THOMAS R. HART

WHY I AM NOT ONLY DISGUSTED WITH THE US COMIC BOOK INDUSTRY, BUT ALSO THE AMERICAN COMIC BOOK "FAN"

2012-02-02T14:44:00.000+01:00

I mean, it had to happen at some point. The entire US comic industry was "founded" by thieves and criminals, with ties to the mob (you know, kind of like Hollywood was founded by thieves who stole from Lumiere and then had the gall, the - dare I say it - chuzpe to "immortalize" the man in a kids' film like Martin Scorsese's Hugo), so the idea of anybody within that industry to have a moral or ethical codex is to expect the same thing from investment bankers.

They did it from the very beginning. To Siegel & Shuster. They did it to Kirby. They did it to Alan Moore. And I have heard all the arguments, that he walked into the situation with Watchmen with his eyes open, that he was over 30 and knew what he was doing and that he is generally speaking an old asshole who should shut the fuck up, because his works are based on things are people have either created (like Watchmen or Tom Strong or... insert your personal preference here)...

... and that's exactly what is out there on the message boards from those "fans" who don't deserve originality, who are sucking any and all corporate owned cock, who have absolutely no problem with creators living in poverty, who have no problem with people who are creative getting fucked over. Who are in the worst sense of the word consumers...

... but hey, it's the same kind of people who worship Steve Jobs and Apple and when you tell them that those magnificent, addictive little bullshit gadgets are made by slaves in everything but name only, there they are. The same arguments.

Others do the same!

If I didn't buy it, somebody else would!

Or, as I have said before, my favorite argument, You'd have done the same!

To all those who say that, I find you disgusting excuses for human beings. You are the same who cry foul when others torrent shit, you cry about "creators" and their "rights", but in the end, you don't give a fuck about actual creators, nor do you give a fuck about their rights.

Just give me what I want!

Give it to me now!

Give me Spiderman, give me Batman, give me Superman, give me give me give me...

... I am fucking entitled to my entertainment! And I don't give a fuck if the creators are being fucked over or if they wind up in poverty or if they get ill and cannot pay their health insurance. Give me! Give me! Give me!

I said it on Twitter. I say it again here.

None of those "creators" who participate in this anal rape, knowing that are participating in an anal rape (as opposed to some of those in the 1960s and 1970s who just didn't know any better), will ever see another dime from me. Not a penny. Yes, Brian Azzarello, I am ashamed that I bought your 100 Bullets and various other books. Never again. I am ashamed I bought Darwyn Cooke's books. Never again. And the same goes for all the others involved too.

Never. Again.

I know what it's like to have no room to wiggle when it comes to dealing with the criminal, corrupt publishers in America. I know that - especially when you are still at the beginning, when you try to work hard and hope you get something return, they back you into a corner, they want to take everything from you, your rights, your copyrights, your story, so that they can rape what you have created, over and over again.

And how you try to rationalize it, how you tell yourself, it will get better, the next time, it will get better, maybe it's just because the next time I'll have more lube...

... but the example of Alan Moore shows, it doesn't get better.

It gets worse. As the example of Neil Gaiman vs. the "great fighter for creator's rights" (as long as they are his own, know?), Todd McFarlane, showed, it gets worse. And still, you people out there, you support these practices. You don't care. And then you dare to bitch that there are no good creators left, that there is nothing truly original.

You have made this system this way.

By knowing that people are being raped, be it in Hollywood or in the comics industry or in other "creative" industries. By knowing all this... and not giving a fuck.

So you wonder why there is no new Watchmen? No new From Hell? No work that has even tried to do what Moore did with Watchmen, but in another work?

It's not the publishers, lying, raping, thieving scum that they are.

It's you.

Just like with the overall status of the world, just like with the fact that companies like apple and Google and HP and Dell can get away with exploitation, it's you. It's you not giving a fuck as long as it doesn't happen to you. As long as you can masturbate your mind to the next version of your favorite character, you don't care. Just as long as you can masturbate your ego with the next version of your favorite gadget, you don't care.

And know what?

That's fine.

But then don't you dare to speak up if our culture becomes so corroded that all we get served is the McDonalds versions of stories. Hey, it's the same everywhere, it's bland and you fucking down't want to know where your Chicken McNuggets come from or where the waste goes, as long as you can feed yourself on the chemically engineered bullshit that you shove into your mouth and pretend that it's something worthwhile.

You have lost every right to complain.

HOW TO NOT WORK FOR MARVEL COMICS, OR: THE ULTIMATE SABLE MANIFESTO

2012-01-20T20:22:00.000+01:00

Hello everyone out there. I'm sure you have been wondering what I'm up to (no, you haven't, but I am deluded enough to think that you have, hey, I'm a poor writer, and delusions are often all that we have, know?)

Okay, while I'm trying to keep my sanity together (and quite possibly finish the editing of my novel Live, which is driving me bonkers), I have been looking at some of the old stuff from way back, all the way back to 2003, to be perfectly honest, when Marvel Comics said they would have an "open contest" for everybody to create cheap-ass books for them through their Epic Comics competition.

Now, Mr. Edo Fuijkschot and I had something that we quickly whipped up together, essentially as a quasi-sequel to Millar and Hitch's Ultimates that had just been released (or rather, if memory serves me correctly, it was about 6 issues into the original limited series, but my memory could be wrong, it could have been issue 9 or 10).

EDIT: Having just looked it up, I wrote this pitch on June 30, 2003, so as far as I know the ending of Millar's first run was not finished by that point...

Now, I have a bit of a spy issue.

Or rather, I have the idea that spy stuff in a superhero universe should be somewhat impacted by all of those gods and monsters that are running, crawling and flying around.

And I thought, let's use a character that nobody gives a damn about.

Which was Silver Sable.

And so I wrote the pitch to The Sable Manifesto, which of course was to evoke all of the things that you by now (not back then, mind you, but now) associate with Matt Damon. The Bourne Something Or Other, so to speak.

But back in 2003, it was still fairly new, that title, so that's how it was.

It went into the Epic slush pile... and we never heard from them until we all got that letter from Marvel that stated (in a highly unprofessional fashion, I maintain, treating artists and writers like we were 10-year-olds) that Epic had gone bye bye, but hey, here's a letter with Spidey on the letterhead!

So here's what I had to say about how to do a spy series....

THE SABLE MANIFESTO

01/ SUPERHEROES AS WMDs

Everybody here? Right on, please sit down and listen to me rant for a while. After reading probably every Marvel Trade paperback known to man, there are a few things in the design of most superhero comic books in the past 30 to 40 years that – while grooming an ever-decreasing number of hardcore comic book fans – prevent the whole genre of superheroes to reach out to modern mainstream America, feasting on a steady diet of TV shows like “Sopranos”, “Buffy”, “Alias” and “24”.

Now, the easiest way to start this pitch (or indeed any pitch) would be to explain why Sable would be such a cool character and why it could make a lot of money. That kind of pitch would deteriorate very quickly into the following, taped in secret at a producer’s pitch meeting:

Producer
Well, we got success with the X-Men and the Hulk, and Bendis is doing a good job with Daredevil, but we need to broaden our sales base a little more…

Writer
You know, I have this good working idea…

Producer
As long as it’s not mutants. We got Morrison and Millar doing the mutants, not to mention Austen, Claremont and the other guys of the X-Corps…

Writer
No, no… it’s not mutants. It’s kind of a cross between Mission Impossible and The Dirty Dozen, but it is set in the Ultimate Marvel Universe. We start with a team of agents, and they’re being led by this woman called Silver Sable…

Producer
Really? So, this is about ordinary people then?

Writer
Yeah. Well, in a way. They’re not really all that ordinary. We can use all sorts of gadgets, tone down the superheroics in order to streamline it for cross-marketing. Anyway, Sable is this really cool character. She’s a mercenary, which is so totally cool, since she’s got such questionable morals and we can play on that.

Right. Now, let’s stop this and go back one step.

That kind of thinking is exactly what is wrong. Good stories do not necessarily begin with character, but with the environment that creates them. If you leave out that part of the equation, you will fall into the trap of most serial writers. You will take something for granted: in this particular case, the inner workings of the Marvel Universe.

Thankfully, the Ultimate universe has solved a lot of the problems that are inherent in an ever-growing creation with more than 40 years of history (hence, from now on, when we talk about the Marvel Universe, we will talk about the Ultimate Universe. Sounds complicated, I know). Millar’s “Ultimate X-Men” belong to the most accessible books on the shelves these days and are wonderfully in synch with the expectations of potential audiences that only know those mutants from the movies. Likewise, Bendis on “Ultimate Spiderman” has written Peter Parker in a way that any teenager today can relate to. But it is probably the “Ultimates” which takes the notion of superheroes in a real-world context to its most logical extreme so far. Not in a sense that such a team would actually work as a US sanctioned assault team (with the exception of Captain America, none of these people have any military background), but it is exactly how and why such a team would come into existence, if you accept the notion that superheroes are indeed real.

Or, rather, that superpowers are indeed real. The best example, although I believe not fully thought through, is Millar’s creation of the Hulk. He is a failed experiment to re-create the super soldier that Captain America has been. His blood (and Cap’s blood) is probably the most lethal weapon the planet has to offer, since it could be used to create more Hulks or even another Captain America. In a sense, that leads to the most important point one has to make about a world in which superpowers do exist and relate it to the real world we all alive in: powers are a weapon of mass destruction. In a world, where mutants are seen as terrorists, you want to have an army of supermen to take them out and protect the American Way of Life (isn’t it funny that this is always in capital letters?). You would need such an army, and the research into that would equal, if not surpass the original Manhattan project and the race to space flight in the 1960s.

Rogue states will want to have the means to produce such soldiers. The United States will try to keep them all. Terrorists will want to use them (which is played upon by the whole Mutant Terrorism storyline, but what about other terrorists? Real terrorists?) What kind of an impact would such a notion have?

That is something that has never been properly addressed. Even in the Ultimate Universe, which is a lot less complicated than the original universe, the fights break out within the superhero “families”. It’s the X-Men vs. Magneto vs. the Ultimates, without any regard to how other states, other governments, other people would see and react to those struggles.

Does anybody really believe that the Russians would keep quiet, if the US decided to start a team like the Ultimates to “fight mutant terror”? Does anybody really believe that there are not elements in the Middle East who would desperately want to get their hands on a Hulk serum, if only to arm their suicide bombers with enough destructive power to level a whole city block within Jerusalem? Or what about dictators such as Little Kim of North Korea? In our world, he already owns nuclear capabilities. In a universe that has an added factor of superpowers, those would become the new weapons of mass destruction, and pretty much every government in the world would try to pursue that road.

Once you have accepted the reality of such a world, it becomes a lot easier to talk about a character such as Sable.

02/THE ULTIMATE SPYING GAME

Now, as strange as that may seem, in such a world, the most prized possession for any government and any terrorist would be the serum of Dr. Bruce Banner and his research findings, not necessarily the Hulk himself.

If the United States had a program with which to recreate the super soldier, then other states must have tried to infiltrate it, even despite the fall of the Soviet Union. I am pretty certain that S.H.I.E.L.D. and Nick Fury have been on the forefront of that battle for a few years by the time the timeline for the Ultimates and even the Ultimate X-Men kick in.

And Fury is the guy who has actually RUN that program. In order to get to that position, you cannot be a very nice person, but rather a player of power. We’re talking about a guy here, who – in the pages of Ultimate Spiderman – tells Peter Parker that the poor kid’s ass belongs to the United States government the moment he turns 18. No, Sir, not a nice person indeed.

A person who would have built up an enormous amount of personal and professional enemies over the years, and who has used, abused and harnessed the power of his position to it fullest potential in order to get the job done, the way he sees it fit. In a way that makes him almost a symbol of the current US government and their outlook on the world. The end, in Fury’s mind, always justifies the means. After all, he is fighting for Truth and Justice, right?

It is exactly that kind of thinking that fueled – in the real world – the actions of the CIA and other agencies throughout the Cold War (if you want to talk spy stories, you automatically start talking politics). If you need to assassinate a duly elected President in Chile and replace him with one of the worst dictators in the history of the 20th century, but who is in your pockets, you will do so. After all, you are fighting a bigger war here, right?

The same with the current fight on terrorism. As long as you can justify to yourself that all the means you have put in place will ultimately produce the right effect, you can look at yourself in the mirror each morning and still feel you are the good guy. Never mind civil liberties, never mind the fact that you need to kill innocents here and there. It is all for the greater good.

It is necessary.

Even Mark Millar played on that briefly when he opened up with the Black Widow and Hawkeye making fun of Nick Fury’s “media darlings”, while they had to do all the real work (he did portray Fury slightly differently in the “Return to Weapon X” storyline, which can be still considered to be consistent with our approach, since Fury had no problem killing a couple of hundred Indian soldiers and was only ready to see one person alone as human being, since he saved his life: Logan)

But that is the kind of world that spies live in. No questions, no answers, just a kind of professionalism that is needed to get the job done. This has been portrayed with great success in movies such as “Ronin”, “The Three Days of the Condor”, “Clear and Present Danger”, “The Siege” and, to lesser extent, in movies like “The Bourne Identity”.

That grit will be one pillar of what we call “The Sable Manifesto”. We will establish that kind of world within the Marvel Universe, to take a look behind the glitz and glamour of a group such as the Ultimates and into the inner workings of the machinery that made it possible.

Now, the spy business has been glamorized itself, and Bond, James Bond contributed a lot to it. Exotic locations, gorgeous women, impossible missions, all off those contribute to a romanticized vision of what a spy should, or could be. Even the updated versions such as “xXx” have played on that. Incidentally, here’s a question: in that movie, the big baddies want to release a nerve toxin into a city, and instead of recruiting a suicide bomber from their blatantly nihilist ranks, they build a boat that is released from a point so far away that our hero can still race it. John McTiernan once told an interviewer about the way he wrote the first “Die Hard”: “If your answer to the question ‘Why is the hero doing this?’ is Because otherwise the story would be over, then you have serious problem.

Updating a classic spy story takes a lot more than a tattooed guy you put in essentially the same stupid situations that Bond constantly finds himself in.

It takes the kind of realism that is part of those other movies and the combine those elements with the things that people have to come to expect from a good spy story.

The Sable Manifesto will do exactly that. And more so, it will do it in a way that is totally consistent with a universe that has characters such as Thor and Iron Man running around in it.

So, we are left with a few simple rules that makes a cool spy story set within the Marvel Universe.

1.    Make it real!
The world these people are living in is complicated and painted in shades of gray. People who may be your ally at one point can become your enemy later, due to a switching political agenda. Actions, in this world, have serious consequences. People die. People kill. People don’t give a damn about anything other than saving their own buttocks. Sounds cruel, but we are talking here about the dark side of a world increasingly dominated by superpowers.

2.    Make it accessible!
Treat everything in the story as if you are writing a movie, and not the third season of a TV show like “The West Wing”, where you need a bloody manual to know who is who and why they are doing what they are doing. The Sable Manifesto will have a beginning, middle, and an end and will run on movie time, meaning we are talking a six-issue story arc in which one comic book page roughly equals a minute of movie time.

3.    Make it work within Marvel!
Right from the beginning, the story needs to re-introduce the reader to the actual universe itself, pretty much in the same way a movie would introduce the foundation of the story. It has to be stand-alone. Within the first ten to fifteen pages, we will tell people all there is to know about the Mutant Terror menace, the Ultimates, the development of superhuman strength as a weapon of mass destruction, but do so in a way that it immediately becomes an integral part of the story.

4.    Make it exotic!
Now, most people would say, especially in the current political climate, well, what the hell, use the Middle East as a backdrop, sthat’s what on television anyways, and what could be more exotic than a couple of ragheads whose religion and culture we don’t understand in the first place. Again, that would be lazy writing. The Middle East is very much like Vietnam or Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. These are wars that are merely the executive action of a bigger threat that is showing up all around the world. And that turns old enemies into allies and old allies into enemies. That is one of the reasons why a big chunk of the book will be set in “New” and “Old” Europe, for now we have almost a sequel to the Cold War, except we are forced to deal with new players. It will also address the fact that the biggest arms shipments to rogue states still come from places like Russia and France, simply because they have a political stake in numerous of those issues facing the world today, including the oil issue. We will use that as a springboard to deal with superhuman threats.

5.    Make it personal!
Now, if we decide to see the Sable Manifesto like a movie, then there has to be a very close, very personal connection between all the players involved. Our players here will be Nick Fury, Sable and Raphael Sabitini. Over the course of the story, we will find out that Sable’s relationship with Fury has been less than professional at one point in the past, while Sabitini’s relationship to his ex-wife will become a lot more professional, when he makes her part of his attempt to steal the research for the super soldier serum right out of the Ultimates headquarters.

03/ THE RELUCTANT HERO RETURNS

Now, to the important question: why the hell would anybody pick Silver Sable to star in a book? She’s not on the top list of characters people crave to come back like Dr. Strange, she’s only had one run in the comic book explosion of the 1990s and has been used primarily as a background player in the Spiderman series.

The answer: because she is perfect.

If you deconstruct the character and take only the most basic elements of her, she is exactly the kind of person who would be a player in the spy community. She has questionable morals (after all, she was designed by her creators to have an obscure Eastern European background, she acts as any responsible professional in that business would). She is in it for the money.

These are the elements that make her a perfect fit into a world where you cannot trust anybody, especially Nick Fury and his agenda.

She’s also a woman with expensive tastes and a serious penchant for decadence. She’s Old Europe, she’s exactly the kind of character James Bond used to be in the original movie, she is a professional player, is sarcastic and highly intelligent. She has no superpowers to speak of, has to rely on her ingenuity to stay alive and knows how to use sex as a weapon.

In order to have a fully-fledged persona like that, she must be older than your regular hero. When we open the curtain for our story, she is well into her Mid-Thirties, exactly the age of any good spy, meaning she’s had the experience and the knowledge to stay alive in a world, where nothing is exactly what it seems (most agents would never make it past their 30th birthday, so to have an agent like Sydney Bristow in “Alias” would never work. That show is not about spying, it’s all about Jennifer Garner’s butt in the same vein as Charlie’s Angels is all about Cameron Diaz’ butt).

And she has been out of the game for a couple of years.

That is the other thing that makes a good hero in a spy story: the reluctance to be brought back into that game. Let’s think about that for a moment. Does anybody remember why we all hated Luke Skywalker’s guts in the first Star Wars movie and why we all cheered for Han Solo? Simple, Skywalker was a typical teenage mall rat and we could almost hear him whine, “But I wanna go off with my friends to fight the Empire!” Which, incidentally can be translated to “But I wanna go off to the mall to play with my friends!” Now, Han Solo as portrayed by Harrison Ford, was entirely different: he knew the risks, he didn’t like them, so when in the end he comes to the rescue, it brings a totally different weight to that character. That, incidentally, is one fine American tradition, or at least it was in World War 2, and that is the reason why Millar’s re-interpretation of Captain America works so beautifully.

It is the same kind of weight that Hugh Jackman had at the end of X2. The ability to make the right choice despite all your instincts going against that is what makes the reluctant hero.

And there is no hero more reluctant than Silver Sable.

She’s done with the game. She’s done with that rather stupid code name (I believe that all of those names are code names. None of the people working in that business would use their real names, not even Bond, James Bond… that is still a name that I believe is taken by the person who takes up the 007 code) In the Marvel Universe, that would mean that all the other folks are using code names too, including the Black Widow, Hawkeye and even Nick Fury (what kind of a last name is Fury?)

Sable’s real name is Silvié Sablonski, she’s from former Czechoslowakia and has a family history that dates back to the Princes of Poland, which allows us to keep all the important elements of her original background and dispose of the bad ones, including the imaginary country of Symkarnia. The Marvel Universe, from its very conception, has used real cities and countries, as opposed to DC.

That is one of its strong points.

There are no cities like Metropolis and Gotham there, there is NYC and the rest of the world. By turning Sable into a Czech woman, we merely extend that idea to the rest of the world and inject some realism into her character. The same goes for her name. In the original background, her name is Sylvia. Now, unfortunately, that name doesn’t exist in Eastern Europe, but Silvié actually means Sylvia. That way, we change only the bits that stood in the way of realism, but without annoying long-time fans too much about major changes.

We also update Raphael Sabitini that way. He is Sable’s ex-husband, he is still an assassin, he is still in the game, he is still known as “Foreigner” amongst some of his associates, but that is not his code name. He is a rogue agent that Sable should have killed three years ago on a mission sanctioned by none other than Nick Fury.

He should be dead.

And when Fury finds out that he isn’t, he forces Sable back into his game: a very sick and twisted game.

And we’re here to walk you through it. Sit tight, take a good look underneath your seat for a b… (it’s not a b…, it’s a bomb) and enjoy the fireworks.

ISSUE ONE: POLICY CHANGES

I’m assuming that you’ve read the script for the first issue by now, so we will merely do a little recap here. The first issue is pretty much all set-up. In movie lingo, we’re talking the first fifteen to twenty minutes, interrupted by the titles. And we’re dealing with a damn tall order there.

We FADE IN with Raphael Sabitini. He wakes up in Saint Petersburg, in a high class hotel, right next to a gorgeous woman who has apparently shared the last night with him. And he starts talking. Apparently, the big bad in a spy movie always seems to have verbal diarrhea, and Sabitini is no exception. We use him to give us the lowdown on the Marvel Universe, and especially the role of the Ultimates in that universe, while the woman on the bed seems to be still fast asleep. We even get to know from his monologue that the woman is an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D, that he himself started off as a terrorist and lead the read to think that this is going to be that kind of Goldfinger moment that we all know.
“Do you expect me to beg, Mr. Goldfinger?”
“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die…”
It seems that all big bads have the inclination tell all their plans in advance, before they lock an agent in a chamber without supervision and wait for some sharks with lasers attached to their head to kill them. Yeah, right. Or, like Scott Green in the first Austin Powers rightly said, “Dad, I got a gun in my room. Let me just get it, we pop him right here, we pop him right in the head.”

We will use the reader’s subconscious knowledge honed by years of watching movies and TV shows and pull the rug at the very end of the scene as we reveal that the agent on the bed is dead and indeed has been dead for numerous hours.

That way, we immediately establish Sabitini as a formidable big bad. It also gives us a chance to integrate important information about the universe (superhumans as WMDs, the Mutant Terrorism threat and the notion that putting together a team of inexperienced heroes in costumes to fight terrorism is in general a very, very bad idea indeed) into the main story and use that at the same time to establish Sabitini’s character.

He’s cold, he’s lethal, he conducts terrorism and spying as business and not as a foundation for an insane plan to DOMINATE THE WORLD (insert insane laughter here) and he DOES NOT make the mistake that apparently has been made by every big bad in every spy movie since Goldfinger.

And he KNOWS that he has been watched, even acknowledges it by winking at a hidden camera as he exits the room as we CUT TO

TWO PEOPLE watching the surveillance tape of that room. It’s NICK FURY and the BLACK WIDOW. Fury asks the Widow if the tape is authentic. She tells him it is and that the Russians have delivered it through their UN embassy.
“Who the hell wires their hotel rooms?” muses Fury.
“We do, Sir,” the Widow answers. “We got them all wired for image and sound in accordance with the Patriot Act. The memo should be on your desk.”
The smiling Sabitini on the screen seems to mock them.

We then CUT to our BIG OPENING. Let’s call it the first scene after TITLES. After introducing the VILLAIN, the UNIVERSE, we will now introduce the HERO.

We FADE IN on Monte Carlo. It’s night. It’s Casino time. Visually, we play the introduction of Sable the classic way. She is in a Casino, playing Blackjack, and in the beginning, we only see glimpses of her. We also see that she is totally at home in that environment of money and decadence, which is contrasted when Nick Fury enters the scene. Sable only acknowledges him by a sideways glance.
“Hello, Nicky,” she says.
“How did you know it was me?” is his reply.
“You smell of gun oil and old wars. Most of the other men here smell of Versace.”
That little exchange immediately shows their relationship to each other. They are mistrustful of each other. And Fury, despite the fact that he has an assault team inside the Casino, dressed up to blend in, is inferior to her throughout the whole situation. This is not his world. He is not James Bond. He is a soldier. Or, as Sable puts it, “Old Europe really isn’t your style. No military boots, no guns, no bombs.”

It is only when he produces a glossy of Sabitini, taken from the surveillance cameras, that he has the upper hand for a moment and we learn that Sable has worked for S.H.I.E.L.D in the past, that she is the ex-wife of Sabitini and that Fury gave her the order to kill him. We immediately understand that the mistrust between Fury and Sable is not just based on professional differences. There is something there that runs deeper, even if we don’t explore it immediately. There is something personal.

That undercurrent explodes in the final question: “But that’s not the funny thing. Funny thing is that he’s still breathing. Especially since I ordered you to kill him three years ago. Care to explain that to me?”

ISSUE TWO: CROSSING THE LINE

When we OPEN UP in the second issue, we have Fury and Sable driving towards Nice International airport. It is clear that he has extracted her from the Casino and is on his way back to the States to debrief her. Now, in a regular spy story, she would have been able to pull of some kind of stunt inside the Casino to get out of Fury’s way, kill a few of the undercover soldiers and set out to prove her innocence.

That’s bullshit.

Not only would it be totally unrealistic (now, where in your evening gown would you hide the AK 47 to do that?), but it also would not be consistent with Sable’s character at that point in time. She’s done with the whole thing. It’s not her game. So she would go with Fury, but not without noticing a few things before she does that:

The Audi A8 that passes them on the street with the three men sitting in there.

The man with the cell phone who begins talking with somebody the moment they leave the Casino.

The tourist couple that take pictures with a digital camera when they get onto the serpentine that leads out of Monte Carlo.

We INTERCUT these sequences with Sabitini, sitting in Saint Petersburg, preparing a big deal with some of the ex-KGB people that he’s had numerous relationships with. It becomes clear that the man on the cell phone in Monaco is part of his team, and that he’s had Sable under surveillance for quite a while, for reasons known only to him at this point (a point here: If there is any foil for Sabitini at this point in this story, it is John Travolta’s character in “Swordfish”. You just KNOW that this is the man pulling the strings, regardless of what the other people might think. The audience should be in awe of that man).

He tells his team to extract her immediately.

There are three things we (as the audience) get from those sequences. One, Sabitini seems to know everything that Fury knows, and that there seems to be an inside man within S.H.I.E.L.D. feeding him the information. Two, Sabitini seems to need Sable for that deal that he has just brokered. Three, he seems to have the French in the pocket, all the way up to the government, on this deal, which makes his plan easier.

We RETURN to the serpentine streets between Monaco and have the very first BIG, BIG action sequence in the book as Sabitini’s team extracts Sable from Fury’s hold. It will be played out in just as much in a realistic way as the ambush in DeNiro’s “Ronin” or Harrison Ford’s “Clear and Present Danger”, as the team carefully prepares and ambush in a village set between Nice and Monte Carlo, killing most of Fury’s carefully selected S.H.I.E.L.D agents in the process. Remember, these are pros pitted against each other. These are not superheroes that rip apart a couple of buildings while doing some glib one-liners.

When Sable’s getting away from Fury, she picks up a cell phone handed to her by one of Sabitini’s team and acknowledges her extraction. She does so in a way that makes us think that not only did she notice that before, but that this was some part of a bigger plan and that she had expected Sabitini’s call.

We CUT BACK to Fury as he gets in all the details about his losses, and strangely enough, he doesn’t seem to be fazed by any of the truly horrible numbers. Acceptable losses, it seems. And it is only then that we learn that he has placed a tracking device on Sable that flares up on at least half a dozen spy satellites back home at HQ, with the Black Widow supervising the whole operation.

“Plan’s working,” Fury tells the Widow and then tells his driver to take him to his plane. “We got her.”

We FOLLOW as the signal is tracked all the way from Monaco to Saint Petersburg, where Sable and Sabitini meet for the first time in our story. And here’s the next surprise. For somebody, who has apparently quit the game, Sable seems to be exceptionally happy to see Sabitini again, as they kiss passionately.

ISSUE THREE: FOLLOW THE LEADER

Now, we left the audience with some sense of confusion as to what side Sable’s playing on. This is made clear by the first few sequences in which we have Sable and Sabitini have incredible, OTT sex that is usually reserved for extra-marital affairs or spies. Apparently, in the case we have both.

Throughout that sequence, we also get the info what exactly Sabitini is planning to sell: the latest batch of Bruce Banner’s research, meaning the serum that turned Banner into the Hulk and all the relevant data that is necessary to produce that serum on an industrial level. Despite the fact that the Hulk is not really the best weapon of choice, he knows there is a huge market around the world and one that hasn’t been regulated and supervised, because it officially doesn’t even exist.

That promises big, big money for both him and Sable, he promises her (actually, he only calls her Silvié, never Sable, but that is just by the by. To him, she is not that code name, but the woman who has crossed the line three years earlier and is part of his operation). All is good, it seems.

We also the other member of the team that is going to participate in this impossible bust, so he will have his very own so-called Wild Pack (like we said before, we will use references to Sable’s rich past, but we will never make it obvious, this is more along the lines of Logan’s and Scott Summer’s dialogue in the first X-Men movie, kind of like, “what would you prefer, yellow spandex?” It is a reference to keep hardcore fans happy, but, like the inclusion of the word “Foreigner”, it doesn’t need the previous knowledge to enjoy the story. We merely add another layer by doing this):

The final addition is a German hacker by the name of Klaus Rheinhardt (the Germans have a pretty decent history when it comes to terrorism, unfortunately, but that is not the main reason for making him German. The main reason is that Germans make good villains…) But it is the way that we introduce this character that makes him just as important to this story as Ving Rhames was in Mission Impossible. You see, the way this issue goes like is something like this:

We INTERCUT Sable’s meeting and sex session (so to speak) with Fury and his people TRACKING her through the bug that he has placed on her during the earlier meeting in Monte Carlo. We constantly switch back and forth, pretty much using the oldest trick (but still very effective) by conning the audience into believing that Fury, and the Black Widow, now with an assault team, know EXACTLY where Sable (now, here is the big question: does Sable know that she is being tracked? Well, we’ll answer that later…) is and get ready to take out Raphael and his team. Imagine big SHIELD forces, helicopters, the whole Appleseed SWAT team order.

In the meantime, we have Raphael not explaining that he has an inside man in SHIELD, no sir, we also have him explain to Sable that he plans to get the Hulk serum straight out of the Triskellion.

And Fury’s team is getting closer… This will also set up a couple of paragraphs in which Fury discusses the relationship between the US and Russia in a day and age, where the US have the Ultimates and Russia has effectively lost the arms race on numerous counts. Pretty much like back in the early days of the Cold War, when only the US had the nuclear bomb. His Russian counterpart doesn’t like it, but hey, we are now all on the same side, and that technology can’t be allowed to fall into the hands of terrorist groups, right?

We worry about the bilateral relationships later, so it seems…

And Raphael introduces us to Rheinhardt, who then explains that by the by Fury’s team is exactly where THEY want them to be, since he has diverted the bug’s signals to a place somewhere Chechnya, where terrorism is running high anyways, and Fury had no problem getting in, due to the Anti-Terrorism pact with Russia.

We also learn that this has only been made possible by the Black Widow (who is with them), who worked for Fury’s counterpart during her time at the KGB. And the two still seem to be friendly with each other.

