Why I Write

I was thinking the other day, while pacing around the house like I do when I can’t find anything that can catch and keep my attention span, about my favorite authors. Who are they, and why? Well, sure, I could spout off a good ten or fifteen if asked: C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, Gaiman, Orson Scott Card, Asimov, Heinlein, Philip K. Dick, Lovecraft, Poe, M. R. James, Shirley Jackson, etc. And poets, don’t even get me started on poets. I began to try to narrow it down a bit, maybe a top five, when I realized that all of them are on the same level in terms of my love for them, save one. To me, there is only one who matters, and that is Ray Bradbury.

I’ve been asked by friends and family what my favorite book is, and without hesitation I say “Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury.” Favorite author? “Ray Bradbury.” Every time. Instantly, no other response (though there are several other writers who I love with vigor and have shaped the way I read, think, and look at the world). It’s always like that–snap, “Bradbury”–no question. That quick.

But it wasn’t until today that I ever really tried to figure out why I loved his work so much. Sure, I could tell you all of the aspects of him that I love, but that wasn’t relevant to the question. Why is Ray Bradbury my favorite author? What about me made me love him? And why is anybody anybody’s favorite author, or why do people have a favorite book or movie or song? What is it that makes us latch on to art so fast, like that gut response that you just know?

It took me back to when I first discovered Bradbury. I’m sure anybody who has a favorite author encountered them in a similar way: reading about books, what and who other writers are influenced by, the curiosity (oh, that’s a cool concept), adding it to a “to read” list, and moving on. I had just finished reading the short story collection M Is for Magic by Neil Gaiman. In the introduction, which is brilliant by the way, he mentions that the title is a nod to Ray Bradbury, who had written a similar short story collection named R Is for Rocket. Being a huge fan of Gaiman’s, I’m likely to like anything he likes. In fact, he had a similar introduction to reading that I had in pouring through Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia at a young age, an event that undoubtedly, for us, set the tone of what we were bound to like and gravitate towards in fiction. Of course I’d heard of Fahrenheit 451, but I’d never picked it up, and I had no idea what else he had written besides that and other science fiction stuff. So I thought “Huh, cool, someday I’ll check him out.”

A few months went by, and I happened to find a giant hardcover of Bradbury stories in the library. I read the back, and then the inside of the sleeve, all those cool tidbits about the author and what he wrote. Then I flipped to the table of contents, and started for the first title that caught my attention. I’m terrible in that way, being biased towards titles that sound neat or have a catch to them, and naturally the one that got me interested was the story entitled “Farewell Summer”. I read that story in the library and started crying.

The story is a simple one. A brief one, too. It follows a boy living out the last days of summer, taking a nap, and having a dream about dying. Death is a loud parade that sends him down the street on a float, all of his loved ones waving goodbye to him, and him getting on a boat to sail away to who knows where. The boy then wakes up and has a talk with his grandpa on the back porch. It’s so simplistic, it’s so bare and yet filled with emotion. The story itself fills every gap you need filled from a short story. It carries itself through. No fluff. No padded on scenes that try to end the story in a twist or anything, just a simple experience. And when the story ended I snapped out of it like I had just snapped out of a dream. How can somebody know me so well? How can they understand me like that?
That summer I read everything else that Bradbury had written (except for all of his short stories, that’s an iceberg I haven’t even begun to know, him having written around 600 plus short stories in his life). Every one of his books has something I love and enjoy about it uniquely. The ancient depths of From the Dust Returned had me wanting more in a genuine way (which is a rare skill that only the best writers can do successfully); Something Wicked This Way Comes reminded me of my dreams, my inner dream world that I see when I sleep, and the basic power of positivity; Fahrenheit 451, aside from being a relevant and brilliant criticism of culture that’s borderline prophetic, touched on my desire to preserve and carry on knowledge and understanding for future generations. But there were two books that really did it for me, really closed the deal, confirmed Bradbury as my favorite author. Those would be The October Country and Dandelion Wine.

