Commercial Real Person Fan Fiction (RPFs), crossovers, and parodies, as 2021 geeky/hackery imperatives for revitalising the film industry
Summary
Node LinkNextThis essay attributes the perceived problems of "Hollywood"/the-film-industry, namely:
Lack of original screenplays.
Many big-name "unemployed" actors and actresses.
An increase in the number of dystopian and/or pessimistic franchises and films.
To these culprits:
The psychological, social, and economical shift towards competent and physically and intellectually attractive people being both geeks (= "amateurs"; loving their work or field of study; not doing it only for money) as well as hackers (= resourceful, rule benders, "action heroes", fate defiers).
This is regardless of their gender, calendrical age, past experience, ethnicity, nationality, beliefs, profession, or any other parameters.
The recent cultural trend toward openness, freedom, sharing and remixing / standing on the shoulders of giants (= building on the work of your predecessors or contemporaries). E.g: Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), open/free content, "web 2.0", User-generated content.
This makes geeky hackers increasingly think of stories and screenplays in terms of fanfiction, and wish to write them as such.
The film industry's requirement of accepting screenplays only in its draconian, finicky (and yet - boring) format. ( Reference ).
Its lack of communication on why a screenplay has been rejected. ( Reference ).
Its franchise territorialism (which hinders commercial crossovers). ( Reference ).
The fact that copyright is enforced on commercial use of characters, concepts, and worlds (and to an extent - texts). ( Reference ).
Since most popular art and culture (e.g: films, T.V. series, stories, books, songs, audios, web pages, interactive games, quotes and aphorisms, etc.) in the past decades was "proprietary" (= restricted, "All rights reserved", "copyrighted"), it makes the legal status of most crossover art, iffy.
The recent antagonism against Real Person Fiction ( RPF ) due to an apparent "jinxing" of celebrities from being employable as actors in commercial films, and T. V. series.
It proposes a way forward, implementable by more than one party, that may hopefully make the film industry flourish just like the music industry (including "playing-for-fun" musicians), and the software industry. Here is the link to see the current plan and recommendations.
Note: as a writer of fan-fiction, I may be biased in handling what seems to be the lowest-hanging fruit for me. However, I suspect this is also an important stepping stone towards other aspects of world healing.
Meta-Info
Node LinkNextCompletion date:
Last updated date:
Disclaimer
PrevNode LinkI am not a lawyer ( IANAL ), nor am I a qualified economist, psychologist, sociologist, historian, ethnologist, film maker, etc. Please take my insights and advice with a grain of salt.
This document is researched relatively amateurly, and it is likely that it cannot be directly cited as a reliable source. I use the HTML5 "cite" element and attribute only as an origin link. Furthermore, I sometimes link or quote to older pages I originated (despite Ustinov's reluctance to do so in the introduction to his book). To be fair, I link to many other pages and also embed youtube videos.
The Context For This Essay
PrevNode LinkNext“Terminator: Liberation” - An Illustrated Screenplay for a Terminator parody
Queen Padmé Tales (Star Wars / Star Trek / Real Life Crossover)
Teaser - based on the Star Wars opening.
"Why I will continue to write my real person fan fiction (fanfic)" - previous attempt.
IRC Conversation about "Copyright Cannibalism" - a philosophical stepping stone ("rindolf" there is Shlomi Fish).
My wiki - contains thematic pages of quotes or essays.
Introduction
PrevNode LinkNextImmature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.
( — T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood )
I refuse to apologise for writing fan-fiction. Hollywood writers are often not the originators anyway. They probably also often switch writers between films, seasons, or individual episodes, to get different perspectives and materials.
The bible had a lot of fanfic as did Aesop's fables and the Greek mythology.
Even the Epic of Gilgamesh was spiced up in the course of time.
( — @shlomif (= me) tweet )
Hacking and Amateur/Geekdom vs. Conformism and Professionalism
PrevNode LinkNextCompetent People Are Geeks
Node LinkNextAs unlikely as it sounds, I think I reached the "right" conclusions at my previous attempt while having a somewhat misled deduction chain.
As of March 2021, it seems most talented, skillful, competent, and attractive individuals of any gender, age and profession, and past experience are increasingly both geeks (= "amateurs"; love what they do; not doing it only for money, even though they may be offered a lot) and great hackers (= "action heroes"; bending or challenging the "rules", not accepting their fate, being resourceful, thinking outside the box, etc.). or even "hacker monarchs" / "messiahs". As I show, this implies most new quality screenplays and stories are currently and are going to increasingly not only be fanfiction but also crossovers, parodies, and/or real person fiction - usually including recent "proprietary" (= restricted, "All rights reserved", "copyrighted") franchises and recent (and often living) real people. And they aren't being written in the finicky, hard to get right, and boring Hollywood-blessed screenplay format, and geeks will increasingly stop sending drafts or proposals to non-communicative reviewers.
One thing I got wrong is thinking a geek will refuse to get paid. Perhaps it was true for amateurs and geeks before the advent of Capitalism, but is no longer true now. That is wrong, as of 2021, because often, geeks are now offered large amounts of money or at least token pay. For example, Linus Torvalds, who is a software developer, an action hero, a geek, and a remarkable amateur philosopher and entertainer, is believed to get paid 20 million USD/year. While he will gladly continue to comaintain the Linux kernel project for less, it is commonly accepted that it is a reasonable salary to give him.
Moreover, attractive actors (including female actresses and/or inexperienced and obscure ones and/or formerly big name ones) are also geeky hackers. As a result, they will not play in any badly written film (and usually a dystopian, ending badly, pessimistic, politically correct and dishonest one) even for all the money in the world.
Geeks are not to be confused with "dorks" who are (for the context of this essay) people without social life, or who seem reckless, not confident, unattractive, etc. Moreover, "amateur" now has pejorative meaning of something done poorly or non-skillfully but in the 19th century, it was a compliment.
The word "nerd" can mean either "geek" or "dork".
These were contrasted to "professionalism" (= doing something only for money, regardless of how little or a lot: "We're not just doing it for money!…We're doing it for a shitload of money"; not enjoying your work).
A geek may agree to do some tasks that are not too enjoyable as part of their job. There is also the old Stoic method of trying not to hate a task and even allowing oneself to enjoy it. This is reflected in the "spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down" scene from Disney's Mary Poppins. However, if the job is destructive and pointless, e.g one that stands against the contemporary "open / free / share" ideals, then it can never be enjoyable.
What is “hacking”?
PrevNode LinkNextI also contrasted "conformism" (= playing by the rules of "society", what other people expect you to do, following superior orders, doing what you feel you are obliged to do, etc.) to "hacking" (a.k.a "action heroism"). Hacking is not limited to computer security exploitation, or even to creative software development.
Hacking involves:
Thinking outside the box. (
Both cups were poisoned. I had developed an immunity for the poison.
)Being resourceful.
Finding creative solutions.
Bending or defying the "laws"/guidelines.
Not accepting your "fate".
"David vs. Goliath" and its "Indiana Jones' Gun vs. Swordmaster" scene modernisation (which is funny now, and the Goliath story was likely equally as funny in ancient times). Moreover, the real-life Samantha Smith became "the child who slew two mighty superpowers", at the age of 10, by using international mail, and other 20th century technology (and not killing anyone).
"Craziness" / Nev'ua ( which was mistranslated as "prophecy"). I suspect the hebrew verb "lenabé" changed had sported different meanings in Biblical times, but at a point meant to "act crazy", to "drive crazy", "to be crazy", "to seek [divine] guidance", including in today's casual senses. It involved: "funny"ness, exaggeration, song-and-poetry, emulation, contradicting one self, intimidation and fear (which can be fun in a way) - even blasphemy. Many Members of the appropriate sex nevertheless found it sexy.
Plato considered insanity as divine, and during his time, the good "stand-up philosophers" or nevi'im (and many similar phenomena in the Near East), were often funny, or otherwise exciting, exalting, non "original" (borrowed and built upon the works of their peers and predecessors), often seemingly or actually contradicted themselves, blasphemous or just seemingly "stupid", and didn't take themselves seriously. Although held with some contempt, they were highly coveted by Members of the appropriate sex.
Julian Jaynes hypothesised that the Nevi'im were Schizophrenic and hallucinated voices of "gods" (= "guidelines-generators") and who spoke in poems or rhymes. However, now I think most of the later ones were only hypomanic (= mildly-manic) at worst, often spoke in prose or in free form verse, and often not only emulated, built-upon, parodied, or mocked their predecessors or contemporaries, but topped them.
And they were often accused of being "bullshit" artists, being blasphemous or stupid, and "contaminating the minds of the youth" and held in some contempt. Socrates, Galileo, Alexandre Dumas, Sarah Bernhardt, early films and film cartoons ( Walt Disney, Warner Bros, etc.) television in the 1970s (Sesame Street / etc.), video games starting from the 1980s, Role-playing games, Internet chat ( IRC / etc.), supermodels, reality TV show contestants, independent YouTube cover/etc. artists, bloggers, and social media. Like Qoheleth noted around 300 B.C.: "There is nothing new under the sun."
Just for the record, while I am enamoured with many YouTube cover artists, and whose songs comprise of most of the music I listen to, my sister, who is 5 years my junior and who has a Ph.D. in Computer Science (so she is intelligent and techsavvy), has a prejudice against them.
