Writers who jumped the shark

David Matthews wrote
>
> I'm trying to remember the name of the movie that had a Jewish
> vampire. Someone holds up a crucifix to ward it off and the vampire
> says "Oy Vey! Have you got the wrong vampire."

Polanski's 'Fearless Vampire Hunters' ?
 >> Stay informed about: Writers who jumped the shark 

"Rik Shepherd" <RikShepherd RemoveThis @orangemonkey.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:3f06051f@news.bnb-lp.com...
> David Matthews wrote
> >
> > I'm trying to remember the name of the movie that had a Jewish
> > vampire. Someone holds up a crucifix to ward it off and the
vampire
> > says "Oy Vey! Have you got the wrong vampire."
>
> Polanski's 'Fearless Vampire Hunters' ?
>
>

Thanks Rik.

Dave in Toronto
 >> Stay informed about: Writers who jumped the shark 

On Sat, 5 Jul 2003, Matt Ruff wrote:

> Tuvix wrote:
> >
> > Well, it isn't clear WHY he doesn't remember writing Cujo. He had
> > an interview, after Cujo was written, where he specifically describes
> > how he slowed down to write Donna's confession of her infidelity, to
> > make sure he got inside the characters head, to speak from her
> > point of view. So at one point he did remember writing Cujo. Perhaps
> > he suffered some kind of damage that erased those memories later?
> > Or maybe he's just referring to other parts of the novel that he
> > was drunk while writing...yet I find Cujo to be so well written
> > that I doubt that he was at the bottom of his booze/cocaine phase
> > when he wrote it.
>
> _Cujo_ was never one of my favorites, but I agree it's a great job for
> somebody supposedly out of control on booze and drugs. If
> _Tommyknockers_ represents King in recovery, I liked him better stoned.

No, Tommknockers was NOT King "in recovery". Insomnia, Dark Half,
The Uncut Stand, these are "King in Recovery", but he described
himself as still trying to fool himself into believing he could
manage his addictions years after TOMMYKNOCKERS. It's just that
TOMMYKNOCKERS was apparently the last novel he wrote while indulging
in the most wretched excesses, during which his wife finally started
putting her foot down.

I doubt that Cujo was a result of the "out of control" period. It's
too short, too tight. The increasing bloat in books like THE STAND,
and IT are more indicative of increasing cocaine and alcohol use.

But as far as his writing goes, I much prefer King on drugs to present
day sober King. King on drugs LOVED writing. He's described it as
being another addiction, another escape, just like the drugs were.
Sober, drug free King seems to hate writing, seems to not enjoy
"falling through the hole in the page" as he describes it.
 >> Stay informed about: Writers who jumped the shark 

Tuvix wrote:
>
> Well, it isn't clear WHY he doesn't remember writing Cujo. He had
> an interview, after Cujo was written, where he specifically describes
> how he slowed down to write Donna's confession of her infidelity, to
> make sure he got inside the characters head, to speak from her
> point of view. So at one point he did remember writing Cujo. Perhaps
> he suffered some kind of damage that erased those memories later?
> Or maybe he's just referring to other parts of the novel that he
> was drunk while writing...yet I find Cujo to be so well written
> that I doubt that he was at the bottom of his booze/cocaine phase
> when he wrote it.

_Cujo_ was never one of my favorites, but I agree it's a great job for
somebody supposedly out of control on booze and drugs. If
_Tommyknockers_ represents King in recovery, I liked him better stoned.

-- M. Ruff
 >> Stay informed about: Writers who jumped the shark 

Sea Wasp wrote:
>
> Ian McDowell wrote:
>
>> I'd be interested in seeing how many other writers here share your
>> feeling that one should never contradict the established parameters of
>> one's characters, at least in an ongoing series.
>
> You should NEVER contradict known facts within your universe without
> a damn good reason.

"It will allow us to tell a really cool story" is an excellent reason,
though.

> If the contradiction is one that's likely to jar
> your fans, you'd damn well better provide an explanation better than
> "well, gee, it seemed like a fun thing to do at the time".
>
> Consistency in a fictional world is one of my top criteria to
> measure someone by.

I'm a consistency and internal logic freak, too, actually, but a good
story trumps all other considerations, and the more entertained I am,
the more continuity errors I'm willing to overlook. "Buffy" kept me very
entertained, so things I might have nitpicked in a more boring narrative
(e.g., Babylon 5) just didn't bother me.