We will play this very much like a mixture between the Search and Destroy in “Patriot Games” and the finale of “Silence of the Lambs”.

It will only be on the final three to five pages of the issue that we realize that a) Sabitini is in complete control of the situation and b) that Klaus Rheinhardt is the bloody best hacker on the bloody planet, which is necessary to establish his character through his profession. He is a minor character in this play, but vital, so that bit is necessary to set up what seems to be Fury’s defeat and

ISSUE FOUR: IN AND OUT

Here, we have a full issue of three people pulling off the impossible: Getting into the Triskellion, getting the Hulk serum and the research data AND avoiding the Ultimates in doing so.

Like I said, impossible, right? Just the power levels alone would be enough to kill and/or maim Sable, Sabitini and Rheinhardt, despite the “inside man” that Sabitini claims to have and who gives them access to the internal surveillance system, so Rheinhardt can help them from a remote site in Manhattan (just think of him as our little German R2-D2, heck, German sounds to American ears like robot speak anyways LOL).

But even with all that, it should be impossible, right? I mean, we have Captain America on the other side, Thor, Iron Man. Not to mention 5000 staff and soldiers all through the bloody complex.

Still, getting in is incredibly easy, if you have an operation on such scale, provided you have some inside information. It is the getting out that a team should worry about.

Right.

Now imagine this: You’re Bruce Banner, in your holding tank and working silently on the cure for your little Hulk problem, and through the air lock you have a guy coming in who immediately pulls a .45 and points it at your head. Now, the following conversation would work something like this:

BANNER
Please, dear god, don’t do this.

BANNER
Please, in the name of god.

BANNER
You have no idea what you are doing.

SABITINI
I do, Dr. Banner

And he shoots him right in the head.

SABITINI
Believe me, I do.

Now, we all know that you cannot KILL Bruce Banner. The Hulk serum will prevent that from happening. But that shot shows two things: the absolute ruthlessness of a professional agent and the only way to get OUT of the Triskellion.

For Banner turns into the Hulk as Sabitini walks away and starts THRASHING the place, meaning that everybody and anybody, and yes, this does include Cap, Thor and the 5000 soldiers have their hands full with that threat.

All the while Sabitini and Sable get the relevant data out of the labs. Unfortunately for Sable, there is only one other person in the Triskellion with a background similar than hers: The Black Widow, and she is the only one who immediately assesses the situation correctly.

She meets up with Sable on her way out and we have a REAL fight, none of that Matrix hoopla (it would work within the MATRIX, but real people fight differently). Rheinhardt is watching all through the internal surveillance system. Sabitini is already on his way out, and so he can see that fight as well. He tells Sable to withdraw, but she can’t do that with the Widow knowing.

So he orders Sable to kill her to prove that she is really on his team, and not a covert sent in by Fury. Which she apparently does. She shoots her point blank. And the team disappears into the shadows again

It is only in the aftermath that Fury checks all the surveillance again, and sees the following: Sable slipping the Widow a flack jacket and only THEN shooting her point blank for the camera.

The only problem now is: where the hell is the Widow?

Because she is GONE from the Triskellion.

And we FINISH with that to set up

ISSUE FIVE: COLLATERAL DAMAGE

After returning to Saint Petersburg, we have a somewhat subdued beginning, during which Sabitini and his team finally SELL the Hulk serum to… none other than the Russians!

And it is not only that, it is exactly the person who was seemingly helping Nick Fury in the previous issues. The Black Widow’s former executive officer (a name is still missing here, I know, but names are not really that important)

We also reveal who Sabitini’s “inside man” was: none other than the Black Widow herself! Who, as it turns out, has apparently never stopped working for the Russians, but has been a deep covert for the past few years. When asked about this by Sable at the meeting, she sneers and tells that she would never betray her own country (that is consistent with her original origin and it would be fun to have it in a way that we can return to that moment of “oh my god, she’s a bad guy”)

The Russians, it seems, have learned from SHIELD’s mistakes. Based on their research with monkeys during the space program, they have come up with a way to treat the emerging Hulkings (well, there is only one Hulk, now, is there?) and use them as weapons pretty much in the same vein as you would use a K9 dog. They are being manipulated by electric shocks.

Now, the appearance of the Black Widow here seemingly puts Sable into serious danger: her cover is blown, now that Sabitini knows that she’s been playing them, AND that Sable didn’t kill her when she should have.

But this where the next unexpected thing happens (or at least very unexpected for Sabitini): The guy who was seemingly so totally in control of everything gets shot by the Black Widow point blank, on the order of the KGB (well, also for the fact that he would have ALLOWED her to die previously).

Sable and Rheinhardt, meanwhile, get thrown into jail, where Sable has some serious thinking to do. Now, this is our moment. Up to this point, everybody has been playing everybody. But now, Sable is in a classic James Bond situation: she is alone (well, with Rheinhardt), she knows there is nobody she can trust anymore, and still, still she manages to pull off a daring escape, thereby firmly establishing her as a true hero, who is now desperately trying to race against the clock to prevent the Russians to finish their experimentation.

Unknown to her, though, the Black Widow STEALS the control device that should have controlled the Hulklings, and this is where things get really, REALLY fucked up.

You see, now the Hulklings wake up WITHOUT control.

And immediately start thrashing the lab. One of the first who gets it is Rheinhardt, who gets literally torn to pieces by the Hulklings. And here is where Sable and the Widow meet again.

And Sable is pissed. Very, very pissed.

“That was not the plan,” she yells at the Widow. “That was not the plan.” The two women desperately race out of the lab as the Widow contacts Fury to tell him that something has gone terribly wrong.

As Sable escapes, the Hulkings wake up.

And then it’s the end of the world…

ISSUE SIX: STATE TERROR

We OPEN UP with a truly horrible picture, by the way of news networks. Saint Petersburg is overrun with uncontrolled Hulklings. And chaos ensues on a level that has never been seen before. Forget 9/11, we are talking about 150 superpowered mindless monsters that RIP through the city.

Sable and the Widow actually RACE the Hulklings as they make their way across the city, on motorcycles, ACROSS the rooftops (again, every action sequence has to be made in a way that it can be done in a movie WITHOUT too much CGI involved)

Sable and the Black Widow, during their escapes, are met by none other than Fury again, who has apparently been waiting at the outskirts of the city. And again, we learn something unexpected: the Widow has not been a double agent after all.

“You got it?” Fury asks the Widow.
“You doubt?”
“Not really.”

All the while the city behind them is turned into dust.

Fury calls his Russian counterpart and offers his help with the situation. That request is denied. The Russians know how to handle it themselves. (this is essentially a play on the Kursk. The Russians have seriously trouble with accepting any kind of help, especially coming from the Americans. And, well, would you really accept help if the reason for that chaos is the fact that you stole technology from your enemy? No, didn’t think so)

Essentially, what we are doing here is to up the stakes with each subsequent action sequence throughout the series, like it would be in any good movie. We start on “Ronin” level, but then, with each new action sequence, we get bigger on the level of destruction, until we reach this issue: The total obliteration of a city.

Or, in other words: We are dealing with the first superhero Hiroshima ever shown in comic books. There will be real deaths, real murder, real mayhem.

And it’s the civilians who have to pay that price. And it is not going to be the kind of destruction of cities that has been seen repeatedly in comic books. You know, the kind of death ray that may kill a million or two, but is over and done with in two panels.

No, this destruction will be played out panel by panel as the Hulkings, unrestrained and uncontrolled, tear people apart. And there’s a real danger of them leaving the city and running rampant in the country.

Fury offers his help. Of course he has already planned for such a contingency (you see, this is the moment where we actually get to know that it was not Sabitini who is essentially Travolta in “Swordfish”, it is Fury. He plans for everything). Part of the team he has with him are the Ultimates. Again, that offer is declined.

Up to a point, where the Russians use their final means of control. They release a gamma bomb over the city.

The final cover-up. And, of course, they tell the world that this catastrophe was a terrorist attack coming from Chechnya. Well, easy to swallow, that one, right? Especially since Fury backs up that story with forged documents from SHIELD.

And we return to Sable, Fury and the Widow who are flying out, back from a mission that seemed to have been a complete failure.

And it is only then that Sable realizes it: Both Fury and the Widow had planned this long before she got involved. They WANTED the Russians to experiment on the Hulk serum, because that kind of research is now forbidden in the US (well, does anybody really think they could use the serum on anyone after it created the Hulk? No way). Fury acknowledges it by not denying.

And Sable realizes that she has been played all along. She is back in Nick’s world. And in that world, the loss of a complete city, if it is not an American one, is an acceptable loss for the greater good.

We find out that, while it was Sable’s mission to infiltrate Sabitini’s team, the real payoff has always been what the Widow’s mission was: the technology to control the Hulk.

Fury tells her that the money is on her Swiss bank account.

She punches his lights out, before looking back at the green mushroom cloud that has engulfed Saint Petersburg.

We END very much in a “Swordfish” way, through a series of SHOTS coming from news networks, in which we are told of INCREDIBLE destruction at various places where there were apparent terrorist cells. Over and over again… Is it the Hulk, now controlled like a Pavlovian dog? Maybe…

________________________________________

Okay, since there is apparently a lot of ruckus on the Internets about how much freedom an artist should have to interpret your stuff, let me just state for the record that from the very beginning, Edo (Fuijkschot) and I worked on shit the way other people party. In other words, I did a script, then we sat down, had a lot of coffee and tea, he'd have brilliant ideas, I'd go mental and think "gah, must incorporate that), I then did re-writes and the actual final writing would be done by him and me... sitting at the computer together.

But here you can see how things looked in the original script... and way up above, you can see how Edo drew these things...

THE SABLE MANIFESTO

ISSUE ONE: POLICY CHANGES

(SCRIPT)

PAGE 01
Let’s get the show on the road, and I do mean that quite literally. We OPEN UP with a ROW OF FOUR SMALL panels that consist of CLOSE UPS. We START with a very ornate HUMIDOR, placed on a just as ornate nightstand. Think 17th century. We FOLLOW as a thick, muscular hand takes out a Romeo & Juliet (for those non-cigar aficionados out there, that is a rather expensive Cuban one ;) and lights it with a long wooden match in just the right way, first rolling the cigar between the fingers, then lighting it while rolling, warming up the cigar before we go to the next panels. We NEVER see who the man is in that first row of panels. We have him talk, though.

MAN
And that, my dear, is the whole trick.

MAN
To make them see what they want.

MAN
Keep their mind occupied with other things.

Now we PULL BACK from those CLOSE UPS and introduce the man. Call him RAPHAEL SABITINI. He shows his CHEST underneath a silk morning gown. His nipples are both pierced, there is a TRIBAL running down from his shoulder to his navel. Long hair, slicked back on the top and curly at the neck. He is SEXY in a BRUTISH WAY. There is a carefully trimmed goatee, giving him the look of a modern-day Peter The Great.

CAPTION (LOCATION)
Saint Petersburg, Russia

He takes the cigar between his lips and takes a drag over the course of the next ROW OF PANELS, this time consisting of THREE. We SEE that he is in a lush 17th century BEDROOM, getting up from the bed. He continues to talk while he gets ready.

RAPHAEL
Thank god for those mutants, that’s what I say. They just make it all so damn easy.

You have them blow up the Brooklyn Bridge, you get everybody in the States scared of any freak in a strange costume.

If you ask me, my dear, it’s these people that give terrorism a bad name. Talk about weapons of mass destruction.

We FINISH the page with a WIDESCREEN PANEL, in which Raphael moves away from the bed and towards the camera, smoking his cigar. In the background, covered by SATIN SHEETS, we see the NAKED BODY of a young woman.

PAGE 02
SPLASH PAGE. Let’s make some impact here. We have Raphael standing at the bedside, and now we can actually see the whole room. It’s a huge atrocity of Pre-French-Revolution proportions, the walls covered with gold, the floor polished wood, a bedroom made for kings; the woman in the bed doesn’t move. It looks like she is still fast asleep. Think expressionism. Not too much detail, let the colors and the rough line work do most of the work here (or you go insane by the details)

RAPHAEL
Used to be, all you needed was some determination, a gun or a knife and you could make them negotiate.

That’s how I started, you know? A gun and an airplane. Those were the days.

Back when it was all about business.

Not today. Now, you need to wear your underpants outside and pose for Dateline to get any kind of attention. It’s all for show, that’s the problem.

PAGE 03
We have THREE WIDESCREEN PANELS on that. We START off with Raphael moving past the woman on the bed, CARESSING the lines of her back, looking down at her. In that POV, we still don’t see her face.

RAPHAEL
All to make it look good.

We CUT to an ESTABLISHING SHOT of the TRISKELLION; the “Ultimates” headquarter. It’s an imposing sight against the nightly backdrop of Manhattan.

RAPHAEL (OFF PANEL)
It’s a P.R. exercise. Even that name: The Ultimates.

Straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon.

We CUT BACK to Raphael. He has PASSED the woman and moves slowly towards the luxurious BALCONY DOORS. The blinds are made out of heavy silk. Morning has already broken outside.

RAPHAEL
Don’t get me wrong. I like a good show. And that show’s as good as they come.

PAGE 04
Again, we OPEN with a WIDESCREEN PANEL. We STAY with Raphael. We are on the outside of the balcony as he opens the door and takes in a breath of fresh air. We stay CLOSE to him, not too much background here. We keep focused on CHARACTER, not LOCATION.

RAPHAEL
Just look at it this way. You got a country that’s scared enough to piss on its own constitution. You got a media that’s telling the public whatever you want it to hear.

We CUT BACK to the TRISKELLION; this is essentially a CAMERA MOVE that FOLLOWS from the establishing shot. We get the ENTRANCE HALL of that huge building. I’m envisioning a kind of “Patriot Games” shot here, that kind of rolling camera move that HOVERS above the floor of the entrance hall as we show the S.H.I.E.L.D insignia on the marble, very much like those CIA shots in half a dozen movies (most recently in a rather forgettable one called “The Recruit”, with Pacino). There is the usual buzzing of employees, agents and soldiers in that entrance hall.

RAPHAEL (OFF PANEL)
Hell, you even got a hundred and fifty billion dollars through Congress for your war on terror, and what do you spend it on?

We MOVE through the CORRIDORS of the TRISKELLION as part of the busy SUPPORT STAFF. We FINISH the page with none other than CAPTAIN AMERICA in FULL GEAR coming towards us.

RAPHAEL (OFF PANEL)
More freaks in costumes.

PAGE 05
We CONTINUE our little tour of the TRISKELLION in another WIDESCREEN PANEL. We have passed Captain America and are in another CORRIDOR. We PASS the HOLDING UNIT that Dr. Bruce Banner designer to hold the Hulk. Again, there’s the usual flurry of activity by soldiers, support staff and tech people. We see BANNER on the other side, in the unit, looking at people on the other side.

RAPHAEL (OFF PANEL)
Seems there are so many of them these days, it’s impossible to contain all of them.

We RETURN to Raphael for a THREE PANEL ROW as he is outside on the balcony, smoking lazily his cigar. He looks at the sky above him for a BEAT, then INSIDE for a MOMENT then returns his attention to his own speech We have one word balloon per panel here.

RAPHAEL
But you probably know all of that, don’t you, my dear? Working there with them, I suppose, does have some benefits.

RAPHAEL
All of that glamour and glitz on top, that’s just a good coating for what we are really talking about.

RAPHAEL
What all of them really are.

We FINISH the page with another WIDESCREEN. We change POV and are INSIDE the holding unit, together with Bruce Banner. Outside, the people pass by as if a skinny man in a cell built to hold a monster is just the most mundane thing in the world. We can see Banner’s REFLECTION inside the glass. But it’s not the skinny man we see there; it’s the raging beast that makes up THE HULK (can we have the kind of reflection that is using that total color transparency, without any line work there at all? That would look totally awesome, I would think).

RAPHAEL (OFF PANEL)
Monsters.

PAGE 06
We START this page with another THREE PANEL ROW that STAYS in the same POV. We are hovering above the luscious bed, showing the woman inside it. It is essentially the same panel over again, to make one point and one point alone: she DOES NOT MOVE while Raphael continues to talk to her.

RAPHAEL (OFF PANEL)
Oh, by the way. If you want me to stop talking, just say so.

RAPHAEL (OFF PANEL)
I must be boring you to death with all of this.

RAPHAEL (OFF PANEL)
I just like to think out aloud sometimes. Have somebody listen to all that’s going on in my head. Have somebody who knows what I’m talking about.

We FINISH the page with TWO WIDESCREENS that take us back to the TRISKELLION.

The FIRST ONE is a REPEAT of that panel that shows Banner locked up inside the HOLDING UNIT. The only thing showing time has passed is the different type of people walking by. Banner has stepped back from the glass and has withdrawn into himself.

RAPHAEL (OFF PANEL)
Gods.

The SECOND PANEL here is showing THOR approaching the TRISKELLION. As much as Banner should be seen as a symbol for human misery, Thor is BIGGER THAN LIFE. Awe-inspiring even from that one panel, he is essentially exudes the same kind of gentle kindness that somebody like Superman would exude in that universe built by the Distinguished competition.

RAPHAEL (OFF PANEL)
And monsters.

PAGE 07
Right on, this page will be just FOUR WIDESCREENS that all STAY in the SAME POV. We are with Raphael on the balcony, the camera is positioned BEHIND him as he watches while the SUN SLOWLY RISES behind the rooftops of St. Petersburg, burning away the shadows on the city.

All those panels will be silent, played for cinematic effect rather than expository purposes, before we turn to

PAGE 08
We have a BIG PANEL that takes up most of the page. It’s the first big ESTABLISHING SHOT of St. Petersburg that is GLOWING in the morning sunlight.

RAPHAEL (OFF PANEL)
A new dawn of man.

We FINISH the page with a THREE PANEL ROW. Again, we STAY in the POV of hovering above the bed for all three panels. The woman is still lying there, not moving, still apparently FAST ASLEEP. The only difference to the previous THREE PANEL ROW is that we are going to play with color here as the sun creeps into the room. By this time, we KNOW something is not quite right with that woman.

RAPHAEL (OFF PANEL)
Now, don’t laugh.

RAPHAEL (OFF PANEL)
I know very well how that sounds.

RAPHAEL (OFF PANEL)
But it’s what it says in your press release.

PAGE 09
We have another THREE PANELS in a row, in which we follow Raphael as he walks back into the bedroom. They should be bigger than the previous rows we used, probably a third of the page in length, BLEEDING into a BIG PANEL that that takes up the other two thirds of the page.

RAPHAEL
To me, that sounds almost like the things you hear from those mutant terrorists.

RAPHAEL
To these people, it’s all about vision. What you see, how you see it, how to make you see the world their way.

RAPHAEL
And in the end, it’s just another press release.

We CUT now to MAGNETO in his FIBERGLASS HOLDING UNIT deep within the bowels of the TRISKELLION for our BIG PANEL SHOT. He is sitting as his glass desk. Three agents in dark suits and sunglasses are surrounding him for interrogation.

RAPHAEL (OFF PANEL)
Did I tell you that I met Magneto once? Of course that was a long time ago, before he decided to wear that costume and blow up half of New York with his mutant army.

Before your bosses locked him away for good.

Made the world a safer place, I guess.

We FINISH the PAGE with another THREE PANEL ROW, but these will be smaller and INTEGRATED at the bottom of the BIG PANEL. We have a STRING of CLOSE UPS in which Raphael extinguishes his cigar in an ashtray. It keeps on SMOULDERING for a while, then the smoke fades away. In the background, we can see the DOOR leading out of the bedroom.

RAPHAEL
Talked for him for quite a while, back then.

RAPHAEL
He was the man with the vision. For me, it was all about business.

RAPHAEL
That’s all I ever talk about, it seems.

PAGE 10
We start with the SAME THREE ROW PANEL that we ended the last page with. We see Raphael walking away from us, OPENING the door in the background and WALKING THROUGH IT.

RAPHAEL
I don’t care about how to make it better. Or safer. I leave that up to other people.

RAPHAEL
I just clean up their mess.

We then have two WIDESCREEN PANELS. In the FIRST, we have Raphael walking down a very lush, very exclusive hotel corridor. We are BEHIND him as a MAID bringing some towels crosses his way. The maid is a typical old-fashioned Russian mamuschka.

In the SECOND WIDESCREEN, we have him PASS the maid, nodding friendly at her, before we CUT TO

PAGE 11
Right on, we’ll have THREE WIDESCREEN PANELS here on this page that ALL stay in the SAME POV. We are IN the bedroom and have this and treat this and the next page as a way of showing how TIME PASSES. It was very well done in Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s “From Hell” at one point (and it did even make it into the movie, which was one of the very few scenes that I actually liked. The rest of that thing was very, very bad…) Now, before we digress…

We START with the maid entering the room. The woman on the bed still hasn’t moved.

We CONTINUE with the same POV (I would suggest from an above angle, but I leave that up to you) and the maid now SITTING in one of the chairs, after having had a nervous breakdown. There’s also the HOTEL MANAGER standing in front of the bed, wiping sweat off his forehead. The woman has been turned over in the bed and we can see that she is dead. She stares with BLIND EYES at the ceiling (and therefore, at us)

We FINISH with the SAME POV and show the MAID, still sitting on a chair, but now more composed, the HOTEL MANAGER talking to a RUSSIAN POLICE OFFICER while another POLICE OFFICER (both uniformed beat cops) LOOKS at the body.

PAGE 12
The same game, three WIDESCREENS continuing our little passage through time.

We START with now even MORE people being in the room. The MAID, now being questioned by two cops in suits, with at least FOUR uniformed POLICE OFFICERS looking through the room. The HOTEL MANGER talking to another cop in a suit, while we have two people from the CORONER’S OFFICE coming into the room.

We CONTINUE with the focus now being on the RUSSIAN C.S.I people having taking over the crime scene. They investigate the body thoroughly as more and more people from the RUSSIAN ARMY come into the room, looking around. The HOTEL MANAGER, the MAID and the STREET COPS are gone in this panel. There’s a PHOTOGRAPHER flashing snapshots of the corpse.

We FINISH with the room FILLED by SHIELD operatives, as they TALK to some of the RUSSIAN ARMY OFFICERS and some others looking at the corpse with their high-tech gear.

PAGE 13
We’ll have FOUR WIDESCREEN PANELS on that page that are all in the same POV. It’s a BIG SCREEN with two people sitting in front of it. We only see the backs of those two. They are shrouded in SHADOWS. One of them is NICK FURY, the other one BLACK WIDOW. Only the images on the screen CHANGE as the scene progresses.

We START with the last IMAGE of the previous page. The only thing different here is that we show the TYPICAL TV LINES coming from shooting something on Hi-Definition video.

FURY
Freeze it.

In the SECOND PANEL we have pretty much the same image, but on the display we also have the “II” that shows up on an OSD when you freeze frame a video or DVD

BLACK WIDOW
We got the feed through the Russian embassy yesterday evening. I had it run through Tech all through the night for inconsistencies.

FURY
Is it authentic?

BLACK WIDOW
Looks like, Sir.

The THIRD PANEL stays exactly the same as the second one. The only thing that I would change is that the two silhouettes in the foreground shift slightly as they continue to talk to each other (that should be consistent throughout this sequence, since it gives the impression of cinematic movement)

FURY
Who the hell wires their hotel rooms?

BLACK WIDOW
We do, Sir. Got them all wired for image and sound in the D.C and New York areas last week in accordance with the Patriot Act. The memo should be on your desk. The Russians just got there a little faster, that’s all.

The FOURTH PANEL also stays exactly in the SAME POV. The image on the screen is still in FREEZE FRAME. Fury turns around to face Black Widow.

FURY
Show it again.

PAGE 14
We CONTINUE with the FOUR WIDESCREEN BREAKDOWN that stays in the same perspective, so we can play this like a movie with nearly a minute of screen time per page.

In the FIRST PANEL we SEE the REWIND BUTTON on the display and the typical SCRAMBLED UP PICTURE that shows up when somebody rewinds a video tape (of course, a DVD jumps a little cleaner, just showing single frames, but that might be difficult to pull off artistically within the confines of a comic book. But if you have an idea how to make that REWIND more high tech, I’m all ears). We GO BACK in TIME and have the image of the MAID and the HOTEL MANAGER from Page 11, Panel 2 there. In the foreground, Fury and Black Widow, still talking.

FURY
What was her name?

BLACK WIDOW
Vanessa Ferrick, Sir. Codename: Rapier. Seven years in the field, five of them in Black Ops.

In the SECOND PANEL, the image on the display jumps FURTHER BACK INTO TIME. Now we see RAPHAEL on the SCREEN as he LEAVES the ROOM. Otherwise, we stay in the same POV. We STILL see the REWIND BUTTON on the display as well.

BLACK WIDOW
You briefly met her at the opening gala for the Ultimates last year.

FURY
I remember.

In the THIRD PANEL, we skip further back in time. Now we are SHOWING none other than Vanessa Ferrick and Raphael in bed (or around the bed or wherever you want to place them) as they are doing the naughty.

FURY
What about her family?

BLACK WIDOW
Has been notified.

FURY
Give them the works for the funeral. Find out who their congressman is, get him on the phone and have him hold the eulogy.

In the FOURTH PANEL we skip even further back in time. Here we see Vanessa as she pours some champagne into a flute In this shot Raphael is not in the image.

FURY
She died a soldier.

PAGE 15
We FINISH the sequence with (yes, you guessed right) the final FOUR WIDESCREEN PANELS. Again, we have the two shadows in the foreground move as they speak over the imagery.

We START with Raphael and Ferrick entering the bedroom.

BLACK WIDOW
You give the word, we take him out. I can have an assault team out there within 36 hours, Sir.

We CONTINUE with Raphael LOOKING up STRAIGHT INTO THE CAMERA. He starts breaking a smile.

BLACK WIDOW
We got Stark’s new armor back from field-testing in Arizona. They got enough firepower to level the whole place, if necessary.

FURY
No. The Russians won’t go for that. This ain’t Iraq or Afghanistan where nobody gives a damn. We march in there, we’re right back in the bloody cold war.

We CONTINUE with a ZOOM onto Raphael’s face LOOKING UP as his smile widens.

FURY
And the bastard knows it.

We FINISH with a CLOSE UP of Raphael on the display with a KNOWING SMIRK.

FURY
He knows exactly how to play us.

PAGE 16 & 17
This is a SPREAD that opens up with a HUGE PANEL to establish LOCATION which takes up the whole spread. At the bottom of the spread, we have a ROW OF EIGHT PANELS INSERTED INTO the big image like a string of BOXOUTS.

The BIG DOUBLE SPREAD PANEL: an image of Monte Carlo at night, as seen from the sea. It should evoke old movies with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly as well as early James Bond, not the newer movies. Anybody who’s ever been to Monaco knows that the place is still stuck in the Sixties, despite the fact that they have all the new cars driving around there. The flair is still the Sixties, the women (at least the RICH ones) still adhere to Sixties formal style, so even with that opening shot of Monte Carlo, where we DON’T see any people but rather the buildings lit up for the night should convey that feeling of old-fashioned glamour (I am ranting here, but most of the modern writers have only seen the city on TV).

In the BOXOUTS we position the camera BEHIND none other than SABLE sitting at a blackjack table. Even in those little shots, we can see that the casino she is in is top class. The dealer has the slick expression of a European professional and none of that Las Vegas sleaze. These people here play for pleasure, not for money. Sable is in formal wear; evening gown, a sable fur, long, black opera gloves. We FOLLOW the game she is playing through those eight panels and PLAY it totally for visual effect, so there will be NO DIALOGUE at all.

The only thing we do on that double spread is a

CAPTION (LOCATION)
Monte Carlo, Monaco

PAGE 18
We OPEN with a FOUR PANEL ROW of CLOSE UPS as Sable meticulously takes out a small cigarillo from a silver case, lights it, blows the smoke against the ceiling and then slightly turns her head as to acknowledge the presence of somebody behind her who we don’t see yet.

SABLE
Hello, Nicky.

We FOLLOW with THREE WIDESCREENS that have NICK FURY in an ARMANI TUX sit down NEXT to Sable at the table, first PULLING UP the STOOL, then positioning himself next to her.

FURY
How did you know it was me?

SABLE
You smell of gun oil and old wars, darling.

SABLE
Most of the other men here smell of Versace.

FURY
Right.

PAGE 19
We continue the CASINO SEQUENCE with a FOUR PANEL ROW at the top with QUICK CUTS between SABLE and FURY as they talk. We START with a CLOSE UP of Fury.

SABLE (OFF PANEL)
And they don’t look like a butler when they wear Armani.

Then we CUT TO Sable as she continues to talk. The CUTS should be as cinematic as possible. Since we have a lot of dialogue and exposition to get through here AND at the same time make it sound cool (meaning it has to snap, crackle and pop like the best Tarantino), we get through some quick cuts here and there.

SABLE
Old Europe isn’t your style, Nicky. No military boots, no assault rifles. You even had to dress up your soldiers to get them in.

In the THIRD PANEL of that first ROW, we have a SILENT FURY look surprised, before we then CUT BACK to

SABLE
Oh, come on. You think I didn’t notice?

We CONTINUE with a BIG PANEL that shows the CASINO HALL, all done in late 18th century style, filled to the brim with people gambling and partying in an old fashioned cocktail party kind of way (ever compared a European cocktail party with an American one? Trust me, there is a big difference between New American Money, and even old American money is new money to Europeans and really OLD OLD OLD European money. It is just the level of decadence, I guess, but that can be played very nicely in this book). It is the comic book equivalent of a WIDE SHOT that is needed to give a good overview of the location and serve as an interim shot before the next series of SMALL PANELS that are on the BOTTOM OF THE PAGE, almost an OVERLAY OF BOXOUTS onto the BIG PANEL that goes all the way down. We have three PANELS there that show exactly what Sable is describing in her VOICE OVER.

SABLE
What I do like is the German ambassador in the back. Hardly noticeable, unless, of course, you know that no German would have such a good sense of fashion.

SABLE
Then there’s the couple at the Roulette table. They’ve spent less than the half a grand in the past twenty minutes. You wasting all of your money on superheroes these days?

SABLE
Now, the cocktail waiter, that’s sloppy work. I can see his earpiece. Everything we say, you probably have it analyzed by your monkeys back home while they live on Starbuck’s coffee and Happy Meals.

PAGE 20
We have A ROW of FOUR PANELS each to begin with as we CONTINUE the conversation between Sable and Fury. Again we have a lot of QUICK CUTS between the two, starting with a CLOSE UP of a smiling Fury. It’s that kind of a smirk who knows how to be charming and at the same time dangerous. Think Robert DeNiro in “Ronin” here as a good reference (or even better, when it comes to the mood of Fury here, think DeNiro in “Goodfellas”)

FURY
Of course.

We CUT TO Sable as she looks down in another CLOSE UP

SABLE
Of course.

Again, we CUT BACK to Fury as his face hardens.

FURY
You know the rules of this game, Sable

And BACK to Sable. Now it’s her turn to show a dangerous, very thin smile.

SABLE
I quit your game, Nicky. Even quit that stupid code name.

Now, we go into a WIDESCREEN of the two sitting next to each other. Sable has turned her back against the Blackjack table, while Fury is still sitting there, facing it. He rests the chin on his hands, looking at nothing in particular while smiling to himself.

FURY
Really?