These two books hold a special place in my heart for several reasons, but for only one that really matters: the value of memories. Bradbury has been criticized as being overly sentimental, sickeningly nostalgic, and idealistic to the extreme. I don’t disagree, and these two books are probably his worst offenders. And that’s why I love them. They seemed to be the expression of melancholy and wonder that I had always held inside me, something I never thought could be expressed so perfectly by someone who didn’t know me, never knew me, and never would. It’s like watching a sunset in a graveyard, or walking down a leaf carpeted road on a cold day while thinking about love. It was something so…me. And I thought “What if I had never discovered this, what if Ray Bradbury had decided not to write anything?” And from that instant I knew what I had to do. I was filled with this urge, this calling, this burning to go write.

Funny how I refer to it as an author understanding me. In reality, it’s me understanding him. They throw themselves out there through stories that are literal extensions of themselves by making tangible something intangible. They take thought and make it word. Just like any artist, their identity is within the art, and as a writer you can’t avoid having yourself spill out onto the paper. But this is their skill, they take us inside their minds, their dreams and hopes and passions, and they paint pictures. The fun part about this is that it takes some work from you too–you have to imagine what they say, see what they see, feel how they feel. Once you learn this, it becomes second nature, and writing just flows through you and you understand without a whole lot of effort. But this is what makes writing such a unique artform: unlike painting, or sculpting, or even filmmaking, there are almost no limits. You can, with the right combination of words (and this is the writer’s talent), take somebody into your head. That can be scary, depending on the author, but for us it’s usually rewarding (even if they are a bit disturbed). You get a glimpse into who they are.

Yet we always go “this author understands me”. Even if when you look at it objectively, it’s us reading something written by someone who doesn’t know us, and in some cases is dead. We’re understanding them. But even then, even though we know all this, we still respond with “How can they know me so well?”.

There’s a reason for this, and it’s something I’ve been slowly discovering as I read and learn and live. When an artist makes a piece of art, the intention is never to reflect back on the artist, you’re never meant to try to study it and decipher who the author is and learn about them. Instead it’s something that is a pure expression of the artist, but reflects back on you, gives YOU an experience. It puts you in an observers shoes, it takes you and throws you into the fire. You’re in the driver’s seat, you’re there. This centralizing of the entertained is the point of art. You’re not understanding them, they’re understanding you. And once you’ve set the book aside and let the world of the story drift away, you realize whats just happened. You realize that the story is both a window into the author and a mirror of yourself. It’s a common ground, a way of someone saying “You are not alone”. And I think that this is what drives writers to do what they do, to extend themselves to others and win friends they will never know; to let the lonely know that they share memories, questions, dreams; to send love through ink. The thought of “There is someone out there just like me, and they don’t know it. And if I don’t tell them, they may live their life without ever knowing it.” This is what drives me to write. Thanks to Bradbury, I discovered this, and it has grown into a passion and a purpose for me to live. Sometimes I think of it as the only purpose, though I know thats not true. But I can always rely on it, if I ever have any doubts, when I feel like there is nothing. It’s always there in the back of my head, a whisper for me to lean on. And that is why I write.

Dear Rams

There’s something about a championship game that feels different. Standing on the sideline or sitting in the stands, you can feel it. There’s a scope, a massive, monumental feeling that builds up, crescendos into the air, pumps through you. It could be any championship game—a little league baseball title, the Super Bowl, or a state championship.
It could be a marathon, an Olympic medal, the final sprint, a pounding drive to the finish. Despite the vast differences between these in terms of the value placed upon them by everyone, there’s a common thread that ties these together. It binds them, makes them one and the same, identical, interchangeable. It’s the name. The title of “champion”, something reserved for those who reach something that feels so unattainable, so mountain-like. Intimidating. The name itself, “champion”, gives you a sense of victory. Why?

