The Storytellers

New Comedy Podcast: The Voice of God

2008-09-06T02:05:00.000-07:00

Hello, everyone.

I'm writing a new daily comedy podcast called The Voice of God.

God is drunk, bitter, angry, and has had it up to here with the whole lot of us. Up. To. Here. And so he's blogging daily, and telling us exactly what he thinks of us.

God is extreme, he's insulting, and he's (hopefully) funny. You can also subscribe to his daily rants through FeedBurner and have his rants downloaded straight to your ipod.

Start with the first one, in which God gives us five reasons why we should kiss his ass. And if you're new, check out how he has it out with a listener, draws a line in the sand, and loses.

Enjoy.

Heart of Stone: the Trailer

2008-07-01T23:39:00.000-07:00

Hi, everyone. The trailer and the website for the movie I've been working on for the last year are finally up and online.

The website is here: http://www.israelisf.com/. You'll find the trailer, pictures, details about the actors, details about the music, and about why a movie about new emotions is science fiction.

'Heart of Stone' is a low-budget, feature-length, independent Israeli science fiction film in Hebrew.

Ofer Berger, a world-renowned scientist, has a heart of stone. He has no emotions. One day, the floodgates in his mind open. Emotions pull out, wild, strong, uncontrollable, and behind them is something new and different and unknown...

Just for fun, here is the trailer (with subtitles):

Enjoy.

Comedian, Bash Thyself

2008-03-02T16:09:00.000-08:00

A while ago, we talked about how to be funny, a comedian must first be able to laugh at himself. To write effective satires, a satirist must be able to admit he’s wrong. That is the difficult task he expects of his audience, he must be able to deliver it himself. To be an effective and honest pundit, a pundit must be able to admit a mistake, to claim he’s changed his mind and to admit someone else might know better. That is, after all, what he expects of us.

Here are a couple of examples, inspired by last week’s events:

The Post-Oscar Jon-Slam

This excerpt is is taken from one from last Wednesday’s The Daily Show. In it Jon Stewart welcomes John Oliver, The Daily Show’s ‘Senior Hollywood Correspondent’, to talk about the Oscars that had taken place two days earlier. Soon the fact that Stewart was the host is mentioned by Oliver.

John Oliver: “And may I say, your performance was terrific.”

Jon Stewart: “Very kind of you. Thank you so much, John, for saying so.”

Oliver: “Absolutely. And far, far superior to the crapfest of two years ago.”

Stewart stares at the camera. Presently, he says, “John, that was me, as well.”

Oliver: “Indeed it was. But this was quite a turnaround for you. And it’s not just me saying so, Jon. That’s the consensus of the millions and millions of people all around the world,” Oliver continues, “who read about it.”

Stewart corrects him: “And saw it.”

“No, just read about it. Nobody saw it.”

Stewart begins to apologize, “Well, obviously, it wasn’t the highest rated Oscar ever...”

“No,” Oliver agrees. “It wasn’t. Unless by highest you mean lowest. It was the lowest. Or the least high. Is that what you meant, Jon? The lowest? Because it was that,” Oliver continues and continues to Stewart’s face. “The lowest rated Oscar. Ever. Of all times.”

“To be perfectly fair, though...”

“It’s almost funny, if you think about it,” Oliver interrupts Stewart. “When you did it before you were horrible and millions and millions of people watched it. Yet when you deliver a good performance, it disappears into the atmosphere to exist only as a brief moment in future Oscar montages.”

“That is somehow ironic.”

“I mean, two years ago,” Oliver continues, “with the whole world as your audience, you delivered a basic cable performance. Yet on Sunday night, with a world-class performance, you delivered a basic cable audience. It must be truly upsetting.”

“Well,” Jon says. “You can’t control an audience.”

“You certainly can’t, Jon.” Oliver produces a piece of paper and reads off it, “Adults 18 to 24 down 15%. Women 35 to 54 down 28%. People who know you, aged 18 to 49, down 72%. People who gave birth to you, down 100%.”

And so it goes.

The entire bit, which takes place on Stewart’s show, ends with Jon laughing at the camera and telling the audience “I think we have more fun writing the post-Oscars Jon-slam than we do anything else we do on the show.”

On the Other Side of the Scale...

The fact that Stewart is able to bash himself so powerfully, that he is able to admit (whether it’s true or not) that he is wrong or that he has failed, is a trait that allows him to come with a clean conscience to encounters like the following, from a couple of years ago. Here he tells the two hosts of Crossfire exactly what he thinks they’re doing wrong, to their faces. Note how he does come with a clean conscience because he has this trait, and note how the two hosts react. The high-browed “You don’t don’t do it, either” never fails to convince.

Do you see the connection between being able to admit you’re wrong and Stewart’s behavior? Do you see the connection between not being able to admit you’re wrong and the two hosts’ behavior?

It’s connected, man. To be a comedian, you need to be able to laugh at yourself. To be a satirist you need to be able to change your mind. To be a pundit you have to be able to admit you’re wrong.

Why Are Comedians Quick?

2008-01-24T09:03:00.000-08:00

Why do comedians seem to be so much quicker in their thinking than us normal people? How is it that they think so quickly? How is it that they respond quickly? Do they really think faster than we do? Is it a requirement?

Improv

The most extreme example of seemingly superhuman speed is found in improvisation, as anyone who saw Whose Line Is It, Anyway? can attest to. The first and foremost requirement of improv is this: No matter what happens, you must accept a premise you’re given, rather than knock it down. So if you’re on the improv stage, and your fellow actor says, “Look at that camel!” you don’t say as a response, “That’s a giraffe,” simply because you were had a good giraffe joke. That would knock down the premise you were offered and destroy the bit. You could say, “But why is it blue?” And by doing this, you accept the premise, go with it, and offer something to your fellow actor.

The people in the audience are not used to accepting new ideas without taking time to process and, perhaps, to refuse them. So when they see a new idea accepted so quickly and built upon, it automatically seems as if a lot of thought has gone into the response.

But that isn’t the case.

Accepting a new idea takes a lot of time for us. Accepting a new idea, to comedians, takes no time at all. If they don’t, they die.

The Live Interview

Let’s move on from improvisation to interview shows, from Late Night to The Daily Show or The Colbert Report, where comedians interview live people, forcing them to improvise jokes on their spot. Here’s one example:

In The Daily Show’s March 12^th, 2007 interview, comedian Jon Stewart interviews Senator Chris Dodd. He asks him why he is running for president.

Sen. Dodd: “First of all, I’m a first-time father. I’ve got a couple of young children, daughters, and I don’t want to sound naïve at all, and I look at them... I mean, you’ve got a couple of young kids. What kind of a future are they going to have? What kind of a world are they going to grow up in? What kind of a nation are they going to live in the 21^st century? And, frankly, right now, I think there is more at stake than probably ever before in my lifetime. Both with what’s going on at home and abroad. And I decided to get in this race and talk about what we could do to make it better for them. I know it’s naïve, but—”

Jon Stewart interrupts him, “Here’s what I’ve done. I also have young kids and I look at them, and I started building a bunker.”

Stewart automatically accepts Senator Dodd’s premise (thinking about the future while looking at your kids) and goes on from there. In fact, he continues, “Your idea could work, too. But I have a feeling, when the day comes, I’m not going to be knocking on your door, you’re going to be knocking on mine.”

As Stewart proves by taking Sen. Dodd’s premise and reaching the opposite conclusion, accepting a premise doesn’t actually make the other guy right. It just means you’re agile enough of thought to understand someone else’s premise. Then you go with that logic, and see where it leads you.

Smart People vs. Comedians

Adapting to changing circumstances, being able to accept new ideas, not sticking rigidly to your old position – these are all the necessary tools of a good comedian. They are also the marks of intelligence. So what happens when a quick and intelligent comedian meets a quicker and more intelligent man? The man may not be as funny, but he’s able to adapt to new situations just as fast as the comedian. Here is the best example I found in which the shoe was on the other foot.

This is from an interview in The Colbert Report (Feb. 8^th, 2006) in which Stephen Colbert, who, on a daily basis, stumps his guests by offering ideas (meaning ‘premises’) they’ve never thought of or didn’t expect to face, now interviews Prof. Alan Dershowitz. We’re going to look at the dialogue like a chess match.

Colbert introduces Dershowitz, then runs to the crowd, as he always does, and gets cheers. Colbert sits down.

Colbert: “Mr. Dershowitz, thank you for joining us.”

Dershowitz: “Thank you.”

Colbert: “Do you have an audience at work?”

Colbert’s opening salvo is framing a question Dershowitz clearly doesn’t expect. Dershowitz answers immediately: “I do, always. I teach to a class.”

Colbert: “You do? Really?” Colbert didn’t expect a ‘yes’ from his guest, but adapts quickly, “Do they applaud like this when you come in? Up in Harvard?” Colbert takes his question to a place Dershowitz would not have expected.

Dershowitz begins his answer even before Colbert finishes asking the question: “No, they react.” Dershowitz isn’t blocking by saying ‘no’, he’s splitting hairs, thus proving he’s accepted Colbert’s premise and is building on it.

“Oh, really?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“With fear, I’m assuming.” Colbert accepts Dershowitz’s premise and takes it one step further to a place Dershowitz clearly did not mean.

“I hope,” Dershowitz thus accepts Colbert’s premise again.

“Do you ever shroud a student like in that movie, The Paper Chase?” Again, Colbert offers a premise his guest was not expecting.

“No, they’re too smart.” Dershowitz does not deny the premise. He accepts it and within the rules of the premise finds a reason why it isn’t so. He continues, “They sit there with their, you know, Googles, and they know more than I do.”

Colbert: “Yeah, with their internets.” Colbert accepts Dershowitz’s ‘Googles’ and builds on it. Mockingly, of course. “And their world wide webbing? It’s amazing.”

“It is,” Dershowitz accepts Colbert’s volley.

They move on to talk about Dershowitz’s book. Colbert puts it up on the table: “Okay, this is it. Preemption, a Knife That Cuts Both Ways. Tell me about the knife and why it’s cutting us.” Colbert presumes a false premise regarding the book.

Dershowitz opens his mouth to answer, and Colbert continues, “Is it cutting us?”

“It is cutting us.” Premise accepted.

“Whose knife is it?”

Not blinking, Dershowitz continues, accepting Colbert’s premise, and using it to make his point, “It is the knife of power that is being wielded. Preemption means, just simply, we get the bad guys before they get us. And that, sometimes, can be a good thing.”

“You look at us wrong, you get a God-smack.” Colbert immediately picks up on Dershowitz’s premise and goes with it one step further.

“No,” Dershowitz splits hairs again rather than blocking completely: “you try to kill us, you try to invade us, you try and terrorize us, and we’re going to get you first, but there are tremendous risks involved in doing that. Because we can get the wrong people, we can get there too early, we can provoke an attack, so it’s a knife that cuts both ways.”

“Well, this sort of sounds like anti-preemption here,” Colbert accepts what Dershowitz says and tries to take it to a direction Dershowitz doesn’t want to take.

“Well, it’s pro some preemption and anti some preemption,” Dershowitz clears his theme by understanding what Colbert said and explaining the difference between the two positions. “It all depends.”

“You can’t have it both ways!” Colbert aggressively introduces a new and unexpected premise (elsewhere known as The O’Reilly Premise).

“You can have it both ways. You have to have it both ways.” Dershowitz understands the other side but insists on his own.

“No, if you have to have it both ways, that’s why the knife cuts back and forth,” Colbert introduces a new premise in mid-argument, miming a knife cutting both him and Dershowitz.

“Absolutely,” Dershowitz accepts it.

“You want the knife to just do this,” he mimes the knife attacking only Dershowitz.

“But it has to be sterilized,” Dershowitz goes with Colbert’s premise even further. “You don’t want to cause an infection.”

Colbert moves on to his next thought: “Okay, so...” and then Dershowitz’s words sink in, and he stops, stumped for an answer. He was not able to adapt quickly enough.

The audience begins to laugh, as Colbert thinks of the next thing to say.