We move to a SECOND ROW off FOUR PANELS with another series of QUICK CUTS and CLOSE UPS. This time we start with Sable.

SABLE
Really.

We CUT TO Fury as he again looks around to face her.

FURY
I remember correctly, I fired your ass.

And BACK to Sable who holds her ground as she stares him down.

SABLE
Same difference.

We CUT BACK to FURY as his smile widens to a grin.

FURY
Right.

We FINISH the page with ANOTHER WIDESCREEN. Sable moves closer to Fury as she talks.

SABLE
That’s your game, Nicky. You got all the toys, agents with code names, heroes in costumes. All you could ever need to save the world. Your world, not mine.

PAGE 21
We’ll CONTINUE the conversation. I would suggest another FOUR WIDESCREEN PANELS that stay in the same POV as the final widescreen from the previous page. Again, we play with time and movement here to guarantee a good flow. So, we have them do rather mundane things (I leave the who does what when to you) while they discuss important ones.

During that conversation, Fury pulls out a small piece of paper from his Armani tux and puts it on the table. Sable, on the other hand, takes out another cigarillo from her case and lights it. Then she RECOGNIZES what (or rather who) it is she sees on that paper.

SABLE
I just have to live in it.

SABLE
Trying not to think too much about old times.

FURY
Bad thing about old times, they always catch up. When you do our kind of work, that’s just the way it is.

FURY
People like us, we never go ex.

PAGE 22
SPLASH PAGE. We have the whole page DEDICATED to a CLOSE UP of that SHOT of Raphael smiling into the security camera. We see Fury’s hand covering up a small portion of that print.

FURY (OFF PANEL)
I know the shot’s not as good as the ones we made at your wedding reception and the beard’s new, but I’m sure you can still recognize your husband.

He goes by the name of Raphael Sabitini now. Runs an operation out of Saint Petersburg. We’re not sure what kind. He killed the covert we got in to put him under surveillance last week. But that’s not the funny thing.

The funny thing is that he’s still breathing. Especially since you were ordered to kill him three years ago.

Care to explain that to me?

________________________________________

Now, some of those ideas are now, 9 years (fuck, has it been that long?) somewhat... known (and having just read through it again, I am quite certain that I wrote the pitch before the end of the first Ultimates ending, because I felt incredibly clever for using somebody to shoot Bruce Banner in the head as a way of bringing out the Hulk), but back then, I don't think they were all that known, to be honest, and some of the action set pieces I still love, and some of them have in the meantime found their way into my own original writing.

I have not kept up with Marvel in the meantime all that much, I feel that most of the things they are doing now (that I have skimmed through) are monotone and incredibly boring, which probably means that I have finally outgrown them. Yay, I am a grown up!

Still, superheroes hold a fascination for me, and like I said, some of the things here found their way into my own writing.

Hope you enjoyed this little flashback... and one of the very rare moments (I was younger and dumber back then) that I actually tried to make a corporate character work. I still think that I wasn't all that bad, and that it would have been a good limited series.

THE WRITE STUFF: GHOSTS, OR: HOW TO SUCESSFULLY TEAM UP HARRISON FORD AND PIERCE BROSNAN (AS BOND & RYAN)

2012-01-05T10:03:00.000+01:00

Since I am "Cleaning House" (so to speak), I'm going to show you a fragment (in its very first draft) of a movie script that I started in late 2009 when thought that dear god, somebody should write a good role for Harrison Ford and Pierce Brosnan...

... well, mostly Harrison Ford, who I adore and who has been in nothing but shit in so many years that it's hard to remember that there was a time when nobody could top him at the box office and a Ford involvement in a movie was almost a stamp of approval to go and see it (yes, this was before the age of the Internet, and I'm old enough to remember it. Shut up).

A fair warning. What you are about to read is essentially pop fiction. It's based on a simple (and not entirely original) premise. Let's just assume for a moment that you have Pierce Brosnan and Harrison Ford (which I didn't, but that has never stopped me before)...

... and then you do to them what Sean Connery did to his role in The Rock.

In other words, you use your audience's "knowledge" about these stars and their biggest roles to your advantage. Because what made The Rock work wasn't the story (laughable) or Nicholas Cage (sorry, man), but the fact that the moment Connery enters the movie, we know one thing about this very special prisoner...

...he is Bond! James Bond!

It's never said, not out loud, but we all know it. And everything that comes after Connery's first appearance? From a writer's point of view? Easy sailing. You know you're going to be all right. Bond is there. And whatever shit Ed Harris might want to throw at San Francisco, you knew that Connery would prevail, despite the fact that the final big rescue moment belongs to Cage.

I have to admit (and do so gladly) that I have always had a big soft spot for aging heroes. I never cheered for Luke Skywalker with his mall rat attitude of "I wanna fight the Empire, all of my friends at mall are fighting the Empire, why can't I fight the Empire, this is so unfair, Unca Owen!"

Young heroes - you know, the kind that modern Hollywood vomits on you with frightening regularity - are not courageous, they cannot be. They're too young, too dumb to understand the stakes of standing up and fight. Sorry, kids. I know you're out there and standing up and trying to fight the good fight, but in a movie scenario, the idea that a suburban kid is predestined to become the "chosen one"...

... is utterly ridiculous.

My fascination with "old heroes" goes back to two Connery movies, one that shows an aging Robin Hood, coming back from the Crusades to find out that shit back home hasn't changed at all, with him going one final time against the "establishment", against injustice, only to find out that time has passed him by, that his fight is already lost, that nobody cares anymore...

... and to this day, I find this movie to be beautiful and heartbreaking.

The other Connery movie was Outland. Which was essentially the SF version of High Noon, that western that had Gary Cooper being left alone, being left out by the very same people he was supposed to protect as shit begins to fly. And honestly? Both movies are a good indicator of the kind of help you can expect from the "Good People".

You can't expect shit.

These things I had in mind when I sat down in October 2009 and began to write Ghosts.

Ford. Brosnan. Ryan. Bond.

One last time.

There were two other big influences here in the script, which would be "still sane" Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns and Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven.

In fact, if there was a pitch line, it would have been. It's Unforgiven for the spy genre.

What I thought was interesting about Jack Ryan and James Bond was how different they were, as archetypes. The Movie Bond (prior to the Daniel Craig reboot) was a loose cannon, a womanizer, a suave personality, somebody who fit easily in the 1960s, was laughable in the 1970s, irrelevant in the 1980s and briefly resurrected by Brosnan in the 1990s to almost his former glory.

Jack Ryan on the other hand, he was meticulous, he was - the way both Alec Baldwin and then Harrison Ford portrayed him - an accidental hero. Think about it. He's an analyst. He's not an agent. When he gets into shit, in all three movies he starred in (prior to the Ben Affleck one), it's not really by choice. He just happens to be the one who did the dossier on that Russian submarine captain. He just happens to be there when the IRA tries to kill the Royals. Him merely trying to help out his friend Admiral Greer that has him wind up in a giant conspiracy.

In fact, if you had to boil down Ryan to one sentence, it's the one said by Alec Baldwin in The Hunt For Red October...

JACK RYAN
A memo, Jack! Next time, you write a memo!

(incidentally, there's a rather clever reference to this in the script I will walk through with you)

These two men (and the way the two actors portrayed them) are like fire and ice.

What a buddy movie that would make!

What a last hurrah I could write with that!

And since both men are essentially relics of the Cold War, it would be even easy to get the ball rolling, simply by saying "these two men have worked together before, years ago, and the shit that gets the plot rolling... ties right back to the end of the Soviet Union".

That's the thing about the past, I have one of my characters say, you can quit. But the past stays right where it is.

So, with that in mind, I'll walk you through this fragment, okay?

(1) WHEN YOU START, START WITH A BOOM!

When opening a movie these days, you don't have much time. Shit must fly. Shit must happen. And that shit must fly in such a way that you have your audience's ass firmly planted in their seats, because, hey, right next door they are playing another movie, and maybe they sneak out and watch that if you bore them in the first 10 minutes, know?

Now, the problem with that is - everything has been done already. The Boom, I mean. There are only so many ways of opening a movie like this, which means that if you go with The Boom, you must twist it, turn it, put it on its head.

At the same time, you must give it a location that would allow for both the British and the American intelligence services to become interested. Now, I am not saying that my way is extraordinarily clever, but it is workable, by introducing both The Boom and the reason for it, but in such a way that it is still a mystery to the viewer...

The first 4 pages serve as a set-up, and like any set-up, it has to do all of the things that I just explained to you. Now, here's the problem with the Russians and Britain. They kind of own it (I know, tell an Englishman that and they'll be huffing and puffing about it, rah rah rah... Rule Britannia!) and they are no longer publicly perceived as a threat.

But the more influential they have become, the more you can find some feeling of, well, I wouldn't quite call it xenophobia, but what we Germans would call "Überfremdung" (becoming overly alienated). Such a feeling can slide very quickly into xenophobia, though, and quite quickly into racism.

The problem? You have probably falling asleep already reading these two paragaphs, which sound like the beginning of a lecture.

In a movie, kids... you have to show, not tell (and expositions are a bitch).

In 2009 I chose to show by combining this through.... what else, this is the UK, after all.... Football.

Thankfully, the Chelsea FC is owned by a Russian billionaire, and having the footie fans in a pub (what could be more... English?) shout "Enge-land" "Enge-land" for a team that consist primarily of international players and is owned by a Russian... serves a good way to introduce this notion without sliding into a socio-economic analysis.

We also get to know that there are still Russian dissidents (remember, kids, when the FSB [formerly KGB] killed that Russian dissident by radiation poisoning... by having him drink tea? LOVE IT! Use it! Make it work)... and that this particular guy Lermontov is apparently important enough to have two MI5 agents babysitting him...

... not that it seems to be helping a lot: BOOM!

I'm sorry.... did I break your concentration?

(2) INTRODUCING YOUR HERO, PART ONE

Now, introductions of heroes are a bitch. Always and forever. Tattoo this behind your eyelids, kids, because whatever writers (and directors and producers) tell you, there aren't many iconic introductions that stick with you. The introduction of Riggs in Lethal Weapon is one of them. I'm sure you remember. It's the scene where Mel Gibson takes down a couple of drug dealers and goes full crazy, slapping his face, poking them in the eye and slapping them, Three Stooges style... before going all hardass cop on them, making you know that this is one unhinged motherfucker.

(I seem remember that in the director's cut there's a scene prior to this one, which has Riggs deal with a sniper at a school, but that scene is really bad and shouldn't have been included into the movie, because even back then, it almost plays like a Dirty Harry parody)

But the introduction that I still feel is one of the most powerful, most iconic ever... is the one of Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark. You know, this one...

It takes a full three minutes before Ford makes it onto the screen, and then, when you first see him, he has his back to you... before slowly turning around. And you know, right from this moment, that this is your guy.

Now, in an Unforgiven type of script, we have the problem that ...

(1) all of your heroes will have a past, but you still have to introduce them in such a way that it stands on its own.

(2) that past in this case is the fall of the Soviet Union, which is something your teens and even twenty-somethings have only heard about in a rather boring environment of a school or university lecture, if at all... so this puts you already in a bit of a shitty spot.

... but you have the Jack Ryan archetype that you want and can play here, so don't worry about those two problems, tackle them head on.

In my case, I used a device that - if you have read page 4 - I have quite openly stolen (stealing isn't necessarily bad, kids) from a rather bad movie, all in all, called The Kingdom. I say bad movie, because the actual plot kind of falls apart after a very strong start, but the opening credits I still think belong to the best things that ever made it to the screen...

Now, that was something that would provide the perfect bridge from the opening sequence to the introduction of my first hero... because you can see at the end of the opening credits that the entire history of the Soviet Union until its demise...

... and to then see it was a boring lecture! At West Point! By our hero, retired Harrison Ford. By opening it this way, I could tie it into two things.

(1) The famous Indiana Jones sequences that everybody knows, the ones that have Indy lecture his students and being rather out of place there... remember what I told you at the beginning of this walkthrough. Use your stars' persona, the "public knowledge" about them to your advantage. Always!

(2) The other big archetype... that something happening halfway around the world has repercussions somewhere else. and so, off to the races we go...

These two pages are all about character. Not only do we establish that Ford and his visitor have a shared history, we also include the fact that Ford has a family that he loves... and that there is something off between him and the character of Halloran, making what appears at first glance just a bit of chit-chat between two old friends... somehow into a threat. You're forgiven if you overread it, but a certain bit on page 6 will come back to bite us in the ass later.

We're about eight minutes or so into the movie by now, and you already have a set-up and the introduction of one of your heroes. Remember, kids, these days you just don't have time to go into long, extended character pieces, like actually showing Ford to be a family man. These things are important, they must be included, but make the point... and move on.

(2) ESTABLISHING YOUR HERO

... and moving on means your hero needs to get involved in the set-up. Now, in the pre-24 days, that would mean getting him to another place, more talks, you know, the kind of briefing situations. But nowadays, we can play it a bit faster by including TV FOOTAGE and cut back and forth between what you think happened in the opening of this movie...

... and what really happened.

... now you have a lot of exposition that has been dealt with, in a relatively short amount of time, and not only that, we managed to do another thing. We established that Ford's character is indeed the smartest man in the room.

In a room that is packed with all the amenities and high tech gadget bullshit that would give Michael Bay an enternal boner (because he loves that shit)... here's an older guy who pulls all of what they show him apart... just by thinking.

And when you are dealing with a Jack Ryan archetype, the analyst archetype, that is exactly what you need to do. You need to establish an intellectual dominance over the "new-fangled" stuff.

I used a bit of another movie in this scene, and you may have noticed it, you may not have, but there's a moment in which Ford's character puts on some glasses...

....echoing one of my all-time favorite movie scenes, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, in which we had (a long time ago) one of the best moments of showing a "hero" who has aged, Captain James T. Kirk (as I seem to recall, William Shatner had a shitload of problems showing that Kirk had aged, but the moment in which Kirk puts on the glasses right before he orders the Enterprise to fire? A moment of sheer brilliance by writer/director Nicholas Meyer).

We also establish two more things in these scenes, one of them being a fun moment which has Ford say to Max (the young female character who you should watch closely) at the end of page 16...

JACK
A memo. I wrote a memo.

... echoing what I up there called the defining character line of the Jack Ryan archetype.

Also, I showed on pages 12 and 13 that - as it is mostly the case with retired CIA people - that Ford's character was tired and more than a bit disillusioned, something that comes straight out of Bob Bear's real life CIA agent who was used as the basis for Clooney's character in Syriana.

Again, it gives the character a back story without actually having to show it.

(3) INTRODUCING YOUR HERO, PART TWO

Now that we have the Ryan archetype and have him established, we are left with the Bond archetype. And that one's a lot harder to do, because Bond is a reactive force, much less proactive. And to be honest, I'd doubt that most of the Bonds (I always saw it as a cover identity you took when you became 007) would actually live to reach retirement.

But as you can see on page 16, not only does Ford's character realize why the CIA came to him, it is also immediately hinted at this other character, or as it is said...

HALLORAN
When you wrote the book on him. You... and that other guy.

With a single line of dialogue, we have established a link between Ford's character, the plot (something that happened ten years ago) and the Brosnan "Bond" that is about to come into the movie.

... and "Bond" has always been a bitch to introduce. And older "Bond"? Hell, slit your wrists right now. But like I said, we are not talking about "Bourne Bond", we are talking about the original one, the suave one, the womanizer, the one who'd be at all the places of glamor in the world you could never get to, like Monaco. And he'd do all the things that suave men (and those pretending or deluding themselves to be) would do, like bedding the most wonderful women.

All of these things belong to the archetype.

All of these things you can see - twisted - in these few pages that

(1) "Bond" is still to be found in Monaco, but now it's essentially a reserve, you know, where old agents go to die after they've been retired. And he's stuck there.

(2) He's still bedding women, but no longer the glamor pussies of old, but rather anybody who he may fancy, so the womanizer is very much alive but at the same reduced to this "aging playboy"

(3) His life style is killing him. I always knew it would. He's been boozing too much, fucking too much, not giving a shit about where this all may lead.

And it's led him here.

By the way, some of those ideas, concocted in 2009, made it into my pulp serial novel RE:TIRED that I am working on, but here you can see those ideas of a "caged, aged tiger" for the first time.

... but as you can see from those pages that follow (and we are about 23 minutes into the movie, it's time for the first big set-piece, remember kids, we don't have time, not these days, we need to go Boom! a lot) that even the aged and ill "Brosnan Bond" is intellectually a match for Ford's character by dissecting the scene around him in quite a calm manner...

... again making fun of the type of agents that we are now being treated to, the desk jockeys, the automatons, the kids that Hollywood shits on us when we see an "agent" movie these days, staffed by people who are barely out of their diapers but are supposed to be "experts" at everything.

Or as Mason (yes, I know, I suck at names, his name is Sean Mason, which is absolutely atrocious and a reference to The Rock so obvious that it should induce nausea) says....

MASON
Really. I should be flattered... would be flattered, if I weren't quite certain that somewhere in a bunker, probably underneath Langley, the best Halloran can come up with to analyze my reactions tduring our conversation.... the part of our conversation that won't be about the unpleasentness of my health or the pleasentries of your retirement... is a couple of college children tapping on some keyboards half a world away, living on Mars bars and Happy Meals.

In other words, I have him piss all over Spooks and 24 and Bourne and everything that came after the grand and glorious days of propery spies, you know, the kind of Bond and Smiley that made the genre, the ones who actually did stuff with their minds and their fists...

.. before I segue into the beginning of the first big action sequence with both of our heroes by having Brosnan's character realize, quite calmly, that shit is about to happen.

MASON
Okay. The three chaps coming in right now, however? Closes you've come so far to blending in, give you that.

THOMAS
They're not ours.

MASON
In that case... get down, Jack.

And that's it from me so far. I'll get into how to set up action pieces and how to keep shit running in a movie like this in another post later down the road, because right now... I can feel you all go "Wha?" and "Thomas is crazy"...

THE WRITE STUFF: THE CAGE, OR: THE TV SHOW ABOUT THE NEWS YOU WON'T SEE

2012-01-03T16:12:00.000+01:00

In May 2009, right after I had finished the slavery... uh, work, yes, work... on It Takes A Wizard and 10 Beautiful Assassins and having finished two screenplays that were more or less designed (i.e. I wrote them with a potential market in mind) with Safe and Possession, I was empty.

I couldn't write. I didn't want to write. I wanted to lie down somewhere and die. And all the shit that was going to happen with my book publisher was happening as well as me desperately trying to get a manager or agent in Hollywood for those two movie scripts...

[INSERT IMAGE: See how the writer does cold emails everywhere and gets told by everyone that "under no circumstances will we ever talk to you" even though I had already had a screenplay called Reality Check optioned by Julian Krainin in the early 2000s, had two books coming out and thus couldn't be called quite a "stupid fanboy writer", but hey, who gives a fuck, right?]

I was deeply frustrated, not only by the industry (and the people in it), but still thinking, if you are better than anybody else, they will come, right, Kevin Costner, right? Come on, it works in every fucking goddamned movie. If you write it, they will come!

And I didn't want to write anything that was "designed", I had spent 2.5 years writing on assignment, I had written stuff that was catering to the "invisible hand of the market" for so long that I felt like a whore all the time, and I say "whore", not "prostitute", because, see kids, prostitutes get at least paid...

... and so I finally sat down and told myself, just this once, Thomas, you'll write something for yourself. You won't give a fuck about who might read it, it will never be produced anyway [how prescient of me, non?], but you will write a concept and the pilot for a TV show that you've wanted to write since my days at Bertelsmann in 2003.

A show about... journalists!

I know, right?

Like, a show about the most hated professional group after politicians (and today, bankers) ... what the hell was I thinking?

Well, I was thinking exactly that. Journalists suck. I know. I used to have been one. Journalism (as I have made the point here on this blog a few times in Journalism Watch) has become a degenerate profession, has devolved from what it was, what it should be to.... TMZ and Perez Hilton and Hackgate and Murdoch and ....

... but that's exactly what I wanted to write about. Not as a comedy, not as a farce, I wanted to write about journalists in a way that you would write about soldiers. I wanted to tackle it in such a way like it was a mixture between Band of Brothers and The West Wing, I wanted to update All the President's Men... but as a TV show...

... and I wanted to use the model of the "TV Mini Novel" that I had invented in 2007.

Insane, right? Yeah, I know!

This is what became The Cage.

[INSERT EXPLANATION: The pitch document you see here is essentially (but not quite, it would be too long to explain the various versions I went through) the "pitch" I did for the show... a few months after I had written the pilot, trying to make it "interesting" to read, hence the "tabloid" opening page with its summary and, yes, Matt Perry!... and also the quotes from the pilot episode for each of the main characters that would, so I hoped, encapsulate their personalities. Did I mention that I wrote it for Matt Perry in my head? I did? Oh, well...]

I wrote the first draft of it in less than 12 days. A masssive, detailed draft of a pilot episode that I thought would put Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing scripts to shame. I would also like to point out that this script and concept existed long before Sorkin wrote Newsroom... and that I was very much aware of the points I make and the problems I point out in the linked blog post by me... in 2009 already. So whoever is out there, don't even fucking think that I "stole" from Sorkin, okay?

In the pilot, there was a lot of fast talking, a lot of smart people in really terrible situations. The script was also 87 pages long, which ensured that nobody would ever read it. Nobody that mattered. Because people that matter in Hollywood, and kids, write this down, tattoo it inside your eyelids...

.... people who matter in Hollywood are too stupid to really read!

It didn't matter. Not to me. I was proud of what it was.

Very proud. Ah, vanity... one of my favorite sins, eh?

But knowing that nobody would care to read it, I put it into a folder on my system... and looked at it every now and then and thought, well, if you never write anything else in your life, Thomas, you wrote this, and it's your most personal piece ever... and it is good.

Let's skip to early 2010, and somebody did read it. And that somebody smelled money. And that somebody knew the "development guy" at Mpower Pictures... which i had never heard of, but it was apparently the production company of Steve McEveety, one of the numerous guys who had produced Mel Gibson's Braveheart...

... and is it okay that my script would be shown to this guy, because "this is the best thing I have read in such a long time"? Sure, I said, and tried not to roll my eyes too much, because here's the thing, kids, these kind of folks always call anything and everything "awesome" if it suited them. Whatever. The script stood as it stood. Nobody could steal it.

[INSERT IMAGE: Imagine the author and creator thinking to himself, why worry? This won't go anywhere anyway. But hey, what do you have to lose? Like I said, whatever]

I will cut this short, because as much fun as it can be to dissect the process that happened between March 2010 until I (yes, I) pulled the plug on this "relationship" in August 2010, I have already done so (without naming names) here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here

And after the "development guy" (and no, I still won't name him, you can google him, it's easy. Do some work) apologized and I let them tell me "it's with the networks now", here....

[INSERT EXPLANATION: I don't believe in lying, and if you read through the links here, you will see that I was "hopeful", that I was a "team player" or at least tried to be, I listened when I thought that somebody made a good point, but in the end, you can see my frustration and my righteous anger at the numerous stupidities and more importantly, the attempts to dumb my concept down to Castle: News Reporters... and for what it's worth, I stand by my words from back then that you cannot do a show about journalism in August 2010 and not even know what Wikileaks is]

At the end, not because it made it "better" but only "shorter" (= fit onto the mandatory and completely stupidly random "formatting"), I had cut down the pilot - without having lost too much of dialogue (and sneakily thinking that I could re-insert most of it in the shooting script stage, yeah, talk about delusion)... I had the script down to 42 pages.

So let's show you a little bit.

That's what you're here for, right?

Okay, that's what I pretend, and I stand by that delusion, too...

If you've read (or skimmed through) the pitch document, you'll have noticed that I wanted to start the story of The Cage and my reporter James Morrow on literally what would become the worst day of his life, and that I didn't want him to be a "hero" or a "lovable rogue".

I wanted the viewer to not know him at the beginning of the pilot.

I wanted them to question him.

I wanted them to come into the show "knowing" what they "knew" to be the "truth".

That journalists are scum. And only slowly, bit by bit, I wanted to reveal that nothing in this show would ever be what it seemed. And that that there are no heroes. Only people trying to do the right thing.

And paying a very high price for it.

Here's James Morrow. Give him a hand, will you?

Oh, and if there's somebody out there who does want to read this in full (I ain't gonna post all of it), and no, I am not begging or asking, just stating and offering, you can drop me a line at Thomas.R.Hart@gmail.com (it's my drop box, not my actual work email, but I check it relatively often)

And.... the day's just going to get worse. For everybody.

I will most likely write The Cage as a series of novels one day, no, strike that, I will write it as a series of novels someday, but I never will forget that it remains, to this day at least, the one thing in terms of "visual writing" that I am most proud of.

And that, as my friend and artist Edo Fuijkschot once pointed out to me, "is essentially what you are in a nutshell, Thomas. That guy. You are James Morrow. You are that guy."

YES, VIRGINIA, NOT ALL JEWS ARE NICE

2011-12-29T19:53:00.000+01:00

Hush! Are you hearing it?

In the Western media? You know, the one that never has reported on anything Israel has done that it couldn't excuse? Killing people? Why, it was all them terrorists! Invading other countries? Why, it was them terrorists they had to kill. Sending covert assassination groups to Dubai or into the Sudan? Why, it was them...

... you get the picture. Because, boys and girls, here is the grim truth, the world in general but the Western world in particular still regards Israel (and in its logical conclusion, Jews) as different. As people that cannot, must not, shall not be judged by the same rules, rationales as the rest of you (or us). Now, the Eastern world in general and Muslims in particular, they also think that Jews are different.

The difference? Mathematically speaking we can say those two worldviews on Jews in general and Israel in particular are simply an inversion, with the Western world giving them a (+) on any- and everything, and the Muslim world giving them all a (-).

Philosophically, we could also state that the Muslim world is stuck in the Pre-World-War 2 era, where all Jews are terrible, they run the media, the banks, the world, they are evil and must be destroyed.

Tsk. Tsk. Idiots.

The Western world doesn't fare too much better, because since the Holocaust, the Shoa, whatever the fuck you want to call this mass murder, it's Jews are under siege, in danger, and, uh, well, none of us was responsible for what happened to them during World War 2, we either didn't know or, uh, we fought it all, I mean, we did fight Hitler, right, and thus by extension we fought for the Jews, yes, that makes us the Good People, and we shall always look away and/or give any excuse for the delightful amount of human rights abuse and outright war crimes that have been perpetrated by Israel in the past decades.

Just don't remind us, okay?

Just don't say the word, okay?

Hush!

Jew!

Tsk. Tsk. Idiots.

We shall not go into the whole truth of the matter that not only didn't the overwhelming majority of the delightfully Good People of France, of Britain, of the Netherlands give a fuck about what happened to the Jewish neighbors in their own countries, you also don't want me to give you a blow by blow of what the USA's cultural heroes Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh among very many others thought about the Jews (those damn bankers! Those damn capitalists! Those damn communist capitalist Jews! Oh, wait, doesn't that sound familiar? Why, yes...)

As I wrote just a few posts back, we love to delude ourself, and the Allied countries, they have been living with that particular delusion of "heroism" that all of World War 2 was fought to "free and save the Jews from opporession" since the end of that last, big war fought in the Imperialism 1.0 way.

Which also helped to get the state of Israel on the map.

Can't really say "no, man, you can't have your own state, uh, oh well... okay, but only if you kinda never mention again that we didn't give a shit about you between 1933 and 1945, okay?", can you?

These two diametrically opposing, completely bullshit views have allowed Israel to play everybody against everybody for decades now, and as argumentative trump cards go, the Holocaust, no, wait, the multimedia bombardment of images from the Holocaust is hard to beat.

Kill children in Gaza? HOLOCAUST!

Take land away and break contracts? HOLOCAUST!

Let people starve? HOLOCAUST!

And again I say, idiots.

I'm going to tell you something.

Israel has no special place, no special position in the world.

Oh gosh, I know... right?

How dare I say that? HOLOCAUST!

Yeah, shut up. Or I will mandate that the Native Americans get the land in the USA back, because percentage-wise, boys and girls, we (oh no, wait, that was you!) killed more of them. I will mandate that you give back Australia to the Aborigines! Because percentrage-wise, you killed more of them.

But hey, none of you were so obsessive compulsive as the Germans under Hitler were in documenting it all so that the History Channel could run one entire month of every year nothing other than Nazi documentaries.

In world history, the Holocaust was nothing special.

And before you open your mouth to loudly protest that nowhere before had so many people been killed by a dictatorial system and that it was unique in... hush. Now look at how many people the Stalin regime murdered. At roughly the same time. Of its own people. The lowest estimate is roughly 20 million.

Yes. Let that sink in.

20 million. As the lowest estimate.

Executed or killed in concentration ca... oh, wait, gulags...

Mass murder. Nothing really special in human history.

And that is something you should actually think about.

That should scare the living fuck ot of you.

The fact that the Holocaust was nothing special, that at any given time and place, there are always enough people to support a regime, to support a system, that will enable, carry and carry out such mass murders. And hey, I am also looking at you, Turkey. Your massacred those Armenians, own the fuck up to it.

And who's read this blog before knows that this is not to excuse what the Germans did. Far from it.

Like I said a few posts ago, it's not the 1%, it's you...

But hush... can you hear it?

Out there? In the media?

Have you read it? Heard it? Seen it?

There's talk about it. Everywhere. Hush Hush and very quietly.

Coming with a little bit of "Huh?" and "Why did nobody tell us this before?"

That gasp of disbelief that only the best "journalists" can come up with.

Hey, kids... did you hear? There's Jewish Terrorism!

Hey, not my words, but those of the IDF!

Oh noes! Say it ain't so!

But yes, Virginia, not all Jews are nice people!

Because, hell, most people looked away from stories like these....

... when they happened weeks ago, months ago, when the same people who spat on, who bullied, who attacked this little girl in Beit Shemesh did the same, but hey, back then it was against Palastinians, and let me point something out again, like I did in my post earlier, the majority, the silent, the moral, the whatever-the-fuck majority, they don't care when it happens to other people, but they sure as hell get rather annoyed when it happens to them.

Jewish Terrorism. Who'd have thunk?

Jewish Taliban. Who'd have thunk?

Actually, if anybody in the West had not willingly looked away, had not been buried in either guilt, political correctness and whatever else you may call it when somebody looks away (I call it moral cowardice), the rise of the Ultraorthodox Jews in the fabric of Israel and their growing influence on its policies could have been seen by a mile off.

It's those people who - with the help of Israel's government - put up their fortresses and settlements that break any and all international treaties. And hey, kids, you know something? This group, they don't even believe in the state of Israel as a democratic thing!

Ooops.

But they sure have been coddled, fed, hugged by an increasingly more terrorist government under Netanjahu, he needs them, he can't govern without the parties that these cultural, these religious terrorists have formed.

In the USA, that would be like the GOP getting into bed with the KKK... oh wait...

In Germany, that would be like our govt. looking away at Neo Nazis... oh wait...

In the UK it would be like Cameron shifting his shit into major nationalism mode... oh wait...

In France... oh, well, guys, you see the picture here, right?

Same as it ever was. Everywhere.

Where the powerful, the "Elite", join up with or don't look at an extremist, vile, dangerous group... because it allows them to stay in power. With most of the population being perfectly okay with it.

And to be perfectly honest?

