of The Piano (which I don’t remember super-well), this movie ends up also have a very intense relationship with music as well. This is a lesbian love story between a woman betrothed to be married to a man she’s never met and the painter who is making her portrait for the approval of said man. The painter is initially working on the portrait secretly, the film’s attention is tuned to the two leads’ furtive glances and studies of one another, the gaze intensely felt, but returned and mutual. Lots of great stuff, real delight taken in faces, the ability to change another’s expression by making them laugh. the power of music, the incommunicable aspects of subjective experience. I watched this director’s other movie, Girlhood, but don’t remember it, and this is a lot better. This is also a lot better than Blue Is The Warmest Color, where the only thing I remember is the long and graphic sex scene. This movie has no such scene. One of these actresses led the walkout when the French film industry gave Roman Polanski an award.

Summer Hours (2008) dir. Oliver Assayas

Just did an IMDB search and found out Assays cowrote a movie with Polanski a few years ago? That sucks. This one’s about an artist’s estate being sold off after a widow dies, as the kids need money. Plenty of nice bits about the subjective value of art and nostalgia. Assayas is not my favorite filmmaker by any means but he’s consistent enough. I guess Personal Shopper is my favorite of his?

Two Friends (1986) dir. Jane Campion

TV movie about two teenagers, told somewhat in reverse order for seemingly arbitrary reasons. Not great.

The Day Shall Come (2020) dir. Chris Morris

Beginning with like a series of “establishing shots” of Miami that eventually get to college kids partying is such a terrible way to begin a movie, really signals a degree of indifference to the language of film in favor of a a product of constant churn of content that “television” once served as shorthand for. Chris Morris comes from TV, of course, so I should know what I’m in for, and British comedy of a subversively-intentioned sort puts it in the wheelhouse of things I pay attention to anyway. That’s not to say I laughed at this thing, but I sort of observed it and its intentions — it never really wants you to be comfortable enough to laugh, and while the posture it takes to its black leads is sympathetic there’s still a feeling of anthropological indifference as part of its satirical thrust. Film comedies are meant to work in a theater because of the contagious properties of laughter, and when you lose that you end up with a thing that, even if I don’t want to subject it to “Hm, this seems kinda racist” thinkpieces that are the worst-case scenario, everything about the movie seems like the best case scenario is a reaction of “I see what you did there.”

Midnight Special (2016) dir. Jeff Nichols

Fits into the tradition of not-a-superhero-movie-but-basically tradition of Scanners and The Fury, but while those are basically the X-Men, this kid, kept from the sunlight because his dad think it will hurt him but really it’s good for him, is basically The Ray, of the 1990s Christopher Priest series I didn’t read consistently but liked a few issues of. The first half of this movie, spent speeding down streets at night, while some weird things happen, involving government agencies and a cult, is considerably better than the payoff, which is the child (a kid from Room and later, Good Boys) is an angel and is going to ascend to heaven. Part of it is so low-key and tense (but in a way where it feels like if it were on mute nothing would appear to be happening) and then the other part of it has these special effects that are fairly corny? So while the whole “indie guy makes a more mainstream movie” thing generates some interest, the idea of what constitutes a mainstream movie at this point in time (while also being a throwback in some ways to eighties Spielberg, or riding an It Follows/Stranger Things wave) means being forgettable.

Atlantic City (1980) dir. Louis Malle

This was a rewatch, which normally I avoid doing, but it turns out I had forgotten basically everything about this movie, besides vague memories of shots of stairwells, the sprawl of its plot, the roaming camera. That, still, is sort of the main thing to take away, because I love how the plot sort of swirls around this apartment building, and the streets of the city, the casino where Susan Sarandon works. She plays a woman whose husband left her for her sister, and they have rolled into the city with a large amount of cocaine. Burt Lancaster plays Sarandon’s neighbor, who lusts after her, but watches after another neighbor in the apartment, an old gangster’s ex-lover. Maybe I would suggest this as a good first Louis Malle movie to watch? Then you could watch Au Revoir Les Enfants, Murmur Of The Heart, Elevator To The Gallows, and My Dinner With Andre, and some of those are maybe better movies but this is arguably the most “accessible” in terms of its relationship to gangster/crime stuff while nonetheless feeling expansive and deeper than that. It relates to Burt Lancaster’s larger career but also has such a depth of feeling it’s not just a film history thing. Wallace Shawn has a cameo as a waiter also, it’s nice to see him.

