According the IMDB.com news wire, Universal may be making Second Sight into a feature film. The series, which originally starred Sin City’s Clive Owen, is about a detective who wants to solve one last case before he loses his sight, all the while keeping his condition a secret from his colleagues. There are, as yet, no stars attached to the film.
The San Jose Mercury News website reports that GameTap, a subscription online game service, will offer free games starting May 31.
The site currently offers more than 850 games to people who pay fees ($9.95 a month, or $6.95 a month if one buys a year in advance). The free games will be in addition to the games available to subscribers. Among the subscription games are Sam and Max (based on the Steve Purcell comic) and Myst Online: Uru.
How will they make money by giving away games? Advertising. According to Stu Snyder, senior vice president, "We view this is as the next evolution of GameTap. Clearly, the Internet is a growing force as an advertising medium. Our heritage at Turner is we always aggregate content, re-popularize it, and make it available in different ways to consumers.”
Interesting idea, that.
There is hardly anything more annoying than listening to a bunch of us Baby Boomers talking about the good old days: the music, the sex, the drugs, the sit-ins and be-ins and love-ins, even the comics. We act like we invented rebellion, and we don’t think anyone else will ever care about the world as much as we did, and certainly no one else will make changes as important as the ones we made.
We’re wrong.
A recent article in USA Today describes “Generation Y”, those born since the early 1980s, as one that has endured a lifetime of public tragedies. My generation lived through the Kennedy assassinations and the murder of Martin Luther King, the Kent State shootings, the Viet Nam War and Watergate, and these things were horrible. However, kids today witnessed the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle explosion, the Waco standoff, the Oklahoma City bombing, the attack on the Atlanta Olympics, school attacks on Columbine, the Amish school in Pennsylvania, and the recent Virginia Tech massacre. They’ve seen a tsunami devastate Southeast Asia, and Hurricane Katrina destroy New Orleans. In my day, we watched a half-hour evening news broadcast, while today there is a 24-hour news cycle. They say that Viet Nam was the first war fought on our living room television, but the “Shock and Awe” attacks on Baghdad four years ago had so much advance hype and so many on-the-scene embedded journalists, they practically had official sponsors.
The horrific moments that changed my personal world occurred when my best friend’s brother died in Viet Nam, followed shortly by the Kent State slaughter which was just a few miles from my house. Before that, my feelings, although sincere, were based more on ideas than on events. My son saw the World Trade Center collapse outside his classroom in lower Manhattan, but not before he saw burning bodies falling from the windows.
Just as the Sixties didn’t turn everyone into a protesting hippie peacenik, these events have not shaped a single personality type among today’s twenty-somethings. Most of the mass media would have us believe that the values of this generation establish a new low of shallowness, exalting the likes of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. But their taste and values go far beyond American Idol or the Pussycat Dolls.
The USA Today article quotes social historian William Strauss: “the Millennials’ baby-boomer parents were anxious about political assassinations because that’s what they witnessed growing up. But their children’s fears are different – because they witnessed mass killings of children by peers whose motives nobody can seem to understand.”
He continues, “The fact that this sort of thing can happen calls into question the super-achieving, high-stress life some of them lead.” He says that Generation Y will be less concerned with “having it all” than with having a balance. Unlike many in my generation, who traded in their values for SUVs, private schools and second houses and the long commute to jobs that paid for everything, there is hope that this generation will enjoy every day with their families as well as meaningful work.
The horrific events this week at Virginia Tech have elicited the usual pompous political rhetoric about the evils of Hollywood entertainment – violent video games, rap music, movies and television are to blame. “Our kids are being trained to be murderers,” thunder the politicians. “They learn to shoot at their enemies instead of reasoning with them. They become calloused by this violence, which dehumanizes others. Let us regulate this evil, lest our children slaughter us in our beds.”
Except that’s not how it works. If the media were that effective, we would all be effective code crackers, physically fit from our active lifestyles, enjoying out fabulously large New York apartments. That’s what the non-violent media teaches.