When I watch a title game, there’s a sense of pride on both sides. They’ve made it, their hard work has paid off. Hours of grueling practice, tortured lengths of running and training, all poured into a cup called Effort. Effort overflows into a cup called Reward, and sometimes the cup spills and misses, sometimes it doesn’t amount to the same level as the Effort poured in. Sometimes the cups are uneven at the end of the day, and for those that win, the winning is never perfect. The cup spills, it shakes, it splashes around the cup, the goal. Objectively speaking, there is never a spotless game. And when I watch a championship game, I know one team will win and one will lose, no matter how perfect the story is. Sometimes the plot will end in a twist. It might feel out of balance, like chance and circumstance had
more to do with the win than effort. But as corny as it sounds, both teams win. Why? Because they made it. Their name is up there too, maybe not on the final trophy, but always on the game itself. “Who played in that game, years ago, when so and so won?” someone might ask, and the one who either has the best memory or was a fan of the loser will go “Oh yeah, it was so and so, they played a helluva game. What a battle”. Sometimes it’s a blowout, and occasionally its embarrassing for the losers. But before that game starts, right before, when you can feel the mounting pressure, the total and complete enormity of the game, both teams are even. Sure there might be odds and bets placed, but both teams made it. Their name is on that scoreboard. The title of “champion”, in that moment, is attainable.

I stood in the stands that day. I could feel the presence of “title game” all around me, like it was a living spirit. Families came out in packs, the school day was cut short for the students to enjoy the game, cheer for the school, scream our name, wave our signs. I remember leaning against a railing, squinting my eyes in the blue bathed sun, and wondering about all of this. I turned my head, kind of gazing, half smirking. I stopped to think about it. This is surreal. Sure, its commonplace for people who have been brought up fed on games like food, but objectively, this is absurd. It’s called a game, and there’s a winner and a loser. Your cheering, ultimately, does nothing. Sure, maybe it boosts the morale of the team, makes them feel inspired to go out there and win. Yet who wins and loses does nothing for you. You will wake up the next morning, and nothing will change. It’s something inside though, and you feel it and know it if you have a personal connection with the players, or if you are a player. Or if you’re just a diehard fan. And the stuff inside, that stuff that flows like sap from a tree when tapped, is what gives any of this value. It gives the game life. It gives the game truth.

Games are bleak things. Without any inward meaning, they are as purposeless as existence without any inward meaning. Nothing changes at the end of the day, and wind blows like yesterday. What you get from the game is the value placed in it. If you give it merit, add up sums of stats to equate with wages, you give it something. You give a drive to it. But there’s a little known secret among the sporting the community that only the best coaches know, only the players who get fulfilled know: value is not determined by what others give it, but by what you do.

I watched my brother and brothers win state the other day. It was in six-man football, a strange, odd sport that strategically is so different from eleven-man football that they can hardly be seen as similar. They have the basics of football, but it’s a faster game. Whenever you change the dimensions of the field or alter the number of players, you get a warped mirror of the original game, and it allows for some exciting possibilities and makes for an entertaining watch. I didn’t even know six-man football existed before I came to Hill Country.

What my brothers did, though, was give it something. Something inside of them poured out on that field, and I watched it flow. A flood ran down that field, soaking it in brotherhood, love, family. I watched the drenched grass puddle around them, and it rose to the stands, it flooded us, it drowned us. Family is so much more than blood. It is so much more than objective, biological fact. Brothers are the ones who spend their lives pouring themselves into the goal, and in effect, into each other. I could write pages and pages about this, but all I have to say is this: we won that day. Even if we hadn’t won, we won. I love all of you guys more than I can really express, and I am in awe of the floods I saw running down that field. It wasn’t just a team out there, but something far deeper. And I congratulate you guys for discovering the true meaning of the game.