Cat People (1982) dir. Paul Schrader

This movie’s a rewatch but I remember it being “watchable” but not really good, at least not nearly as good as the original. If memory serves, this has pretty much nothing in common with the original, but there’s a scene in the original that’s very memorable that’s reprised here. There’s a lot of gratuitous nudity in this one, and it even ends with a scene that seems perverse enough it should be memorable- Where Nastassja Kinski’s limbs are tied to a bed in a bit of bondage before she has sex and gets turned into a panther, so she can safely be put into zoo custody, but I didn’t remember at all on account of it feeling more perfunctory than indelible. Also I thought there was a scene where you see a naked man climb out of a cage at the zoo but maybe that’s in another movie too. Remember when Paul Schrader made a facebook post asking whose were the best tits in the history of art?

Affliction (1997) dir. Paul Schrader

When there was a little featurette documentary on Criterion Channel where Alex Ross Perry interviewed Schrader, Schrader cited Affliction as one of his best movies. Takes place in a snowy landscape reminiscent of Fargo and A Simple Plan, the vision of small-town life feels slightly familiar from Twin Peaks too — all of these things feel “nineties” in a way. About the cycle of domestic violence being passed on from fathers to sons. Stars Nick Nolte, with Willem Dafoe as his younger brother, who narrates intermittently. Mary Beth Hurt plays Nolte’s ex-wife, Sissy Spacek plays his current lover. James Coburn plays the abusive father but I kept thinking it was Rip Torn.

Rancho Notorious (1952) dir. Fritz Lang

Another solid Fritz Lang movie, that I believe was a favorite of the French new wave filmmakers? (Who didn’t like his German stuff for some bullshit reason.) This one’s a western. A man’s fiancee gets murdered, and he tries t to track down the guy who did it, in search of revenge. There’s a recurring bit of a song narrating his desire for revenge that’s pretty bad. It turns out there’s a large ranch, run by Marlene Dietrich, where criminals can hide out if they don’t ask questions of one another and give her a share of their haul. He forms alliances, does some crimes, gets his revenge, there’s some great technicolor shots of landscapes, it’s unclear how real his feelings are for Marlene Dietrich or if they’re partly put on to win her affections, I don’t think Dietrich is that appealing personally. The thing that makes this movie cool or interesting (and maybe makes it feel particularly American, but seen from an outsider’s perspective) is this sense of bonhomie that is maybe just a total front for long-standing resentment, with love as a conditional thing.

Slightly French (1949) dir. Douglas Sirk

I found this one pretty watchable. A rough-around-the-edges fairground actress is recruited to play a French ingenue in the press as part of a long play for a director to get his job back with a studio he was fired from after alienating the original lead actress and everyone above him. The director basically only cares about making movies, and is sort of a psychopath, but she falls in love with him. The director’s sister, who warns that she also has no feelings, ends up being paired off with the producer who competes for the star’s affection for a while. Written by a woman, and feels very psychologically insightful and unjudgmental about women’s tendency or willingness to fall in love with people who treat them poorly, and to allow for the movie/genre expectations to respect that choice as the right one.

A Scandal In Paris (1946) dir. Douglas Sirk

Apparently Sirk considered this his best movie. It’s before his melodrama period, and is based on a memoir, so there’s a bit of a biopic quality to it, though it does try to be fairly concise and well-structured. About a criminal who solves a crime he committed in order to become chief of police, ostensibly to become an even bigger criminal who pulls off a huge robbery, who then goes straight instead. The criminal is also a casanova type, who seduces a series of women and makes them fall in love with him and forgive him his crimes. I would probably have liked this movie more if it was a stylized seventies thing and/or liked the actors better.