I’ve been a non-violent activist since high school, where I regularly risked expulsion by distributing an anti-war magazine. I dropped out of college for 18 months to work with the War Resisters League, and I now serve on the Board of Directors for the A. J. Muste Institute (http://www.ajmuste.org). Doing this work, I’ve met a lot of people who are deeply and thoughtfully concerned about popular culture, and think it degrades people. After decades of rational and reasonable conversation, I need to disagree.
In Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence, author (and sometimes comic book writer) Gerard Jones examines why children enjoy playing at violence, and why it can be a good thing for them. If I may grossly over-simplify an entire book into a few sentences, he says that children play to work out their feelings, including anger, frustration and helplessness. It’s far better to pretend to kill the monsters with rayguns or laser beams than to hit another kid because he’s got better stuff in his lunchbox than you do.
Kids aren’t the only ones who feel this way. As a human being and a New Yorker, I face frustration dozens of times a day. The traffic lights are slow, the tourists don’t know how to walk down a city sidewalk so other people can pass them, my neighbors don’t clean up after their dogs. I think about killing them all the time. Because I’m an adult, and because I understand that actions have consequences, I don’t do these things. Instead, I watch Kill Bill or read Punisher.
I also understand that other people have feelings. This understanding did as much to shape my politics as anything else – I saw people on television, dying in Viet Nam, realized I didn’t want to die, and the people I saw, even the Communists, probably didn’t want to die, either. From there, I could see that the people making the decisions to go to war weren’t the ones fighting, but they and their friends were getting rich.
In the first portion of our interview (click here), Harlan told Martha Thomases all about the nature of humanity and probably became the first person to use the names Klimt, Frank Buck, Eddie Condon, and Sanjaya Malakar in a single sentence. We pick up our story right after some stuff about Gary Groth…
Well, that’s that. Anyway. The Dream Corridor. After ten years, the book is out.
CoMx: It’s just gorgeous.
HE: Isn’t it? You know what’s interesting? It’s gotten great reviews in Publishers Weekly, in Newsweek. It’s gotten great reviews in the mainstream. And nowhere in the comic world are they reviewing it.
CoMx: What’s made it in bookstores is not what the comic press writes about.
HE: Yeah, it would seem you’re right, Martha; and it breaks my heart. I love comics so, and want acknowledgement for them, beyond Crumb and Spiegelman and MIller. But the comics press for the most part only plays the flak-agents for DC and Marvel. They write about the superheroes. Here’s this book, this absolute gem, on which dozens and dozens of people broke their ass, Dream Corridor, and it contains the absolute last time that Curt Swan put a pencil to paper. We had the smarts to publish Colan as Colan, and then colored it, too. One would think: here is a book that really matters, what people say comics are supposed to be! And we can’t get a mention amidst all the talk about who’s going to be writing Birds of Prey.
CoMx: But you’re going to be reaching more people than Birds of Prey.
HE: Yes, I suppose.The book is selling out, but it’s cold comfort, kiddo.
CoMx: I don’t know your numbers, but I know that Birds of Prey is selling less than, say, 300 is selling.
HE: Mmmm. But is that really the point? Whatever the distribution may be is sort of commercialspeak. I guess I’m talking art for the people, not just feeding the adolescent fix. Here are critics of the field looking at a genre, an art-form, and they have the choice of doing the current Spider-Man of the 500 Spider-Man books that are put out every month, or one issue of this magazine over here that is striving for something clearly different. And they choose to do the Spider-Man over and over again. When you call them on it, you get no response. It’s as if: why is this person talking to us about that which does not have a cape and a cowl?
CoMx: Because they are confusing the medium with the genre. They think “superheroes” is the same as comics. They think superheroes are the important stuff.
HE: You mean all the good, smart shit that Maggie Thompson or Peter David or Gary Groth has been nagging about all these years, none of it has stuck?
CoMx: Where it’s stuck, those people have not gone on to write for the comics press.
HE: That’s pretty depressing: after all these years and all this serious discussion of what comics should be doing by all of the serious critics in the field … that nobody gets it. And they all still think that Superman is the beginning and the ending of this Great American Original Art-form? Kill me now. There’s something awry in the world of graphics. It’s very distressing to me, especially because the new Dream Corridor is out, and it’s probably the last of that kind of thing I’ll ever do.
