Danny G Writes Plays: Supervillain!

First off, I am both surprised and gratified by all the comments my last blog post is getting from current and former postal workers. Thanks for finding the blog, thanks for reading, and thanks for the supportive comments. I can only hope that some of my other posts, less directly related to your own struggles, can also entertain you. On that note…

Gonna try to blog a lot more this week to make up for a lengthy absence. And to continue hammering it in as a habit. And clearly, I’ve stumbled onto the one thing my audience craves.

Derpy wombats.

Look at the silly little guy!

I kid. Now, I’ve pretty much exhausted my supply of post office stories (save for the odd case of the dude on 12th Ave), and I don’t have any past regrets I need to send an open letter to just now (not to say I’m out of regrets, just that I don’t feel a need to discuss any of them) so it’s time to return to my ongoing re-examination of my old scripts.

The year was 2000, Lethargic Lad had just wrapped, and things continued to get silly in the spy parody Supervillain!

What’s it about?

Former henchman-turned-supervillain Hank Scorpio has a vision: that the global domination game can be won if you’re just willing to avoid all the classic mistakes villains love to make and be smart about things. With his temp/Grand Vizier Jake McCoy, chief enforcer Katya Greatsex, and the prophet Tellius, he sets out to prove the bad guy can win. Opposing him is arrogant superspy Jack Bunt, whose list of defeated villains is almost as long as his list of female assistants killed in action, and his new assistant Jessica Sydoskyk, who he refers to as “Sidekick.”

PREMISE!
Hello again, Premise Beach.

Hank must foil the spies and rule the world, without giving in and telling Bunt all the details of the plan. But… it’s such a good plan, it seems a shame not to talk about it…

So why did that happen?

Two sources of influence here: first of all, an email forward titled “Things I will do when I am a supervillain,” a list poking fun at classic villain screw-ups like assuming your death-trap will kill the hero or buying into statements like “He’s just one man, what can he do?” Second, the Simpsons episode You Only Move Twice, in which Homer goes to work for charming, friendly, boss-of-the-year supervillain Hank Scorpio. Yeah, not even going to try to deny the connection there. What point would there be? I named my theatre company after him, I’m not going to be able to claim the character name is a coincidence.

So after reading the villain list, I became enamoured with the notion of a villain actually trying to avoid the cliche screw-ups, and decided to give that story a whirl. I also threw in a trope Terry Pratchett often took shots at, the trope of the sinister Grand Vizier who will inevitably turn on his master. Hiring a random temp, Jake, as Grand Vizier was Scorpio’s attempt to circumvent that.

How’d it turn out?

Fairly funny, I’d say. Funny enough that it made a return appearance to the stage a full eight years later, with only minimal polish.

Some of the jokes are a little forced. Some of the banter remained too wordy. But a lot of the humour holds up okay. The many trials of Sidekick, from dealing with Bunt’s blunt-object approach to espionage to the unwanted advances of Katya, still entertain me. Hank and Jake make a decent comedy duo when the banter’s clicking. Bunt’s cavalier disregard for Sidekick’s safety still makes me chuckle. It’s rough in places, sure, but there’s still an appeal under it all.

We also tried a gimmick when this play first went up: alternate endings. We gave the audience the chance to say how they thought the play should end, and if we used theirs the next night they got in free. The idea was that they’d bring friends to see their suggested ending. Also, tickets were two-for-one with a used ticket stub, to further incentivize repeat viewings.

Alternate endings included Katya and Sidekick kicking out the menfolk and taking over, the Independence Day ending (Hank rallies everyone to fight a sudden alien invasion), the Charlie’s Angels ending (Jessica, Katya and Tellius are the Angels), the henchmen-blow-up-the-base ending, and the popular “return of the surly cocktail waiter” ending. Plus what I stubbornly referred to as the real ending.

Would you stage it again?

Maybe. In the right circumstances. I’d probably want to continue to polish it, clear up some of the rough spots, improve the pacing, but it holds up okay. It’s far from my best comedy, but the jokes work more often than they don’t.

It’s a B- spy parody. Not great, not terrible, which makes it hard to say anything in-depth about. It was a chance for me to tell silly jokes about spy movies for an hour and a half, ending with a decent monologue from Hank and a lot of fun exasperation on the parts of Jake and Jessica. It’s good enough that I’d rework this script instead of starting over from the basic premise, not so good that I’m quick to give it to people as a sample of my work.

Repeated theme alert

  • This entire play is a pop culture reference. Bond movies, Shakespeare, the lead character is a Simpsons reference… it would be harder to find a page without pop culture references on it.
  • I surely did like the word “creepy.” I used the words “creepy” and “creeps” so much in this script they begin to lose meaning.
  • The Outsider: I always found it beneficial to, when dealing with odd premises like this one, have a character who is outside of the situation. An ordinary person who can act as audience surrogate. Steve in Apocalypse Soonish, Greg in Illuminati in Love, and now Jake. Works pretty well.

My month at Canada Post part two: it all goes wrong

Okay. Buckle up. This isn’t going to be fast, easy, or fun. Wait–why would you read it if it weren’t fun… think, man, think… I know! More cute animals!

Look at him. LOOK AT HIM.
Tales From Parts Unknown: working to be a leading source of derpy wombats.

Day one

I arrived at the Sunridge depot just in time for my 10:00 start, as part of Wave 2. I found the desk of Lori, the staffing supervisor, where all the relief carriers waited for their assignments. Available routes were handed out based on seniority, so I got the second-last pick. My choices were 1458 and 1472. Maybe the story would have gone differently if I’d said 1458. Probably not. At least so I’m choosing to believe.

I had help: the woman who once walked this route… let’s call her “Claire…”* was sorting the bulk of the mail for me. So all I had to do was bundle up the mail that comes pre-sorted by computers (the sequenced mail, as it is known), sort through my parcels (any package too large to be sorted in with the rest of the mail or carried in the satchel, thus requiring separate delivery), get my van, load up and hit the road, right?

As I mentioned last time, the Tuesday after a long weekend is a notoriously heavy mail day. The mail doesn’t stop moving on weekends, it just piles up at the depots, so I essentially had four days’ worth of mail and parcels waiting for me. Six containers of sequenced mail–that means little to any of you, suffice to say it was at least twice as much as I’d see any other day that week, or ever before during peer training. Forty-four parcels, again nearly twice the number I’d seen on our busiest day in peer training. And that’s before the manual sort mail and the fliers got added to the pile.

I was handed two sets of keys by the supervisors, and told I’d need all of them. Her exact words. “You’ll need all of them.” Remember that, it’s going to be important. Also, one of the keys had been bent and twisted beyond any actual use.

It was 1:45 before I left the depot to start delivering. The route contained three “park and loops,” where you park your vehicle and walk a series of loops that start and end around where you parked, allowing you to reload your satchel now and then. The three loops filled a 30-square block area bordered by 10th Avenue NE, Centre Street (all businesses), 16th Avenue (more businesses), and Edmonton Trail. There were also daily pickups: a street letter box, or SLB in postie-speak, that had to be cleared no sooner than 5:00, and a daily pickup from Albern Coins and Foreign Exchange, which was to be done by 4:20. Often packages of coins being mailed out. In other words, heavy, heavy packages. Both of these pickups were on the far side of Centre Street from the bulk of the route, and thus meant moving my van across a major hub of traffic right during rush hour. Well thought-out, Canada Post. No points for you.

After putting some gas into the van, which is never supposed to have less than half a tank but was left nearly empty, I charged into my route. I hit the houses and apartments on Centre A Street, the supposed starting point, then the businesses on 16th Avenue. “Good start,” I thought, returning to the van to grab the mail for Centre Street. Only… only the sun looked a little low in the sky. Even for November. I quickly checked the time. It was already after 4:00 and I still hadn’t finished my first park-and-loop. I decided to hit Albern Coins right away: these scheduled pickups are an overwhelming portion of Canada Post’s revenue and thus are not to be missed, ever. So I moved my van closer, using a small parking lot across Centre Street, as I didn’t know about the parking lot behind Albern Coins. If I had, I could have avoided the narrow alley to the smaller lot and I wouldn’t have hit that pole and dented the passenger door of my van.

But I did. Great first day so far.

You might say it was otter madness. Sorry, making it worse...
You might say it was otter madness. Sorry, making it worse…

I hit a few businesses, including one mini-mall, sometimes sliding mail under the doors of already closed businesses. Around 5:30, I called the end-of-day supervisor to report that I was very clearly not going to finish my route by 6:00. She said to do my pickups and get back to the depot, as all incoming mail (including the Albern packages) has to be on a truck to the plant to be sorted and sent on its way by 6:15ish, so I got the van, fought my way through traffic to the SLB, grabbed the letters and made my way back to the depot. I met up with Lisa, the end-of-day supervisor and one of the genuinely nice people I’d met during this job and will actually miss (the others being my peer trainer Greg and his supervisor, Steve). She took a look at the vast piles of mail I had left, and recommended I at least try to deliver the parcels. She’d be there until nine, so I should head back out and deliver what I could.

I resolved to try and fly through the parcels then see what residential mail I could deliver before 8:45, when I figured I should head back to be at the depot for 9:00. I managed 33 out of 44 parcels, but that was it. Everything else got put right back in the depot. I clocked out at 9:30, 11 and a half hours after I started, and limped home. I also grabbed some food, since I hadn’t eaten since 9:00 that morning, never having had time for a meal break.

