Ripped from the Headlines

Sad songs say so much: the enduring appeal of songs that hurt your heart

You don't have to look far to find songs about sadness. Popular music of all genres has trafficked forever in lyrics that tell terrible tales, suggest dark motives and essentially insist that we all live in a vale of tears.

The nice thing is, there's usually a catchy chorus and, if you listen to psychologists, this is all good for us. Earlier this year, an article in Psychology Today noted that sad songs let us understand shared difficult experiences of "rejection, loss, unrequited love, misfortune or other themes," and which gives us a perspective on others' problems. We might have had similar experiences, which give sad lyrics a new resonance, but regardless that empathetic understanding is what helps us grasp our common humanity and, down the road, perhaps overcome our own troubles.

Not that we're thinking about this when listening to songs like Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" or Metallica's "Unforgiven." But music paired with thoughtful lyrics has a way of worming into our conscious in a way little else can: We play our favorite tunes over and over, and even talk sometimes about how some snippets become earworms we can't eradicate so easily.

While I'm a fan of a good, sweet pop tune like Pharrell's "Happy" – I think anyone who isn't must be a little dead inside – I get much more long-term traction from a tune that takes a seriously dark turn. Maybe it's the aural equivalent of picking at a scab – it's questionably good for you, but the itch you reach by listening again and again is deeply, instinctually, satisfying.

And a good dark lyric can even overcome some of my lack of interest in the music or artist herself. Take Kelly Clarkson's "Because of You." She's just about as mainstream as you can get, from her "American Idol" success to her chart-topping hits, Clarkson doesn't seem like the sort of musician who would write a song about being abused – and being forever changed by that abuse. But in "Because of You," we get:

Because of you
I find it hard to trust not only me, but everyone around me
Because of you
I am afraid

Damn, girl.

Dark lyrics are often best approached when we're in our darkest, loneliest times – when we're teenagers. We may have friends we can talk to, but when the right song sinks its teeth into your spine, it's hard to ever lose the feeling entirely. I'll always know exactly how I felt when The Smiths' "Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me" hit home the first time:

Last night I dreamt
That somebody loved me
No hope - but no harm
Just another false alarm
Last night I felt
Real arms around me
No hope - no harm
Just another false alarm
So, tell me how long
Before the last one?
And tell me how long
Before the right one?
This story is old - I KNOW
But it goes on
This story is old - I KNOW
But it goes on

In that short space the band acknowledges that we've all had that dream – waking or asleep – in which we felt totally secure and loved, only to wake and find it was nothing but smoke. Then, at the end, the terrifically brilliant bit: the self-awareness that it's an old story and maybe boring, but it never truly ends.

Noted Psychology Today, hearing those sad songs and thinking them through is like an exercise: We can imagine terrible real-life occurrences without having to literally experience them, and "such mental exercises can promote an attitude of problem solving and a safe venue for hypothetical testing of possible choices," said the article.

This "music-evoked imagination," at least in my case, sometimes went further than the artist may have intended. When I interviewed Juliana Hatfield about her 1993 single "My Sister," she insisted it wasn't actually about killing a wicked sibling. But I have my doubts; the song begins:

I hate my sister, she's such a bitch.
She acts as if she doesn't even know that I exist

She spends the rest of the song talking about how awesome her sister is … but then sister vanishes.

I miss my sister – why'd she go?

Because you took her out and wiped your memory of the incident! Or maybe that's just my imagination going wild.

Whatever the reasoning, I've always been attracted to lyrics that twist and bend, or take us in different directions than just acknowledging how damn happy we are. Whether the surreal (Robyn Hitchcock's "My Wife and My Dead Wife") or epic (Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald") or surprisingly frightening (The Beatles' "Run for Your Life") or literary (The Beautiful South's "Woman in the Wall"), those tunes stir the darkness within year after year.

And, perhaps, make the real world a bit more understandable. As PT notes, "Music-evoked imagination can encourage us to reach beyond our troubles to help others. Compassion for others can comfort us and help us find our own healing."

Or just a kick-ass playlist.

This article originally appeared at Curiosity Quills.

A love song for Howard Jones: Why pop lyrics matter to the teens we are and the adults we become

The world teaches us to think that life is full of limitations
The world tries to make us think that there are loads of limits
— “Conditioning,” Howard Jones

 

Two things happened in the world of music during the week of March 23, neither of which had anything to do with one another – unless you happen to live in my head.

Zayn Malik left One Direction, a band I do not listen to. And I went to see Howard Jones, a musician I fervently listened to when I was the median age of most of 1D’s fans.

In this column, I generally address great (and poor) writing on TV and in movies. But when I was a teenager, all the words in the world that mattered to me came not from TV or movies – or even books. I was voracious in my consumption of of music and spent hours flipped on my stomach in our living room parsing the lyric sheets of albums by my favorite artists, explicating every line for deeper meaning.