The Biblical Samson was not in general an action hero, but a classical "I'm taking them all with me" / "may my soul perish with philistines" tragic hero, who worked hard (and not smart!) and took many lives of (often innocent) people who cared about him.
Naturally, when software developers say "I hacked a Python script" or "The Linux kernel is a great hack" they mean that they were created or concieved with pleasure. The Ancient Hebrew verb ידע ("yada`", "lada`at") meant both "to know" and to "have had sex with". However, I hypothesised that it also meant "to create something with joy" and a linguist friend confirmed that. A female software developer who paid me to teach her the Perl programming language told me that writing a Perl script felt like giving birth for her.
As a result, I think "yada`" had some of the contemporary meaning of "hacking" despite some etymological erosion.
This corresponds with the "amateur" / "geeky" nature of workers loving/enjoying their work.
Also note that hacking sometimes does involve a prolonged and intense amount of work as opposed to the David vs. Goliath 's "taking the easy way out". David for example had likely spent many hours practicing his slingshot skills and honing them.
That put aside, despite common belief, NASA astronauts did use pencils in space at first, just like their Soviet peers. However, this solution was found to be lacking. As a result, space-friendly pens were developed (within budget) and used (including by the USSR cosmonauts).
Like the book "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" or the "There's more than one way to do it" adage indicate, there are many kinds of hacker monarchs (= "master hackers", "hacker kings/hacker queens", "messiahs") and looks or qualities can be deceiving.
Geeks and Hackers are the Mainstream “Cool Kids”
PrevNode LinkNextTraditionally (as of 2021), there was an apparent dichotomy between geek and hacker culture and "mainstream" culture. Geeks were considered intelligent, but unattractive, shy, anti-social, unathletic, and often without "real-life" social life. My 2005 "The Human Hacking Field Guide" story presented male and female open source and open/free content geeks and hackers as competent, confident, sexually attractive, socially capable, assertive, as well as popular and coveted. It was written as an antithesis to Paul Graham's "Why Nerds are Unpopular" essay and the Buffyesque false social dichotomy. Some commentators claimed it was detrimental, because the target demographic for "open source"/etc. geeks was the social outcasts, "uncool" kids.
However, by the time the first season of The Big Bang Theory aired during late 2007, it was an established observation that geeks and hackers were the Alphas. Moreover, I believe that its primary "anti-Geek" character, Penny, despite her "hot dumb blonde girl" image, and her ignorance and laymanship, was a superb hacker and geek. This is because she constantly challenged and broke the hidden rules of the show's more stigmatic (and less attractive looking) geeks, and because she was passionate and enthusiastic about many of her endeavours. Moreover, she is often depicted as trying to emulate the nerdier/dorkier geeks, and successfully.
Given "one needs to be a badass to play one on T.V.", I'm pretty sure that Kaley Cuoco, the actress who portrayed Penny, is a hacker and a geek as well.
First people were prejudiced about new vs. old. Then about popular vs. unpopular. Now they are about "mainstream"ness: "Two kinds of fools". Let's just kill prejudice once and for all! When I described Kate in Selina Mandrake - The Slayer as a socialite, I was attacked. But what's wrong with being a socialite?
I still resent the fact that many hardcore geeks looked down on the Friends T.V. show due to its "mainstream" image, at the time.
Moreover, some self-proclaimed "atheists" completely dismiss the Jewish Bible due to its text and style reflecting the mentality of the time.
Some people love to hate Ayn Rand, or Joel on Software, or Eric S. Raymond, who while I never completely agreed with everything they said (and they may have been proven wrong in time), often found them of useful food for thought (and none of them claimed what they say is gospel or that it will remain accurate as time and technology advance).
Welcome to the Club!
PrevNode LinkNextDo note that in accordance with Saladin's Ethics and general strategy, I welcome everyone to join the club of happy, competent, benevolent, intelligent, and attractive geeky hacker-monarchs regardless of what they did or proclaimed in the past or in the present. It seems that not only are superb hackers and geeks the alphas, but that most remaining intelligent people try to emulate them, and usually successfully.
Also see "Most People are Good" below.
More Links
PrevNode LinkThe Guild - “I'm the One That's Cool” Single ( Somewhat vindictive but otherwise enjoyable. )
Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation - a 1992 precursor.
Openness, Freedom, Sharing, “Stealing”, Remixing
PrevNode LinkNextIt is hard to avoid the trend of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), open/free content, sharing digital (and often tangible) works with the world, making derivative works, and even remixing / mashing-up works:
( Pagan-za about not reinventing the wheel )I thought using loops [for producing Electronic dance music (“EDM”)] was cheating so I programmed my own samples. Then I thought using samples was cheating so I recorded real drums.
I then thought that programming it was cheating so I learnt to play drums for real. I then thought using bought drums was cheating so I learnt to make my own.
I then thought that using premade skins was cheating so I killed a goat and skinned it. I then thought that that was cheating too, so I grew my own goat from a baby goat. I also think that is cheating but I'm not sure where to go from here. I haven't made any music lately, what with the goat farming and all.
While not all digital works are explicitly licensed under licences that allow building derivatives, or remixes/crossovers/mashups, in practice, most talented independent remixers will have no qualms about reusing other people's "proprietary" (= restricted, "All rights reserved", "copyrighted") work, at least after paying for a licence.
In my FAQ I explain why I, as a geeky hacker-king, who was influenced by the "open" / "remix" movement, find it necessary to do crossovers, Real Person Fiction Works ( RPFs ) and parodies in my writing:
Why do you write mostly fan-fiction and crossovers?
Lawrence Lessig gives many good reasons for remixing in his book Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, which I have read and enjoyed. Writing fan-fiction and crossovers, whether in fiction or in non-fiction (see some of my crossover essays), is the writing equivalent of what he describes being primarily done with music and videos.
Our aversion towards fan fiction and an insistence on "originality" is mostly a 20th century fad, that is slowly (for some values of "slowly") diminishing.
Anyway, the various fiction franchises and idea systems that influenced me are a large part of me, and I cannot throw them away when writing my own works. I don’t have a lot of control of the ideas I come up with, but I know I must materialise them eventually.
What about your real person fiction?
I feature or reference several celebrities in my stories (whether past or present) as a way of Real person fiction. According to the wikipedia page, such fiction is likely to be legal if it is done in mostly good taste, which I believe and hope is the case for me.
The general consensus is that a celebrity generally allows himself or herself to be a subject of reuse in literature, and that includes me, Shlomi Fish.
Update (02 November 2019): I have now written a more comprehensive essay about why writing real person fan fiction is good.
Update (26 November 2019): I now realise that fan fiction and especially real person fiction can be used to help combat the flood of new characters and names that plagues many more-"original" stories. People generally have a rough concept of what characters such as Chuck Norris, Emma Watson, Richard Stallman, Moses, or Miss Piggy, are like and generally can better remember them because they thought about them a lot.
Update (06 September 2022): commercial real person fiction is common and encouraged:
Cookie monster agrees with me:
Education = Entertainment = Conception of Values
PrevNode LinkNextThose who make a distinction between education and entertainment don't know the first thing about either. — Marshall McLuhan ( via the movement-sig fortune cookies' collection )
( Marshall McLuhan. )
McLuhan was a Canadian philosopher who coined the term "global village" and predicted the Web (WWW) almost 30 years before its invention (which in turn was a while before it became popular).
Both education and entertainment were known by various names throughout human history:
Philosophy (especially amateur philosophy)
Love, pleasure.
It is possible yada` (ידע; = "to know") in ancient Hebrew, meant "to educate / to entertain" and involves pleasure, but sometimes pain too, and was mutual, and always spawns [possibly invisible] baby angels. If learning makes you bored or indifferent, it likely is not effective.
( @shlomif Tweet )
I think before the Internet/social media were a thing, people did amateur philosophy / entertainment / education / art - with their peers, even if limited to sports / food / Members of the appropriate sex.
I think I have learnt more from Internet forums (especially interactive, realtime chat, ones), than I did from Project Euler which I favourably compared to the Technion. I also attribute a lot of ideas and inspiration from them.
For more information, see:
My YouTube comment for the student film titled "The Student Bride". I feel that that film satirises and criticises the contemporary American college student life by showing how ridiculous the film The Princess Bride (which is regarded as a modern masterpiece) will be when adapted to be set there.
My English dramatically improved after I graduated from high school
Ah, when they ask me how the hell I managed to write so good band compositions, I’ll tell them, the secret is to chat with geeks about top vs bottom posting.
Ditching Hollywood's Screenplay Format
PrevNode LinkNextHollywood's blessed screenplay format is boring, finicky, and requires a lot of time to prepare and get right.
Moreover, it is poorly documented, cannot be validated and linted by an automated program, and has issues being XML and HTML-friendly
As a hacker/action hero I'd rather my screenplays never be filmed by Hollywood studios, than waste time preparing one in its blessed format. Furthermore, since it cannot be automatically linted or validated, one often needs to revise or amend the drafts, which is even more time-consuming. Rinse and repeat.
One can imagine most young or young-at-heart screen writers who use code sharing sites and services (e.g: GitHub or GitLab), wikis, desktop or online word processors, or similar tools, will also sport the same sentiments.