“I’m Jewish,” says Dershowitz during Colbert’s silence, accepting his own premise and going with it.

Colbert takes another few seconds, then, unable to think of something smarter, changes the subject.

And thus Dershowitz wins this battle against an intelligent, professional and mighty-quick comedian not because he’s funnier but because he’s that much smarter.

Accepting new ideas is a mark of intelligence. Understanding new ideas is also a mark of intelligence. Being able to adapt quickly is one, too. And always keep in mind that understanding the other side’s logic doesn’t make the other side is right. It just means you’re smart.

Soft Opinions

2008-01-15T12:59:00.000-08:00

Sometimes our convictions aren’t as deep as we think. Sometimes our convictions are soft. Sometimes they’re soft without us even being aware of how soft they are.

Let me tell you a story.

A Christmas Tale

One episode of Picket Fences, written by David E. Kelley, began at a school recital at the small and harmless town of Rome, Wisconsin. The teacher, Louise Talbot, is rehearsing the nativity scene with the kids towards the upcoming Christmas pageant. She’s playing the Virgin Mary. The police comes in, uncomfortably forced to enforce a court order to stop the rehearsals and to stop the show. It’s no longer legal to have religious content on public property.

Louise, who’s been one of the best teachers in the school for the last nine years, thinks it’s ridiculous and refuses to stop. The sheriff is then forced to arrest her and bring her before the town judge. The judge releases her and explains to the townspeople why they can’t have their pageant the way it’s always been done. He suggests, however, doing it on property that’s not public.

But now that Louise in the system, her fingerprints turn out to be the fingerprints of a man who’s been missing for quite a few years. It turns out, and Louise can no longer deny it, that she used to be a man. She had spent a couple of years dressed as a woman, then had a sex-change operation.

The school board is flabbergasted. They summon Louise to answer some questions. She appears, and with the help of a friend, shames them for thinking what they’re thinking to do. The day is almost won, but Jimmy Brock, the sheriff and a member on the board, turns the tables on Louise (classic Kelley) and shows everyone how she, by definition, has to be mentally unstable. So how can she teach our kids?

Louise is soon fired. She sues the school, and we head back to court. The judge (there’s only one judge in the small town) reverses the school board’s decision for being blatantly bigoted. The rehearsals for the nativity scene continue with Louise still as the Virgin Mary. But now that the news is out, parents come to the class and pull their kids from the pageant. Louise doesn’t want to, but relinquishes her role in the pageant so that the kids may have theirs.

The pageant, then, continues as planned. When the nativity scene arrives, the kids change the text, and talk about how the kids don’t want to live in their parents’ bigoted world. They refuse to accept the bigotry, they say, and invite Louise back to the stage. Their speech is moving, and in an emotional scene Louise walks out from the audience and stands on the stage. A few grownups in the audience begin to stand and clap. Slowly, more and more grownups stand up. A few more grownups look around, and they come to their feet and clap, too.

Now... you get that, right? You can understand people looking around, seeing that it’s okay with everyone else, and getting up as well. Seems natural, doesn’t it?

Soft Opinions

The thing is that these are the same people who only a few moments ago were sure that this was a line that could never and must never be broken. And when they saw that many other people accepted the new circumstances, they immediately saw that there was no real harm. Their opinions seemed to be hardnosed and steadfast convictions. But as soon as the rest of the people didn’t agree, the convictions behind the opinions vanished.

Sure, it’s a TV show and it didn’t happen in real life. But their behavior probably seemed natural to you as I told you the story (and certainly if you saw the episode). It’s easy to believe, because that’s how most people would behave.

So: How many of your convictions are soft? How many things you consider are lines in the sand are actually lines in the sand on the beach? One wave, and they’re gone.

Make a List

Test yourself: What convictions, what issues, what opinions do you hold that you’re certain of? What would you fight for? Make a list. Then look at the list and as you go down the list, issue by issue, imagine that everyone you know suddenly believes in the opposite.

How many of these positions would you keep? How many of these issues would you still believe? Which of your opinions are soft and would change if everyone else’s opinion changed? Which of your opinions would never change no matter what everyone else thought? Which opinions would you really fight for?

It’s election time. Time for real opinions, not soft ones. Now, seriously, go make that list.

Women Versus Blacks

2008-01-12T15:43:00.000-08:00

In the last post we talked about how, in the current political situation, Hillary Clinton can’t make any move regarding any ‘black issues’ without automatically losing to Barack Obama. She can’t be blacker than him. She can’t understand what it’s like to be black the way he can. If she makes a move on any black issue, black activists will do Obama’s work for him, and he will win without having opened his mouth.

Now the question that comes to mind is this: Does it work the other way around?

Let’s imagine a scenario: Obama suddenly talks about women rights, and how he respects his wife and how strong and intelligent she is, and how he learned from her that women have it bad and how he wants to fix the situation. Would this give any kind of victory to Clinton the way it would give a victory to Obama if she made such a statement about black people? Would people assume Clinton is way ahead of him on this? Would there be a backlash against Obama, that as a man he doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about? Would people assume that Clinton knows ten times better than he does everything about ‘women’s issues’? Seems to me that the answer to all these questions is ‘no’.

So the real question is: Why not?

That is not a political question. It’s a question in human behavior, which is a subject we like to tackle here. In looking for an answer, I only found one, and it’s a sad one: The majority of women doesn’t respect women.

To explain this answer let’s work our way from the conclusion backwards. If most women didn’t respect women, then they wouldn’t trust a woman to represent them. In fact, they would be suspicious of her. If most women didn’t respect women, then they couldn’t really form into cohesive and influential groups representing women. In fact, they would form fragmented groups with little influence. If most women didn’t respect women, they perhaps would think that their own conditions are bad but that other women perhaps deserve what they have. All these results are true, and they all stem from one premise: The majority of women doesn’t respect women.

That is a sad state, and I wish there was another answer to the question. In fact, if you have a better answer, please share it with us.

False Premises in Today's Politics

2008-01-12T02:46:00.000-08:00

With elections looming, politicians are everywhere. ‘Tis the season.

The last couple of seasons of the The West Wing, may it rest in peace, were devoted to the election process we’re seeing today. First, Santos (played by Jimmy Smitts) ran as an idealistic candidate for the Democratic nomination, while Arnold Vinick (played by Alan Alda) ran for the Republican nomination. Once they both won, they ran against each other. We got to see a lot of inside politics. We got to see why politicians say what they say, what their advisers tell them to tell us, and what moves that we see really mean to them.

Accepting the Premise of the Question

One of the most important issues we saw time and time again was the candidates’ refusal to answer questions the premise of which was decided by the other guy. The reasoning behind it was that, once you accept the other guy’s premise, once you accept the framing of the question, it doesn’t matter what you say, they will win the argument when the day is done.

For example. Leo McGarry, running for Santos’ V.P., is an old hack at politics, having run the country from behind the scenes. But now he’s a politician. He’s supposed to talk to reporters. Here he is being briefed by Annabeth (Written by Debora Cahn):

Annabeth: “Press is here for the Q&A. Now remember, you control the conversation. You don’t like what they ask, don’t accept the premise of the question.”

Leo says, “I’ve been rejecting the premises of questions since the Hoover Administration.”

The two of them now face reporters. Says one, “Mr. McGarry, are you still in AA?”

Leo avoids the question: “Good to see you, Christine.”

The reporter insists, “When was the last time you went to a meeting?”

Leo answers, “I’ve made statements about that before. You should take a look at them.”

Reporter: “Does your cardiologist think you can handle this kind of stress?”

Leo: “My cardiologist has made a statement about that. You should take a look at it. See, what I’d like to talk about is what Matt Santos can do to improve the public schools here in Pennsylvania and across the country.”

Sounds like every other professional politician we know. He evaded the uncomfortable issues, didn’t say anything he didn’t want to, accepted no bad premises, and led the answers to his own agenda.

Later on, however, he slips up:

One Reporter says, “Mr. McGarry, are you finding the campaign trail exhausting?”

“Invigorating, Kevin, thanks for asking.”

“Is Speaker Haffley floating an education issue with the White House?”

“I don’t know what’s going on in the Speaker’s office, but I can tell you that Matt Santos has the most practical approach to improving teacher quality we’ve seen in a long time.”

“Is it similar to Haffley’s plan?”

“The Santos plan is a comprehensive.”

“Why is the President working with Haffley if this is the candidate’s baby?”

“Because the Constitution empowers the President to sign bills into law and doesn’t empower candidates to do anything.”

Annabeth steps in, says Leo has to go. Once they’re alone, Leo says to her, “I accepted the premise of the question, didn’t I?”

In accepting the premise of the question, Leo said his own candidate has no power. That’s a mess-up.

The thing about mess-ups is that they don’t look like mess-ups when they happen. But the rules of the ‘game’ are clear: the second you accept the other guy’s premise, somewhere down the line you will lose the argument. Before we move on to real life, let’s look at one more fictional mess-up from The West Wing.

Santos, a Democrat, keeps losing on defense issues, even though he’s a Reserve Air Force pilot, while Vinick never served a day. That’s because Republicans always have a better image on security issues. But when Santos is called to serve, Santos goes to serve. And suddenly the news channels are filled, day in and day out, with Santos, looking good in uniform, climbing aboard the air-force jet, and flying off.

Suddenly, Santos is catching up to Vinick in the polls. A rattled Vinick loses it for a second when talking to the press (written by Lawrence O'Donnell Jr.) when a reporter asks him if it was a stunt:

“A stunt?” Vinick seems shocked. “No, that was devotion to duty. That’s what makes the American military the greatest fighting force in the history of the world. And I hope Congressman Santos continues to do his duty when I’m Commander-in-Chief.”

It sounds like he jabbed Santos. But he didn’t. In answering the way he did, he accepted the premise that Santos is a military guy, thus giving his opponent more credence. Santos says it best when he watches it on TV: “I’ll take any sentence that has ‘Santos’ and ‘do his duty’ in it.”

Today’s Politics

In real life, we’ve learned to pick up on this kind of dialogue when politicians refuse to answer questions. We’ve learned (hopefully) to pick up on it when people spout talking points rather than real thoughts on TV. But sometimes it’s more complicated than just answering a question. These days, Hillary Clinton has tried to gain ground on the black race issues.

Her problem is that she’s fighting Barack Obama’s premise. Any attempt to go for the ‘black’ issues would immediately give victory in the argument to Obama. She can’t be blacker than him. She can’t understand what it’s like to be black the way he can. He doesn’t even have to say it. With this issue, he doesn’t even have to do anything to win it. Any time Clinton raises the black issue, at this stage of the race while going against Obama, she is losing votes and giving them to Obama.

False Premises in Today’s Politics

We’ve seen how people unwittingly accept other people’s premises when answering questions or when raising issues, but false premises are everywhere. In fact, we take many of them for granted to such an extent that we don’t even see them. And in accepting a premise, we help it along.

False Premise #1: There Are Only Two Real Choices In (American) Elections.

The question is: If you took a second to think about it rather than take it for granted, would you still think it’s true? Since when are you satisfied with only two choices in anything? Do you accept two choices of milk? Two choices of coffee? Two choices of cars? Two choices of houses to buy or apartments to rent?

Is a choice between two things actually a choice in your eyes in anything but politics?

Americans are so finicky, expecting a wide selection in everything they buy. And yet they expect no such choice from their politicians, the people who write the laws and have the ability to send their kids to war.

Two choices? Is that it? Is that the premise you choose?

A good reason to accept that premise is an apparent lack of choice. Third-party candidates never have a real chance. But whoever says that third-party candidates are the alternatives actually accepts the false premise. They are not the only alternative. Which brings us to the next false premise:

False Premise #2: One Party, One Opinion

This premise says that voting a Democratic candidate into office helps the Democratic Party and voting a Republican into office helps the Republican Party. Seems natural and obvious. But it doesn’t have to be true.

If you vote for, say, a Democrat, and it’s good for the Democratic Party, then that man is loyal to the Party and not to you. Voting for a party and not for a candidate means that the entire Party is one choice, one opinion, has one set of rules and one agenda. That’s good for both Parties, but it’s bad for us.