Music lyrics do that to us. The music is the bird that pokes holes in our conscious; the lyrics are the seeds it leaves behind, and they flower all the rest of our lives. My mentors never spoke to me directly, but left behind legacies of words put to a good beat you could sometimes dance to that still conjure up adolescent memories even today. When I was 14 and 15 and 16, I wanted someone to give me guidance about what the hell was going on in the grown-up world, and pop tunes did that for me.

 

Here I come now got no time to frown
Nothing in my way now nothing can bring me down
Feel that surge open the doors around
Higher and higher the world is my hunting ground
— “Hunt the Self,” Howard Jones

 

So 1D fans, I know none of your band’s lyrics and can hum none of their tunes, but I feel your pain: Your bedrock is crumbling and everyone around you who isn’t a fan is laughing. I’m way, way old and I’m not. Because I remember that whether the words are deep and meaningful or shallow and simply-rhymed doesn’t matter; as long as you’re listening to them, they are the scaffolding on which you are hoisting yourself to the next stage of life.

I listened to a lot of bands and took in a lot of words in those formative years. Howard Jones was never No. 1 on my top list of bands but I put him quite high up in a rarefied position, thanks in part to the words he wrote – he was a guru to me. Legendary rock critic Robert Christgau may have vilified Jones’ first album Human’s Lib for being self-help twaddle, but I wasn’t listening to it as a grown up; I heard it as a kid.

So when I listened to some of those songs all over again some 30 years after hearing them for the first time in New York City the other night I confess: I took a little side trip in my head and remembered all the things I had learned from my guru, and the places those lessons took me.

Places like these:

Veganism and Taoism.

Howard Jones was the first person I ever heard of who was full-on vegan. He did it hard-core in the days before the world ever heard of a Boca Burger and even wrote songs about the cruelty done to animals in the name of feeding humans (“Assault and Battery”). So I went vegetarian. And had some eggs. And fish. OK, I was terrible at being vegetarian, but it was a blow for independence at a young age.

In addition to being a vegan, Jones referred both directly (with a B-side song title) and indirectly to the Tao Te Ching, a religion/philosophy/book/way of thinking I’d never heard of before. I still don’t know if I fully understand what “the way” really means, but it has a lot to do with letting go and understanding that you are just a speck in the river that carries you along.

Professionalism.

I’ve never met Jones (other than waiting hours in line outside Tower Records in 1985 only to have him sign my “Things Can Only Get Better” 45 record sleeve “To Mandee”), and it’s not important that I do. But early on in my journalism career, I interviewed him over the phone – in the most irritating way possible. I peppered him with dozens of nerdy fangirl questions until he finally asked, “Do you think we’ll talk about the new album soon?” which was of course why we were here in the first place. I went scarlet. I scrambled, recovered, did the job I was supposed to do and learned a hugely valuable lesson. You really do often learn best from your mistakes.

Acceptance.

When I went out to visit a friend of mine I’d been pen-pals with since she moved away after we were in kindergarten together, I was 16 and crushing hard on a guy in school who was still two years from coming out of the closet. He gave us ladies some hope by, well, dating us – but we knew the truth even if we (and he) didn’t want to admit it.

Meanwhile, my pen-pal had begun a deep dive into evangelical Christianity, and when I told her about my hopeless devotion to my uncertain friend she became first sincerely concerned for my soul. Then, when she couldn’t convince me to abandon my friend, she wrote me a letter quoting the Bible extensively and explaining that she could no longer associate with me.

It begged for a response. So I went to a different bible for my recourse: I shot her back the last letter we ever exchanged, covered with my own favorite lyrics about equality, tolerance, what is natural and what is not – Jones’ lyrics.

I have always felt good about that.

 

You don’t know
I don’t know
Nobody knows
This is an answer to every question
This is a place to begin
— “Always Asking Questions,” Howard Jones

 

It’s easy to mock pop lyrics. Easy to say Taylor Swift’s words are all about the same thing, or that the guys in One Direction don’t even write their own lyrics. But teenagers don’t care – they’re still listening hard, still using those lyrics to ascend into adulthood. Pop singers, rock singers, rap singers – those are the grown-ups kids listen to; they are their teachers as much as, if not more than, the ones paid to instruct them in school.

Awards strictly for lyrics don’t exist, so far as I know. Songwriters get prizes for the combination of words and music, but that’s a significant difference. And lyric writers, the good ones, really should get some recognition for a clever rhyme, the hidden pun, the evocative image. A well-turned lyric, aimed at the right person at just the right time, gets under the skin of even the hardest-to-reach young people. That’s a rare power that deserves respect – and love.

So thanks, Howard Jones. You weren’t the only musician who raised me into adulthood, but you were a significant player in the group. Long may you – and the beautiful simplicity of your words – reign.

This column originally appeared at Curiosity Quills.