One retcon I still marvel at is the one that ended the La Femme Nikita
series, where it was revealed that she'd been working as a double-agent
for Center since the beginning of season two. Continuity-wise it doesn't
withstand scrutiny, but it was such a gutsy move I really wanted it to.

> I go to considerable lengths to make my own material consistent

Me too, but a TV show isn't just one person's material -- it's multiple
writers, directors, and actors working together. In that sort of
collaboration, flexibility is very important too, and you might as well
make a virtue of necessity.

-- M. Ruff
 >> Stay informed about: Writers who jumped the shark 

Matt Ruff <storytellers RemoveThis @worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>Sea Wasp wrote:
>>
>> Consistency in a fictional world is one of my top criteria to
>> measure someone by.
>
>I'm a consistency and internal logic freak, too, actually, but a good
>story trumps all other considerations, and the more entertained I am,
>the more continuity errors I'm willing to overlook. "Buffy" kept me very
>entertained, so things I might have nitpicked in a more boring narrative
>(e.g., Babylon 5) just didn't bother me.
>
>One retcon I still marvel at is the one that ended the La Femme Nikita
>series, where it was revealed that she'd been working as a double-agent
>for Center since the beginning of season two. Continuity-wise it doesn't
>withstand scrutiny, but it was such a gutsy move I really wanted it to.
>

I never watched "La Femme Nikita". Was Center the bad guys? That
sounds interesting, if so.

-David
 >> Stay informed about: Writers who jumped the shark 

David Bilek wrote:
>
> Matt Ruff wrote:
>
>> One retcon I still marvel at is the one that ended the La Femme Nikita
>> series, where it was revealed that she'd been working as a double-agent
>> for Center since the beginning of season two. Continuity-wise it doesn't
>> withstand scrutiny, but it was such a gutsy move I really wanted it to.
>
> I never watched "La Femme Nikita". Was Center the bad guys?

[I should probably put in a belated spoiler warning here...]

..
..
..
..
..

In the TV series, the organization Nikita worked for was an
international anti-terrorist group called Section One. There were other
Sections mentioned during the series (the numbers went up to Eight, at
least), though for the most part their roles were never defined. All of
the Sections were answerable to Oversight, an administrative watchdog
group with the power to order the "incineration" of a Section if it was
publicly exposed, compromised, or just got out of hand. Center,
introduced fairly late in the series, was a sort of Oversight to
Oversight. In theory, they were all good guys, but in practice, as
Nikita would say in the show's intro, "their ends are just, but their
means are ruthless," and they were always in danger of becoming as evil
as the terrorists they fought.

Re: the retcon, Nikita faked her own death at the end of the first
season in order to escape the Section. At the beginning of the second
season, she was identified and captured by a terrorist group who thought
she was still a Section member; when Section got a hostage video and a
ransom demand, they were very surprised that Nikita was still alive.
After she was rescued, she managed to convince Section that she'd been
held hostage the whole time she was gone, rather than for just the last
couple weeks (she had help pulling this off). So they let her resume her
duties as a Section operative.

Now, jump ahead to the end of season four. After numerous additional
reversals of fortune, Nikita once again fled Section, was recaptured,
and was about to be executed, when at the last minute the head of Center
showed up and announced that Nikita was actually a deep cover agent
who'd been investigating Section One on his behalf. He'd found and
recruited her for the task after she'd escaped from Section that first
time -- the implication now being that her capture by the terrorists,
rather than being an unfortunate accident, was actually planned as a way
of slipping her back into Section as a double agent for Center. By
itself this might actually have been believeable -- by Section
standards, it wasn't an especially Byzantine strategy -- but there were
other incidents that had occurred over the course of seasons two through
four that were much harder to square with the idea that Nikita was
really working for Center at the time. Still, it was such a great moment
when Nikita's wicked superiors at Section One realized that she was
higher up the chain of command than they were, and always had been, that
I really *wanted* it to work...

-- M. Ruff
 >> Stay informed about: Writers who jumped the shark 

Tuvix wrote:
>
> But as far as his writing goes, I much prefer King on drugs to present
> day sober King. King on drugs LOVED writing. He's described it as
> being another addiction, another escape, just like the drugs were.
> Sober, drug free King seems to hate writing, seems to not enjoy
> "falling through the hole in the page" as he describes it.