If you come to a candidate from a place that says: If you do the things I like, if you go the way I want, I will vote for you, no matter what Party you come from – in that case, the candidates will suddenly have to suck up to you, rather than their bosses. They will have to do what you say, rather than what their Party says.

They need you. Make them work for it; break Party lines.

If it works, the Parties themselves will do their best to fight it. But they will adapt and change. Because they need your votes and they need your money. At the end of the day, both parties work for you.

It doesn’t matter who’s to blame for the situation (whichever situation it is that bothers you). It doesn’t matter who did what when. Make the candidates take a stand by telling them you’ll vote for them (or not) based on positions you find important, completely disregarding Party lines. Make both Parties work for your vote specifically, creating ‘one Party, many opinions’.

The alternative is to go on accepting the Parties’ premise and going on as before. In accepting the premise that there are only two choices in elections and in accepting the Parties’ premise that there is one party, one opinion, you make sure that the Parties win. One election cycles, the Republicans are on top. Another election cycle, the Democrats are on top. In both election cycles, you’re on the bottom. Just as Leo made sure the other side won when he answered the question, just as Vinick lost the argument the second he accepted Santos’ premise, and just as Clinton is losing the race issue by tackling it. Accept both Parties’ premise, you help them both win. In not accepting the premise, there is a chance that you will win.

Forcing Us to Think (Again)

2008-01-06T12:06:00.000-08:00

Every so often we’re going to come back to a theme we’ve talked about before. Some ideas are worth it.

Now we’re on David E. Kelley fairness watch. Here is our first. Now it’s time for the second.

David E. Kelley Fairness Watch

David E. Kelley is the only writer today who is able to write one side of an argument (say, in a court drama like Boston Legal) in such a convincing way that the viewers agree with that side, know they’re going to win, and certain that there are no strong counter-arguments. Then Kelley lets the other side speak, and when that lawyer’s done, the viewers are equally certain that his/her side’s case is completely right.

This forces the viewers to think. With equally-strong and powerful arguments on both sides, the outcome is uncertain. And our brain works more than we think it does when watching TV, imagining what could happen, what would happen, and why.

Here are two examples from a recent Boston Legal episode.

YouTube

Clarence, who works for the firm and sometimes dresses as a woman was caught on tape, dressed as a woman, screaming at some guy and going absolutely nuts. That footage is then put on YouTube, to Clarence’s chagrin. Clarence sues YouTube for defamation.

And so, they go to court. There the judge appears with a helmet on his head, to everyone’s amazement. A red helmet with a white stripe.

“Before we begin,” the judge says, “some of you may or may not have noticed that I’m wearing protective head gear. I sustained a small wound while gardening. My doctor advised to take conservative precautions until the stitches are removed. Please pay no attention.” With that out of the way, the case begins.

The first thing YouTube’s lawyer does is make sure whether the footage fairly and accurately depict what happened? And it does. There is no doubt about that. Clarence takes the stand, and, as a lawyer, is forced to admit that the law expressly protects internet sites “from online defamation liability arising from material posting on their sites by individuals.”

The issue is clear. The law is clear. Clarence admits the footage was not doctored. What you see is what really happened. And the law protects sites like YouTube. Clear-cut and simple, isn’t it?

Now it’s Clarence’s lawyer’s turn to speak. “Your honor, this was an extremely embarrassing event, aired world-wide on a website, absent the context that occasioned it.”

The helmeted judge does not understand. “The footage depicts what happened. So where’s the damage?’

“Your honor, think of it. We’ve all had a meltdown or two. A mortifying episode or two. Typically, we’re allowed to live those moments down. But now thanks to the internet, we can’t. Suppose,” he produces a handheld video camera, and points it at the judge, “I taped you as ‘Justice Bauble Head’.”

“Put that thing down!” the Judge is beside himself.

“How would you like to be defined—” he continues to tape.

“Put it down this instant!”

He puts the camera down and turns it off. He then takes a breath and starts calmly, “My point is: Life’s little embarrassing moments are now having far-reaching and more devastating consequences. If the day has come that we are going to be publicly and globally shamed by our foolish missteps, then the laws of defamation should keep pace. Certainly when these tort laws were drafted, the legislators never contemplated YouTube.”

And he sits down.

Do you know who’s going to win now? Even if you think you know who’s right, Kelley phrased the positions in such a way as to make them equal: Will the judge go with the law and decide against Clarence, or will the judge decide to go against the law because the law is wrong? You don’t know. But you’ll think about it.

The Racist Cop

In the same episode, the firm has another case. A policeman shot an unarmed black man, who fit the description of a suspect. The policeman says he was reaching for what appeared to be a weapon. But in truth, he reached for something else. In addition, the policeman has a history of erroneously shooting black men, and to top it off, when the D.A. tests the policeman under an MRI, it turns out that his brain responds with more violent emotions when he sees a black than when he sees a white man.

With the case drawing to a close, the prosecution speaks first: “Policemen do tough work, dangerous work. The cities across this country seem to grow more and more dangerous. That is a reality. But here’s another reality. African-Americans have been targeted disproportionately in both arrests and excessive force. Blacks comprise 13% percent of our population, yet 44% of our prison population. And how many times do you have to turn on the news and see that yet another innocent, unarmed black man has been shot dead by the police before we say ‘enough’? Eight times he shot him! Even his partner, who is also his friend, called the shooting reckless. Was it an honest mistake? Yeah, sure, like the last time he mistakenly shot an unarmed black man. How many mistakes can we allow him? Do we keep tolerating these executions or not?”

And the prosecution sits down. So, does the defense even have a case? And even if it does have a case, it can’t be equally as good, can it? All the facts are in.

The defense speaks: “The victim matched the description of the armed suspect. He raised his hand with something metallic in it. It looked like a gun. My client reacted. The District Attorney did not offer even one witness to dispute that. Instead, he gave you a brain scan. The police can now take our blood, our hair, our DNA. They can make us give handwriting samples, voice patterns. They can check our computers to see what interests us, our GPS’s to see where we’ve been. And today they’re introducing scans to show our feelings. Where does this stop? And let’s assume these MRI’s really can show that my client feared black people more than whites. So what? The law has to distinguish between thought and deed. The Supreme Court is doing away with warrants. Our administration eavesdrops on all of us. Are we really going to allow this government to unleash the thought police? Are we that scared? We must be. Because today the prosecution is trying to convict a man of murder with nothing more than an MRI. God help us.”

So... Who do you think won this one? What would you vote if you were sitting in the jury?

One thing is certain: Your brain thought about it whether you wanted it to or not.

Is 'African-American' Offensive?

2007-12-26T12:27:00.000-08:00

Is the expression ‘African-American’ offensive? Yes, it is.

That is because the term is ethnocentric. It assumes that the United States is in the center of the world. Here’s why.

The expression comes to replace the word ‘black’. But it denotes not only skin color or ethnic origin, it also assumes citizenship. An African-American is, by definition, American. But not all black people are American. In fact, most of them are not.

What would Americans call French blacks? What would Americans call blacks from Nigeria or South Africa or the U.K.? Even in the U.S. itself, if a black man walks down the street in New Jersey, that hardly means he’s a U.S. citizen, does it? Why call him American?

Why would a new term for ‘black’ include the word ‘American’? Why would a new term for ‘Asian’ include the word ‘American’? People would only suggest the expression (and, later, adopt it) if they automatically assumed that the U.S. is in the center of the world, that most people come from America, are in America, and that not much outside of America exists. That seems to be the only way such an expression could get acceptance. The fact that it got to be so popular means that a large part of the American people believe this deep down.

This isn’t new. The term ‘American’ itself has hinted at this for years. Ask a Canadian if he’s American, and he’ll say “No, I’m Canadian.” But a Canadian citizen is an American in the same way that a citizen of the U.S. is American. And let’s not even mention South America.

The terms ‘American’, ‘African-American’, ‘Asian-American’ and their like tell us something about the people who invented them, about the people who adopted them, and about the people who use them.

When People Think For Themselves

2007-12-17T10:12:00.000-08:00

We’ve talked about how a large part of David E. Kelly’s humor forces the viewers to think, whether they want to or not. Now we’re going to talk about how his drama forces the viewers to think, whether they want to or not.

The Courtroom

One of the things that sets Kelley apart as a writer of TV court dramas is his ability to present both sides equally, without prejudice. This is how he usually does it in like L.A. Law, Picket Fences, Boston Legal, The Practice, and even, occasionally, Chicago Hope: When it’s time for the jury to decide, one side stands up, and gives his case. The case is so convincing and clear and simple that we, the viewers, think that that’s it, it’s a done deal, he’s going to win, the jury’s going to go this way, and there is nothing the other side can say that can save the day.

Then the lawyer for the other side stands up and presents his case. And by the time he’s done, the viewer thinks: That’s it, he’s right, it’s a done deal, he’s going to win, the jury’s going to vote his way.

Very few writers can pull that off. And, of course, the viewers remember that they said they same thing a couple of minutes ago about the other side. This forces them to think for themselves, to weigh both sides, to make up their own minds which way the jury will go and which way they would go. When both sides are given the best representation, it’s up to us to do the thinking. Usually, writers chew the conclusion for us and give us conclusions they hope we'll share. Less thinking is involved.

The ability to think for yourself to Kelley, perhaps, is more important than the fact that you reach the conclusion he agrees with.

Kelley doesn’t always do this, but more often than not, he does. Here are two examples from the third episode of this season’s Boston Legal:

Cockfighting

The firm’s client, Miguel Obisbo, has been charged with cockfighting, and he admits to it. The time has come to put it to the jury.

The prosecution gets up and says: “It’s not just that it’s against the law. It’s indecent, barbaric, inhumane. Two chickens – roosters, I should say – are thrown in a pit and forced to do battle until one loses consciousness due to blood loss, at which point the other pecks its head off. It’s sick. And this man openly, notoriously, broke the law to commit a sick, sick crime, one he admits committing. Just having a nun translate for you,” he refers to one of the defense lawyers’ tricks, “doesn’t put you on the side of the angels.”

And with that, he sits down.

Now it’s the defense’s turn: “Ever realize chickens are smarter than dogs? Much, much smarter than horses. And we call them ‘fowl’. How sad that the chicken by far is the most abused animal on the planet, raised in crates less than a square foot, the ends of their beaks snapped off after hatching, pumped up with antibiotics to keep them alive in conditions that would otherwise kill them, genetically altered so that they grow twice as fast, sent off to the slaughterhouse after only 6 weeks of living – typically in open crates where millions of them either freeze to death or get baked alive. The ones who do arrive undead are scalded to defeather them. Then they’re hung upside down and electrocuted just enough so that they don’t flap around when they’re getting their throats slit. It’s not good to be a chicken.

“Now, the cockfighters, they get real food. They get real room to move. They’re often loved as pets. They get at least two good years before they’re even asked to do combat. And if he’s a really good fighter, he gets to retire, to stud service, where he can live the life of... Denny Crane,” he points to Denny. Then he returns to the jury, “The simple truth is that if the chickens in this country hope to be afforded a modicum of dignity, he has to fight. Studies show they might actually enjoy it.

“Now, I suppose you could find my client guilty, because technically he broke the law, which screams out with hypocrisy. Or you could say, ‘Wait a second; Miguel Obisbo offers chickens a better life.’ Miguel Obisbo now trusts you to be... humane. Not just for his sake, but for the chickens’.”

So... Who do you think won?

Abstinence Only

Notice, by the way, that in the last example and the next, Kelley never talks down to us. The sentences and the arguments are intelligent and thoughtful and... long. The reason we follow them, the reason they’re not boring, as conventional TV wisdom would have us believe, is that each statement advances our heroes’ success or causes one step closer to their plight. So as long as he sticks to the merits of the case and as long as the points are convincing, he keeps our attention.

Moving on: 15-year-old Abby Holt has had unprotected sex and gotten the HIV virus. She is now suing her school, for having taught ‘abstinence only’ rather than teaching her to use condoms.