As Paul Graham notes in a different context:
Hackers are lazy, in the same way that mathematicians and modernist architects are lazy: they hate anything extraneous.
So a lack of "original" screenplays and many unemployed screenplay readers is not surprising.
Note that even if a screenwriter has prepared such Hollywood-blessed screenplays in the past, he or she likely met enough fans, critics (either positive or negative or mixed), collaborators, etc. (see the "Earth Angel" concept or the subtext of xkcd: "11th grade") that they will adopt a similar mindset. Even though I am 1977-born (so approaching 44 in 2021) there are some time-consuming things I have done in the past which I will not repeat such as studying Electrical Engineering in the Technion, working for distrustful or micromanaging bosses, or reading Lord of the Rings or Crime and Punishment.
This is while I can spend hundreds of hours contributing text, code, and markup, voluntarily and without expecting immediate payment, to the public. And this includes my pro-bono contributions to Fedora Linux, which is backed and led by a profitable and well financed for-profit company (= Red Hat, Inc.).
I thought I invented illustrated screenplays, "by need", but recently saw the illustration on Edward Bulwer-Lytton's stage play "Richelieu" after I searched the web for his "The pen is mightier than the sword" adage.
Furthermore, a fellow writer, who was less techsavvy than I was at the time (and wished to remain ignorant of software development) told me that "[hyper-]linking is not writing". However, not only did the Hebrew Bible had hyperlinks of sorts (references to other works), but many are currently broken. There are also known-but-lost works among the Works of Aristotle and those of many other classical philosophers.
Also note that there are known spelling mistakes in the canonical text of the Hebrew Bible, so it is imperfect.
So I suggest Hollywood studios to also accept screenplays either in a subset of XHTML5 (which will be capable of being validated using an open source, easy to install, and portable linter) , or an XML-based format, either a subset of TEI or a custom format. Perhaps any self-contained XHTML5/HTML5 page or EPUB can be accepted, including ones on the public-facing web.
One can find many screenplays like that in Archive of our own, but there are likely many more.
Given many screenplays are reworked, or even improvised upon during filming, their formatting should not be too draconian and finicky, anyway.
I am quite happy with my XML-Grammar-Fiction's custom "Screenplay-Text" format, as well as its "Screenplay-XML" XML grammar, and I added more features to these grammars as I needed them ( YAGNI - "You aren't going to need it" ). Nevertheless, I'd be happy with other grammars that can be validated and linted.
It is also conceivable to write converters from subsets of other trendy lightweight markup languages (e.g : AsciiDoc, or CommonMark ) and other document formats such as Google Docs or OpenDocument, to these grammars.
Note: capable hacker and geeky screenwriters will also increasingly write crossovers, parodies and RPFs from similar reasons. See this for more info.
No true Scotsman ^W screenplay
Node LinkNextPerson A: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
Person B: "But my uncle Angus is a Scotsman and he puts sugar on his porridge."
Person A: "But no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
( No true Scotsman )
Some have argued that we can only call texts in the Hollywood-mandated format "screenplays". However, I claim that a screenplay is a Platonic ideal with many conceivable formats. In 1990 , the screenplay "The Hitchhiker's Guide to Star Trek - The Next Generation" was written in ASCII plaintext and circulated by E-mail, and used a different format than either Hollywood's or mine.
I doubt that the "1 page = 1 minute of film" argument holds much water:
It is probably inaccurate anyway.
One can get a similar ballpark estimate by printing the XHTML5 to PDF using a custom CSS stylesheet.
Be communicative
PrevNode LinkNextJosephus: And so did my good Greek friend, Alexander, who started by writing some poems to her which I didn’t like, and told him why. So he ended up improving slowly but surely, until he wrote a truly great poem about her, and people loved it.
Josephus: Then Phoebe — that’s her name — told him, while crying, that she loved the song, but that she still is not going to marry him.
Alexis: The Bitch!
Josephus: My thoughts exactly. Anyway, he felt very down for a long while, so I decided to introduce him to my redhead cousin - her name’s Elishevah - hoping it’ll cheer him up. He ended up liking her and he wrote a hack of that song as a love song to her, and she ended up falling in love with him, and he converted to Judaism and married her, and she’s now pregnant with their first born, and he writes more songs about her. Very good ones.
( “So, who the Hell is Qoheleth?” by Shlomi Fish (= me) )
Note that I employed this strategy, in real life, with an Internet friend of mine who is a retired Finnish software developer in his 40s, who lives in a small Finnish town. He shared some poems he wrote and I and other chat participants commented what we liked or disliked about them. His poetry did improve mostly consistently and… he now has a young woman living with him. I do not know what she thinks about his poems, but he's a cool guy regardless.
If you do not like a work, please try to comment on why you think it is lacking, rather than completely dismissing it or vaguely criticising it. Some examples for such non-helpful criticism are:
"It sucks."
"You cannot write."
"It’s a waste of space."
"Try to write it as if you were there."
People are often amazed by food reviewers in the recently trendy cooking competition ("reality") shows being very pedantic and pinpointing small and large problems, but it comes with experience and "with the territory". So I applaud these reviewers.
One tip I can offer for dealing with critics who only provide vague criticism is to ask them to point out one specific issue.
Telling a contributor why you dislike their work will make reworked and future works better, and your own future job easier. Reportedly, film studios often silently dismissed screenplays that they received. I recently submitted my Sesame Street / "Harry Potter" crossover screenplay to the Sesame Workshop and received no reply.
Another different approach is the canned response. While sometimes useful, it is often indicative that the problem needs to be fixed more permanently. I also recall being given a list of reasons by a web ad service for why my site was unacceptable, and they were far too vague.
Be communicative about changing your policy
PrevNode LinkThe MPAA should publicly announce their plans to also accept screenplays in new electronic formats with accessible linters, and to instruct their screenreaders to try be more communicative. Per Saladin's Ethics, I do not propose laying off the existing screenreaders.
I feel this is the current bottleneck, but the film studios should also approve of writing commercial crossovers, parodies and RPFs.
“Bad” Acting For The Win
PrevNode LinkNextMel Brooks
Node LinkNextMel Brooks popularised exaggerated, phony, and overemotional acting in his films. My favourite film of his is Spaceballs, which is a parody of the Star Wars IV-VI trilogy. Many people who have watched both (including I) now admit that Spaceballs is better. The actors there acted badly because it was easier for them, and because the crowds liked it better. They were hacking.
(Don't mess with a Druish Princess - "He shot my hair!")
Arnold Schwarzenegger
PrevNode LinkNextOne actor who built his career around hacky, guideline-bending, acting is Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was hired for reportedly as much as 50 million dollars per film, and whom audiences in the 1980s and 1990s loved, and many people held in contempt back then. Aside from his physique, Schwarzenegger was notorious for his thick Austrian accent, his one-liners, and his funny and fun and unnatural acting. People who went to see his films were usually entertained because "worse is better".
My Hacky Acting Story
PrevNode LinkNextNow for a personal story: back when I was in the 7th or the 8th grades (I am 1977-born, so it was around the time of the first Gulf War; ~1990), my classroom studied a Hebrew translation of Molière's play The Misanthrope as part of our "Literature" studies and my classmates took turns reading the lines. One day I was assigned to read the lines of the titular character, and whereas most of my peers read their lines without excitement, I was enthusiastically envigorating the role with much fake emotion. I became a hit and almost monopolised that role.
One reason I did that was that at the time, I was more oriented toward Maths and other exact sciences, and because in Israel, one's 7th/8th grade Literature grades have little effect on their scholastic aptitude. So I had little to lose.
Anyway, I recall playing the close-to-the-finish monologue where I was lamenting the disappearance of my character's treasure box. I felt I acted unnaturally, but it was still fun, and my classmates gave me an enthusiastic ovation.
My performances there are lost in the proverbial Akashic records because they were not recorded. Furthermore, for better or for worse, I was a web worker and writer, during the early days of the Web (WWW), an amateur graphics manipulator, and a professional software developer (who also has done for-fun/"amateur", open source, software development work). This has given me an edge over laymen who used Microsoft Word during the web 1.0 and the early web 2.0 periods when text, limitedly formatted HTML, and images (GIFs and JPEGs mostly) were prevalent due to technological limitations (e.g: the browser wars and Microsoft holding back Internet Explorer 6 development, and low speed Internet connections. ).
Emma Watson as a hackery actress
PrevNode LinkNextIt might seem preposterous to believe Emma Watson is the new Arnold Schwarzenegger just because they were both Hollywood's best paid actors and you would be right. Emma Watson is not the new Arnold Schwarzenegger.
But Arnold Schwarzenegger will forever be remembered as the old EMMA FUCKIN' WATSON!
( Shlomi Fish (= me)’s Emma Watson Factoids. )
It seems that Emma Watson employed a similar strategy when playing for the Harry Potter films from what I saw of her there. She was overemotional, edgy, and acted in a manner which was both easier, more fun, and was loved by the geeky audience (whether in the cinemas, or at home). In a way, she was one of the few selling points of most of the series' films, which although skillfully executed, were clearly not done by artists having fun. This apparently changed with the 7th and 8th installments, which were reportedly edgy and fun to watch.
