Comic Book World Building for Dummies (and Studio Executives)

The Flash on the CW. So good. So Very Good.

I have an axiom that I use whenever people want to discuss rumors about upcoming super hero movies, and stuff that “they” have said “they” are working on: Until I see a picture of the alleged actor, in costume, on the set, with a cup of Starbucks coffee in his hands, talking to the Director about the next shot they are lining up, my official policy is, It’s Not Happening.

That axiom has saved me a ton of grief over the years. I’ve used the hours I didn’t spend freaking out about things that ultimately did not come to pass to write books, cherish loved ones, and learning to ballroom dance. It’s added much to my quality of life, and I suggest you all implement it immediately.

I bring this up because right now, there’s a lot of talk going on about Warner Brothers’ plans with the DC Universe. You’ve seen the announcement by now, I imagine, but just in case you haven’t, here’s Entertainment Weekly’s coverage of the press release. Forgive me if I don’t get excited, just yet. This sounds like a fanboy’s wish list, and looks like it closely mimics the Marvel Universe movie line up, like their recently-announced Phase Three Plans.

When you compare the two lists, a couple of problems bubble immediately to the surface. Number one, Marvel is into Phase Three of what is clearly a complicated, overlapping, interlocking network of movies—and in fact, every single one of the movies in Phase 1 and Phase 2 has been made or is about to wrap up. DC, on the other hand, has made, remade, and in some cases, re-remade Batman and Superman origin stories until we are sick to death of them. Their one foray into the wider DC Universe was Green Lantern, and it was a hot emerald mess from top to bottom.

And if you remember the not-too-recent history, Warner Brothers has a habit of starting and then scrapping plans when it comes to their super hero franchises. The Doomed-From-the-Start Nick Cage/Tim Burton/Kevin Smith Superman movie is proof of that. How far down the line did they get? And it never got made, right? So, what does this announcement about two Justice League movies mean to me? Bupkiss, is what.

When we do get a Batman and Superman movie—again, because I’ve totally forgotten their iconic-to-the-point-of-being-imprinted-on-our-collective-DNA origin stories, they are either happy accidents (Nolan’s Batman trilogy) or controversial wedges that divide the Geek Nation (Zach Snyder’s Superman). Warner hasn’t hit one out of the park since Nolan’s second Batman movie, The Dark Knight (2008), and even then, there was a small sub-segment complaining that the movie was too dark. But it was that success that took us directly to neck-snapping Superman, because Warner Brothers executives don’t understand their intellectual properties and haven’t in decades.  For the reasons why this is so, I’ll point you to this excellent article on how the accountants are running Hollywood these days, as well as why this is so.

In short, I have no faith, nor any confidence that Warner Brothers Studios will be able to fulfill or deliver on any of the promises made in their grand announcement. It would be great if they could, but if you’ll look closely at me, you’ll notice I’m not holding my breath. I feel like Charlie Brown, trying to kick the football, only instead of trusting Lucy one last time, I’m walking off. I’ve got better things to do.

I told you all of that to tell you this: I am in love with what Warner Television is doing right now.

Arrow. It's gotten much better.

I wasn’t, for a long, long time. Arrow did not grab me, initially, and that’s mostly because I suffered through an excruciatingly long marathon of Smallville—nine seasons, in fact—to get to the “good stuff,” only to find that I really didn’t like where Smallville ended up. I hated the soap opera elements of the show, and I really hated the casual name drops that showed someone in the writer’s room googled “Superboy” but that didn’t always connect with an actual in-show concept. It was too intense, too apologetic about the source material, and way too back lit for my tastes. But for a decade, it was the only live-action super hero show in town.

Yes, I know, there was Birds of Prey. I stand by my original statement.

The first season of Arrow looks and feels exactly like 2001 Smallville, only 30% more Grim and Dark. The Geekster Eggs are dropping like drone strikes, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. “See? We named his SISTER Speedy! Eh? That’s what you guys like, right? Lots of in-jokes?” Then there’s the back story... However, despite all of that, Arrow covered a lot of ground for a show that had nothing more powerful in it than guns, arrows, and martial arts.

The second season felt like a response to the Internet, and so here come the super powers. Nothing major, just yet. Super soldier stuff, mostly. I suspect this toning down of the Four-Color Hero stuff was a way to pitch it to executives that didn’t quite get what the show was about. “Green Arrow? Why is it green? You know, studies have shown that Orange is trending with the kids right now. Let’s call him Orange Arrow!” Hey, I get it; you had to get the show on the air. That’s why the soap opera elements are cranked up through the roof and there’s not a lot of trick arrows flying around. But it got better. And it continues to move closer to what we wanted to see in the first place: super heroes doing super hero shit.

But in the middle of the series, we get to watch the Flash’s origin play out, and then suddenly, the kid gloves are off, and they never come back on. It’s still Grim Dark, and major characters are dropping like flies, because that’s how you keep people’s (and hero’s) interest; by slaughtering everyone around them.  Somewhere in there, it was announced that they were spinning off a Flash TV show. Helmed by the same guy that did Arrow. Very cool, but...will it be Grim and Dark? I was initially worried, because in the new, retconned, and thoroughly unnecessary origin written by Geoff Johns, young Barry Allen witnesses his mother’s death at the hands of a super speedster dressed in yellow. Because we can’t have nice things, apparently. Everyone has to die, or there’s no reason to be a super hero.

Aside from that, the show has been a real breath of fresh air, throwing villains out into the show, nilly-willy, and with alacrity in its heart. Actual super powered villains. Captain Cold, for example. Granted, he’s not dressed in the blue and white parka, but you didn’t really expect him to be, now, did you? And instead of reworking his name, they kept Leonard Snart. No stupid fake Easter Eggs here that go nowhere and do nothing. When one of the characters says Ralph Dibny (and he does), he’s talking about the guy who will become The Elongated Man. Really? How cool is that?

And you can really appreciate the difference in tone from the two part, two show crossover (one of which was named The Brave and the Bold) and see these two characters working side-by-side. It’s striking at just how different the shows are. But the more important thing going on here isn’t the transformation that has taken place in just two and a half seasons of Arrow and a half season of The Flash. No, the thing you need to be checking out is the world building going on.

Those two shows are building the DCU right under Warner Brothers Studios’ noses.

So far, in the two series, Arrow and The Flash, we have been introduced to, among other minor and lesser and non-powered characters the following DC staples:

The Huntress

Count Vertigo

Black Canary

H.I.V.E.

A.R.G.U.S.