Day two

I didn’t sleep well that night. For every hour or two of sleep there was one hour of tossing and turning. When I dreamed, it was of the undelivered mail I feared was waiting for me. I slunk into the depot for 10:00, and was relieved to hear that the surplus mail had been sent out, leaving me with only the surplus parcels and the new day’s mail. And the sorting went much faster: I was on my way a full hour and a half earlier. Cause for optimism, I thought.

As another bonus, on day two one of the customers in my first 16th Avenue mall told me that there was a group mailbox, so I didn’t have to run from store to store so much. Turns out the other malls had group mailboxes as well. And I found the parking lot behind Albern, which was handy, for they had so many more packages going out that day. So, making good time, right? I hit the second park-and-loop with enthusiasm. Enthusiasm somewhat tempered by the fact that everyone I met on the route said it had been weeks if not months since there’d been a regular mail carrier on this route.

But the enthusiasm faded. The sun was hanging low again by the time I reached the van to reload for the second half. I sped around, delivering what parcels I could before 5:30, but it was again time to hit the SLB and get back. I was lucky, in a way: someone from my training class was on her first day, and brought her SLB letters back too late, meaning she had to drive them to the plant herself. But it was now almost 7:00 and I still had a fair amount of mail left. I’d done my fliers for the day, that was something.

On that note. If you want to really feel like an idiot, deliver a flier for Domino’s Pizza to a restaurant. Or to a rival pizza delivery place.

This time Lisa said I should just call it a night, and I was grateful for that, because I was already late for Reservoir Dogs rehearsal. I staggered in, half an hour late, aching all over, starving from not eating all day, half-dead from exhaustion, and did my best to work the day’s scene. During the run, I was mostly okay, but between runs hunger and exhaustion hit me like twin sledge hammers. At least I slept better that night.

Getting grim again. Koalas! STAT!
Getting grim again. Koalas! STAT!

Day three

The guy who’d delivered my surplus mail hadn’t had any keys, so he brought back everything that had been meant for an apartment building. I, too, had been having trouble with apartments: the two keys I had that looked like door keys didn’t work on any apartment buildings. On any doors I encountered, really. I mentioned this, showed that the bent and twisted key was now breaking, and was met with nothing but skepticism from the supervisors, who seemed confident I should be able to open any door I encountered.

But the other effect of the other guy not delivering to apartments is that his extra mail got lumped in with mine, leading the staffing supervisor to assume that I once again hadn’t delivered past the businesses on Centre. I was tired, sore, frustrated, and in no mood to open day three with a scolding, but there was no way around it. Lori made it clear that today I was to deliver everything, no matter what. She also found someone else to do my pickups, and to deliver about half of my parcels, so she managed to be my new worst enemy and best friend in one conversation.

With no need to be back at the depot to drop off outgoing mail by 6:15, my path was clear: deliver everything. Every letter, every parcel. My sorter helped by suggesting I take a more logical approach to the route than the assigned path and do all of the businesses first, instead of saving half of 16th Avenue for the end of the day. After all, residential mailboxes don’t close at 5:00. I got an even earlier start, out on the road before noon, no need to buy gas.

However.

That doesn't sound good. Make with the wombats!
That doesn’t sound good. Make with the wombats!

At my first mall, I had some issues with my keys, then learned that one of the two keyrings I’d initially been given was missing. I called Lisa, drove back to the depot, got a replacement set, much to the chagrin of the daytime supervisor (also to the chagrin of me, who’d hoped to be done with businesses by the time Lisa started at 1:00), and headed back out. The sun began to set around the same place in the route, halfway through my second park-and-loop.

There is something inherently demoralizing about delivering mail in the dark. Watching the daylight fade, feeling how much mail you have on you, knowing how much is still waiting in the van. It also didn’t help that while using my phone as a flashlight to read addresses off envelopes I dropped my phone on the sidewalk, smashing the screen and leaving me phoneless with no time to deal with it until the weekend.

I tried to keep my spirits up. I thought of the words of Winston Churchill (or at least the version of Winston Churchill from Victory of The Daleks): KBO. Keep buggering on. My remaining door key did not work on a single apartment building, but despite the route taking some zigs and zags my training had told me it wouldn’t, resulting in me hitting a couple of blocks with fliers and then having to come back to give them their actual mail, I walked the whole route. I delivered every parcel. Well, okay, in some cases I just left the slip saying the parcel could be picked up the next day. And by 8:45 or so I was just dropping the slips off without knocking, figuring it was too late to be ringing doorbells with parcels anyway.

Yes, on day three I brought everything I hate about UPS to Canada Post. Not a proud hour.

I returned to the depot, mentioned the key issue, and was on my way home at 10:00. A full 12 hours with no pausing, no food, only one bottle of water to last me the whole day. I limped home, took some muscle relaxants I’d borrowed from Ben the night before, and managed one episode of the Blacklist before crawling into bed.

Day four

I barely slept again, so I was not off to a great start, but I did eat the healthiest breakfast/meal I’d eaten all week, so I felt good about that.

With no mail returned, I instead had to deal with scoldings about apartment buildings and claiming I didn’t have enough keys. It was only now, on day four, that Jackie the supervisor bothered to tell me that the two key rings I’d been given, saying “You will need all of these,” were actually duplicates. That the one key ring I’d taken out yesterday and assumed to not be enough in fact held all the keys I needed. At no point did she explain why she’d given me two sets without saying they were identical. At. No. Point.

I also took grief for claiming I couldn’t get into the apartment buildings. She asked, repeatedly and condescendingly, how hard I’d tried. I replied firmly that the key did not fit and telling me that it should have didn’t change that. After this ugly opening to the day, while I was wondering how to contact Ian to get video footage of the key not fucking working to review with Jackie and, if necessary, the union’s shop steward, Claire, while finishing the sort and tie-out of the mail, told me that there was a keyhole in the buzzer panels, and that was how to get into apartments.

Took her about five seconds. Five whole seconds to fix all of my problems with apartment buildings. Yet, simple as this was, at no point did either daytime supervisor or Lori think to look at the key I was claiming didn’t work and say “Oh, that’s the wrong key, there’s a keyhole in the buzzer panel, use that.”

At. No. Point.

Argh. Manatees, please.

Manatees don't lie.
Thanks, calming manatee. They ARE jerks.

So, as I start my fourth day, I’m already in a mood, but I remain determined. Only 15 parcels, up five from yesterday but six of them are right at the start of the route, the least sequenced mail I’ve seen all week. No key shenanigans, no driving back to the depot, no zigging and zagging on 10th Avenue, all easy. Yesterday I finished, today, I thought, today I finish on time. Every letter, every parcel, back by six. Seven at the latest.

I was back at the depot around 9:30. If anything, even later than the night before. On a traditionally slow mail day.

To say I was disheartened would be a dramatic understatement. I was crushed. The thought of having to deliver to this route for a second week was giving me anxiety attacks. All I’d had to eat since 9:30 in the morning was one apple I’d bought while delivering to a 7-11 that I’d munched on when the opportunity arose.

Inside I was screaming at myself to give it another week. Give myself time to improve. Keep at it, KBO, damn your eyes. I might even move to another depot on Monday and get to take a break from Jackie, Lori, and 1472. But, just so I knew… I asked Lisa how, if necessary, I would go about resigning.

She said, in gentle tones, that if I was going to resign, now would be better than mid-next week. I said that I felt I should at least try to get my time down from 12 hours to eight. She said I probably wouldn’t, that 20-year veterans were taking 10 hours to finish a route, and that it would actually get worse before it got better.

I was starving. I was exhausted. My shoulders, back, and legs were sore, nearly to the point of agony. My fingers were covered in tiny yet excruciating wounds. I’d worked 45 hours in four days. And I was being told this was as good as it was ever going to get. So I did the only thing that made sense. I turned in my ID card, satchel, work shirt and unopened headlamp, and left Canada Post behind.

Aftermath

In the harsh light of day I, of course, wondered if I’d done the right thing. It turns out I would have moved to Bowness the next week if I’d stayed on, but I have no guarantees that would have been better. As I said last time, I don’t like failing, and leaving after one week felt a lot like failing. But at rehearsal the next afternoon, our Nice Guy Eddie said the most reassuring thing I’ve heard: “You on Wednesday versus you today?… You made the right decision.”

It was a bad fit. That’s all there is to it. I can deal with 12 hour shifts, but five of them in a row? With no meal breaks? That’s too much. It’s just too much.

This was supposed to be a part-time day job to help pay the bills while some other projects come to fruition, something to support me while leaving evenings free for my passion projects, but instead it was turning into a job that would swallow my entire life, sucking up every available moment from Monday to Friday and leave no time or energy for anything else. I’m playing Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs. After that I’m directing a Doctor Who tribute play that ties into this month’s fiftieth anniversary. I’m launching a webseries next spring. I write this blog when I can. And I still write plays. And I am not prepared to give up all of those things so that I can spend my days delivering mail in the dark of night then arriving home just in time to eat something unhealthy but quick (there was no way I was ever going to have time or energy to cook) and crawl into bed in time to do it all again.