Writing Dead: Why Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse still ask the big questions in ‘The Leftovers,’ ‘The Returned’

When Lost first aired in 2004, I was prepared to be hooked. Plane crashes on deserted island, people learning to survive. That’s my kind of story – Survivor without the gimmicks. Creation of a new community, a new society.

That was not going to be Lost’s story. Yes, there was an airline crash. Yes, survival was an issue. But Lost was never about day-to-day events; it had a lot of smaller stories and a much bigger ambition (if not always perfectly realized) than almost anyone – including those who stuck it through to the end – were planning on ingesting. Creators Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse (and to a lesser degree J.J. Abrams) wanted to ask the big questions about life, death, and meaning.

I wasn’t expecting that on ABC primetime.

“One of the thematic things that was always interesting about Lost is this idea of is this arbitrary? Is it happening for a reason? And that’s the fundamental question of life,” Lindelof told me. “That’s the fundamental question of life: Is there a purpose? Am I part of some grander design?”

I bailed on Lost when it didn’t give me what I expected, and though it clearly was worth going back to, I never did. One of those things I’ll get to in the nursing home, I expect, but there’s just so much good TV and only so many hours in a day.

But then I did it again, with Lindelof’s latest TV project. Last year, I gave HBO’s The Leftovers a real kiss-off in this space. The book is always better than the movie (or the TV series), said I, and here was just the latest evidence. And then I bailed on Leftovers.

Well, I’m going to give that one another try. As shows like Walking Dead and Game of Thrones have shown us in recent years, going off the reservation in terms of telling story is all but a requirement when you’re adapting a book for the long term. A movie of the week or even a miniseries is one thing; if you’re going to spin out a slim novel like Leftovers for more than a season, you’re gonna have to rethink things. But that’s not exactly why.

I’m interested in the big questions, and now I think I have a better grip on Lindelof’s (with author Tom Perotta) mission. And Lost fans, take heed: Lindelof’s writer-in-arms Carlton Cuse is also back on TV (well, he’s been there overseeing Bates Motel and Strain) with a new adaptation of the terrific French series The Returned. It’s another show that addresses those life-shaping questions – what if the dead returned to you, unchanged and unharmed, exactly how they were at the moment of death?

“It is interesting that we’re both working on projects that grapple with the idea of life and death and loss and absence and grief,” said Cuse, who meets with Lindelof approximately once a month for lunch (though they don’t talk shop). “But The Returned and Leftovers are vastly different in the way they’re executed, even if they are exploring both of the same themes. There’s plenty of room for both shows.”

Undoubtedly so. TV doesn’t always do very well asking, or answering, the big questions; we couch potatoes are fairly happy being spoon-fed good guys and bad guys and satisfying resolution within 42 minutes of screen time, once a week. But there are shows that go deeper, and are worth grown-up consideration. In just the last week I watched the latest episode of The Walking Dead challenge me with the question of what happens when a bunch of PTSD-ridden survivors of the zombie apocalypse find Eden? Could they be the ultimate snakes in the grass? And then on The Good Wife, atheist Alicia believes her God-fearing daughter may be losing her religion, which prompts a moment (that takes place in her head) in which Richard Dawkins visits her to ask why this troubles her so much.

This is big stuff, and the fact that it happened on one of TV’s top rated shows (Dead) and on the staid, older-skewing Tiffany Network (Wife) blew me away. But maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised, just as I shouldn’t brush off a show because it fails to meet my preconceived notions – and actually posits more challenges to my perception of storytelling. And of what couch potatoes can absorb.

“I feel like a lot of TV shows avoid religion,” said Lindelof. “It’s a very dangerous topic and that’s why I really responded to Tom’s book. He was talking about religion in a very interesting way, and the same thing is happening in The Returned. Leftovers doesn’t deal directly with death, but it is a death metaphor. These people have departed, they’re gone. But … you didn’t get to bury them, so could they come back? That’s what we’re trying to explore here.”

This article originally published in Curiosity Quills.

10 scripts, 2 Oscars: Which writers will take home the best screenplay awards?

The writer on a movie set is a second-class citizen, a vestigial remnant that might once have served a purpose but who, once filming has begun, can only get in the way. Once a script leaves the hands of its screenwriter, unless said screenwriter is also directing, they’re less useful than an appendix. Nobody wants to know or hear about the “writing” any more.

But that hasn’t stopped the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from creating two Oscars for the writing that even makes the story possible. Sharp acting, studied design and clever writing aside, all movies have to start in the same place – with a story – and so the writing of that story deserves at least a nod. Even though, on Oscar night, writers tend to be shoved all the way in the back of the theater. (They’re the ones most likely to have loosened hair pins and bow ties by the time they’re called; bless them, they’re so grateful.)