Amanda Waller

The Suicide Squad

Deathstroke, The Terminator

Deadshot

The League of Assassins

Ra’s Al Ghul

Speedy/Arsenal

Brother Blood

Wildcat

Bronze Tiger

China White

Captain Boomerang

The Atom

S.T.A.R. Labs

The Flash

The Crisis on Infinite Earths event

Captain Cold

Reverse Flash

Weather Wizard

Multiplex

Prism

Mist

Plastique

Simon Stagg (and Java)

Gorilla Grodd

Firestorm, the Nuclear Man

Grodd! Grodd! I swallowed my gum when I saw this.

This is not every single reference in both shows: I specifically omitted characters whose names were appropriated in a stupid way and never used (Arrow, seasons 1 and 2) and that list of characters we all heard, but haven’t seen yet (The Flash, season 1) I ended with Gorilla Grodd and Firestorm on purpose. Show of hands, here: who among you ever thought in your wildest dreams that we’d ever see Gorilla Grodd and Firestorm on live-action TV? If you actually raised your hands, then take a well-deserved victory lap, because the rest of us just snort-laughed and said, “Sh-yeah, that’ll be the day. We can’t even get a Wonder Woman movie.”

That list above encompasses some very large concepts and real estate in the DC Universe. First of all, I want to point out that the League of Assassins and Ra’s al Ghul are Batman Family concepts, and pretty big ones, at that. So Star(ling) City and Central City are in the same world as Gotham and Metropolis. That means, Bludhaven, Hub City, Coast City, and in fact, they’ve already mentioned Keystone City. Pick your favorites, place your bets, ladies and gents! The Question? Nightwing? Who’s up next in this collection of shows? Another spin-off? Sign me up, man.

Greg Berlanti, the creator of both Arrow and The Flash, is in a unique position at the moment. He’ll have two full seasons of Flash and four seasons of Arrow under his belt before the next turgid, overblown Zach Snyder movie trundles in and splits the comic con hall in twain again. Considering how fast (forgive me) The Flash is developing, how much extra world building do you think he can get done between now and then? Firestorm? Metamorpho? The Atom? 

Granted, it’s not Hawkman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern, but at this point, who would you rather have helming those projects? The movie studio that gave us that last Superman fiasco, or the guys who just pulled off a Two-Part Green Arrow/Flash Cross Over that introduced Prism (formerly known in the Silver Age as the Rainbow Raider, I swear to God) and Captain Boomerang? You heard me, Captain Boomerang, and he was a bad ass from start to finish. I’ll take door number two, every single time.

I should be the target audience for this. Instead, I'm
dreading it worse than a trip to my German Dentist.

So stop worrying about the DC movies. There’s nothing you can do to save them, except, you know, stop thinking they are going to be great. The odds are not in your favor, here. And they won’t be, either. Let them go. If you want to see them, fine. But if you don’t like them—and you probably won’t—the worst thing you can do is contribute to their bottom line. The only way to get what you want in today’s culture is to loudly explain why you’re not giving the company any money, and then, you know, don’t give them any money.

Better instead to loudly talk about what you DO want. For example, Grant Gustin is currently owning The Flash. Likewise Stephen Amell as Green Arrow. If you think they deserve to be in The Justice League Part 1 and Part 2, then boost that thought to the rafters. Dangle money in front of that idea. That’s what the studios will reply to. Kvetching about what’s maybe going to happen online is akin to building a moat around your house in case the Visigoths ever decide to attack you. It’s a big waste of time, and there’s no guarantees about anything anyway.

The really sad thing is, Warner Brothers Studios could use the television shows to its advantage. After all, Arrow and The Flash are doing all of the heavy lifting, right now. They could swoop in after two more seasons, scoop everyone up, and announce a JLA movie with all of the current cast members and get not only the movie-going crowd, but every single person watching any of the TV shows. And they would spend exponentially less money on marketing, salaries, and so forth. But they won’t do that. They are incapable of playing nice with others.  So we’re going to see this weird TV versus the Movies thing play out, and fans are going to try to convince themselves that it’s Earth 1 and Earth 2 and this was the plan all along, and yadda yadda yadda. And it’s not any of that. It’s willful ignorance and petty jealousy propping up tent pole movies and counting the bottom line and calling that movie-making. 

I’ll stick with Berlanti, thanks all the same.

Some Unapologetic Hugo Ballot Campaigning

Yeah, I know what you're going to say: the Hugos are Broken, awards don't mean anything, it's not about winning something, my vote doesn't matter because of X,Y and Z, and insert-your-personal-complaint-here. I'm not going to debate any of what you just said.

But if the system can be gamed, then let's game it.

I'm not telling anyone what to do. But there are a lot of blanks on the Hugo Awards nomination ballot, and every year, I see stuff that I've never heard of, or seen, or experienced. Just once, I'd like to be in on that campaigning little clique. Note: I've not included every category below. If you attended last year, you may already have some thoughts on the matter. You may have already filled out your nomination ballot. The good news is this: you can revisit that ballot and add things. Yep. You really can. Go here: http://www.loncon3.org/nominations.php and do it. Here's the official website to the Hugos, as well: http://www.thehugoawards.org/ If you were in attendance at Lone Star Con 3 last year, you can nominate! See the Hugos website for other ways to participate.

Anyone who knows me and my interests will have no difficulty translating why I listed what I did. This is an attempt to load at least a couple of heroic fantasy works/things I care about/people who are no longer with us/my own shit onto a ballot that, despite the grand list of reasons why you shouldn't, (and despite the industry's ongoing struggle to catch up to the latter half of the twentieth century re: parity, gender issues, and POC problems) is still a going concern. I picked a few things that are of a heroic fantasy/sword and sorcery nature to highlight. Feel free to add more when you go vote. If you need a refresher, there's linkage below.

Best Short Story

TITLE                                                 AUTHOR                   PUBLISHER
"Timeout"                                            Neal Barrett, Jr.           Ray Guns OverTexas/FACT

                                                                                                           
"Defenders of Beeman County"         Aaron Allston               Ray Guns OverTexas/FACT

"Take a Left at the Cretaceous"          Mark Finn                     Ray Guns OverTexas/FACT

The good thing about the ballot is, you can put multiple things on it. So, that's nice!

Best Related Work

TITLE                                                 AUTHOR                   PUBLISHER

Blood  & Thunder:The Life               Mark Finn                   The Robert E. Howard Foundation Press

and Art of Robert E. Howard                                                                   

(2^nd edition trade paperback)

The first edition of Blood & Thunder garnered a World Fantasy nomination (not a win), and it would be nice if the second edition would at least capture a nomination. I have no doubt that few enough people have read the biography that are part of the Floating Temporary Permanent WorldCon Convention Staff and Attendees and would vote for it on the official ballot, but a nomination alone would allow the book to justifiably stay in print as a scholarly work. 
                                                                                 

Best Graphic Story

TITLE                                                 AUTHOR                               PUBLISHER

King Conan: Hour of the Dragon       Tim Truman                             Dark Horse Comics

Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)

TITLE                         CREATOR/WRITER/DIRECTOR               STUDIO/SERIES

“The Red Wedding”       Erin Gibson, Bradly Schulz            HBO/Game of Thrones

Best Editor (Short Form)

EDITOR

Rick Klaw                   RaygunsOver Texas

Rick has been doing this for a while, and doing right by the authors and artists he's worked with. He deserves a nomination.