And that’s what it was becoming. Twelve hour days with no breaks to eat, buy better shoes, go to doctor’s appointments, book doctor’s appointments, let alone write, rehearse, or do any of the creative things that give my brief existence meaning. My stomach turned every time I drove past Centre and 16th. I wasn’t sleeping. I swore I could feel my health deteriorating. And on top of all of this, I was talked down to like a child and accused of being either lazy or incompetent because I didn’t magically know something they should have been explaining. And everything I heard said it wouldn’t get better.

I don’t feel great about quitting so fast. Not everyone has made it an easy choice to justify. But I’m getting less sore, my fingers are starting to heal, and it’s been three days since I last fell into deep despair because the sun was setting, so it’s a choice I stand by. There’s a job that’s right for me. Just need a little more time to find it.

Thanks for bearing with me on this, if you managed to do so. Next time I’ll get back to talking about old plays, then I’ll yell about pop culture and superheroes some more. That should be fun. Take us home, Calming Manatee.

There, there. They can’t hurt you anymore.

*Name changed not to protect her identity, but because I honestly never caught it. I suck sometimes.

UPDATE:
A huge thank you to all the posties who have commented with thanks, reassurances, and horror stories of their own. If there’s one thing I’d like people to take away from all this it’s that you guys work extremely hard to perform an important service and don’t get the credit and respect you deserve. Stay strong out there.

Also, when I mentioned the few nice people I’d miss, I should have mentioned all of my classmates from training. It was good to know you guys. Hope you’re doing better than I did.

My month with Canada Post part one: It all seemed so simple

Hark now to the tale of my extremely short-lived career as a letter carrier for Canada Post. I’ll try to keep it entertaining, but if I sense it’s getting gloomy or bitter I’ll throw in some pictures of manatees and whatnot. Everybody loves manatees.

The hiring process

It began with me deciding that instead of fighting the legions of unemployed journalists for jobs in my actual field, I should seek out entry-level positions at companies that seemed worth working for. And so I came to apply as a part-time relief letter carrier for Canada Post.

I’m not sure they understand what “Part-time” means, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The hiring process was lengthy, if not complicated. First step? General skills assessment test. Simple enough questions. Section one, same or different: look at two addresses, say if you think they’re the same or different. Section two, basic math: addition, subtraction, multiplication, light division. Section three, sortation: here’s a number/address, which range of numbers or addresses does it belong to? Section four, memorization: here’s four columns of addresses. Take a few minutes to learn them, and then recall which column each of these addresses belongs to.

The real challenge was the harsh time limits. Early sections only gave you five minutes to complete 25 questions, with points awarded based on number of right answers. That’s 12 seconds per question. I over-thought same/different, and multiplying a four digit number by a two digit number can take more than 12 seconds, so I didn’t finish either of those sections. However, I did well enough on the exam that by the end of the day I’d booked an interview for the following week. I nailed that, and was scheduled for phase three: a physical test and a road test. I passed both (the road test was a close call), and received an offer. A week or so later, I’d start training.

Postie school

Training breaks down like this. First is four days of learning how to sort and deliver mail, split between book learning and sortation practice. Also tutorials on how to use the PDT scanning devices that track delivery of parcels, registered mail, and fliers. Next, three days of peer training: follow a letter carrier through their day, see what it’s basically like. I helped deliver mail in Ranchlands, right around where my parents lived until not so long ago. Me and my trainer split the route, with me delivering to part and then watching him speed through the next. Maybe that’s what made it seem so doable: I was only delivering part of a route and got to empty mailboxes at the start. Didn’t seem so bad. We were usually done by two. Sure, we never paused for lunch, but having lunch at 2:30 instead of 12 isn’t so bad, right?

After three days of peer training come the exams. A written test, on which you need to score 75%, and a sort test. Sort 120 letters in ten minutes with 99% accuracy to pass.

Or so they said.

Turns out they just wanted to see an improvement in your speed over the week and solid accuracy. Accuracy being ultimately more important than speed, as taking 60 minutes to sort instead of 45 will cost you less time than making a bunch of mistakes and having to fix it while delivering. So only one person actually got all 120 letters sorted with 100% accuracy.

Damn skippy it was me. Clean as a whistle, sharp as a thistle, best in all Westminster, yeah!

The final day of training was defensive driving. Which was entirely common sense stuff. Also boring and forever taking.

That complete, we were now officially on the on-call list as relief letter carriers. Well, those who were left.

Bad omens

Our teacher had warned us, up front, that not everyone in the class would turn out to be cut out for this job. And she certainly wasn’t wrong. The first week was like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Each day we had at least one less person in the class. One person quit during a lunch break. I expected each lesson to start with an Oompa-Loompa song about our latest drop-out. Two left because they were sick, and if you miss even one day of training you have to start over, as you’ll miss too much. One left because she’d expected this to be more of a causal, part-time thing, a way to supplement her income from running her own business, and it clearly wasn’t going to be. One left because he intended to spend much of the winter in warmer climates and thus would have to re-do the training anyway. I never expected to join them: I’m good at sorting, I actually like sorting, and was hoping a more physical job would help me get into better shape. I thought I could handle it.

Late in week one a union rep came to talk to us about the postal workers union we’d have to join. That’s where the horror stories started. Canada Post management types were quick to mention benefits: pay grades, pension, vacation time, etc. Union officials always added a “for now” to any talk of benefits, as the contract is up for negotiation in a few years and the corporation is gunning for that pension plan. When I joined the union, horror stories continued: tales of supervisors out to “break” relief workers, refusing to file for overtime, late hours and hard work. I didn’t let them scare me. I wanted to believe I could handle this job. I don’t like failing, which is weird, because I have so much practice failing at job applications, weight loss, and talking to cute girls at parties that you’d think I’d greet failure as an old friend by now.

Turtle power!
That got a little dark. Have some sea turtles.

On top of all these warnings, I’d booked two job interviews during the training period. Even before day one of work, I was, on some level, looking for an exit strategy. But I remained hopeful. On Tuesday, November 12th, I would start delivering mail on my own.

The Tuesday after a long weekend. A day known to be a heavy mail day. I could have planned that better.

Look, we’re already over 1000 words on this thing and thinking about last week is still making me a little stress-queasy, so we’ll leave it there for now. Later tonight, or maybe tomorrow, we’ll jump into how it all went so very wrong.

Sometimes we all need a calming manatee.
Also manatees.

How to ruin your sequel

And I’m back. The run of a play I was in and adjustment to a new work schedule have made posting difficult as of late. Real talk, society: 5:30 AM is no time to be awake. It’s unnatural. You know how I know? The sun isn’t up yet. If the sun isn’t up, it is not “early in the morning,” it is still night.

Anyway.

Last night, as a final Halloween celebration, I was at a horror movie marathon, the theme of which was “A Night at the Cabin,” horror films featuring cabins in the woods, ending of course with Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s excellent Cabin in the Woods. Cabin is a hilarious and thrilling deconstruction of horror films, whose ending always makes me a little conflicted, as it basically guarantees there will be no sequel ever (the box office helped assure that as well, but that’s neither here nor there). On the one hand, the premise of all the horror movie tropes being engineered by a mysterious organization in a bunker (personified hilariously by Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford) is so much fun that it’s a shame there can’t be more of it. On the other hand, I can’t imagine a sequel to this movie actually working on any level. It would surely end up a retread of all the popular jokes and scenes from its predecessors.

You know, like Austin Powers.

Sequels exist because giving audiences more of something they enjoyed is a relatively safe bet for movie executives. The problem is that “People liked that, let’s make another” isn’t the best way to begin a creative endeavor. There are good sequels, to be sure: Terminator 2, The Dark Knight, The Empire Strikes Back, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Sequels that build on what came before and manage to find new and great stories to tell with characters we’ve already come to love. Others… others screw up. Here’s some ways they do that.

“Let’s just do that again”

What might be the most common and laziest way to make a sequel: say “Hey, that worked, let’s just do it again.” And why not? Doesn’t that work for James Bond? That’s a franchise built around “And then James Bond foils another villain,” and Skyfall proved that after fifty years there’s still a surprising amount of gas in that tank, if you’re willing to try.

Sadly, not everyone is willing to make that kind of effort.

Witness Austin Powers. The first one was a delightful surprise, a breath of fresh air. The second one recycled all the popular jokes from the first movie and added some newer, less funny jokes. Goldmember did the same. And that’s why instead of being a trilogy of classic comedies with a best-selling special edition box set, they are instead our greatest case study of diminishing returns. See also the Hangover trilogy, which went from “surprise hit” to “surprise bomb” in just two movies.

The Ring 2 is another key example. The Ring was, in my opinion, an amazing horror film, replacing jump-scares with a remarkably consistent aura of dread and ending in a climax scary enough I hid in my coat rather than re-watch it on my second viewing. The Ring 2 was made by people trying to re-create the key beats of the movie based on a rough description, and was terrible.

Witness Batman and Robin, which began its many, many, many crimes against film making by kicking off the plot with Commissioner Gordon saying “There’s a new villain in town, please come stop him” and pretty much nothing else. More egregious? The Men in Black movies. Men in Black could have been a hell of a franchise, but instead of using the first movie to establish the world and then build on it in sequels and whatnot, they instead tried whatever they could to just re-do the basic story beats of the original. And they also bring us to my second sequel mis-step.