The Prestige: The Nolans and the 3 Act Structure of Stories

One of my favorite movies ever is The Prestige. Christopher Nolan has a knack for making movies that I like, movies that I connect with on a personal level. His moody, contemplative films are always a weird blend between realism and science fiction that heighten the stakes, make you question the players, and ultimately question the game. But there was something about this one, something that set it apart from Inception, Interstellar, Memento, or his Batman movies. It’s something that I think sets it apart from his other movies entirely, elevates it to a whole ‘nother level. Once I saw it, I got it immediately. There was no question. The Prestige is about him and his brother.

For those of you unfamiliar with the movie/haven’t seen it, there will be spoilers. The film follows two magicians and their hate for each other after one of them, a man named Borden, accidently kills Angier’s wife in a water tank trick gone wrong. Borden claims that he could not remember which knot he tied in the accident, one of the knots being one that Angier’s wife had a harder time untying, and was deemed too dangerous to use onstage. The movie goes on, and Borden and Angier eventually go on to become rival magicians in their own shows. Borden has a trick called “The Transported Man”, which becomes a big hit. Angier sees this as totally impossible unless Borden is using a double, but under examination, he can find no difference between the man who goes through a door only to come out another. He tries replicating the act with a double, but finds sitting under the stage, listening to his double get all the applause, unsatisfying. So, with the help of some totally random dude named Nikola Tesla, Angier finds a way to clone himself (so apparently cloning has been around for years, created by the guy who made the death ray). Angier uses his clone to do his own new act, called “The Real Transported Man”, which makes Borden’s act look like a joke. But here’s where it gets twisted: he immediately kills his clone each time by making him fall through a trapdoor into a water tank with no key. This is where the science and film logic gets tricky, but when Angier is replicated, made into a clone, his consciousness and memory transmits to that clone, while still staying in the original too. He’s split up, almost like a cell that divides itself. So even if its another person, its still Angier. So each and every time, he has to trick himself into dying for the act. I’m not going to try to elaborate or explain this any further, because it is insanely mind bending and hard to understand, and has nothing to do with the point of this post.

Anyways, it is revealed later that Borden DID have a double, his double being his identical twin brother. This explains why Borden couldn’t remember which knot he tied. It was his twin who did it. Once you know this detail, everything about the movie changes. You look at everything in a new light. And you begin to realize the kind of sacrifices that these two men had to make in order to outdo each other and further their art. It seems trivial, pointless, and I think thats just a part of what Nolan was trying to say with this movie.

When you watch this movie, you can’t really seem to figure out who the good guy is and who the bad guy is, because you sympathize with them, yet are disgusted at the lengths they take to be better. And it doesn’t really matter who the bad guy or the good guy is, because that’s not the point. It’s simultaneously a warning and a window into the lives of artists. Yes, I know you’re going “What?”, but thats one major part of this movie. It touches on the struggle artists have with themselves, internal struggles, and the sacrifices they make to get better at what they do. Now, these guys take it a whole other direction in trying to obsessively outdo each other, which lead to their downfalls, and I totally don’t recommend or condone that, but in the area of furthering your art, your talent, your skill, this is a perfect example. It takes sacrifice, maybe not on that level, but this whole movie is a heightened metaphor anyways.

Alot can be said about the similarity between the three parts of a magic trick and the three parts of a story. A constant theme that recurs in the lines spoken by Michael Caine’s character is “The Pledge, the Turn, and the Prestige.” “The first part is called ‘The Pledge’”, says Caine, “The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course… it probably isn’t. The second act is called ‘The Turn’. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you’re looking for the secret… but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn’t clap yet. Because making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to bring it back. That’s why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call ‘The Prestige’.”

This three part formula is seen in almost every story, and is especially evident in Nolan’s Batman trilogy as a whole. You could easily summarize those movies as “The beginning, the twist, and the rise.” A hero is introduced, he is then thrown into absurd situations, and then he rises above them and defeats the villain. In Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne is introduced and examined as a character. Deeply flawed, borderline psychotic, and overall just a really messed up dude. Now, you can’t really blame him, cause his parent’s were brutally murdered right before his eyes. But his lust for vengeance and obsessive desire for *deep growl* justice are what drive his character. Batman Begins is an examination of “the ordinary object”, and as every Batman movie should be, a very psychological one at that. Like, honestly, if I had a dollar for every time the word “fear” is used in that movie, I’d be rich as heck.