Best Editor (Long Form)

EDITOR

Lou Anders                 PYR

Best Professional Artist

ARTIST

Tom Gianni                             RobertE. Howard Foundation Books

Best Fancast

TITLE                                     PERSONNEL

The Cromcast                          Josh Adkins, Luke Dodd, Jon Larson

Discussion: Fear on Film, from 1982

(From L to R) the moderator, Landis, Carpenter, and
Cronenberg on the set of this TV program that ended
up being a huge influence on me. How strange.

When I was growing up in Abilene, Texas, there were limited resources for a kid that was into weird stuff. Truly, had it not been for the baffling ability for Abilene to pull in KTVT  channel 11 and WFAA channel 8 from Dallas, along with KERA channel 13, the PBS station that ran Star Trek and Dr. Who and Monty Python's Flying Circus, I don't know if I would have turned out like I did. Well, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have had as deep a pop cultural education, in any case.

One of my most important early resources for news and information was Starlog magazine and Fangoria magazine. These early issues weren't so press release heavy back then; in fact, they often had to go find stories and make content for the magazine, which led to some really great articles about a lot of interesting stuff. One of those articles in an early issue, (maybe issue #9?) was called "Fear on Film" and it was a partial transcription and report about a round table discussion between John Landis, David Cronenberg, and John Carpenter. This was in 1982, and Cronenberg was the "old hand" at the time, having successfully made Rabid, Shivers, The Brood, and Scanners. Landis was white hot coming off of American Werewolf in London. And Carpenter had made a little movie called Halloween and also The Fog, and was working on The Thing. Talk about three directors at the top of their game. 

The article was interesting, and I never forgot reading it. But yesterday, I stumbled across THIS on the interwebs. Oh, thank you, sweet Interwebs!

Fear on Film, Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoGIyAtCJ-k

Fear on Film, Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2dKmFG-CTI

Fear on Film, Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vjjQH71Q7c

This was a great discussion, and if I had any complaints, it would be that it was only a thirty minute talk. The moderator is pretty good, but the three guys are good speakers and eager to talk about their work. Very interesting stuff, particularly from Cronenberg, whom Landis and Carpenter seem deferential to. If you've never seen it, give the interview a watch. 

It's telling to me that all of this is happening before Landis' tragedy on the set of the Twilight Zone Movie (though he may have been about to work on it), before Cronenberg made Videodrome and the Fly, and before Carpenter went off the rails completely. Basically, they are still young enough that they've got stuff to prove and talk about, and hadn't been completely eaten alive by Hollywood yet. 

I miss the early days of Fangoria. If I'd had a decent amount of art training, I might well have ended up a contestant on Face Off. 

This is my WorldCon Schedule

It's a lot of stuff, but in my defense, a big chuck of it is all Robert E. Howard-related. The rest is a mix of groups, receptions, and clutches of things I've done with other people, and a few panels that have nothing to do with REH. Oh, and a beer session, a reading, and an autographing. Fair warning: I will be in huckster mode during this convention, in that I'll have stuff for sale and it'll likely be on me at all times. Nothing too expensive, mind you: the Tinglers are only two bucks a piece, for Pete's sake. Twelve dollars is the upper limit. So, I'm selling, but it's all AFFORDABLE, see?

Enough of that. Here's my schedule for WorldCon, and I'd appreciate any prayers or good vibes. I'm gonna need it to get through all of this!

The First Barbarian of Texas: Conan the Cimmerian

Thursday 12:00 - 13:00

For over 80 years, Conan has ruled the roost as the literary and pop culture definition of "barbarian." What makes Conan so popular in and out of the U.S., with readers and film-goers, and fans of all ages? Is his reign likely to continue into the 22nd century?

You Don't Know Jack about Bob: What's New in Robert E. Howard Studies

Thursday 13:00 - 14:00

If you read the Conan paperbacks in the 1970s and 1980s, but haven't checked out what's been going on in the wild world of Robert E. Howard since the Millennium, then you have missed out on a lot! In the last decade there have been new biographical discoveries, new authoritative editions of Howard's work, and so much more. Come get caught up with some noted experts.

The Apes of Wrath!

Thursday 15:00 - 16:00

Join Rick Klaw and his cadre of authors as they discuss the idea of a literary ape anthology and how it all came to be.

Reception & Readings: Rayguns Over Texas

Thursday 18:30 - 20:30

This reception is the launch of Rayguns Over Texas, a new anthology edited by Rick Klaw and published by the Fan Association of Central Texas. Note: This event will be held at the central branch of San Antonio Public Library.

Barbarian Days: Starring the BNFs of Howard Fandom

Friday 13:00 - 14:00

A warm-hearted documentary about the annual celebration of Robert E. Howard and the devoted fans who make the trip to Cross Plains, Texas, every year. Our film festival will be screening this film, followed by a discussion with the subjects of the documentary.

Two-Gun Bob: The Somewhat True Tales of Robert E. Howard

Friday 16:00 - 17:00

Writing a biography is an inexact science, and it's made all the more difficult when the subject in question was less than truthful about what they chose to tell other people about themselves. Four Robert E. Howard experts will shatter long-standing myths about Howard's life and talk about how they separate fact from fiction when writing about REH.

Literary Beer: Mark Finn, Jayme Lynn Blaschke

Saturday 15:00 - 16:00

Robert E. Howard: The Weird, West, and Worms

Saturday 17:00 - 18:00

Paper session. Jeffrey Shanks and Mark Finn, Independent Scholars, present "Vaqueros and Vampires: Robert E. Howard and the Genesis of the Weird Western." And Jeffrey Shanks, Independent Scholar, presents "Evolutionary Otherness: Anthropological Anxiety in Robert E. Howard's 'Worms of the Earth.'"

Gorillas in Science Fiction: The Encore Performance!

Saturday 19:00 - 20:00

You've heard about it for years! Now it's back for one final presentation you do not want to miss! There is no movie that cannot be made better by the judicious application of a gorilla. Examples abound, and you'll get a ringside seat when our panel discusses the best -- and the worst -- of simian cinema, and celebrate the 80th anniversary of the film that started it all, KING KONG!

The Wild, Weird, and Wonderful Westerns of Robert E. Howard

Sunday 13:00 - 14:00

At the end of his life, Robert E. Howard was making good money writing humorous, and also very dark, westerns. In fact, westerns abound all throughout Howard's short, intense career. Our panelists talk about everything from the hilarious Breckinridge Elkins series to the deadly earnest story, "Wild Water."