Frank the Pug Syndrome

If I accomplish one thing though blogging, let it be making “Frank the Pug Syndrome” a recognized trope. That or Infinite Respawn. You know, when the heroes have to fight a faceless horde of something, like zombies or henchmen or Chitauri, and they’re weak enough for the heroes to be able to stop while looking badass but since they never stop coming the heroes are gradually overwhelmed? Not my point. Right. Where was I.

Frank the Pug was a once-scene joke in the first Men in Black movie, and far from the best joke at that, but the makers of MIB2 thought that an alien disguised as a pug dog was intrinsically hilarious enough to make him a full-fledged member of the team in the sequel. He was not. All he did was serve as a piss-poor replacement for Linda Fiorentino (either not asked to return or not interested in doing so) and Patrick Warburton. Seriously, putting Patrick Warburton in your movie as Will Smith’s new partner and then ditching him after ten minutes in favour of a “wacky” talking dog? Bad writers. Zero points for you.

And so I came to coin “Frank the Pug Syndrome” as a term for any sequel who takes a minor character from the previous movie and inadvisably gives them a much bigger role in the sequel. Shrek 2 is another example, with bigger parts for previously one-joke characters like the Gingerbread Man, Pinocchio, and the Big Bad Wolf. I haven’t seen Shrek 2, maybe it worked okay, but I very much doubt anything the Gingerbread Man did was as funny as the Muffin Man bit from the first movie.

Or look at X-Men 3. That movie became immensely over-crowded, because they kept wanting to bring in new characters, but also wanted to give expanded roles to everyone from the first two (except Cyclops, who was killed off to punish James Marsden for following Bryan Singer to Superman Returns). It’s not that Iceman, Kitty Pryde and Colossus didn’t deserve bigger parts, it’s that there just wasn’t room to do that while introducing Beast, Angel, Juggernaut, and Jamie Madrox while giving Storm a more dominant role to appease Halle Berry and continuing to fetishize Wolverine because that’s what the X-Men empire appears to be built on.

Even just trying to bring back every single person of note from the previous movie can be a struggle. Looking at you, American Pie 2 and Ocean’s 12. But then, it is possible, very possible, to go too far in the other direction.

Throwing out too much

Sometimes people come along to make a sequel who seem to have no idea how or why the previous film worked. Now, sometimes a director will want to put his own stamp on a franchise, and good for him: Aliens was a worthy successor to Alien because James Cameron wasn’t trying to just re-do what Ridley Scott did in the first movie, he simply took the world it created and ran in his own direction. The Mission: Impossible movies, however, vary so wildly in tone and style that it’s hard to believe they actually take place in the same world.

A more obscure example: a 1990s Chinese kung-fu movie called the Heroic Trio, in which a vigilante named Wonder Woman (but not that Wonder Woman), a mercenary called Thief-Catcher and a thief called the Invisible Woman (not that Invisible Woman, but played by Michelle Yeoh!) eventually team up to fight evil. Eventually. Invisible Woman is on the wrong side for most of the movie and they don’t become a Heroic Trio until the climax of the movie. I had fun with it, so my friend the Video Vulture suggested watching the sequel. Which takes place decades later, in a post-apocalyptic society, years after the Heroic Trio have split up.

This was the second movie.

At one point one of the Trio says something along the lines of “Remember all those adventures we had as the Heroic Trio?” and I, as viewer, could only proclaim “WELL I SURE FUCKING DON’T!” Not only am I still baffled why they felt post-apocalyptic was a natural next step (there was no hint of the impending collapse of society in the first movie), they spent the entire first movie creating the Heroic Trio and then skipped over their entire existence as a unit. It would be like if Christopher Nolan had gone straight from Batman Begins to The Dark Knight Rises–no, to the second half of The Dark Knight Rises, when Bane already controls the city. The origin comes at the beginning, “years after retirement” comes at the end, but something is supposed to go in the middle.

That was a lot of time spent on an obscure Chinese film. Seem to be running out of room to also diss the Terminator franchise. Okay. Speed mode. The central premises of the first two Terminators were a) unstoppable robot assassins from the future trying to kill people in the present, aided by the heroes’ lack of access to futuristic weapons; and b) the idea that the War of the Machines can be won or even prevented through time travel. Sarah Connor clings to the belief that “There is no fate but what we make for ourselves,” while the entire time travel gambit was a hail-Mary desperation ploy by Skynet to avert its impending defeat at the hands of John Connor. Terminator 2 hammered this notion, and was the best of the franchise. Terminator 3 immediately threw it all out and declared the Judgement Day could not be prevented, only delayed.

Think about that for a moment. They’re not saying that man creating an AI is inevitable, or even that man and sentient machine going to war is inevitable; they’re saying that man creating a military AI named Skynet who nukes the planet and invents Terminators and time travel is inevitable. Is that not a weirdly specific turn of events to be unavoidable? And if Judgement Day can’t be prevented, than why can a successful human resistance be stopped by killing John Connor as a child? Either future events are set in stone or they’re not. If stopping Skynet’s inventor only means that someone else invents the exact same Skynet, then wouldn’t some other visionary warrior rise up in place of John Connor? If the future can’t be stopped, isn’t this entire time travel cold war between man and machine a gigantic waste of time? Like Terminator 3 turned out to be?

Sadly I’m out of time to talk about Terminator: Salvation, except to say that it threw out the franchise’s other premise by setting the movie post-Judgement Day and having regular, modern-day weapons work just fine against the previously bullet-proof Terminators. Bad writers, no cookie.

Sequels ruined horror movies

As a final note on sequels, here’s how I think they’ve mutated the slasher movie horror sub-genre into something I have a harder time enjoying than I used to. See, in order to have a franchise, you normally need a strong recurring character or characters to hang it off. James Bond, Indiana Jones, Michael Corleone, Ripley, etc. Someone we’re happy to root for time and time again. But for slasher flicks, your central, recurring character is your monster: Freddy Krueger, Jason Vorhees, Chucky, etc. They’re the ones who keep coming back to kill a fresh crop of victims, one of whom is a determined yet tormented heroine (or Tommy Jarvis) who despite losing friends, family, and/or potential lovers, is finally able to dispatch the fiend. Who inevitably comes back because they want to make another one.

The problem is that since the killers are typically the only or at least primary recurring characters, they eventually become the most interesting ones in order to keep the audience’s attention through fresh, new ways to kill teenagers for having premarital sex. The kills are, after all, the only variety the franchise is getting other than finding different locales for the carnage, be it Manhattan or, when they’re really desperate, space. This means that the struggle to stop the monster becomes depressingly futile. Jason had the decency to stalk a fresh new batch of teenagers each time (except for the above mentioned Tommy Jarvis, who killed Jason twice but went a little crazy in between), but Freddy Krueger usually kicked off his latest movie by finishing off the survivors from the last one. So their big triumph over Freddy lasted about a year, tops.

And that has become ingrained into contemporary slasher movies to the point where the villain’s inevitable return isn’t just hinted at any more. Now Freddy, Jason, and Victor Crowley‘s defeat at the hands of the Final Girl doesn’t even last until the end of the movie, as they’re back from the dead and killing again right as the credits start to roll. I’d call that an unsatisfying ending, but it isn’t even an ending! A four-minute lull in Jason trying to kill Jared Padalecki doesn’t mean the story is over if he’s just going to leap up and start again afterwards. Also, that’s Sam goddamn Winchester, Vorhees. Just stay down.

But to a certain audience, maybe that works. The audience that is down with rooting for the killer, not the victims. But that mentality leads to House of 1,000 Corpses, which from what I could tell was about glorifying the killers to the point that the victims make no effort to fight back, as they only exist to be creatively dispatched, and I honestly cannot think of a movie I’ve loathed more than that. I haven’t seen all of it, and I don’t intend to.

There are probably other ways to botch a sequel. Maybe you can name some. In fact, I encourage you to do so in the comments. But I’ve taken up enough of your time for now. Thanks for your time, I’ll try not to let day jobs keep me from posting for so long again.

Are you even trying, lyricists?

Let’s get one thing clear before I get started here. I cannot write songs. At all. The idea of putting notes together and creating some sort of melody is as alien to me as the notion of running marathons for fun. Some people seem able to do it, but I can’t begin to imagine how.

But I am a writer and have respect for wordplay, imagery, and poetry, so I often find myself judging certain songs not on their hooks or melodies, but on their lyrics. And sometimes I hear a song and call only think “Are you even trying?”

Now, I’m not talking about the easy targets here. Katy Perry and Taylor Swift are out to please teens, so they can sing whatever bubblegum lyrics are going to please that demo and it’s fine as long as they do it over there, away from me. Likewise, nobody listens to Ke$ha or the Black Eyed Peas for lyrical depth, they’re in it for the beat and the catchy hooks that encourage folk to get their dance on. Andrew W.K. simply has some passionate beliefs on parties and partying that he’s trying to get out there. And if the lyric “Rub that shit, it’s yours, bitch, grab his dick, it’s yours, bitch” offends you, maybe you shouldn’t have been listening to Lil John in the first place.

But some people in other genres just get stuck in my craw. And here’s some examples.