Story Of A Cheat (1936) dir. Sacha Guitry

This movie’s wild! One of the best credit sequences I’ve ever seen, establishing a pattern that the whole thing will be told mostly via narration, and this narration goes on to tell so much of the story that the visual storytelling almost seems redundant, or illustrative of the text, in a way I’d never seen in a movie. It’s structured as a man writing his memoirs, and is more literal about that structure than we normally see. But then there are parts where his writing gets interrupted and these scenes use dialogue and employ elision to discreetly set up punchlines… Really cool. Criterion’s website says this was an influence on Orson Welles, and maybe they mean F For Fake?

The Immortal Story (1968) dir. Orson Welles

I hadn’t seen this one, despite being an Orson Welles fanatic, I guess because most people would not consider it a feature film, as it’s under an hour long, and made for French television. It’s not great, kind of feels like a long short film. Welles plays an old rich man who hates the existence of fiction so much he tries to make a story that’s basically a Penthouse letter become true, casting Jeanne Moreau in the role of the woman and a much younger man as the dude who has sex with her. Based on a story by Isak Dinesen, which I’m just learning now was the pen name of a woman.

If You Could Only Cook (1935) dir. William Selter

So I kept on watching Jean Arthur movies, binging them before they left Criterion Channel at the end of June. You would expect them to blend together, and maybe they will in time but having just watched this one it’s great. Totally absurd premise becomes legit funny. The master chef from History Is Made At Night here plays an Italian gangster. The two movies would be a pretty solid double feature, as both feature pretty involved, absurd plots, based around love stories, but also featuring this weird comedic element. This one features Jean Arthur as a down-on-her-luck woman who strikes up a conversation with a guy on a park bench, convincing him they should get a job together working as a butler and cook team. He is secretly rich, and gets lessons in being a butler from his butler, and falls in love with her, a week before he is scheduled to get married to a rich woman he doesn’t actually care about. This movie is just over seventy minutes long. I am pretty unfamiliar with the screwball comedy genre and really wonder how they play with a different lead actress.

The More The Merrier (1943) dir. George Stevens

This one’s great too. Super comedic, with sort of intricately choreographed visual gags, but then the romance culminates in a scene that’s wildly horny, bordering on the pornographic despite the absence of any nudity. That’s a seduction shot in close up, where a sort of oblivious and distracted conversation occurs absentmindedly as kisses move from hand to neck. Jean Arthur rents a room to a domineering older dude (Charles Coburn, the guy from The Devil And Miss Jones, who’s funnier here) who then rents half of his room to a man he thinks would be a good for her. Feels like a big part of the comedy in these is people being absolute nightmares who force other people into going along with things they absolutely hate, and as much as I hate the idea of being someone who can’t handle an old comedy because of my modern cultural mores, such scenes are pretty nerve-wracking to me. Still, there’s something to the storytelling in this, how the initial gags build on themselves when it’s just the two of them, then the introduction of the second man sort of continues the sort of jokes that were already being made, how the comedy sort of snowballs but then takes the shape of this very real romance.