With that in mind, my hubris and expertise has surged to the fore again (as it did in August when I prognosticated which TV scripts were most likely to take home Emmys). Here, a brief look at the two important Oscar writing categories and which male scriptwriters (because there are no women nominated) will bring home a new lil’ buddy (and a whole new lease on his career) after Sunday night.

Take notes!

Writing, Adapted Screenplay
For reference: An adapted screenplay may be an original work, but it derived its inspiration (at the very least) from something else (like a memoir) that has already been written.

American Sniper (Jason Hall)
Based on the late Chris Kyle’s memoir, Sniper has been a source of contention since it was first released. Is it anti- or pro-war? That foot-on-either-side-of-the-minefield approach is likely director Clint Eastwood’s, but clearly Hall’s script wasn’t interested in seeing things in black-or-white at all times. Nominated by the Writers Guild of America.

The Imitation Game (Graham Moore)
Being nominated by the WGA is one thing; winning it gives your script a huge boost: Moore comes to the Oscars knowing the guild is on his side, and this is likely to tip the balance in his favor on Sunday. That said Imitation is a weird artefact of a script, divided in what story it wants to tell and dropping a major moral quandary three-quarters of the way through telling it. The likely winner, but not the most deserving one.

Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson)
As the heir to the Robert Altman school of intertwined, loopy and often surreal storylines, Anderson wrote and directed his own script and probably deserves a special prize for being able to successfully adapt a Thomas Pynchon novel. Alas, Vice has a very low profile and didn’t even receive a WGA nomination.

The Theory of Everything (Anthony McCarten)
Or, the biopic about a Cambridge-educated scientific genius who changes the world that isn’t Imitation Game. Theory is a more coherently-told, if rambling, story about the great Stephen Hawking (based on his ex-wife Jane Wilde Hawking’s memoir) that is conventional in nearly every way. Still, McCarten’s take on the love triangle between Jane, Stephen and a family friend was done with a light hand and a firm expertise. Not WGA-nominated.

Whiplash (Damien Chazelle)
Here’s your dark horse outsider. A relative newcomer to directing/scriptwriting, Chazelle occupies a unique niche: storyteller/director for dark musical tales. Whiplash is roundly considered to be original and extremely well made, but is probably in the wrong category. It’s only considered “adapted” because Chazelle adapted his own 2013 short film by the same name for this longer take. The WGA recognized this and nominated it as an original; being in the wrong category for the Oscars could sink Chazelle’s chances.

Writing, Original Screenplay

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr. and Armando Bo)
Those who haven’t yet seen Birdman may sneer, and sneer rightly: At its twee, weirdly-punctuated title; at the fact that it took four people (including the director) to write it. Yet Birdman soars above those criticisms by being a kinetic bit of magical realism that was like nothing on the screen we’ve seen in years. Not nominated by the WGA, though; this may hurt its chances.

Boyhood (Richard Linklater)
The screenplay that took 12 years to complete should win for something. But it’s hard not to feel that Linklater let his actors form the script every time they met for a week each summer over that long span of time. It’s the Mike Leigh way to tell a story, and while it’s not wrong … it’s not exactly scriptwriting. Linklater is owed, big time. But based on the script – there’s not enough there, there. WGA-nominated.

Foxcatcher (E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman)
A big misfire. Slow-moving and dreary, starring Steve Carell’s prosthetic nose. Director Bennett Miller really thought he was on to the next Capote (in which he was also directing an Oscar-nominated script by Futterman) and then found whatever gems his script kept hidden buried under turgid directing and performances (save for Mark Ruffalo). Nominated for reasons unknown by the WGA.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (screenplay by Wes Anderson; story by Wes Anderson and Hugo Guinness)
You want your quirk? Wes Anderson delivers your quirk. He may be pushing his limits in terms of just how sweetly off-the-wall he can be, but no question that director/writer Anderson knows how to move things along on charm and style. As the WGA winner this year, Budapest is largely considered to have this in the bag.

Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy)
There’s a good chance you missed this film, but it’s never too late to seek it out. Darker than the inside of a goth’s closet during a blackout, Nightcrawler was also pointedly satirical about the way the greed for ratings has turned the newsgathering game into a blood sport. Gilroy wrote and directed his own script with a firm, clear hand but this one tended to fly under most peoples’ radar. Worthy, and WGA-nominated, but hasn’t really a solid chance.

This article was originally published at Curiosity Quills.

Arisia 2015: My schedule, and how I'll defy both time and space while there

It's almost time for Arisia again! And that means ... panels! Reading! Parties! Boston in January!

Come join me!

Arisia is New England's largest sci-fi/fantasy con, and is held at the Westin in Boston early every year. I'm going for what I think is the sixth time, and again I'm honored to have been invited to participate on panels. I'll also be running directly from one panel into the tail-end of the awesome Broad Universe "Rapid Fire Reading" in order to share a new story of mine, which makes it even more exciting.