The school’s lawyer stands up to give his closing argument:

“Your honor, I think we all agree that fifteen is too young to be having sex. Is there anyone here who takes issue with that? Sometimes, when the right answer is ‘no’, you say ‘no’. You don’t start tinkering with morality to coincide with logistics. Kids need to hear ‘no’, not ‘here’s how, just in case’, but ‘no’.

“Abstinence was the right answer here. If she hadn’t had sex, she wouldn’t be HIV positive. And even if you are so determined to opt for pragmatism, abstinence is still the right answer. Since the implementation of this policy, the teen pregnancy rate has gone down 30%. More and more kids are choosing not to have sex, and that’s good. Whether they get sick or pregnant or not.

“And if parents disagree, by the way, they can choose to teach their kids about condoms and birth-control pills and diaphragms. But once the schools start doing so... Come on, you’re explicitly telling the kids it’s expected of them to be sexually active. And many start doing so because they feel all their friends are. Sure, you can pass out condoms. But it is simply more responsible, more moral, and, yes, more safe to practice abstinence. That’s what we should be telling them. And this school is.”

The school is not responsible for the girl getting HIV, is it?

Alan Shore gets up to give his closing:

“This case isn’t about teenage pregnancy. She didn’t get pregnant, she got HIV. I can see why you’d want to make it about teenage pregnancy, since... Well, actually, I can’t. The United States has the worst teenage pregnancy rate of any industrialized nation. And contrary to what Mr. Jovanka would like us to believe, there’s no evidence whatsoever that suggests using condoms or teaching students about condoms makes them any more inclined to have sex. None. They’re already inclined to have sex, since early puberty. They’re simply going to do it. We all do it. Birds do it, bees do it, educated fleas do it. One day, your honor, even you...” At which point the judge angrily uses his gavel.

Shore recovers, “Yes.” Then he continues: “The fact is, this case has nothing to do with the efficacy of abstinence-only programs. This case is about religion, politics, and federal funding. Our present administration, in blind service to the religious right, has transcended the separation of church and state, and consistently implemented a faith-based political and moral mandate. And now that same policy has been passed on to our educational system. If schools teach ‘abstinence only’, they get federal funding. If they teach any other type of sex education, they don’t. And as a result, the students in these ‘abstinence only’ programs aren’t being taught the truth about that magnificent technological marvel, the condom.

“It’s not a dirty word, your honor: condoms. They first came on the scene some 3,000 years ago in Egypt. For centuries they went merrily along, in modified forms, warding off syphilis, gonorrhea, preventing unplanned pregnancies, until science and medicine eventually caught on, and the pill became a much more effective, less intrusive contraceptive. Penicillin and other antibiotics were miracle cures for gonorrhea and syphilis. The poor, humble condom languished.

“And then came AIDS. This terrifying new disease that panicked the world. For many years it has been fatal, gruesomely so in every case. There was no vaccine, no cure, no treatment. But there were condoms, and they worked. They were safe, time-tested, easy to use, and they protected both partners. The condom is arguably the single, most important invention of the past 2,000 years. In fact, it has been said, without exaggeration, that the health of the world depends on them.

“Now, one would think that the obvious choice would be for schools to tell their students as much. But Abby’s school, indeed all schools that have chosen ‘abstinence only’ have chosen to lie. They teach that condoms are ineffective at preventing pregnancies, which is a lie; they teach that condoms are ineffective at preventing diseases, which is a lie; some of the literature actually compares using a condom to playing Russian roulette, which is frightening, despicable, unforgivable lie.”

“Abby Holt has HIV which, in all likelihood, will develop into AIDS. We’ve sort of forgotten about AIDS in this country. Treatments have improved dramatically. Drugs are keeping people alive for many years after they’ve become infected. But the grim butcher’s bill for this pandemic still keeps growing and growing. Sixty-five million people worldwide have become infected. One time, unprotected sex can kill you. A condom can save you. It is inconceivable that every child in the world isn’t taught that. We should be in criminal court this very moment trying this obscenely duplicitous school for conspiracy to commit murder!

“But frankly, I have no stomach for that. I think of the horror that has been inflicted on this 15-year-old girl, and I’m just so profoundly sad. I can point out the evils of this corrupt system, I can tell you how effective condoms are, the lives they save, on and on and on and on, but words seem to be these hollow, useless things rattling around in this courtroom, because ultimately the lies this school told Abby Holt may... will probably kill her. They have certainly altered her life forever. And in the face of that, all I can think of is... Why?”

And, with that, he sits down.

So... who do you think won?

Planting an Idea

In the last example, Kelley did one more thing. He used the argument to create an idea in our heads that probably wasn’t there before: that 'abstinence only' is akin to murder. It doesn’t really matter who wins, now, because there’s an idea in our head now that wasn’t there before. And it’s an idea we probably won’t easily forget.

And that’s how writers try to change the world.

This Is America, When Ordering Please Speak English

2007-12-16T12:52:00.000-08:00

The Cheesesteak Sticker

It's been making the news rounds recently that Joey Vento who has a cheesesteak joint in Philadelphia put up a sign saying "This is America. When Ordering Please Speak English". Sure, you can look at the political issues of this, but we're here to look at words and what they mean about people.

The phrasing has been getting people's dander up, and the question is not only why but what's behind it.

The sticker has two parts, and the first one isn't really necessary. Mr. Vento could have easily phrased his sticker without it: "When Ordering Please Speak English".

Or he could have put a totally different first part to the sticker, like "Be Kind, When Ordering Please Speak English", or "Be Civil, When Ordering Please Speak English". He probably would have gotten better results, and certainly not have gotten on anyone's bad side.

Which means that the phrasing is not there to get people to speak English when ordering. The phrasing is not there to get people to comply with the idea it seems to suggest. Which means that the sticker was not put there to get people to cooperate. It was put there for a different reason.

"What Is It?"

In Storytellers we try to do what actors and directors and playwrights in the theater usually do. They look at human behavior that seems obvious and ask: "What is it? What is it really?"

A while ago, we talked about "what is it really" when people in an argument say things like: "I believe in the United States of America". We came to the conclusion that people who invoke this kind of argument care more about being right than anything else. You can't say that and be wrong. No one can tell you you're wrong when you say "I believe in the United States of America!" or "I support the troops!". And of course it has the added advantage of automatically putting the person you're speaking to on the wrong side of the argument.

But the sticker says something slightly different. "This is America. When Ordering Please Speak English". What is it? What is it really?

It seems, at least to me, that only a person who needs a lot of positive feedback from anyone, even strangers, a person who needs a lot of pats on the back, a person who needs to constantly be told how right and okay he is, would put up a sticker with that phrasing. If you don't see why, think about it about it backwards. Start off imagining a person who constantly needs positive feedback, who needs to be patted on the back by strangers. Then ask yourself, would that person not put out a sticker that says this? Would the sticker not then invoke exactly that kind of response?

The reason we do things? It's rarely the principle; it's almost always personal.

Patriotism

Speaking of patriotism, check out our old post about the patriotic and pro-military Donald P. Bellisario. We explored the idea that patriotism, as it is usually practiced now, has both limits and borders. Honor and truth have no limits and no borders.

The Comedy-Off: Colbert

2007-12-15T03:43:00.000-08:00

The Comedy-Off

After posting the last entry about humorous writing and timing, one Nir Yaniv asked me why I didn’t use excerpts from more popular sources, like Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat. I said that I wanted to quote from things that the readers are less likely to have read, something that will feel new. But, I added, why don’t you do it on your blog? As the conversation continued, we decided to have a comedy-off. Here’s his first salvo.

So far there are only three rules:

1. Entries must be in English, so that both our readers can enjoy them.

2. There must be at least 4-5 excerpts. Anything less is cheating.

3. The loser’s name starts with ‘N’.

More rules may crop up as the game continues.

Timing

What Jerome K. Jerome did in the excerpts Nir brought is build a comic situation, which certainly requires great timing. The point in the last entry in Storytellers, though, was about a different sort of timing.

We’re going to get to it in a roundabout way.

Laughter, like humor, is a sure-fire way to weed the more intelligent from the less intelligent. This is how laughter does it: Laughter almost always starts off with a powerful ‘ha’, in which our diaphragm (read: stomach) hits the bottom of our lungs. Laughter clearly marks the milli-second you got the joke. There is never a doubt about who laughed first, who laughed second, and who laughed last if at all. Laughter shows us how fast someone understood something.

In the Jack Vance and Dorothy Parker excerpts I’ve quoted in the last post, everyone who does laugh (not everyone will laugh) laughs at the same time at the same word. To do that, the author needs to set up one set of expectations in a very clear way and then offset it in a surgically-precise manner to produce the same result in everyone’s brain with one word. Try reading those excerpts again, and see how you’re always surprised at the same spot and want to laugh at the same spot. Check out if you can see how we were set up one way then taken another.

In the Jerome K. Jerome excerpts, meanwhile, it’s the situation that’s comical. The comic situation builds and builds and becomes more and more absurd, and therefore more and more funny. People who listen to or read it will start laughing at different spots and their laughter will keep on rolling as the situation grows more comical.

“We’re at war, sir. How can you ask us to make sacrifices?”

Speaking of having one set of expectations, then being taken another way, there’s a subset of that category, in which the writer already knows what we think, so he doesn’t bother building up the premise, he just knocks it down. That is one neat trick, and one man and his writers do it time and time again on television.

Stephen Colbert

Colbert, in his program, The Colbert Report, makes it a point to again and again appear to say one thing but actually say another. He never tells you he doesn’t believe what he’s saying. He never tells you that what he’s saying is absurd. He is relying on the audience’s set of presumptions to already realize that he couldn’t possibly mean what he’s saying.

Here are a few examples:

“Folks, everywhere you look these days, there are signs our great American traditions are disappearing. Look at this,” he shows a newspaper headline, “ ‘The great American swing set is teetering’. The wear-a-helmet-first Gestapo would have you believing that playgrounds are dangerous. And they are. That’s exactly why we need them. To thin the herd.”

As before, explaining why something funny works really takes the punch of it. See if you can tell how he assumes you’re thinking one thing and preys upon it.

Here he continues his rant:

“Sadly enough, even the weather page is in a state of moral decay.” Colbert pulls out a colorful weather map from USA Today, filled with red zones, orange zones and red zones. “What’s wrong with red, white, and blue, USA Today? This rainbow weather map is just another example of the homo-meteorological agenda. Folks, I don’t care what their forecast is, I will not turn partly gay with a chance of a reach-around.”

Another time, he took on the policy of ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’, by suggesting the Pentagon adopt an even stricter policy: “ ‘Don’t know, don’t think’. Under the new policy, it will be against regulations for a soldier to know what homosexuality is. If a fellow soldier tells you he’s gay, it’s your duty to assume he’s filled with joy. If you see two naked guys oiled up and rolling around, just assume they’re wrestling. And if someone starts soaping you up in the shower, say thank you and salute. Because the only way we can have a cohesive fighting force is if there is never a question about a comrade’s sexual orientation. And we can no longer count on gay soldiers refusing to answer the question we’re too afraid to ask.”

Colbert on competition:

“Competition improves everything. After Home Depot opened down the block, service at my local hardware store got a lot better!” He pauses a second, then feels a need to add, “Until it closed.”

Colbert takes on education:

“Oprah Winfrey recently spent over 40 million dollars to start a school in South Africa. She said Third World kids were more desperate to learn than our kids. Yes, Oprah, that’s exactly why we have to hold the Third World kids back!”

Later on, he adds:

“And, hey, don’t the liberals always say, ‘who are we to judge these people’? Maybe dysentery and guinea worms are part of their culture? I don’t know.”

Here Colbert takes a stand on capital punishment:

“Most disappointingly, my own Catholic Church is against capital punishment. Well, that’s pretty hypocritical considering they wouldn’t even have a religion if it weren’t for capital punishment.”