The Impatient Years (1944) dir. Irving Cummings

This was originally conceived as a quasi-sequel to The More The Merrier. It is a weird one, with a vaguely comedic premise it takes a pretty emotionally intense first act to set up. The first half hour has these long dialogues filled with tension of people not really being able to communicate. It’s written by a woman and you can really tell, holy shit, it’s closely observed. But the whole premise is fucked! Begins with a court hearing for a divorce. Jean Arthur has been hit by her husband, and her father (Charles Coburn again) who witnessed it says he can’t recommend a divorce, because then the judge would have to give a divorce to all the couples who got married too quick before the man shipped off to war. A flashback structure shows him, freshly home, smoking cigarettes above the crib of the child he’s never seen before and pretty irritable. The father argues the issue is the married couple has forgotten while they’ve fallen in love. Coburn basically sucks too- he’s in all these movies as this railroading paternalistic figure, and apparently was in his real life a white supremacist? And while The Devil And Miss Jones shows him learning to not be a piece of shit, this movie basically takes his side and argues for him being right. The judge agrees with this plan that they should spend four days retracing the steps of when they first met, before he shipped off to work. And it works, they fall back in love in the movie’s second half. But basically Jean Arthur’s whole behavior at the beginning of the movie is predicated on her having the responsibilities of a mother? And the movie just sort of argues that she’s got to learn to be a wife too, and she agrees, pitching it as this sort of romantic thing, but the actual central cause of tension is never resolved. So this movie is flawed and kinda nonsensical, but it’s interesting, partly because the beginning is like Bergman-level brutal before the contortions of a plot push it into this unnatural light comedy shape.

Arizona (1940) dir. Wesley Ruggles

This one has Jean Arthur as the female lead, opposite William Holden, but is more notable for its scope as a Western. A pretty good example of the genre being about society in microcosm, being forged from this conflict between the wild and domestic spheres. Jean Arthur both brings this semi-feminist sense of freedom to all of her roles, and she also built up a body of work of populist politics and class consciousness. This one has her as a rugged individualist frontierswoman, who runs a series of businesses as a way to make more money and accrue wealth, which ends up being a good vehicle, from a storytelling perspective, to increase the scale of action consistently. The villain runs a series of scams/conspiracies to win a profit via dishonest means. This culminates with a wedding where the man leaves his bride immediately afterwards to murder the person who’s been trying to take over her property. Probably the best western I’ve seen where the threat of Native American violence is a major plot point. It does lack the sense of atmosphere and landscape I value in a western, favoring a more storytelling more focused on plot and characters. Ends with a scene where a dude gets married and then immediately leaves to go kill someone waiting in a bar for him. (I should try to track down the George Stevens western Shane, that also features Jean Arthur.)

Whirlpool (1934) dir. Roy William Neill

This isn’t as top shelf as the other Jean Arthur movies but it’s pretty good. A man goes to prison, fakes his own death for the sake of his wife so she’ll move on. Jean Arthur plays the daughter, who meets him once he gets out, but needs to keep him a secret from her mother, who has remarried but would probably wreck her life for the other man’s sake. This is a pretty weird movie, both structurally, and because the father-daughter relationship feels quasi-incestuous: She abandons dates with her fiancee to spend time with her father, etc. The movie handles it semi-innocently, but I guess I had just been hearing about how when things like this happen in real life, and adult children meet their parents for the first time as adults, there often is an irresistible desire between them. So the movie kind of feels like it’s basically about something super-fucked-up but is trying to depict it as innocent, but also just the raw emotion Jean Arthur displays as she cries when they meet for the first time is really intense! She doesn’t even show up until like 1/3 of the way through the movie but she gives it such emotional weight.

Party Wire (1935) dir. Erle Kenton

This movie’s charming and watchable but yeah not one of the better ones. It’s about a pretty interesting thing- In small towns in this era basically cheaper for there to be a telephone line everyone can listen in on. This ends up being a movie about small town gossip and resentment, where the villains are old women with too much time on their hands. It’s also about Jean Arthur being a wildly charming “real” person who wins the heart of a rich man who every woman is after, so while she’s good in the part there’s an element of formula executed better elsewhere. Here she has a father who’s drunk all the time, his alcoholism is a big running gag that gets a little exhausted. Also apparently there’s an app now that’s basically a party wire?