54/40: Lies to Me

At it’s heart, Lies to Me by Canadian rock band 54/40 is about a guy who feels he doesn’t deserve to be as happy as his girlfriend makes him, and suspects that when she tells him otherwise she’s lying, saying he’s a better man than he is, but for now he’s happy to buy into the delusion. Simple notions that dudes and ladies of flawed self-esteem can easily relate to. There’s just one repeated line that drives me crazy.

Maybe it’s not fair to her
To believe in what she says
That’s the way it goes sometimes
And it can also go the other way

YES. BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT “SOMETIMES” MEANS.

“It can also go the other way.” That was implied by your use of the word “sometimes.” We have other words that mean “That’s the way it goes, and there is no other way it could go,” like “always” or “consistently.” But no, you wanted us to be absolutely sure we understand what “sometimes” means.

The lyric feels lazy. It feels like the lyricist found himself a line short in an already emaciated verse–that’s it, by the way. That’s the entire verse. From there it’s right into the bridge. Anyway. Having come up with three whole lines for his second verse, he finds himself out of ideas and needing a rhyme for “says,” so he opts for a detailed explanation of what “sometimes” means. It’s a lazy time-filler of a lyric, devoid of any real meaning…

And he repeats it twice.

Which means he thinks it’s meaningful. Meaningful enough to sing twice in a song that only has eight lines of actual verse. It just… I just wanna…

Flip a bitch
GRRRAAAARGHH

Tariq: Chevrolet Way

Okay. Many of you probably haven’t heard this song. I envy you that. It’s from a formerly Calgary-based artist named Tariq who had two songs receive some radio play on Canadian rock stations in the 90s: this and Not Just a Waiter. Not Just a Waiter is what it sounds like, an anthem about how he’s an artist and not simply a conduit between kitchen and customer. Chevrolet Way is also exactly what it sounds like: a blatant attempt to sell a song to a car company. Or so it appears, given how little effort he put into anything but the chorus. To illustrate my point, here’s the chorus:

In the Chevrolet way,
I’m thinkin about the world today.
It’s a four-by-four road,
more torque, more load.
It’s a Chevrolet way yeah,
so you better get the hell out of the way.

Nothing that would be out of place in any car ad ever recorded. Now, here’s a sample of what he came up with for a verse:

My girl she loves me good,
I think she always will too.
But in southern Alberta, southern Alberta,
his neck went redder as the sky turned blue.

WHAT. WHAT. What does any of that mean? Whose neck? There was no third person in this verse before now! It’s like you had a seizure halfway through and forgot what you were singing about! The verses from One Week by Barenaked Ladies make more sense and the guy who wrote them has freely admitted to making them up as he went along!

Listening to this song made me feel like I was having a stroke. His album only sold 10,000 copies, and ten years later Tariq was a guitarist in an obscure Vancouver band and a radio host on CBC Radio 3. Chevrolet Way did not land him a car commercial… but it did get him a Juno nomination.

Further flipping of bitches
Stupid Junos

Ko: Capable of Love

They say Ko writes songs so deeply personal he sometimes breaks down onstage. If that’s true, and this is an example, then I’m sorry Ko had such a painful relationship with an addict. Loving someone that’s insistent on destroying themselves is a bitch.

That said.

So lick a ring around this L
So that it burns all night
Then I pass round that Philly so, so
So we can all get high

This, I admit, may not be Ko’s fault, but in the first half of his chorus he’s thrown out two slang terms for marijuana I’d never heard before. And “L?” Seriously, L is a slang term for a joint now? We had a slang term for a joint that was basically one letter. Jay. As in the letter J, first letter in the word “joint.” Precise and sensible. L? Meaningless and redundant.

Who do I speak to about putting a stop to this?

The Dirty Heads: Lay Me Down

Now this one doesn’t actually anger me. But it’s a little throwing. This song is a story, the story of two lovers on the run from the law. Here’s a sample from verse one.

Well this is how it starts Two lovers in the dark
On the run, from the one That they called Sheriff Spark
Six guns by their side and bullets around their waist
Two shots to the sky
Signal sound for the chase

Verse two…

Well it’s the story of the two
Always on the move.
They got nothing left to lose
‘Cept their guns and their wounds

And then…

But the sheriff finally found them with his eyes seeing red.
So the lovers had to shoot him down and fill him full of lead

A simple narrative of two lovers whose only escape was to flee to Mexico and kill the man hell-bent on catching them. But here’s what we have in verse three…

Well you’re my green-eyed girl And I’ve been running around with you.
It’s the afternoon and we got nothing left to do.
So wipe the dirt off, or Take your shirt off,
And we should go hit the cantina, We got work off.

Wait wait wait wait wait. Wait. Back up. In the last verse you shot and killed a man, don’t just start singing about beachside sexy-time fun like that didn’t happen! Okay, yes, tonally the third verse fits the chorus much better (the chorus being about finding a safe tropical place to rest and then bang), but come on. I still don’t know what these two even did that caused a sheriff to hunt them all the way to whatever tropical beach town they settled in once they were done murdering. Maybe they were wrongfully accused and have finally escaped an unjust fate. Maybe they’re serial killers and everyone in this town is going to die. I don’t know. I just know they’re having fun on a coastal town now, and that it a hell of an awkward gear shift to go from “they escaped the law by killing it to death” to “SPRING BREAK FOREVER, BITCHES! WOOO!”

It’s still catchy, though. So unlike Capable of Love, I will not kill the radio rather than listen to this one. But I maintain, it’s like they brought in a second lyricist, played him the tune, and then asked him to write a verse without telling him what the rest of the song was about.

Next time… I will probably revisit another old script. Hopefully some people are still enjoying that stroll down my path of past literary mistakes.

Items of joy: An open letter to Who recruits

So I hit a chord with many people in writing an open letter to one of my great regrets. Thought I might see if I could strike a similar chord talking about things that bring me real joy. Some of those things have to do with television. I know, it doesn’t seem like a proper subject for such discussions, but until such a time as I can fly to Australia on a whim to watch the sun set over Uluru (formerly known by its slave name, Ayers Rock) or take off to Chicago to see an old friend in a play and then take said friend out for the deep dish pizza I’ve been craving since 1996, well, television just has to do sometimes.

As long as it’s good television.

Which brings me to this: an open letter to a friend I’ve been introducing to Doctor Who, which may prove enlightening to others I’ve tried to convert.

Sad is happy for deep people

Hey there friend. So one day, months ago, I convinced you to try out Doctor Who. The new series, not the classics. Not yet, anyway. And you were hooked fast, amazed when I said these first few episodes that had captured your attention were “the rough patch.” But it hasn’t been an easy journey. This show does like to mix its wit, charm and adventure with frequent doses of heartbreak. Maybe the BBC feels that even what they consider “family programming” should be delivering some important lessons to young viewers: people leave, and sometimes there’s nothing to be done about it but be sad for a while; no matter the tragedy, there may be a triumph right around the corner, you just need to be willing to look for it; bad things happen to good people, and it’s not fair; sometimes humanity is the real monster, whether it’s malice, greed, or the simple laziness that makes people not care how their products were made or by who as long as they stay cheap.

But I digress. Heartbreak comes, and it comes kind of often, and we tease you about that. There were some extremely sad goodbyes already, and you can tell another’s on the horizon, and you’re dreading it. Which our constant reminders don’t help. Well, they’re not supposed to, we’re specifically tormenting you with them because we’re terrible people.

But what we don’t frequently remind you of is the moments of joy that this show delivers. For every “I’m burning up a sun just to say goodbye,” there’s a moment like “Just this once, everybody lives!” Or the simple emotional climax of one of my other favourites: “Not now, not again Craig, the planet’s about to burn, for God’s sake kiss the girl!” Moments like the end of The Big Bang, where you want to cry not because it’s sad, but because it’s so beautiful. So… perfect.

Which is not to say the sad moments won’t come. Just that they’re worth it. Vincent and the Doctor is one of my go-to episodes to rewatch, yet it brings a tear to my eye every time. It may end sadly, but before it does there are moments of such incredible beauty that they can make you, for a moment, see our world for the incredible miracle that it is, and that the occasional tragedy can’t change that. An hour that’s beautiful and tragic at the same time. No wonder it’s about Vincent Van Gogh.

Doctor Who is these things in (relatively) equal measure, and that’s why I love it. Stephen Moffat put it best in his episode The Girl in the Fireplace: one can tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an angel. Those moments when the Doctor works his magic and everything’s wonderful make the moments when he can’t worthwhile. The tear-soaked goodbyes are worth it for those moments when the Doctor realizes he’s thrown on his old bow tie without realizing it, and that the old madman with a box is still alive, even after he thought he’d lost everything. (That doesn’t make sense to you but it will eventually, it’s a nice moment in The Snowmen.)

Or maybe it was Blink that put it best: “Sad is happy for deep people.”