Yes, Virginia, not only are not all Jews nice people, no, the ones that have deluded themselves to be nice, to be special... they deserve to be the targets of those Ultraorthodox Jewish Taliban, let me repeat that, yes, they deserve it...

... because they were okay with it all when the Jewish Taliban did it to their neighbors, you know, the ones living or rather existing and barely surviving, behind barbed wires in Gaza and the West Bank.

They were okay with it as long as it served their own purpose.

How does it feel now, kids?

When your rabid attack dog bites your own children?

THE DARKEST HOUR IS THE ONE YOU'LL NEVER GET BACK WATCHING THIS...

2011-12-29T08:44:00.000+01:00

So, let me tell you a joke... five asshole American Twenty-Somethings go to Moscow and get in the middle of the dumbest alien invasion ever! There you have it, that's the plot of the hyped "Horror-Scifi-Survival-Where-Is-The-Cloverfield-Monster?" movie that I am sure should win the "worst movie of 2011" Award, because, hell, if that isn't a bad way to leave this year behind, pop culture wise, then I don't know what would be.

(just the fact that I am taking the time to write about this should tell you something, because I usually don't give a shit about reviewing a movie, thinking, hey, everybody has a taste, good or bad, if you enjoy this dreck, be my guest)

But not in this instance. The Darkest Hour is the latest of the "Alien Invasion" movies that have haunted us this year, starting with...

Battle: LA (which had some of the worst military dialogue in history, everybody who's ever been in the army will cringe hearing it, but at least also has some kind of Blackhawk Down sensibility in its battle scenes)...

Attack The Block (easily the best of the bunch, with its unplanned "tie-in" with the London Riots this summer... and one could argue that this movie plays a lot more like a Council Estate version of Gremlins with a lot more cussing, because in the end it doesn't matter if the things attacking are alien of not)...

Transformers 3: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (I don't remember the plot here, but that's okay, because I'm sure there was none, and if there was one, it was buried underneath the rubble of that giant 9/11 skyscraper scene that told me the halftime of "We will never show anything like this" in Hollywood... it's 10 years, or 3 seconds in Michael Bay years)...

Apollo 18 (where we now know there are intelligent rocks on the moon, and they eat people. Or something like that. Stay away from it. This movie, I mean, not the moon)

What have we learned through these movies? Bad Aliens Are Out There To Get Us And Steal Our (a) lifeforce (b) water (c) energy... or (d) all of the above.

(incidentally, any fucking stupid screenwriter worth his or her salt would know that no alien, I repeat, no alien would come down to Earth and kill a few folks.. for water after having traveled a couple of lightyears. Psssst, kids. There's Europa, and no, I don't mean my continent, I mean the moon, which has a shitload of water, albeit in frozen form. If you're totally into water, you could just as well put a sign up that says Eat At Joe's there...)

And now it's Moscow's turn. I can see the pitch meeting.

Producer
Aliens?

Writer
Yeah.

Producer
We've had aliens...

Writer
It's, like, totally different, the aliens are invisible!

Producer
Oh... I like me the sound of that. Good thinking, kid. Get this kid a whore, we can put it on the budget, because if we don't need to show the fuckers, we'll save millions!

Writer
It'll be like 28 Days Later meets Cloverfield.

Producer
Sounds good. Keep going. But know what? Still worried about the whole thing, we have destroyed New York, LA, Chicago, London already, we gotta think about the international market...

Writer
Moscow...

Producer
Moscow?

Writer
Moscow! We gonna destroy Moscow.

Producer
Fuck, that's genius, because them Russkies are going to the movies more than our fucking Americans these days. We can sell this, like, worldwide.. but we gotta have Americans in there, somewhere...

Writer
Don't worry, I'll tack them on.

Producer
And chicks. Good-looking chicks.

Writer
Sure thing.

Producer
Well, get on it!

And on it, he got, that Jon Spaihts, who apparently is one of those up and coming screenwriters in Hollywood, so much so that he wrote the first draft of Ridley Scott's Prometheus, and even if you liked the trailer to that one, you should pray and hope that the incoming Damon Lindelof (of Lost infamy) rewrote everything and that the writer credit Spaihts got there is just a legal thing...

The result of this all?

The Darkest Hour.

And you should already be frightened when the official summary of the movie for Rotten Tomatoes is this...

The Darkest Hour is the story of five young people who find themselves stranded in Moscow, fighting to survive in the wake of a devastating alien attack. The 3D thriller highlights the classic beauty of Moscow alongside mind-blowing special effects.

It's telling that the summary plays up only "Moscow" and hey, did we mention it was in 3D? With INVISIBLE ALIENS, by the way, because those play so fucking well in 3D? And none of the special effects are breathtaking enough to merit a 3D in the first place, either.

But the thing that should scare is you that it doesn't matter who those five people are!

Not even to the assholes trying to sell you the film!

Those five people...

(none of which you need to know, they are stock characters of the worst kind, the type of Twenty-Something Yuppie characters that Hollywood is so enarmored with, three software engineers and two chicks they meet during a night of clubbing, one of those is actually Rachael Taylor, who should know better and was in the first Transformers as super-intelligent govt. hacker figuring out the secret takeover plans of the evil robots and who is reduced here to a dumb fucking blonde)

... they see the first sign of the alien attack as one of them evil aliens... and here's the shitkicker, it kills one cop in front of the club crowd after they ventured outside when all of Moscow is blacked out. Why? How? Who cares? It's shit shot in the dark.

And the cop gets burned extra crispy. Lookee here...

And panic ensues.

And our five "heroes" hide themselves for a day, before they venture out into the aforementioned 28 Days Later scenario, which primarily means that Moscow is empty. Except for some strategically placed cars so that it alloks a wee bit creepy. There's some tensions in that group, mainly because all of them are so stupid that they go, hey you know where we should go? The US Embassy!

That idea alone makes a strong case for the audience to go, "oh, I hope you all die..."

And they do. One after one, but not before they figure out that (and here it comes) that electricity gives the invisible aliens away, so you can "see" them since their charges light up the previously drained cars, lightbulbs, street lamps like a Christmas tree.

And while they are being picked off (the Swedish guy playing the Black Character here, you know he's going first, and hey, he does!), they meet up with a mad plubmer/electrician/scientist who has the aliens all figured out, see, they cannot pass through a Faraday cage, because they are a "wave energy" (apparently they aren't, they're some interdimensional shit and the whole invisible microwave thing is just a shield, you know, like in Star Trek)...

... did I mention these are the dumbest aliens ever?

I mean, if you can stop them with a Faraday cage... then all you'd have to do is...

... now, kids, which one of you listened in 3rd grade science?

Yes, all you'd have to do to stay safe is... STAY IN YOUR CAR!

Whoops. Major plot problem.

Not that Mister Spaihts has any experience with technology, oh, wait, according to that afore linked article to Variety...

In the early 2000s, Jon Spaihts was on another career path entirely as an executive for the New York-based educational technology company Teachscape.

3rd grade science... just saying...

But who cares. Shit goes haywire in the flat of the Russian mad scientist/plumber/electrician, which means that Miss Rachael Taylor gets killed by an alien, something that I'm sure she thought about "thank fuck, I am outta here"

But in the meantime, with a Russian teen girl (and like all Russians, she apparently has "The Pout" down to an art and is really, really brave, and we know so, because she actually says "I am tough" Da. Seriously. I am not making this shit up) and some information from a radio (they work inside a Faraday cage, so do cell phones... we are not going into the ridiculousness of it all), the remaining kids know there's a Russian nuclear sub waiting for surivivors!

A Russian Nuclear Sub! No fucking shit. In Moscow. In the river.

Stretching it... would be an understatement.

(if you don't believe me, look at where the Russian fleet is stationed, and tell me how in the space of 48 hrs or so, a sub will get to Moscow, if they are even at their ports and not out at sea)

But who cares. Our remaining survivors meet up with the Three Stooges, oh, no, wait, three Russian soldiers fighting against the aliens, which pretty much only says "hey, we can kill these things", they get to the sub, but not before the remaining American girl gets lost... which has our remaining US boy "but we cannot leave without her" (and here is where you literally want to start slitting your wrist and go, please God, let me die, no further)

And so the three Russian soldiers, the Russian teen girl and our US boy go and kill three aliens in an incredibly silly fight (with "microwave guns" previously invented by that Russian Mad Scientist, yeah, I know... don't ask)

... and off they go, on the nuclear sub, to teach the other remaining survivors how to fight the aliens and retake the planet. But not before the last remaining hero kisses his new love interest that he has just saved (kids, if you want to get into a girl's knickers, nothing beats saving them from aliens)

This movie, this script, these characters belong to the worst that I have ever seen.

And now, some of you out there will go, oh shut your fucking trap, Thomas, unless you can do it better, then you are just a grumpy guy who didn't make it in Hollywood.

Yeah, I know. Typical argument by idiots like you.

But I'll play, if only briefly.

Let's take the basic premise as outlined in my imaginary pitch meeting above.

Moscow. Alien invasion. Americans.

Okay, here's the thing, and everybody should have seen Back To The Future (the original one) to know that (a) you can pretty much put all of your exposition in the first 10 mins (b) you can foreshadow your entire movie in those 10 mins and (c) you can make your characters likeable in those 10 mins by showing their normal life.

None of which Mr. Spaihts did. He introduces his characters through (a) the flight to Moscow (b) a fucking pitch meeting (c) a night club.

Seriously?

Idiot.

Here's how you do it. You need to have an American in Moscow. To have an emotional anchor for them folks in the Fly-Over-Countries. Fine. Let me introduce you to...

Emilie Hirsch (who plays the main lead) and who - in my version - is an American exchange student at a Moscow university.

Make him be there for about six months already, so that he still (a) has problems with the Russian language but (b) has so far settled in that we can show him having a "normal" life.

Make him a student of astronomy or astrophysics, make him essentially Peter Parker minus Spiderman, he is smart, but not brilliant, but it gives us a way to deal with the physics of the aliens' invisiblity later... and a way to explain the microwave stuff etc...

... instead of the random Russian Mad Electrician, make that character one of Hirsch's professors, make him somewhat unhinged but friendly, if you like. Again, this will add credibility to some of the bullshit that's going to go down later.

Give Hirsh a girlfriend.

Make that girlfriend Russian (not only because it's logical, but also because you can cast a Russian actress and thus even double your stake in Russia's movie grosses, but also because then your plot point of "we cannot leave without her" makes actually sense). Make that girlfriend a student as well. Make her smart. And kind. And tough.

If you need more Americans, have Hirsch's brother and/or best friend come in to Russia to have a good time with him, so that we can have a scene perhaps at the airport where they Hirsh and his girlfriend pick them up. And then you can have them go clubbing...

.. but before shit flies, you then have established proper relationships between the different characters, and that is the main thing in movies like this. The characters need to be relateable and likeable, something that Spaihts fails to do on every level.

Now, I'm not going to think on how to structure the rest of the movie, mainly because whatever follows would come from those character interactions, and the way I write, these things happen organically, then.

But with these relationships just described, in the roughest terms, I know that - for a movie like this - I am already on safe ground, because I will have made you care about them in the first 10 to 15 minutes.

And it's easy to do that.

It's not rocket science.

But then again, Hollywood doesn't know rocket science.

Or a good story. Or a credibly plotted film.

Not anymore.

SOCIETY WATCH: OKAY, CAN WE NOW CALL YOU STUPID? WHY, YES... YES, WE CAN!

2011-12-28T14:47:00.000+01:00

The scariest paragraph I read all day came from a LA Times story, and it should worry you. Well, most of you won't be worried, because the statistical probability is that you might fall in that group that doesn't care... about stuff, but here is that paragraph nonetheless...

Only about a third of American adults can name all three branches of government, and a third can't name any. Fewer than a third of eighth graders could identify the historical purpose of the Declaration of Independence.

Here it is, all for all of you.

(1) Legislative (that's what Congress and the Senate should do, but usually don't, unless it's for corporations or Hollywood, wait, same thing really, with the NDAA and SOPA)

(2) Executive (that's the White House. And that black dude who should have stopped the NDAA and SPOPA but loves corporations just as much as (1), so don't expect any help from him)

(3) Judicial (that's everything in the courts, all the way up to the Supreme Court, you know, those motherfuckers that rule with frightening regularity against you, but that's okay, because apparently most of you don't know what they are to begin with)

All clear now?

No? How about a picture... you know, for kids!

But I'm sure all of you can give me the latest stats on Tim Tebow, right?

THE WRITE STUFF: SAFE... AND THE PREDICTION OF A SUDAN WAR IN 2008

2011-12-28T09:38:00.000+01:00

Okay, kids, this will take a little bit longer to explain, but I'll try to make it as short as possible. In 2007, I had an idea for a movie. A small movie. The kind that doesn't need an awful lot of money, which in this day and age means, you have barely any locations and that in turn means that the locations you do have must be really awesome and/or gruesome.

I had a joke of an idea. You know, the kind of joke that goes "Two men enter a bar"...

In my case it was that idea of "two men are inside a vault"

I called it Safe.

(well, I have this thing about wordplay... I am kind of obsessed with it, and Safe would mean a nice double entendre, since it's both the name of something you keep your money in and the actual fact of keeping somebody "safe")

I'm not going to go into the details here too much, but I wrote a teaster for it, mainly because an artist I "knew" at the time wanted to be a director so much, he'd have sucked every dick in LA, and he continued to bug and bother me a lot with "you should write this, I am going to direct it, write this, it will be a ticket for the both of us, blah blah blah"

If you're a writer, you know these type of things.

So I wrote the teaser... and nothing happened.

A year later, in 2008, the same artist started to bug me again. I was in the middle of writing It Takes A Wizard and 10 Beautiful Assassins, I was also slowly writing (in my not really there spare time) a horror script called Possession, which was my "And I shall end horror films as we know them" script, but he kept on bugging me, and to be quite honest?

I began writing this script for SAFE essentially so that he would stop bugging me.

Because I thought, shit, two guys in a vault. One of them a criminal, one of them the guy who created the vault's security systems... and who had shut them off, including the ventilation... while both of them were being inside. A ticking clock scenario. Not the smartest or most artistic way to begin a movie, but if you don't have much to work with, you take what you can get...

... so this was the opener....

Like I said, if you don't have much (in terms of a "James Bond" opener or in anything, really, that will provide the necessary "boom" for an opening scene) you go straight for the throat. And in this case, I wanted the image to be that the "evil" guy was beating the shit out of the hero...

... and for some reason, he wouldn't break. In fact, despite ahving a gun, the villain does not have the upper hand, or as my hero Ryan Marshall (and everyman in a Hitchock-ian tradition) says, I don't care about the money. That's the problem. Right here, right now... you no longer got an idea what I care about. And that means there's nothing to promise. You think about that. I'm no longer locked in here with you. You're locked in here with me!

That was the basic premise. Two guys in a vault. Trying to get the upper hand while they are both running out of air. Some of you may think now that sounds awfully close to Buried or any given CSI episode or perhaps even Kill Bill, but this wasn't what I was thinking about.

I was thinking Hitchcock. I was thinking "small budget, you have no money".

Still, that scene - as good as it is (and with the right actors, I delude myself to this day, that it would be a good scene) - is very thin, conceptually.

It's a scene. Not a movie.

For a movie you need to have more than this set-up. But don't tell Hollywood that, because they sell shit on premises that are even thinner. But in 2008, while I was getting sicker all the time, trying to juggle my comic book work (most unpaid) with the ever-increasingly desperate attempts to write something that would get my an entrance ticket to the troughs of LA, to feed with the rest of the pigs, I started thinking on what kind of a movie that could be.

And here's where I got into trouble. In order to make a heist like this... there'd have to be serious cash in that vault. Problem Number 1, that was. Nobody the fuck uses cash anymore. Or have you read about some grand and glorious heists these last years? I mean outside the action delusion of Fast Fucking Furious?

No. Because we all have become plastic, and that means whenever you steal something, you steal it from a server, your wire money left, right center... poor heist people are so totally out of a job these days. Damn economy!

Problem Number 2 was that the artist (who wanted to be the director) wanted the movie (for quite understandable reasons) to be set in Portland, which really has not the reputation for being a financial center of any shape or size that would make it plausible for somebody to dump a huge amount of cash in a vault there (and we were already approaching the banking crisis, where millions turned into billions, so 1 million or even 10 million these days would barely sound like making a heist worth your while)

So, my problems came down to this....

I needed to come up with a reason to (a) have a major amount of cash (I settled for 150 million) locked away (2) in a town like Portland in a bank that wasn't used for this.

Here's where your writer goes, okay? Who uses cash these days? Drug dealers. Terrorists. Shit You can't use either of those. Too generic. Too boring. Who uses cash these days? And for what?

Now, all three readers of this blog know that I'm very much an observer of world affairs, and so I - after getting drunk on hot honey milk in the desperate attempt to sleep - I found two things that could work, if I had the big fucking brass balls to pull this off.

(1) The news item that the CIA and the Pentagon had shipped vast amounts of cash, proper cash, over 10 billion, to Iraq in the aftermath of the war (and in the middle of the guerilla warfare) to pay off the Sunnis... and that a lot of that money just went walkies... gosh, how do these things happen, eh?

(2) The overlooked news that the Sudan was on the verge of being broken up in the referendum of 2011into South Sudan and its delightful oil reserves and the North Sudan, pretty much controlled by radical Islamists. And that the CIA was positioning itself to get a little piece of that pie by supporting the "democracy" of South Sudan... okay, getting the oil.

Click. Click. Click.

Where would the CIA store such money? Why, certainly not in one of the bigger banks, you know, no, they'd use a smaller bank, something that nobody would really look at.

Like a bank in Portland.

That would for some strange reason hire a guy to give them a state-of-the-art security system.

A guy who'd get into deep shit, who has his life destroyed... for something that happens half a world away. Like I said, Hitchcock... but in a more modern way, a bit like North by Northwest or The Man Who Knew Too Much...

Hey, I thought to myself, this just might work...

One of the things I always had problems with (in modern cinema) is that if you look at e.g. the Bourne franchise, people die. Normal people. And they're almost like extras. They walk onto the stage with the express purpose of getting their heads blown off. Like in the first Bourne, Matt Damon and Franka Potente seek refuge in that farmhouse in France, her ex-friend (or lover) and his kids show up... for the express purpose to provide some kind of tension.

And I thought, well, what if you make a movie from the point of view of a guy like that? You start with him getting ready for a nice weekend, and then shit that is way too heavy for him to understand, and people are destroying his life? And what if that "normal guy", that Everyman... starts to fight back?

Again, not a terribly original idea, but something I could work with, because from that one opening scene with "two guys in a vault", I could develop a structure that would slowly reveal that a Jason Bourne movie had crashed into my hero's life...

After that, I wrote the script relatively quickly, and with each new scene I revealed more about the backgrounds of this heist, changing only one thing from how it might work in real life. The two intelligence services that fight it out over the money (and much more about its use) are in the script the CIA and the English MI services, whereas in the real world, it would be the CIA and the Chinese Intelligence Services.

But I chose the Brits primarily to not give away the game too early.

And this is what this game was...

Yes, I wrote about the overt and covert support of the South Sudan in 2008, thinking that - if the move were to get funded and released in roughly 2010 or 2011, it would add some credibility or realism to what most cetainly is an outlandish story.

I mean, the USA supporting or building up an army in a country that has economic and strategic value? No, never... only that is exactly what is happening right now, because the "transition of the former South Sudanese militia into a proper army" is wholly funded by the Pentagon, which means, hey, by your tax payer money.

In my script, I take the very American notion of "One man at the right time can make a difference" and put it on its head. Because, yes, my hero stops the heist and thus will allow the money to be used for its intended purpose... and thus triggering a civil war... half a world away.

Incidentally, the reaction to the script in Hollywood was... "We like the idea, but the backstory of the CIA funding something in Sudan to rig an election or referendum is ridiculous, this is not logical, make them drug lords or something".

Yeah.

Totally ridiculous.

Watch for the war, kids.

WHAT YOU DON'T SEE... ARE SYLVESTER STALLONE'S INCREDIBLY TINY BALLS

2011-12-27T17:17:00.000+01:00

Well, kids, if 30 is the new 20 and 40 is the new 30 (hey, that's awesome, I just dropped 10+ years in a moment, gosh, that feels like working out), then apparently - if you are a Hollywood star - 65 is the new Frankenstein.

At least that was my immediate reaction to the first still photo of Stallone in the new Walter Hill Murderfest A Bullet To The Head.

Now, I have talked about Stallone's rather iffy morals considering paying people for their jobs, especially when they are located in a different country, but now I at least understand why Mr. Sly can't afford to pay people.

To have a "body" like this at 65, that requires a lot of drug use (and the ones stating that this comes all from exercise and healthy living, guys, Stallone was not only caught with Human growth Hormone [HGH] in Australia, he also is rather open about swallowing this shit down like M&Ms)... what it doesn't do?

It doesn't make you look remotely human.

But then again, let's take a look at how Channing Tatum, Taylor Lautner et al will "enhance" their bodies in another 40 years. I suspect cybernetic enhancements, perhaps gene therapy.

Ridiculous...

THE CANCER OF THE "BIG SOCIETY"

2011-12-27T12:50:00.000+01:00

So, if you are diagnosed with cancer in the UK (and hell, pretty much in Germany as well), here's what happens...

(1) you may not lose your job (some laws still prevent that, watch them go in 2012 and 2013), but the inability to work has most people who are in cancer treatments to be on health benefits, which are incidentally quite a bit lower than what you'd make if you were able to show up at the office. And I know, I know, stupid fucking bastards for not being able to work with cancer, I mean, where's their backbone, right?

(2) Your costs of living will increase as even with health benefits a much more significant amount of money you will have to spend on your co-pay regarding drugs etc. And if you don't believe me, I don't gtive a fucking damn, because my parents -

(both of them chronically ill, with my Mum being in a dismal state after a gazillion operations, one of which removed a tennis ball sized tumor that nearly killed her after months of doctors telling her left, right and center that "there's nothing wrong with you, it's a psychological thing")

- pay roughly 250 Euro in co-pay for their medicines, co-pay, not what the drugs actually cost... every three months. And they are with their pensions about 100 Euro above the limit in which our new "awesome" and "economic" German Health Care System would cover it all.

But that's not all, kids. Your other fixed costs continue to rise as well, like rent or - more importantly - heating costs, squeezing your wallet the way the cancer squeezes your body.

Which all leads us to a news story that barely anybody has looked at, in the UK, because the English, especially under Cameron, are always a bit further in everything (and hell, they invented the Manchester Capitalism), which has cancer victims literally beg "for a little more" like Oliver Twist...

Cancer patients are becoming increasingly reliant on charity handouts to heat their homes as they struggle to pay rising fuel bills, newly-published figures have shown.
Macmillan Cancer Support said it had made one-off payments totalling £2,548,563 to 12,669 cancer patients to help with fuel costs during 2011, a sharp increase on the 7,369 patients needing similar help just five years ago.
Commenting on the rise in charity payments announced by Macmillan, its campaign manager, Laura Keely, said: "To feel too scared to put the heating on because of soaring energy bills is an unacceptable reality for thousands of vulnerable cancer patients who feel the cold more and spend long periods of time at home.

"When the charity was established 100 years ago, founder Douglas Macmillan helped cancer patients by handing out sacks of coal to keep them warm.

"It is shocking that a century on, people who are diagnosed with this devastating disease are still relying on charity help to heat their freezing homes."

Here's the truth, kids...

We all have cancer.

It's wrecking our societies.

But hey, who cares, right?

IT'S NOT THE 1%, IT'S YOU

2011-12-24T12:35:00.001+01:00

One of the rather sad things I have learned over the course of this year... is how small the group of people is who actually give a damn.

I know, I know... why talk about it at all, I mean, could there be something more depressing? Unfortunately, I believe we have to talk about it. Or I have to talk about, but that's because I'm somewhat obsessed with a few things.

Like, one of my obsessions growing up, the more I learned about the Third Reich (not the Fourth Reich, shut up ou people in England and start learning a little more than "Churchill Was Great. We Are Awesome. Rule Britannia"), the more I wondered, how the hell could anybody let this happen?

I mean, it's so easy, right? You don't let anybody drag your neighbors away. You don't let anybody smash your neighbor's windows in. You don't let anybody torch your neighbors' stores. I mean, what the hell, right? And you definitely don't get in line with the people who do these things. Not ever. Not in a single instance.

I have been told (in numerous cases) that the majority of people were just too afraid, that they were scared for their own lives and the lives of their children, which can also be translated as If you had been in the same situation, you'd have done the same.

No.

Too easy.

I have been told (also in numerous cases, and always by - I am terribly sorry to report - Americans and Englishmen) that there is something inherently wrong with Germans. That it could have only happened here, in my country, that there has never been anything like that ever before and not since, and so, in conclusion, it must be the German people. Case closed. Let's celebrate democracy!

No.

Too easy.

And trust me, you don't want me to open a can of whup-ass on your countries, your cultures, your history and give you a blow by blow of the enormous amount of genocide, mass murders, war crimes and horrible atrocities that you have committed... the ones that you don't talk about, the ones that you don't teach in your history books, the ones that you have blissfully and happily drowned out in the call of But look at Germany!!!

Just... don't make me.

Because in the end, all of these arguments are essentially the same. In that they put blame on something, but avoid looking at responsibility.

It wasn't us! It was them!

Now, Germans of that Hitler generation, incidentally, love that particular delusion. I to this day find it funny that every politician of my country praises the "Wreckage Generation" that built that awesomely made "Democratic Germany" from the rubble and the ashes of World War 2. Yes, you must praise them! Right now! All of the generations that came after them! You didn't do anything near as difficult or near as heroic as that generation!

Uh. Yeah... until you think about it for more than a moment.

And I want us to do just that. Think for more than a moment. That generation was the very same generation that, uh, what was that again... started the damn war! And not to be too anal about things, let's forget about the war, they were the same generation who had no problem putting on their jack boots and their delightfully designed Hugo Boss SS uniforms and make a beeline after the Grand And Glorious Führer.

Same people, swear to god...

... which obviously means that entire generation suffered from an enormous schizophrenic delusion. They actually split themselves into two very distinct personalities. Before... and after the Nazi German rule.

I find myself thinking about this a lot these days. As the world everywhere slips further while the "news" tells you that all is horrible and there's just not enough money to go around for you all while making the claim - at least in my country - that everything's fine, all will be well 2012, this is the best economy ever for you!

I'm thinking about it, because here's what I have learned 2011. Most people don't give a shit. Most people wouldn't give a shit if the cops appeared tomorrow at your neighbor's doorstep and took a "Jew", a "Muslim", a "Communist", a "Terrorist" away. Oh, wait, in the USA they can do that quite soon now, with the NDAA provisions snuck into the Defense Budget Bill. They can take you away, they can take your neighbor away, and they would never have to tell anybody anything, they'd never have to take responsibility for it.

It could just happen.

And most of you out there would react exactly the same way the Germans reacted during the Nazi rule.

Leave us alone, you would say.

They must have done something, you would say.

All the while thinking one thing, the same thing...

Hey, as long as I'm on the side of the winners...

For most people out there, the ones often called the "pillar of democracy", the middle class, that's what it comes down to. Being on the side of the winners. They won't support fuck all, won't support human rights, won't support justice, won't support fairness...

... as long as they don't know, know with a certainty of 99%, that this means they will be on the side of the winners. Don't believe me? Look at Egypt. Where there are the same people, the same small number of people who didn't matter prior to January 25, are still fighting for human rights and justice, with the rest of the country giving them a shrug, yeah, who cares, what's in it for us?

Look at the USA, where exactly nobody but the "Usual Suspects" give a shit about the NDAA and the SOPA bills, and when I say "the usual suspects", that's exactly who I mean, and those who belong to that group, hey, kids, you're already on the naughty list. Merry Christmas, motherfuckers.

But the rest? The ones who give willingly all of their information to Zuckerberg and pretend, delude themselves that "I have nothing to hide, I am one of the Good People"...

... they are silent. Have always been silent. Will always be silent.

Just like the Germans were.

Look at the UK, where it took Maggie's Little Bitchboy David Cameron only two things, I repeat, two things to get spiked like hell in the polls. (1) he had to tell the English that they are somehow better than the rest of Europe and that Europe is the cause of all of their problems and (2) give some bullshit about the Falklands.

And the middle class, they jump at this shit. They love to be told that they are better than somebody else, they want someone to tell them, they want that someone to be dressed in the flag and give them a sense of pride, a sense of belonging. And make no mistake, people.

It isn't the poor you can catch that way.

Especially since there's one thing a poor person knows.

And that's this... it doesn't matter who is the figurehead. Obama. Cameron. Merkel. Sarkozy. Whoever. Whatever. You were born poor, you know that - whatever they'll promise you - you will most likely die poor.

But the middle class, they support every and any system, they have no morals, they buy them at Wal Mart, wear them like Holister hoodies, follow any and all trends...

... as long as you tell them that this will make them special.

That this will make them part of the winning team.

And so, I tell you this... all of you who are silent.

I will tell you this... all of you who think they are on the winning team.

Who wait and stay quiet in the hope they will picked, picked by the 1%, by the "elite", hope that somebody notices you, that you're not going to be that poor fat kid who gets picked last, because fuck, who wants to be that fat fucker, right?...

It wasn't Hitler, it was you.

It wasn't Gaddafi, it was you.

It wasn't Milosovic, it was you.

And it isn't the 1%... it's you!

THE WRITE STUFF: MARS ATTACKS!

2011-12-23T15:56:00.000+01:00

Admittedly, I hated all the trailers and teasers and promotional bullshit that Disney has put out for John Carter (of Mars), because honestly? It looks cheap. It looks shit. It looks like something that should be dropped on the SyFy Channel like the biggest turd since Dune: What Was The Plot Again?

But what I love, have always loved, will always love...

... is the concept art for movies like that, because there - without the idiocy of producers butting in and the problems with budgets and actors and bullshit...

... is where imagination lives.

SOCIETY WATCH: KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!

2011-12-23T09:45:00.000+01:00

Here's the truth. You will not want to hear it. You will scream and shout and holler and tell me what a stupid fuck I am. You will go all Warren Ellis on me, will call me a hypocrite, will tell me that I am just jealous, that I am anti-capitalist, that what I am talking about is the best thing since sliced bread, even though you have no fucking idea where that phrase comes from without having to google it first, but you will scream and shout.

The truth is that the tablet will kill not only creativity but kill the very informational fabric of what we so far called the human civilization.

Say what?

Haven't we heard all of that before? About the record, about the cassette, about the PC, about the cell phone, hell even about the book itself, about which an unnamed monk, some time in the 15th century wrote "know what happens if the asshole masses get access to the same information as us brain types before God? Revolution, that's fucking what! Now get me Martin Luther and kill the motherfucker!"

The same monk then proceded to doodle a bit into the margins of his bible that depicted a woman getting fucked by a goat while sucking the cock of what can only be described as a Devil's Dick, and the water marks on those margins have recently been identified as sperm marks.

Because that is what I am arguing against here, right? Full, unfiltered access to information for everybody, and god, only a fucking fascist would argue against that, right? I mean, the same kind of fascist that would like to shut down social networks and perhaps the very internet itself in the event of an uprising. And no, I am not not talking about the wankers in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria or Libya, I am talking about British PM David Cameron, a sentiment echoed by pretty much every "good democratic" politician in the Western hemisphere.