Just yesterday I flipping through the forward and intro to the revised
Dark Tower/Gunslinger at B&N, and, yeah, he comes across as a really
world-weary, crotchety old guy now -- I think Vonnegut and Stanislaw Lem
still have him beat on that front, but not by much. It's sad.

-- M. Ruff
 >> Stay informed about: Writers who jumped the shark 

David Bilek <dtbilek.RemoveThis@comcast.net> writes:

>Matt Ruff <storytellers.RemoveThis@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>Sea Wasp wrote:

>>> Consistency in a fictional world is one of my top criteria to
>>> measure someone by.

>>I'm a consistency and internal logic freak, too, actually, but a good
>>story trumps all other considerations, and the more entertained I am,
>>the more continuity errors I'm willing to overlook. "Buffy" kept me very
>>entertained, so things I might have nitpicked in a more boring narrative
>>(e.g., Babylon 5) just didn't bother me.

>>One retcon I still marvel at is the one that ended the La Femme Nikita
>>series, where it was revealed that she'd been working as a double-agent
>>for Center since the beginning of season two. Continuity-wise it doesn't
>>withstand scrutiny, but it was such a gutsy move I really wanted it to.

>I never watched "La Femme Nikita". Was Center the bad guys? That
>sounds interesting, if so.


The best thing about LFN, when it was good, was that it wasn't so easy
figure out who the bad guys were, even after the fact.

Center was the, well, center of a worldwide antiterrorist network, one of
whose branches Nikita worked for. Center, and Section One, and Nikita,
all used tactics that would have made John Ashcroft cry foul and join the
ACLU. On the other hand, they fought terrorists whose tactics and scale
would have been the subject of Osama Bin Laden's wet dreams.

So, serious end-justifies-the-means question mark time. At a purely
tactical level, Center's efforts to stop Red Cell's nefarious plot du
jour made Center the Good Guys for the day. But there was an ongoing
battle for the soul of Center, Section One, and all the rest, that was
more important and less clear.


By the start of the third season it was unfortunately clear to the
audience that the show was unclear on these points because, like the
X-Files mytharc, they were making it up as they went along. The final
retcon being particularly atrocious in that regard. A pity, because it
is a story I would have liked to see done well.



--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*schillin@spock.usc.edu * for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
 >> Stay informed about: Writers who jumped the shark 

On Sat, 5 Jul 2003, Matt Ruff wrote:

> Tuvix wrote:
> >
> > But as far as his writing goes, I much prefer King on drugs to present
> > day sober King. King on drugs LOVED writing. He's described it as
> > being another addiction, another escape, just like the drugs were.
> > Sober, drug free King seems to hate writing, seems to not enjoy
> > "falling through the hole in the page" as he describes it.
>
> Just yesterday I flipping through the forward and intro to the revised
> Dark Tower/Gunslinger at B&N, and, yeah, he comes across as a really
> world-weary, crotchety old guy now -- I think Vonnegut and Stanislaw Lem
> still have him beat on that front, but not by much. It's sad.

I have to read that intro, because I've been hearing about it on the
King newsgroup, and the general gist I got of it was that he has
a fairly poor opinion of his younger self's pretensions...is that
what he says? I always felt that the "Uncut" Stand was revised
with that sort of contempt, or lack of appreciation for his
younger self's ambition. It's also possible that the extreme drug
and booze usage fried his brain somewhat, and he just doesn't
get the more subtle aspects of his younger self's writing...the
attempts to be poetic, for example (which I always thought very
successful).
 >> Stay informed about: Writers who jumped the shark 

>It's a hack feature, however. A lack of attention to continuity, in
>service of what will be "cool" or "interesting" is a hacky
>calculation, albeit an intelligent hacky calculation.

I don't think that's true. A hack simply repeats the same stories again and
again.
 >> Stay informed about: Writers who jumped the shark 

myrnag2555.TakeThisOut@aol.com (Myrnag2555) wrote in message news:<20030707054737.26077.00000174.TakeThisOut@mb-m16.aol.com>...
> >It's a hack feature, however. A lack of attention to continuity, in
> >service of what will be "cool" or "interesting" is a hacky
> >calculation, albeit an intelligent hacky calculation.
>
> I don't think that's true. A hack simply repeats the same stories again and
> again.