The danger, of course, in phrasing things like this is that some people will take you at your word. President Bush's people, for example, who invited Colbert to the Press Corps Dinner. Then again, maybe they were fooled by the red, white, and blue colors that pervade the show.

In a recent ‘meet the author’ that can be found somewhere in podcast-land, Colbert says that some of the people he grew up with tell him, Now we agree with what you’re saying.

On the other hand, of course, if you add ‘... Not’ at the end of every sentence, you won’t be as funny.

Over to you, Nir.

Some Dry Humor

2007-12-09T12:57:00.000-08:00

Timing

Sometimes dissecting things that are funny takes the fun out of them. I wanted to talk about timing and how timing is not just something musicians or dancers or actors have. Timing is something writers have as well.

Here are a few examples of some very dry humor. We’re not going to talk about them, because that will take the fun out of everything. But, if you can, after you read each excerpt, think about the author’s timing.

Jack Vance

Here’s what you need to know about Jack Vance for the purposes of this article: He used to write about the far, far future, in which mankind populated galaxies, and each planet was a social framework with its own characteristics and its own subcultures, each also with its own unique social framework.

The first excerpt is from the novella Freitzke’s Return, which I found reprinted in the book called Galactic Effectuator. ‘Effectuator’ is to the denizens of the galaxy what ‘private investigator’ is to us. Here, our hero is hired to investigate a case in which, a-hem, well, it’s like this: The bad guy is a jealous man who can’t accept the smallest failure. When the client ends up marrying the woman the bad guy was interested in, the bad guy kidnaps the client, knocks him out, and operates on him. The client slowly begins to suspect that his sperm-making ‘apparatus’ has been replaced by the bad guy’s sperm-making ‘apparatus’. Thus, if the wife gets pregnant, she gets pregnant by the bad guy. The client hires our hero to find the bad guy and have his original ‘equipment’ re-placed.

That is neither here nor there, because the quote from the novella is Vance’s explanation, in a footnote, how the Arsh race, which is now slightly different from the human race, came into existence:

The legendary starmenter Yane Cargus contracted with the all-male fugitives. He agreed to deliver one hundred young females for a fee of five hundred red sarcenels, the sarcenel being a jewellike object taken from a Flamboyard’s sensorium. Cargus raided the Convent of the Divine Prisom at Blenny, on Lutus, capturing two hundred and thirty novitiates. Upon delivering his cargo, he required a thousand sarcenels or nothing, emphasizing the volume discount. The fugitives in their turn pointed out that sarcenels were rare, that the Flamboyards ferociously resisted attack, that, for eighty-six men, two hundred and thirty females were redundant by more than a factor of two, and, more importantly, that the females were members of that ill-favored and swarthy race known as Gettucks: not at all what the fugitives had in mind. In the ensuing fight, Yane Cargus took thirty-four wounds from the sneezewood lances, but miraculously survived. The fugitives acquired two hundred and thirty females free of charge, and the Arsh race came into existence.

Notice that part of what makes it funny is the fact that Vance borrows a set of phrases from one world and uses it in the context of another that has nothing to do with the first (“emphasizing the volume discount”, for example, has nothing to do with slavery or rape).

He does it again in the following two examples, from Night Lamp. Here a schoolboy and a schoolgirl are talking.

It was Tatninka, rather than Skirlet, who bore the news to Jaro. “Did you hear what Hanafer called you?”

“No.”

“He said you were a moop!”

“Oh? What’s that? Nothing good, I suspect.”

Tatninka giggled. “I forgot; you’re really off in the clouds, aren’t you? Well, then!” She recited a definition she had heard Hanafer use only the week before: “If you come upon a very timid nimp who wets the bed and wouldn’t say ‘peep’ to a pussycat—you have found a moop.”

Jaro sighed. “Very well; now I know.”

“Hmf. You’re not even angry,” said Taninka in disgust.

Jaro reflected. “Hanafer can be carried off by a big bird, for all I care. Otherwise, there is no return message.”

Later, his mother sees Jaro moping and gets to the bottom of things.

“That is not acceptable conduct, and I shall have a word with his mother.”

“No!” cried Jaro in panic. “I don’t care what Hanafer thinks! If you complain to his mother, everyone will laugh at me!”

Althea knew that he was right. “Then you’ll just have to take Hanafer aside and explain in a nice way that you mean him no harm and that he has no reason to call you names.”

Jaro nodded. “I may do just that—after punching his head to attract attention.”

Of course, on different matters, the mother and the father, have their own disagreements.

From the first Hilyer had felt deeply suspicious of Maihac. When Althea scoffed, Hilyer claimed darkly that his instincts were never wrong. He felt that Maihac, if not a blackguard had much to hide, to which Althea said: “Oh piffle. Everyone has something to hide.”

Hilyer started to declare, “Not I!” in a decisive voice, then thought of one or two shrouded episodes in his past and merely gave a noncommittal grunt.

Dorothy Parker

In a collection of her book reviews which I found in The Penguin Dorothy Parker, she reviews a book by one Margot Asquith. It’s called Re-enter Margot Asquith – A Masterpiece from the French, dated October 22, 1927.

I think it must be pleasanter to be Margot Asquith than to be any other living human being; and this is no matter of snap judgment on my part, for I have given long and envious thought to the desirability of being Charles A. Levine. But the lady seems to have even more self-assurance than has the argumentative birdman. Her perfect confidence in herself is a thing to which monuments should be erected; hers is a poise that ought to be on display in the British Museum. The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature.

In another review, The Professor Goes In for Sweetness and Light, dated November 5, 1927, she reviews a book by Professor Phelps in which he gives us his wisdom on the key to happiness. She is now in the middle of quoting from the beginning of the book regarding the definition of happiness.

We might just as well get on along to the next statement, which goes like this: “One of the best” (we are still on definitions of happiness) “was given in my Senior year at college by Professor Timothy Dwight: ‘The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts.’” Promptly one starts recalling such Happiness Boys as Nietzsche, Socrates, de Maupassant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Blake, and Poe. One wonders, with hungry curiosity, what were some of the other definitions that Professor Phelps chucked aside in order to give preference to this one.

The Point

The point? The point is that writers have timing. That includes authors of prose, whose work is not meant to be read aloud, not meant to be heard, and when read in one’s head is not read to a rhythm. There are still authors with perfect timing.

If you disagree, please read the excerpts again.

I reserve the right to bring more examples, and I hope you may feel like adding a few excerpts yourself in the comment, if you feel like sharing.

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For more posts on humor, check out the one analyzing David E. Kelley's humor as well as the one that takes on racism. Then we've got some nice funny excerpts from Rescue Me and from the Gilmore Girls.

There's No Place Like Home

2007-12-05T14:16:00.000-08:00

A small, small thought about the last line in the first part of Tin Man, where the land of Oz is now called 'The O.Z.' (pronounced 'Oh-zee').

The last line is delivered by the evil sorceress to this story's 'Dorothy' (called D.G.), after D.G. and her friends have been defeated: "Welcome back, little sister. There's no place like the O.Z."

Now, couldn't the last line have been: "Welcome to the O.Z., bitch. There's no place like home."

I mean, you get a two-for-one.

I'm just saying.

The Problem with Pundits

2007-11-29T23:57:00.000-08:00

Comedy, satire and punditry all require a common denominator that is usually overlooked: the willingness to look stupid.

Comedy

When Tim Allen was at the Actors’ Studio, he was asked by a student the basic secret to being funny. That, of course, is a loaded question that can take years to answer by experts. Allen said (and I’m paraphrasing): ‘You have to commit. You have to be willing to commit and go all the way. Even if your joke tanks, even if you don’t get a laugh, even if you look stupid, you have to go all the way with it.’

That’s great advice. And if you take the time to imagine the comedians you like best and the moments of comedy you like best, you’ll see that in almost all those moments the comedian went with his joke/bit all the way. You’ll see that the joke didn’t have to succeed and that if it didn’t, the comedian would probably have looked very stupid. In fact, most comedy that does succeed comes first of all at the expense of the comedian. Comedy, by its nature, punctures bloated egos. It punctures stupidity, it punctures the unwillingness to bend (in behavior or logic or opinion). And if you have a bloated ego or an inability to look stupid or an unwillingness to bend, you can’t make comedy.

In puncturing other people’s egos you have to first of all be able to puncture your own. If you want to get people to laugh at their own stupidity, you have to be able to laugh at your own first.

Which brings us to satire.

Satire

In a talk a show a couple of weeks ago there was an interview with a playwright who’s famous where I live (which means you’ve probably never heard of him). He has a new satire out and he came to talk about it.

When he was asked about his last satire and about the fact that what he had said there had turned out to be not true, rather than admit it, he began to shift around in his seat and talk his way out of it, explaining, in a very roundabout way, why he wasn’t wrong even though the facts no longer back him up.

Now, satire asks of the audience something that’s very hard to do. Satire asks us to change our minds, to admit we’re wrong, to open our minds to new thoughts and new ideas. If you can’t change your mind, admit you’re wrong, and open your mind to new thoughts and new, how can you have the gall to ask that of your audience? How good can your satire be if you have an inability to open your mind?

Which brings us to punditry.

Punditry

Punditry is like satire in this respect: the pundits are asking people to change their minds, to consider a new idea or a new concept or a new opinion.

Too many pundits in all forms of the media are unable to admit mistakes. Not only are they not asked about their previous erroneous statements by their interviewers, they do not usually admit to such things on their own. Not all pundits are like this – and the best certainly aren’t – but certainly too many. (One good example jumps immediately to mind: Jeff Greenfield is a very smart ‘analyst’ who has no problem saying he was wrong or that he’d changed his mind. That’s one of the reasons he’s become hot property.)

When it’s your job to be right, it’s hard to say “I was wrong”. When it’s your job to be right, it all becomes about your ego and you feel you must maintain your status and the opinion of others. But it isn’t your job to be right, it’s your job to be intelligent.

Changing your mind isn’t evidence of flip-flopping (an accusation politicians are victims of); changing your mind is, at times, an ability to adapt to new information and new circumstances, an ability we usually refer to as ‘intelligence’.

But let’s change “I was wrong” to “Oh, that’s right”. The two statements mean the same thing, after all. If it’s your job to get the audience to say “Oh, that’s right”, you should be able to go through that process yourself. Lead by example. It’s not about your opinion, it’s about having the ability to think. And “Oh, that’s right” symbolizes that pretty well.

So here’s a proposition to pundits out there: Start saying, “Oh, that’s right.” People’s opinions of you will go up.

The World Must Be Peopled

2007-11-16T17:18:00.000-08:00

Women

So: Women. What’s that all about?

In the movie Switch, written and directed by Edward Blake, Ellen Barkin plays a sexist, chauvinist man who treats women as if they came in a PEZ dispenser. Three of his ex-girlfriends band together and kill him. Rather than send him immediately to Hell, God gives our hero a second chance: I’ll send you back, God says, and if you find one woman who loves you, you’ll get to Heaven. But the twist is that God sends him back as a woman, a really hot woman.

Edward Blake was a great writer and Switch is great both as a movie and as a comedy (and Ellen Barkin is great as a man in a woman’s body ,but we’re not here to talk about acting). Obviously, Blake tried to get men to understand what it’s like to be a woman, even for a day. Blake fails in two places and succeeds in a third in a really big way.

Here’s where he doesn’t succeed:

One: Men treat our hero like a piece of meat and constantly try to get him into bed, no matter the context of the situation or conversation. We see the situations are true and we know that men really behave like this and we hear Barkin complain about it with the same words women really use, but the men’s behavior only comes off as annoying. Men in the audience who would love to be hounded endlessly by women wouldn’t, on the basis of the movie, feel like complaining if they were a woman hounded endlessly by men. After all, it’s their fantasy to be attractive.

Two: Our hero’s best friend in life (before he died) is played by Jimmy Smits, who later learns the truth about his old friend’s new body, but because he’s now a hot babe, tries to sleep with him anyway. One day, the two of them get drunk and then fall asleep together in a bed. Smits, apparently, took advantage of Barkin while Barkin was asleep. Barkin says Smits raped him. Smits says Barkin cooperated. This part doesn’t work, either. Although Barkin’s words are all true, and though her character’s point of view is clear, we don’t feel bad for Barkin for what happened. The feeling of violation isn’t there. So if you didn’t care before you watched the movie, you wouldn’t care while watching it. That’s the writer’s fault.