The iPad [insert your choice here] is the great savior of democracy!

That is pretty much what is being echoed around, and not only by hackers (for the most part), but more importantly by sociologist, futurists and, hey, can't forget those, economists.

And have we not already seen the transformation taking place? Just a few months ago HP announced it will sell or spin off (translate: dump it to the Chinese, you know, like IBM dumped its shit to the Chinese, who turned it around and made it Lenovo) its entire PC business, and perhaps just in the nick of time as PC sales have been plummeting by roughly 20 percent.

Can somebody give me an EEEEEEEEK?!

PCs are quickly becoming again what they once were, what they apparently will devolve again into, and what that is? They will be the box you log onto when you are at the office, whereyou slog through Excel files, where you write reports, where you send emails to your boss and perhaps surf for a bit of goat fuck porn on the side (which there is surprisingly much of and only serves to show that the unnamed monk know what he was wanking about)

There will be nothing Personal about this Computer anymore, becoming again a workhorse, clunky, ugly and usually hidden underneath a desk, together with your booze bottle and the two glasses you use in the office when nobody is looking, you can't get your drug dealer to bring you that new vial of cocaine that otherwise would be enough to get you through the shitty work day.

No, your personal shit will be on that tablet, on that phone, you will carry it around all day, you will hug it and love it and will want to introduce it to all your friends the way you only used to introduce your girlfriend or wife to them. "Hi, I am Thomas, and this is Isis, yes, I called my iPad Isis, and she warms my heart, no, literally, she does, because the battery heat is such a motherfucker, she burned my nipples when I last fell asleep with her resting on my chest, want to make something out of it?"

Yes, I know what I am talking about. We are all not only becoming addicted to the constant flow, the constant consumption of "internet" feeds, we kinda go "hey, that's not a bad thing."

Which, in the end, makes Apple and Google (the big players on this market, together with FaceBook) dangerous drug dealers. Let me put it in another way.

You are willing (and hey, isn't this blog at Google? Shit, it is) to not only hand over all your personal stuff to those companies, now, you expect them to be there for you, you need it, give me that fix, I cannot live without constant stimulation, without constant feedback, god god god, somebody could have tweeted, chatted, BBM'ed me...

... and the effects are getting more pronounced as this article shows...

More than half of Americans would rather give up chocolate, alcohol and caffeine for a week before parting temporarily with their phones, according to a recent survey by technology firm TeleNav.

One-third would give up sex, 22% would give up their toothbrushes (versus 40% of iPhone users, who evidently love their phone more than clean teeth) and 21% would rather go shoeless before separating from a mobile phone. Sixty-six percent sleep with their smartphones by their side.

Our addiction is so severe that people described going 24 hours without Internet akin to quitting an alcohol or cigarette habit, according to a report from British company Intersperience.

About 40% of those surveyed reported feeling lonely without the Internet, and 53% felt upset at being deprived. One person described unplugging to "having my hand chopped off."

University students who faced a sudden Internet and media blackout began to display withdrawal symptoms, during another survey conducted by the University of Maryland.

At least it's universal. One American said she was "itching like a crackhead" after going cold-turkey for 24 hours, and an Argentine student reported feeling "dead" without media, while a Lebanese student described the whole experience as "sickening."

Let me make the big point here one more time. 40 percent feel "lonely" without constant access to the internet... not to mention that every third of you would give up sex. Okay, other than with your own hand. Which is what the constant barrage of bullshit provides you. Wanking material, both socially and sexually.

While you kneel before Zod.

And give him a blowjob.

POWER WATCH: IT'S NOT A HAPPY HOLIDAY UNLESS IT'S A TAX HOLIDAY, RIGHT, APPLE AND GOOGLE?

2011-12-23T08:54:00.000+01:00

Hey, kids. Remember when Apple and Google were totally not liking each other? I mean, you know, like Democracts and Republicans don't like each other? Ah, yes, here's the funny thing. They may not like each other, but gosh, when it comes to not wanting to pay taxes they legally owe to the US Government and by extension to you, my dear tax payer, they are totally on the same page.

Incidentally, that page is one that they mostly hide from the public, because, pssst, you might get pissed off about it, know?

So, since we are all in the "Holiday Spirit" (c) (TM), this is what these companies want to push through, a "Tax Holiday", because as we all know that cash cannot stay on the beaches of the Cayman Islands forver, it's warm and fun there and all that, but you can't really do shit with it while it's there, like buying up your own stock and thus artificially inflate its price.

So, what to do? Do what Google and Apple do. Hire some lobbyists! And tell everybody that the money that was on holiday will "totally make the economy better", or as this article by Bloomberg News states...

U.S. multinational companies have amassed more than $1.375 trillion in profits overseas on which they have paid no federal income tax, according to a recent report by JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) When the earnings are returned to the U.S. -- or repatriated -- they are taxed at the top corporate rate of 35 percent, with credits for foreign income taxes paid.

The companies are pushing to reprise the 2004 holiday that allowed them to bring home offshore earnings at a low tax rate of 5.25 percent. Under that break, companies repatriated to the U.S. $312 billion, largely for stock repurchases rather than direct hiring or investment, according to a recent paper in the Journal of Finance, the latest in a series of studies that reached similar conclusions.

The proposed holiday would reward the companies that have most aggressively parked profits in tax havens such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Switzerland, said Martin A. Sullivan, a former Treasury Department economist and contributing editor for the non-partisan Tax Notes.

“A lot of what companies report as foreign profit is really U.S. profit that should be subject to U.S. tax,” Sullivan said. “Those earnings didn’t get overseas by accident. Many of these companies intentionally put them there to avoid paying U.S. taxes.”

Happy Holidays! For you? Nah, most of you are struggling to get some gifts for your children, and if you do get them, they're most likely paid for by debt. But hey, you ain't a corporation, kids.

THE WRITE STUFF AND OTHER THINGS

2011-12-23T08:34:00.000+01:00

I just realized that I didn't show you the final, colored version of RE:TIRED 01 book, with the rather catchy title "You Can Never Leave", which is finished and done and clocks in at 56,000 words, while I have an additional 14,000 words of the second book, "Devil On The Run" done.

So, that makes it 69,000 words so far. Of what I am assuming will be 300,000...

.... somebody, please, kill me now.

This image, by the by, is Edo's rough for the second cover design, yeah, shit's gonna fly, and you know what? When shit's gonna fly, it's always good to know that your girlfriend has a giant fucking sword.

Writing comes, albeit slowly, mainly due to my emotional exhaustion that has gotten worse over the past couple of months, as I tried (rather unsuccessfully, I may add) to believe and hope that the world will change, and that I don't have the right to bitch if I don't at least try to make a few things better. Well, I tried. And failed. Because the majority of people don't like change. They just say they do.

On a personal note, thank you to Ben B. Franklin, Julia Aloft, Ms. Anthropics, my little sister Korgasm and Ghostpickles, who gave me a few hugs when I really needed them and who are still out there, fighting. Also, to my love Sharon, who held me close as my little illusion just shattered and I felt like crying all the time.

I don't have that energy anymore. I admit it.

I just don't. I didn't have much energy to begin with, this year. So little, in fact, that I told my closest friends, that might not see the end of this 2011 last Christmas. I somehow wanted to put that little bit of energy to good use, especially when it appeared that the "sleeping majority" might wake up. Like I said, you don't have the right to bitch if you don't try yourself.

Well, I tried. I tried a lot. I wrote 36,500 tweets, well, for the most part I wrote them. I'd say 25,000 were actually written by me, trying to expose, to poke fun at, to rail against the injustices and the insanities of our "leaders" and more importantly, the masses. In little bursts of sarcasm and humor. Let's say at 10 words a tweet... that would be 250,000 words.

Which would have been a decent-sized novel, by the by.

The Year in Review in a Tweet?

Good News Everyone! After much rah rah rah, the world has actually gotten worse. You're welcome!

I wouldn't call my 25,000 or so tweets a complete waste. Some people listened, some people cared, but I can and will no longer delude myself that it is a significant chunk that I reached. Even with retweets, my maximum reach at any given moment was 50,000 people, tops (if a tweet got maybe picked up by one of the "Big Guns" in the Twitter Sphere).

And most of those picked up on those things that they cared about to begin with, so the actual impact of any of those tweets was roughly a factor of 0.001.

But I no longer have the energy. The thing that I realized over the this year - not counting that after a spark of hope, followed by a blaze of glore, followed by the extinction of every fire of hope - was the profound impact tweeting had on myself. Despite feeling ill, despite feeling empty, I still continued...

(and you may say, rightfully or not, that this blogging thing, well, what is so different about that, eh?)

... mainly because I developed a sense of duty, a sense of "you don't want let anybody down, you started this and for fuck's sake, you must keep it running, you must finish it". I also developed what is rather similar to ADD, writing-wise, attempting to pack as much information in a funny way as I could in 140 characters or less.

And make no mistake, it is the creative equivalent of ADD, because one of the awful secrets of Twitter, even more than the Facebook bullshit, is that there's too much information coming in, no, strike that, the illusion of information, while in fact most of it is chatter, and even the "real time" updates from those revolutionary places like Tahrir or the OWS camps never are more than a breathless eye-witness report that can be condensed to "Breaking News! Cop beat Person. More at 11".

Don't get me wrong.

As far as eye-witnesses go, Twitter can be a valuable asset.

But it drowns you. In that sense of "importance", while the bigger issues, the bigger problems, they are not even being adressed. I mean, in the end, what is left of OWS or Egypt? Symbols. The places. The fights. The brutality of a state system against people.

But for the most part, there are no solutions on Twitter.

There's no coherent thought on Twitter. There can't be.

Tweets are either headlines (mine were, I thought) or snapshots of a situation. There's no analysis, no deeper thought, it's data packages, reduced to the lowest common denominator, the #hashtag.

At some point I will give the addiction to snapshots, to quote bits, to the "Here And Now" of modern "Reading" and "Information Consumption" some more thought. I am quite worried about it. Not about the immediate effects, but rather about the long-term implications of how this form of information gathering changes the psychology and ultimately the cultural sanity of us all.

I am very worried about that.

The strange thing is, even after just two days off Twitter, my breathing has relaxed, my heart cramps have stopped at least, and that constant rush of adrenaline-fuled righteous anger is slowly subsiding. The immediacy of "Here and Now" is going away, and with that, the Informational ADD.

It seems I can think again. Analyze again. Breathe, if not a little easier, then at least not as labored and hard anymore. And while I still feel tired, it also appears that I can still write longer sentences. And gosh, entire paragraphs.

I will make use of that, of that little bit of energy.

I will not use to it to support symbols. Or places.

I will make use of it to think. To analyze. And to write.

While I breathe.

DEAR HOLLYWOOD: CHANGE... OR DIE

2011-12-23T06:50:00.001+01:00

Since I am off Twitter and thus have some time to actually think (I know, right?), I have thought a lot about the Hollywood fight against "piracy" and the crackdown (well, it's more or less a legalized massacre) on the internet users, or as we like to call them here at Hart Central: terrorists! See, we are all terrorists, we just terrorize those poor billion-dollar businesses by no longer playing by their rules.

Horrible, us.

But instead of being snarky (which comes as a natural to me), I shall try this time to actually do an analysis and give some ways out for Hollywood (there will be a joke at the end of this, so keep reading... or cheat and scroll down) out of the mess that made for themselves...

Ready? Here we go...

Let’s start with a caveat here.

What you are about to read you may not like, because a lot of it is going to challenge every notion, every traditional truth that the movie and TV industries are built upon.

What you are about to read is an analysis, impartial and unbiased and not coming from a source within the industry itself that would say whatever you will want to hear to get themselves a job, a better position or the good table at Thursday’s Cocaine Night at Morton’s.

Stop here if you feel properly insulted.

Still with me? Good. Then let’s start with the most important question that the industry has to face, but has tried to avoid in the past years, with PR campaigns, lawsuits and… pretty much by putting their heads into the sand, hoping – like the European cotton mill producer in the 19th century – that the world will not turn. And the question is this:

What is the intrinsic value of entertainment?

Obviously, one could look through the spreadsheets of your normal movie production, evaluate the cost of the finished product, include the PR and marketing costs and the distribution and then say: this movie X or this TV show Y has the value of Z million dollars.

That would be the MBA way of doing an analysis, and it’s the way it’s always been done, and it’s a way that finds itself reflected in the quarterly earnings reports. It focuses on the real, tax-deductable production cost value and needs to extrapolate from that point onward, in the way tangible products are measured, like e.g. cars, clothes, shoes, kitchen utensils etc.

However, entertainment in itself is an intangible product. While its traditional delivery systems like TV stations, cable networks, video, DVDs and even the newer delivery systems like cell phones or ipTV are a quantifiable structures, the content itself isn’t.

Or, to put it more precisely… it isn’t in the eyes of the individual consumer. And this is where the analysis needs to start. Not with production costs, delivery system and their advantages/disadvantages, but with the individual consumer. And the question needed to be asked becomes:

What is the intrinsic value of entertainment… to the individual consumer?

The answer is zero. And since that is a hard thing to swallow for somebody within the industry, let me repeat this one more time…

The intrinsic value of entertainment to the individual consumer is… Zero. Null. Zilch. Nothing. Nada.

We can debate for a while the different reasons that made entertainment without a value in and of itself, and one could argue with quite some success that it is the result of torrenting and pirating, and that it’s those evil bastards out there who are destroying the industry and that it’s immoral and… and… yes, yes, those are all arguments we’ve heard before, but those are all primarily moral arguments. We’re not here to talk morals, we are here to talk business.

And, what is more important, all those arguments stem from the previously mentioned MBA type analysis: we, the studios, have come up with a product that cost us the amount X and, consequently, we are assigning this product the value Y.

And with the complete control over all channels of distribution, that was a workable business model.

With torrents, with P2P, with widening broadband access, a fundamental parameter has changed, and in order to not only survive but thrive in this new environment, one has to accept a fundamental fact.

The old system is dead, not just broken, and it will never come back to the same structural integrity that has served it throughout the past 70+ years, because in the new business environment, it is the consumer who has increasingly the power to assign a value to the entertainment product itself. And those consumers that do possess this power more often than not are assigning the value Zero = Y.

Again, we could argue ad nauseam as to why exactly more and more consumers don’t consider the product put out there to be a valuable thing in and of itself.

One could argue that it has something to do with the quality of the entertainment product that has been dreadfully lacking in the past 15-20 years .

One could argue that studios have coddled up too much to acting stars and are paying them too much money without a proper analysis of the potential ROI, despite the fact that a proper analysis of the most profitable movies and TV shows of the past 50 years would show that none of them were propelled to success by star power.

One could even argue that – by attempting to build brands out of celebrities instead of products – the industry has devalued itself slowly, for the “real” Brangelina is now coming to every consumer’s doorsteps and/or TV set on a daily basis…

…free of charge, and with a much more interesting “script” than any of the movies they are starring in.

Explaining these different facets fully and thoroughly would make for an interesting book or a scientific thesis, but all of them have contributed to the dilemma that stares down the industry in the years and decades to come.

And all of them are unfixable.

Thus the first rule of time management and efficiency applies: if you cannot fix the system in order to gain more efficient results, abandon the system.

What’s needed is a paradigm shift, and this is what this document will provide, on a relatively small level, designed for the production and distribution of a serial drama show, but which can be adapted and used for other types of entertainment product in later stages.

The thoughts and conclusions provided here are taking into account different business models that produced other product and placed it successfully into the marketplace.

For our purposes, we will have to start at the one place that has been too often forgotten in the development of entertainment product in the past, primarily because it is a product that tries to have an artistic “vision” and is made mostly by people who very often don’t think about who in the end should pay for this product: the consumer.

And this is where we will start. Not with a script. Not even with a concept. Not with a producer, not with actors, studio heads or whoever else thinking they are important. In all the thoughts, all the deliberations, all the different bits of analysis that are about to follow.

We will start with the consumer.

For the consumer is all that matters.

(1) THE CONSUMER IN A WANT-NEED-MATRIX

The modern consumer’s power to assign a value to the entertainment product affects the industry’s future in terms of

    • distribution

    • production

and even down to the very

    • conceptualisation

of the product.

To illustrate those significant changes, it is necessary to analyse how a consumer makes his or her choice about a potential purchase of any product.

Any decision by the consumer to purchase a product is the direct result of a conscious/unconscious Decision Tree, which in turn is part of a complex Want-Need-Matrix determined by a number of variables based on existentially relevant Needs and real or projected Wants within the consumption process.

Needs are defined as products and services that are absolutely necessary to continue one’s existence, such as rent or mortgage payments, transportation costs, electricity, heating, food, clothing etc.

Wants are defined as any products or services that, while not necessary to survive, are part of consumerist culture and are thusly in and of themselves primarily luxury items that include tech gadgets, vacation travel, social gatherings … and entertainment products.

The traditional way to market products in the Wants column has been to create the artificial perception by the consumer that those products are indeed within the Needs column, mostly through the creating the illusion of a sense of lifestyle attached to the product itself.

Simply called: advertising.

The basis of such a consumerist economy, especially in the US and UK consumer market’s, however, has been the consumer credit, with the allure and more importantly the perception that the product or service bought has no real value and will be paid off in increments through so-called “plastic money”.

This is about to change. The credit crunch currently hitting both the US and UK markets, together with a stagnant economy and exploding prices for products and services necessary to survive, primarily electricity, heating and transportation costs, are taking up more and more of the individual consumer’s budget.
This all leads to a rationalisation by the consumer for all non-essential purchases within the decision tree, which affects intangible products and services first, lifestyle products second and only then bare necessities.

This rationalisation by the consumer prior to purchase is what concerns us for the purpose of the model that is about to proposed in the later pages of this document.

This rationalisation is where all intangible products and services, all lifestyle and/or luxury items are immediately at a disadvantage.

Let us take a look at two examples from two different realms of entertainment delivery: the world wide web and DVD sales, especially TV Box Sets.

While it is true that hedge funds and corporations are buying up new web sites, such as YouTube, MySpace, Facebook et al in a Web 2.0 bubble, it is also true that none of these sites present an actual business model designed to generate sustainable profits.

For the consumer may be willing to look at these sites, even become part of it for a while (research indicates that there is about a drop-out rate of MySpace users in the 80 percent range within a year of signing up, leaving database corpses and not much else), they are not willing, nor will they ever be to actually pay for any content online. Every media venture outside very specialised content creating ventures (such as Daily Variety, Medical Database Services etc) has failed in attracting enough paying customers for their content, the last example being the New York Times.

Why is that?

Well, first all of – and it is a rather obvious thing to point out – information and content are by their very nature intangible and can be assigned a value by the consumer immediately within the confines of the web.

And again, that inherent value is zero.

Why? To quote a famous proverb, which can be applied to the content distribution online: “I already gave at the office”. For we have to keep in mind that the consumer is already paying.

He’s just not paying you!

To understand this, one has to understand consumer psychology. What he is paying are rather expensive broadband access packages to his cable or telecom service providers, usually within the range of 40 to 80 dollars a month and to the consumer – like it or not – that price tag includes all the stuff he might want to look at in the world wide web.

In fact, it is that consumer psychology that has been forgotten far too often in the development of media content. The consumer is a far more complex entity than what advertising agencies and marketing consultants (and I used to be one, so I know what I’m talking about) will try to sell to you as the truth.

Focus research backs up the notion that consumers are more inclined to believe that the content on the world wide web is something they already paid for and see no reason to sink in even more cash for single products that use the web as a means of distribution. Focus research also shows that for each entertainment product and service there is an inherent tipping point at the Point of Sale (POS) of “brick & mortar” entertainment products, such as magazines, music CDs and DVDs.

Stay below that tipping point, and the product in itself can become that most elusive and most wanted of all products: the impulse buy.

Move above it, and with each gradual rise of the price tag, one will decrease the potential purchase audience numbers by a factor of 3. Part of that loss can be kept at bay by the rising prices, but it turns the product itself from a mass-market product to a more and more specialised item that will then be at the mercy of a relatively small group of fans or aficionados and can increasingly become endangered by their whims.

What are those tipping points in the price tag?

Again, focus research has shown a similar pattern throughout most markets in industrialised countries for different media products, with each product being assigned a single value.

For mass market magazines, e.g., that tipping point is 3 dollars, for a music CD it is 8 dollars, for a single movie DVD it is 10 dollars and for a TV show box set it is not more than 25 dollars.

When dealing with certain brands or properties, this value assignments changes incrementally, depending on the brand, how long it is established and what the consumer considers to be a “fair” price for this item in his Wants column. But for our purposes here we should keep in mind those basic numbers we put up here as the skeleton for the model of distribution that we are going to discuss in the following pages.

(2) THE FOUR TIERS OF DISTRIBUTION

Actually, there are five tiers for the distribution of an entertainment product such as TV shows, even though most people inside the industry see them only as four. They are:

TV NETWORKS
(Including cable, both basic and premium)

DVD DISTRIBUTION

ONLINE SALES

ONLINE STREAMING
(World Wide Web Only)

IP TV

The last tier, launched in 2007 in a number of European countries, are TV Packages distributed through your ISP and via the ip Protocol. They are not part of what most people these days would consider “online” delivery, since they have the “look” and the “feel” of classic digital cable TV, with the underlying delivery system being a different one.

For our purposes, we shall deal with the first four tiers and look at the ipTV format at the end as a separate issue, and one that will have quite some significant impact on the industry as a whole, since it spells the end of the vertical integration that has driven media conglomerate consolidation of the past two decades. ipTV will take away the delivery monopoly of the traditional media companies and put them in the hands of the more powerful telecom conglomerates.

However, since that is about five to ten years away to come through in full force, we shall deal with the other, more established distribution systems first when looking at how to develop TV show concepts that can make full use of all of those delivery channels.

There have been a few examples as of late of people producing content directly for the web, the latest being Quarterlife by Zwick/Hershowitz, which was recently picked up in a licensing deal by NBC, but if one looks more closely at that, it shows a structure that is that of a generic dramedy. Other examples would include Will Ferrell’s website venture, Tokyopop’s “Online Manga Cartoons” and others, but all of those examples are without too much merit, since they come from an already established perspective and just extrapolate that perspective to a new delivery system, be it “comedic shorts” (Ferrell), “cartoon shorts” (Tokyopop) or “this is actually a network dramedy cut to pieces” (Quarterlife). None of them were developed with the end consumer in mind.
A new model for TV show concepts will have to address the strength and weaknesses of each delivery system even before the conceptualisation of the show itself, for each distribution channel comes with a certain set of rules that need to be reflected in the actual concept, structure and delivery of the product.

Within the realm of ONLINE STREAMING, e.g., the research on consumer behaviour shows a preference of short clips and/or movies with a maximum length of 10 minutes and not more. These are films/videos/rants that are often watched at the office during lunch breaks, as a little diversion and perhaps shared virally with friends and family.

The realm of ONLINE SALES, like at iTunes and other similar services, are merely a supplemental sales and distribution model to the “brick and mortar” DVD market. This tier’s primary strength is what currently drives music executives crazy, because it allows for the conscious picking of a single track/song or – for our purposes – a single episode of any given TV show. The overall pricing for an entire season would be very close to what an actual DVD box set would cost, but the strength here is to give the consumer the illusion of getting more control over the purchase and a perceived (though not real) better value for money.

The distribution tier of DVD SETS has to contend with the subconscious tipping point we discussed earlier. TV Box Sets are usually set in a price range of 40-100 Dollars per box set for an entire season, and while one could argue that the cost-value equation is a pretty decent one, with a set containing up 22 episodes or more, the price tag alone ensures that for box sets, the intended target audience is currently the fraction of hardcore fans who enjoyed the show on its earlier distribution channels on TV and would like to be in control of the experience on their own terms. Because of that, TV Box Sets traditionally favour genre shows such as all forms of Star Trek, Babylon 5, X-Files, 24, Lost as good sellers, with the occasional sitcom highlight like Friends or Seinfeld being thrown in.

Finally, the TV NETWORK distribution comes with a pre-formatted structure of a 5 Act episode (for a full hour show) that allows for commercial breaks, with the best shows already written in such a way to make dramatic use of the commercial break itself. Its primary strength comes from the perceived notion of not having to pay for the content at all, in the traditional trade-off of content plus advertising.

The different strengths of the distribution channels and their usage by the consumer often contradict themselves, thus having creatives dealing with the rules and regulations of that distribution channel that they are developing the intended property for, in a trade-off for the disadvantages that come through the other distribution tiers.

If e.g. a new TV show for network distribution is conceptualised, it is designed to work within the confines of that distribution channel and that distribution channel alone, with all other channels being supplements to the primary one but not taken into account from the beginning of the conceptualisation itself.

We are going to change that.

Let us recap what a modern TV show concept will have to be able to achieve.

1) It has to fully work in 10 minute serial increments to take full advantage of the ONLINE STREAMING primary use by the consumer.

2) It has to work as a 45 minute single episode, but wetting the appetite for subsequent purchases to fully take advantage of the ONLINE SALES tier

3) Its structure has to allow for a DVD collected format at a significantly lower price point than the series box sets that are currently on the market, but giving the consumer a full experience with each DVD set bought and leave them wanting more. It also has to take into account the primary target group willing to spend the most money on entertainment and their viewing habits, which means: a genre show.

4) It has to work in the 5-Act-Format of a “normal” TV drama, which means it has to be written in such a way that it allows for their traditional model to still work.

All of that sounds like a rather tall order.

The way to combine all these elements is a conceptual structure that comes from the past, from a different medium even, but on that can be adapted fully to the 21st century notion of a TV show.

It’s a concept pioneered in the 19th century by popular novelists like Charles Dickens and is still in use in countries such in Germany when it comes to novels. It was briefly resurrected, with some success, by Stephen King for The Green Mile as well. Back then, it was called serialisation. For our purposes here, it will be called the MINI-TV-NOVEL SERIES.

Let me explain…

(3) THE MINI-TV-NOVEL SERIES STRUCTURE

The model will work, because all of the elements of it are already in place, have been tested and tried on their own, with varied success, admittedly, but never thought out and thought through.

What all failed to do, though, is to combine all the different elements in one solid conceptual structure and consider the implications of such a structure on what it means for the creative conceptualisation of such a series.

But first, let us take a look at all the elements of the structural model from a business perspective, shall we? And ask some important questions, starting with maybe the one that will immediately come up.

(4) AH, YES, BUT WHY WOULD IT WORK?

Why should TV/cable license an outside concept? Obviously, this is the big one, for throughout the past two decades the media conglomerates have been going through a vertical integration process that has them controlling the entire value chain, from conceptualisation to distribution, and it is a fair question to ask as to why they would give up that control. Why should they, since everything works so well with the current model?

Oh no, wait. It’s not really working, is it? As most of the times, with vertical integration, the initial goals of bringing down costs and control the quality hasn’t been met, with hundreds of millions being put into development deals and little to show for it.

The reason for that is a simple one. By consolidating the entire value chain the media companies have created an monolithic structure within themselves that is controlled primarily by personal relationships and by the jockeying for the next best position. This is not an uncommon result, nor is it merely a feature to be found in the media industries.

In fact, research has shown that over 60 percent of all mergers and acquisitions in the corporate world have failed and in more than a few instances have resulted in a disastrous loss of stockholder value.

In the media industries, where personal relationships have begun to supersede the primary focus of content creation: the consumer.

Series budgets and developing costs have ballooned to a point where a new scripted drama show will cost about 3 million per hour, and with 90 percent of all new scripted series per season failing before their first season run, that is a lot of money going down the drain. And yet, more and more development deals with big-name producers are announced, primarily to keep business relations going and also to perhaps hop from one executive chair to the next, should the wind come from a different direction…

It’s an entirely closed system, or so it seems.

So, why should a network buy from an outside source? Again, let us forego the typical creative answer, which would sound like Steve Buscemi in one of his smaller film roles, going “Because we are better, waaaah!”.

Nobody cares. What the networks do care about is money. Or rather, not spending money, for while a successful TV show for them might show up in the earnings reports two, three years down the line, the costs will show up almost immediately or at least in the next quarterly spreadsheet.

Let’s re-iterate: 3 million dollars per hour of scripted shows, between 1.5 million to 2 million dollars for a reality TV show.

The networks will be interested in a licensed show, because we are making them an offer, in the words of Don Corleone, that they simply cannot refuse.

At 500,000 dollars plus 25 percent of the advertising revenue generated within the hour the show is shown, it will be the offer of a quality product at a fraction of the initial cost and without any of the risk, since the show is going to be independently funded.

And furthermore, since this concept is independently funded, one can repeat the same approach on every TV market in the world, analyse our target, calculate the tipping point for each channel and approach them directly. Obviously, such a tipping point would differ from market to market, and the same cost per hour of content in e.g.. Hungary will differ greatly from the one in the UK, Germany, France or the US. But the underlying business model stays the same.

Greed, ladies and gentlemen. Greed works.

Only in this case, it will work in the favour of those investors who fund the model and the model’s creator. For the model for the company to be set up works along the lines of the Silicon Valley start-up models, with the entrepreneur and the venture capitalists forming an alliance that is going to benefit them both.

Obviously, such a partnership wouldn’t automatically result in the investor to rub shoulders with Nicole Kidman on any red carpet, but honestly, who cares?

This is about the money.

What is the deal with the DVD MINI NOVELS?

To answer this question I shall refer to the chapter THE CONSUMER IN A WANT-NEED-MATRIX. As briefly discussed there, there is a tipping point for the consumer for each purchase of an entertainment product at which rational thinking sets in and turns an impulse buy into a rationally thought out purchase.

For a DVD (movie) this tipping point is about 10 dollars. That is the price point one needs to set for a volume of this series concept.

Obviously, for a TV show series produced under the current model, that is nothing that would work. Neither are the shows conceptualised to break down in those chunks needed to allow for such a price point, nor would a broken down show like Friends or even an extremely serialised drama like Lost or Heroes give the consumer the feeling of getting a fully fledged product with their purchase.

It would even counter-act the subconscious notion of getting proper value for their money.

Again, this entire model starts and ends with the consumer at the very core of it all. If the price point is 10 dollars and if an entire box set of a full season only works for already established series in terms of repeat viewings, then one must find a way to construct a series structure that allows to be broken down into meaningful chunks that can be sold at the price point necessary. The notion of telling a complete story in a span of 3 to 7 full hour episodes in an of itself not an entirely new one.

In the current TV model, these stories are called mini-series, usually done in an event-like manner, like the currently airing Tin Man on the SciFi Channel… or pretty much anything produced by Hallmark Entertainment.

But those mini-series often play out as a bloated movie, where things are stretched beyond belief and very rarely lead to a Battlestar Galactica situation, in which the event serves as a launching pad for an ongoing series.

What is the advantage of conceptualising a series of mini-novels is that they can be put together into one volume of a continuing series, very much like an ongoing book series with the same characters.

Liked this Mini-TV-Novel? Buy the next one! It’s just 10 bucks. The perceived cheap price of 10 dollars is an element taken out of the currently successful model run by iTunes in the music realm and adapted for our purposes. The price tag of 99 cents per downloaded song is perceived to be good value for money, for the consumer doesn’t realise that downloading an entire album at that cost will level out usually at 10 to 13 dollars, very much like the cost of a CD.

Applied to our model here, a full season’s worth of episodes will come down to a cost between 30 to 35 dollars, depending on the length of each individual Mini-TV-Novel.

