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| SFReader Forums > SFReader > Ask The Expert > Breaking new ground in S&S | Forum Quick Jump
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RHFay
Sage
      
Date Joined Nov 2007
Total Posts : 1550
| Posted 4/3/2008 2:09 PM (GMT -4) |   |
nathan said...What the hell do you mean "trying" you dirty SOB. Was I being obtuse. Are you saying I can't communicate in a written format!?! That's exactly what I'm saying. [I'm hitting quick reply so don't have my bouncing yellow tounge wagging laughing emoticons handy please mentally insert]. But, yes that's exactly what I'm saying along with fun = profit more than good = profit in many cases...and that that ain't bad or 'less' intrinsicly. Plus...we both like watching SciFi movies, lol.
Perhaps I'm being a bit thick today. I've got a lot on my mind at the moment, and I think my mind has turned to mush. I'm deliberately avoiding the "end of the quarter" work that I really need to get done (create tests, write up the third quarterly report, etc.). I should be doing that instead of posting on the forums, but...
By the way, you know my mother, then? (Bad, bad joke.)
"I'm going to do what the warriors of old did. I'm going to recite poetry!"
Richard H. Fay - Azure Lion Productions
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MichaelEhart
Sage
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 2314
| Posted 4/3/2008 2:07 PM (GMT -4) | | SCIFICTION was actually making money, just not Hollywood standards money. Less than 100k a year was the same as losing money to those guys.
Nebulas are awarded by peer vote by SFWA, like the Oscars. Hugos are voted by fans. A Nebula means got style, Baby. A Hugo means your publisher remembers your kids birthdays.
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nathan
Sage
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 2111
| Posted 4/3/2008 1:31 PM (GMT -4) | |
Jordan Lapp said...So there's a lot of people who like Westerns on this board. I stand by the numbers. 3:10 to Yuma made 55 million at the box office. Compare that to "Wedding Crashers" a movie that had LESS star power at $209 million. Wedding Crashers was cheaper to make too. Do you see why filmmakers would rather invest in something other than a western?
No you're correct, I think. But I think Western is timeless because of the elements involved. So you can always have a "Gladiator" effect with a western. No one had seen a sword-and-sandal epic for like 30 years then you take the elements that make it popular and break it down then you get timeless and always capable of a resurge.
But there hasn't been anything big, big, in quite awhile I think this is true. Unless you count No Country For Old Men which is classic Texas Outlaws movie and huge but set in 1980.
Lonesome Dove was pretty big too, but that was awhile ago too. MY memory is going like my knee.
VIEW IMAGE"Writing the wet dreams of teenage boys" - Lindsey Llyod, Tangent Reviews
Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages." | | Back to Top | | |
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4474
| Posted 4/3/2008 1:29 PM (GMT -4) | | | | |
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nathan
Sage
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 2111
| Posted 4/3/2008 1:25 PM (GMT -4) | |
RHFay said...
The Insatiable, a recent SciFi original. As with most SciFi originals, it was a rather stupid movie, but the female vampire most definitely drank blood. She drank blood from a homeless man, from a rabbit, from a meter reader, and from her captor/boyfriend's workplace rival. The whole idea that she needed to drink blood every night was rather central to the plot. It might have been only in brief shots, but they did actually show her drinking the blood from her victims.
As bad a movie as it was, they did do a good job of combining the monstrous with the sexy. She was sexy, but she was also a monster.
(Yeah, I really lead a very unexciting life. My family enjoys "dumb movie night" on the SciFi channel.) Oh me too, lol. I look at those movies and I think "that script writer got a fair sized advanced for that screenplay (by novel standards, prob not 'good' but I'm sure 'fair') and he only had to write a 100 pages." My Screen Writing For Dummies is on order.
[long post warning]
But you know this quote just gave me a flashback that overlaps with this discussion in a non-S&S specific way and speaks to the divide between an editor/reviewer viewpoint and the fan/reader viewpoint and how burnout (or whatever) on subject matter can hinder a publication.
That Max Sherk vamp story got me into HWA many moons ago, around the turn of the century. I was stunned by some of the names with influence there and I set about absorbing knowledge and lurking threads. One of these people was Ellen Datlow. Great lady who always had time to give insightful advice. At the time she was running SCIFICTION and that was a big market, minimum of 10-cents per word often quite more and winner after winner of Either the Hugo or the Nebula (whichever one is less fan based and more editor based, I forget but it becoms important).