Conclusion: People Love Hacky Acting
PrevNode LinkAll of the hacker actors I mentioned (except perhaps me, given I cannot be a judge of my own skill) could play more convincingly if and when they needed to and when given more time. But playing "naturally" in comedies and action films in non-essential cases is self-defeating.
If you think of the memorable moments of your favourite films, then if you are not in a Clinical Depression you may notice that most of them consistently featured hacky acting that the actor employed. I recall Sharon Stone's phony acting in The Quick and the Dead to be a feature. I also loved Sarah Michelle Gellar's portrayal of a phony, pose, and unlikely Buffy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and later enjoyed her distinctively high pitching voice in the MTv Film awards parodies:
( Spiderman Parody. )
( LotR Parody. )
“Originality” and Franchise Territorialism are self-defeating
PrevNode LinkNextLike it or not - most of the popular art in the 20th century was commercial and/or proprietary ( "All rights reserved" ) . While screenwriters often derive inspiration from older, and now public domain sources, the good ones also reuse characters or texts from real life (Real Person Fiction ( RPF )) or from newer franchises (out of being constructively lazy). And with copyright law being maximalised to covering individual characters, concepts, and worlds and individual sentences, this makes legitimate and commercial reuse/remixing of drama a legal problem.
( Wil Wheaton in "The Happiest Days of Our Lives". Emphasis (bold text) is mine. )At one point, I walked past a booth that had lots of classic Star Wars toys. My eyes fell on an original model of Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter. I had that toy when I was a kid, and just looking at it was like those car commercials where the guy touches the car and gets this rapid-fire burst of images until he takes his hand off of it. I saw myself riding in the car to Kmart with my parents, hoping to buy a new Star Wars toy, playing with the toys on the gold shag carpeting in front of the brick fireplace in the house in Sunland, running around the back yard in the fading evening light in the summer of 1980. I piloted my TIE fighter, chasing my brother who piloted a snow speeder. ( We weren’t afraid to combine Star Wars and He-Man, so why not combine Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back?)
People as young as children have been doing crossovers and Real Person Fiction ( RPF ) of franchises, individual books/stories/films/songs/etc., characters (both fictional and real), and more serious idea systems (see a partial list). E.g: when playing with dolls or action figures, like Wil Wheaton notes in his book "The Happiest Days of Our Lives".
As an example, we can imagine a young girl to write a funny screenplay using GitHub or Google Docs which pits Emma Watson vs. Kim Kardashian on who gets to ride Princess Celestia next, with Darth Vader and Haman as two "evil", but mutually hating one another, arbiters. Might seem ridiculous, but if I didn't want entertainment in my life, then I'd go watch grass grow. It will be a legal and “ethical” minefield, but I'd bet it'd be easier to follow and more entertaining than Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" was even shortly after LotR was written.
There is no way one can expect them (or me) to only use sources earlier than 1900, because technology as well as art, culture, & entertainment / education / amateur philosophy, did not stand still since then, despite being increasingly based on Copyrights’ maximalism.
You can never truly appreciate Hamlet until you've read it in the original Klingon.
But all the mightiest Klingon warriors have watched Disney's The Lion King instead (or in addition), possibly with Klingon subtitles.
In my screenplay Selina Mandrake - The Slayer, the protagonist (Selina) runs into three vampire warriors (“The Three”) dressed as Klingons, who tell her that “Every mighty Klingon warrior has watched Sesame Street”.
As a retort, she exclaims: “Mighty Klingon vampire warriors who have watched Sesame Street… this decade royally sucks!!”. However, most of the best American warriors of the relatively recent past (of all kinds) have watched Sesame Street, because they loved it as happy children (and later as adults).
( Shlomi Fish (= me): "Hackers make the best warriors" )
If we take my Sesame Street Hosting Harry Potter fan fiction as an example, then it mashes together the real world J. K. Rowling, her franchise's characters: Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Dumbledore; the Muppets' characters: The Amazing Mumford (a stage magician), Cookie Monster, and Miss Piggy; various circa 2014 trends (e.g: Sushi, and the model Candice Swanepoel, who was mentioned there because she topped Maxim's Hot 100 that year); and as icing on the cake it closes with a hack of the Beatles song "All you need is love" titled "Do it all with love"
While it also sports a parody of the fable "The miller, his son and the donkey", the donkey there is the one from the Shrek franchise as originally voiced by Eddie Murphy, and he ends up being transformed into a bigger and stronger stallion, like in the second Shrek film.
These are all building blocks of my creative spiritual world. Any screenwriter who can successfully mutate the screenplay (and they have my blessing and legal permission to do so) must use recent enough characters and quotes. To quote Groucho Marx: I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member
. The Muppets franchise did such crossovers and Real Person Fiction ( RPF ) since the 1970s (e.g. "Sam the Eagle versus Alice Cooper") and most of The Muppet Show's early (and later) skits are amazingly fresh and funny even today.
As much as I like Charlie Chaplin, he will be a poor substitute to Chuck Norris in my Muppets' "Summer Glau & Chuck Norris as Grammar Nazis" fanfic episode, despite the fact that he also was Hollywood's "alpha male" at the time.
Anyway, I believe most hobbyist screenwriters either approve of other people taking their works in their own direction ( "If they don't like it, tell them they can go and remake it". ), or lack the time and energy (even if they have enough money) to start a long litigation process.
Good hackers are constructively lazy, and build on the work of others. And this means doing crossovers, parodies, and real person fiction.
As an analogy, most software developers will use high-level programming languages, and convenient desktop or mobile operating systems to write what Joel on Software calls "throwaway code", or "in-house code" or even a lot of shrinkwrap (open source/proprietary/etc.) codebases whose performances are not too critical, as well as libraries, APIs, and development tools. Writing everything in assembly (or ASIC if you're really crazy and rich) will be a grand waste of time, and usually development effort will exceed the runtime of code written using higher level languages.
Real programmers use a nice [text] editor and a programming language and get done in less than O(N!).
Similarly, most competent screenwriters will use characters, concepts, and texts from more than one recent franchises or works for most largescale screenplays. They will either get frustrated at their "lack of imagination" or accept that the screenplay will have to be anonymised. I'm proud of me being a fanfic writer / remixer, and suspect the situation will only get "worse" for the commercial film and fiction industries.
Do note that, like parents, I believe geeky and hackery screenwriters are very proud of their intellectual children (at least when they are happy or hypomanic), and won't mutate them on their own volition without a good reason. They will refuse to de-fanfic them, even if it means that they'll find different jobs (where their hacker and geek nature is being approved of and respected, including lower-paying ones), or become Con-Men (= creators who frequent conventions/conferences, and making an income out of it), or like me publish and publicise their "fics" on the web and social media outlets. I suspect the reason several promising T.V. shows (e.g: Firefly, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, or Game Shakers) got cancelled recently, is that their screenwriters turned "to the dark side" so to speak and started using fanfiction elements there, which would be a legal and pseudo-ethical minefield.
It seems the parodical 2001 film Not Another Teen Movie killed the whole genre. However, I've written the afforementioned "The Human Hacking Field Guide" story in 2005 (after recovering from my Technion "education", or relative lack of it and entertainment), and it is a geeky/hackery spin on the teen story model. It too is partly crossover/RPF fanfic, but, despite that, two teenagers living in the USA (where it takes place) asked me if it was real.
Moreover, its two female protagonists seemed quite farfetchedly competent back then, but I'd bet many younger girls (or older ones that have the right attitude) today can easily blow them out of the water.
Attractive People are Geeky
PrevNode LinkNext( Link )
I think we would hire Emma Watson [for filling a software developer position] based on looks alone.— glange on Freenode’s #objectivism.
As I noted elsewhere increasingly most attractive guys and girls are geeky (= "amateur"; doing what they do because they enjoy it) as well as very action heroic and hackery (resourceful, bending the rules, defying their fate).
While there are many big name actors and actresses, and studios will gladly have them star in their films, they will refuse to act (even for obscene amounts of money) in any films whose screenplays were not written by honest, optimistic, and idealistic screenwriters such as me, which are increasingly not written in the draconian format, and increasingly feature crossovers / mashups / real person fiction / parodies of relatively recent franchises. ( Even if they do not have a conscious policy against starring in pessimistic screenplays, they will be so poorly written or depressing or boring, that they will "subconsciously" avoid them. )
Emma Watson being unhirable as an actress in Hollywood started as a snarky youtube comment I wrote, which some people found funny, but which materialised after the film Little Women (2019). Although loved by professional critics, geeky fans like me thought that the 1994 adaptation starring Winona Rider was still pertinent today, and that Watson was underutilised.
She has not accepted a "major motion picture" role since, possibly because she'd rather play at local parody plays, frequent Conventions ("cons"), play in indie films, get paid for modelling, be an activist, acquire new skills, or just relax, than get paid to star in a poorly written and professional (and likely dystopian or pessimistic) Hollywood remake or original film. Lend me Emma Watson and Jennifer Lawrence and I'll return both with Natalie Portman as interest! Whether or not Portman is going to accept being cast as Thor(ah), that will be the last film the territorially-franchised film industry will see of her.
(For reference, see this teaser for "Queen Padmé [Amidala] Tales", and the Queen Padmé [Amidala] Tales fanfic itself, both sporting Portman.)
“When I was your age, @EmmaWatson was called ‘Sarah Bernhardt’.”