In fact, we will have the consumer spent just as much if not more on the product through this model as he would have done just buying a complete box set of the old kind.

But… we are going to give them the illusion of control.

And that is a major difference. In this model, the consumer will not have thought about the purchase cost of the completed season, the way he would have done, if we had presented just with the choice of “This set will set you back 35 dollars, take it or leave it”.

In a world where almost all TV shows are available constantly through a stream of Usenet, BitTorrent and P2P networks, the new generation of media consumers will more likely than not say: “I will leave it, thank you very much” and download the shows as DiVX files.

Why should we show individual chapters for free?

The traditionalists among the media people (and those are most of them) fear nothing more than the web. In their minds it is filled with evil, little creatures that dress like Johnny Depp, smoke filterless cigarettes in their rooms or their dorms and want everything for free, those damn kids. Why don’t they get off our lawns?

What is often forgotten is that – while there may be a grain of truth in that imagery, skilfully portrayed by poor studio heads in the chambers of Congress – it is not the whole truth.

All independent research has shown that torrenting, like it or not, has by and large increased the sales of, and this is another thing you may not like to hear, good product.

These results corroborate the thesis put up in the introduction of this document.

It is now the consumer who assigns a value to the entertainment product and thus chooses more carefully what – in his mind – is worth paying for.

So, what is the use of putting an individual chapter a day online, for free? It’s primarily a promotion tool, granted, but it allows to target those in the potential audience in such a way, with 10 minute clips that have a beginning, middle and ending, very much like a book chapter. It allows for a quick viewing during the lunchbreak, coming back for more the next day, coming back for more the day after that… and the day after that.

Ultimately, its purpose is to not only run an entire TV network episode in the space of 5 days, its purpose is to create an item that is placed in the Wants column and have the consumer be interested to not have to wait anymore for the story to continue and follow up with either the purchase of an entire single episode through iTunes or the various Mini-TV-Novel DVD sets.

This tier is especially powerful in the beginning of the distribution and will lose importance as the other tiers are moving fully into place, turning this one into a supplemental element only.

And now, for the final question of this section:

Okay, but how does this all affect the actual product in terms of concept, production and budgeting?

As you may have noticed in this document, we are talking not about the production of 22 episode series per year (TV network standard, e.g. House, Lost, Boston Legal etc.), but only 13 episodes per year (which is a model often used by cable in the US and the preferred model for UK TV production, e.g. The Shield, Nip/Tuck in the US, Dr. Who in the UK).

In those above mentioned cases, though, the decision for a shorter season, or half-season as it also often called, is solely a financial one. A half season there is pretty much designed and run by the same rules as a full season on one of the major networks.

We are choosing the 13 episode model per year for two different reasons.

•    It allows for three volumes for the Mini-TV-
    Novel DVD, which means they can be launched
    into the market in 4-month-intervals.

•    It’s an amount of episodes that makes it easier
    to produce the entire run of 13 episodes per
    year on a much more pre-planned “movie”
    production strategy.

In other words, it allows for the entire 13 episodes to be written first, before anything is shot, which in turn will enable logistics that ensure both the quality and timeliness of the end product.

Financial considerations are obviously also an element in this choice, for the projected budget per episode of such a series concept would be within the realm of a show primarily designed for cable, i.e. of about 1.5 M dollars per show.

That gives this series concept overall production budget projection of 19.5 M dollars per a 13 episode season or, in other terms, for 3 to 4 DVD volumes.

Factoring in overhead costs, marketing and PR etc.… and an initial investment will come down to approximately 25 M for the first year of producing the series product.

Now, that sounds like an awful lot of money, but let’s compared it to the 33 M dollars half a season of a regular network show would cost in production costs alone, not counting the corporate overheard.

And what’s more, let us compare it to the production budget of ONE mid-size movie under the current model, which ranges between 25 and 50 M dollars for a single product, without the ability to follow up on it after the initial value chains has been run through, and the 25 M dollars investment for a year’s worth of shows that are designed from the beginning to maximise profits from all existing and future distribution tiers with a BRANDED PRODUCT that keeps on giving.

BRANDING is going to play a rather important part in the conceptualisation of the product itself (and future series that are based on the same business model)

For BRANDING leads to the opportunities of merchandising and spin-off products for each of the series that would be produced under this model.

Once more, let us take a look at the most successful entertainment products of the past, and we will see that the majority of them, ranging from the six Star Wars movies to the Indiana Jones trilogy to the Pirates trilogy are genre concepts. Family-friendly genre concepts that play with the imagination and leave one coming back for more.

Please take a note that we are leaving out the Spider-Man, Batman, Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings adaptations in this list. Those movies all came with preconceived concepts and much loved ones at that, which gave them an advantage on the mass market.

The series concepts that are to be developed under this model do not have that luxury, but can learn from the elements that are within all of those concepts. The comparisons to Star Wars, Indiana Jones and the Pirates movies are, however, valid ones. All three were designed to work on a global scale and all of them built worlds from scratch in order to not just tell a story, but to cash in on all supplemental products that could be designed through them.

That is what needs to be done: build a world, let the consumer into that world and make him feel at home there, so he won’t mind paying for such an experience over and over again.

If one takes a look at the list of the most successful entertainment product concepts, one will notice another vital thing:

TWO THIRDS of the first-run revenue comes from OVERSEAS TERRITORIES, which means that a successful concept needs to be globally inclusive by tapping into the same subconsciousness shared by people everywhere.

This can be done by either creating and outlandish world concept that seems familiar as done by Lucas in Star Wars or creating a familiar historical world that is then filled with outlandish elements, as done by Lucas and Spielberg with Indiana Jones or Verbinski and Bruckheimer with the Pirates trilogy.

Regardless which one of them is favoured personally, the overall conceptualisation of such an entertainment product that can maximise profits both as a product itself and through supplemental products.

It needs to be a genre concept.

In the second part two of this document, you will find the first of such a conceptualisation that takes into account all these factors from the very first moment.

It is called The Invisibles.

Other concepts are also in the works that address the different rules in the same way in order to build not just a ONE OFF CONCEPT, but a BRANDED PRODUCT LINE that allows for the expansion of the company to be built as to take advantage of the opportunities presented for the future.
_______________

Okay, we shall stop here. To tell you the joke (and to answer the question of "What is he talking about? The Invisibles? Huh?")...

... and because you have probably noticed that a few of my references are a little... off.

That's because I wrote this and presented it to a great many deal of "big name" Hollywood producers to pitch not only a new TV show (THE INVISIBLES) but said new model...

... in DECEMBER 2007.

Yeah. Can you imagine the responses I got?

I bet you can.

Merry Christmas.

Oh, and fuck SOPA!

OH NOES! NEW APPLE IPHONE 4 DOESN'T SELL IN EUROPE! DAMN COMMUNISTS!

2011-12-22T19:38:00.000+01:00

It appears that the biggest consumer terrorists are exactly where you would expect them to be, in the Anglo states, as the new Reuters story tells us that Continental Europe is going Yawn on the whole "new supa iPhone", but let's take a look at the story itself...

Apple's market share in the 12 weeks to end-November rose to 36 percent in the United States from 25 percent a year earlier and in Britain to 31 percent from 21 percent, Kantar said.

However, in France its share slipped to 20 percent from 29 percent and in Germany to 22 percent from 27 percent. Similar drops were seen in Italy and Spain.

Now, the funny thing here, of course, is that the rest of the Reuters article goes on to state that this all due to the European cash/debt/survival crisis, which is why you have the sentence "Similar drops were seen in Italy and Spain".

However, considering that Germany (we'll not go into the details of that particular delusion) is considered to be Europe's strong man (rah! rah! rah!), while both Britain and the US are very much so in the tank, it shows a lot more about who is in the grip of Status Addiction and who isn't (all that much).

Somewhere at Cupertino, people should start to shit their pants. Because there are numerous factors here at play, and one of them - if my talks with former Apple users is an indication - is that Apple has crossed a line in 2011 with its lawsuits, its shitty customer care, its arrogance towards those who see a cell phone primarily as a tool and wonder, hey, if I can get the same shit with Samsung (insert any other brand here), what is the reason again to buy an iPhone?

Ah, yes... the whole "But I am special" delusion.

Something that, yes, diminishes the more the economy squeezes your budget.

Merry Christmas, Apple.

You're no longer "special"

BE GOOD AND KIND

2011-12-21T15:57:00.000+01:00

I have not much to say, not really, and the world out there looks grim, and gets darker each day, both in my personal life and in the lives of those who struggle, with less and less success, in their fights, some of them just fighting for the moment, that little bit of peace, that little spark of hope that means that today your child does not go hungry.

I have had the honor and pleasure to have talked to one of those men, have known him briefly on Twitter, and the humiliation and the despair of a good man, a man asking for nothing more than a little work, an intelligent man, a man who was highly qualified...

... who had to beg, the modern way, the global way, with a cheap cell phone and a limited amount of minutes, asking directly, with that cell phone, that Twitter feed being the bowl held out to the world.

And I couldn't help him.

In my life, I have not often felt such depth of helplessness.

No, strike that. I have never felt this helpless. I could help him in other, small ways, with information, but that's how far it went. I'm thinking about him and his wife and child now, in Haiti. And if I were a praying man, I'd pray for him. And that's what prayer is. The acknowledgment of helplessness.

It shouldn't exist. Begging.

Even though you have done nothing wrong, even though you have educated yourself, even though you are trying, forced to make the impossible choice to perhaps even sell the tools that you need in the first place to give your family one more day, because that's what it has come down to in so many parts of this world, not just in those places that you hear about, on the news, between the blitz of commercials that tell you to BUY BUY BUY...

... that tell you you can't be happy without the latest iStuff, without the latest car, that tell you that you are less of a man or a woman if you can't, that tell you that this is what society is, that this is what makes you part of it...

... one more day. Without going hungry. One more day. Being able to look your child in the eye, that child who believes in you, who thinks you come right next after god, that you are its Dad or its Mom, still believing that there's nothing Dad or Mom cannot handle...

This is what we have been reduced to. And it's no longer just in Africa. Or Haiti.

It's right next door. It's in our cities. In our small towns.

But we look away.

And we tell ourselves that these are nothing, these are the Ghosts of Christmas Past and not those of Christmas Future. As a species, as a society, we lie to ourselves, we tell ourselves that lie that we are the "Good People" while our actions tell a different story, that old story, that story by Charles Dickens. We just don't want to own up to it, we pretend, each year again, that we give, that we care, that we have done enough... by giving a cheque to charity and forget about the whole thing again...

... until next year.

In my family, we are lucky. My Mom is very ill, has been for such a long time that I can barely remember the day when I didn't look at her and see the pain and the weakness of her body crippling the woman I knew as a child. We are very lucky, because we grew up poor, and we were taught by my parents that stuff is just that... stuff.

And this Christmas, we will sit together, and we will celebrate. No God. Not Jesus. Not Stuff.

We will celebrate that we have this. One more day.

And I will maybe see my Mom smile. Because my sister and I will be there. And my nephew will be there. And we will cherish that. That we are still there. That we can still care.

I wish the woman I love could be there, too. But she's far away, and right now, there's nothing more I wish for than that she could sit with us on Christmas Eve, and that she could see my family smile, and it breaks my heart that the way this world is... doesn't allow for that. But I am grateful. I am grateful because she was here. And she could meet my Mom and my Dad. And my sister and my nephew. I am glad, because it's the end of the year. And I do not know if there's going to be another Christmas with all of my family still alive. Next year. It looks grim, this world. And it looks dark, and it is getting darker with each passing day.

I wish I could leave you with something... better.

With something... uplifting.

As the world out there drowns in darkness.

But I can tell you only this. Celebrate it.

That one more day.

If you have family who loves you, celebrate it. If you don't have to worry about where the next meal comes from, even if it's a cheap one, celebrate it. Be good. And be kind. Not because some God tells you to. Not because it makes you one of the "Good People".

Celebrate it. Because in the end, that's all we have.

That one more day.

Merry Christmas.

GOODBYE, AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH

2011-11-21T14:43:00.001+01:00

I am sick of it.

I'm tired and I'm sick, and I am sick of being tired. A couple of months ago, on August 22, to be exact, I predicted the turn from the Arab Spring to the Arab Fall in Egypt. It was an easy prediction to make as I could see the writing on the wall in the arrogant, selfish, entitled, culturally apologetic bullshit that those on my Twitter timeline had tweeted about those who continued to ask for human rights, for women's rights, for any rights at all.

The arrogance of those who hogged their books, flogged their logs, who defended an army against those who had their rights taken away.

Now what would we call that?

Oh, yes, the "moral majority".

I don't even want to talk about what's going on Egypt right now. I want to say this...

You yourself are responsible. You looked away. You went away. You went on vacations and book tours and Daily Show guest appearances. You were too busy patting each other on the shoulder for a job well done. Well... well done, right? And put a fork in it, too!

There were only a handful of people left in those past months who still stood up, and they were maligned, they were spat on, they were ridiculed.

Business as usual.

And not just there. It's everywhere. While we can make much about the bravery of some who are getting beaten the shit out of them right now at various Occupy Wall Street protests, it is too easy to make the movement something heroic.

Don't get me wrong, when it started - and I know some who were there on September 17, and who have shown extraordinary bravery - I was among those who lent my little voice to it, sometimes my sarcasm, but most of all my hope.

That we are able to learn. That maybe we are better.

And then I saw last week's Daily Show report on what the Occupy Wall Street camp in Zucotti Park had turned into. Sure, you may say, Thomas, the Daily Show is a humorous show, and a lot of the things you saw could have been exaggerated.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Occupy Wall Street Divided

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

But thing is? I don't believe it was.

It took two months for them to establish an upper class and a lower class. It took two months for the pseudo-intellectuals to come in, to separate themselves from those who had been there from the first day. Two months for the ugly face - underneath all of the illusion of "equality, fraternity, liberty" - to emerge. Class. We are smarter, they are dumber. We are educated, they are not. We can quote Descartes, they think it's a menu item.

There's a reason I hate college-educated motherfuckers. And yes, I have two degrees myself. So what? The arrogance, the sheer empty-headed sense of entitlement that we all know from bankers, that we know from politicians, it had formed itself, corrupted what was a good idea...

... in less than two months.

I will not lend my tiny voice to them anymore. I shall observe. And I shall no longer get involved in any of these things. I'm tired of feeling this way. I'm tired of wasting my time with it. You may accuse me of being a coward. I don't care. I stood up and spoke up and gave a fuck long before most of those who may call me a coward were involved in anything.

And I stood up and spoke up for others at the risk of my job, of friendships, of everything that by and large is what people call important. I did so because I hoped. That people cared. That it would get better. That, if people only knew, if people were in possession of all the facts, things would change. Things would get better, and if that was the case, then I'd gladly put my job, my friendships, even my life on the line.

I hoped against hope.

That the "moral majority", the "silent majority" would wake up.

I'm done doing that.

They love to sleep. They always have. They always will.

I want to leave something behind, and I want to leave a smile on faces. And so I am out of here. To write. To create. I have an appointment in the Wicked Woods with a little girl named Kylie. I have an appointment with a boy who will grow up trying to be a hero on the rooftops of Brooklyn, 1927. I have an appointment with another girl who tries to get into a very exclusive boarding school.

I am out of here, for the most part.

I will do Twitter updates if and when I deem them important enough.

But not more than that. I have a towel, and I am not afraid to use it.

Goodbye, and thanks for all the fish.

THE CALL FOR DEMOCRACY 2.0

2011-11-08T06:18:00.000+01:00

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In the past, information, decisions and opinions could not be transmitted within seconds accross a country, much less the entire world. As a consequence, citizens elected regional representatives to serve as the voice of the people in parliament.

Such a representative system, reflecting the economies and the societal structures of a world long gone, is still in place today, but no longer serving the fundamental idea and ideal of democracy as a system for the people and by the people.

Instead, the elected representatives have become compromised by lobby interest, corrupted by corporations, have lost touch with those they are supposed to represent, serving only those who want people to serve them, be it as employees, voters or soldiers sent off to wars to kill or die for profit.

We have reached a time of change as too much power is concentrated in the hands of the few, becoming a "representation" in name only.

Such is the corruption that these representatives have now repeatedly turned against those they are supposed to represent, that they are fearing the tools, the technology that would allow a more direct participation of those that they are supposed to govern: the internet.

The internet allows us all to work together in a new form of democracy, a true 21st century version it that is still true to its ideas and ideals, giving everyone a chance to have their voices heard, to participate in the shaping of ideas and laws on regional, national or even global levels.

There is no excuse for denying this chance to us, the people.

There is no excuse for not allowing us, the citizens, to be educated, to formulate informed opinions, to vote on those issues that directly affect us, not only in our daily lives but also decide the future of our children and of the very world itself.

Decisions like these can no longer allowed to be made by those who don't listen to us, who only listen to those who promise them money or power or both, who offer them consulting contracts, places on corporate boards, who have sold the voices of the people to Big Oil, to Big Pharma, to anyone "Big" enough to pay them enough to make them believe that corporations are people, and people are consumers.

These few, they fear us, the citizens. Those few, they fear our thoughts, our thoughts and opinions, as the example of the proposed referendum in Greece on the Euro has shown, aborted under pressure of not only an unelected body like the EU but also bowing to the pressure of the so-called markets, behaving more irrationally than any informed citizenship would ever be able to do

There is no reason to fear us. We are your brothers, we are your sisters, we are your fathers and mothers, your daughters and sons. We are your neighbors. And we are all in this together. That is what is at the heart of democracy. Us.

And for the first time in the history of mankind, technology has given us the tools, the chance and opportunity to live up to those ideals that were formulated ages ago, by men and women smart enough and kind enough and trusting enough to see that we are the same, by men and women who believed that this is what it's all about.

The opportunity to not only have your voice heard, but listened to.

The opportunity to educate and in turn be educated.

From the first book printed, those in power have fought the flow of free information, out of of fear, scared of no longer being able to control those they governed. In every age, the people who have fought for this freedom have been called terrorists, have been called criminals, have been oppressed.

Do not fear us.

Do not fear information.

Do not fear the necessary change.

This is our time. This is your time. This is your future.

It is the time that democracy can finally live up to the promise given to mankind all those centuries ago. A free exchange of ideas. An educated citizenship.

To those who fear the redesign of democracy. Have the past months not proven that today's system is at the point of collapse? That parliaments like those of the United States and even Germany have abandoned even the illusion of representation by appointing secret committees, deciding on budgets, budget cuts, on your life, without even being held responsible to those who are supposed to hold this power by the virtues of our constitutions?

Has it not proven that the laws that were written, the laws that were repealed, that were neutered, blocked and scrapped not only served the interested of big corporations beholden to no ideal, but were in fact written by them and voted upon by Members of Parliament who not only didn't know what they were voting on, but also didn't seem to care about the obvious incompetence?

In the United States, only 8% trust Congress anymore to represent them. In Germany, it is 9%. Similar numbers are to be found in every country that is supposedly a democracy. We have been sold out, have been silenced, have been pushed aside.

We didn't stop believing in the system.

The system stopped believing in us.

We believe there are more competent people out there. We believe that they have not been given a voice, have been silenced by a system where money talks and ideas are silenced.

These people are not only out there.

These people are you and me.

And it us who can change this world. Bit by bit.

Discussion by disccusion. Debate by debate. Decision by decision.

We know you are disillusioned. We know you are afraid. We know you are angry.

But most of all, we know this... We know you care.

We think we not only can, we need to change the way democracy works, not only for a better today, but a better tomorrow. A man, a politician, once said to us to "hope" and "change", and we hoped that he would be the change.

But he wasn't. We are this hope. We are this change.

The "Occupy" Movements around the world, they are the first voice. It is loud. It is unshaped. But it is a beginning. It voices your anger. It voices your disillusion. And it has been critized for not offering a plan, a Powerpoint presentation, a memo... by the very people who have had years and decades to come up with solutions and failed time and again.

We cannot wait on those who stand against us anymore.

We cannot wait for them to represent us anymore.

We believe in democracy. They do not.

We believe in the intelligence of our citizens. They do not.

We believe in the ideals of our constitutions. They do not.

And to change this world, to fight for a better tommorrow, we must take back our democracies from them. Technology has given us not only the tools, but also the ideas on how to tap unused potentials. Ideas that can start as a single thought and transported to millions of people at the touch of a button through technologies like BitTorrent, thoughts that can spread through 140 characters or less on Twitter, plans that can be worked on in open and fair exchanges on Public Pads.

The ideas are out there. The ideals are out there.

Because you are out there. And waiting to be listened to.

We are calling on all of you.

The dreamers. The realists. The experts. The people.

Because that is how democracy starts

With just a single sentence. A single thought.

"We, the people..."

It was important enough to begin every call for democracy since the American Revolution.

We are all in this together.

Let's start the debate.

Let us create a democracy that is transparent, that is again for the people and this time by the people, representing the best of us and no longer represented by the worst of us.

Let us build a democracy that deserves this name. That evolves. That is ours to shape and guided by the principles that our leaders have forgotten but that we still carry in our hearts.

Let us build Democracy 2.0.

THE WRITE STUFF: RE:TIRED COVER ART

2011-09-01T09:18:00.002+02:00

Since I have been undercover (brother) for a while again, let me just say that I am hard at work on RE:TIRED, having nearly completed the first book of it (at 250 pages now, almost 55,000 words, uh, okay, didn't I tell myself that one issue of that series would run roughly 30,000 to 35,000 words? Yeah, like, try telling that to the guy who just keeps on talking... and talking)

I am very happy with how things are shaping up, well, no, happy isn't the right word. Satisfied is more likely it. Having had to undercome a serious writer's block due to personal stuff, I can now more easily access my world again. And that makes all the difference.

My friend and long-time collaborator Edo Fuijkschot has graciously said he will do the covers for the entire series, and those images will feature rather iconic images that he has worked on, while being interviewed and shit by Singapore TV on what makes a good comic.

To which I say, he does.

So, here is the development from sketch to pencil to ink of the first cover.

Looks pretty awesome, don't it?

UPDATE: I have now slotted the inked artwork into the original cover design that I made a while back, and while you cannot see how the final will look yet just yet (hey, Edo has other things to do as well, know?), it gives a decent impression on how it will all come together...

FROM THE ARAB SPRING TO THE ARAB FALL

2011-08-22T15:38:00.003+02:00

We'll be fighting in the streets

With our children at our feet

And the morals that they worship will be gone

And the men who spurred us on

Sit in judgement of all wrong

They decide and the shotgun sings the song

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution

Take a bow for the new revolution

Smile and grin at the change all around

Pick up my guitar and play

Just like yesterday

Then I'll get on my knees and pray

We don't get fooled again

The change, it had to come

We knew it all along

We were liberated from the fold, that's all

And the world looks just the same

And history ain't changed

'Cause the banners, they are flown in the next war

Good News Everyone!

And gosh, if it isn't good news that Gaddafi (in whatever way you may want to spell him) and his Boys are soon to be gone, wiped from office, perhaps even wiped from the face of the planet, then what is? Or in the immortal words of Donny "Let me bomb the shit out of you" Rumsfeld, "Iraq will already be a better place just for the reason that Saddam is no longer there."

Say, how is that working out there?

Oh, it isn't? Bugger. Must have been all the Americans' fault, because we all know they walk around on the planet arrogant little buggers they are, thinking they can fix everything, in what can only be called Operation: Hey, You're Free Now!

Yeah, that really didn't work out all that way, didn't it? Because the moment they could, the Shiites went all "ethnic cleansing" on those who had oppressed for decades, and if there are places now in Bagdad that are relatively safe, it is because they are no Sunnis left. Ah, the sweet smell of freedom. Strange how it smells exactly like burning houses. And sounds exactly like exploding cars. Gosh. So disappointing, that.

But wait!

Isn't Egypt now a better place, and isn't that what we have all been looking forward, extrapolating, projecting our hopes into those events that happened on January 25 and following?

Wasn't it great? wasn't it awesome?

To see a peaceful "revolution", to have everyone come together, for one time, not bucking, not budging, not going away, until their demands for "freedom" and "democracy" were met? Were we not all sitting in front of our televisions, our computers, our mobile phones, wasn't that the best game ever we watched?

Like, it even beat the Holland-Spain final of 2010. And it went on forever. And we knew exactly on which side we were, and it was an easy choice to make, because on the one hand you had another dictator, one funded and helped by the USA, one who oppressed his own population, one who had built a corrupt system that penetrated every social strata.

And on the other hand, the young, oh how can you not love the young, with their hopeful faces, with their sparkling eyes, with their shouts of "We will not go, you will go"?

Yes. We projected our own hopes into these masses, because the last time we projected our hope onto something or rather somebody, it was Obama, it was 2008, and by the time February 2011 had come around, most had already seen through him, another politician, another liar, another war criminal who bombed, who tortured, who let people like Bradley Manning thrown into jail for (allegedly) telling the world some of the rather smallish nasty things that happened even under the Obama watch.

People in the world needed hope, they wanted to see hope, they wanted a spark. And wasn't it awesome that it came from the most unlikely of places? I mean, come on, North Africa? Really? Who'd have thunk?

And these things happened. And these things were real. And for one moment, as it is so rare in history, change was possible, change was within reach, and Mubarak said, like we all knew it, that phrase, that those in the West, they don't understand the Arab way, the way that has worked for so long, hell, what the fuck do we care about how many people were tortured, or how the cells looked or how badly run the justice system was? I mean, fuck, look at our justice system, right?

And we thought, we deluded ourselves, especially people like me, those cynics with the hardened shells, those who so desperately try to look for that little spark, that little bit that should be in all human beings, who believe that humanity is better, must be better, we deluded ourselves that we are all the same, that there is something - helped, not hindered by technology - that makes us all equal.

And so we stood with them. It was easy. It was as easy as hitting a button on software like TweetDeck, we didn't do more, couldn't do more, but we did what what we could, with whatever little means we had.

And look at what is happening, has happened and will happen in Egypt.

Nothing. That is what has happened.

Nothing. That is what is happening

Nothing. That is what will happen.

But wait, you say. Hasn't there been at least one "free" election? Weren't we all proud? Weren't we all watching? Yes, we were, while in the backrooms the Egyptian Army performed "virginity tests" on women who protested. Which means, let's be honest here, let's be the fuck crude, because that is what it is, crude, they violated those women, and none of those who did were held responsible.

Forget about it. Move on. Believe.

And those who didn't forget what this had been supposedly be about, that revolution, they didn't want to go, they still set up little camps on Tahrir, they still said, "hey, nothing has changed, the people in power are all those who supported Mubarak, these are the same generals, where is our democracy?"

And the same people who were calling themselves Egyptians, who very often live in the US or in the UK or wherever the fuck, they were okay with when the Egyptian army forcefully, violently removed those who had remained, and fuck those in the rest of the world who dared to speak out against that, those same people then said the following "You are not an Arab. You don't understand our culture."

Interestingly those same people didn't (because these types of people never do) understand the irony of their wording. Nor did and do they understand that they now use the same vernacular, the same language, the same ideology of their former master, ah, gotta love that, the stupidity of people. Because you of course are welcome as long as you agree.

But you know what freedom is? The ability, the choice, the right to disagree.

And to stand on that fucking square and continue to protest.

But of course not. Not important, that. Move on. Believe.

So, now it's Gaddafi's turn. Out he goes, and boy, what did I hear on Twitter today? Echoed, rising, flooding, that sentiment that Gaddafi should get the same brand of "justice", the same brand of "law" that he dished out. Fuck, put him in the same torture cells! He deserves it! He was responsible for the death of 40,000! Get him in there, and fucking lose the key, yes, that is the right way to do it.

And you say that this is not the way, that there must be a better way, that this is not justice, this is vengeance, and unless you are the wife, the son, the father, the mother of one of those who were killed, you (and I mean especially you who were in the safety of another country for most of it) have no right to vengeance.

And you say it, and you get "You don't understand Arab culture"

No, I don't understand it, but I am slowly getting a good picture of it, and that picture is not a pretty one, it is ugly and misshaped, and the most ironic thing of it all is that the idea put forward towards me is "the Americans do it too."

Which I find hilarious on many levels. Because as much as there is visceral hatred towards America (some of it for very good and historically understandable reasons), this particular argument reveals an ugly truth. Not just about the Arabs, but about everybody who uses it.

And that ugly truth is It's okay if we do it our enemies, but it is torture, it is war, it is unfair if it is done to us.

And how pathetic does that make you, who say it?

Already religion is used again in Egypt to supress those who are of a different opinion. Hey, no protests on Ramadan. Can't offend the prophet, right? Fuck that shit. And fuck your prophet!

And before somebody on the Christian Crispy Rightwing Nutbutter Brigade starts clapping at this point, fuck Jesus too! And the same goes to those Jews in Israel who think they are chosen to be something better. Fuck all of you who hide behind books that you are more than willing to use to oppress others and only scream like stuck pigs when they are used against you.

Because that is what has happened to the Arab Spring.

It has become the Arab Fall. And the leaves are falling, exposing what is rising behind it. The Arab Winter. When nothing has changed, nothing will. Only the players change, the game stays the same. And the truth, the cold, historical facts of the French Revolution, they wave all the way from 1791, when it became more and more pronounced that the second sons, the third sons and the upper class were the ones who filled the voids left by the dictator back then, gosh, it was so nice to have all that power now to you, and fuck those who had bled on the street.

For what? For a change in management.

What did The Who sing? Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

I am as of late remembering South Africa. Not only because my love comes from there. But I remember how it was, what enormous courage DeKlerk showed when he dismantled South Africa's apartheid system, when he no longer stood against the tide, but was forced to follow it, and instead of choosing what would have been the easy way out, the way with guns and violence, he relented.

I remember that, and I remember one of the bravest, kindest men in the history mankind, Nelson Mandela, who also didn't understand the "Arab Way" it seems, which also has become the "American Way" and the "Way" of all those who either are in power or are itching to get it. I remember a man who had every reason to kill every white motherfucker in the entire country. Who had been imprisoned, tortured, humiliated, threatened to be killed for 27 years.

And he walked out of that cell. He walked out with his head held high.

He walked out of that cell. And he told those who - like those in the Arab countries right now - talked about retribution and vengeance, all in the mantle, under the cover, with the brand name of "justice", he told them that "Reconciliation begins here. Forgiveness begins here."

Reconciliation. Forgivneness. Both words that have often been said by those two men both those "Christians" and "Muslims" worship. But words nobody ever really believes in, right? Those who hide behind the other words from those books, the rules, who justify them for their positions of power, who cream that it is unfair when somebody else uses them against themselves, they certainly don't.

Forgiveness is the foundation of peace. Forgiveness is the foundation of civilization.

Because if you don't, where will you stop?`Will you kill Gaddafi? Hey, everybody's fine with that, right? Kill his sons? Hell, we can live with that, too. But where do you stop? Will you put those who just ran over to the rebels weeks or sometimes even days ago, will you put those on trial? Most of them have blood on their hands. Shouldn't they pay? Or is it okay for those to walk away free? because, hell, they chose the right side (and by the right side we always mean "our" side) in the end, gosh, wow, just about made it... wheeeee! Safe!

But to think like that, well, that apparently is not the "way".