Feeling is good, feeling is human

And what it comes down to is, why would you want to watch anything that can’t make you feel things this strongly? Yes, it breaks your heart now and then, but the fact that it can is part of what makes it amazing. I’ve been looking at my TV viewing, and making some cuts from my line-up as I realize that I’ve been missing out on amazing shows like Homeland and Breaking Bad because I’ve been too busy keeping up on Nashville. Nashville. And I spent most of my time watching that playing Minesweeper while waiting for a plotline I cared about to happen. So I dropped it. Because I’d rather be watching something that grips me, even if it’s not always a laugh. Like Game of Thrones, even if I dreaded The Red Wedding so much it damn near gave me nightmares. Skins might enrage me from time to time, but at least it’s engaging me. In 18 episodes (per generation) they made me care more about some of those stupid self-destructive British teenagers than I ever cared or could possibly care about the Glee kids, even before Glee became an engine for churning out iTunes singles. Hawaii Five-O… still having second thoughts about dropping that one, but for all the witty banter and decent action, it is no Justified and never will be.

Doctor Who is going to crush me later this year. The biggest, most painful goodbye in nearly four years is on the horizon. And yet I still can’t wait to see what happens afterwards. I mean, I’ll have to, there’ll be about nine months in between, but still.

And that is its power. It is a source of wonder, of excitement, and of pure joy, a joy made all the more powerful by the pain that comes along the way. And that’s why I try so hard to share it with people. To spread wonder, excitement, and joy. Isn’t that worth a few tears?

Thanks for bearing with me, folks. Next time, I’ll be hilariously angry about pop culture. That’s always fun, right?

Danny G Writes Plays: The Death and Life of Lethargic Lad

This month has been known amongst my friends as “Super September,” with at least one party, often landmark birthday parties, each weekend. It’s been a long, tiring, very busy month. Super September serves as both an excuse for not blogging in like a week (also some temp work that left me exhausted with a sore back for a few days), and a great set-up, as we continue to look at plays about super heroes.

But this time, instead of comic book creators, we tackled actual super heroes in The Death and Life of Lethargic Lad, written by myself and my colleague Chris Munroe.

What’s it about?

It’s based on the Canadian comic book-turned-long running webcomic Lethargic Lad, which uses the mostly mute super hero Lethargic Lad and his various friends/foes to parody super hero culture: the comics, the movies, the cons, the fans, whatever is big in the news or capturing creator Greg Hyland’s attention that week.

For a time, my favourite comic ensemble. But then so little was done in the 90s that comic books should be proud of.
Lethargic Lad and company.

 

We focused on the major cast members. For good guys, the four “replacement Lethargic Lads” that turned up in a parody of the “Death and Return of Superman” story from the early 90s and then stuck around to be the principals: the Last Son of Lethargy, the Lad of Steel, Little Green Boy, and the Evil Cyborg Lethargic Lad. On the side of evil: Lethargic Lad’s primary nemeses Evil Smiley Face Guy and Mr. Mimico, plus the Part Time Lethargic Lad Revenge Squad: Evil Kitty Cat Guy, the Quizmaster, and Lady Bad Girl.

When Evil Smiley Face Guy and Mr. Mimico finally succeed in killing Lethargic Lad, the Replacement Lads spring up to carry on his legacy while the Part Time Lethargic Lad Revenge Squad plots to conquer the world.

But mostly they all sit around and argue about TV, movies, and comic book nerdery. And then the Evil Cyborg Lethargic Lad turns on everyone. ‘Cause, you know, evil.

So why’d that happen?

Many of my nerdier friends at that time had become huge Lethargic Lad fans. It spoke to my love of things geeky and made fun of them in just the right way, much like Hijinks Ensue does now. One day, Chris Munroe decided to email Greg Hyland and ask for permission to write a play about his characters. To my shy, quiet, nobody-will-ever-say-yes-to-my-dreams amazement, Mr. Hyland said go for it, and I decided I wanted in. Chris agreed to co-write the project, and soon we were crafting an outline and picking which scenes we were each going to write (for the most part, I wrote the heroes and he wrote the villains).

We found places for as many of the Lethargic Lad supporting cast as we could: Walrus Boy was made the owner of the coffee shop where the Lads hung out, Guy With a Gun Gal (a character designed, I assume, in reference to a Punisher storyline not even I’ve read) makes an appearance, Mr. Cheese is there solely to make fun of how ridiculous the plot of Batman and Robin was, we put in references to the No-Mutants (a team featuring no mutants) and Poison Uma Thurman, a character created to mock Uma Thurman’s portrayal of Poison Ivy who Chris re-imagined as a villain whose schtick was poisoning Uma Thurman. And, just like in the comics, Lethargic Lad’s one true love Lethargic Lass was a cardboard cutout.

I also found a way to include one of my favourite running gags. Every time something particularly bizarre happens, or there’s a continuity error to cover up, Greg would include the feature “Greg Talks to a Frog,” in which a giant frog would berate him about what was happening. In our script, this took the form of the Narrator being berated by a giant frog about once per scene. I thought it was funny. And done right, it certainly can be.

How’d it turn out?

You know what? Two of us worked on this thing, two of us should get to reflect. So joining us live via having emailed me last week, here’s the Internet’s Chris Munroe.

Three lessons I took from Lethargic Lad:

1) Ask for what you want in this life. The worst that can happen is that you’re told no, and sometimes you’ll offer nothing (nothing!) in exchange for the stage rights to your favorite webcomic and the author/artist, who’s never heard of you, will just give those rights to you out of the goodness of his heart, because why not?

2) To participate in the production of something you’ve written, you need to be able to sublimate your creative ego. The product will be different than what you put on the page. I have an enormous amount of respect for Dan’s ability to do this well. As to my own ability in that regard, we’ll leave the question hanging…

3) Reference-based humor will date. Rapidly, and badly. This is a show from the early 2000s, based on a comic from the 1990s, and WOW does that fact show. Both Dan and I were willing to go very deep into the genre-convention-based lampshade hanging and, while as an exercise this proves interesting to look back on with a decade or so’s hindsight, it shows on every page. Would a third writer who knew nothing of comic books or the culture that surrounds them have helped moderate our instincts in this regard? We’ll never know, as neither of us thought to invite one to give thoughts on the finished product…

Oh man. He ain’t kidding. The pop culture references were thick on this thing. Thick. And grotesquely dated. Future archaeologists could find a copy of this script and figure out it was staged no later than the fall of 2000 based on the references to Ally McBeal, Ironic by Alanis Morissette, and the endless shots at Batman and Robin. Throw in the fact that four of the main characters are references to a Superman story from 1993 (not technically our fault) and a running gag that depends on you having read the Superboy comic from the mid-90s (totally our fault), and yeah, we could’ve used someone to remind us what was going to amuse an audience rather than each other. Sorry, Munsi, do continue.

…I use the phrase “finished product” very loosely here, as I find the script reads very much like a promising first draft that desperately needs a few editing passes to trim the flab. Jokes are repeated again and again, character/plot points are told, not shown, and we both seem to be operating under the belief that drawing attention to plot holes in an occasionally humorous way makes up for the utter lack of interest we have in actually closing them. Overall the “plot”, such as it is, exists as little more than a minimalist frame upon which to hang comic-book inside jokes, working on the assumption that the audience at the actual show will know enough about ‘90s-era event comics to take that journey with us. If memory serves, they did not.

Fact. The lampshade hanging is both fast an furious, and not once did we consider that if our characters (mostly the Frog, also Walrus Boy and Lady Bad Girl) were complaining about the story this much it might be a red flag.

Which is a shame, as re-reading this I was surprised at how many of the jokes actually did still work for me. Poison Uma Thurman, in particular, is a super-villain concept that does still make me giggle, what with her poisoning Uma Thurman and all, and beyond that I think a lot of the banter, the bickering and the patter still hits more than it misses, even with a decade’s hindsight. It’s not that the material was BAD, as such; it’s just that there was far too much of it, spread too long, without enough framework to back it up properly, which led in the end to a script that was much less than the sum of its parts.

I don’t know why I thought for so long that “wordier is wittier.” I still catch myself thinking that sometimes. “I can make this awkwardness Hugh Grant-adorable if I just make the sentence three times longer than it needs to be.” No. Stop it. Streamline that banter, whittle the jokes down to something more rapid fire, and have less people yelling about how stupid this all is and we’re on to something.

I remember almost nothing of the production of the actual show, as I was on the other side of town rehearsing a different show simultaneously with this (Cabaret? Rocky Horror? For the life of me I can’t remember which) [Rocky Horror. He was Riff Raff. -Dan] and had to split my focus between the two. And the role that was basically “amusing, largely mute background business” wasn’t getting the lion’s share of my attention due to this fact, which is a shame, as I recall the actual performances being light, breezy fun, and would have benefited from more time to devote to what I was doing. I have no idea if the SHOW would have benefited, but I personally would have.

Overall, Lethargic Lad is a good summary of Dan and I, as writers, for both good and ill, at that time in our lives, operating completely free from editors, with all the problems that creates. A decade later I use editors for my writing. Lots and lots of editors. Broken Escalator went through eight different readings during three editing passes before I considered it sufficiently workshopped, and I was tempted to give it a fourth pass before finally releasing it. That’s me today. Me a decade ago, unencumbered by any significant editorial voice other than my own belief that I was hilarious? Lethargic Lad didn’t stand a chance…

I, too, have since learned the value of an edit, and the value of people you trust to tell you what does and does not work. We’ll get to that more as we move on.

Would you stage it again?

Like this? No. Very much no. The humour fades exponentially the further away you get from the late 90s. But there are elements in there that work.