The Whole Town’s Talking (1935) dir. John Ford

Felt pretty ambivalent about this one too, which is more of an Edward G Robinson vehicle. This is meant to be a comedy, but I don’t really think the jokes come off that well, and the sense of reversals feels a little pat. Realized my best friend from high school looks sorta like Edward G Robinson now and worked out a way to remake it starring him. The Robinson version is about a guy who works as a clerk in an office, writes on the side, but learns he is the doppelganger of a killer gangster who just escaped from prison, who’s played by Robinson as well. This leads to his worldly coworker he has a crush on developing an interest in him, but also a lot of cases of mistaken identity with the police, who give him a note saying that while he looks like the person they’re trying to arrest, they’re not the same guy. The gangster then reads about this in the news and breaks into his apartment to get this “passport” from him. The remake I envision plays off of the fact that people are no longer famous for doing crimes enough to attract the attentions of a savvy young woman. But what if it was some dumb Youtube prankster, who is constantly committing crimes, that has the police after him? And then it’s basically the same movie.

Public Hero No. 1 (1935) dir. J. Walter Rubin

More of a heavy-duty crime thing, about the head of a gang busting out of prison, reuniting with his gang to do crimes, not knowing the cellmate he broke out of prison with is an undercover cop. Jean Arthur ends up caught in the middle, falling in love with the cop (not knowing he’s a cop) while being the sister of the criminal she hopes goes straight. She enlivens the movie quite a bit but it’s a familiar enough plot to still come up a little bit short. Would maybe benefit from more atmosphere in the crime bits and less comedy bits about an alcoholic doctor slowing it down.

You Can’t Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939) dir. Frank Capra

Watched these for Jean Arthur, though they are classics for being Frank Capra movies, Jimmy Stewart movies, and sort of archetypal in their depiction of sincerity and the opposition of the rich and powerful. So that is to say that while my favorite movies I’ve watched recently have felt genre-less, or like they participate in every genre, these feel far more like you know where they’re going pretty much from the start: In the case of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington that’s partly because of things like there being an episode of The Simpsons that parodies/reuses it.

Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (1936) dir. Frank Capra

Also has Jean Arthur as the female lead, here playing opposite Gary Cooper. When they remade this as an Adam Sandler vehicle, Winona Ryder took the Jean Arthur role. Gary Cooper inherits money, comes to the big city, everyone wants the money, Jean Arthur writes news articles mocking him as a rube while slowly falling in love with his sincerity. In the end his decision to give the money to the poor outrages everyone in power and they try to argue he’s not mentally fit. All these Frank Capra movies are longer than the other Jean Arthur movies, (two hours, as opposed to an hour and a half) and also are not really focused on her, though she’s the best part of them.

Ball Of Fire (1941) dir. Howard Hawks

Billy Wilder cowrites this, and it’s maybe his best comedic script? Lot of good jokes in this, feel like this would’ve blown people away in 1941. Gary Cooper plays a naive nerd grammarian who in the course of realizing he needs cover modern slang for his encyclopedia runs into Barbara Stanwyck, as a gangster’s moll, hilarity ensues, they fall in love, both leads are great, supporting cast is big and funny, Gary Cooper in Mr. Deeds plays a somewhat naive hayseed, the character here is similarly out of his element but it’s because he’s a big nerd, which is a lot funnier. Stanwyck’s world-weariness giving way to affection for a bunch of old people while continuing to use language they don’t understand and sort of run all over them as they fall over here is a great bit. Really well-written, there’s a Billy Wilder movie starring Jean Arthur (A Foreign Affair, from 1948) I haven’t seen but would like to track down. Sort of fascinating preoccupation with gangsters in these movies, but also positing innocence as a virtue, but in a way that runs counter to “virgin/whore” reductionism. I guess a lot of this comes about because it precedes the post-war mass migration of white people to the suburbs? Organized crime was a big part of people’s lives. I hadn’t seen any Howard Hawks movies until recently I think? Unless I saw one of his westerns or screwball comedies in college. He’s good!