The Dark Knight is “the Turn”. Obviously. The Joker is literally chaos personified, and he throws all of Batman’s ideas about order in his face. The events surrounding him and Harvey Dent towards the end of the movie are what really carry this series from just a run of the mill superhero trilogy, to something much more. The catalyst of the Joker’s actions throw the whole series into uncertainty, and at the end Batman literally disappears, just like the structure outlined in Caine’s monologue on magic tricks. Aside from being a fantastic commentary on terrorism, the potential tyranny of government, and human nature (There is so much about this movie that translates exactly to our current political situation that I might have to write another blog examining it), The Dark Knight is just an overall awesome example of how to make a sequel. And it really shows why most sequels are the best movies in trilogies–they thrill us and set up the ending with insane amounts of suspense. Most sequels, anyways. There will always be the Cars 2’s and the Thor: The Dark World’s out there to disappoint us.

And then we have “the Prestige”. The Dark Knight Rises follows Caine’s lines verbatim when it shows the return of Batman after an 8 year vacation. Nolan literally brings the object that disappeared at the end of act 2 back into the attention of the audience when a new threat, the Occupy-Wall Streeter Bane comes out and destroys the peace. Batman is faced with a Tale of Two Cities-esque situation, and is forced out of hiding to save Gotham and bring back *deep growl* justice (in fact there are TONS of parallels between TDKR and Tale of Two Cities that deserve a blog on their own. Heck, Caine’s Alfred even reads a passage from it at the end of the movie. I mean Nolan wasn’t even trying to be subtle). Anyways, Batman swoops in, saves the day, and rises. Hence the name of the movie. I mean, that’s like, the entire point.

When you step back and look at it, The Dark Knight trilogy is the basic blueprint for almost every kind of story, while simultaneously being a symbol for stories, namely the three act structure and the elevation of something normal into something not human, something deeply symbolic and idealistic. Sometimes trilogies will use the sequel as an excuse to do some backstory flashbacky stuff (such as The Godfather Part II and Indiana Jones: The Temple of Doom), but more often than not it is the turning point in the series. It’s when chaos is introduced, things get sketchy, and we’re not sure what’s going to happen next. Two other trilogies that follow this blueprint perfectly are the Star Wars trilogy (the originals, of course, the prequels aren’t worth talking about) and the Lord of the Rings. Lot’s of Campbell-ish Hero’s Journey stuff, but I’m not going to bore you with that. Moving on…

But what is the importance of this? What makes the nod to movie making and story-telling so central to everything? Because, in my opinion, of Jonathan Nolan. You mention that name to casual moviegoers and they go “Huh? Who’s that?”. You bring up Christopher Nolan and they’re like “Oh yeah, Dark Knight, Inception, Interstellar, yeah he’s awesome.” But Jonathan? Nope. Never heard of him.

Jonathan Nolan is Christopher’s brother. Christopher is one of the most influential and talented, visionary director’s of our time, yet nobody knows about Jonathan. Jonathan Nolan has, and I mean literally, written every single script and screenplay for every single movie his brother has directed. In fact, Jonathan actually came up with and wrote the script of Interstellar long before Christopher was set to direct it (it was originally meant for Stephen Spielberg to direct, but he backed down from the project). So why is someone, someone so talented, who has laid down the brickwork for all these films, hardly recognized? Well, I personally think that screenwriters deserve way more attention and cred than they get, but the movie The Prestige touches on this a little. Jonathan and Chris’s relationship is very similar to Borden and Angier’s relationships with their doubles. They work as a team to better themselves and their act, yet one gets all the credit, while the other waits under the stage, listening to the clapping and cheering for work that was half his. This is the biggest sacrifice in the dynamic within any team, and the similarities between the doubles and the Nolan’s are irrefutable. This is best demonstrated by the image of the bird cage trick that is seen in the movie, where a magician shows a bird in a cage, covers the cage with a cloth, slams down the cloth and pulls it back, letting the bird free. The bird is actually a double, and the first one was killed by the crushing of the cage. A young boy in the audience is smart enough to pick this up and begins crying “You killed it! You killed it!” After the show Borden finds the kid and goes here, see, it’s still alive, handing him the magician’s bird. But the kid shakes his head. “But that’s his brother.”