And I will repeat here what I said once before in a Tweet. The next time somebody uses the same standards against you, don't count on me to raise my voice for you. Never again. I once wrote that there is something called a shibboleth. It's what was used to differentiate between friend and foe, originally, but in sociology it can be defined as "What you do when you are absolutely certain you can get away with it."

It's what defines you. As a person. As a culture. As a society.

And so far, you are all failing the test.

THE LONDON RIOTS AND LOOTINGS, OR: WELCOME TO CONSUMER TERRORISM

2011-08-16T14:10:00.001+02:00

While I have tweeted a lot about the London Riots that spread to other cities like Birmingham and Manchester, I do think that after the whole deluge of TV images that brought us some welcome relief from those other TV images like Fukushima, the war in Libya, the riots in Greece, the protests in Spain, Italy and god knows where else...

... we need to sit back and think for a moment. Because it's not the fact that there was a riot or looting going on in London and elsewhere, it is the what they looted that gives us an insight in to our society's deterioration.

Much has been made, from both the left and the right ends of the political spectrum, mostly with laughter or anger or some sense of what the fuck as to the property that was looted over the past couple of days. Mid-Range fashion, Consumer Electronics, for the most part.

And my personal favorite is still the story of the convicted 11-year old who stole a garbage can. For 50 quid. Because it looked nice. For his Mum. And because he knew he could never afford it. Stupid kids, eh? That's what I have heard time and again over the past few days, and I admit, it took some time for me to wrap my head around it.

If I were looting, I'd go at least for the really expensive stuff! Or for something that makes a political point! Say, how is that Hermes store looking? Or that Cartier store?

But to steal tellys? To steal iPods and iPhones? To go into a fashion store, get some skirts and pants, if you are a female looter? To even pick and choose? Or to steal things like energy drinks?

Truly, what the fuck indeed. Don't they have respect for property? I mean, isn't that what this is all about? Respecting property?

And here, kids, is where it gets complicated.

Because we have to explain what "property" is.

(1) THE TRANSIENCE OF PROPERTY

Now, the original definition of property is this, according to Merriam Webster.

PROPERTY: the exclusive right to possess, enjoy, and dispose of a thing, ownership

Easy enough to understand, isn't it? Property is ownership, and ownership is something that comes without a limit. To possess, enjoy and dispose of a thing.

Only that our society doesn't value property anymore. Or rather, property has no place in the world of consumerism. And right now, I can hear you all go "wha?" Usually that is followed by "You kidding? I own a house. A car. A computer. A dog. A wife. A... [insert stuff here]"

Yes. Property in the world of consumerism is not about the actual ownership anymore, it about the perception of ownership. That car of yours? Most likely it's leased and thus belongs for the most part still to your bank. That house you own? Unless it is fully paid, you just live there. You may think that you own it, but how was that working out for all those "homeowners" after the end of 2008, eh?

What you own these days, what you truly and properly own is... a status.

It is not the ownership of a thing, not even a house, that defines who you are within our 21st century 1st world (and I am talking primarily about Europe and the USA here, to break definitions down across cultural and national lines would take a book, not a blog post).

Because we have passed capitalism, even in terms of a cultural definition. We are talking about consumerism. See, the problem with a status is - as opposed to ownership and hence property - is the following.

(a) Status is defined not by rationale, but by perception, which in turn makes your social standing always relative, never absolute. Ownership on the other hand is binary. It cannot be altered, only defined by owning or non-owning. Status is a fractal concept.

(b) Status has to be renewed. Since it is not binary, not an absolute, its very definition is a floating one, constanly aching to be defined by different social, economic and/or cultural groups

Hence status is transient, at least in the abstract (you may argue, quite successfully, that the status of entire chunks of society have been cemented, and you wouldn't be wrong in one sense, but that also means that you have already grouped individuals based on certain factors, most likely race, religion... but definitely money.). Because even in those larger groups, the status has to be renewed, kind of like in the movie Logan's Run. Renew! Renew! Nobody above 30!

Only in this case it is renew your tech! Renew your car! Renew your face!

You don't believe me, do you?

Well, let me give you an example. Or rather, let me ask you a question. Was your old mobile still working when you threw it or gave it away to have it replaced with the shiny new one you are reading this post on? It was, wasn't it? But you felt it was old. and wonky. And gosh, the others had a much nicer one.

Which brings us to the second big factor in the UK riots that barely anybody is considering.

(2) THE IMMEDIACY OF NOW

Since we are no longer a property- but status-based society (and I know what some of you are thinking, "hey, Thomas, money buys status"), we have to understand what and how this status is sold. As much as everybody on Twitter and on Facebook and Google- thinks they are the centre of the universe and that the future of advertising is to be found there, it isn't. Those places have a much overgrown and bloated sense of importance, like most social places have.

The unifier for the largest portion of society is still... the television.

Especially since it is the television that tells us how the rich live their lives, what the rich wear, what you must have, must eat, must drink, must... consume to be not excluded from the cool people. And we all know the cool people, right? Them's the ones who sit at the table with the Queen Bees. Well, maybe not straight at the table with the Bees, but at least close enough to pretend that they matter. And we all know what type of people we are talking about, right?

And what does the telly sell you? Consumer products!

Stuff! You want that stuff! You need that stuff!

Life isn't worth living without that stuff!

What pisses the liberal analysts, activists etc. off about the UK riots were that they were seemingly pointless, that they had no banner (SOCIALISM NOW! MARX WAS RIGHT! FEED THE DOLPHINS! HUG A WHALE!), no cause, no reason.

Well, let me tell you something. Those liberals are idiots. You can see quite well what the point of the looting during the London riots were.

It is why I chose the image of this delightful young woman as the photo to run with this post, because this photo, much more than the ones about the violence, encapsulates the message of the London lootings. What that is?

BEST! SUMMER! SALE! EVER!

Now, you may not like this message (the Conservative DeadBrains will hate it because it goes against their whole "Wot's this then?" and the idea that poverty equals criminality) because most liberals would like to pretend that human beings are better than this, that they have a cause, that they have a reason. And these people had a cause. A reason.

And their aspirations weren't even that high. They were...

... and this should scare the fuck out of you...

... the aspirations to belong not to the rich, but to you, the middle class. To have not the Ferrari, the Jaguar, the yacht, no, they wanted to have what those still not worked to death, still not beaten into the lower middle class, those still not fearing they may just become one of the great "Unwashed"... what they have.

A flatscreen TV. A nice mobile. Some cool shoes. A dress or two.

They wanted that, and that itself, more than the violence, more than the police brutality, more even than the murder of Mark Duggan... should worry us as a society. Because it means that there are larger and larger parts of our societies that are incapable or obtaining those ever more fleeting status symbols of a class that in itself is in danger of disappearing.

It should also be of note that no books were looted. Why not? because books - while being property - are no longer a status symbol of the middle class. Oooops. Sorry. I know. I offended you. I'm sure you are huffing and puffing... while you are reading this on your iPad.

It's what these people wanted. Something. That they will otherwise never have.

A status. And they wanted it now.

You know, like in that Queen song. I want it all, and I want it now!

Because that is what has been sold to them, to us, to everybody. That is what is at stake here, what we are devolving into. A society only caring about status, at a time where it is always now, where there is no past, no longevity, there cannot be, there must not be any longevity, for... what is that, kids?

Ah, yes. Without growth, without the "new", without the "now", our system would collapse. Because manufacturers of those dreams that define the middle class now, they have not placed a value on their products which are supposed to then become your property, they have not only build in an obsolescence into the actual product itself...

(and everybody who has ever bought cheap China crap knows this)

... they have put this obsolescence into the social status as well. Only the call that "innovation cycle" or "product cycle", both of them so hopped up on speed now, if they were a cyclist, they'd be Lance Armstrong. And if you don't believe me, again, look at how fast your moblie/smartphone has become obsolete. And ask yourself (again), has it really? No, of course not, but gosh, the new thing comes in white, and it looks cooler, and boy, will the other people be jealous when they see it.

Status.

That's what our society is about. And in order to achieve that status, advertisers, corporations and also our governments, despite public claims to the contrary, have terrorised consumers with imagery, with creating an immediate need, no, an immediate want for novelty, for without novelty, there cannot be consumption, and without consumption, well... go fucking hug a tree, then, right?

We're talking capitalism here! Are you a communist?

These things have been implanted deeply into our society's psyche. Buy! Now! This is no longer good enough! Be better! Think different! Impossible is nothing! Life, the very existence and self-worth of mankind, reduced to slogans and status.

The London riots, but especially the lootings during those riots... are a sign that people have internalised this thinking, and it must be said that as well as those at the top looting entire countries, the ones who went onto the streets of London to go window shopping in the most literal sense of the word are capitalism's children, are the purest of the breed, without the mask of civility.

They are what the system made them to be.

Consumer terrorists.

SOUNDTRACK OF THE DAY: IT'S JUST ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE

2011-08-08T15:36:00.002+02:00

It's one of those days. We all have had them, and it is my fear that way too many of people will have them in the future, because things are going to get worse. A lot worse. Out there. On the streets. When people who are good people, decent people are being thrown out, are running out of money, are running out of option, are running out, are running on empty.

Only the rest of the world doesn't see it that way. Doesn't notice it, for those people seem to stand still. They try to hide, try not to be noticed, try to not have their shame, their embarrassment be seen. They are the ones who just look that little bit off when you see them on the street, they are the ones who try to smile and yet, there is infinite sadness in their eyes. We no longer need camps, no longer need poorhouses, no, not in this society anymore.

These people, poor and ashmed of it, they are ghosts. Most of us don't even notice them. That's what the Victorians used to call them, did you know that? Ghosts. Because according to Victorian values (which have been shoved so deeply together with Calvinist values) those who are poor are curses, their are damned, their are haunted. They must have done something to deserves this, or otherwise, the same thing could happen to everyone, could happen to themselves, and dear god, we cannot have that, can we?

No, literally, dear God, we cannot have that.

And so, the poor in Victorian times were not merely outcasts, they were the shadowy movements just in the corner of your eye. They didn't have faces, they had blank skin, covered in soot, as if they had been to hell and back, here to haunt you, the good citizens, the decent citizens, the ones who will never have this happen to themselves.

Ghosts.

And who the hell believes in ghosts, eh? We all know, ghosts have no power, if you don't believe in them, and if you are wondering why people on Wall Street, why people in the rich suburbs, in the planned and guarded towns for the rich, why they don't see the poor... this would be that reason.

For them, it is "another day in paradise", and as long as one doesn't venture too far out of it, the ghosts can not come to your door, they are outside the cities, they are in the parks, they exists in tent cities, in the BushBarracks of today, in those dire circumstances that were once called Hoovervilles.

It's one of those days when I feel weak. And powerless. And ashamed.

Because I have never learned to look away. And I know there are ghosts. Who once were people. Who died in our society's mind, who were left behind by our society's soul. And who haunt us.

For most of us are one paycheck, one bad day, one moment of bad luck, one of those days away from turning into them. So don't look away. Not when you meet them. Pass them. Walk away from them the next time they are on the street corner.

They are you. Or what you could soon be.

She calls out to the man on the street
"Sir, can you help me?
It's cold and I've nowhere to sleep,
Is there somewhere you can tell me?"

He walks on, doesn't look back
He pretends he can't hear her
Starts to whistle as he crosses the street
Seems embarrassed to be there

Oh think twice, it's another day for
You and me in paradise
Oh think twice, it's just another day for you,
You and me in paradise

She calls out to the man on the street
He can see she's been crying
She's got blisters on the soles of her feet
Can't walk but she's trying

Oh think twice...

Oh lord, is there nothing more anybody can do
Oh lord, there must be something you can say

You can tell from the lines on her face
You can see that she's been there
Probably been moved on from every place
'Cos she didn't fit in there

Oh think twice...

WHY I AM OFF TWITTER

2011-08-03T16:24:00.000+02:00

I was right.

Not when I said that I was wrong. But the first time. About Twitter. And while I am incredibly grateful for having "met" a few wonderful people, most of all the woman I have fallen in love with, in the end, I had it right the first time.

Twitter, in the end, is meaningless. It's an echo chamber of prejudices that get embellished and taken further and farther than they should, and the truth is nothing anybody is really interested in. I have been thinking about this a lot over the past few weeks and have discussed it with my wonderful woman over the past few days, and I have approached Twitter in the past couple of weeks a lot more like a social experiment than anything else.

What would be re-tweeted, what would be commented upon, and by what social and or cultural and or religious group. The results have been, well, how to phrase it? Disastrous. Outside a developing story, a catastrophe, where Twitter becomes the record of eyewitnesses, often accompanied by videos and/or photographs...

.. it is an echo chamber that shows a lot more about those who "follow" you than you wish to know.

In the end, my decision to no longer peruse my time line is based on numerous factors, but I will tell you a few examples. I have (and will continue) to criticize the hell out of Israel for its human right violations, which was pretty much unanimously met by "Here! Here!" by those in the Arab world who "follow" me (never let the fact that somebody appears to give a shit about what you say leave an impression), but the moment you turn the same critical eye on their culture, they get either

(a) offended or

(b) become very quiet.

In other words, no retweet for this shit, how dare you? And before some of them reading this go all "Waaah" on me (which some will, I have no doubt), it is the exact same way on that other side. And I am sick of it. Sick and tired of it all. Like I tweeted today, "The truth knows no friends and needs no followers"

Because in the end, they don't want to hear it. Based on culture, religion, personal prejudices, they will simply block it out, especially when it goes against their "beliefs", be they religious, cultural, political or otherwise.

I have thought about it for a while now, but today was the moment I was finally so sickened by it all that I am writing this. And it was Egypt once again. You know, where everybody goes mental once again, because the same people who put him in power now put that fossil of a man named Mubarak in a cage to put him on for a very special "show and tell".

And make no mistake, that is exactly what this "trial" is. A show. Wonderful! We get tweets that state "Mubarak plane just landed!" and "He is in a cage!" Whoop-de-fucking doo! We have reached the same point that is reached in every revolution, and shame on me for believing that people are capable of learning. Or thinking. Or doing anything other than feed their own little world views.

I am embarrassed by this. I am also embarrassed by the fact that I watched those who did the "revolution" go on worldwide tours and have panels where they were treated like minor celebrities, that the same people who complain about poverty and injustice the next moment tweet about how they are at a F1 race in Canada or on a month long vacation in France.

I am embarrassed that I allowed myself to be a voice in that chorus, when it is the same people then who - when some were still holding out in a peaceful protesting sit-in at Tahrir were violently removed by the same police and army forces that were there in the days following January 25. I am embarrassed and ashamed that the same people - if not outright condone such an action - used Ramadan as an excuse, as an explanation why it was right to empty the square.

I am embarrassed by a lot more than this, also with those in America and their take on Obama, because several have the same kind of blind, stupid, idol-worshipping loyalty to a man, not the office, not an idea that the Bush acolytes showed for 8 years.

The truth is the truth. And it has no friends. And it needs no followers.

But what broke me, what made me think "this is not worth your time or effort" was today's fact that not one, not a single one of the Egyptian soldiers who performed "virginity tests" on female protesters on March 9th was arrested, nor were they charged, nor are they investigated.

I even titled the tweet "Things that nobody wants to know". And I tested people. Knew how was online. Which one of them retweeted me in the past. Do you want to know how many people retweeted that in the deluge of Mubarak Mabuarak Trial Trial tweets?

2

Let me repeat that. 2 people, one of whom was a young girl in Egypt. When I tweeted about that is afternoon, one more (who doesn't count, she is my friend) and one more.

So that is 4 people.

You want to know why? Because people don't want to know about this. They don't want to think about this. They are willingly blinding themselves to anything that is not already part of their pre-formulated world views.

I am not stating this to make myself sound like I am the only one in the know. In fact, over the past few weeks I have become increasingly tired and weary of things, thinking - like I did when I wrote that piece about the Guardian and Wikileaks - "why is nobody else picking up on this? This is something that should never go away, that should be front and center, because it matters".

As I stated a long time ago, I am anti-social by nature. For me, social interaction comes with responsibilities. If you have a friend, even if it is a Twitter friend, you must be there for them, you cannot simply go "oh, well, it is not as important as a real friend"

Well, I can't. For me it is all or nothing.

And it has been eating at me, that bit. Not the few people I genuinely care for, but the fact that in the end, most things, they just don't matter.The truth... doesn't matter. And I have found myself spending way too much time on this, time that could be spent writing or working out or, hell, even masturbating would be an improvement over scanning the news and try to strip it down to what it actually means.

It doesn't mean that I will be completely off Twitter, but it does mean I will no longer engage outside the very small circles of those I care about. No, I will no longer reply to a mention from somebody I don't know or care about. I will still tweet when something catches my eye, but I won't debate you, I won't give you that time of day anymore.

The truth has no friends. And it needs no followers.

That is how it's going to be from now on.

PULP NOUVEAU COVERS

2011-07-07T16:57:00.001+02:00

In the past couple of days I have found some of my fighting spirit again, and I found it in the most unlikely places, in South Africa. And while that is really none of anybody's business, it explains why I have started to work again, or rather, found the way back into those places inside my mind that unlock the writing, which has been increasingly difficult for me over the past few months as the weight of the world seemed to be crushing me.

I told you earlier in the blog that I have been working on a series of pulp fiction short novels, and I am quite far with the first series, in that I have over 50,000 words now, and it is back on track, running smoothly so far.

However, one of the things that I am thinking about is that I want to create a universe. Since I have divine delusions, I think, heck, creating a universe is the right thing to do. Now, that sounds rather arrogant, but really isn't. I have had the various parts in my head for a long time, but I was trying to get them made as TV shows or a movie series, but in the end, why the hell should one do that? Give up your creative control to the machine of Hollywood hustling morons who will Jerry Siegel and Jack Kirby you. Who will Ditko the Steve out of you, because just as the comic book industry was founded by criminals, thieves and cocksucking mobsters, Hollywood has not been any better.

And so all of my ideas will form a bigger picture one day, and as opposed to George Lucas I can tell you right now that there is a plan, that I know what is going to happen 10, 15, 20 books from now, and while they all will occupy a different space in the big "Ultimate Hart Universe" (or UHU, yes, I did that on purpose, look it up), they also all going to allow me to play with a wide range of genres, mix and match, the way good pop pulp should be.

And so, with my inspiritation back, I sat down and created two cover designs for two of the first series. Because one thing that annoys me as a reader is how very often publishers treat each book by an author, like a one-shot (and it often is, hell, be happy you get one publishing contract, motherfucker, what, you have an idea for a series? We don't do series. Unless you are a fraud like James Frey. Unless you are a thief like Steven Spielberg, and yes, you can bet your ass that if I ever do get famous, I will not shake either men's hands)....

...and if you have numerous books by an author, it's like chaos on your bookshelf. Unless you are lucky (and I wasn't) and got a masterworks edition at some point like e.g. Michael Moorcock once did, of which I have only been able to gather three books of. I get all "wow" every time I see them on my bookshelf, then I see all the different variations of Elric, Corum, Hawkmoon and the others next to those three and inside me, something dies. By the by, just an aside - somebody get me a cheap version of the Cornelius Quartet! Something I always wanted to read, but never could actually find in print.

What I am going to do is to write pulp. I am unashamed of it. It is Pop Pulp. It is what I grew up with and what I have always loved, even when my tastes expanded to include literary works. I will write series. And I want them to be immediately identifiable on the bookshelf in that moment when they might make the leap from eBook to "Special Hardcover Edition".

Whic means they must match up. Not on the cover per se, but the spine design must be the same, the size and specs must be the same, and you have to think about these things very early on in the process, because otherwise... well, whoever has read of my dealings with logo and cover designs for my two graphic novels knows how "professionals" do it. By not thinking about it.

Until it is too late.

I am too much of a control freak for that.

And so, even though there is only a rough draft of e.g. The Lizard Princess in notes on my computer, some of it having come from a wonderful and completely rejected Wonder Woman pitch my friend Edo Fuijkschot and I did ways back for DC, I wanted, no, needed to have these images in my mind before progressing in any way. I am weird like that. I often think of the cover image and look before the story. Kids, don't try that at home. I am crazy. You're not. Okay?

Right. I shall briefly show the two covers, and in a later post (I am doing this just briefly to show people who don't follow Twitter that I am indeed not dead) I will tell you how they came to be. Before I go, the artworks for those two images were not done by me. I chose them from a wonderful panting by Gabriel D'Otto and Chris bachalo, respectively, to give me something to work around, to do what I have earlier on this blog called the "MacGuyvering"

And so, quite confidently, I shall show you how those books will look like.

Kind of.

I AM WRITING... JUST NOT HERE

2011-05-25T00:25:00.001+02:00

I have been writing quite a bit, actually, and most of it is even good stuff, but at the moment I have not much of an inkling as to what to write about here. Most of the things that are happening in the world I have written about before, and to talk about the dangers of an emerging democracy in Egypt, of the dangers of a collapsing democracy in the United States...

(if it has not already collapsed, there are many days like today, with thunderous applause to Benjamin Netanyahu in Congress, where I believe democracy in the United States is already gone, but people don't want to see it)

.. feels like merely pointing out what I have already pointed out so many times on this blog and in emal and in personal talks. If you search this blog, you will find that I have predicted exactly what is going on in Greece right now over a year ago, that I have predicted Ireland and I am a bit tired of rehashing it. It's not like people listened in the first place. I have written about paid internship, have written about the dismantling of unions, have written about the dismantling of social services all around the world, have pointed out the great lie that is the wonderful German economic recovery. All of that, over the past year or so. All of it, having turned from analysis to prediction to fact.

And to add a quick comment or to point out the obvious, well, Twitter beats writing lengthy blog posts for that, so it's not like I have been silent in the past few months. I have spoken up and have - to the best of my abilities - tried to give others a voice, too.

I have been thinking about releasing my screenplay to Safe here on this blog for several weeks now, because there is a low level civil war already on its way, and whatever fault this screenplay I wrote in 2008 has, it predicted this accurately, too. Not that anybody believed that, either.

I'm not stating this to be an arrogant bastard. Those who know me already know I am exactly that. An arrogant bastard. I'm stating it to say that I am tired and I feel somehow obligated to those few who did care to read here to explain why there is not much coming at the moment.

I'm writing. Hopefully what I am writing right now is good.

And hopefully, you shall see it soon.

WHY SUPERMAN MATTERS

2011-04-28T23:47:00.001+02:00

I admit it. I have always been a fan of Superman. Not necessarily of the comic books (I own many of them) or the movies (I own those, too), but of the actual concept.

There's an old German edition of Superman from 1974 that I still own, and it was one of the very first comic books I ever bought at a flea market. It was called Superman & Batman, it was flimsy and printed on a very weird paper. In the back of it, in the editorial pages, there was a form to fill out, the kind you'd find every now and then in those type of comic books, the kind where the reader can answer questions like What superhero would you like to be? and Why would you like to be that superhero?

And in the little squiggles of a young kid it has these answers.

(1) Superman

(2) Because I will save everyone.

I wrote these lines. I was five years old. In the end, for all my anger and all my frustration at the injustices of this world and life, it was always Superman I looked up to. Some of you may now accuse me, and perhaps you'd think even rightfully so, of me having a god complex. But that was never what Superman was all about for me. I'm from a small town. I have parents very much like the Kents. They bicker and argue and are stubborn and strong and taught me one thing above any other.

That there's right and wrong, and that it is very easy to make that distinction.

And you may say that this is too simple. You may say that the world is a much more complex place, and it has neither the time for such simple thoughts, nor have these simple thoughts a place in this world.

And I say to you, that is bullshit. There is truth. And there is justice. And they are simple concepts, because they are true. And just. And easy to understand, even if your are a little child. There is only one truth that matters. And it's that you stand up for those who have been beaten down, that you show kindness to those who have never known it. Not out of pity, not because it is easy, not because it may make you feel good about yourself, may make you feel empowered and allow you to look down on those who are not.

The concept of the Superman, as written down by Nietzsche and misread by so many people tyrants and despots and prejudiced men and women everywhere is not that you are somehow better, somehow more powerful, not that might makes right.

It is this, it is compassion. It is what Superman over the decades grew into. Not a Man of Steel, he is often seen as boring, because, hey, let's be honest, he is the Godfather of all superheroes. He is - if not god - the closest thing to a god what modern pop culture has ever been given. There was a time when he could move mountains, when he could stop time and fly faster than the speed of light.

But these things were never what made him Superman.

It is that - with all this power - he chose to see right from wrong. To not look down on those who are less powerful than him, but to stand for those who are in need. His parents taught him that. And it is a simple concept. Truth. And Justice.

I will also quite openly tell you that I don't like what Superman comics of today are. They are cheap in content and high in production value. They are written for the most part by people who focus on the wrong things, understandably so, but still...

But yesterday I bought the anniversay issue of Superman, the No. 900. I did so out of a whim and perhaps out a little sense of nostalgia. Whatever the big "in continuity" story was didn't hold my interest. It was some kind of crossover bullshit that I cared nothing for. But when I flipped through the issue, a little story caught my eye, and it is that story that made me buy the book.

It's by David Goyer, and if the name means nothing to you, he's a guy with a lot of adaptation credits for comics-to-movie things like Blade and also Batman Begins and Dark Knight. Some of his things are very good, some of them are truly atrocious.He is also credited for writing the Zach Snyder reboot of Superman, which by all indications will belong to the latter.

But this little short story, a few pages long, was everything that Superman is, what Superman should be. I have scanned in a few pages of it, not all of it, and if you go out and buy Superman No. 900, do so for this particular story. Most of the rest is bullshit.

But this... this is what Superman is.

What we should be.

What superhero would you like to be? Superman.

Why? Because I would at least try to save everyone.

THINGS I LIKE: TANGLED

2011-04-20T20:00:00.000+02:00

I most readily admit that over the past years, I had become very disillusioned with anything that came from Disney, but especially those things that they called "animation". For they were mostly lifeless, bloodless, emotionsless executions in digital perfection, very much like the movies produced by Universal or Fox and Dreamworks.

I call that the Shrek factor. And I admit, I hate Shrek. While there were some splatters of brilliance in Jeffrey Katzenberg's otherwise mean-spirited, blatant rip-off of every single myth in the Grimm playbook, some of them having to do with the mixture of modern pop music to otherwise irrelevant scenes, as movies the Shrek "franchise" (god, there is another word I just hate) are the equivalent of being anally raped with a hot poker. Not just once, but four times.

Disney had followed those models, and even though I did like The Princess and the Frog for its attempt, at the very least, to be more inclusive in modern mythology, to specifically make one of the Disney heroines a black girl, overall that movie fell flat for me as well. Instead of not bring up the fact that the heroine was black, they made a whole thing about it, making it the animated version of a Tyler Perry movie, pretending to be jubilant about black culture by putting the story into the same ghetto black culture has been put in for decades. Oh, look! Vodoo! Oh look! Jazz! Oh look, the girl is a waitress with the dream of owning a restaurant!

Just painful, that was. My friend and often collaborator Edo Fuijkschot disagrees with me on that, vehemently, I might add. He may have a point, but then again, he loves Jazz and Bluegrass music as much as I hate them, so even on that point we are going to be worlds apart.

I have often felt that the last good Disney movies were the ones made in the early Nineties, I call them the Menken trilogy. They include The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. All of them beautiful takes on old fairy tales (and no, Disney, that doesn't mean you own those tales, so whenever your asshole lawayers are running around and tell others, this shit is ours now, no, it isn't, so shut the fuck up, okay?)

All three of these Menken movies had something that set them apart. All three had no fear of bringing forth female characters that were different, were outsiders, even Jasmine in the take on Arabian Nights's stories is a relatively strong woman who doesn't take "no" for an answer.

Nothing that came after those three, and yes, I include the absolute stolenbullshit that is called The Lion King among them, even came close to those three movies.

So it was with quite some trepidation that I approached Tangled.

And for the first time since those early Nineties I was not disappointed. It was light and breezy on the surface, that movie was, and one may be allowed to criticize Rapunzel for approaching a bit too much the way of the Valley Girl, but she is headstrong and what is more important, she has wonderful scenes that condense exactly how a girl growing up today must feel.

The brilliant, incredibly fast intercutting of her after leaving the tower for the first time, literally swinging from incredible high to deepest emotional lows is not only breathtaking, it does what no other Disney movie has been able to achieve in years and year: it rings true.

From "Best. Day. Ever." to "I am a horrible person", these scenes, no, these little moments do more to describe this state of mind than any big drama ever could.

Make no mistake, this is a movie about growing up and literally leaving the nest, especially since Mother Gothel has rightfully taken her place in the line of great Disney villains, bot as the over-protective, smothering mother and in her incarnation of the selfish bitch, who literally wants to live her life through her daughter.

And isn't that something that - especially in the United States - so many teens can identify with, both coddled and pushed by their parents to become a sports star, a beauty queen, a pop star,becoming everything that their parents have failed to achieve, under the mask of "I am only doing this for your own sake, in your best interest? Mommy knows best"...?

Tangled tears off that mask, and it is on that level it connects best with the audience. It is that which is the heart and soul of a story that otherwise could have easily becoming dry and strained, you know, like bad hair (come on, you know there needed to be at least one hair joke in this here, right?)

The male lead is also much more of a rounded character than most of the "princes" that have otherwise populated the Disney versions of fairy tales. Somewhere between boy group and selfish jerk, he does however continue the myth that underneath every asshole you'll meet is basically a nice guy. Let me tell my female readers, that is not the case in real life. But in this, it makes for a good story.

The songs by Menken for the most part sparkle, especially the "I have a dream" set in the tavern, where with the tiniest brushstrokes, you have a whole universe of ruffians and thugs who actually dream of being normal. It recalls some of the earlier scenes in Beauty, only to invert it in a subversive way, stating quite clearly that it is the "good people" you should be afraid of, like Mommy Dearest, and not necessarily the ones who look freaky or weird.

All of it works well together, and the action set pieces - however much they own to Raiders of the Lost Ark as well as Disney's Tarzan (watch for the way Flynn Rider does the slide and put it up next to Tarzan doing the same in the jungle scenes, you'll see they re-used the camera models as well as the way the character moves) - are mostly effective. Especially the escape by Flynn Rider from the castle at the very end, which brings me to the best thing about the movie. Also, in that sequence, watch for that reference to Transformers. It is easy to spot.

But here's what I mean about the best thing of the movie. The name is Maximus. He's a horse. But the brilliance here is that Maximus is not played like a horse. He's played like a dog, down to him sniffing for Rider throughout most of the movie and reacting to Rapunzel calling him a "good boy" in exactly the same way a dog would. It is just one detail, but that detail changes what otherwise would have been a stock character into something with personality that leaves the predictability of the Disney realm and almost enters the territory of old Warner Bros cartoons, which are more much zany and chaotic.

Best. Horse. Ever.

Just for that, Tangled will have a special place in my heart forever.

THE REASON(S) I AM AWFULLY QUIET

2011-04-12T19:59:00.000+02:00

Over the past two weeks there have not been any developments that I would have felt comfortable writing something about. It doesn't mean they don't exists.

There is some terrible fragility in Egypt, in the Ivory Coast, the French took prisoner a former President who wanted to be that for life, it seems and instead may find himself to be a lifer in prison for inciting the killing of thousands... and boy, I don't even know what to say about NATO and Libya.

This shapes up to be so much like former Yugoslavia in the 1990s that it frightens me. All of the elements are already in places, and if there are any politicians in power who recognise those patterns too, they don't do anything about them.