Here’s where Blake succeeds in a big way. It turns out that from that one night with Smits, Barkin gets pregnant. He decides to keep the baby, and eventually he gives birth. And the second Barkin gives birth, something happens in the mind of the men watching the movie: a switch of the imagination, a real one. Men may entertain what it’s like to be raped or to be leered at or to be constantly hit on or to walk in heels, etc., but they never entertain what it would really be like to give birth. That’s a woman’s job. That is therefore the one big moment in the movie where the men actually entertain the thought of what it must be like to be a woman. By this I mean that it is the one instant in the movie in which the men watching actually imagine what it would be like to be different or other. That kind of imagination is not required for any other part of the movie.

Every time I watch Switch, the same realization hits me at exactly that time: Deep, deep down in their subconscious, most men – and it doesn’t matter if they’re liberal or conservative – still see women not only as sexual objects but also as baby-making machines; that deep, deep down we perceive this as women’s most important role. This societal imperative that has been ingrained into our society for thousands of years has not vanished, has not even been addressed since the pill was introduced and women started actively and effectively choosing not to get pregnant.

Abortion and God

It seems to me that the anti-abortionists (a position which, in the U.S., is called ‘pro-life’), has less to do with a baby’s right to life or even religion and more to do with the societal imperative that is revealed in Switch.

Here’s why it isn’t only about life for most anti-abortionists: People who would be actively against abortion because they care so much for life and for the sacredness of it would be out there helping the poor and the hungry in all countries, they would be against the death penalty, and they would be just as active against the many genocides and slaughters currently taking place all over the world. This is usually pointed out by liberals when they try to claim that conservative anti-abortionists are hypocritical, but calling the other side names takes nothing from the other side’s claim. The point is that because of this inconsistency, it can’t possibly be only about this. It must be about something else.

Here’s why it isn’t about what God says: There’s true belief in God and there’s belief in God. Here’s an example of the former: If God tells you to take your first-born child and kill him (as the Bible tells of Abraham), you take your first-born child and you kill him. That is true belief in God. Most people are not willing to go that far. Most people at the end of the day believe in things that are comfortable for them to believe in. Most people choose their god in little ways, what their god would accept and what He wouldn’t. Most people find the god that most agrees with what they want to believe God is. That is especially true when it comes to the big things. You may keep the Sabbath holy even if it’s uncomfortable for you, because it’s not that big a bother, but at the same time you will probably choose not to kill your first-born child even if your minister/priest/rabbi/etc. told you to.

Now, the Bible talks about many, many things which today people would not fight for (slavery, for example). People choose which parts of what God said in the Bible to care about and which not to. Not everything that’s in the Bible is reason to go out to the streets and picket. It is the person, not God, who picks and chooses.

At the end of the day, people need to care about something they become active about before they find that God agrees with them (and the more active they are, the more they need to care). But if God agrees with them, they feel morally justified and their fervor grows.

Objectifying Women

Why is it, then, that it is so easy to get people out to the streets to fight against abortion? Because we have an ingrained social imperative that is thousands of years old: Women are here to make babies. You thought women were being objectified as sex symbols? That’s nothing. Women should be mothers. Women should make babies. That’s why they’re here.

The thing is that although the abortion debate is not really about being ‘pro-life’, it also isn’t about being ‘pro-choice’. According to this instinctive belief ingrained into men, women shouldn’t get a choice. Some things are too important, too sacred. And it is men who write the abortion laws and men who decided Roe v. Wade, and it is men who will vote on the next piece of legislation that has to do with a woman’s right to choose anything.

Women are here to make babies. It is more important than their right to express themselves. It is more important than their right to vote. It is more important than any other right or freedom that they may get or deserve. Not only that, but their making babies is more important than whatever it is they want out of their own lives. It is the reason they’re here. The world, after all, must be peopled.

That is how most men, even liberals, perceive women deep down. And, truth to tell, that is how many women perceive themselves, too, deep down. And if on top of this your god happens to say that fetuses mustn’t be killed because they have souls, why that’s great, let’s use that.

I'm Back

2007-11-13T02:07:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm back, as you can see from the earlier post. I'm back, but there will be a few changes.

This will no longer be a weekly column. It will all depend on how much time I have and on whatever idea may strike that's worthy of a column.

Storytellers will still be a column, but will also become more of a blog, in which I'll post news and other things I think might be interesting.

Speaking of which, here's an update on the movie Cold, Cold Heart, which was the reason I stopped posting here a few months ago. In the meantime, we finished shooting and finished the rough cut. The rest of the post production process, however, will take a few more months than originally planned, but everything's proceeding apace. Such is the life of the independent filmmaker. I hope to have a website about Cold, Cold Heart in the upcoming weeks. I'll link to it over here when it's up.

By the way, I mentioned Erica Jong in the earlier post. She is one of our truth-tellers, and for you newcomers out there, a few months ago we had an entire column about truth-telling.

The Meaning of Words

2007-11-12T19:35:00.000-08:00

Back to the Beginning

Here’s a nifty fact which I found reading historian Niall Ferguson’s The War of the World (a mind-blowing read, by the way). It’s right in the introduction:

“In terms of our DNA we are, without a shadow of a doubt, one species, whose origins can be traced back to Africa between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago, and who began to spread into new continents only as recently as 60,000 years ago – in evolutionary terms, the proverbial blink of an eye.”

This is, of course, not new, but from a writer’s point of view, these numbers are fascinating.

We Are Not Genetically Built For Language

Think about it like this: The first human did not speak any language. S/he had the same genetic ability for language that we do today, but obviously s/he only learned to communicate the way the tribe s/he was born into communicated. And the way tribes communicated back then must have been no different from the way monkeys communicate today: grunting, pointing, screaming, and so on.

Obviously, the first human did not immediately invent a language. It is unreasonable to assume that the first human suddenly came up with something like English or ancient Aramaic, for example. Even if s/he had, s/he would have no one to talk to. And, of course, no one can invent a language out of thin air without first knowing a language.

It is more reasonable to assume that the first human communicated with the tribe in the way the tribe communicated before the human had been born, and that the new human did nothing more complicated than that. Then the first human bred, and the offsprings bred, and so on. And eventually, after a few generations, maybe one word formed that the humans – and even the ones with the more monkey-like brain – could learn to understand and use to communicate better. (Monkeys, research has shown, can learn a few hundred words.)

Over the generations, a few more words must have formed. A few generations later and maybe there were a few dozen words. Take a few more generations, maybe even hundreds or thousands of years, to form something remotely akin to syntax. And take a few thousand more years to form a basis for a language that had some kind of logic or reason behind it, as all human languages today do.

According to the numbers above, mankind had anything from 40,000 to 140,000 years to form out of nothing a basis, a common denominator, for what would later become all human languages.

We are so used to seeing babies and children learn the language, and babies and children are so good at it and the human brain is so clearly geared to absorb language in a faster and more thorough way than adults can, that it seems the most natural thing for the human brain to do. And yet if we think about it, it becomes clear that the DNA that gave this ability to kids, was not created when language, even rudimentary language, existed.

We ourselves need language so much, are reliant on it for everything, and our brains are clearly quite equipped and adept at using and learning a language, that it is almost impossible to conceive that we are not genetically built for language.

The mechanism through which babies and kids learn language, the mechanism we use to communicate, must necessarily have served a completely different purpose than the one we are using it for now. When mankind formed – with the same DNA as we have today – it must have taken thousands of years for a rudimentary semblance of a language to form.

We are not genetically built for language. And yet we are.

Symbolic Logic

It’s all about symbolic logic. That’s an ability to put something into a concept, which can be a word or a number or even a picture in our imagination. Once we can think about things without seeing them, we can put two of them together, imagine consequences of things we have not seen by creating a third avatar/picture/concept/word/number in our heads, and so on.

We can plan ahead, we can think about things that haven’t happened or did happen but are not happening now. We can think about people or animals that are not in front of us. We can see our own death. We can imagine entire scenarios in our heads, an ability that also allows us to imagine and understand and invent stories.

The more concepts for which we develop names or shapes for in our heads, the better we are at thinking ahead, relying on previous knowledge. Today it’s given us languages, mathematics, stories, and more. But the mechanism for all this is the same: the ability to separate one thing from all we see or imagine or feel and see it as one thing.

That one ability separates our intelligence from the monkeys to such an extent that it let us take over the world and even get to the moon and send probes to the far reaches of the solar system.

Back to Words

So what does that mean about words?

Words are either concepts or connections between concepts. I’ve put in bold the words in the last sentence that are concepts: Words are either concepts or connections between concepts. Here is the same sentence with the connections between concepts in bold: Words are either concepts or connections between concepts.

But words resonate. Poetry resonates. Stories resonate. Certain sentences by certain authors can lay you down and pierce you right through the heart.

The Meaning of Words

Erica Jong, in her book Seducing the Demon (also mind-blowing), writes about a choice she made before giving a speech:

“There was only one way to tell the truth. And that was to tell the kids and their parents and professors why I was there. I was there because I was a writer and a writer is someone who takes the universal whore of a language and turns her into a virgin again. I wasn’t going to coast on clichés. I was going to talk about the power of words—something I had been thinking a great deal about since the so-called war on terror dragged on and on, kidnapping the language and proliferating terrorists.”

When Jong writes about “the universal whore of a language”, she means two things: One, that language has been recently overtaken by Orwellian Newspeak and forced to tell lies and hide the truth; and two, that even without that, it is the writer’s job to create something new and true every time she puts old words on a page.

But as great as that line is, language is never a whore.

A writer uses two kinds of words: the words that are concepts and the words that connect concepts. The words that connect concepts are perceived in the same way in everyone’s minds (‘and’, ‘but’, ‘is’, ‘that’, ‘the’, etc.). But the words that are concepts are perceived differently in each and every person that hears them. ‘Chair’ isn’t the same for me as it is for you. Neither is ‘leader’ or ‘strong’. You know what I mean when I say these words, but the words resonate differently in every one of us.

Even our own understanding of words isn’t that clear. Do we know what we fully mean when we say ‘chair’? Can we define it properly? ‘Chair’, after all, covers all chairs possible, and that’s a hard concept to define. And yet when we see a new chair, we immediately know that it is a chair even though we’ve never seen another one exactly like it before. The word ‘chair’ also includes many memories of chairs, as well as, perhaps, certain experiences with chairs. The word ‘chair’ must necessarily carry with it the process by which we, as babies or kids, learned to tell chairs apart from things that looked like chairs but weren’t. The process of learning the word ‘chair’ is also included in our experience of it when we hear the word. The process of having been taught the word ‘chair’ (different from learning the word) must also be hidden there somewhere. The possibilities of what other chairs could be as well as the possibilities that were close but did not make it into the definition (back when we were kids) must also be subconsciously included in our experience of the word. I could go on and on and yet not cover everything.

That means that when we say the old word ‘chair’, things resonate in every one of us slightly differently. Different pictures, memories, associations are summoned within each of us, and usually we are not aware of this process. Even when we are aware of it, like now, we can’t be aware of everything that single word means to us.

Every word that is a concept is not a fully-formed concept. It carries with it memories, depths, associations to other concepts, possibilities, and who knows what else. Words that are concepts are like pillars on which you stand but that reach endlessly down, so that their bottom cannot be seen. A good writer uses that fact when putting together a sentence. A good writer would know that every one of us understands concepts differently. A good writer would subconsciously know that careful use of words-that-are-concepts resonates deep into unseen places.

In Conclusion

Language isn’t a whore. Language is made of bottomless pillars that go deep into the murky depths of our selves and reach into places we don’t fully know or understand. The words in language that are concepts rather than connections have, as far as we are concerned, endless depth, and if used properly, they will resonate in ways that reach into those depths.

