The Thing in Orange

She looked at the painting again. It was crazy, but there was something familiar about it, a sense of deja vu from her own childhood. Ethan had been so proud when he brought it home from art class but even then her enthusiasm was undercut by a barely palpable feeling of dread. Now here it was, up by the computer, while he played quietly downstairs with his trains.

It occurred to her then that she hadn't heard anything down there in quite a while. "Ethan?" she called out, but there was no answer. She went downstairs, the painting sitting by itself on her desk.

(art by Jack Arndt-Schreiber, age 6)

From the archives

Rage (1977) by Richard Bachman
"His twisted mind turned a quiet classroom into a dangerous world of terror."

Cool things that happened this week

Okay, so the Pennsylvania Primary didn't turn out quite like I hoped, but it's not exactly a surprise. Fact: it feels good to exercise your right to vote, even if your guy doesn't come in first. And the outcome, delegate-wise, isn't all that world-altering anyway.

Plus, some other cool things happened this week. On Monday I finished the 8,000 word outline for Project X and sent it off to my agent, Phyllis, and my editor, Keith. Phyllis already got back to me and said she was impressed -- and she's not an easy woman to impress. Still waiting for feedback from Keith.

On Wednesday, Grove Press sent me an advance galley of Jim Harrison's next novel, The English Major, due out in October. I'm about halfway through it, and it's excellent. Not everybody out there likes Harrison -- my dad said once, memorably, "He writes like a drunk" -- but I love his stuff, always. This new book, about a 60-year-old farmer whose wife leaves him, spurring a cross-country road trip to visit his gay son in Hollywood and the renaming of all 50 states along the way, is so full of flavor that you can practically feel it absorbing into your pores.

Christina and I watched the DVD of Charlie Wilson's War. Our schedules are so different that we actually watched it separately but I got to look over her shoulder at my favorite parts again. It's one of those rare flicks that you expect is going to be great, and it is. Aaron Sorkin's screenplay is razor sharp, Tom Hanks is a perfect mix of savvy and bewildered, Julia Roberts does a spot-on impression of a blonde human switchblade, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman is just plain flat out brilliant.

Plus, Tuesday being Earth Day, I got to help my son bring in a jar of giant slugs into his kindergarten class.

All in all, not a bad week.

Hey, you got your Alien in my Predator!

I love the Alien movies. For anyone who doubts this supposition, I put forward the fact that I just watched Alien vs. Predator: Requiem. It took me three nights, but I got through it. I even kinda enjoyed it, in a third-piece-of-birthday cake kind of way. Its gory, brainless, overdark, shittily acted take on the Alien franchise was like having disappointing but itch-scratchingly satisfying and ultimately guilt-free sex with an old ex-girlfriend...in the morning, all one has to do is forgive one's all-too-familiar inability to say no to life's seedier indulgences. Which, unfortunately, I'm pretty used to doing.

But anyway.

It got me wondering. Everybody always seems to like the idea of a new Alien movie, but after Aliens, they all sort of sucked, didn't they? Don't get me wrong, I love them all anyway, of course, like I love my own children. The first Alien was the golden boy, the CEO, the JFK. Aliens was the buff, harder working athlete with the military pedigree and the cool war stories. The third one was the brainy, balding art school dropout with funky politics. And then there's Alien Resurrection, the fourth brother, the Teddy Kennedy of the clan, who never bothered getting dressed for the day. But even that one stops me when I find it on cable. Somehow the fact that it's not scary or suspenseful or even particularly engaging all make it more charming, like an elementary school play with an absurdly inflated budget. Plus it wasn't directed by Michael Bay.

But the point is, if you were going to actually make a good Alien movie, what would you do? I think we can safely dismiss such initial flashes of inspiration as turning the Alien loose on a commerical airliner, a shopping mall or a French cheese festival.

What made the first one so great? Besides the groundbreaking creature design by H.R. Giger, what are we left with? A realistic cast of characters, for one thing -- grumbling, ball-scratching just-woke-up employees of a massive corporation that could care less about them. In a brilliant stroke, Dan O'Bannon and Ridley Scott decided to introduce a highly ambivalent, very 70s view of technology. They didn't have to--they could've just made Jaws in space--but the decision to introduce artificial intelligence systems and synthetic humans as something that might very well make things worse, is what makes this movie timeless.

So what would it take to make another great Alien movie? How about a big dose of that great late '70s paranoia? Tony Gilroy's Michael Clayton was a great example of how this attitude still lives and breathes just dandy on today's screens. Hell, I think any Alien movie that even tried a little to be brainy and subversive would be a step back in the right direction. Viewed in this context, Alien 3 is a damn masterpiece. See what I mean?

In the end, though, it's people exactly like me who are to blame for the shoddy state of things. We don't hesitate to pay good money to wtach the fifth, eighth or twentieth sequel in an increasingly bankrupt series and sit up all night grieving about how we could spruce it up, bring the magic back, make it breathe again, if only somebody in power would just give us a chance. Although in the end, this is probably just another way of enjoying it. Viewed in this enlightened context, I actually don't feel too bad about it.

And that, my friends, is the beginning of wisdom.

Learning to Struggle

Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade sonnet
marathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags
of rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of
stone.
Out on the dance floor we were all doing the Struggle...

--Billy Collins, "Nostalgia"

In my house we've been misquoting this poem for years, but it's still one of our favorites. We talk about our kids "doing a dance called the Struggle." Actually learning to struggle is turning into a big part of Jack's learning curve. He's good enough at certain things that when it comes times to flail, flounder and ram your head against the wall trying to get stuff worked out, well, he's still learning how to do that dance.

So am I.

