What about Noir video games? The titles that jump to mind are the Max Payne series–the first as Noir comic, the second as Noir film (so i’ve heard, never played). However, does the “supernatural” aspect of those games negate the Noir status? Or, does the intense personal POV–dream sequences, etc–subvert any Noir ideals?

I also want to call Bioshock a Noir game, but i don’t know whether that is accurate, either. Something about the period feel gives it that, for sure. There is also an aspect of the search for truth, tho as i have not finished the game yet, it’s hard to say whether that plays through the entire thing.

others?

However, i was really angry at the beginning of the film and while i was leaving. This was due to an announcement made by a couple of the employees during that one ridiculously long segment before the previews run where they “give you time to shut off your phone.” The announcement was this: “Take this time to turn off your phone. Anyone caught with their cell phone out during the film will be ejected from the theater.”

As far as i can tell, there are only two reasons for this type of thing to be enforced. First, there have been enough complaints about cell phone usage in that theater that the management have decided to take drastic measures. While i would not agree that this is a valid option, this particular theater is home to many of the local teenagers, and of course the best course of action with children is always to take away their candy.

Second, however, is the one that gets under my skin. I have no idea if this is actually the case, but the mere fact that it’s a possibility makes my blood boil. What if this decree came from on-high? What if the powers that be at Fox have mandated that this militant behavior be mandatory for Wolverine, the big film with the huge problems?

I have a particular friend reading who will just eat this up, but i fail to understand how something like this has helped the studio to keep a lid on the leaks, the bootlegs, and the pictures. This is the same studio who told us that, “The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

The more you act like the evil empire, the more you become it. That’s all for now. Anyone else have this problem?

The lovely fog of Film Noir has been hanging at the edges of my mind for a while now, for several reasons. First, the wondeful people over at Miramax finally saw fit to release that double-disk set of No Country for Old Men that I’ve always known was coming (the frakking bastards.) Second, the non-sarcastically-wonderful individuals at the Onion’s A.V. Club posted a primer on Classic Crime Fiction. And finally, in the last few weeks I’ve picked up a couple of comics in the new Marvel Noir theme, as well as the final comic in the spectacular 100 Bullets series. Here are my thoughts on Noir, why we love it, the idea of Neo-Noir, and the best of American Crime Film.

In the medium of comics, I am of the opinion that anything other than superhero comics is at least a start. Crime comics have a small but special place in my heart since I am still in the process of writing one, and it’s hard to go wrong with “100 Bullets.” I also got the first issues of “Daredevil Noir”, “Wolverine Noir”, and the full series of “X-Men Noir.” At the moment, I’ve only finished X-Men, but I have to that that I am intrigued. Any book that begins with the death of a major character (spoilers?) scores automatic points with me. I’m also a fan of anything in the “Elseworlds”\Alternate Universe style. But more than anything, it says “Noir” on the cover. That in and of itself would be enough to get my four dollars. The thought that such a thing could even be possible—not just a crime comic, but a noir comic—puts a big old smile on my face. But it also creates questions, as so many things do with me. What is noir? What makes it different than other crime stories?

We like to think of Noir as synonymous with a time period. I believe that this idea comes not just from the films that we know and love—Double Indemnity, The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, etc–but from the stories and books upon which these films were based. When the A.V. Club posted their Classic Crime Fiction primer, I ran right out and picked up Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep and The Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett. I read Hammett’s The Thin Man close to a year ago and enjoyed it, but it surprised me a bit to see the list that the A.V. Club posted seemed to be rife with books that had all been turned into films, and many of those classics of the genre. I have realized now, only about 20 pages in, that The Big Lebowski is the Coen brothers’ “adaptation” of The Big Sleep. But all of this doesn’t really say anything about what Noir is, only a vague idea of where it came from.

The name “Film Noir” was given to an era of American film by French reviewers and film enthusiasts. The Americans didn’t even realize they were doing it. The French, you see, had the benefit of perspective. During the occupation of France by the Nazi’s in WWII there was an embargo placed on American film. Once the embargo was lifted, a glut of movies showed up in France, many of them what we would call “B-movies” (films of smaller budgets that were generally produced quickly as filler between “A” releases.) French reviewers and theorists saw in these movies common themes and even a unique visual style, lent in large part by the German film makers of the expressionist school who fled to the US before the war. Thus, the idea of Film Noir has always been more important to filmmakers and theorists than it has been to the general viewing public. And yet, even though film people seem to be the privileged few who are actually aware of Noir, it has a strong foothold in the American consciousness. What is it, though, about Noir that is so uniquely American, despite the French name?