The Sniper (1952) dir. Edward Dmytrk

This one’s interesting in terms of feeling very ahead of its time but also like it would never be made now. About a dude whose misogyny causes him to shoot women with a sniper rifle, the same rifle that apparently any ex-soldier would carry. Probably a pretty tough and upsetting watch, as it’s just about a dude being insane, hoping the police arrest him, and him having interactions with women where he very quickly becomes upset when they realize he’s weird, so he follows them with a gun. Director was blacklisted, the only real overt political sentiment is “get perverts and people who assault women serious mental health care after their first offense.”

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hub-pub-bub · 5 years

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‘A Game-Changing Model for Text Entertainment’

Many in the Western book publishing industry still are trying to wrap their minds around the size of “online writing” serials in Asia. In China and Korea, millions of fans make micropayments to writers for incremental updates in their serialized stories.

One such platform, however, is taking its success in a different direction that could turn book-to-screen mapmakers on their heads.

Korean entrepreneur Seung-yoon Lee, Radish’s founding CEO, launched the service on Valentine’s Day 2016 and has spent three years building up to the advent of what he calls “Radish Originals,” which he says have been part of the plan all along.

The New York City-based company’s materials point out that Lee has raised some US$5 million in seed funding from backers including Greylock, Lowercase Partners, Softbank Next Media Innovation Fund, and one company publishing knows well: Bertelsmann Digital Media.

Having watched the Radish service grow to some 700,000 users and top author income reaching a reported $43,000 monthly, Lee tells Publishing Perspectives, “I’ve always been inspired by how Netflix innovated the video entertainment industry with its integration of production and distribution, and [I] wanted to build such a game-changing model for text entertainment as well.”

His response to the Netflix model, these Originals, is closer to television than you might expect: Lee has hired a former executive at ABC Daytime Television, Sue Johnson, to create a “writers’ room” with veteran soap-opera screenwriters to develop seasons of cliffhanging serials as premium, professionally produced content. Closely associated with All My Children, Johnson now talks of such productions as Fraternity Madam, Paging Prince Charming, Blood Brothel, Heart of Dragons, Lies I Tell My Sister, and Vampire Prep.

“We originally debuted 20 pilots of five episodes each” last fall, she says. “Of those 20, we went forward with a full season—20 episodes each—of the six top-performing stories.”

Of those six stories, three are currently in their second seasons, Fraternity Madam and Heart of Dragons with Vampire Prep having just opened its second season on February 11. A second round of 10 five-episode pilots is going to the platform now through March. “Once we see the results of these pilots,” Johnson says, “we’ll determine which of those 10 will get a full season order. We’ll continue this piloting process going forward,” with Fraternity Madam going to a daily release schedule soon, she says.

‘Tremendous Traction in China and Korea’

How is Johnson getting the sheer volume of material she’s talking about so quickly?

For one thing, these “episodes” are 10 minutes long in reading time. Radish readers are accustomed to short bursts of story on their smartphones.

And the real secret, of course, is veteran writers, six of them, direct from the soaps. Her starter team includes Jean Passanante, Addie Walsh, Leah Laiman, Tom Casiello, Marlene McPherson and Lisa Connor. Between them, they reportedly have 11 Emmy wins, 50 Emmy nominations, 15 Writers Guild Awards, and 42 Writers Guild nominations. Someone in that writers’ room has worked on each of the major afternoon weepies, from As the World Turns and Days of Our Lives to Search for Tomorrow and The Young and the Restless.

And if the titles of Johnson’s Radish Originals sound more lurid than the The Edge of Night or One Life To Live, we can point to the readers. The company is using A/B testing, not unlike that used by gaming studios, to gather data on reader responses. Apparently with enough blood and sex, they’ll follow you anywhere.

Both Johnson and Radish’s head of content strategy Taylor Carlson spent time at Pocket Gems. They’re joined by more of Lee’s new hires—Filippo De Rose (CMO), Johghun Shin (CTO) and Seyoon Kyle (engineering lead)—each with proven track records in scaling up audiences for apps in storytelling, comics, and games.

