Lilo & Stitch and Save the Cat

by Tony Goins on July 29, 2013 at 1:43 pm
Posted In: blog, writing

Stitch, not saving a cat.

I finally got around to watching Lilo & Stitch, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Save the Cat.

I spoke about Save the Cat on the Panel/Ferret Press blog, but here’s a recap: Save the Cat is a scriptwriting book that lays out exactly the structure for a hit movie, as well as some commandments to make the story connect with viewers. The first maxim is that your hero should immediately do something to get the audience on his side, ie; “save the cat.”

Lilo & Stitch breaks this rule right off the jump. The movie opens on a mad scientist, on trial because he has created a monster. Stitch is quickly established as a literal weapon of mass destruction as he steals a police ship and makes for a backwater planet (Earth, natch).

Likewise, we first see Lilo running late for dance class, punching a classmate, then biting her. We learn she’s an orphan being raised by her older sister. She’s a weird, troubled kid, but we do have a rooting interest for her.

Lilo & Stitch follows the Save the Cat structure pretty closely. There’s a good “fun & games” section where the mad scientist and an alien “Earth expert” try to capture Stitch. Stitch can’t be captured as long as he stays next to Lilo, but he also can’t cause too much havoc. Lilo indicates Stitch is 80 percent bad, although it’s not clear where the 20 percent comes from. But he sees her loving relationship with her sister, and starts to wish he had a family of his own.

The stakes are raised as we enter Act 3. The galactic council sends Captain Gantu, a no-nonsense military officer, to capture Stitch. In order to get a true “bad guys close in” moment, the movie is forced to put Gantu through an abrupt heel turn. He tries to capture Stitch without caring that Lilo gets hurt. So far, Gantu has not been depicted as anywhere near that kind of bad guy. Early in the movie, he refers to Stitch as an “abomination,” but he’s basically right about that.

So here’s our status: The movie has blatantly disregarded the “save the cat” maxim at the beginning, then artificially ramped up the conflict at the end to satisfy the formula. The first one doesn’t bother me, but the second does.

I’m not going to claim this is a refutation of the Save the Cat approach. It could be that the script needed one more rewrite to cover all of its bases. But it is an argument for not forcing your story to do something it’s not designed to do.

 

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Fake Geek Girl

by susan_downs on July 24, 2013 at 12:13 pm
Posted In: blog

I keep thinking the “fake geek girl” thing is over, and I missed commenting on it. But it keeps coming up, so here are my thoughts.

fake geek girlI don’t think “fake geek girls” really exist.

I do think there’s such a thing as a person who plays up their interests to get attention. If you have ever seen me pull out pictures of my 3-year-old daughter in a roomful of middle-aged women, you will know that’s the case.

However, I don’t know how to distinguish someone who’s “just trying to get attention” from someone who’s “excited about things they’re into.” If you’re sure you are dealing with the former, my advice is to just ignore that person. Save your internet scorn for a worthier target.

Additionally, if there is a test for true geekdom, I am not sure I would qualify. I write & maintain a webcomic, but my pull has only a half-dozen books. I’ve never role-played, I skipped Battlestar Galactica, I missed the last four comic book movies and I haven’t watched an anime in years. I know tons of women who are geekier than I am.

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Dracula on old-time radio

by susan_downs on July 1, 2013 at 6:25 pm
Posted In: blog, old-time radio

I don’t think I ever got the real erotic subtext of Dracula until I heard it on radio.

dracula-balletmetHere’s Dracula by the CBS Radio Mystery Theater from 1974, courtesy of Relic Radio.

Run it up to around 11:55 to the point where Mina Harker is watching Dracula give Lucy Westenra the kiss of death. Mina somehow gets into Lucy’s head, and we get this description.

I watched Dracula as he approached my bed … there was a deliberate voluptuousness about him that I found both thrilling and repulsive. … As the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin, and seemed about to fasten on my throat …  and then two hard dents of two sharp teeth just touching and pausing there … I closed my eyes in a langorous ecstasy … I waited there with a beating heart.

Anybody else need a cold shower?

It’s a weird adaptation. It spends a lot of time talking about Lucy’s victims, and ends abruptly with the stake through Lucy’s heart.That part is essentially cut out of the Bela Lugosi version, if memory serves.

The killing of Dracula takes place completely offstage, through narration. I guess they had to cut it short to make room for the radio pr0n.

(Above picture is a still from BalletMet’s Dracula, which is the 2nd most erotic Dracula adaptation I’ve ever seen. I spoke about Comix & the Ballet in 2012 on the Panel blog.)

 

 

 

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Horror Radio: Not one ounce of ironic distance

by susan_downs on June 24, 2013 at 3:39 pm
Posted In: back to basics, blog, old-time radio

Out of the past, phantoms of a world gone by speak again the immortal tale …

I’ve spent the last few years on a “back to basics” kick, reading a ton of classic sci-fi and a bit of classic horror. I’m talking about old masters like H.G. Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson and E.A. Poe, moving up through “newer” masters like Alfred Bester, Larry Niven and Joe Haldeman. And soundwise, I spent several months binging on classic sci-fi radio, most notably the long-running “Space patrol” series. This is after a long, long stretch in classic pulp & radio from my teens, primarily “The Shadow.”