Perhaps what we’d need to do to make a Lethargic Lad script work is completely change our approach. Rather than try to replicate the “hangin’ round, mockin’ comic books” narrative of the webcomic, if we made this a full-on mockery/celebration of the tropes and cliches of nerd culture. Move away from specific references (“Wasn’t it dumb in Iron Man when they did this”) to something more overreaching (“Them’s surely a bunch of white dudes you’ve assembled to save the world”). I mean, nerd culture is in the mainstream now, and we could have fun with that. Not that we will in all probability. We both have other projects on the go and neither of us is likely to go back to this well any time soon.

Shortly after the run of Death and Life of Lethargic Lad I envisioned an outline for a sequel, Lethargic Lad Returns Forever. It also involved a cast of at least 14 and many, many outlandish props and costumes. I never bothered to write a word of it down. I couldn’t imagine anyone being excited to do it all again, and started writing smaller scale comedies with more character development.

Well. Eventually.

Not right away, as the next installment will show.

Repeated theme alert

  • “Sittin’ around coffee shops.” A lot of my plays involve characters just chatting in coffee shops rather than, you know, doing things. I can’t believe I didn’t mention this trope in Apocalypse Soonish, given what a serious offender it is on this score. Anyway, 75% of what the Replacement Lads do is quibble about 90s pop culture in a coffee shop.
  • No Simpsons quotes! But I did borrow a turn of phrase from… some sitcom. One character says “Get out!” in disbelief and the other replies “I’m out!” Not Seinfeld. What was it. Some lesser Friends clone, I think. Oh well. Hardly matters.
  • That said I did lift a few scenes from the original Lethargic Lad comics, but I feel that’s allowed in this case.

Danny G Writes Plays: Forging the Team

Okay. That last post has held the front page long enough. Time to move past sad tales of past failures and resume my look through my old scripts–oh. Right. Well at least these were mistakes I did learn from.

Ladies and gentlemen, Forging the Team.

What’s it about?

Ed, Amy, and Les have been collaborating for years. Their goal? To one day produce their own comic book. Ed writes plots, Amy scripts, and Les draws. Ed also acts as the gang’s agent, and he’s landed a pitch meeting with Impact Comics. They’re going to have their chance to pitch their own super hero team: they just need to decide what that team’s going to be. Ed thinks they should sell a team he came up with: The American Freedom League, greatest heroes of the 1950s.

Les is obsessed with visuals, too tied up in what looks good on the page to have any idea what makes for good characters or stories. By way of a for instance, Les creates The Sketcheristo, a hero whose drawings come alive. His name isn’t the only problem: he’s also an unrepentant Nazi war criminal.

Amy is busy tearing down the few characters of Ed’s that Impact has liked, trying to subvert standard comic stories and inject more feminism. She finds Supreme Avenger too derivative of Superman, thinks the sexual tension between occultist The Blue Witch and scientist The Astounding Professor Night too cliche, and resents that Blue Witch is the team’s only woman and is called “sultry” right off the bat. Ed worries that her less crowd-friendly ideas might put off Impact, but she fights him at every step.

Ed must not only assemble the perfect team of heroes to pitch to the company, he must also find a way to forge the three friends into a true creative team.

See what I did with the title, there?

Whew. No Premise Beach at all this time. Okay. Good start.

So why’d that happen?

Short answer is “It was my final project for playwriting class in University,” but that’s a dull answer.

It’s likely no surprise, given how many opinions I have about Batman, that I’m a comic book geek. I was also running a superhero-based role playing game with my friends. So, needing a subject for a one-act play (final project and all that), I decided to tap into that world. Play around there. And for super hero character concepts, including many of Les’ hilariously bad ideas, I looked no further than my role players. After all, these were the people who, when asked to make characters for a super team in pre-civil rights Cold War America, came up with an African prince, a Nazi war criminal and a Russian communist named Glastnost Guy.

Comic gold, even for people who don’t follow the Justice League.

How’d it turn out?

For starters, I had never seen our teacher laugh as hard as when Les pulled out Sketcheristo. So I’ve got that going for me.

The premise is solid, and many of the jokes work great. The actor who played Ed in the two festivals I entered this in has been bugging me for years to remount it, so clearly the script has its strengths, mostly the comedic beats. And it got me an A, or at least an A-, in the course, so it can’t be all bad.

However.

Amy’s feminism is played as barely more legitimate than Les’ terrible character ideas. Her desire to fill the team with something other than burly white dudes is an obstacle Ed must overcome, even though he does ultimately concede and the fifth character that they add to the team is a second woman. In today’s age of rape threats being lobbed at any feminist critic who dares to claim there is gender inequality in comics or video games; a time when accusations of “fake geek girl” get lobbed at women for trying to express their love of geeky things; a time when Batman has four comics to himself, Superman has three, Wolverine is in more comics than actually exist some weeks, but Wonder Woman can’t get a second book unless she splits it with Superman, Amy’s portrayal is… jarring. Uncomfortable. These controversies weren’t in full bloom when I wrote this 14 years ago, but comic books were still a massive boys’ club, and the fact is that Amy is raising more valid points than anyone else in this script. And yet Ed is our noble protagonist.

It’s a cute story with a few great laughs, but it aged badly in ways I did not anticipate.

Would you stage it again?

The core concept works, and many of the jokes are funny, but I would be hesitant to bring this one back to the stage without some overhauling. First off, I no longer buy Ed as the protagonist. I’m not saying he couldn’t be, but right now, reading the script, I’m not sure I buy it. If he’s the glue that holds the team together, I should be able to see that sooner than the very end.

Second, the play is split into four scenes: one prior to the initial pitch meeting, and three others set in the 20 hours or so between that meeting and the follow-up where Ed needs to present a full team. This means that every time some sort of conflict begins to arrive, Ed calls for a break and we flash forward a few hours. This… does not work. Not really. If I were to take another spin at it, I’d instead say that Ed has landed a pitch meeting with Impact Comics, but it’s in one hour. They have one hour to get this done. Let the looming deadline turn up the pressure from minute one, then let the cracks start to form, instead of cutting to black every time the story gets out of second gear.

And last… maybe Amy should be the protagonist. She’s the one challenging the team to do something new and interesting, while Ed just wants to parrot what already works and thinks that’s something to be proud of. Seriously, every time Amy says one of his ideas is unoriginal he comes back with, basically, “But we’re in comics, so it’s okay.” I make… I make so many troubling points in this script. It’s confusing and unsettling to realize.

At the very least, I cannot play Amy’s desire to see some attempt at gender equality in the comic she herself is being asked to write as something that’s holding the team back. The way it’s written now is at best ignoring an opportunity to attack the various misogynist attitudes plaguing geek culture. At worst, it’s condoning those attitudes. And that’s not the side I want to be on.

Also Amy and Ed’s opening argument over which book is better, Justice League or Avengers, might establish their “writer vs. artist” dynamic but it uses specific stories from the late 90s as examples, and as such reads hella dated now. Might want something more abstract there.

Repeated theme alerts

  • “Man and woman cannot be friends.” In the play’s final 30 seconds, Les realizes that Amy once had a crush on him, but since he didn’t seem interested she moved on. Something he now considers a great injustice. Not sure why that’s there. I mean, the play was basically over. Where did that come from.
  • “Writing about writers.” Two thirds of the characters in the script are writers. It begins.
  • Debatable Simpsons quote on page 45. Definite Simpsons quote seven lines later. Still doing that, huh?
  • My wordplay has a definite style at this point. Just… not a great one.

Next time, an attempt to recapture the Trigger Dandy spirit with apathetic superheros. Bite down on something, it’s gonna sting.

An open letter to long ago

So the other day I officially entered my late 30s. It’s… it’s a complex thing to process. And tends to spark a certain amount of reflection. We’ll get to how I moved from writing about plays to writing about comic books soon. But for now, I hope you’ll forgive me if I switch gears and allow shit to get real for a moment.

Feel free to skip this and come back next time. For now… if you’ll bear with me, there’s an old pain I’d like to try to let go of. An old friend to say good-bye to, even though she will almost certainly never, ever read this. Anyway. Let’s begin.

A long, long time ago

Has it really been nine years since I first saw you? In the parking lot outside the theatre. I don’t know that we spoke. Not for long. But there was something about you, even then. I liked you right away. Not that I told you that. Not that I could tell you that. I can jump out of a plane, I can give a group of people something I wrote and watch them tear it to pieces so I can improve, and time and money permitting I would happily hit the airport and jump on a plane to anywhere with an hour’s notice. But I cannot run a marathon, climb Everest, start a conversation with strange women or tell someone that I like them. Never learned how, and while the process seems easy enough to pick up (just run now and again, and each time try to run a little further, how hard is that), I can’t get past the notion that the training process is going to be savagely unpleasant. Seems so valid when I say it. Never seems as valid when I hear it.

I didn’t talk to you that time. Or the time after, at your coffee shop. But then you were in the show, and I got to see you three times a week. At least. And we’d talk. We’d bond. I liked you the moment I saw you, and I liked you more as I got to know you.

I should have told you.

I should have hugged you when you were sad about being stood up at a performance. I should have driven you home from the wrap party like you thought I was going to. But more than that I should have told you how I felt. We talked until six in the morning one night, I should have said one thing that mattered. The only thing that mattered.

