"Hurm" said the Mike

Indeed...


First post ever on a blog. Interesting.

My name is Michael and I'm a senior at Willy P. University. I'm majoring in Filmmaking, which is, to me, the most wonderful pain in the ass one could ever experience. The downside of being a film maker at the student level is that you don't have control. And by that, I mean you can't write a 10 minute short film that takes place in a plague-ridden European village in 1350. You don't have the money or the technology at your hands to pull it off. The other problem is that you have to balance out making films with the rest of your schoolwork, which can become very burdensome.

That said, I'm also an English Writing minor. I like to write for the exact reasons why I don't like film making. I have complete control over the story I'm telling. I'm not restrained by a budget or lack of technology to create something. I also have a tendency to take screenplays I've written and filmed(and wound up being incredibly unsatisfied with) and turn them into short stories instead. As I said, more control...


Moving on, I'm a big comic book reader and a really big fan of pulp fiction, which, with the exception of two of my former English professors, is met with disdain by academics. I guess I'm a fan of what academic snobs call genre fiction, though for the life of me I don't know what the hell the difference between that and "literature" is. For those who don't know, pulp fiction magazines were kind of like the prose predecessor to comic books, called "pulp" magazines for the cheap pulpy paper they were printed on. They were full of lurid, seedy stories of crime, horror, action and adventure, etc...and some very well known writers came out of this: Dashiell Hammet(The Maltese Falcon), Raymond Chandler(The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye), H.P. Lovecraft(The Call of Cthulhu, At The Mountains of Madness) and Robert E. Howard(creator of Conan The Barbarian and Solomon Kane).

Lovecraft is my favorite of the bunch, and probably my favorite writer period. He wrote these incredibly horrifying novellas and short stories about unfathomable cosmic horrors. The driving theme behind his stories is that man is merely an ant on the cosmic picnic blanket. And when they face "the beyond", their complacent minds shatter and they go insane. What I love is how these horrors force their way into the world. And it's Man's quest for knowledge or their extreme ignorance of the world that is usually their undoing.

Check him out at: http://www.hplovecraft.com

However, two of my favorite pulp characters, probably the most notorious(and for good reason), are The Shadow and Doc Savage. The Shadow was a heavy influence on the creation of Batman(hell, the first Batman story is basically a Shadow story with the names changed) and many other grim crime-fighters. Decked out in a black suit and fedora, with black flowing cape lined with red and armed with two .45s, The Shadow menaced the underworld with his horrible laugh and the ability to "cloud men's minds". Unlike Doc Savage, eh Shadow was more grounded, taking out mob gangs and the occasional evil opium peddling psychic China men with elaborate death trap in sub-basements. There was that crappy movie with Alec Baldwin made in the '90s. Ignore it.

Doc Savage is essentially Superman without the costume and ability to fly(Savage's first name is Clark, his nick name is the Man of Bronze, and he has a fortress of solitude). He's a regular man who was trained since birth to become the first human speciman. He's a genius, a brilliant inventor, a fighter, an adventurer, you name it. He would discover ancient amazonian civilizations and fight evil tribes, dinosaurs and all sorts of other stuff. There was a crappy movie made in the 70's. Ignore it.

My second favorite writer is crime novelist Richard Stark(aka Donald Westlake) whose writing I just recently got into. I'd been familiar with his novel "The Hunter" through it's two cinematic adaptations, POINT BLANK(1967), my favorite movie of all time, and PAYBACK(1999; The director's cut is way better than the theatrical cut.). And recently, one of my favorite comic book writer/artists, Darwyn Cooke(darwyncooke.blogspot.com/) started working on comic adaptations of Stark's novels, starting with "The Hunter". It was awesome, and it inspired me to go out and read the actual book. The Hunter marks the first appearance of Stark's master thief, Parker. He's a cold, cunning son of a bitch, and you can't help but cheer him on anyway. Stark's writing was a revelation to me, in terms of style. Unlike crime novel masters Hammet, Chandler and Spillane, Stark's writing was devoid of flowery metaphors and language. It's hard, straight and the point. It's as cool and brutal and calculating as Parker himself is. As a review for Cooke's adaptation stated, it's "like a shotgun blast to the chest". And it is. For more info, check out The Violent World of Parker

And while I'm at it, I'm really excited that Kim Newman's Anno-Dracula novels are finally being re-released by Titan Books starting in May. Anno Dracula, The Bloody Red Baron and Judgement of Tears are three of my favorite novels. They detail an alternate timeline in the Dracula universe where instead of losing, Dracula kills his would-be destroyers mid-way through the novel and proceeds to become Prince Consort to the throne of England. In doing so, all the vampires come out of hiding, including literary cousins to the character. Other period-appropriate literary characters are there, too. It's a wonderful blending of pop. culture and all three novels make a for an incredibly satisfying read. Even more exciting, Newman's fourth entry to the series, "Johnny Alucard" will finally be released as well. Check Mr. Newman out here

I was also assigned to talk about my Advanced Creative Writing class, but I don't know what to say at the moment. As a class, we've met only once and got a list of our assignments. Once we get further into the semester, I think I'll be able to talk about it more.