Nolan’s movies are rife with this kind of imagery. The sacrifice of one to help another, this working of a team, is seen in a lot of his other stuff. Same goes for the fierce rivalry between Borden and Angier, that kind of polarity between characters is seen several times in all of his movies, maybe excepting Interstellar. Anyways, this is all wild speculation on my part, and just simple observation of the movie and the Nolan’s themselves. If you’ve been patient enough to put up with my tangents, thanks.

Modern Fairy Tales On Film

Oz the Great and Powerful (2013), A totally unnecessary and ridiculous prequel to the classic The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Back in 1939, a pop culture giant was born in the form of The Wizard of Oz, a fantasy/musical based on the book of the same name. Starring July Garland, her stupid dog, and flying monkeys, it told the now universally known story of a girl who’s sick and tired of her boring farm and her boring aunt and uncle, who both seem to have nothing better to do but farm while she has nothing better to do but dream that she had something better to do (don’t try to overthink that, it’s not as complicated as it sounds, we all do it). So thankfully a magical tornado shows up and whisks her away on this wonderful journey on a yellow brick road, singing annoying tunes that tend to not leave your head for days. Its quite the movie, for 1939, and it has set the bar for literally every fantasy movie to come. But what made this  type of film so popular? And why has the fantasy and fairytale genre instead turned from greatly acted and performed epics and into awful CGI ridden twists on our favorite stories? And why in the heck have there been so many of them in the last ten years?

Through the forties and fifties the fantasy genre took off after the incredible response to Oz and it’s fantastic cast of guys in suits, and the trend caught on. The films made their way into pop culture as a recognized genre, akin to the western and adventure film. But it wasn’t until the eighties that the fantasy genre exploded, with thanks to the ingenuity and vision of talented directors Stephen Spielberg, George Lucas, and the ever popular puppeteer Jim Henson. Movies like Star Wars and it’s sequels The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, E.T., The Dark Crystal, The Neverending Story, Time Bandits, The Princess Bride, Willow, and Labyrinth (aka David Bowie and His Uncomfortably Revealing Spandex).

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This was the Golden Age of fantasy movies. The story telling and joy of watching movies was at its highest. You could literally sit down, put in that old VHS, watch the tv buzz for a few seconds, and marvel at a movie’s special effects while laughing and enjoying the nonchalant, magical fun of it all. Things were light, characters were humorous, and watching films was a pleasure. Every time you heard John Williams playing in the background, you knew you were in for a good time. Then things got a little more serious. Movies got darker. And we got stuff like Conan the Barbarian and Fire and Ice.  Technology was rapidly improving by the nineties, and the revolutionary innovation of CGI came into play. Thus, by the early 2000’s, we had our first batch of CGI driven fantasy epics in both the amazing Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Harry Potter saga, two series that literally deserve blogs upon blogs about each. They are that good. We even had the less critically acclaimed yet entertaining Chronicles of Narnia series make its way to the big screen. But somewhere, somewhere along the line, somebody came up with the idea that fairy tales needed rebooting. Moody, twisted, different takes on all of your beloved stories that are jam packed with action and special effects, and, well, not much else…

In 2007 Enchanted came out, a musical/fantasy comedy that set the tone for what was to come. It actually wasn’t all that bad, but it started the idea of fairy tales not ending the way they’re supposed to, and turned it into a craze. With the critical success of Stardust, an awesome comedy based on the book by Neil Gaiman, made in the vein of Princess Bride , and released the same year as Enchanted, the visual style of these movies was finalized. Flashy witches throwing cheesy green waves of energy, charming knights and ridiculously perfect heroines, and goofy side characters were now stock characters for fantasy films. And *drumroll* enter the 2010’s…