So for those of you who are thinking about attending, here's what you need to know about the con ... and here are the panels/readings in which I'll personally have a hand. Or voice. See you there!

Saturday 1/17, 7 p.m. / Alcott
"Fan Etiquette: How Not to Be That Fan"
You're a fan of something, I'm a fan of something. But nobody really wants to be the scary, creepy or downright embarrassing fan ... at least, hopefully that's not a goal. During this panel (I'm moderating) we'll talk about how to come across as a devotee, not a stalker.

Sunday 1/18, 11:30 a.m. / Alcott
"TV Year in Review"
Man, there have been so many great TV shows in the genre field this year, who can keep track? Five of your fellow esteemed panelists will try running through our favorites (and ones that aren't quite so favored) while soliciting comments from the audience. See how many we can get through an hour and fifteen minutes!

Sunday 1/18, 11:30 a.m. / Douglas
Broad Universe "Rapid Fire Reading"
Yeah, I've got access to the TARDIS but even I can't be in two panels at once. While other great Broads do short readings of their new work, I'll be over in the TV Year in Review panel, then heading into the RFR in the last few minutes to gasp out my own work. Let's see if I can violate both space and time in the process.

Sunday 1/18, 1:00 p.m. / Alcott
"TV Writing: Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror/Genre"
As anyone who reads my Curiosity Quills column "Between the Lines" knows, there's a lot of great ways to tell story on TV ... and a lot of ways to mess it up. With former Syfy Network excecutive Thomas Vitale moderating, we'll be discussing what makes for great writing on TV, and what the challenges of telling supernatural stories on the small screen are.

Come on by and say hello at the panels, and if you miss me there, check out the Broad Universe table, where we'll be selling copies of our latest work. Have a great con!

It’s a Terrifying, Asphyxiating, Not-So-Wonderful Life After All

“It’s a Wonderful Life” aired again on TV recently, as it does pretty much every year around Christmastime. And whether you’ve actually watched it or not (and I do recommend you give it a chance), you probably know the story of George Bailey, whose life is upended one Christmas Eve when a big deposit from his bank goes missing, he contemplates suicide, and learns what his world would have been like without him around.

It’s a cracking film, made by the brilliant Frank Capra, who appears to have had pixie dust in his pocket, and it expands mightily on the short story that inspired it, “The Greatest Gift.” And like many great films it succeeds in large part because multiple generations have been able to interpret it on their own terms.

But this essay is not here to sing the praises of hearth, home and the beauty of having community rally around you. This is about why “It’s A Wonderful Life” is actually a horror movie.

Stay with me now.

In horror movies, good people (or at least mostly-good people) are assailed by forces beyond their control. They may or may not escape. Mostly, they don’t – or if they do they’re haunted for the rest of their lives. Everywhere they turn, the forces amassed against them are bigger, smarter, and more determined than they are, a combination that brings them down in the end.

Back to George Bailey, resident of a sweet little town called Bedford Falls. From the moment we meet him, we know he’s destined for greater things. He’s a good guy with a big heart who saves his brother (at a physical cost to himself), then saves his employer (a grief-addled pharmacist who writes the wrong prescription) from giving out medicine that would have killed someone. That’s three lives Bailey has in his “win” column before he even hits adulthood. If anyone should go out and become a world leader, it’s George Bailey.

That’s what he wants to do, too! As an adult, we first see Jimmy Stewart as Bailey ordering a giant suitcase that’ll carry all of his belongings while he goes around the world. And later on, he tells his future wife Mary, “I know what I’m going to do tomorrow and the next day and the next year and the year after that. I’m going to shake the dust of this crummy little town off my feet. I’m going to see the world then I’m going to build things.”

Oh, George. In a horror movie, never express your hopes and dreams. They will then be enumerated so they can be taken from you.

Bedford Falls is a nice enough town, but young folks don’t really want nice. They want adventure, they want to spread their wings and take on the world. George, however, is doomed not to get that chance. Here’s the sequence of events that read like doors closing on his face:

Dad, who started the town’s Building and Loan, the only business in town somehow not under the thumb of the evil, wealthy Mr. Potter (think “The Simpsons’” Mr. Burns), has a heart attack. George, apparently the only competent human being in the town, has to take over the B&L and gives his college money to his brother Harry, with the promise that Harry will return and take over in four years.

Harry – the kid who owes his life to his big brother – returns with a fiancée and a better job offer with his future father-in-law and George again defers his dreams to let his brother go.

Stuck in town, he re-connects with local chick Mary. Yeah, they had a nice evening out a while back but since she’s become a little too Overly Attached Girlfriend, turning a passing phrase of his into a needlepoint portrait. Never mind, they get married and start having kids. Which in and of itself is not a bad thing – but it digs him in deeper rather than paves a path to his escape.