She could afford to do this because SCIFICTION was the lit-arm of the SciFi channel. She had an entire cable channel as a backer and people thought her stuff and picks were GREAT. From an artistic sense or however you want to put it, she was probably more influential because of her rep and story choice than any of the other Jurrassic’s in the field. She had a real eye for picking skillful young guns and soliciting veterans and as I said the awards were coming (she won both H’s and N’s but one WAY more than the other and that proved prophetic).
Then of course SCIFICITION went away.
Reason? Fellow editors loved her story choice. The six or seven upscale readers who subscribed or purchased loved her story choice. But at no time did she ever have the readership that equaled “in the black.”
I was very new and I didn’t understand what or why something was happening and a few old timers privately emailed me the general suspicions. One, the kind of awards you get can tell you a lot about your “fan” base when you’re a publication (less so if you’re a writer but it still holds true in a loose way). If you get a lot of “fellow editor or industry pro” awards then you are a legitimate creature and you have "accolades." If you mostly get fan based awards then you get a second house on the beach.
She was (they would say and I paraphrase) getting literary kudos while no one who formed her largest drive by demographic [.i.e. people who watched SciFi then went to their online site then clicked on the magazine] bothered to read the magazine.
Why, if everyone associated with being in the know about what was great loved her (and she was extremely kind to me, btw) did it fail? The general consensus I got was: no stories about Gargoyles fighting the SS. No stories about husband’s keeping their sex kitten wives locked in a cage while they feed ‘em blood. No stories about Pythons. Or Boa Constrictors. Or Pythons vs. Boa Constrictors. Not even to many BSG stories.
Some how a disconent had happened between the people putting dinars out for a product and the people trying to collect those dinars. I have a hunch burnout and saturation of story type plays into this.
People want to read story X. The poor editor reads 10,000 story X's until he's so sick of story X he doesn't pick the best X story. He picks the C story. The customer (not having had to read 1/100th the amount of verbiage in category X as the editor) read the C story and get pissed off because they wanted to read the X story, not the C story. Meanwhile the slush crew is screaming "Give me C stories! Give me F stories! Just for the love of your personal politically correct diety image of choice, don't make me read another X story!"
I think being an editor is hard. And I'm dying to write a SciFi orginal screenplay with cheesy CGI and a 10k kill fee.
VIEW IMAGE"Writing the wet dreams of teenage boys" - Lindsey Llyod, Tangent Reviews
Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages." | | Back to Top | | |
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Steven the Git
Neophyte
Date Joined Nov 2007
Total Posts : 190
| Posted 4/3/2008 12:14 PM (GMT -4) | | As a brit bloke I have to say I love westerns, and I know I'm not alone in that. My brother once had to tape the Searchers for his boss when it was on during the christmas holiday as the man loved it (although been on plenty of times)
The classic theme in westerns is facing your enemy. Personally, I can't see that ever being lost. I've seen it work in fantasy, samurai, gangster and martial arts movies. Even horror, there is often that point where the victim decides to confront the monster/killer.
Oh, and I do remember that my local library, in a small town, had sections - fantasy, scifi, horror, and westerns. They had their own shelves.
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Steven the Git
Neophyte
Date Joined Nov 2007
Total Posts : 190
| Posted 4/3/2008 10:12 AM (GMT -4) | | I do think the execution of it counts for a hell of a lot. I like elves and dragons and stuff, so if it seems the same old thing, but is written well and has characters I take an interest in, will read and enjoy. Maybe won't respect it that much, but can still find it in myself to like it. If something is original or different, great, but not if written badly.
I remember when I read Lords and Ladies by Pratchett. Elves but very different, but the main thing was it was very well written. Remains one of my favourites of his.
I only read Conan last year. I bought the book of everything Howard did concerning the character. By now it can be see as very stereotypical - women to be rescued, serpent men, sorcerers with evil intent. But then I knew Howard is part of the reason why it is this way. So when I thought, hmm, I could remind myself that hey, he did this before I was born!
But that wasn't why I read it or enjoyed it. Howard had great dynamic writing and Conan was a vibrant figure in his stories. So even though his work has become almost too well known by now, it is still a fantastic read and would recommend to anyone.
Ok, will have to admit I am a sucker for that type of story too. I mean I'm annoyed as just missed Krull on tv! But to go right back to the first post - barbarian fights monster. Give me a barbarian I want to read about and a monster that daunts me, and i'm in.
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