It hadn’t felt like a terribly productive week but as I was thinking of how to summarize things, it started to coalesce into more of a busy week than I originally thought. Additionally, I’ve watched a few things that have been really fun and inspiring and just extremely well-crafted stories, so I wanted to share those as well.
Writing
In April, when I had far too much to do, I started writing a new full-length play. Or something that maybe feels like a series of plays because the idea feels bigger than what I could happily contain in a single work. Some playwrights craft trilogies of plays and maybe this could be one for me, but I’m not going to worry about that just yet. Broadly speaking, the idea centers on the question of whether it’s the right choice to continue trying to fix something that’s broken or if you’re ready to acknowledge that it’s broken beyond salvaging and it’s time to let it collapse and rebuild. I had the ambition to finish a first draft by the end of the month and while I didn’t get anywhere close to doing that, it is underway and I’m continuing to build it.
I started writing a new short play last week and began exploring what might be a new full-length play this week. Both are in the early phases of development so all I’m doing right now is trying to listen and find the right tone for each.
I have two comic book concepts I’ve been building for which I’ve felt ready to start searching for artists. One of them, I’d like to publish here on Substack, but the other I’d like to go about building a pitch to send out to publishers. For that concept, I think I’ve found an artist! He’s currently working on a four-issue series for a publisher which should wrap up around October, which gives me plenty of time to continue building the bible for the comic. Granted, I would love to start moving on it right away but I think this cushion of time is going to be very beneficial, and he and I will check in leading up to October to talk more about concept and character design. The concept is going to be a miniseries or a single graphic novel. (There could be a second if by chance people really like it.) I’ll probably outline it for both options and in the event a publisher shows interest in it, we’ll discuss the best option for publishing.
The best creative moment this past week was a discussion I had with my partner about one of the core structures of the comic; basically how the world within the comic is structured and how the protagonist moves within it and affects it. We started the conversation and I knew what I wanted the world to be, but I didn’t know how it got to be that way and I feel like we came out on the other side and I had a clearer vision of how the world within the comic worked. Then I took part of the week to outline those structures in my series bible. So that was a very fruitful and productive portion of the week.
If you’re creating anything, get you someone who is really sharp, points out where some of the weak spots in your story are, someone who challenges you with the right questions and encourages you to keep building. I’m very fortunate that my someone is the person I do life with.
Okay now, on to the things I’ve seen …
Moving Pictures
We finished watching Severance (last night, in fact). What an insanely weird show that executes an interesting idea masterfully. The thing that it does so well is that for every new discovery made by a character, those discoveries create more questions which perpetuate the overall mystery of the series and propels the characters toward the next discovery. The season finale really crushes the cliffhanger! I’ll be eagerly awaiting Season #2 and will probably watch Season #1 again.
We wrapped up both seasons of Mythic Quest. My sister recommended this show and I have to give her credit because we enjoyed it very much. She had suggested that the second season was where the show found its groove but I thought Season 1 was almost equally strong. Really solid comedic ensemble. I love Charlotte Nicdao in the role of Poppy: MQ’s lead designer and co-creative director. But the most fun discovery we made while watching S2 of the series is that Charlotte appears in like 5 seconds of Thor: Ragnarok playing an Asgardian actor playing Sif in Loki’s dramatization of his own heroic death. That was a fun dive.
We finally watched The Batman on HBO Max. We didn’t see it in theaters because I had a pretty hectic schedule the first part of the year, but also I didn’t feel a tremendous excitement about the film due to a little Batman burnout. I loved The Dark Knight trilogy and that only ended 10 years ago. Plus, as much as I don’t want to think about the Ben Affleck/Snyderverse Batman, he’s there, he’s in my brain, and he’s only in the recent past, so it didn’t feel like enough time had passed, for me, to be ready or eager for another vision of Batman. And I didn’t actively dislike Affleck’s Batman. I thought he was a decent Bruce Wayne, but better at being Bruce Wayne than Batman. And that’s mostly because Snyder’s vision of Batman is ridiculous.
The Batman is, thankfully and much to my relief, a very good Batman movie. Wholly distinctive from all the rest, which is exactly what you need to do if you’re creating within a realm where so many of us know the character, know the world, know the story. Matt Reeves clearly understood that we don’t need another origin story. I appreciate that the movie takes place two years into Bruce Wayne’s endeavors as Batman. No longer a rookie, but not yet a veteran. He’s got his feet underneath him, but he’s not unbeatable. Not yet the legend we all know he’ll become. The production design and cinematography strike a beautiful balance in merging a modern city with a gothic vision of Gotham. I also really loved that the mystery of the film is not centered on who is committing the murders - other than they don’t know who the Riddler is - but rather on who the next victim will be and why. Colin Farrell as the Penguin was just outstanding and just completely unrecognizable. The other thing I am always eager to see in a new Batman film is how the designers handle the tasks of developing the suit, the toys and the vehicles, and I think everyone did a tremendous job with all those things. I’m not really a gearhead, but I did have a private nerd moment when I heard the Batmobile rev up for the first time.
This shot was one of my favorites …
Spider-Man: No Way Home … was a disappointment. (I said earlier I saw some well-crafted stories that I wanted to share, but this isn’t one of them, so that’s a bit of a misdirection and I’m sorry about that.) Too convoluted most of the time and a bit thin in its structural narrative for us to believe and buy into the motivations and choices of some of the characters. No Way Home suffers from the same affliction that many of the Marvel movies suffer from in the current phase: nostalgia. Sentiment, to put it another way, which is what Loki warned us about in the first Avengers movie and what plagued the last Avengers movie so terribly.
Nostalgia leads the film in a lot of weak directions, but taking the nostalgic approach does brought us Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire reprising their roles of Peter Parker. (Peter Parkers? Peters Parker?) Once they showed up - and only when they showed up - the movie started to feel fun. The best scene - certainly my favorite scene in the whole movie - was when a grieving Peter Parker (Tom Holland) meets his counterparts from the other universes and they all share their grief. And the elder Peters Parker - (yeah, that works) - share where they are with their grief: Garfield is still in a dark place and he warns Holland not to become like him, while Maguire has reached the other side of his darkness, but it took him a long time to get through it. Really good scene.
Second favorite scene: when they all discover that Tobey Maguire’s spider webs come out of body. Garfield getting his mind blown by that was awesome!
Can we have one more Andrew Garfield “Spider-Man” movie?!? Give the man his trilogy!
Everything Everywhere All At Once is just splendidly weird and outstanding! There are a lot of Multiverse options in films right now, and most of them are in Marvel, and I knew going in to the film it would be completely unique and it absolutely is and it’s wonderful! I so admire filmmakers - creators of all kinds - who have a weird idea and just fully embrace how weird it is and have fun with it. Regardless of how good the film is, it’s usually obvious that everyone making was having fun doing it, and that’s very true with EEAAO. Plus, it’s just a very good film. It works so well because it’s emotionally grounded in a very specific story that’s about this family, how they’ve become estranged from each other in very specific ways and how they reconcile with each other. Highly recommend this film! Even if you’re burnt out on seeing the multiverse in cinema, this will be a breath of fresh air.
And lastly, we are two episodes away from finishing Slow Horses on AppleTV+. Solid British spy series.
Second lastly, I picked up some new notebooks!
Do I need more notebooks? No, I do not. But a colleague at my day job had some of these and I am pathological about buying new notebooks sssoooooo this was inevitable.
But I have a lot to put in them so they’ll be put to good use.
Happy creating to all! Leave a comment with what you’re creating, what you’re reading or what you’re watching. Always looking for new recommendations.
All the best. See you next time.
Scott