Because you deserved to know. Because hiding it was dishonest. Because keeping it to myself was killing me. The vending machine and the bear. But back then, sometimes it seemed like I was only happy when I was talking to you. Seemed a shame to ruin that by inducing the gut-churning terror of even thinking about telling you I was falling in love with you.

But I should have told you. Before it was too late. And I believe, I do believe that there was a time before it was too late. A time of hugs and hangouts and extremely late-night chats. A time when I could have taken you out and gone for the kiss and I think I might have succeeded. But there was most definitely a time when it was too late. And a time when it was way too late. And that’s the time I picked.

And now you’re gone. Far away. Not too far, a person could drive there in a day if they started before dawn, but it feels farther than it is. Because it’s not the physical distance. It’s the fact that I can never talk to you again. Over four and half years later and it still stings sometimes. I wish I could call you. Text you. Visit you. Know how you’re doing. But I can’t. And I have no one to blame but myself, my own cowardice, my own failures.

I don’t think of you often. Not every day. But sometimes. And I miss you when I do. I never wanted things to end this way, with sudden silence and a farewell you’ll never see, and yet somehow I managed to do everything necessary to make sure it couldn’t end any other way. And if our friendship had meant something to you, and I think it did once, then I took that away from you.

So I’m sorry. I’m sorry for lying, if only through omission. I’m sorry for hiding behind excuses. I’m sorry I didn’t give you the respect you deserved. I’m sorry that I hurt one of my best friends enough that I’ll never see you again. And I’m sorry that I couldn’t even be bothered to learn something from this and did it all again two years after I lost you forever.

Some regrets haunt you, kids. Some regrets haunt you and you’ll never really be free of them. And it’s the things you didn’t do that really get to you. Guess that’s the moral.

Next time something fun, I promise.

Danny G Writes Plays: Pride and Prima Donnas

If this were an “inside baseball” examination of plays I have worked on, the actual performances, this would be when the story gets dark. This would be when my first theatre company split in two, like the Mystics and the Skeksis in Dark Crystal. Fortunately it is not. Just talkin’ about the scripts. So, without further ado (my stores of ado are low today anyhow) here’s Pride and Prima Donnas.

What’s it about?

Okay. New leaf here. No angels, demons, or shadow governments. Just normal people with normal people problems. Shouldn’t need Premise Beach at all.

Director David Locke has returned to his home town after a stint in New York, and is back working for his old theatre company alongside his producer friend Jacob Garrison. For David’s first show back, Jacob’s picked out something special… Dance Into the Fire: The Duran Duran Rock Opera.

PREMISE!
Here we go.

So close. I was so close. But, since we’re here… Doctor Simon Duran builds himself a love android, Electric Barbarella, but then falls for Rio, who he sees dancing on the sand. In a fit of jealously, Electric Barbarella kills Rio, then Duran, then herself. A tragic love story set to synth-pop hits of the early 80s. What’s not to like?

Anyhoo, before long David’s been introduced to his crew, stage manager and loyal soldier Caitlin Markov and tech director Ted O’Shea, and has to assemble his cast. As Doctor Duran, Monroe Morrison, veteran of the dinner theatre circuit prone to clowning around and ad-libbing. As the Baladeer, arrogant Method actor Shane Thompson. As Rio, former chorus girl Lena. And as the android, Tiffany Neuworth, whose bubbly, cheerful, seemingly airheaded exterior masks the fact that she’s a gifted performer and possibly the smartest person in the company. It doesn’t take long for the cracks to form.

Shane and Monroe hate each other immediately as their acting styles mix like cheese and diesel. Jacob is trying everything he can to get in bed with Tiffany, or at least get her naked on stage. Lena and Ted start an affair that quickly turns sour. And David has difficulty masking his contempt for the show and everyone in it. Well, except Caitlin and Tiffany. Tensions build to a head as rehearsals continue.

So why’d that happen?

David Locke was my first spin at an archetype I’d play with a couple more times over the next few years: the guy who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else and expresses that through hopefully amusing angry rants. I’ll cover why I gave that up later, but at the time, David served as a vehicle to satirize the theatrical process.

Write what you know, they say, and theatre was what I knew, what I’d known for nearly all of the 90s. I’d seen shows threatened when the lead actors broke up, last minute recasts, successes and failures of differing acting techniques, and the beautiful miracle of a cast coming together and making something wonderful. So I decided to try writing about it.

As to the show within the show. My musical upbringing was… difficult. I missed out on the popular music of my youth as my parents were trying to raise me on country and folk music. My rehabilitation was… difficult, and involved some regrettable choices in the late 80s, but the point is that I didn’t actually get into the pop music of my youth until university. Toto, Soft Cell, Thomas Dolby, maybe I’d heard them here and there back in the day, but they were all like new discoveries. And my favourite? Duran Duran. So I conceived a musical based around their hits to serve as the backdrop for the script.

How’d it turn out?

This is another script that’s been put up a couple of times. As such, it’s had some revisions, but unlike Apocalypse it was ultimately a case of adding rather than cutting or replacing. Additional moments to further flesh out the cast and crew. Additional chaos to the end of act one, where everything truly begins to collapse. The scene had opened with four simultaneous arguments, each taking turns playing out, a device better suited to television or movies, something where cuts and edits can happen, rather than stage, where people have to stand awkwardly until it’s their turn to talk again. So I blended the dialogue together, making them all flow into each other. Much better effect, but way harder on the cast. Which one day I might be persuaded to care about.

Ultimately I think it works well. It’s not a full on farce; too many breaks in the pacing, especially with the new material. In order to fully explore the characters I needed to take the occasional breather from rehearsal antics and just let the cast talk to each other. And, reading it now, those are some of the better scenes, so trying to push it to full farce would be a disservice. It’s the moments when David stops yelling at his cast and starts being a person, revealing his passion for theatre, that the audience gets any investment in Dance Into the Fire being a success. And without that I’d just be wasting everyone’s time.

So by and large I’d still call it a success, but there is one detail, one flaw I refused to see throughout both productions. For the climax, I included a montage of scenes from the musical to show that they’ve pulled off the show. Various people suggested cutting it over the years. I didn’t listen. It didn’t help that one of the primary voices suggesting the sequence be cut had a tendency to equate “simpler” with “better,” the same logic that led to a blown sight gag when I directed Two Guys the season Pride was remounted. After letting that logic screw up the horde of ninjas, I was in no mood to hear anything remotely similar to “don’t do it, because it might be hard.”

In addition, one other factor drove me to include the scenes from the play. In Kevin Smith’s film Jersey Girl, Ben Affleck steps forward at a town hall meeting to deliver an impassioned speech to the townsfolk. As he starts talking, his voice fades out and the music swells up, and his big speech is not heard, but simply implied in the reactions of the crowd. Which to me felt like cheating. Cheating, and a little bit of cowardice. I was convinced that to make a show about a Duran Duran rock opera and never show any of it was like doing a Star Trek movie with no spaceships in it. However, after the second run was complete, another writer friend, whose first novel is great and available for purchase right this second, explained my error.

In the end, the show goes spectacularly. So everyone claims as they rush off stage to the sound of applause. By deciding to show clips from the play, I put the responsibility of earning that conclusion on the show’s cast. In short, the selected scenes actually have to be spectacular or the entire ending feels hollow. Whereas if we don’t see the actual production, it can be every bit as amazing as the audience can imagine. So, yeah… the smart thing would have been to use cheering and applause as a sound cue, and let the assume assume it all worked out.

Would you stage it again?

Probably, yeah. I’d revisit David’s dialogue a bit. If he must be angrily ranting at the cast the whole time, I’m convinced it can be better. And I’d take all the scenes from the show within the show and scatter them throughout the rehearsals. That way, we still get to see bits of the show, avoiding that feeling of copping out on the premise, but still leaving the final product up to the audience’s imaginations.

Overall though, I’m still fairly happy with it, and it’s part of a cycle of connected plays that starts with Two Guys and continues through two more scripts we’ll be talking about down the road, all sharing characters who are part of the theatre group staging Dance Into the Fire.

This show also tends to spark interest in seeing the rock opera itself. I’ve never given it a whirl, but that has less to do in my interest in writing the show and way more to do with my interest in not getting sued by Simon Le Bon. If I thought there were a way to stage it with the blessing of the band (and their label, who likely hold more sway over the song rights), I might go for it, as I do have a vision of how it might go. The actress who played Caitlin (both times) had a different vision, and took a shot at getting the rights to make it, but it proved a stickier wicket than she’d hoped. I think she used an internet site to apply for the rights to use the necessary Duran Duran songs, but got told that the rights to the works of Queen were unavailable. An answer that’s like the movie Tree of Life: confusing and of no use to anyone.

Repeated Theme Alerts

  • “Man and Woman Can Never Be Friends.” It’s not enough for David to respect Caitlin professionally, he has to ask her out in the end. She says no. He takes it well.
  • “Plays about plays.” The second time this trope reared its head, and the only time where none of the characters are writers. I can only assume it’s because in 1999 I hadn’t yet become a devotee of Aaron Sorkin and his fondness for writing about writers.

Next time in this series… the superhero/supervillain period. It starts better than you’d think.