But wait: The honeymoon! Yes! He can see the world on his honeymoon with good egg Mary! But no: As they’re leaving town there’s a run at the banks and … you guessed it. The only way the Building and Loan can stay afloat and out of the hands of Potter is if they use their honeymoon money to keep it afloat.

Score: 3 lives saved, 2 bundles of cash doled out to ungrateful others. George Bailey: Zero trips out of Bedford Falls.

George, as you may guess, never leaves town. This is what happens to the non-survivors of a horror movie.

But this is before the movie’s real darkness descends! George has to live with the terrible doodle-headedness of Uncle Billy, who mislays a huge deposit (which Potter scoops up, never to be returned) that leads George to thoughts of suicide on a snowy bridge, prepared to end it all.

Capra isn’t done going dark: George is shown what life would have been like in Bedford Falls if he’d never been born. Welcome to Potterville, a lively town of whorin’, drinkin’, fightin’ and one dowdy librarian named Mary who apparently in all quantum universes that ever existed could only be happy if there was a George Bailey around. So she’s single, and sad (because: single) and freaks out when he approaches her on the street. It’s an uglification of the Bedford Falls we’ve been seeing (even if it is a bit more exciting) and that’s about where we reach the terrible truth of it all:

George, you ain’t getting out, even if you die.

I’m not alone in these thoughts, mind: Dan Seitz at Uproxx noted something similar in 2012 (and also brought up that in the original script kindly angel Clarence faced off with Potter and scared him into having a heart attack).

And in 2008 Wendell Jamieson wrote in the New York Times: “ ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your oppressively perfect wife. It is also a nightmare account of an endless home renovation.”

So this year, watch this well-written, ultimately terrifying film with some fresh eyes. Hide your kids. Put away your needlepoint portraits. And settle in to watch a good man get defeated, all while being convinced that he’s living a “wonderful life.”

Your mileage may vary, of course.

This post originally appeared at Curiosity Quills.

Ho-ho-hold the treacle: Most holiday movies stink. Demand better!

After much delay, at last I saw “Maleficent” the other night. And yes, while it is full of exactly what one expects from a Disney film – for (spoiler alert), example, a villain given grace by his vanquisher tries one last time for the win and ends up falling to his death – it took a remarkable number of turns away from expectations and more than once I prickled up with a tear.

I don’t cry much in the movies, and I wonder how many regular moviegoers do any more. Certainly, I know how the man behind the curtain works too well – the little manipulations of script, color, costume and music are all tip-offs to me. When a script does successfully vault my hurdles and makes me teary, I love it like no other. But there are so few instances when a movie goes where it did not seem to be heading, and evokes an emotion that I was unprepared to have. I can’t be alone in this – we’re all ingesting so much visual entertainment these days, I think it’s getting harder to really push our buttons.

Or is it? As we head into the holiday season, there’s a distinct change in the air. All at once, it’s time for the holiday movie – more specifically, Christmas movie – onslaught, and almost without exception it is seriously sweet stuff: Norman Rockwell households, problems best enclosed in quotation marks, wholesome (and usually very white) protagonists whose only real problems in the world now are how they can make one day at the end of the year feel real and precious. The other 364 days? Who cares.

Tune into the Hallmark Channel, and it’s almost wall-to-wall Christmas movies this time of year. From “Mr. Miracle” to “One Christmas Eve” to “Christmas Under Wraps,” these are films that are not written to surprise or challenge viewers – they’re meant as the equivalent of a holiday sweater: red and green-colored expressions of goodwill toward people. There’s nothing inherently wrong with them. They’re perfectly nice. And also like that holiday sweater, meant to be worn once and never thought of again.

Into all of this niceness has pawed one of the odder internet memes in recent years, Grumpy Cat. Lifetime – not traditionally the source of original, meaty stories – has embraced the cat with the permanent frown (a real animal) and turned her into the star of “Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever.” This is enough to make me sit up and take notice: Comedian Aubrey Plaza is providing the voice of the cat and one of the scriptwriters is a longtime contributor to “SpongeBob SquarePants,” which automatically makes it a more interesting story.

Will it all pan out? Or will it end with Grumpy Cat coming to some kind of un-grumpy realization about the joy and wonder of the holiday season? Civilization will not fall either way, but it would be nice to know that things might turn out a little differently than the paint-by-numbers structure most of these holiday movies are made of.

We’re gluttons for stories these days, with more outlets than ever to tell them to us – online, in the movies, on TV. Expectations are higher than they once were – it’s up to us to demand better from our mythmakers. We want movies that will send their arrows through our protective walls, into our hearts, and release the emotion within. The storytelling equivalent of “nice” makes us sleepy. The other kind makes us alive.

If all goes well, “Grumpy Cat” will have a long life. Think of the Christmas movies that stick with us these days – “Elf,” “A Christmas Story.” Think of “It’s a Wonderful Life” as a horror movie (stay tuned for that next time). The films that are more than the sum of their parts, which get around all of the treacle and usual expectations … those are the ones we’ll want to watch again and again.