Harlan Ellison is a force of nature.
For more than 50 years he’s published stories and novels, written for television, movies, and comics, created an award-winning CD-Rom, lectured widely, performed TV voice-overs and spoken word recordings, and been an all-around pain-in-the-ass curmudgeon. This month alone, Deep Shag Records issued his newest CD, On the Road with Harlan Ellison (Volume 3, no less) and a 105-minute theatrical documentary about him, Dreams with Sharp Teeth, will have its premiere at the Writers Guild in Beverly Hills on Thursday, April 19 (for information about all of this, and to get tickets for the Guild Event, go to www.harlanellison.com).
Dark Horse Comics just released Harlan Ellison’s Dream Corridor Volume Two, a book ten years in the making, with contributions from Gene Ha, Curt Swan, Martin Nodell, Gene Colan, Jay Lynch, Eric Shanower, Tony Isabella, Richard Corben, John Ostrander and more.
I first heard Ellison speak more than 25 years ago, at an event to which ComicMix sensei Denny O’Neil brought us. I no longer remember precisely what he said, but do remember being so angry about it that I was awake all night, arguing with him in my head. Ten years later, when the rabbi’s sermon provoked a similar response, I knew I’d found the synagogue for me. Jews are like that.
Reb Ellison is still schooling. Our interview started off awkwardly, as we called to arrange a schedule and Mr. Ellison wanted to go with no notice. After a pause while we ran out to buy batteries for our antique cassette recorder, we began.
HE: I live my life principally by one adage – Louis Pasteur: Chance favors the prepared mind. Thus, if you call me, you should have batteries. Now we know we’re running. Now you can interview me. Go ahead.
CoMx: You have a new graphic novel, you have a new CD, you have this movie coming out. Why now?
HE: Because though I’m incredibly humble and shy, I am, nonetheless, famous … I’m a cultural icon. Everyone gets their 15 minutes, and if they have some talent they get their 15 minutes repeatedly. My 15 minutes have been going on since about 1955.
One finds, at this age, the most annoying thing you have to worry about is cultural amnesia. For most of the little imbeciles today who live on the Internet, for whom nostalgia is what they had for breakfast, all the golden things and evil lessons of the past have no significance, no meaning, no understanding that whatever they do would not be possible had not the world, its artistic heroes, villains, done what they did before their smug, ignorant li’l asses were born. They know nothing, and are arrogant that they know nothing. “Bite me” is their mantra. They don’t even know the name of who won on American Idol last year or who came in second or who won the Academy Award, much less who Sojourner Truth was, or Lanny Ross, or Tris Speaker, or Subotai, or Klimt or Frank Buck, or Eddie Condon, or … or anything earlier than Sanjaya Malakar and Beyonce’s thong.
But they are quick to label geezer and old coot everybody who did anything the day before they were born. I consider myself very lucky still to have a large following and a loyal following in these parlous times, and I think, some interesting enemies, too.
Why do we like superheroes? There are many theories. The one that makes the most sense to me is that they arise from our frustrations with our own bodies. As someone who was once the mother of a two-year old (as well as once a two-year old myself), I’ve seen how the rage and frustration of an infant gets transformed with words into imaginative play, with storylines so complicated they would baffle Grant Morrison.
We want to fly and we can barely walk. We want to lift cars over our heads, yet we struggle to pull up our pants. We want to leap buildings with a single bound, but the monkey bars at the playground are too scary. No wonder we are drawn to superheroes.
Since most comic books have been written by men and purchased by boys, we can make fairly educated guesses about what most frustrates the male of our species. They want to be stronger. They want to be faster. They want to be more powerful. They want to be able to physically and mentally dominate.
What about women? Do we want the same things? Do we want something different? If women controlled the superhero comic book market, would other kinds of characters be more successful?
May I suggest the following:
Metabolism Lass – The woman you love to hate, she is able to eat anything at all, even cans of frosting, without gaining weight.