I’ll talk more about those things more later, but right now I have to talk about what’s currently knocking me out: Classic horror radio from Relic Radio.

The standard plug for classic radio is that your own mind fills in the majority of the story. You don’t have to worry about cheesy special effects or low-rent sets. The show is as real and terrifying as your imagination (plenty terrifying, in my case).

Listening to classic horror on my earbuds creates a kind of locked-in effect. Even if I’m walking down the tree-lined streets of my neighborhood, but in my head I’m at an English country estate while my fiancee’s father’s corpse lies headless in the family crypt.

But the real draw of these shows, oddly enough, is the actors. These actors go for broke on every take. There is not one ounce of ironic distance in any of the performances. You have not heard an actress scream in terror until you’ve heard it on old-time radio. You have never heard a man be strangled by a nameless fiend.

What I really love about these is they’re weird as shit. Like, really weird. A guy with an iron maiden fixation starts a blood vendetta with a cat after accidentally crushing her kitten. A Chinaman’s severed hand comes back to life to choke you. A falsely hanged witch takes posthumous revenge on state highway patrolmen at a haunted crossroads.

And these were major-network shows! These make your typical Law & Order look like an episode of Scooby-Doo.

Here are two samples to get you started, both from my favored purveyor, Relic Radio. These are also available on iTunes.

The Haunted Crossroads by The Witch’s Tale

Mad Monkton by The Weird Circle

You gotta love the intros and outros on these Weird Circle joints. Too much.

Bell-keeper! toll the bell!

Out of the past, phantoms of a world gone by speak again the immortal tale …

I’ve spent the last few years on a “back to basics” kick, reading a ton of classic sci-fi and a bit of classic horror. I’m talking about old masters like H.G. Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson and E.A. Poe, moving up through “newer” masters like Alfred Bester, Larry Niven and Joe Haldeman. And soundwise, I spent several months binging on classic sci-fi radio, most notably the long-running “Space patrol” series. This is after a long, long stretch in classic pulp & radio from my teens, primarily “The Shadow.”

I’ll talk more about those things more later, but right now I have to talk about what’s currently knocking me out: Classic horror radio from Relic Radio.

The standard plug for classic radio is that your own mind fills in the majority of the story. You don’t have to worry about cheesy special effects or low-rent sets. The show is as real and terrifying as your imagination (plenty terrifying, in my case).

Listening to classic horror on my earbuds creates a kind of locked-in effect. Even if I’m walking down the tree-lined streets of my neighborhood, but in my head I’m at an English country estate while my fiancee’s father’s corpse lies headless in the family crypt.

But the real draw of these shows, oddly enough, is the actors. These actors go for broke on every take. There is not one ounce of ironic distance in any of the performances. You have not heard an actress scream in terror until you’ve heard it on old-time radio. You have never heard a man be strangled by a nameless fiend.

 What I really love about these is they’re weird as shit. Like, really weird. A guy with an iron maiden fixation starts a blood vendetta with a cat after accidentally crushing her kitten. A Chinaman’s severed hand comes back to life to choke you. A falsely hanged witch takes posthumous revenge on state highway patrolmen at a haunted crossroads.

And these were major-network shows! These make your typical Law & Order look like an episode of the James Bond Jr.

Here are two samples to get you started, both from my favored purveyor, Relic Radio. These are also available on iTunes.

The Haunted Crossroads by The Witch’s Tale http://www.relicradio.com/otr/2012/11/h466-the-haunted-crossroads-by-the-witchs-tale/

Mad Monkton by The Weird Circle http://www.relicradio.com/otr/2012/05/h418-mad-monkton-by-the-weird-circle/

You gotta love the intros and outros on these Weird Circle joints. Too much.

Bell-keeper! toll the bell!

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Star Trek Into Darkness & Philosophy

by susan_downs on June 21, 2013 at 2:22 pm
Posted In: blog

Warp Speed to SPOILERS!

Star Trek Into Darkness Warp

 

One common complaint with the JJ Abrams Star Treks is they don’t have enough “philosophy.” Ie. a Star Trek movie should have an allegory or a main point, whereas the NuTrek is more of an action movie in space.

I held that opinion myself until a day or two after seeing Star Trek Into Darkness, when I got hit with some fridge brilliance. Kirk averts war with the Klingons by doing the right thing. He disobeys an order in order to do things by the book.

And Kirk defeats a terrorist not by killing him with a cruise missile, not through torture, and not by busting in and shooting him in the head. He brings the terrorist back for trial. Granted, cryosleep is such an extreme violation of habeus corpus that would make Dick Cheney blush with shame. But c’mon, this is the biggest liberal statement in Star Trek since the interracial kiss.

They don’t make a big deal about it, but it’s there if you want to look for it.

Other than that, I’d say I dug Into Darkness more than the median. It had its share of plot holes, but I put it in a category with Looper and Dark Knight Rises rather than Prometheus. I think a Star Trek movie is practically impossible (I’ll talk about that next week), but I think Abrams & Co. came about as close as can be expected.

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