____
Corrections: A certain evolutionary biologist corrected me on the following things (I'm paraphrasing).
1. "Every time you said 'monkey', you meant 'ape'."
2. "It is most likely that the brain evolved together with the language and symbolic thinking. Language advanced a bit, the cortex got more complex, language advanced a bit more, the cortex got more complex, etc."

It's Time to Say Adieu

2007-08-02T22:05:00.000-07:00

Hi, everyone. As you may have noticed, I’ve disappeared for the last couple of weeks and I am going to disappear for a much longer time. I’ve just finished shooting a 50-minute drama, which I wrote, directed, produced, and shot. The drama’s in editing and I’m starting to shoot a movie which I’m writing, directing, producing, and shooting. I thought I could do that, and, at the same time, keep writing the Storytellers articles. And I can’t. The water’s over my head. So it’s time to go.

These are the things we would have talked about during the next few weeks and won’t: We won’t talk about David Lynch and where emotions that have nothing to do with reality come from; we won’t talk about the Coen brothers and the way they describe human processes from the outside and never look from the inside to see what it feels like; we won’t talk about whether it’s good that Spielberg’s best movies are for kids or whether making scenes with The Hero and The Kids and The Dame rather than people with names comes from a dehumanized place; we won’t talk about Battlestar Galactica and the way everything in it fits the article I already wrote about Weeds; and we won’t talk about how David Mamet uses truth to hide the truth, even in the ending of his movies and plays.

Thank you, everyone. I hope you liked your stay. I hope you’ll like my movie. In the meantime, here’s a story I’m really proud of. Enjoy.

Guy

Oh, by the way, the movie’s name (for now) is Cold, Cold Heart. It’s science fiction. My executive producer says there’s going to be an IMDB entry in a few weeks. So if it pops up there, I’ll post a link to it as my last post (for you RSS-ers out there) so people can follow our progress.

Religion and the Origin of Science Fiction

2007-07-11T13:13:00.000-07:00

Where does science fiction come from? Since it is a form of art, and since it does touch many people, then it must necessarily touch something that was created long ago, when mankind came to be.

The origin of science fiction must necessarily start at the origin of mankind and not at the origin of modern technology (like electricity) or even ancient technology (like agriculture).

So where was science fiction when we came down from the trees?

Religion as Science

Some evolutionists have argued that religion is science without the scientific method. Religion, faith, beliefs, and superstition are all based on explanations of the world we live in. If you’re a caveman whose father is deathly sick, and after you happen to hit the wall three times or close your eyes and pray or tear your hair out, he gets better, you might assume that the events are connected. You would not test this theory as you would a scientific theory because you would not risk your father’s life.

If two months later your mother gets sick, you perform the same ritual, and it works, then your theory was right. If she dies, then perhaps you knocked on the wrong place on the wall or maybe you didn’t pray hard enough or maybe you didn’t tear out enough of your hair. You will find a malleable explanation that fits both instances rather than discard the original proposition as false.

If you’re a caveman who steals from his friend then almost gets hit by lightning, you might decide that the two events are connected. You would not test that theory, scientifically, to see if it would happen again or if the events were unrelated, because you would be afraid to be hit by lightning.

In trying to explain why there is rain or thunder, why there is a famine, a draught, a hurricane, a tsunami, or why people get sick or die, theories explaining these events are formed in our heads. When enough theories are formed, a belief system is created, what physicists call a ‘Theory of Everything’. Sooner or later a person believing strongly enough in this theory and persuasive enough to draw other people in creates followers and believers in this theory of how the universe works. From there on, rules are created that apply to the believers, and the road from there to organized religion is clear.

As a side note, this means that any life-form on earth or in space whose intelligence would be advanced enough to create science and overcome nature would also develop religion. In fact, it would develop religion first.

The Emotions of Religion

But religion also carries with it a few extras that science does not. It carries with it a few emotions that are easily classifiable.

It allays fears – Religion allays fear of death, as much as possible, by telling us that death isn’t the end and that there is something good afterwards. It also allays fears during hard time, telling us that things will be better or that god has a plan, etc.

A feeling of unity – Many religions provide its community a feeling of togetherness that can’t usually be found in other communities. Everyone knows everyone else is likeminded. Everyone gathers in the same place at certain times to celebrate the same things. A feeling of unity is a powerful thing, and both democracy and science stay away from them.

A feeling of the divine – When you believe in certain gods, you feel like you can touch something that is beyond you and above you. For a few short instances, you feel what true grandness must feel like. It’s a feeling of majesty, of a grand plan, and of your place in the universe.

Science Fiction and Divinity

A large part of science fiction and its allure is the feeling it gives, that grander things are possible, that majesty bigger than what we know exists. Technology we haven’t dreamt of, races the likes of which we’ve never seen, mysteries we haven’t conceived of, societies more advanced than our own that are now dead - all these things hint at things that are bigger than us, at a majesty to a universe of which we are but a cog. Many stories are based on a grand plan to the universe. It could be that laws of physics are introduced or supposed that make us see a more logical Theory of Everything. An alien race or advanced technology may give us a hint of things grander than ourselves.

A good chunk of science fiction tunes into that basic human feeling that existed when we came down from the trees, the feeling of majesty, of awe, of things greater than what we know, of a big plan that might exist - things that are found through science... and religion.

Science fiction comes from religion. And religion comes from science.

What Does Cronenberg Find Weird?

2007-07-04T09:21:00.000-07:00

We’ve already talked about the top four storytellers in TV today. Now, slowly and sporadically, we’re starting a four-article series about the top four storytellers in cinema today.

Storytellers in Cinema

In television, the storyteller is the writer. In cinema, the storyteller is the director. There are many kinds of directors: an actors’ director, a visual director, a lyrical director (Greenaway, for example), a storytelling director, and so on. In this column, we care about those who tell a story best. There are four storytellers in cinema whose power to captivate us when telling us a story, even a crazy story, is unmatched. They are, in no particular order: Steven Spielberg, the Coen brothers, David Lynch, and David Cronenberg.

Cronenberg

Today we’re going to talk about Cronenberg. He is the director (and, often, writer) of The Fly, eXistenZ, A History of Violence, Naked Lunch, Videodrome, Scanners, Dead Ringers, and more. Cronenberg tells us dark and strange stories, sometimes disgusting, at best weird. And yet we sit there and take it, not because of the subject itself, but because Cronenberg can tell a story.

There are things we can tell about people who tell stories, facts we can deduce by the way the story is told. It would be the easiest thing in the world to try and deduce something about a mind that invents such eerily dark stories. But let’s take a different tack. Let’s put aside the content of the story, and try and learn things about Cronenberg simply from the way he positions the camera.

Cronenberg’s Frames

Take A History of Violence, for example. Leaving the story completely out it, most of the frames in the movie give us a feeling that something is very very wrong. And yet these frames are usually of one or two people, just standing there, in front of a completely ordinary background. But that nagging feeling that something is wrong does not leave us.

That nagging feeling is not our imagination. Cronenberg put it there for us. He put it in the frame.

But where is that wrongness found? It isn’t in the background, because the background’s normal. It isn’t that the shot is framed in a particularly freaky way; it isn’t. It’s that somehow a bigger emphasis is given to the character’s head. Everything that’s wrong in the picture is in the character’s head (and it doesn’t matter what character we’re talking about). But, look hard as you can, you won’t see what’s wrong. Cronenberg doesn’t tell you what’s wrong. You have no idea what possibly could be wrong. But you do know that something is very wrong.

What’s Behind Those Eyes?

If we look even more closely at the way the frame is positioned, we’ll see that the picture is framed in such a way as to make us look not exactly at the person’s face, but at what’s behind it.

Cronenberg is focusing out attention not at the person’s face, but at their intent, that murky, intangible thing which causes us to act and think.

There is something behind a man’s (or a woman’s) eyes. Something lies behind that normal shell, behind the skin and bones that nature gave us. Something lies behind our thoughts. Something inexplicable that brings about those thoughts. Something beyond what we understand, beyond what we know is there and Cronenberg obsesses over it.

When he looks at a person, and when we look at a character through his eyes, what we see is: intent. A Cronenberg character looks at someone or says something, and there is intent in those eyes. And behind the intent, there is... something.

What Cronenberg Finds Weird

Cronenberg doesn’t know who we are really. All he sees when he looks at a person is ‘intent’. But he knows that there is something behind that intent. He feels it in his bones. And he feels that he doesn’t know what that thing is or where it comes from or who it belongs to. He doesn’t know why that intent is there, what it really wants. And he fears that our intent may come from a dark place or that it may not actually come from us.

Look at his movies again, and you’ll see how he frames the shots in such a way as to put intent as the most important thing in almost every shot. There is something mysterious behind those eyes, his work screams. If the shot is about two people talking, you’ll see that very often, they get equal treatment in the frame, taking the same space and equally interesting to the eye. That is because they are both human, both have intent, and both are therefore equally mysterious. Cronenberg doesn’t care who is in the shot, as long as s/he’s human. It’s the intent he’s trying to catch; that’s the real hero and villain of his stories.

And that’s where his darkness comes from.

Why Did Evolution Leave Us the Artists?

2007-06-27T01:05:00.000-07:00

Why do we even have artists? Do we really need them, from an evolutionary point of view?

Artists should have died off

Who needs artists, anyway?

Most of them, historically, are not very good at the productive stuff, which makes them a burden on society. The thing that they are good at is not very useful for society and all other animals have done well without pictures or stories or music. We don't really need movies or music or dancers or poets to survive, do we?

Not only that, artists are usually a destabilizing influence on society. They keep trying to break rules (usually), they keep living a wild and sordid life (overall), their art keeps pushing boundaries that disturb the careful balance of society (mostly).

It would seem to make sense that a society that succeeded in eliminating its artists would survive better and therefore have an evolutionary edge. Its people would work better and longer, would not dream of better things, and the rules of the society would be less threatened.

Why didn't artists die off and leave our societies more stable?

Art increases people's intelligence

Most stories are good for our intelligence. When small kids listen to stories, they experience in their minds situations they haven't been in and learn how to cope. They listen again and again to the same stories, and imagine what it feels like to be in that situation. The same is true with grownups. Some stories help us prepare for future situations and/or understand past situations better.

Imagination also helps increase people's ability to think, seeing as it breaks old forms and helps imagine new ones. Imagination is a very good surviving tool. The better your imagination, the better your ability to cope with change, to win wars, to advance in society, etc.

Being able to think outside the box promises a more intelligent society, even if the person who first thought outside the box was one of them artist types. Being forced to push back when somebody pushes your boundaries or buttons, magnifies your ability to justify the boundaries, and also helps you move them should the need for it arise. If change becomes necessary, the fact that your boundaries were already in question, makes it easier to change them. An ability to bend under changing circumstances is a mark of intelligence.

But these things don't exist in all pieces of good art.

Art crystallizes ideas and emotions

What every piece of good art does is crystallize ideas and emotions.

The better the art the more precise the expression of emotion. Artists make solid emotions that are fluid and that don't have a name. If you hear a piece of brilliant music and it captures the way you feel precisely, you are then able to look at some of your emotions in a more precise manner. If a painting captures a feeling you never knew you had, now you know you have it. Your emotional intelligence increased somewhat. If a brilliantly constructed building shows you a relationship of the spaces around you that you saw but couldn't place or that brings some enlightenment to a place in your mind you didn't know was there, you are now a slightly wiser person. If a dance tugs at your heart in a place that has no name, if a play makes you feel like you experienced something bigger than yourself, then your world is richer and your ability to handle it has marginally increased.

So. Turns out artists are good for us. Take two a day before each meal and you'll be fine.

What Is It That Peter Jackson Really Does?

2007-06-20T03:58:00.000-07:00

Peter Jackson, director of, most notably, The Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong, can’t tell a story. Sound odd? Let’s take a look.

Peter Jackson can’t tell a story

Remember the scene in King Kong in which Naomi Watts (Kong’s blonde love-interest) gets kidnapped by a bunch of aborigines who try to sacrifice her? Supposedly, she’s going to die any minute. Jack Black is on her heels and an ominous threat in the jungle (Kong) appears to be getting closer.