Multi-Task Mistress – She can tend to a screaming baby, a demanding boss, a helpless husband, all while explaining to her mother, on the phone, how to use the Tivo.
Invisible Girl – No, not Sue Richards. This I-Girl is able to walk past a group of construction workers, Wall Street traders or street kids without rousing any whistles.
Couture Queen – Sick and tired of clothes designed for people with no hips or thighs, she has the power to create clothes that actually fit, look good and feel comfortable on adult women.
Manicure Maid – It’s a cliché of modern times that if you want to show a character is spoiled, you make her complain about a broken nail. Hey, it hurts to break a nail! Despite the pain it causes, Manicure Maid uses hers as weapons, firing cuticles like bullets at badguys.
Princess IRA – Our heroine can stretch a pension check from here to Pluto, which is a useful power when women live longer than men, but earn less.
Guilt Girl – Doing amazing feats on your own is great, but she completely understands that you don’t have time to help her overcome the monstrous evil she faces. Really, it’s okay. She’ll get by. Don’t trouble yourself.
Have ideas of your own? Put them in comments!
For the second week in a row Will Ferrell is the top box-office draw as Blades of Glory remained the highest-grossing picture of the holiday weekend, according to the Associated Press. The film took in $23 million, followed by Disney’s animated Meet the Robinsons with $17 million. Ice Cube’s Are We Done Yet was third, with $15 million.
Grindhouse, the hilarious send-up of B-movies made by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, earned $11.6 million, according to early estimates. This is considered to be a disappointing showing, as it was expected to top the box office with grosses in the $27 million range.
"With these two filmmakers’ pedigree and the overall cool factor that this film had going for it, you would have figured it would have done a lot more business," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Media By Numbers. However, with a three-hour-plus length, the movie could be shown only half as often as the other films.
Grindhouse played to big crowds on the East and West coasts but failed to click with audiences in the Midwest and South, Weinstein said.
With theatrical receipts, overseas sales, television and home-video revenues, Grindhouse"will turn a profit on its $53 million budget, Weinstein said. The company hoped that word of mouth from those who did see it would sustain it at theaters in coming weeks, he said.
In response to recent inquiries about the production of Grindhouse, a spokesperson for Troublemaker Studios, the production entity co-founded and co-run by Robert Rodriguez and Elizabeth Avellan, released the following statement:
"Elizabeth Avellan and Robert Rodriguez were separated long before the Grindhouse production began. Their separation and subsequent divorce were very amicable and they opted to continue as planned, and to produce the film together — a decision they informed Bob and Harvey Weinstein [co-chairmen of The Weinstein Company, distributor of Grindhouse] about prior to the start of production. Robert and Elizabeth plan to produce Sin City 2 together — with Robert directing — for Dimension Films in the coming months. The hiatus during the production of Grindhouse had nothing to do with Robert’s personal life.
"On April 10th, 2006, after shooting for five weeks, Robert completed principal photography of the first phase of his segment of Grindhouse. He took a hiatus from shooting to assemble the footage he had already shot and determine his next steps in the production, which is the same successful approach he utilized with Sin City when he shot the film in two parts."
On a completely unrelated note, we saw Grindhouse yesterday and think the Tarantino part was awesome.
Because men have so little power in modern life, Spike TV will provide them a safe place to express their opinions this year when they present the first-ever Guy’s Choice Awards. Categories will include Best Asskicker (that’s what it says in the press release), Ballsiest Band, Hottest Girl on the Planet (Saturn Girl is not eligible), Luckiest M.F. (sic, again), Luckiest Bastard, Most Dangerous Man. They also promise to deliver a prize they call The Brass Balls Award to a legendary action hero.
Unlike any other program ever on television, Spike TV dares to feature what they describe as "unbelievably foxy trophy girls."
If you’re a guy and you never, ever get to have an opinion, vote, run for office, or run a branch of government, you can make yourself feel powerful by voting at www.spiketv.com. However, you’ll have to wait until May 1. All this authority goes away when voting closes on June 1.
The official sponsors are American Express, Cingular, Jeep, Pizza Hut, Snickers, Southern Comfort and the U.S. Army.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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