“Whoa, dude! How old are you?”
It's funny to think that Em is the canonical “Alpha Female” now, but Bernhardt being the daughter of a (Jewish) prostitute, whose father's identity was unclear, was far more questionable. And where there's a will there's a way.
I also suspect the belief that make-up makes a woman look better is largely a "Stone Soup" effect / placebo effect catalyst for feeling confident, competent, and happy, and being honest and benevolent. This is given most men, who have their share of frustrations with their looks, do not need makeup, and neither do underage girls.
All this has jinxed the reality T.V. show “Beauty and the Geek” and now large budget Hollywood feature films.
I was told that every waitress at a restaurant in LA is a potential Hollywood actress
. But most of the good looking ones are increasingly geeky hackers as well.
Many people will pay to see a film starring well-known and well-regarded actors and actresses which they happen to like, and approve of its trailer, which they can watch on YouTube. But given most of the screenwriters, are now great hackers and geeks, they won't bother writing their screenplays in the Hollywood blessed format and increasingly do parodies, crossovers and RPFs.
All People are Good
PrevNode LinkNextI never met a monster I didn't like.
( Vincent Price on The Muppet Show )
Even though I tried to find truly malevolent people per Neo-Tech and some possible interpretations of my Israeli-taught mostly-Tanakh Judaism, I was unable to run into a truly evil person. Even historical mass-murderers (e.g: Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Alexander of Macedonia, even Nebuchadnezzar) provided some redeeming actions or wisdom. See for instance "Top 10 reasons why Darth Vader was an amazing project manager" with an easy (but tabooed) "Darth Vader"⇒"Nazi Germany's leadership" substitution.
Since I have at least subconsciously (and lately consciously) believed everyone can improve and change, and grow (see the Pygmalion effect vs. the Golem effect ) and treated them like that, they eventually usually did improve.
My mother told me once "There are no bad people - only bad actions". Moreover, the iconic Israeli homeless man, "Ayalon Dude", (see an interview with him in Hebrew) once proposed her to marry him, because she treated him with respect and friendliness. She naturally refused because she was and still is happily married (to my father).
As a result, I don't think that Hollywood producers, executives, lawyers, directors, and other workers are evil (or alternatively USA/etc. government, parliament, legal system, etc. workers are) - just possibly misguided.
Moreover, changing your future is often easy given free will and refusing superior orders and hacking around the guidelines (even "rules" or "laws").
Businesses Being Starved of Competent Employees
Node LinkNextEric S. Raymond and I have a hypothesis that Microsoft wishes to deprecate the original Microsoft Windows Internals, and gradually replace them with an open source reimplementation based on Linux, GNU, and Wine. That is because optimising, refactoring, or otherwise enhancing them, have been made more and more discouraged due to the (possibly justified) policy to not break legacy 3rd-party applications (including many old ones or ones with no source available). Programmers and other software developers who wish to work on them, whether young, old, experienced, or inexperienced, are thus frustrated at the process' lack of flexibility and agility that they become unhappy, aggravated and complain. Other obstacles are the iffy legal status of the codebase, which prevents opensourcing it like .NET Core, and its reported lack of elegance.
Given these developers can easily find many other openings as software developers or other high paying jobs (including on different teams within Microsoft) and increasingly wish to enjoy their work (being geeks or "amateurs"), the team is starved of competent, and enthusiastic workers. Even if Microsoft still sells Windows copies, they are being starved of employees.
Another note about Microsoft Windows is that I suspect, that in their “Professional”/“Server” sub-line of Windows (such as Windows Server 2003 , Windows Server 2008, or Windows Server 2019), Microsoft has disabled, either in runtime, or in compile-time ( #ifdef/etc. ) compatibility code. As a result, misbehaving legacy applications will not run there, while properly-coded-or-fixed ones will run faster and with fewer quirks.
Note: Microsoft has many other products and services, many of them are Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and/or provide important services or infrastructure for open source, open/free content, or otherwise geeky, hackery or important projects. So I do not wish to completely demonise them. In fact, I make use of some of the Microsoft-owned GitHub infrastructure for many projects of mine, including my home-site, and it seems the user experience of GitHub improved since the acquisition by Microsoft, and I am also a fan of TypeScript.
Lawyers have been demonised, but I think most of the lawyers employed by the offenses in the Smartphone patent wars asked for a reassignment or quit in disgust, or they will. These "Smartphone wars" are a rerun of the "Jennens vs. Jennens" court case which gave many lawyers more work to do and made them a little richer, but made them more miserable:
William Jennens (possibly Jennings) (1701–1798)… was a reclusive financier who lived at Acton Place in the village of Acton, Suffolk, England. He was described as the "richest commoner in England" when he died unmarried and intestate with a fortune estimated at £2 million, which became the subject of legal wrangles (Jennens vs Jennens) in the Court of Chancery for well over a century until the entire estate had been swallowed by lawyers' fees.
There is a reason that most lawsuits are settled out of court: the reputation, angst, and happiness losses involved in them are too paramount.
A capable geek and hacker, will quickly enter clinical depression when working on destructive tasks, and this includes lawyers and politicians and clergymen and socialites - even accountants. Someone told me of a documentary showing almost empty Silicon Valley office spaces of patent trolls as most of their workers quit in frustration (also see karma / "what goes around comes around"). Even if a firm doing destructive tasks is not starved of customers, they will be starved of employees.
I suspect the recent RIAA (= "Recording Industry Association of America") takedown request against youtube-dl's GitHub repository was done by a techsavvy lawyer employee of the RIAA, who had the legal capability to file it on behalf of the RIAA as a whole, and hoped to save future work this way. This is given the RIAA foolishly sends takedown notices to many publicly accessible web sites that host media files downloaded using youtube-dl and similar tools ( Piracy, motherfucker! Do you speak it? Arrrrrr!! ), and they are kept being protested and challenged.
He or she may have been scolded by their executives, but do note Quark's approving reaction to Rom (= his brother and employee) having attempted to murder him in a Star Trek DS9 episode. I think the real solution is to completely stop sending these takedown notices and accept piracy as a necessary "evil" (and possibly sponsor better user interfaces for file sharing sites and practice less censorship).
There is an ongoing transition to the geeks and hackers' culture, which no one can stop ( see Summmerschool at the NSA ) and a trend towards openness, freedom, and sharing of cultural / code / scientific / tangible works. Thus, the film industry is starving itself, both of competent screenwriters and individual screenplays, and of attractive and competent actors, both male and female, and both those that haven't yet appeared in any major roles as well as experienced and highly acclaimed ones.
Organisations being better - by choice
PrevNode LinkNextOne reason the RIAA member companies embraced YouTube and other media sharing sites as distribution channels for their songs, was that there were enough independent musicians who provided (sometimes not too inferior and often superior) covers of the songs and didn't care too much about getting direct ad revenue. It's not as if one gets penalised for getting a million views (or many more) rather than a mere one hundred. Furthermore, to quote Tim O'Reilly The greatest threat to authors and creative artists is not piracy — it’s obscurity.
.
The RIAA member companies are happy now providing legal or financial services to signed artists and lately even actively promoting them and YouTuber singers (and the line between signed and independent artists has been getting more blurry).
As an analogy, The Roman Catholic church used to burn at stake girls who admitted to having premarital sex even once. On the other hand, Madonna, who identifies as a Catholic, and boasted of having had premarital sex with dozens of willing men, (and I have no reason to doubt her) was not only left unharmed, but was welcome in some of the holiest churches in Israel and the Palestinian Authority during her visit there. If you ask a Catholic clergyman if she or similar "sin"ful women should be killed again he'd likely say: Dear Lord no! 'Thou shall not kill'. It's up to God to punish them if he sees fit, but we should not act as his agents.
. So the Roman Catholic church now is more benevolent - by choice.
More recently, the "Ceiling cat is watching you masturbate" captioned image, has stopped many preachers from using the shopworn "omniscient, omnipresent, deity [who cares about your sex life]" argument. However, to be frank, it was neither effective, nor desirable. I think there are far better insights and memes in the Hebrew Bible, than that (despite being a non-observant agnostic).
Similarly, the RIAA is not going back to the pre-YouTube / pre-"piracy" days, because even if it could, it would rather not. We need to be more creative and resourceful when reforming the fiction/drama/Hollywood/film-industry world, but I think we should try, and we likely can succeed.
Taking Guidelines as Dogma is the Problem
PrevNode LinkNextIntroduction
Node LinkNextI've heard a Jew and a Muslim argue in a Damascus café with less passion than the Emacs wars.
— Ronald Florence
The main issue is people treating rules / laws / "orders from above" / what other people think / social norms / scientific 'facts' - even religious decrees or the American Constitution or the laws of Logic or those of maths as absolutes and dogma rather than as mere guidelines.
I met open-minded, enlightened, even self-critical, observant Jews, Christians, or Muslims (and a Sri-Lankan woman, who took care of my grandmother during her later years, identifies as both a Christian and a Buddhist). I also met close-minded and "professionally fanatic" xkcd fans, or My Little Pony fans or haters (see this thread for instance), and professional Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fans. And this is to say nothing of fanatical fans or fanatical foes of Apple Inc., rust-lang, git-scm, the Emacs text editor, FSF/GNU, pro/anti-Israel (or pro/anti-"Zionism"), Python-Lang, and the BSD family of operating systems - all of which have or had notoriously ardent zealots.