In thinking about this post, I started thinking about what Noir really is. The first thing that comes to mind is the hard-boiled detective, the dame, the crime, and the parade of increasingly eccentric characters and the twists that accompany them. What about Double Indemnity, though? There is still the dame and still some crime, but no detective. What about Blade Runner, which has all the basic elements but takes place in the future? I could go through my entire thought process but I won’t. Suffice it to say, the first model doesn’t fit. As a matter of fact, I don’t want it to fit. Some of my favorite Noir movies are those that take the idea of the genre and drop it into other settings and circumstances.

I deliberately prevented myself from researching this topic because I wanted to come to my own conclusions. So here it is, the Super Special All-Purpose Answer (patent pending) to the question, “What characterizes Film Noir,” is… Tragedy and Truth. These are the two things that all Film Noir seems to have. They are not in equal measure nor are they absolute, but I think they are accurate. First, there seems to be an element of tragedy, in the Greek sense of the word. In those detective stories of old, it seems like the tragedy was always started by a murder, leading the protagonist into a world of tyrants and scandals. This lends itself to a feeling of almost melodrama. I need to pull out my copy of Poetics again to further research the tragedy angle, but I really feel like it’s there, at least in the best cases. Second, there is the search for a truth. Now, it may have been misleading above when I wrote this as “Truth,” but I do not mean the philosophical truth-with-a-capital-T. It’s just a truth, doesn’t really matter what truth, but definitely the relentless, obsessive pursuit of it. This is why the traditional driving character in a Noir is a detective. We like private detectives, I think, because they are unbound by the pomp and procedure, as well as the sometimes negative feelings that accompany the police. Noir being a sub-genre of what we could call “crime”, there should also be a crime involved, but i think even this aspect is flexible, so long as the characters perceive the truth that is being sought as solving a mystery or a crime, the definition still stands.

(It has just now come to mind that under the definition above, the sub-genre that we call “thrillers” could be added. Films like Michael Clayton and the recently released State of Play would fit into my rudimentary classification. I don’t feel like this is an accident. It will take research and another post, but my gut tells me that one could draw a line from the modern thriller to the Film Noir of the past by way of films like Chinatown and the noir of the 70s.)

One more thing on the topic of what Noir is: even though i said that i tried not to do any research, i did look up the definition of Noir so that i knew whether it meant black or just dark. The work translates to black, but i found something else very interesting. Referencing the American Heritage Dictionary, Dictionary.com defines the genre of Noir as “featuring tough, cynical characters and bleak settings.” I like this and i don’t find it inaccurate, but i think of these characteristics as features of a time or set of Noir films, not as a template for future creation.

I wanted to take a film class on Noir before I left college, but I just couldn’t fit it into my schedule (I think I was maxed on the film classes I could take, anyway.) Keep in mind that these are no one’s opinions but my own. However, since I myself became aware of the thing, I have felt of myself as a student of it. Here I wanted to give a quick rundown of my favorite Noir movies and why I love them. First, there is Brick. I was embroiled in the culture of the film school when I became aware of this film, and around that time I I made a short (horrible) film on the subject of Noir and its traditional visual cues–the gun, the fedora, the ashtray on the desk– for my Production 1 class. This was a direct result of listening to Rian Johnson, writer/director, talking about the fact that Brick is really just a Noir dropped into a high school, and how the idea of Noir can hold up even without all of those traditional visual cues. From a screenwriting perspective, I find the film just brilliant in its structure and of course, the dialog: the later especially after watching Miller’s Crossing.

Second is Blade Runner. I still say that this is one of the greatest adaptations in the history of film (more on this in another post.) The film makers were able to see and then to distill the Noir detective story from the original book by Phillip K. Dick Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and make a film that follows the spirit of the book, but has a life of its own.

And third, also last for this post even though the list could go on and on, The Big Lebowski. As I said before, I now realize that this is a loose adaptation of The Big Sleep, but what I loved first about the film is layer after layer of its own self-awareness. The Big Lebowski is aware that it’s an out-of-place Noir story; it’s aware that it’s a Coen brothers film; it’s even aware of its own ridiculousness. But that is what makes the Coen brothers the masters of Contemporary American Noir. They have made a career out of dropping the very basic elements of film noir into unorthodox settings. Whether it’s West Texas; Fargo, North Dakota; or Los Angeles it seems that their entire career has been one long experiment in stretching the limits of what the genre can take, what can be said with it, and what it really means.

i think they finally reached the summit of this mountainous goal with No Country For Old Men. Here, we see all of the traditional trappings of Noir stripped away: there are no fedoras or dames, no detectives or cigar chomping crime bosses. Only a man–a kind of Everyman, for sure, but still unique and interesting enough to be engaging–a bag of money, a Texas sheriff, and a psychopath. Here again is the experiment, as if to say, “Let’s take it all away this time and see if there is still something there.” And of course, there is. There is a self-awareness here also, as I would argue in the film’s somewhat controversial ending, not that in that the film knows that it belongs in the subgenre of Noir, but that it knows it is Noir and stands apart. The question of whose search for truth the movie depicts is one I will leave alone. Draw your own conclusions, I will not argue. i will, however, challenge anyone who tries to tell me that the film is not among the finest that American Noir has to offer.