Things are moving fast. “Online serial fiction platforms with tremendous traction as I’ve seen in China and Korea like China Reading,’ Lee tells us, “had several initial years of slow growth. Wattpad also went through a similar phase. It does take time for these content platforms to get a hit and they go through lots of iterations to get the stellar growth they seek.

“We were lucky in that we were able to get more than 700,000 users and a writer with nearly US$800,000 in cumulative gross revenue without much marketing spend. With Sue’s leadership, I’m even more confident about our growth ahead with accelerating production of premium original content.”

‘The Leanest Data-Driven Producer’

And here comes the boomerang potential. In publishing today, a lot of book folks are being told to go west, young men and women, because book-to-film is the yellow brick road to success in a world of “streamers” like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, iflix, and other content-hungry platforms.

What Lee and Johnson are doing is laying the ground for a round trip: TV writers ankle their daytime soap offices to write Radish Originals, which, in turn, Lee says, could well be some day headed for development as screen properties. Johnson and her writers, in other words, could be making a round trip as far as their careers go, from screen to text to screen.

“I think the greatest potential of an original mobile serial fiction platform like us,” Lee says, “is in the intellectual property. While the development of TV and/or film is not a short-term strategy, that’s the direction that we ultimately want to move into.”

And while on the move, Johnson says she’s not missing those on-cam gasps and sighs from traditional soaps, either.

“Working without the visual element of television,” she tells us, “is incredibly freeing while also having a maximum impact. When creating stories, we aren’t hampered by budget. For example in the television world, an explosion at a formal event with 250 people can cost millions in production. For a Radish story, we can produce that same event in minutes with a few words and minimal financial and time expenditure. And we can change any element of that story (plot, character, cliffhanger, etc.) with a few keystrokes and nominal risk.

“In addition, when a person reads content versus watching content they have to employ their imagination. With well-written content, that consumer’s imagination will always be stronger than any visual provided. Bringing their own imagery will increase their focus, and the investment in the story will consequently be deeper.”

On the business track, Carlson says, “We see two big benefits to developing Originals internally at Radish.

“First, because we have a lot of insight into the types of stories readers enjoy, as well as insight into how readers engage with those stories, we’re able to focus our efforts on creating the best possible stories made specifically for our platform. Because we make Originals in-house and can quickly test and iterate on the stories, we can gain an even deeper understanding about what does and doesn’t work. The speed of testing and iterating is important and we can execute more efficiently with a small internal team. Through Originals we hope to raise the bar for engaging, high-quality serialized fiction and pass our learnings and best practices onto Radish writers, which will benefit readers, writers and the platform alike.

“Second, we’re really excited about creating stories that this generation of readers can enjoy outside of Radish and across different mediums. Hollywood is starting to recognize the power and tastes of this demographic as evidenced by a number of recent major productions. We love creating stories for our audience and we’re excited about the potential of having a catalog of great exclusive IP that we know our audience loves and would enjoy on film, television or any one of the many emerging entertainment platforms of the future.”

‘Quickly Test and Iterate on the Stories’

That theme you’re hearing through all these comments? Speed. The executives at Radish are all impressed with how much more quickly they can move in storytelling development than traditional elements of publishing and story generation.

Lee sums it up: “First, we put out 20 pilots in November and A/B tested these stories to our existing and new users. After seeing their retention and paying conversion rate, we greenlighted six stories for a full season. Then, the most successful batch of three stories were commissioned second seasons.

“Less than a month ago, we decided to daily serialize one of these stories [Fraternity Madam] because of its outstanding performance.

“This transition from a pilot to full season, second season, and ultimately daily serial only happened in the span of four months. In contrast with Hollywood studios that have to put in an astronomical amount of production cost and time into creating a hit, we aim to be the leanest data-driven producer of entertaining stories.”

More from Publishing Perspectives on serialization is here, and on books-to-film development is here.

#wattpad #books #serials #digital publishing #book to film

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