Reading: Mark Finn

Sunday 16:00 - 16:30

Robert E. Howard at the Ice House

Sunday 18:00 - 19:00

Howard was an amateur boxer, and wrote mountains of boxing stories. No kidding! Here's a rare opportunity to hear about the boxing canon of Robert E. Howard from the editors of the FOUR VOLUME series currently being published by the Robert E. Howard Foundation Press. Warning: attending this panel may cause an outburst of laughter, followed by a burning desire to read Howard's boxing stories.

Comic Book Movies: From the Page to the Screen

Monday 10:00 - 11:00

There have been more comic book movies in the past decade than in the entire 20th century combined. How do they hold up? What are the best and the worst examples of a successful transition? Our panelists draw comparisons (and maybe even blood)!

Autographing: Yasser Bahjatt, Mark Finn, Susan Krinard, Walter John WIlliams

Monday 13:00 - 14:00

This is Why We Fail: SharkNado, Schadenfreude, and Schlock

There are no words. There just aren't.

I did NOT want to watch SharkNado. I didn't. I barely glanced at it when the blurb hit FaceBook. I saw a picture of a CGI shark, inside of a CGI tornado, and weirdly, was able to put the entire movie together in my head in the span of a nanosecond.

But then, Wil Wheaton started tweeting his excitement. I noticed he wasn't the only one. Many of my friends, professionals in their industries, and known for having a modicum of taste and common sense, were enthusiastic--nay, giddy, about watching the movie. I looked again. Yes, it was a "SyFy Original," which is code for, "we spent no money, time, or effort on this movie."

I've long had a problem with SF fans who insist on watching everything that the SyFy channel pumps out (or for that matter, any of the big network channels) that has even a whisper of science fiction and/or fantasy elements to it. "We have to watch," they tell themselves and others. "If we don't, then Hollywood will never, ever make another science fiction television show for as long as it lives, and we'll have nothing to watch, then." And oh, the gymnastics they go through to try and convince themselves to keep watching the show. "Well, see, the first season, all twenty-four hour-long episodes of it, is pretty much just the set-up for the premise. It doesn't start to get good until the second season, about mid-way through. But in the third season, that's when the show takes off! Of course, they cancelled it after the third season, so you have to read what happens next on the website. But the next hit show that SyFy vomits out...that'll be the good one!" Yeah, right.

I am apparently the only person who is bothered by a television network called "SyFy" that consistently produces the worst kinds of shows in the name of Sci-Fi, or SF, or whatever we've decided to call it this week. It's garbage, all of it. From the reality shows, to the ghost-hunting shows, to the original series, to the special "movie events...like, um, well, SharkNado."

There's this production company in Los Angeles called The Asylum that produces these made-for-tv monstrosities. They also produce direct to video movies that are specifically designed to trick the unwary into picking up their movie instead of the actual film they were looking for. Here's a good example of what I'm talking about.


Here's the poster (and presumably the DVD box cover) for Paranormal Activity, a mega-hit that was made for $15,000 dollars. It was widely seen and most people who like that sort of thing really liked it.








Here is the poster for The Asylum's Paranormal Entity. It very likely had the same budget as Paranormal Activity, and was only seen by the people who foolishly went into Hollywood Video, glanced at the cover, and then snatched it up and screamed, "Hey, Enid! Here's that Paranomal movie you was wantin' to see. You wanna get it tonight?"




This is the kind of stuff they do, on purpose, all of the time.

Of course, there's a rich history of production companies that latch onto the success of their peers like a remora and feeds on that bigger, better company's ideas. The television career of producer Glen A. Larson comes to mind (we used to call him "Glen Larsony"). So, I'm not down on The Asylum for their lamprey-like exploitation of Shark Week. I understand. There's a rich tradition of douchebaggery in Los Angeles, and they are just upholding that tradition.

I'm down on The Asylum because they have given up. The writers, directors, PA's, post-production staff, all of them...they have given up. L.A. has beaten them, and they are lashing out at L.A. and taking us with them in the process.

I won't bother to recount SharkNado for you. Not when there's someone willing to play along and gleefully tick off the plot points like a Middle School Queen Bee with a case of the Gossips. I'll let her tell you all about it.

Now, presuming that you either watched this...I hesitate to even call it a movie...or you read the synopsis, let me tell you what this, um, production is really all about. It's hate mail for Los Angeles.

The film "stars" a guy from Beverly Hills 90210, Tara Reid, and John Heard in the Steve McQueen Money Shot role. None of them are taking it seriously. How can they? SharkNado is a mass of stock footage, terrible computer-generated sharks (and I mean terrible--not "oh, it's CGI, I can tell" or "Oh, this looks more like a video game," but truly terrible as in, "I don't know much about the animation software being used by amateur filmmakers these days, but I'm pretty sure that given an hour or two, I could draw, render, and animate a more realistic looking shark using only my feet."), and a story that ignores logic--even movie logic, physics--even movie physics, and science--even movie science. It's got the appeal of a sociopathic five year old's imaginative drawings, but it never delivers on any of the above premises. All it does is bitch and moan about L.A.

I get it, L.A. is a terrible place to live. Yes, we know, the 405 is a soul-sucking monster. Right, I know, people in L.A. are crazy, and they complain incessantly. Yes, everyone is Beverly Hills is deluded. Douchebaggery abounds. Is the solution, then, to flood L.A. with ravenous, terribly-drawn sharks who can devour these people whole in a matter of seconds? Apparently so.

Of course, the only way to accomplish this is by having waterspouts and waves appear, like magic, out of nowhere, to destroy everything behind the heroes at just the right time. Waves and waterspouts--full of sharks, mind you, that crash down on these poor sinners and freaks and creeps and guys who stop on the 405 at Rush Hour because COME ON, MAN! AREN'T WE ALL IN ENOUGH PAIN WITHOUT YOU GETTING OUT OF YOUR FREAKING CAR? And what a coincidence that the sharks are conveniently swimming in these crashing waves, mouths open, to descend right straight down on the people that most need to get eaten. Mother Nature at work, y'all. What comes around, goes around.

I kept expecting the guy from 90210 to look at the camera and wink every time someone said "Beverly Hills." His character's name is Fin, by the way. Clever.

Yes, that's Beverly Hills 90210's Ian Ziering, Yes, he is
holding a chainsaw. Yes, he is, in fact, about to jump into
a flying shark's mouth. Spoiler Alert.

In the end, L.A. is devastated by waterspouts full of sharks, which was, I suspect, the original nugget of inspiration for the movie: a waterspout that picks up a deadly sea creature and deposits it on an inland coast somewhere. I think I could have and would have preferred that as a premise. One creature. Not, um, every shark in the friggin' ocean.