To finish, I want to talk about a term that I’ve heard tossed around by film snobs and nerds alike: Neo-Noir. I’m not going to get all indignant and say that i get irrationally angry when people use Neo-Noir (not nearly as angry as i get when people talk about Hollywood like something other than a big hunk of land in California) but i do think it is an inaccurate term. The idea of something being “Neo” anything means–to me at least–that there was an old, and now there is a new. The first either died or fell out of favor, and now we have a revival. I don’t think this is the case. Americans have been making these kinds of films since the 20s and 30s, and i don’t believe that we ever stopped. Maybe there has been a revival in recent years, but the line can be drawn directly from Double Indemnity and The Maltese Falcon to Chinatown and the films of Scorsese to Blade Runner to Blood Simple and Miller’s Crossing to Brick to No Country For Old Men. If there is a division in these films, it would be the division that comes from own filmic self-consciousness. Once we were made aware by the men of France who so loved American Film that we really had something special on our hands, the game seemed to change. Since then we have been trying to make Noir films, not merely just allowing them to happen. Right or wrong, I am of those who are keenly aware of the existence of these films in all their beauty and terror, and I am also of those who love them.

I don’t know if I ended up where you thought I would, but here we are. Thank you for listening.

My experience began a few of weeks ago with some podcasts. First, I want to clarify that by “experience” I mean the what-I’ve-learned-about-myself-and-life-and-whatever type of event that we are all searching for on a constant basis (I hope.)

For whatever reason, I’ve decided lately to start listening to more podcasts. I think it’s because I sometimes need something different to listen to on my way home, and audio books are expensive. Also, it seems like everyone is doing them, so there are no shortage of talky-talky thingies to listen to on all of my favorite subjects. I think the real origin was The Watchtower, which I came to by way of a link from a webcomic, and which I thoroughly enjoy even though it’s about the comics that I generally don’t care about.

One such podcast that I’ve started to listen to is The Triple Feature—a movie themed show by webcomic artists. I’ve listened to this show in the past, but for whatever reason stopped a number of months ago. Now I’m listening regularly again, and it’s wonderful. But, it’s also carving a hole in my chest.

I miss talking about movies. I miss the intense analysis of a scene, sometimes to the point where the scene would be forever deconstructed and lose almost all meaning. I miss being able to confidently talk about Neo-realism, Surrealism, French New Wave, and all of those other film-nerdy types of things with any kind of authority or confidence. Most of all, I used to feel like I understood the history of film and could talk about it with some intelligence, but I don’t feel that way anymore.

The next rung on this twisted ladder was the 43 Folders podcast, specifically the most recent, which is a recording of a lecture Merlin Mann and John Grubber did for the South by Southwest Interactive Festival about blogging. The basic idea was this: blog what you love, don’t worry about money, carve a niche and live there. My favorite idea from the ‘cast: “Topic (which becomes ‘obsession’) times voice.” This is where the germination for my “experience” began, where the ladder eventually ends, and why I’m writing this.

Now we can actually talk about the festival. We got to Vail that Friday night, checked into our hotel, and went to see a film. When my wife and I got to the little theater—which was thankfully in the hotel so we didn’t have to venture out into the snow—the room was ice cold and packed with people. Everyone was shivering a little and we spent the entire time cold and huddled together for warmth.

The movie was preceded by a short by Disney, which was obviously both an attempt for them to try a pixar-esque cuteness and also an experiment in CGI snow dynamics. It was both cute and snowy, and I liked it, but it still wasn’t able to reach the level of both heart and comedy that Pixar can.

The film itself was a British ghost/thriller type of thing. My wife liked it even though it was too intense for her at times. I liked it despite its problems, which were many and varied. But I discovered something almost immediately after leaving the theater: I wanted to talk about it. Almost immediately I wanted to discuss all of the finer points and the duller points. More than anything, however, I wanted to talk about how the film could be “fixed.” This, to me, is the difference between reviewing a film and film theory. One of many differences, but all of them are the same at the core: the surface vs. the deeper meaning. Of course, if you review films, you have to talk about why the film is or is not good more than just, “I liked it,” or, “I hated it.” But that’s not what i’m interested in. I want to know why a film is or is not good, but I also want to know how it could have been better and how it fits into a greater context.