The mark of an interesting story is that it keeps the audience glued to their seats or that it keeps the reading audience turning one more page and one more page after that. That thing which glues us to the page/screen/chair is brought on by tension, a small fear in the audience of what might happen next. In the sacrifice scene there was absolutely no tension whatsoever.

On the one hand, the scene looked exactly as a sacrifice scene should appear, all those crazy angles, tens of shots cutting quickly into each other, plenty of shadows, tense music, etc. And yet the potential sacrifice in mid-movie of the movie’s heroine provoked yawns in the theater that I had attended.

That’s... unbelievable.

How bad do you have to be at telling a story if threatening to kill your heroine doesn’t evoke the least bit of tension?

It’s not that Jackson is bad at telling a story – I don’t think he even tried – it’s that he’s not interested in telling a story.

Peter Jackson doesn’t want to tell a story

Peter Jackson doesn’t want to tell a story. What he’s really interested in, if we look at his last four movies, is taking an imaginary world he must have had as a child and making it real. He took the fantastic and hugely-encompassing world of Lord of the Rings and made it real in front of our eyes. He basically said, “Look! It’s real! I knew it could be real!”

In King Kong he took New York of the 30’s and made it real in front of our eyes. He took the unrealistic monsters and worlds shown in old Godzilla and King Kong movies and made them seem real in front of our eyes. And in that – that thing which he sought to do – he did a fantastic job.

Jackson doesn’t want to tell us a story. He could care less about the plot. In fact, the plot is an onerous chore he has to go through to get to the part he’s really interested in.

The faults of a new world

When George Lucas wrote and directed the first Star Wars movie way back before the technology for it existed, he realized that reality is dirty. To make his spaceships real, he always made sure that they would be dirty or broken or messed up in some way. The audience understands that on a subconscious level. And therefore if something is too clean, it doesn’t ‘feel’ real to us; it feels man-made. But if it’s messed up in some way, it ‘feels’ real. That’s just how our mind works.

Jackson should take that to heart in the next world he creates. Not every sunset is amazingly, unbelievably beautiful; not every vista is magnificent; not every detail is perfect. Imperfection adds to reality, and the feeling that a view exists in reality makes a beautiful vista more beautiful.

In the same way, real symmetry is rare in life and frequent in Jackson’s movies. The realistic New York cabs in King Kong drive in both directions with flawless symmetry. Nowhere is there a bump or a cab stopping for no reason causing a momentary, imperfectly-spaced jam with the cars behind it. The fleeing dinosaurs in the same movie run symmetrically just before they get trampled. Reality isn’t symmetrical and lack of symmetry adds to a feeling of reality.

Seeing as Peter Jackson is wildly popular, and that the opinions of most of you must differ greatly from mine, I’d love to hear what you think.

Meme Roundup - June 2007

2007-06-17T15:39:00.000-07:00

As you may recall from our last meme roundup, when writing an article I try to put in at least one meme that may be new to most readers. Here's what we talked about over the last couple of months:

* Kids are scared of monsters in closets; grownups are scared of an overabundance of possibilities.
* The best-laid plans are planned and laid ahead of time. We pitted Lost's mysteries vs. Babylon 5's mysteries.
* When asking if The Daily Show is patriotic, we learned a different meaning to an old question: 'What is it?'
* Good stories are, by their nature, liberal. Good stories have conflict, and good storytellers need to be able to write (and understand) both sides of a conflict well. They therefore find themselves on the humanistic side of most ideological battles throughout history.
* Patriotism has its limits; honor and truth do not.
* Loss of stability is a feeling.
* Gods aren't heroes.
* The dangers of cockiness: Just because you're one of the best writers around doesn't mean that what you wrote today was any good.
* Of truth-telling and truth-tellers.

Apparently, we're old enough to start news items. Here's one: Rescue Me is back for a fourth season. In this article we talked about how its writers put a soul in a TV show.

Hope you enjoy the articles.

Truth-Telling

2007-06-13T15:40:00.000-07:00

If the truth is uncomfortable, the American audience would much rather not hear it.

Truth that’s uncomfortable? Truth that’s unseemly? Truth that’s ugly? I’d prefer a story with a happy ending, thank you.

The two top TV writers over the last couple of decades, David E. Kelly and Aaron Sorkin, have had unique relationships with truth-telling. Let’s take a look.

Sorkin and truth-telling

Sorkin had Toby. In The West Wing, Toby was the truth-teller. And quite early in the series, he justly calls himself “the kid in the class with his hand raised that nobody wants the teacher to call.”

Toby was the guy who said the bad things out loud, because he couldn’t stomach lies or self-delusion. Toby stared the truth in the face even when it hurt him.

The first time we saw Toby’s inability to keep his mouth shut was in the middle of a basketball game with the president of the United States, “Oh, this is perfect, you know that? This is a perfect metaphor. After you're gone, and the poets write, 'The Legend of Josiah Bartlet,' let them write you as a tragic figure, sir. Let the poets write that he had the tools of greatness, but the voices of his better angels was shouted down by his obsessive need to win.”

How many people in life do you know who will tell you your faults to your face? Are they loved? Are they shunned?

When Toby’s twins are born, Toby shares his feelings with Leo.

“I don't know,” he says. “For nine months, you're hearing how this is gonna change your life, and ‘You've never loved anything like this’, and ‘My God, the love’ and ‘Nothing's gonna be important any more.’ It just never really felt to me like I was someone who had the capacity for those feelings. Plus, you know, I like what's important to me. I want it to stay important. I want to be able to do it well.”

Leo says, “What do you mean, you don't have the capacity? Of course you're gonna be a great father. Of course you're gonna love your kids the way you're supposed to, the way other fathers—”

Toby interrupts him, “My God, Leo, we look around, we see that's not true. It's not automatic.”

Some parents don’t love their kids, and Toby knows that. Some parents treat their kids horribly, and Toby knows that. Some mothers feel bad that they don’t love their kids right away, not knowing it’s a process, and that it takes time. Toby doesn’t fall for that and even dares to admit that he is very different from what a father is supposed to be.

Another time, the president and Josh were shot. The president was all right, but Josh’s condition was critical. It was iffy if he would make it out of surgery.

Donna, Josh’s assistant who cares deeply for him, rushes in to the hospital, only knowing the president’s been shot. In a room full of friends, only Toby speaks, and says, “Donna. Josh was hit.”

“Hit with what?” Donna says.

Toby: “He was shot--in the chest.”

C.J. adds, “He's in surgery right now.”

Donna is in shock. “I don't understand. I don't understand, is -- is it serious?”

And the truth-teller gives it to her straight, without sugarcoating it, “Yes, it's critical. The bullet collapsed his lung and damaged a major artery.”

How many people do you know who don’t – and won’t – sugarcoat the awful truth for us?

Sorkin, of course, also knows how to make fun of it when he wants to. Because Toby isn’t only a truth-teller, he is a pessimist. Andy, Toby’s ex-wife, now pregnant with his child, says that she’s worried about how Toby will raise the kids.

“I do worry about the kids,” she tells him. “Because instead of showing them that the world is for them, you're going to be telling them that they have to work hard in school so they can bone up for a life of hopelessness and despair.”

Toby, not backing down, responds, “Wouldn't it be ironic if our kids were the only ones who were properly prepared?”

When Sorkin left the series after four seasons, Toby stopped being the truth-teller.

Kelley and truth-telling

Kelley’s palette of truth-telling is greater than Sorkin’s. Whereas Sorkin, in writing The West Wing, Sports Night, and Studio 60 only had Toby as a truth-teller, almost all of Kelley’s characters are truth-tellers at quite a few points of their lives.

But Kelly does us one better than that. He doesn’t let the need for everything to be resolved well get in his way. Whereas Sorkin ended the scene quoted above (in which Toby shared his worries about his being a bad father) on the best side possible (Leo tells Toby, “I’m not talking about everybody. I’m talking about you and I’m telling ya, it’s a mortal lock. It’s guaranteed”), Kelly tends to do the opposite.

One time, in Chicago Hope, Alan Birch, the hospital’s lawyer, appears before a committee that holds the future of Chicago Hope in its hands. It doesn’t go well. He gets blindsided and his ass is handed to him. When he comes back to the hospital to prepare for the next session, Dr. Phillip Waters, his boss, reads him the riot act. Later on, Birch appears before the committee prepared, legally beats the aggressive committee to a pulp, and wins the day.

That evening, Dr. Waters comes to Birch’s room, to mollify matters (as usually happens in most American shows). Birch is busy working. I get it, he says. I’ve proven myself a hundred times before, and yet every day I have to prove myself to you as if I’m starting from zero. I get it. You would never have treated any of the surgeons this way. I get it. I’m not one of the guys. I get it. I’m just your lawyer.

And as Birch says these things, he leads Dr. Waters out of the room. For a second, Waters is standing with his back to the open door. He opens his mouth and turns around, only to find the door gently closing in his face.

He then leaves.

Birch was right, and David E. Kelley wouldn’t write a sappy ending just because it's the expected thing to do. Any other writer on any other show would have let Walters come into the room again and ‘explain’ things and show how everything is actually okay. But it isn't. Kelley leaves the painful truth hanging there, for us to see and feel.

Kelley in his truth-telling, does us even one better than that: He goes out and seeks the truth, showing us what really exists behind our actions.

Here are a couple of secrets that Kelley outed during his run on Picket Fences.

One time, Jimmy Brock, the sheriff, and Jill Brock, his wife and a doctor, are having Jill’s father over along with Max, one of Jimmy’s deputies, for dinner. Jill’s father, a professor, keeps making jokes at Max about the ineptness of policemen. The great career as a surgeon that Jill had given up to live as a doctor in this town is also mentioned in passing.

Spirits are heated and things are said. Jill’s father accuses Jill of having grown distant from him, of never calling, of never talking the way they used to. When things get more heated, Jimmy tells him that it’s all his fault. The second Jill met Jimmy, she started to feel her father’s lack of acceptance. Jimmy’s not the intellectual she deserves; he’s a stupid policeman; she could do better. And that, says Jimmy, is why Jill grew distant from you.

Jill’s father is shocked. He turns to Jill and asks her, Is that true? Did you feel that way?

Jill, feeling like a little girl, nods.

Jill’s father then turns to Jimmy. I can’t argue with what she feels, he says, but she didn’t get it from me. I think you’re the exception to the rule, he continues, you’re one of the bravest and smartest men I’ve ever met. Whatever it is that’s going on here, it doesn’t come from me.

Jimmy’s eyes move from Jill’s father to Jill. He’s right, he says. It does come from you. It’s always come from you.

And he’s right. The disapproval Jill ‘picked up on’ came from her and from her own judgments of Jimmy, the man she eventually married. And she kept feeling like this all these years. And that’s an ugly and terrible truth for a married couple to learn. (And if you want to know what happened next, watch the series.)

Another time, Jimmy’s ex-wife comes to town with a surprise: She wants to have another kid, and she’s been trying to get pregnant for quite a while. Unfortunately, it turns out that she has a special genetic disease that allows her to conceive only with genetically-compatible men - only one out of about 75,000 men is a viable candidate (“And how many have you tried?” asks Jill.) And so it turns out that by a freak coincidence Jimmy is one of those men (since they have already had a daughter, Kimberly, who is now a teenager). And she wants his sperm.

Jimmy’s ex doesn’t even want to have sex with him. A few years ago, they had frozen his sperm. She just wants his okay.

When Jimmy says no, she looks at him, squints her eyes, and says, You know what, I don’t need your approval, I’m going to do it.

As you can guess, a big brouhaha ensues, at the end of which she decides not to go through with her plan. But then, standing by her daughter near her car, she admits her true motive: With Kimberly going to college soon, she won’t have a reason any more to come and be in Jimmy’s life. And she wanted and needed a reason to still be around. She is, after all those years, still in love with him.

Now, who else would tell you such truths?