After all of the people that have in some way offended the writer have been killed, the final showdown happens and it's laughable. Not just in concept, but in execution. Once all of the principles are reunited, they look out over the new waterlogged sharkscape that L.A. has become, and, I don't know, make a silent promise to rebuild the city without the 405?

Taking Responsibility

Look, I'm just as guilty as the rest of you, okay? I watched it. I started it late, because I just had to finish watching Jason and the Argonauts on TMC. You folks might like it. See, in that movie, the special effects actually look like they are interacting with the live-action actors, unlike SharkNado...BOOM! Harryhausen Slam! In your Face, SharkNado! As I watched, incredulously, zipping through the advertising that was bought so that this collection of scenes could be inflicted on the viewing public, I felt a real sense of shame and embarrassment for the actors, all of whom took the job so they could pay rent in shitty apartments in L.A. for another two months.

I watched it, and it made me sad. It made me angry and sad. Well, the ending made me laugh, but it was a cathartic laugh, like the joke that someone told you at your father's funeral that broke the tension and gave you a break from your grief.

Think I'm overstating it? I know that some of you right now are thinking that I missed the point entirely. "But Finn, it's so bad, it's good!" you're probably saying to your screen. I respectfully disagree.

I've mentioned Schadenfreude before. I think most of you know what it means: it's getting pleasure from witnessing the misfortune of other people. It's the Germanic tendency that is single-handedly propping up reality television right now. The literal german to english translation of the term is "Fail-Joy." Isn't that perfect? I think that most of the people watching SharkNado were doing it to activate their "fail-joy." No one really liked SharkNado. In the back of your mind, somewhere, you were thinking, "I could have done a better job at this." You were probably right, but in the tweetscape's desire to make funny that which should never have been produced in the first place, we have lost a piece of our soul in the process. And we may never get it back.

Let me tell you what my definition of "So Bad It's Good" means. I think there are measurable criteria.  This article here is spun out of a whole book on the subject. Our definitions differ slightly, but the point is still the same. A movie is considered so bad it's good when:

1. there is something in the movie that transcends its meager offering; Plan 9 From Outer Space is the quintessential example of this. Ed Wood's earnestness can be seen and felt in the whole movie. It's like watching your seven year old nephew put on a play that he believes wholeheartedly in.

2. you can see a real viewpoint hiding under the subject matter; A great example of this is the movie, They Live. There's a cool, cool idea hiding under that godawful, cheese-riddled flick.

3. the movie's parts are greater than its sum; A perfect example is the movie, Lake Placid. The script is what holds the movie together. Every scene has Bridgett Fonda trying to upstage Bill Pullman, who is trying to keep up with Oliver Platt, who is trying to outdo Betty White. They are bringing it, and while the delivery falls flat on the special effects, you end up kinda liking and caring about everyone onscreen.

There are tons of other movies that make this cut or don't, based largely on intention. The only reason why Robot Monster is on any of the lists is not because it's "so bad it's good" but because it's just bad, period. I like it as an example of how things used to get thrown together back in the olden days, when they had a couple of pretty actors and actresses, some stock footage, and a suit for a guy to wear. They would write the script around the elements, rather than write a story and try to make something good. So, it's on my list as a first alternate. Not as a prime example. But it does sound an awful lot like, well, SharkNado. Are you following me?

SharkNado doesn't rise above its intentions. There is no ancillary viewpoint to consider. Even the artistry is lacking--no one said, "I know this is shit, but dammit, I'm going to make the best-looking sharks I can render and really try to make them seem real!" No one said that. No one did that. No one wrote a brilliantly pithy script in spite of the craptastic production values. The actors deliver all of their lines with the grace and pomp of Leslie Nielson in Forbidden Planet. That's great, if you're watching Forbidden Planet, but when you're watching SharkNado, you get the feeling that they just signed on to the film for the sweet, sweet craft services lunches. There's nothing to connect the characters with one another, nor to the audience. They don't even bother to follow the rules of disaster movies. This isn't even disaster-porn. It's not even shark porn. There's nothing to see, here, folks, except people trying to earn a S.A.G. card.

SharkNado gives Movies So Bad That They are Good a Bad Name.

Here's the real tragedy from this: according to Hollywood, this is a success. Everyone's talking about the explosion on Twitter. Thunder Levin (the writer) quipped that he'll need an agent now. SyFy, make no mistake about it, is delirious. I'm sure they feel that there's no such thing as bad press. They are, as we speak, framing these films as "event pieces--things people watch in real-time, like a smart-mob mode--the new digital paradigm for 2013 and beyond."

And this, right here, is why Hollywood thinks we are stupid. They don't consider that we could possibly want a better story, not when everyone is willing to tweet about SharkNado. They think we don't know the difference between Schindler's List and Z-grade Schlock. This is the same group of people that have speculated on why it looks like The Lone Ranger is set to fail at the box office, and why, they wonder out loud, in print, Pacific Rim looks like it'll tank, as well. This then gets picked up by the fake-news blogs in the Geek Nation and the Nerdiverse because they think that by linking to Variety.com it somehow legitimizes something about anything. It all becomes a white noise of self-fulfilling prophesies, because if I9.com said it, even if they are repeating what Variety said, then it must be true. In fact, it's all false. It's meaningless babble in a slow celebrity-scandal week. That's all.

When did we decide to let those people over there tell us what we like and don't like? Who asked for SharkNado? Did anyone say that title out loud? Who was at that pitch meeting? Who thought it would be a good (as in, so bad it's good) idea? Why aren't we advocating for better television?

I just feel bullied by Hollywood at this point. I don't think they get me. I don't think they ever did. I don't think they get many of you, either. And while I appreciate your concerted effort to make lemonade out of lemons with your genuinely funny tweets and your absolutely appropriate sarcasm about SharkNado, I think we're better off going thirsty for a while and demanding better for ourselves.

Oh, and I know some of you are probably thinking that there's a component of jealousy in my disdain for this film and the subsequent event. Let me clarify it for you: it's not jealousy. It's envy. I'd love to be able to write low-budget films for a company and have them get made and seen by hundreds of people. That would be great. Really, it would.

But not at the expense of compromising my art and my craft to intentionally make crap. If I was told that I could make, what, fifteen thousand dollars writing shark-themed scripts, but they would have to include X, Y, and Z, I would turn the job down. I know you don't believe me, but it's true. Especially where I am now, industry-wise. I wouldn't want to write anything that could confuse someone looking at it into thinking that I don't care about my audience, that I phone things in for the money, or that I have a total lack of regard for my own reputation. I know Hunter Levin thinks he's got a streak of hits going now, but he's in a bubble. When it pops, he'll be the guy who wrote SharkNado, and good luck with that one, pal. Personally, I'd rather set myself on fire.