I decided to try and (at least passively) incorporate memes from other idea-systems or franchises even if they have some fanatical zealots.
And naturally, the harm done by overzealous xkcd fans (who usually at most can ban one from an Internet subforum) is small compared to the destructiveness of the Nazis, or early communists to say nothing of Genghis Khan's army. Note, however, that I believe later communists were reformed and that most of the best contemporary "alt-right" bloggers are parody ones, by inspiration from the Colbert Report.
Similarly, I suspect chapter I of Ezekiel was originally intended as an exaggerated parody of Polytheistic visions of revelation by Ezekiel who was a standup philosopher/comedian. Generations of scholars who considered it holy have tried to divine meaning from it, but it is pointless: Ezekiel was just making shit up.
I also suspect Plato’s "Republic" was similarly half tongue-in-cheek by Plato who described how he thought a country really should not be run. That was for the entertainment and education of the Greeks, who may have heard or uttered similar sentiments, and found them ridiculous when lumped together.
Challenging the Guidelines
PrevNode LinkNextAnyway, as humans, we are capable of challenging certain dogmata or taboos in certain cases. This includes: Peano's axioms of arithmetics:
For thousands of years, we have been plagued by mathematicians insisting that two plus two equals four. Who elected them? I, Stevie-O, am promoting an entirely new system, where two plus two equals FIVE ["2 + 2 = 5"]. Eventually, it will be extended to provide other stuff these power-hungry madmen kept hidden away for themselves, such as division by zero, cold fusion, the ability to solve the halting problem, and the secret to attracting hot chicks.
or Aristotlian Logic:
Is qmail open source? Yes, and no."
(That was written in a book I read before qmail's change of licensing.)
I believe in God, and I don't believe in God.
(As I overheard one local young school girl say to her friend a few weeks ago.)
And we can certainly challenge:
Real Person Fiction ( RPF ): never do that!
What about Last Action Hero, Chuck Norris factoids, and xkcd: "Venting"?
No one will read screenplays which are not written in the Hollywood-blessed format
( See above )
The redditesque "no self-promotion" (which was not enforced by Slashdot before reddit was conceived, and still is not enforced by Slashdot or by many subreddits).
Judges follow gut feeling
PrevNode LinkIf you’ve ever visited the ultra-orthodox Jewish communities of Jerusalem, all of whom agree in complete and utter adherence to every iota of Jewish law, you will discover that despite general agreement on what constitutes kosher food, that you will not find a rabbi from one ultra-orthodox community who is willing to eat at the home of a rabbi from a different ultra-orthodox community. And the web designers are discovering what the Jews of Mea Shearim have known for decades: just because you all agree to follow one book doesn’t ensure compatibility, because the laws are so complex and complicated and convoluted that it’s almost impossible to understand them all well enough to avoid traps and landmines, and you’re safer just asking for the fruit plate.
( Joel Spolsky )
I enjoyed watching the 1991 comedy film Nothing but Trouble, at the time (despite its vulgarity). It demonstrated that most judges (or juries for that matter) followed reason, gut feeling, prejudice, etc. rather than the letter of the bylaws, legal code, regulations, and legal precedents when formulating their judgements. This is given the complexity, volume, and the contradictory nature of the latter.
As hacker monarchs and action heroes, we should constantly challenge the 'rules' / 'laws' that we abide by to defy our fate. I do not encourage people to murder harmless people, vandalise property, rape, or steal for vanity (rather than for self-support like Disney's Alladdin) and you should try to "be excellent to each other", but there are many guidelines that were or seemed beneficial at the time that no longer are.
Guidelines are important for the philosophical processes of thought and communication. But they should not be taken as gospel or dogma.
Money can't buy you love
PrevNode LinkIt was commonly accepted that money brings power, but even though Apple Inc. reportedly has north of 100 milliards USD ($100,000,000,000) in the bank, and Steve Jobs and his successors wanted at the time to stop sales of non-iOS-based mobile devices in the United States for "intellectual property" infringement, they were unable to. That is partly due to most competent (and ergo honest, geeky, and hackery) lawyers refusing to litigate for them, and by most others getting bit by unhappiness ( e.g: clinical depression ), alienation from their friends and family, or by karma / "what goes around comes around".
Judges are forbidden to accept "bribes" by law, but even if they did, they are getting paid enough for it to not matter and even most rich people have enough sense to not be too needy and frivolous and as Richard Feynman pointed out, gifts may have an adverse effect.
As a result, I think the international financial bylaws should be changed to allow every legal entity to send any amount of money (assuming they have that amount in their balance) to any other entity, and for any purpose or reason (with a possible digital ledger for historical backtracking).
I started because my mother taught me a long time ago that even when you have nothing, there's ways to give back. And what you get in return for that is tenfold. But it was always hard because I couldn't do a lot. I couldn't do much more than just donate money when I was on [Buffy] because there wasn't time. And now that I have the time, it's amazing.
( Sarah Michelle Gellar as quoted on the English Wikipedia. )
Some people have a prejudice against donating money to corporations, especially large ones. But they and their shareholders (who receive profit dividends) are also good causes.
Subverting Copyright Maximalism, and Territorialism on Franchises (“For Great Justice!”)
PrevNode LinkNextThe commercial fiction industry ( "Hollywood"/etc. ) is not a good oligopoly because they assume people will only enjoy fanfic from one franchise or at most two. This causes franchises to be territorialised even inside media conglomerates. On the other hand, before the 19th-20th centuries, creators mashed together the franchises of previous generations, along with Real Person Fiction ( RPF ) and current trends and events.
These works were often found to be funny or entertaining evenby people who were not familiar with their origins and sources of inspiration (often indirect or subconscious ones). I enjoy watching Monty Python's "Romans go home!" skit despite not being taught Latin, and enjoyed reading The Three Musketeers despite not being an expert in French history.
In order to subvert copyright maximalism, actors or other film workers, can finance the production of fanfiction screenplays starring them, and which are not written in the Hollywood-blessed format. They can and should also try to make a profit from them. As an analogy, Nine Inch Nails' Ghosts I-IV album was licensed under a redistributable (Creative Commons) licence and yet proved very profitable.
For example, I think either Arnold Schwarzenegger or Emma Watson can afford to license the franchises which I used in my "Terminator: Liberation" screenplay starring them. Moreover, they have my (legal and spiritual) blessing to change the screenplay as they see fit.
Even if they do not license a franchise, then a (for example) "Walt Disney Corp. vs. Emma Watson", or perhaps "Walt Disney Corp. vs. Emma Watson Productions", or even "Walt Disney Corp. vs. Arnold Schwarzenegger Films" court case will not look good to share holders. Like I like to say: One does not simply say “no” to an Alpha Female
.
Natalie Portman and Tiffany Alvord can do the same with Queen Padmé [Amidala] Tales, which someone who read the first part of its Pilot episode, noted that it was crazier than Run, Lola, Run
.
I recall an old Fortune magazine feature where Steven Spielberg noted that he had been given advice to never finance a film out of one's own pocket. Now's the time to challenge this guideline - at least until the dust settles.
Back after Sesame Street started airing, it became notorious for its high entertainment / educational value, and its political activism as, for example, its friendly, benevolent, and endearing, "monsters" alluded to the contemporary western perception of the Communists. While it was a labour of love by a large group of people, they had one poster child figure: Jim Henson. As a result, when his company embarked on creating a somewhat more “adult-oriented” and commercial project - The Muppet Show - it was renamed to “Henson Associates, Inc.”, knowing that it made them much more untouchable by copyright trolls.
Can you imagine any of those:
Warner Bros vs. Sarah Michelle Gellar Films.
Universal Studios vs. Tom Cruise Films.
Walt Disney Corp. vs. Joss Whedon Films.
The MPAA vs. Chuck Norris Films.
Dreamworks vs. Tiffany Alvord Productions.
Even: Megacorp vs. Ariel Winter Films.
Freeing Franchises
Node LinkNextI can further suggest the owners of major (and minor) franchises to put them under permissive copyright licences, requesting that a donation be made in case there is profit. If one cannot legally accept donations, then they can sell digital goods (or tangible merchandice) with a minimal, but not maximal price similar to the Humble Bundle or bandcamp models. Hacks!
They can do it either by agreement or unilaterally. As an analogy, I recall that back in the late 1990s, there was an initial resistance by vendors of commercial SQL databases to release official Linux ports of their databases (which they built and supported on similar, but proprietary and costly, UNIX-like operating systems). However, then they announced their intentions to do so one-by-one, and it was technologically easy to do, and brought all of them many sales. And, today, anyone who proposes deploying a UNIX-like server that does not run an open-source operating system (GNU/Linux or BSD or similar), except for running legacy applications, is in a state of sin.
Also see my earlier thoughts about commercial fan-fiction.
Copyright maximalism, and franchise territorialism, are artificial, man-made, and unnecessary, problems. They can be subverted either legally, or in practice, by hacking around them. As alternatives to the more famous actors, cosplayers can play as them or one can produce lower-cost animations (including MLP-style animations), and solicit money for producing a live-action version. One can also solicit money for relicensing works under less restrictive licences (e.g: "CC-by-nc-sa"→"CC0").