I sat down and wrote about the movie we saw after we got back to our room. That will be available to read at a later date.

The next day I had planned to get a massage and then go to the screenplay reading. Vail does a screenplay competition, as many festivals do, and every year they organize a reading of the winners, which ends up being like a table read. I had been really looking forward to going, even though the winner from the year before had not been what I would call a great piece of work. I think it was my attempt to connect with that part of myself that feels lost. In some ways, I just needed to see that I still “got it.”

The first reading was the short screenplay, written by an Irish guy who’s real interest is directing. The story was okay: it was one really great visual idea with a story propped up against it. But the writing itself wasn’t very exciting, and I was upset that I might be disappointed. While it’s important to me in my quest for film knowledge to come across pieces that I don’t like so that I can understand why I don’t like it, I would still like to be able to come across things that I like so that I can understand that, too.

When it came to the feature screenplay, however, my world opened up. The plot had to do with a woman who has lived a hard life dealing with the death of her father. Her brother is also trying to deal with it, and he decides that they need to take a road trip that mimics one they took when they were children. What struck me about the screenplay was the prose. His scene descriptions were dense and dangerous; toeing the line that screenwriters are not supposed to cross between what can and cannot be seen on screen. But somehow, this guy made it work. My heart filled up as the scenes were read, and invariably whenever I would think, “He needs to show that with an action,” or, “He’s about to make this too long,” the ‘play would seem to answer by showing me an action or stopping the description at just the right time.

I’ve wrestled for sometime with the question of whether a screenplay can be a piece of art in an of itself. Most writers will tell you it cannot. It’s a foundation at best; incomplete until the movie is made and the building completed. I, however, need to believe that it can be something more, maybe just for my own ego or my own self esteem, but I am not willing to let go of that idea just yet. This screenplay relit that fire for me.

There were other experiences at the festival: we went to the awards show and saw Kevin Smith and laughed our asses off. I went to another movie that night, but as an animated film with no dialog about an asshole who grows wings that make him do good, it didn’t really carry me to the end of my “experience.” That had actually already happened.

I realized after going to the awards show and seeing Kevin Smith, a man whom I have tremendous respect for, and finding nothing about the show inspirational or moving, that I had already come to all the conclusions and had all the epiphanies—i just needed to put them together.

So here they are. What I’ve come to realize, beginning with the podcasts several weeks ago and leading into Vail and through, is that I need to start talking about movies again. I learned that from The Triple Feature. From 43 Folders I learned that I need to take my obsession, add my voice, put it all in my blog and see what happens. And from the Vail Film Festival I learned that my obsession is film and film theory. I’m not going to write reviews. I’m not going to write about who signed on to do what movie and what director is optioning what book or whatever. I’m going to talk about history, theory, and craft. This is what I love, and since I don’t see a whole lot of people out there doing it, i’m going to take a crack at it. Who knows, it could become something great.

So I’m taking this thing apart again and putting it back together in that image. Let me know what you think.

Mr. Ray Bradbury is a personal hero of mine. I’ve read quite a lot of his work, fiction and non. In one piece that he wrote, he talked about writing short stories, and how he would make lists of titles. Usually, these were simple: The Jar, The Veldt, etc. From these titles he would let his imagination run and end up with a short story. I’ve tried this before, and it’s a nice exercise at times. I don’t find it practical for an all the time thing, but it can be fun.

I also had an English teacher who told our class to always have an interesting title, no matter what.

I’ve made my own lists, and I’ve also come up with a few good titles in the process of doing The Assignment, what little I’ve done.

Here are some of those titles.

“Bury Me Where the Cyber Lilies Grow” (probably end up being a poem)

“A Girl Named Song”

“My Recalcitrant Heart” (which I think is already a title for something or another , but I still like it)

“The Recital”

“On a Clear Night You Can Only See Stars” (as opposed to “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever)

“The Pursuit of Perfection” (non-fiction)

“Hyphenate” (non-fiction)

“Worlds That Can Be Saved” (about why we play video games)

“The First Annual Corporate Workplace Chinese Firedrill”

“That Piece of Paper” (about my diploma, and how it’s not really made out of paper)

“Who I Was Yesterday, Who I Am Today”

“Nihilism, With a Horn Section” (about Modest Mouse)

“Voice Maintainance”

I see this post as a statement of purpose. That is to say that this blog is not meant to be just a personal brain dumpster. It has a “higher” purpose. To adequately explain that purpose requires—at least in my mind—the careful application of three questions.