"I Had No Idea he was a Racist Douchebag"

We just had a fan quit Robert E. Howard studies today. This person, who identified themselves only as "Red Dragon" on Facebook, announced their intention with that above line, and followed it with a short checklist of what was to come next. All of their books were to be binned, and they would unsubscribe from all of the REH lists that they were on. "I will seriously have sold my conan stuff by tomorrow and will never read another thing by him again," Red Dragon posted. Older, wiser heads attempted to prevail, but Red Dragon was presumably already long gone.

Now, I don't know anything about this person other than the fact that their picture on FaceBook was that of a woman, with blonde hair, maybe twenty-five to thirty. I make no assumptions as to if Red Dragon was truly a woman or a G.I.R.L. (Guy in Real Life). This is the Internet. Anything is possible.

But I do want to use this example to point out something: Here was a person, attracted to the writings of a long-dead author, so much so that they bought a pile of books, read them all, and jumped online and joined a number of fan groups, Facebook pages, and participated in discussions. I'd consider that to be fairly typical fan behavior, certainly well within the bounds of reason.

I don't know what Red Dragon ran across that made this sudden change happen--the popular supposition is that they read part of a discussion about a story Howard wrote when he was still a teenager called "The Last White Man." It's a bit of unpublished juvenilia about, well, you can guess what it's about. It was written in response to a letter penned by one of Howard's close, personal friends--a person who was, himself, a member of an organization that was active in the persecution of African-Americans. The story was not published in Howard's lifetime, and in fact, the only reason it was published at all was for the sake of completeness. Another gem from Howard's school days was "A Boy, A Beehive, and a Chinaman." So, you know, that's the thinking of a young Robert E. Howard, right there.

I want to say something, but it won't change anyone's mind. I'm a native Texan, and I'm over forty. This makes me the enemy in the eyes of the younger generations. But I want to walk carefully through this anyway, because it's taken me a while to get to this particular place. Maybe my journey will be of some use to someone out there. Maybe.

I think the thing that bothers me the most about Red Dragon's sudden reversal was that there was no attempt to square the things that originally attracted Red Dragon to Howard's writing, so much so that they would seek out other like-minded people, and the story in question that they heard about in an online conversation. Red Dragon basically threw Howard under the bus with the revelation that he wrote "the Last White Man." Granted, it's not Howard's finest hour, and I wouldn't recommend the story to, well, anyone--and I say that having written charitably a half million words on Howard in the last fifteen years. But this was clearly not something that Red Dragon had picked up on prior to their  declaration, and for one very likely reason: that's not the takeaway message from Robert E. Howard's work.

Oh, the Internet will tell you differently, to be sure. There are a few blog posts out there by folks who started reading Conan and were drawn up short by this monstrous, over-arching racism--or words to that effect. And then they'd blog about what a terrible person Robert E. Howard is. As if he was the first person in fantasy to write about different cultures in an insensitive way. Conan, Solomon Kane, and other stories about other characters--all racist. It's right there. It's repulsive. They just couldn't get through it.

I'm not going to defend the position that Howard isn't a racist. Partially because I think the word "racist" has come to mean something very different than what Funk and Wagnalls will tell you. I think "racist" in modern day language is another word for "outcast" or "pariah." It's verbal leprosy. Someone who is a racist is someone to be shunned, for fear that their disease, their poison, seep into your ears and eyes and rot your brain and turn you into one of them. This notion of the power of speech, or the printed word, is a new thing, I think, and certainly bears discussion somewhere else. But more to the point, "racist" implies that there's an active component in place; a willful need to infect others in a way that is impossible to defend against, like a zombie pathogen.

I won't lambast the younger generation for a lack of critical thinking skills, because that would be showing my age. But I will lambast the generation ahead of me for setting up this idea of "Political Correctness" that has led to a kind of intolerance for anything that is deemed offensive or hurtful to another person, regardless of context, meaning, and intent. Enough about that. We were talking about Robert E. Howard.

Here are some facts: Howard employed language which was well within societal norms in the 1920s and 1930s, but is certainly not appropriate now. Howard wrote about a variety of races and peoples and ethnicities, mostly in his fantasy stories, but also in a number of historical adventures. He used language that was stereotypical, and occasionally derogatory, when talking about these people. Sometimes, they were heroes. Sometimes they were sympathetically portrayed. Sometimes they were the bad guys. In a few cases, Howard wrote recurring characters of color. These characters and descriptions were based almost entirely on what he read in the pulps, and what books he was able to get his hands on. Some of those books were ten, fifteen, twenty years out of date. Other books were fictions by Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain, and other classic authors. Many of the pulps he read features stories set in other countries and time periods, and these pulps also published articles and letters about foreign countries and conflicts. So, for a guy who was landlocked in Central Texas, he did the best he could do.

The other reason why I won't defend the charge of racism is because, in the context of his time and place, Howard was, in fact, a racist. And so was your grandfather. And your great grandfather. And Rudyard Kipling. And Joseph Conrad. And Jack London. And Woodrow Wilson. And just about anyone born prior to 1960 in America. Institutional racism was in full swing, especially in Texas. Separate bathrooms, lynchings, you name it. It was all out there, if not in the wide open, at least tacitly understood. There are just some places you don't go; there are just some people you don't talk to. Granted, every community was different, but by and large, people of color who were a part of a mostly white community were included as exceptions rather than as a rule.  This was the world your grandparents grew up in, by the way. Yes, them, too.

Did Howard know any black people? Sure, a few. He knew a few Hispanics, a Jewish man, and saw and observed Italians, Chinese, and other immigrants in his travels to places like New Orleans and San Antonio. Some of his descriptions were drawn whole cloth from his experiences, or from letters he wrote to correspondents like H.P. Lovecraft, who was himself a xenophobe and a monstrous bigot.

None of this was known to me when I first discovered Robert E. Howard's Conan, coming out of comics and Dungeons and Dragons. There were some folks in the Conan stories who were freed slaves, and there were black, yellow, olive, dusky, and fair skinned people in Conan's world, and they were good, or bad, or rulers, or cowardly dogs, depending on which side of Conan's sword they were on. You can call it white blindness on my part, but I never read Howard's descriptions of ebony skinned cannibals and assumed that Howard was talking about all black men. In fact, it's pretty clear in the story that it's this one city and not everyone in the region. I always liked it when N'Longa, the witch doctor, showed up in the Solomon Kane stories. He was a very different person--on purpose--from straightlaced Puritan Solomon Kane himself. N'Longa gives Kane a Ju-Ju staff, which proves to be a useful magic item in Kane's arsenal against the dark forces. This is heathen magic that the Puritan supposedly has no truck with, and yet, they formed an alliance against monsters.