Reusing my Older Fics
PrevNode LinkNaturally, there are older (but still mostly pertinent in my opinion) fanfic screenplays on my site under modifiable Creative Commons' licences sporting roles envisioned as played by:
The cast of Friends as themselves and the characters from Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead.
The cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
The cast of Star Trek Deep Space Nine (DS9) along with Melissa Joan Hart and some modernised Biblical characters and some contemporary celebrities of the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) world.
Emma Watson (again!) along with Wil Wheaton, who is once again playing a big dick on screen (while advocating the opposite in real life) in a politically incorrect parody and antithesis of "Buffy".
Sarah Michelle Gellar and Summer Glau (as played by herself or by Megan Fox) as they try to vanquish an idolised version of the NSA.
While I am playing the domineering "The Messiah" for now (because frankly you guys suck!), there are likely others who reached the same conclusions. And my secret plan for Queen Padmé [Amidala] Tales is to beget an even greater Hacker Monarch/Messiah, who despite being fictional, is an awe-inspiring Renaissance Woman. But she too will likely not be the final word about Messiah-hood just like Deep Thought is only the "second greatest computer in the Universe of Time and Space". Like Moses, Socrates, Muhammad, Saladin, da Vinci, Newton, Richelieu, Dumas, Verne, The Beatles, The Muppets, etc, were succeeded, so will Queen Padmé Amidala of the Naboo of the Selinaverse. And it seems likely that people had once taken Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Saladin, Richelieu, or Dumas not as seriously as some people later took The Muppets, The Beatles, Buffy, or the Web 2.0 Bloggers, or xkcd.
Losing the Psychological War
PrevNode LinkNextThere recently were allegations of Joss Whedon ("Buffy"/etc.) misconduct against actors on his set. He is not alone as here is a video of George Lucas (Star Wars, Indiana Jones) physically ushering a fellow writer from a conference room due to saying something that wasn't true.
But why are they frustrated? I think it's because more and more screenwriters (including to a large extent the big name directors and producers such as Whedon or Lucas themselves) were touched by the "dark side" of the open / remix trend and started thinking in terms of fanfics of recent franchises and:
Refusing to write in the Hollywood format ( Reference ).
Cannot stand the lack of communication of screenplay readers ( Reference ).
Are frustrated at the prospect of taking the time to avoid de-fanficcing the screenplay ideas from elements of "proprietary" (= restricted, "All rights reserved", "copyrighted") franchises, and reducing the quality of the result. ( Reference ).
Either they get mad at themselves for being so "lazy" or they get mad at the system of "Rules" / laws / court precedents (= the "guidelines"). Either way, they either quit, or it gets much more time consuming and vexing.
The lack of screenplays and screenwriters is the main bottleneck.
But I have a plan forward.
Do it my way
PrevNode LinkNextAll their criticism started to get to me: their opinions, their ideas, their words, their vision. Then I realised: this is my life. I'm not going to waste my time trying to be something I'm not. I'm gonna be fearless. I'm going to take control, and I'm going to do it my way.
I care more about getting my screenplays filmed and produced than I do about being recognised as an innovative and influential, yet obscure and "invisible" "hacker king" or "messiah" of the Web 2.0 / open/free content revolution.
And I care even more about flesh-and-blood people not dying physically and prematurely for whatever reason, or otherwise get physically injured, usually by their own mismanagement. I also want every individual and organisation in the world to improve and prosper:
I was probably too young to have prevented the death of Samantha Smith, one of the youngest known hacker monarchs up to her time. I believe she died because in her later career as a child actress, she didn't insist on doing things her way, until she was killed by a private nighttime flight plane crash, which she took due to hubris and impatience.
I am however saddened that I didn't prevent the premature death of Christina Grimmie at age 22 in 2016, who was a singer, songwriter, and YouTube indie artist. I and others expected her to dominate the music world, or perhaps the whole world at large, for years to come (and become a "hacker monarch"/Messiah so to speak). She was killed by an obsessed fan, who shot her, and who committed suicide shortly after shooting her. I believe her death was also caused by her not doing things her way, which made her later work gradually deteriorate, her sex-appeal (which correlates with competence) to decline, and she not remaining true to her YouTuber roots (e.g: of she doing collaborations with other artists, including the more obscure ones). She acted in one film before she died, but even its trailer was a complete turnoff to me.
Therefore I decided that in my quests to advocate commercial fan-fiction, and get my screenplays directed, I will do things my way. I shall remain living with my parents in their apartment and will not venture far away from my neighbourhood (= Ramat Aviv Gimel, in northern Tel Aviv, in Israel) unescorted. I plan to continue writing and mutating screenplays using my own home-grown format, at least until I find or devise a better one, and write a semi-automatic converter.
I plan to release early and often, and not delete content from my sites that some others disapprove of. (Though I may add notes that I take it back.)
I may have competition, but not only will I encourage them to try to outcompete me, but I will even try to help them. I don't want to be a dick and suggest that neither should you. I want to "win" and become rich and famous (and respected and admired), but setting artificial obstacles in the way of my peers, or people who still (unfortunately IMHO) see themselves as inferior to me, will backfire in the end, and will make me feel guilt and remorse and not Saladin-like.
I thought I invented illustrated screenplays, "by need", but recently saw the illustration on Edward Bulwer-Lytton's stage play "Richelieu" after I searched the web for his "The pen is mightier than the sword" adage.
Furthermore, a fellow writer, who was less techsavvy than I was at the time (and wished to remain ignorant of software development) told me that "[hyper-]linking is not writing". However, not only did the Hebrew Bible had hyperlinks of sorts (references to other works), but many are currently broken. There are also known-but-lost works among the Works of Aristotle and those of many other classical philosophers.
Also note that there are known spelling mistakes in the canonical text of the Hebrew Bible, so it is imperfect.
So linking is writing, and I am going to continue adding hyperlinks to my writings.
Why can't we have them all?
PrevNode LinkNextCurrently, there aren't too many commercial parodical crossovers of fiction starring big-time actors, but there is no reason why we cannot bend all the guidelines that prevent them. Joss Whedon wanted to reboot Buffy the Vampire Slayer starring a previously unfamiliar Black American actress. Boring! Too politically correct!
But picture Emma Watson as Selina Mandrake, a geeky Anglo-American (and Caucasian naturally, and of any hair colour she fancies) 12th-grade high school student, who is unathletic and clumsy, loves playing Basketball (but "royally sucks at it"), is completely non-violent toward the demons she slays, and even shows compassion for them, and having watched the original series, finds the demonic underworld to be "quite a weird lot". She is tormented by "The Guide" ( Wil Wheaton ), a mysterious American Goth-looking man, who despite seeming to possess powerful magic, and mustering weapons, claims she is a far better slayer than he is. In addition, it sports some Israeli secular/Tanakh Judaism background, and a take-it-in-your-face milliards years-old "Elders of Zion"/Illuminati-like conspiracy titled "The Neo-Tech Conspiracy for Establishing the Semitic Culture". It also sports a modernised take on The Three Musketeers, with the French-English-French "Milady" Kate Canterson being the love interest of d'Artagnan, who are both sent by Cardinal Richelieu, King Louis XIII, and the King of England, to "slay" Lord Buckingham (= stage his death and have him start a new life in the British colonies of North America.).
Extremely not politically correct, which is why it is much more honest and fun and may prove more popular. "War is good for business!" to quote the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition. And I invite Whedon to direct it!
My secret to success: I'm a 21st century open source + open/free content + remixer + fanfic polymath and openminded amateur / geek, and hacker / action hero, entertainer and educator. I have my sources of inspiration and my beliefs and my opinions - I do not deny them and reuse them, but often challenge them and parody them. I'm being the "trying to be awesome or at least awesomely badass" Shlomi Fish, who keeps the faith, defies his fate, encourages criticism and yet doesn't try to please everyone.
If I try to please "the media" / "my profits" / society / "the rules" / what other people think / the guidelines and guidelines-generators too much, then no one will be pleased. If I'll be myself and do it my way, then hopefully some people will love my work and most of the others will not remain indifferent.
The Plan
PrevNode LinkNextOK, ok "Show Me the Money!". Note that just like Asimov's Seldon Plan, this plan is not set in stone and we'll likely have to improvise ("play by ear"), or adapt it to the circumstances. Moreover, its items are just guidelines and suggestions, not rules and demands. Furthermore, it is likely this will not be the final challenge faced by the film industry and fiction industry or humanity as a whole, so we should not rest on our laurels.
Anyway, I suggest:
Screenplay readers to also accept screenplays in easier to write and to get right formats, which should have open source, portable, and easy-to-install, validators and linters. They should also accept and tolerate some relatively minor errors. ( Reference ).
Copyright owners to relicense their franchises under permissive licenses (possibly unilaterally). ( Reference ).
They can request to donate parts of the profits of derivative works to them.
In time, Warner Bros will mismanage the #HarryPotter franchise so badly that @jk_rowling will be able to buy it back at a bargain price… There's another road ahead for Warner Bros, Disney, and other copyright holders than copyright cannibalism.
Politicians to amend the financial bylaws to allow any legal entity to transfer any amount of money to any other legal entity (possibly while keeping some digital transactions' ledger). ( Reference ).