Alice in Wonderland, Snow White and the Huntsman, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Red Riding Hood, Hanzel and Gretel, Mirror Mirror, Oz the Great and Powerful, Jack the Giant Slayer, Maleficent, and the television series Once Upon A Time and its spinoffs. Each, in their own way, clichéd, uninteresting, dumb, and CGI bloated “fractured fairytales”. Not that all these movies are terrible, and there are one or two I could pick out and call them “goodish” movies, but they just keep coming. One, after another, after another. And the originality feels lost. These movies feel like they’re being made just for the sake of making money. I wouldn’t be surprised to see reboots in flashy colors of every tale written by the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson in a few years, each with a different perspective of characters and lame attempts at comedy. And what’s weird about this, is they are almost all deconstructions of the happily ever after story directed by people who feel the need to make the classic cartoons and stories grow up. That was their generation, and now a whole new generation of kids are growing up with this style of movie becoming the norm. So what will happen down the road? Will the kids who watched these movies feel the need to reboot them when THEY get older? And what would happen, how would this new type of deconstruction look? A fracture of a fractured fairy tale. It will certainly be interesting to see, and I’m actually looking forward to it. My fingers are crossed hoping the eighties come back, but for now, with the announcement of even more fantasy movies, Pan and Cinderella, we’ll have to be satisfied with more lackluster acting, and a lack of originality on the part of directors. All we can do is wait for the eighties to come back…

Greetings

Hey, my names Geoff, and welcome to my blog The Illustrated Dude. This is, quite literally, my first blog ever, and I am going into this blind and devoid of any knowledge of the rules of blogging, so excuse me if I come across as totally random and unfocused.
But first off, a few things about me. I am a huge Ray Bradbury fan, to whom I owe my blog name to. In his sci fi classic Something Wicked This Way Comes the main villain, a tattooed man with an uncanny ability to tell the future with said tattoos, is simply referred to as “The Illustrated Man”. Nobody knows his name, and he is immortal, un-aging, and literally one of the creepiest villains I’ve ever read. Bradbury’s second best book in my opinion, and I actually have all his books ranked somewhere in the recesses of my weird brain. Maybe I’ll blog about it at some point. Who knows. Anyways, I stole his name and colloquialized it.
Besides being a die hard Bradbury and fantasy/sci fi fan when it comes to books (C.S. Lewis and Tolkien chief among my fav authors), I’m a fan of film. I could argue that the greatest movie director of our time is Christopher Nolan, and that he is the cinematic heir of the cinematic throne that has been ruled by Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock, Francis Ford Coppola, Stephen Spielberg, and Michael Bay. Just kidding, just wanted to see if you were paying attention. Oh, and that reminds me! I’m a big fan of German Expressionist cinema, and I will most definitely talk about that at some point. That style, since adopted by folks like Tim Burton and all his kooky followers, is my favorite form of film. As you could imagine, this love of gothic and baroque cimema has grown out of my love for gothic fiction. Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, W.H. Hodgson, all of those guys have been among my favorite authors since I learned to read. And out of my huge love for E.A.P. has come my interest in poetry and literature. Oh, and music is pretty awesome. I think we can all agree on this. Garage rock and classic rock is just great. I also happen to like indie and folk music, and some dubstep. And music scores. I like Hans Zimmer quite a bit.
   This is all besides the point really, if there is any point, and should kind of give you a hint as to what I’ll discuss as this blog continues and develops into a full fledged look at the world through Geoff tinted glasses. I’ll discuss science fiction and fantasy books, comics (mostly Batman and DC comics), movies and paintings. And alot of literature. And maybe some sports here or there. So anyways, welcome to my blog, and happy reading (is that a saying?).