Question 1: Who am I?
I am a writer who needs to learn to write again. I have a recently-acquired college degree in English and I haven’t written hardly anything since finals 7 months ago. I am a film nerd who hardly goes to movies anymore. I am a terrible procrastinator, due in no small part to some low-level anxiety and depression issues. All of this mixed together in my chubby little vessel makes for a cocktail of self-doubt, stagnation, and apathy. These things are not conducive to the creative process. So, I have been trying—for some long time—to devise better methods by which to write more. You see, I say that I am a writer, but I have very little to show for it. I think like a writer, but until people can “read” my thoughts, that doesn’t do me much good.

So, part one is pretty simple: Write more.

Question 2: How?
Here is the problem. Heaven knows I’ve tried to be better about writing everyday, just like all the “experts” say. I’ve read many books on the subject, and in general I believe they can be classified in one of two ways. First, there are those who merely say, “a writer should write everyday.” This is good advice, but not very specific. I know what I should be doing. The problem is how. There’s also the classic “write for 10 minutes”, but again, it’s not specific enough, and I end up staring at my feet after only four. Word limits pose the same problem.  The second category is a group of books that may consider themselves an entire genre. These are the books that give too much information; are too specific. These are all grounded in the idea that there is an entire population of writers who are dying to put pen to paper everyday, poised at the edges of their desk chairs, staring down the elusive and illustrious blank page, and that most days these ballpoint heroes and heroines turn away, defeated. I do not believe this is the case. In my own experience, content is not the issue. My issue is discipline. The problem with this category of advice is when you tell me what to write, I lose interest because it doesn’t feel like it’s mine anymore. Especially if I’m not interested in the topic, there’s just no way I’m going to be motivated to do the work, and then the point is lost.  I know I need discipline, but how do I get that?

Habit.

So, to rephrase the issue at hand: How do I make a habit out of writing, and thus write more. I came to the conclusion that I needed an assignment, like the “write for 10 minutes” or the books full of prompts, but it needed to be somewhere in between: open enough that I could play and experiment, but with some modicum of structure to make me have to think. Something easy enough that it could become a habit, but still open enough for me to play with my own ideas and content. So that’s what I did.

The Assignment: Everyday I will write three pieces. One of these will  pertain to the past, one to the present, and the third to the future. Also, one will focus on a topic, one will focus on a character, and the third will be in the style of a memoir.

So that’s it. The combinations and the content are up to me. They could each be ten pages or two sentences. As I see it, the possibilities are endless and yet the assignment itself is quite simple. What I hope is that the simplicity fosters habit, but the practice helps me continue to grow as a writer all while getting some words on pages.

And last but not least…
Question 3: What does all this have to do with the blog?
When I first decided that “writer” was the profession for me, it came to mind that I would have to stop being so sheepish about letting other people read my work. Comes with the territory. So, for many years now I’ve not only been allowing people to read my stuff, I’ve been begging for it. As it turns out, without the feedback of others, it’s very hard to see the proverbial forest. This blog is for that very purpose. It stands to reason that with three pieces of writing for every day of the week, there will be some that I will hate. However, it also stands that there will be some that I will love. The blog will be a place for me to post those pieces that I feel are successful, either because they are exactly what I wanted them to be, or because they are so abysmally bad that there are lessons to be learned. Not every piece will be posted. I repeat: not every piece will be posted. (I repeat for my own benefit. Otherwise I get stage fright and end up not writing anything.)

The schedule should be thus: Monday through Friday I will do the assignment; Saturday I will pick my favorite(s) and post to the blog; Sunday is for rest. I cannot/will not guarantee this schedule, but if you find yourself on the internet on a Saturday with nothing to do and see that I haven’t posted, feel free to email me a nudge. I may ignore you; I may tell you to go away; but since I’m currently very motivated to do this, I am going to try to stick to the schedule.

Today is January 1, 2009. The assignment officially begins today with this post. Tomorrow will be a writing day, and then Saturday I will post some of the backlogged content I have from my previous false starts. Stay tuned!

As a final note, while I will not be posting anything pornographic in nature, I see my perspective on life as being solidly R-rated. If you are offended by cussing or the occasional reference to testicles, please do not bother to read. I am not interested in hearing about how a “real” writer shouldn’t need such language. Real writers work to create an authentic voice, and this one is mine, for good or ill.