Big name actors, actresses, directors, writers, etc. to set up production companies carrying their names. ( Reference ).
Start directing films with fanfic: crossovers, Real Person Fiction ( RPF ), parodies, etc.
Film / TV shows / etc. copyright owners should avoid trying to stamp out piracy. In addition, legitimate low-res (720p/etc.) versions of the complete films and TV show episodes should be provided free of charge on YouTube/etc. This is for hyperlinking, making image macros, video macros, meme scenes, meme story arcs, or even watching or downloading completely.
The second big element of Web 2.0 is democracy. We now have several examples to prove that amateurs can surpass professionals, when they have the right kind of system to channel their efforts. Wikipedia may be the most famous. Experts have given Wikipedia middling reviews, but they miss the critical point: it’s good enough. And it’s free, which means people actually read it. On the web, articles you have to pay for might as well not exist. Even if you were willing to pay to read them yourself, you can’t link to them. They’re not part of the conversation.
Content copyright owners are advised to stop sending takedown notices against infringing copies (or web resources suspected as such.)
Similarly, most forms of DRM provide fig leaf protection at best and are often obstacles for legitimate uses, and so are best avoided.
Basically, there were two sides to the world. There was the entire computer games software industry engaged in a tremendous effort to stamp out piracy, and there was Wobbler. Currently, Wobbler was in front.
Country/locality/etc. based restrictions on viewing, downloading, or purchasing media resources ("content files" or physical media such as CDs) should also be completely avoided (by choice).
I Feel Much Better Now That I've Given Up Hope
Be more communicative. If you dislike the work of someone, try to tell them exactly why. If you like it, tell them, and try to tell your friends. ( Reference ).
Epilogue
PrevNode LinkNextFighting Against The World
Node LinkNextChuck Norris was challenged to fight the world, and accepted. He bet on himself, won, and collected the bet money.
( Chuck Norris Facts by Shlomi Fish (= me) and Friends. )
("Never underestimate the power of the Schwartz" from Spaceballs)
("Little Buddha - Awakening.")
Also see the Biblical story of Elijah and the prophets of the Ba'al
They said Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) will never win. Nowadays, both Microsoft and Apple have many original FOSS contributions, and hire close-to-full-time open source devs. Even Electronic Arts (EA) has FOSS code.
They said open/free content is a fad. Wikimedia, Wikia, and countless of blogs, microblogs and social media pages and web forums are evidence to the contrary.
They said music will never be open. Many independent YouTubers and the commercial success of Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts I-IV album proved them wrong:
Whether Taylor Swift gets the rights for her old songs back or not, it won't change the fact that even though they're her brainchildren, they belong to everyone (who can cover, remix them, & listen to them). Neither Swift nor her record label will likely go bankrupt soon.
They even said the CVS version control system will not be replaced, but Subversion did mostly supplant it, and now git is the dominant version-control system.
They likely thought the Christian crusaders during Saladin's time will remain fanatical to Jesus. Well, most of them did not denounce their faith, but proclaimed Jesus told them that returning to fight Saladin was pointless. Some people would now call that "common sense", and I was told there are now several Christian interpretations of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which had two Jewish actresses in leading roles ( Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Alyson Hannigan ) and had a strong occult general theme.
Now they tell me that Commercial fan-fiction will never happen
or that it will be "unethical". When will they ever learn?
Well, I'm still going to try, and there may be obstacles, and setbacks, and I might not succeed, but I won't give up for now. I may still "walk away" or "run" from this based on what my judgement tells me. But I'll carry on for now.
And I'm not alone. There are many fan-fiction (or "original" fic) authors who would love to see their ideas filmed, but know that submitting them to Hollywood studios is futile. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of unemployable formerly "big name" actors, actresses, film makers, and screenwriters. There are many disgruntled lawyers who make atrocious "Intellectual Property" demands and even put one long paragraph of legalese on a McDonalds' Happy Meal toy. And even the Hollywood executives likely feel trapped.
I have some "enemies" as well. My greatest enemy is naturally myself - how I manage my time, how I say what I say, my prejudice and "rules" I succumb to, and my past record, legacy and mismanagement. Aside from that, I also need to handle:
Slashdot reviewers who keep my submissions in the queue for months and are effectively unreachable.
reddit readers who downvote comments or posts they disagree with (or find blasphemous / true).
subreddits' administrators who remove my posts from public view - either for being blasphemous or due to their delivery being lacking.
The Internet instant messaging services and protocols being fragmented, unusable, messy, or insecure.
WordPress, which I was told is the best-in-class blog engine, being incredibly bad and unusable even for the end-commentators, whose comments are often eaten or their links rendered as plaintext.
People's tendency to either over-idolise or demonise other people, organisations, or idea systems, and take them as gospel or counter-gospel.
Possible interpretations of the USA Constitution, various acts and bylaws or even court precedents and other guidelines that are getting in the way now.
Some people's reluctance to change.
People who accuse me of having ulterior motives of promoting my "agenda" or "religion", when I think they are a solution to the underlying problem and am trying to help:
"Are we to understand," asked the judge, "that you hold your own interests above the interests of the public?"
"I hold that such a question can never arise except in a society of cannibals."
Anti-malware software or firewalls that block my domains, and which are often malware in their own right.
They are not obstacles to be casually dismissed. But they may be surmountable. Furthermore, I am not seeking to destroy the commercial film industry this time, but to make them prosper. And I believe commercial fanfiction will be nice to have, even if some film studios go out of business (which I hope will not happen).
What the Future Holds?
PrevNode LinkBad Blood
Node LinkNextI created a captioned image back in August 2014 which echoed my sentiments that female fighters in films have become not-as-intimidating-as-they-could-be. Taylor Swift's delayed (and likely indirect) response, published in 18 May 2015 was this videoclip for her song Bad Blood:
One should note that the female entertainers in the clip marketed themselves as singers and/or models, despite the fact that they were technically acting in the clip. If they were actresses, appearing in that clip would have accelerated the coming of their “Hollywood unhirability”. But why should it have?
Christina Grimmie's “Feelin’ Good”
PrevNode LinkNextAn inspiring song and videoclip by the late YouTube musician. You can also read my midrash of it.
The Lion King’s Opening Scene
PrevNode LinkI consider myself a child of the 1990s despite being ~12-22 years old at the time ( I am 1977-born ). I recall watching the Lion King film several times using our VHS copy, and while enjoying the opening scene was mostly indifferent to it. Now watching it while being "hypomanic" and inspired, sends shivers down my spine from feeling exalted.
Dedications
PrevNode LinkNextFollowing my lead in "Terminator: Liberation", I will hereby praise both living and dead great men and women. This time I'll also add mythical / fictional heroic figures to the mix (which many people unjustly dismiss. )
Living
Node LinkNextThis crossover essay has a strong reliance on memes from Mel Brooks's films, especially Spaceballs. ( Reference ).
I also wish to dedicate this essay to the cast and makers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, including Joss Whedon and Sarah Michelle Gellar. I consider Buffy to be the hacker monarch of the brief "Web 1.0" period, comparable to Saladin, The Muppets, Jules Verne and The Beatles. Unfortunately, the growing prevalence of the Internet and the web (and the "open" / remix culture) combined with some unfortunate mismanagement decisions (Buffy not ending at high school graduation, Faith being placed in a coma, and the show stopping being aired in Israel and possibly other countries) started spelling doom on it. While Gellar was my biggest celebrity crush, a role model, and the "queen of the (1.0) Web", she was dethroned by Natalie Portman soon after that, who in turn gave way to Jennifer Lopez, Beyoncé Knowles, and Paris Hilton.
Like I note, I suspect the creativity crisis of the film industry is caused by its operational and legal policies, and film makers like Whedon are not immune to their psychological effects.
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to Star Trek - The Next Generation" had already been written in 1990 and circulated by email, and I found it even funnier than the original “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. The web 1.0 and especially the User-generated content trend only amplified the "problem", and I had no qualms of writing my Friends / Fountainhead crossover back in 1998. My Star Trek: “We, the Living Dead” is an even "worse" crossover problem.
Dedications for the deceased
PrevNode LinkNextI only knew Kurt Stevens Alvord as the father of Tiffany Alvord and her brothers. He passed away recently, so I'd like to dedicate this essay to his memory.
William Goldman passed away in 2018 and wrote or cowrote some of my favourite films including The Princess Bride, Last Action Hero, Maverick, and the lesser known Year of the Comet.
Dedications for the mythical
PrevNode LinkDarth Vader, who was an amazing project manager, and is one of the good guys on my Queen Padmé [Amidala] Tales crossover series.
Spaceballs' Dark Helmet, on the other hand, was an atrocious manager. (Which is also a noteworthy achievement.) He is a good guy on Queen Padmé Tales, too.
The characters of the Hebrew Bible and of the Muppets' franchise.
Licence
PrevNode LinkNextThis document is Copyright by Shlomi Fish, 2021, and is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-by) 4.0 Unported (or at your option any later version of that licence).
For securing additional rights, please contact Shlomi Fish and see the explicit requirements that are being spelt from abiding by that licence.
Links
PrevNode LinkNextParodied "[Movie] Star Wars" logo taken from my forked branch of @ztzockt's Star Wars crawl remake.
My wiki - contains thematic pages of quotes or essays.