Especially when it comes to screenwriting. I'm used to the flow of fiction where you can spend time and prose working into the scene, shading the narrative toward its destination. Not so with screenwriting. It's more like building a house, one you hope will keep your head dry when it rains. Nothing ever comes out right the first time, and you find yourself wondering if you're ever going to figure it out. You want to rush ahead, because that momentum mimics the sensation of knowing what you're doing. Bad news, though -- it's not the same.

Now I'm struggling with something new. I'm in the outline form of Project X. What's Project X? Well, it's not a remake of this...



Project X is something you'll be seeing next year, and I've never written anything like it before. Consequently, I'm moving forward slowly and I'm doing the Struggle every step of the way.

It feels good, though.

It feels right.

The King's Reward

Every day my kids ask me to tell them a scary story. I try to oblige. Sometimes they contribute a plot point, occasionally changing the whole direction of the tale.

Take, for example, the story of “The King’s Reward,” made up the other day while I was waiting with Jack for the school bus. It was whipped up to be a bloody tale of vengeance but with a six-year-old’s input, became something a little different.

Once upon a time there was a kingdom at war. It was a long and bloody fight and the king had sent many young men over to fight and die. The king’s birthday was coming, when he met personally with his subjects and received their gifts. One of the local men in the village had lost his only son in the war, and the king knew that the man hated him with all his heart, and would take any opportunity to kill him.

The day before his birthday, the man came before the king and said, “Your majesty, what can I give you for your birthday gift?”

The king knew that he was dealing with a man who was mad with grief. And he knew that whatever gift he asked for, the man would find a way to turn it into a weapon. After weighing the question carefully he finally thought of the most harmless thing imaginable.

“I would like a lamb.”

“I am sorry, your majesty,” the man replied. “I have no way of getting you a lamb on such short notice. But be sure that next year, on your birthday, I shall have one ready for you.”

That same night, the man stole into a nearby pasture and kidnapped a baby lamb. He took it down to the basement of his house and tied it up. He filed its teeth to points, and built its muscles until was impossibly strong. For an entire year, he fed it nothing bowls of his own blood, until it was snarling and hostile, so vicious that the man himself could only handle it with a stick and ropes.

Then, when a year was up, the man came back to the palace. He climbed the twelve flights of stairs to the throne room with a large box wrapped for the king. Though he had packed it in straw to muffle the noises, the snarling sounds coming from inside the box were indescribably horrible.

“Your majesty, I have brought your birthday gift,” the man said, and put the package down in front of the king’s throne.

As the king started to open the package --

At this point in the story, Jack interrupts: “Joe?” (Because he hasn’t called me Dad in years.)

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want the king to die.”

"What?"

"I want the king to live."

“Uh...Okay.”

--and as the king was still opening the package, he stopped and says to the man, “I’m glad you’re here. I want to talk to you. I know you hate me for your son’s death. I know you wish I was dead. I want you to know that I’m sorry. I lost my own son in the same war. Some part of you dies with him and never comes back. So even though I know I can never make it up to you, I wanted to let you know that I understand how it feels.”

Hearing this, the father had a change of heart. But it was too late. The king opened the package and the lamb jumped at his throat. It was only at the last second that the man managed to grab the lamb and pull it back. The lamb fell out through the open window, down twelve floors, and –

“Joe?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want the lamb to die either.”

--and down through the air where it landed in the moat. As it tasted water for the first time in a year, the flavor of blood was washed from its tongue and it paddled back to shore, where the man was waiting for it, pick it up and carry it home.

“How’s that?”

Jack nods. “Good.”

And here comes the bus.

Promised I wouldn't...

...but I've started writing screenplays again.

Last week, after an intense nine-day session of concentrated effort, I finished adapting my novel Stillwater as a screenplay.

I wish I could tell you it was because Bad Robot has optioned it and hired to do the adaptation but the fact is I'm doing it myself, partly as an exercise, partly as a pipe dream.

The pipe dream part is obvious -- I'd love to see my Jaws meets Ordinary People movie on the big screen. If it's true that you should only write the kinds of books you would read and the kinds of movies you'd watch, this project is the perfect choice. You're looking at the guy who not only went to go see Deep Blue Sea on opening day, but arrived an hour early...you know, to beat the rush. I even dragged my wife along. She still hasn't forgiven me.

But also, adapting a 300 page manuscript into screenplay form is, I think, an excellent clinic for the writer on the crafts of economy and the old adage of showing, not telling. As I went back through Stillwater I was amazed at how much space I took up describing the characters' emotional states and unconsciously preparing the reader for the events to come. Clearly the screenplay is a very different format than the novel, but even so, I think I could go back through the manuscript and really groom it properly, story and structure-wise, in a way that I might not have been able to before. Part of this is perspective--I wrote the book last summer and I haven't really looked at it since September--but part of it is also the benefit of looking at it through the merciless eye of the screenplay format.

Back in 2000-2001, I chased the Hollywood dream, getting an agent at Paradigm, staying at the Standard on Sunset and pitching Universal, Fox and DreamWorks. Am I ready for that lifestyle again? We'll see what happens.

What's This?

Well, it arrived this morning from my agent, but the first page says Random House, and there's four copies for me to sign and return --


Yep, it's a book contract for The Black Wing.

Those of you who have been around for a while know that I've been writing and rewriting The Black Wing for several years now. Formalizing the deal for this novel -- officially due out in hardcover in November of '09 -- feels like I'm finally able to exhale. The Black Wing is considerably bigger and more ambitious than Chasing the Dead or Eat the Dark, and I personally think it's going to scare the crap out of a lot of people.

What could be cooler than having a new book coming out next fall?

How about having two new books coming out next year?

Stay tuned...