So for this Christmas, here’s what I want: A better story, well told. Think Santa’s got that on his sleigh?

This column originally appeared in Curiosity Quills/Between the Lines.

When fantasy writers turn on TV, what turns fantasy writers on? (Hint: Breaking Bad)

On my way to the World Fantasy Convention in Crystal City, Virginia last weekend, I had a chat with an editor, who sighed with dismay that she’d initially packed only four or five books to bring with her for the long weekend. She wondered if that was enough.

I began to wonder if I just wasn’t serious about this reading thing – I’d only brought one, plus the new issue of New York Magazine.

Turns out, both of us over-packed: On arrival, everyone got a lovely canvas tote bag packed with … you guessed it, books. Why did I ever think I’d need reading material at a convention devoted to writers?

Then again, I’m new to all this and the WFC is just-turned 40. There was a lot of expertise in that hotel. In just a few brief days it packs in live readings, panels, a dealer’s room (filled with booksellers, natch), an awards ceremony, a tribute to WWI (complete with faux poppy pins) and an ice cream social. It is enough to make a word nerd’s head ‘splode with joy and overscheduling. What it tends to have almost nothing to do with is television.

Which is why I made it my mission to track down several of the more fascinating authors in attendance and quiz them all about the one thing they probably weren’t thinking about for approximately 72 hours – the small screen, and the writing that goes on there. It was a simple mission, and the answers were surprising: What’s the best writing you know of on TV today?

Here’s what I learned:

Sarah Pinsker
Author and musician Pinsker won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best short fiction of 2013 with her short story, “In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind.”
Show of Choice: Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black
“The way they set about using this Trojan horse of a white middle class character to tell these stories about the other women in the jail on the show – they’re all given weight, and thought, and backstory in a way I’ve never seen on a TV show. The women all have reasons [for their plight] and are sympathetic – or not – but there’s lots of gray.”

 

Danielle Ackley-McPhail
McPhail’s most recent book (co-written with Day Al-Mohamed) is Baba Ali and the Clockwork Djinn.
Show of Choice: ABC’s Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
“It’s not jut an action show; there’s depth to the characters and the situations. I’m not sure how much of that is lent from the comics and how much is the actual show, but it’s handled very well whether you care about the deeper characterizations or you like the action, there’s enough of both integrated so it carries you through the episode. You’re not left confused even if you just came in, having missed a few episodes.”

 

James Chambers
Speculative fiction and horror author Chambers’ latest book is Three Chords of Chaos, a Bad-Ass Faerie Tale.
Show of Choice: AMC’s Breaking Bad
“Breaking Bad is the closest thing I’ve seen to a novel played out on television. It was one of the first shows I’ve seen in a long time that gave the audience credit for having an attention span that lasted more than two weeks. Character development, subplots, plotlines that played out over the entire course of the show – and some very in-depth and well-observed characterizations that made it the peak of television writing in the last decade or so.”

Heather McDougal

Steampunk writer McDougal so far has one cracking book: Songs for a Machine Age.
Show of Choice: Also Breaking Bad
“There are shows you enjoy, and ones you think are well-written. This was a show I didn’t enjoy, but it was so well-written that it actually made me watch it for a few episodes because I was so fascinated by the writing. The way the characters interact, the way they’re pulled into weird situations – not that you haven’t seen it all before, but the way it’s put together is different. They’re not afraid of silence, of filling every scene up with emotions. They leave gaps where the emotions should be and you fill it in. Which might be part of why I didn’t keep watching. Ultimately, I couldn’t stand what was happening, so I had to stop.”

And for the contrary view – the most disappointing writing on television right now:

Lawrence M. Schoen
The creator of the ongoing Amazing Conroy series has a new novella published as a standalone book, Calendrical Regression, which is part of the Conroy universe.
Show of Choice: ABC’s Forever
“The saving grace of this show is the supporting character, played by Judd Hirsch. Otherwise, the show is trying to be many other shows all at the same time. You’re seeing all these tropes of other shows, and it’s doing them all together badly. It’s not going to survive and it’s frustrating because the writing is so transparent and superficial. The writing is not helping the actors. You can tell everything that’s going to happen from the very first moment – that’s my greatest disappointment in genre shows this season. It could be done better!”

This column originally appeared in Curiosity Quills.

Take me now: The seductive nature of TV's serial killers

 

Television scares me.

That’s nothing new; TV’s been scaring me most of my life in one form or the other. Early on there was the deadpan, spooky introduction to “Project U.F.O.,” in which government officials investigated alien sightings (this was way before “X-Files”). Then there was “In Search Of,” in which Leonard Nimoy told me the planets would line up in 1980 and there would be devastating earthquakes and floods and I believed him. The apocalyptic-loving switch in me went off and is still running today.