I'm not so sure. It seems to me that a hack may tell
different stories over time, following the vagaries
of fashion, and still be pretty worthless.


David Loftus
 >> Stay informed about: Writers who jumped the shark 

mcdolemite RemoveThis @hotmail.com (Ian McDowell) writes:

>schillin@spock.usc.edu (John Schilling) wrote:

>> mcdolemite RemoveThis @hotmail.com (Ian McDowell) writes:

> > >The original point remains. Verne had no intention of Nemo being
>> >Indian when he wrote 20,000 LEAGUES. The "Prince Dakkar' origin only
>> >came to his mind years later, when he was writing the sequel.
>>
>> That isn't clear. It is possible that the "Prince Dakkar" idea came to
>> mind right after being told that he could on no account make the title
>> character a Polish count, and so decided to make him something even more
>> objectionable but not tell anyone.

>This strikes me as highly unlikely. No matter how liberal his
>leanings, aq 19th Century Frenchman would not easilyhave imagined that
>an Indian would be physically indistinguishable from a European, and
>in LEAGUES he describes Nemo as being fair-skinned.

Pale-skinned, not fair-skinned, and "pale" exclusively contrasted with
"ruddy". This is hardly a surprising description for someone who lives
on a submarine. More importantly, ...


>*******************************

>All of the preceding said, those, like me, who have no problem with
>Nemo being shown as so overtly Indian in League must admit that he
>was given no particular ethnicity in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the
>Sea, and that it was only in The Mysterious Island that his ethnicity,
>along with his background, were revealed. Jean-Marc Lofficier was kind
>enough to provide me with a scan of the original illustration by
>Alphonse de Neuville of Captain Nemo, which you can see here.

>The white man, on the right, is Nemo. A (very) rough translation of
>the text which accompanies his first appearance reads:

> The second unknown man deserves a more detailed
> description. A disciple of Gratiolet or Engel could read his
> open physiognomy. I immediately recognised his dominating qualities:
> his confidence, for he held his head nobly on an arc fromed by
> the line of his shoulders, and his black eyes looked at me with a
> cold assurance; his calm, for his skin, pale rather than colored,
> exhibited the quietness of his blood; his energy, which was seen
> in the quick contraction of his muscles; and finally his
> courage, for his great respiration implied a big heart.

....we are not talking about physiology here, but *physiognomy*. This
paragraph tells us next to nothing about Nemo's ethnicity. It tells
us next to nothing about his body, period. It is a description of his
*character*. "Pale skin" means no more or less than that Nemo is
cold and calculating rather than emotional and impulsive, per a dubious
theory of the time that says any cold and calculating person must have
pale skin no matter where he was born.

Verne drops two names and one bit of scientific termonology to let the
audience know he is using anatomical cues to describe the character of
a man who has just appeared on the scene and has not in fact had a chance
to demonstrate such.

This is *not* the paragraph from which to deduce Nemo's ethnicity.


That paragraph comes two pages later.


"My gallant Ned, that country is not clearly marked on the
maps of the world, and I must admit that it's hard to figure
out the nationality of these two strangers. Neither English,
German, nor French, that's all we can say right now. But I'm
inclined to think the commander and his first mate must have
been born in the low latitudes. There must be southern blood
in their veins. But I cannot decide from their looks whether
they are Spaniards, Turks, Arabs, or Indians."
^^^^^^^


>Clearly, Verne engaged in a bit of retconning in changing Nemo into an
>Indian.


Clearly, both you and your source skipped over the strange names and
big words you didn't undertstand, and stopped reading the moment you
found something that you thought supported your position.

But, I will take back one thing I said earlier. Verne did *not* leave
Nemo's ancestry so vague that Polish Count or Indian Prince would have
been equally plausible.

He very nearly ruled out the possibility of Polish origin, and explicitly
suggested Indian, in the original work.


And then there's Nemo's last line in II.3:

"That Indian, professor, lives in the land of the oppressed
and I am to this day and will be until my last breath a
native of that same land."

A statement intended to be heard as only figuratively true, of course,
but in hindsight it looks a awful lot like Verne, the moment he was told
he couldn't make Nemo a Polish count, decided to slip an Indian prince
past the censors.


--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*schillin@spock.usc.edu * for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *









 >> Stay informed about: Writers who jumped the shark