This was a common pairing in Howard's stories, from Kull and Brule the Spear-Slayer to the unlikely friendships found in Howard's historical tales of the Crusades, and the El Borak stories. A white, if not implicitly W.A.S.P. man, befriends or joins forces with a non-white character for fortune, glory, survival, or friendship. Sometimes it's the end result. Sometimes it's the motive for the story.

Yes, the Africans are "wooly headed." Yes, the Shemite has a hooked nose. I know, I know. That's bad. It's a sloppy shortcut. I won't defend it. Mostly.

It's stereotypical. It's stereotyping. And while it's today considered, well, stereotyping, back in all of popular culture--books, magazines, newspapers, the radio, comics--every media in existence prior to 1945, this was accepted. It was okay, even encouraged, to make these short, sharp descriptors and even judgements about people of other ethnicities than your own. All Irish were hot tempered fighters. All Jewish people were thrifty and shrewd with money. All Italians were overly amorous.  All French people were snobs. All Swedes were big and stupid. These weren't seen as detriments, but rather simplified ways of communicating a set of cultural values and general set of traits at a time when immigration had literally flooded America with millions of people from all over the world. These folks were trying to fit in, and any chance they had to "become Americans," they took. Right up to and including laughing at themselves. Stereotyping was employed by vitually every comedian from the age of Vaudeville up through the rise of radio and later, Television. Many of these comedians moved from medium to medium with their same act, nearly unchanged for forty years.

Jack Benny, a legendary Jewish comedian (who employed a black piano player named Rochester, who spoke in a gruff parody of southern black speech himself) had a very famous bit from his radio show. He's held up at gunpoint by a mugger one evening, who says, "Your money or your life." After a pause, the gunman says, "Well?" and Benny, in his trademark exasperated fashion, says "I'm thinking it over!" One of the recordings online has the audience laughing as soon as the mugger says "Your money or your life." They know Jack Benny, and it's already funny to think that he'd be put in a situation where he has to choose something he values more than his wealth. Stereotypical Jewish behavior, rewritten as a very funny one-liner.

So, I'll cop to it on my part: I never saw what others saw in some of Howard's stories. Not until I got to "Pigeons From Hell" as a teenager, when I first encountered the word "nigger" in the story, did I stop and think about what was going on. After all, that was a word that was forbidden in my house. Well, unless my grandfather said it. Or my father. But anyway. I had to suddenly walk through the time and place of the story and ask myself, "Would a sheriff use that word in casual conversation? In 1936?" And of course, the answer was yes. Yes, he would have. Doesn't mean it's not an ugly word, and while it was certainly a stumbling block, I picked the narrative back up and soldiered on.

The stereotyping was lost on me in the Conan stories. No one likes anyone in the Conan stories. Each country is at war with other countries. People from the Southern kingdoms hate people from the Northern kingdoms. No one has a flattering thing to say about anyone. But that's not the takeaway point of Conan.

N'Longa talks much like the stereotypical educated native to Solomon Kane, and he's definitely what Spike Lee calls a "Magical Negro" in literal, if not figurative, terms. But that's not the takeaway point of Solomon Kane.

Reading "The Ghost of Tom Molyneaux," it's obvious that Ace Jessel speaks in a dialect lifted straight from Huckleberry Finn, if not Uncle Tom's Cabin. It's uncomfortable to read, but that's not the takeaway from any of the boxing stories Howard wrote.

Howard wrote about conflict, often between two cultures, and the sometimes exceptional men that arise from a life built around conflict. Roman or Pict, Moor or Turk, Gael or Dane, and yeah, even White or Black, Howard's message was about overcoming impossible odds, never giving up, never admitting defeat. Howard wrote about the struggle between good and evil, right and wrong, morality and scruples. He wrote about the character of masculinity--in other words, what makes a man. Interestingly, he also wrote a few stories about what makes a woman in a man's world, too. He wrote about the differences between civilization and barbarism and how blurred the line between them sometimes was.

That's what I see when I read Robert E. Howard's work, laid bare. And I know I'm not the only one because he's got millions of fans all over the world who see pretty much the same things. This in no way excuses the stereotyping, or some of the things he said to his friends. But as a reader with critical faculties in place, I think considering when and where he did his writing, it more than mitigates it.

Time and place have to mitigate content. Otherwise, we couldn't read Joseph Conrad, Jack London, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, or anyone else born before 1945. But, then again, there's a copy of Huckleberry Finn floating around right now with nary and N-Bomb in sight, so what do I know?

This is new thinking. I'm pretty sure the kids these days (those in high school and college) aren't willingly reading Conrad, London, Hemingway, or any of the other old, dead, white-guy authors that were "racist douchebags." I don't know when that particular attitude of condemnation for anything that doesn't conform to ones' own internal barometer of taste sprang up, but I suspect it's got something to do with the inflated sense of entitlement and the utter lack of empathy that seems to be all the rage amongst today's hard-wired mall rats.

In the end, there is only the author's work, and the reader's relationship to it. I'm capable of cutting authors some slack when I read their dated works, but then again, I'm a doughy, pasty white guy. Technically, I'm "part of the problem." If you, as a reader, find something so objectionable in a book that it makes you fly into a rage, well, that's your journey, and who am I to say different? I've read some singularly distasteful things in my life--one that springs instantly to mind involves a rape that takes place in a Philip Jose Farmer novel called Lord Tyger. It made me uncomfortable. But after reading it, it didn't turn me into a rapist.

I've read books where the characters are utterly despicable, and say horrible things to and about other characters in the book. Reading those things brought out a number of reactions in me, but they didn't make me into a despicable person. They were just words. Fictional stories, full of words, at that. If they brought out an emotion from me, then the story did its job. Is that not the primary function of art?

Maybe instead of trying to bring the next generation of fans to Robert E. Howard, we need to be waving them off. If reading a word in a story is going to cause them to freak out and rage-quit the author, then that's more flailing about that we don't need. In the past, we've tried to put our best foot forward. We've tried to show critical examinations from both sides of a particular issue. If none of that matters because, well, he was a "racist douchebag," then why waste of of my time and effort? How can someone learn anything knew when they know everything already?

I don't have any answers. If you've read to the end of this very long post, and feel like discussing, have at it.

Ray Harryhausen Is the Father of us All

Ray Harryhausen passed away today at the age of 92. He was, in so many ways, the architect of everything that is great about fantasy movies. If you are a fan of any big, well-realized spectacle of a fantasy film from The Lord of the Rings on down, you owe a debt of gratitude to Ray Harryhausen and his movies, because he set the template, wrote the style sheet on how these movies would be filmed and executed. There isn't a special effects man in the world who hasn't heard of Harryhausen and in some way benefited from watching his work. But Ray was more than just a special effects man--arguably a pioneer in the field of stop motion photography--but he was also an incredible, talented, visionary artist who spent decades breathing life into the inanimate. He was a wizard, a sorcerer, and we have all lost something singular and profound with his passing.