Oh, yes, and in Japan things have been going from bad to worse for a month now, and I wish - as I believe so many of us do - that there was something I could do, something I might be able to do and help, but I and the rest of the world are damned to watch an update every day and feel sick to our stomachs at the realization of such helplessness.

I have been emotionally and mentally exhausted as of late. Gosh, haven't I said that before? Sure, I have, but it seems that you can always go lower, that the ditch can always go down a bit deeper. In a way, some of the people on Twitter have kept me sane, or at least sane enough to not break down completely. I like the idea, the thought, sometimes even the certainty that I can make some of them laugh. Such is the way of a performer, and a writer is nothing but a performer.

There are days when I feel infinite sadness. They have started to outnumber the good days, have even overtaken the decent days, and there's something inside me that wishes to let go. I don't listen to it. There is still time. There's still hope. It gets harder to find it, and it seems to be buried in so much pain and darkness that your fingers turn black as you dig for it, they turn black and ache with pain.

And yet, I dig.

Every now and then, something shines brightly, and it may be just a good phrase or the notion that one of my jokes made somebody smile, if only for a moment. There is still time.

There is still hope.

That this sadness may not be infinite after all.

And that all pain ends some day.

SAYIN' GOODBYE TO HOLLYWOOD

2011-03-30T07:54:00.000+02:00

To celebrate the final ending of my Hollywood adventures, here is Billy Joel with Say Goodbye to Hollywood, which is a much nicer song than the place and the people exisiting there deserve.

At some point, when I have the time and am in the right mood, I will tell you about this particular Hollywood adventure. I will also prove without a doubt that people working there have the intellectual sophistication of a three-year old drawing with crayons and the emotional sophistication of a sociopathic teenager raping the prom queen, because they figure, hey, nobody is going to call me out on it.

In other words, I will make look Barry Josephson Entertainment really bad.

Oh, they never read any of my The Truth Shall Set You Free posts.

Boy, will they be surprised.

FORGOTTEN HEROES: ASMAA MAHFOUZ

2011-03-28T20:45:00.003+02:00

There were many heroes in those 18 days that belonged to Egypt, and so many who died, whether they were beaten, tortured in a cell or shot down by Mubarak's thugs, and yet, we in the West, we know so little of them, because our attention spans are so short, and we need something, no, somebody who is relatable. Someone who makes us feel good about ourselves, somebody who looks safe, somebody who talks like us, somebody who works, uh, I don't know, for Google maybe.

And so a decision was made, not by a conspiracy, mind you, for these things don't need a conspiracy, they just need streamlined thinking, and if there is something that the Western media and all of them who work there can be rightfully accused of, it is streamlined thinking.

It is that thinking that makes us worship glorified stand-ups like Anderson Cooper or Katie Couric as proper reporters, while what most of them do is to spout the stories that were gathered by others, told to them by the producers and researchers as they prep for those minutes and hours they spend in front of a camera, making us think, giving us the delusion that it was all them, for otherwise, would they be in front of the camera? Can't we see that it is them, and them only?

Such is what we have become.

And so, obviously the obvious choice for the unlikely hero who sparked the Egyptian revolution was Google Executive Wael Ghonim. Because, yeah, it is historically well known that is it is executives who start revolutions. Never mind that Mr. Ghonim wasn't even there for the most of it, as he was hosted by Mr. Mubarak's rather unfriendly tourism facilities himself, with his rather unblemished release 10 days later giving suspicion, but I might add no reason to think that the people of Egypt were somehow duped, somehow maniuplated into standing up.

It is not unknown, that. It has happened before, in Hungary, 1956 and most likely during the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine a few years back.

But I do not subscribe to such a view.

While it is possible to manipulate a few people or even a large crowd for a while at any given moment in space in time, fractal mathematics applied to social circumstances will tell you quite conclusively that what you experience in a social revolution is much like the appearance of what scientists call a "freak wave".

You may have heard of those instances, those moments that on the high seas for one moment the molecular movement of water just lines up to build up those waves that before a few years ago were largely dismissed as sailor's yarn.

And while Mr. Ghonim is largely made a symbol of what happened in those 18 days, the cold fact of the matter is that he had little, if anything to do with what happened. Empirical evidence shows that that hundreds of others were kidnapped and brutalized during those days, and each one of them had more or less the same impact as Mr. Ghonim had, scientifically speaking.

The difference here being the Western perception of things, as Mr. Ghonim's position within Western culture, especially media culture and with the backing of Google itself was quickly turned into a celebrity, which then rushed back onto Tahrir Square.

But the true heroes were others.

I already told you about Nevine Zaki, who is the sole reason why I got into this in the first place, and her quiet, optimistic and more than faithful look at things on the street did more to bring Egyptians closer to my world than anything Mr. Ghonim ever did.

But here is another, and for you and me in the West, she should be known.

Her name is Asmaa Mahfouz, and she recorded the video log, in which she does something that Mr. Ghonim never did. She challenges the regime. She does so openly. She does it despite her knowledge that Mubarak's regime was monitoring the social entworks. She gives her name. She gives her Twitter account. All the information that was enough to have her disappear forever.

And she did it anyway. Nothing, not a single thing that Mr. Ghonim has done even begins to rise to this level of courage, because what this woman did was to call out the men, was to call out the cowards everywhere and state, in the words of one of my favorite movie speeches, I will not go quietly into the night, I will not vanish without a fight.

She tells them, in quite certain terms that she will not light herself on fire, that if somebody wants her to shut up, they would have to do it. She states that she, a girl, will stand on Tahrir Square and hold up a banner. She states that only three people showed up. Three people and three cars of the riot police.

Such was Egypt before January 25.

And she still spoke up. With her name. Her face. And her number.

She still spoke up at a time when Mr. Ghonim was quite comfortably at his job and hid behind a Facebook page. She spoke up and showed others that they could and should speak up too. And others did. And others began to feel the same. And they began to march on Tahrir. And they came together.

And they said, we want our honor back, you stole it from us, and we are here to take it back.

We in the West, we have such short memories, such a short attention span that we appear to be able to focus only on one thing at a time, and while that is only human, we need those voices, we need to remember them, need to honor them, all of them, and not merely that one symbol we like, because it looks like us, because it is something that our media can package into 15 second soundbytes.

There were many heroes on and around Tahrir Square during these 18 days, and not all of their stories can be told, although I wish that at some point in time somebody will.

Because none of them deserve to be forgotten.

And all of them deserve to be known.

So let this be only the beginning, let this be something that spreads ther word, if only a little, and let others be known, tell their stories and show the world how many of them were there, and how brave they were, not only, but especially the women of Egypt, who - in the face of kidnappings, torture and quite possibly rape - still gave birth to a new nation.

BLOG OF THE DAY: MICHELLE ASHMAWY

2011-03-26T20:46:00.001+01:00

I'm not saying this because Miss Ashmawy names me as one of her inspirations for starting a blog that - in her own words - will showcase her opinions that are longer than 140 characters, because in her case, one character, a character would suffice. She has that, character, and not merely an opinion.

I'm giving her a shout-out here, because she was one of the first who inspired me, who relentlessly did what once was the task, the job and the calling of a good editor and now has been taken over by many, but by her first and foremost.

During the 18 days of Egypt, she collected, weighted and disseminated stories, gave them to others, showed them links and those whose voices would otherwise not have been heard.

She did so without once putting herself into the foregound, as I am known to do, because unlike me, Miss Ashmawy knows that a good story needs no commentary, and if I were in a news organization right now, this is exactly the reason why I would hire her on the spot.

It takes a good eye to find what is valuable, it takes effort and hard work to keep on looking, especially in a world that is flooded with information.

And for that, I am deeply grateful to her. Many of the things I have written about are owed to her, much of the things I otherwise would not have known about... I owe to her.

And if she has an opinion or two, whether they be as short as 140 characters or as long as she wishes them to be, I can assure she is well worth listening to.

I should know.

I did.

FORGOTTEN HEROES: TOO MANY

2011-03-25T22:21:00.003+01:00

I can remember
Standing, by the wall
And the guns shot above our heads
And the shame was on the other side
Oh we can beat them, for ever and ever
Then we could be Heroes,
just for one day

They are hundreds. And thousands. And there are just a few. All of them have names. All of them are somebody's brother, lover, somebody's daughter or son, somebody's mother or father. There are so many of them. and still, each of them would merit a story if they survive, a song, should they die.

They are in Libya, where there is hope for the first time in decades.

They are in Syria, where they were not standing up in a Day of Rage, but were killed on a Day of Dignity too long denied by those who put up their own images to be worshipped, small men and smaller minds, with cold hearts and colder souls.

They are in Bahrain, where they will not yield against tanks and guns and murderous men who only look like police but have long lost the capability to protect and serve.

They are on the Ivory Coast, fleeing the violence and trying their best to protect their familes, to get through one more night, through one more day, battling not only despair but death itself.

They are in Venezuela, where they whisper amongst each other, hushed words of resistance against a madman in a uniform who threatens their lives and livelihoods.

They are in Japan, where they walk into a reactor that reaches out to them, through poorly fitted protective gear as they work themselves literally to the bones, in an attempt to do the impossible, in an atempt to prevent the worst nuclear catastrophe of the 21st century even as their bosses show neither shame nor honour. Neither courage nor responsibility.

They are too many to name, and all of them give me hope.

That we are not lost.

That we as a species, that mankind is working towards earning our survival on this little world of ours that we have abused so much, that we have loved so little. But with each of these men and women out there, there is love. And there is bravery. And there is kindness.

All of them, deserving of their own story. Of their own song.

But I can offer only one. But it's a good one.

Ladies and gentlemen, "Heroes".... all of you.

THE CLOSING ARGUMENT ON LIBYA

2011-03-25T18:59:00.001+01:00

I would like everybody to forgive me for slipping out of any clothes that could be considered comfortable to dress in the persona of Alan Shore of Boston Legal fame and address those who have been consistently givign us every argument under the sun about why Libya is like Iraq, why the intervention is like the War on Terror, why it is too costly, why it is unconstitutional and why we should have done nothing.

Please bear with me now.

Ladies and gentlemen, you have heard many things over the past few days, but mainly you have heard that our country is at war again. War! Hell, what is it good for, right? Other than, uh, yes, obviously the arms merchants, the arms manufacturers and my personal favorite, the oil industry. Yes, war is good. War is great., We should all have one, every now and then, sometimes two, take them and call me in the morning.

That's the American way, isn't it? Bush told us that. Cheney taught us that. War, ladies and gentlemen, is something that we should do, because it weeds out our poor, our niggers and spics, yes, let them fight the good fight, let them go boldly where no American has ever gone before!

War. Huh. Doesn't seem to be a time I can recall when there wasn't one going on everywhere. Good wars. Bad wars. As long as there is one, somebody will be for them, somebody against them. And somebody who dies. That's the truth. In the end, that is always the truth. People dying.

So, no more war, right? Say it with me! No! More! War! Yes, you too, all the way in the back. I can't hear you. Speak up! No! More! War! Good... now only the women. Yes, that's what we on the Left have always said, right?

There must be better ways! There must be political ways! And you know that it must be true, because right now even our friends from the Republican side of the aisle are joining this call. Senator MCain doesn't want us to go to war! Congress doesn't want us to go war! We have finally learned our lesson!

War is always bad. War is always for oil. Michael Moore was right, you can hire ten teachers for a single Tomahawk missile that is currently raining down on, what was that country again? Oh, I am sorry, really sorry, there seem to be so many of them.

Libya, is it? Yes, Libya. One of those countries that every American Beauty Pageant Queen would have trouble finding on a map. Well, her and Sarah Palin, but I do have it on good authority the latter is working hard on finding Kenya in case it might come up in the election against that Muslim Communist who has brought us there.

To Libya. Where there are no terrorists. I mean, I have seen the images, you have seen the images, no terrorists there, no caves either, I thought we only go after guys in caves, and these people, they have houses and streets and cell phones. They're kind of like us, bit more brown maybe, but trust me, I have seen browner on the streets of Miami, and we're not going to war there, right?

Libya. Could have, would have, should have, that's what brought us there. Because we kept on telling people around the world to stand up, to speak up, to stand for freedom. Of course, we never really thought they would listen, so hey... surprise!

They did. They did listen and they spoke up, beginning in Tunesia, then in Egypt, then in Libya. And we got lucky. We got lucky twice by the fact that in those countries the military refused to shoot at its citizens, and boy, were we happy! And boy, was that good television or what? Me, I haven't seen a good party like that in, well, actually I have never seen anything like that.

But not in Libya. In Libya, they rose up. And they spoke up. And were bombed down. Some of them by weapons we gave that guy who runs the country, and if that isn't ironic, nothing is. And we talked when we should have listened. And we listened when we should have acted.

While they began to die.

Because... war? Can't have that, not again, not us, we done our fair share of bombing, and we have a bit of a reputation in these parts, see, people generally don't like to be bombed. Best to talk about it, first. And we did. In backroom meetings. On the phone with other leaders. We talked. While they died.

While we failed. And here's that moment, ladies and gentlemen. Here's that moment when it counts. When you have to make a call. When I want you to think. It is Friday morning, and the last free city of Libya is surrounded.

By tanks.

The city's name is Benghazi. Remember that. Because it will be a name to be remembered. For what we are going to do there. Or for how much we will fail its citizens.

And they are screaming. And they are afraid. And they are begging. I want you to listen. Can you hear it? There's a mother holding her child and hushing it, knowing that they will have only hours.

Yes, that is right. Hours. Not months, not weeks, not even days. It is Friday morning, March 18, and they have only hours left before the troops of a madman will enter the city and slaughter them. For what we consider to be so unverisally true that we put it in our constitution.

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

But it is Friday morning, and happiness has given way to hope and hope given way to hopelessness. And they are alone. It is Friday morning, and they are brave and they give each other smiles and they give each other hugs and comfort, fearing that each one of those may be the last.

It's Friday morning, and your Chiefs tell you that this might get messy. And your political advisors will tell you that this might lose you the election next year. War. Hell, yeah. What is it good for? Best not to do anything. There's no strategic value here. There is nothing to win. There's everything to lose.

War. We can call it something different, we can call it intervention, we can call it military action, but in the end, that's what it will be. War. Your generals tell you that there's no exit strategy, that there are one million things that can go wrong, including but not limited to the death of your own soldiers.

And for what?

It's just one city. Benghazi. You wish you'd never heard of it. You'd wish it was in the Sudan or in the Ivory Coast or in China, where there is no spotlight, where you could look away, because the rest of the world looks away with you.

But it's here. And they have hours. And a million things can go wrong.

But there is one thing that is certain. They will die. Everything else, whatever your critics will tell you, whatever may go wrong, those are possibilities. This one here, this is certain.

They will die.

And you will be remembered. By those who watched them die. By those who knew that you could have saved them. That you could have done something. By going to war.

It is Friday morning, and you will have to make that call. You'll have to weigh the possibilities against the one thing, that single thing that is certain. It no longer matters how we got to this point, no longer matters what could have been done before, what should have been done before.

It is Friday morning. And you think about those young men and women who went out onto the streets because of something we told them, because they believe in something we once believed in.

And who are willing to die for it.

Make the call. And remember, that this decision will define what you are. As a human being. Who the man is you will have to face in the mirror from this moment on. Yes, that is right. War.

Sometimes, this is what it's good for.

I AM A TWITTER TERRORIST

2011-03-19T11:22:00.000+01:00

If some are wondering as to why I have so abruptly stopped tweeting as the proverbial shit is flying in Libya and Egypt is voting, it is not for lack of caring.

I have been banned.

Yes. I am now officially a Twitter terrorist, for I am way above what my "status" allows me to tweet. Gosh. I guess I must have missed the notice that only Spam has no limits on Twitter as it floods more than 14,000 accounts in one fell swoop.

Actual opinions or news retweets, it seems, have a limit.

I have no idea when they allow me back on. A few hours maybe.

In the meantime, be good to one another. And spread the signal.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

2011-03-19T06:50:00.001+01:00

In the midst of all the realism, in the midst of all the horror, I have to thank NBC and David Kelley for this. No, really. Thank you, everyone involved. I needed this. I really did. I could make some reasoned argument as to why this picture of Wonder Woman is the funniest I have ever seen, I could tell you that one of my girlfriends wore something like this to carnival once.

I could say all these things.

But instead I'll just show you.

And you will know why the famous BWAHAHAHAHA (anybody old enough to remember the modern golden age of DC Comics knows where it comes from) is the only thing that needs to be said.

TICK TICK TICK

2011-03-10T17:16:00.000+01:00

I am seven days away from something else ending. Seven days of silence, then I can hopefully tell you a funny story. About Hollywood. I alluded to it before. But unless the impossible happens (and it's about money, and money is always the impossible in Hollywood when you are a writer, it appears, and even more so when you are not in that inner circle jerk, and since I am in Germany, I am so far away from that circle. And thus cannot be a jerk. Or jerk.), I'll be free to talk in seven days.

And I have been very quiet so far (like, you wouldn't believe).

RIGHT NOW, I HAVE NOT MUCH TO SAY

2011-03-09T18:12:00.000+01:00

No, really. Some may wonder why I haven't written anything at all for a few days, but the truth is, I am currently fighting with massive migraines that are crippling me somewhat. Well, okay, more than somewhat. They are crippling for the better part of the day, apparently Twitter updates nonewithstanding. But writing sarcastic one-liners are not the same as coherent thought, if even they may fool you that the person writing them is in full control of all his faculties.

I am not. In control, I mean. Of all of my faculties.

In fact, I have a serious problem with the Intelligence and Plumbing departments, which means that with the migraines also come serious stomach cramps. Most of it is psychological. Like I said, I am by nature anti-social, and there is a good reason for it. This would be it. What's happening in Libya and Egypt and all around the world, if I take it in, it is wrecking me, psychologically. I cannot stop to care. Or level it out. And I should have known. That this is exactly what would happen.

It's the reason I try to stay away from people, for the most part. I wonder, not for the first time, how others are capable of shutting things out again, once they are in. I wish I could do that.

Right now, in those few moments I have before the next blinding white ball of light will explode in my head, I wish so much that I knew how to do that.

THINGS I LIKE: BIG BANGS

2011-03-04T22:28:00.001+01:00

I am a bit (okay, a lot) late to this particular party, but after I had seen the pilot to CBS' The Big Bang Theory, I was rather less than impressed. Nerds. Hot chick. Hur hur. No, not really, thank you. I am a nerd, and I am not Sheldon (despite what you may have heard from others. I do, for example, have an actual laughter and am not quite a neat freak as... oh, well okay, I am a neat freak and I have the tendency to shelve my books in order of author and then importance of the work. Sue me)

A couple of nights ago, when i was yet again insomniac, I flipped on the televsion and in Germany the show does air at an ungodly hour (in repeats) and then at another ungodly hour (daily at 11.30 AM). But I managed to watch two episodes in a row, and I did indeed have to laugh, then chuckle, then I believe I made a sound not unlike a squeaky toy, although I wouldn't be able to vouch for that and it could have been the beginning of sleep apnoe.

In the meantime I have watched about eight more episodes, and it has started to grow on me. Maybe not exactly like a fungus, although that would be the obvious comparison. Other comparisons would include prolonged drug use, hallucinatory nervous breaks and my personal favourite, the Charlie Sheen cocktail.

Anyway, I do find Sheldon to be one of the funniest characters to be invented on television, because there is one truth in this show, maybe more, but definitely one I can relate to. The smartest people in the room are also more often than not the ones who cannot figure out the obvious.

Or as Sheldon realized after he tried to "train" Penny with chocolate (quite successfully), and she got Leonard to put up her bed for her in exchange for the soon to follow hot monkey sex... "Hm. Sex appears to be working even better in the training than chocolate. I wonder why nobody has noticed that before."

That. Was. Brilliant.

Also, it is the first time at night I am willing myself not go on Twitter. I have eebn there a lot, and tried to do my little bit here and there for over a month now, and the sheer continued insanity is hurting me mentally. I cannot stop thinking about whether the people I am in contact with are safe. Like I said before, with me it's all or nothing when i open up. And I worry for them. Sure, they are people I never properly met, but still.... I worry for them.

I hope they will be safe.

P.S. Since we are on the subject of universal insignificance (or the exact opposite of such thing), here is another song that captures both quite well, Eric Idle's "Galaxy Song".

THE SOUNDTRACK OF THE DAY GOES OUT TO KARL THEODOR ZU GUTTENBERG AND THE GERMAN MEDIA: LET ME LIVE

2011-03-01T20:27:00.002+01:00

Today was one of those rare days when you are witness to a public break-up between two stars. Or two sides that both believe themselves to be stars.

On the one hand, you have the German political media that has been so much in love with now ex-secretary of defense, Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg, that they never cared enough to properly vet this man, this awesome, awful man, who looked like he was the answer to all of Germany's political problems and who at the end showed that he is the very symbols of what ails this corporatocracy.

And on the other hand you have Guttenberg.

Who doesn't blame himself for the end of his political career, how could he? For all he knows, this sociopath did nothing wrong, and by that I mean that he commited fraud, lied to the public, lied to his university, embellished his biography, threw everybody under the bus that didn't further his career, abused three dead soldiers over the past two weeks as shields against the media, and... oh yes, and he was an avid reader of Germany's tabloid, the BILD.

Even in his final moments in the spotlight, he could not, would not use that moment to apologise. See, that is the nature of sociopaths. For them, nothing they do is ever wrong. And in his final minutes, using a rather worn-out (sociopaths are also never very creative)scheme, he tried to see the seeds of what was supposed to be something us Germans call "Dolchstoßlegende". If you are not familiar with the term, it was that mythical bullshit after the end of World War 1 that allowed the eventual destruction of the Weimar Republic, stating that "the war would not have been lost, if only the home front had stood firm."

In Guttenberg's personal, school edition version of this myth, it was not him who was to blame for his downfall by committing an act of fraud by copying roughly 50 percent of his dissertation without assigning the text to its proper authors, by abusing copyright, not to mention that to these 50 percent we have to add the almost 1,200 quotes and footnotes he did use, which makes his dissertation not only fraudulent but also a joke, no... it was the relentless hounding of him by the media that just didn't leave him alone the way they had done over the two years prior.

In other words, "honey, it's you."

And to honor that sentiment, here's Freddie Mercury and Queen.

Because this much cheese should only be allowed if you are Freddie.

Nobody else.

There you go, why don't you take a little piece of my heart, now, will you?

THE OSCAR SPEECH I'D LOVE TO HEAR

2011-02-26T22:04:00.000+01:00

It's easy. To celebrate. And think we are important.

But we have forgotten. While we are in this bubble. With our personal assistants, our only worry being Perez Hilton.

We have forgotten.

That we are here to tell the stories of others.And that we were given this talent to speak up and not merely speak.

We have forgotten. While we are here to celebrate ourselves. We must remember that we merely act what others live. And there is pride in that. And humility.

They gave us their stories. And in turn we must give them a voice.

All of those who have no cameras on them. All of those who live quiet lives. In dignity. And hopefully, soon, in freedom.

They are the ones who live, so let us be the ones to tell their stories.

Thank you.

Good night and good luck.

I think you could do that before the music rises and they kick you off the stage, wouldn't you agree?

SOUNDTRACK OF THE DAY: SHOSHOLOZA

2011-02-25T17:16:00.000+01:00

Although there are many, many versions of this old African folk chant, I - for obvious reasons, if you know me - chose the one done by Peter Gabriel (who I am mindstalking, yes, soon I will have enough power to completely take over Gabriel's creativity and use it for my own, evil purposes).

It means "Looking forward" or "Attack", this song does, and yet it is not an agressive song. It is a celebratory one. It celebrates a culture. And people. And if you have ever seen it performed by an African choir, you can sense the beauty of that entire continent, even if you have not been there.

Enjoy.

DUMBEST QUOTE OF THE DAY: IF WEAPONS KILL, A FORK MAKES YOU FAT

2011-02-24T23:03:00.002+01:00

If you have followed me here a little, you know that I am somewhat of an anomaly in the whole "gun debate" in such that (a) I don't like guns, (b) I know how to use them better than most who love them and (c) I have at two friends who are responsible gun owners, with permit and all.

Now, I do not begrudge them their sport.

For them, it is a sport. Just like archery is a sport. It's about coordination and concentration and the rarest moment in which mind and body unite in complete synchronicity, because that is what is needed to hit a target that is dozens or sometimes even hundreds of metres away. It is thus the same with archery, it is even the same with the more up, close and personal modern sports (or rather, modern sports that evolved into sports), like fencing or swordplay.

In all of these cases, the sport developed out of the weaponry's primary function. And that primary function is to kill another human being. Now, in order to be efficient in such a killing, you must train the skills to do so. Anybody who has ever served in an army knows this. That doesn't mean that you need to use those skills to actually kill anybody.

Far from it. Both of my friends are most likely the most centered, calmest people you will ever meet. Certainly calmer than me. Oh yes. A lot calmer than me. The moment I get calm, you better run for the nearest nuclear fall-out shelter, because when I get calm, I have already made the decision to take you out. And will not stop until I have. Just so you know, if we were ever to meet. As long as I am joking, even when I am raising my voice... you are still safe.

When I get calm. Run. Don't look back. Run.

Both of them are what I would call "cautious pacifists", which means that they would rather debate you to find a solution to any given problem rather than use violence in any, way or shape. Despite or - in their case maybe even because - the fact that they own guns and use them for sport. Neither of them are gun "nuts".

They are trained. And with training comes control.

And with control comes a sense responsibility.

So today I sent out to my Twitter stream the following...

Isn't it nice to know that we manufactured those #weapons that are killing innocent people around the world by the tens of thousands? #Libya

Because our big arms dealers and manufacturers, always eager to fatten up their corporate bottom line, have sold and are selling weaponry all around the globe, including handguns, but most importantly, tanks, anti-aircraft cannons, planes, helicopters, rockets, grenades, mines and whatever else strikes your fancy. And they always, yes, always wind up being used to kill innocents.

And here's where the actual, real gun nuts come out of the woodwork. Who worship guns. Who would love to fuck them if they could. And who always use the same faulty analogy. Come on, kids. You know what it is, right?

@ThomasRHart It is not the weapons that kill the people. People kill people! If weapons kill, a fork makes you fat!

Yes. Of course. As the great Moses, uh, Charlton Heston already said, "Guns don't kill people. Apes with guns kill people!" It's an analogy that annoys the living hell out of me. Because it always forget the primary reason guns were invented. They were invented to kill people. Sorry. Did that burst your bubble? No, not deer. No, not stags. No, not moose (although Sara Palin may have a problem with that. Killing moose, I mean. After all, they had to actually tie a moose the fuck to the ground, so that she could shoot it, and if that isn't cruelty to animals, then Dick Cheney is an actual hunter for shooting bred quail from a fucking car).

No. Guns were made to kill people. Tanks were made to kill people. Jet fighters are made to kill people. Bombers are made to kill people. And the further up that "food chain" you go, the more obvious it becomes, or is anybody out there willing to argue that a tank can be used for anything other than to kill? What? Do a proper stroll around the countryside, maybe? Oh, darling, we would have never had this much fun if we had taken a trip into the woods with just a Hummer?

Bullshit. But that is not even the sentence that annoys me the most.

It is the next one. If weapons kill, a fork makes you fat.

Oh dear. Let us quickly take that sentence apart, shall we? A fork is made for one reason, and one reason alone. It is a tool to help you with eating food. We made it for that specific purpose. In this analogy, if we don't use this tool for that specific purpose, it is rather useless (although I have read it can be used to listen to old vinyl records, I personally wouldn't recommend that, though).

Now, if that is its only use, it doesn't really matter how often we use it. So in that rather shitty analogy, the over-use of the fork would lead to obesity, so not the use, but the over-use of weaponry would lead to killing. Duh. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

It is the way idiots always argue. With bumper stickers. Because they do not have the mental capacity to have more than one thought, and a simple one at that, in their rather empty brains.

Especially since my Tweet wasn't about gun ownership.

Dear god, these weapons are manufactured with only one purpose in mind. To make war. And to make a profit. For people who know that. Who find better, more ingenious ways, more efficient ways to kill larger numbers of people. People in countries run by murderous thugs. But hey, who cares, right? As long as they don't do it on our televsion screens, it is all okay.

Let me state again. I am not the gun police, I don't want to be the gun police, but it is a difference of knowing the weaponry and respecting it, knowing its history and then using it for its secondary use, i.e. sport and the blind, stupid and volatile gun love that usually comes from people who thinks gun ownership gives them a larger cock.

It doesn't. Trust me on this. It doesn't give you a cock any larger than that of a guy who drives an SUV to show he is a stud. Or a guy who drinks himself under the table every night to prove he is a man. And if you let those retards run around freely, shit will indubitably happen. Because they lack the control. They lack the sense of responsibility that my friends do have. Because it is those retards, not people like my friends, who do a Travis Bickle in front of a mirror. It is those retards who I met in the army and who went all the Miami Fucking Vice on the target range.

It is the girls, like the one I wrote about in Arizona, who delude themselves that guns are fashion accesories. And that they would go all Wyatt Earp on a perp, with a .38 (which makes me laugh, then makes me choke on that laughter, because as anybody who has ever shot with a snub-nosed .38 knows, that damn thing is so inaccurate that you're lucky to hit anything that isn't right in front of you)

"Why should I run around outside with my gun," one of my friends said to me just last week? And trust me on this, this dude is funny with everything else. He owns little dinosaur toys. And big dinosaur toys. And more toys than a man of 40 should own. And so many that I am secretly envious of him. He sometimes plays egoshooters, or as he says, "there is nothing more calming than chain-sawing your way through a million virtual zombies. It's like being in a horror movie, whoopeee!"

And yet, when it comes to the subject of guns, he immediately becomes very sincere. He owns several. He has won numerous prizes. And he knows one thing. That he would never play around with them. Would never give them to anybody. Would never dispute that their primary use is to kill.

Yes. Guns don't kill people. That line is right.

Apes with guns kill people.

SOUNDTRACK OF THE DAY: FALL FROM GRACE

2011-02-24T22:19:00.001+01:00

Sometimes, a single line can change everything.

A single word, said at the right time, can save a life. A single thought can change it. I am trying to write the third chapter of The Watchmaker's Wings, and I am having a hard time. To make it funny. To give it something that is hopeful. And will make you laugh, even when you wish to cry. And whenever I'm having a hard time, I start researching. And this research has brought me to this. To her. Again.

To Sarah McLachlan.

God and me, we need to have a chat about this some time. I think he's leading me on. And didn't I say before, he has a quirky sense of humor, that old bastard?

I always liked Full of Grace as one of the better, more hopeful songs of Sarah McLachlan. Its lyrics describe depression rather well, and by depression, I don't mean the medical definition of such thing, but rather the emotional emptiness that is inside you, that feeling that - whatever you may try - you are slipping, and the further you struggle, the more it sucks you down into the pit.

And yet, you can make it work. You can love. Full of grace.

Well, this here is the original track by McLachlan. And all seems the same. The words seem the same. The music certainly is. Except one thing. Here she sings, "I fall from grace." One line. Nothing more. And the song gives you no hope. Only sadness. One line is all it took. And I know why she must have changed it. You cannot be all alone alone in this darkness. There must be someone, something else.

And if there is, there is hope.

And if there is hope, there is grace.

And you are no longer falling.