Ray's inspiration for creating movie magic was seeing King Kong as a boy. He told the story often, as famous people who are asked the same questions constantly are wont to do.  It's a good story, and a charming one, but it doesn't really get across the sheer chutzpah of what he did next. He started doing his own stop-motion animation in his garage and when he had enough to show someone, he sought out Willis O'Brien, the man who created the stop-motion effects for King Kong. O'Brien hired Harryhausen as an assistant on the movie, Mighty Joe Young, where he wound up doing much of the work.

O'Brien taught Ray all that he knew, but it was Ray who took that knowledge and elevated stop motion to an art form. His ability to sketch and sculpt served him well as he created better articulated puppets to work with. But whereas O'Brien helped Ray with some technical pointers, it was Ray who began to give his sophisticated action figures individual personalities, specific body language, and emotional arcs. The fantastic creatures didn't just move, anymore; they acted. They came alive. Each one different, no two alike. The cyclops in The Seventh Voyage of Sindbad reacts with confusion when he encounters the sailors. Gwangi the Allosaur plays with its prey. The baboon prince in Sindbad and the Eye of the Tiger is both a monkey and a man in equal measure. Every Ray Harryhausen fan has their favorite creation. But no one disputes Ray's crowning achievement, his technical triumph, in Jason and the Argonauts.

The film's climax has a skeleton horde rising out of the ground to destroy Jason and his crew. The scene is breathtaking in execution, and mind-boggling in its complexity. Ray was in charge of animating five or six skeletons at a time, and each of them had to move a certain way, in coordination with the actor's movements (filmed on location months before), and each of them constantly in motion. You have to think about what that entails:

Skeleton #1: attacking Jason. Head moving forward, left arm moving to block with shield, right arm recovering to swing, left foot back, right foot forward. Mouth closed.

Skeleton #2: attacking sailor. Head moving back. Right arm back. Left arm connecting with sailor's sword. Right foot up, moving to kick the sailor. Left foot planted.

Skeleton #3: Running forward to battle. Head forward, left leg up, right leg down, right arm back, left leg forward.

Skeleton #4: On ground. Head is down. Right arm on forehead, dizzy. Left arm on ground. Sword still in hand. Torso twisting to right. Left leg bent, knee up. Right leg straight out, swinging left.

Skeleton #5: attacking sailor: Head down. Right hand high, sword in hand. Left arm up, shield is connecting with sailor's sword. Body is moving back from the force of the blow. Right leg stepping backward, left leg planted.

Skeleton #6: Climbing onto platform.  Left leg is up, right leg bent and backward.Arms braced on platform at the elbows. Head forward, Mouth open in a scream. Starting to close.

Annnnd, click. That's one frame of film. Now, imagine having to do that for twenty-four frames of film. That's one second of the scene. But don't take my word for it. Watch the entire sequence for yourself.

Granted, you are spoiling the movie for yourself if you haven't seen it, but if you're reading this blog, I'm betting you have, and multiple times. I still smile and gasp when I watch this sequence. The little touches he put into the sequences, like the beheading, and the way the skeletons hover and wait for the sailor to fall before leaving him for another target. Again, there's that personality at work in everything Ray did. Some days were so intensive on this final scene that he was only able to capture three frames of film in one day. An eighth of a movie second. He did that for four and a half months, in a room, by himself, with no assistance from anyone else.

That's an artist at work, folks.

That scene alone is responsible for more people getting into stop-motion than anything else. Phil Tippett is an unapologetic fan of Ray's and Tippett did the stop motion effects on the Star Wars trilogy. If you thought the tauntauns were cool, Ray was their spiritual godfather. Later, when Jurassic Park was in development, Phil was brought in to work with the computer animators to help bridge the gap between stop-motion and computer animation.  Dave Allen and Jim Danforth were also Harryhausen disciples and they produced a lot of commercial work whenever Ray was locked in his room, working on the next movie. When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, Q, Caveman, Dragonslayer, and so many other (and some would say lesser) movies and TV shows (remember Land of the Lost?) were created by people who were inspired by Harryhausen. Here's a Volkswagon ad that Allen produced for TV starring a familiar face:

I got to meet Ray twice in my life. The first time was during one of the late, lamented Dallas Fantasy Fairs in the Late 1980s and early 1990s. Ray was a special guest and I was over the moon at getting to meet him. I'll never forget sitting in a jam-packed conference room with maybe a hundred other people waiting for his question and answer session. The moderator stood up and said, "Ray Harryhausen needs no introduction. Instead, here's a brief reminder of why we're all here today." The lights dimmed and then a montage of scenes from Ray's various films, all of them key scenes, all of them evoking gasps and cheers of recognition from the audience. Of course, the montage ended with the skeleton fight. Of course it did! And with that, the video ended, frozen on one of the scowling skeletons' faces. Everyone surged up and gave Ray a standing ovation to thunderous applause, and it was one of the first times I thought, "Okay, I'm not alone, here. Other people get this stuff, too!"

Years later, while working at BookPeople in Austin, I got my second chance. Ray had written a couple of books looking back on his career, with tons of artwork, sketches, behind the scenes photos and more. We were having a book signing for him at the Alamo Draft House, where Ray would introduce the movie that inspired him, King Kong, and then sign copies of his book. It was probably the best signing I ever worked on. King Kong and Ray Harryhausen. What could be better?

Even at his age, Ray was a trooper and gamely signed every book that showed up, along with some other oddities. I was again touched by the crowd; sure, there were some old timers there, but there were also a lot of young dads with their kids--and it was the kids who were there to see him. That's the power of those movies. That's the magic of Ray. And he was nice, gracious, charming, and personally thanked everyone who thanked him back. I'm so glad that Hollywood awarded him a lifetime achievement award while he was alive to appreciate it.

Now everything is computer-generated, and at its best, it's amazing, and I really believe that. But I think it's interesting to note that the most amazing stuff now is essentially modeling faces directly from human actors. There's a reason for this: modern special effects people--to an extent--don't have the skill set that Ray had. They don't take acting lessons to try and understand character motivation, or light and film their own sets, or do modeling in three dimensions. I'm not talking about the effects studios like ILM and Weta. They have, as a hive-mind, people who DO still do that, and do it well. I'm mostly talking about the guys who render for a living; sitting at a computer every day, working on whatever three or four second shot has hit their desk that morning, doesn't leave a lot of room for wondering what the dragon's motivation is. Modern filmmaking doesn't work that way. There's no room for artists, not when there's all of these shots to process. And so, we've lost a step.

In the passing of Ray Harryhausen, we've lost the man who took that first step.

Thank you, Ray, for the creativity, the artistry, for the hard work. Thanks for all of it.

Rest in peace.