That frisson we feel when something as mundane and part-of-the-family as the boob tube first gives us a chill is an addictive thing. And all I can think is that based on the truly scary stuff that’s been flooding TV shows lately - I’m not the only one.

Last week I watched cannibals tuck in on a not-yet-dead victim, who then turned things around by telling them he was “tainted” meat - since he’d been bitten by a zombie. Thanks, “Walking Dead.” And over on “American Horror Story: Freak Show,” the old trope of the evil clown has me going off the deep end because of the line from one of his victims, “What happened to the rest of your mask?”

TV has definitely been heading into strange and stranger areas, something far more insidious and spooky than the once-and-future Spock (wrongly) predicting the end of the world. And we have a hard time not loving the villains and morally-ambiguous characters it has been giving us, in part because the actors playing them relish the chance to be very good at being very bad.

“Whether you’re playing Hitler, or Stalin, or some appalling serial killer, you don’t judge,” “The Following’s” James Purefoy (who plays the very bad, very charismatic Joe Carroll) told me. “You just get into their heads and understand where they’re coming from. If you do it honestly, the audience will judge for you. The best characters are the ones where the audience slips and slides and never quite makes up their mind how they feel.”

Purefoy as Carroll is terrific; he’s so good he makes me want to root for him, though in part that’s because the FBI and Kevin Bacon are generally the dumbest investigators I’ve ever seen. But the show gives good fright without too many obvious horror-movie turns (creator Kevin Williamson was behind both “Dawson’s Creek” and the “Scream” films, so that tells you where his mind’s at) - and that’s the trick in writing an awesome bad guy: Making him worth rooting for, then making your audience hate themselves for doing that rooting.

On “Hannibal,” the slippage comes in a different shape: Our titular character (played by Mads Mikkelson) appeared to be turning the profiler assigned to catch him (Will Graham, played by Hugh Dancy) into someone as sociopathic as himself. And for a while, it really wasn’t clear whether he succeeded (I’m still not entirely sure). But the blurred lines on that show come from writers who know they’re writing yin and yang when telling Hannibal’s and Graham’s stories - with the yin sometimes becoming the yang, and vice-versa.

Showrunner Bryan Fuller admits he’s long been lured to the dark side. “Growing up I was rooting for [“Star Wars’”] Han and Luke and Leia, but Darth was so interesting and he had better wardrobe,” he told me. It’s hard not to fetishize the bad guy in our fictions, because we are able to see ourselves in them - even if that is a false impression. Someone on television is in your living room, and there’s a familiarity to them being there. So you forgive them their trespasses. It’s fiction, and I’m seduced.”

That said, any show - however well-written and well-acted - has to know that there are lines that cannot be crossed, not if you still want to keep that audience under your spell. Cannibalism? No problem. Torture? Well, sure. Incestual relationships? Why not. But don’t bother the animals.

Really, don’t: “[My character] slaughtered his way through the Eastern seaboard,” says Purefoy. “Then on one show he wants to sort the men from the boys - the ones with psychopathic tendencies from the ones who don’t have them: If they can kill a fly, all well and good. A spider, fine. But a cat? We did that and the shitstorm that hit me the following day after the cat died was horrible. ‘I loved it when you were a serial killer, but now that you’re killing cats, I’m off!’ Can we talk about that first part of the sentence?”

Of course we can. I’ve been doing it my whole life. Because, see, it doesn’t have to be Halloween for TV to scare me. TV scares me a lot. And I think I like it.

This column originally appeared at Curiosity Quills.

From 'Downton Abbey' to 'Law & Order: SVU,' we're all soap opera addicts now

Greetings! So glad you could make it. Welcome to the first in a continuing story … sorry, the continuing adventures of – no, that’s not quite right, either. All right, I’ll say it first: I’m a soap opera addict. I am a soap opera addict. I love stories that go on and on, with intertwining characters whose lives take sudden heightened turns, in episodes that leave me dying to know what comes next.

Crickets? Come on. This is the place where you say, “I’m a soap addict, too.” Because you are, you know. Unless your DVR is full of nothing beyond episodes of “NCIS” and “C.S.I.” – you are a soap fan. We are all soap fans, because this golden age of television everyone talks about is really just full of a lot of really well-made soap operas. No, there’s no Susan Lucci and none of them are going to last the decades of, say, a “Guiding Light,” but trust me: You are in love with soap operas.

I got my first professional, full-time job writing for Soap Opera Digest in the late 1990s. It was far from the heights of soap operas’ heyday – weekly, we clucked our tongues as the ratings invariably dropped another tenth of a point on each show – but they were still a wall-to-wall daytime cultural force. And they were powerful, if slow-moving, with a history of pushing the envelope on social issues that regular TV barely even touched.

Alas, after five years the scribbling on the wall was clear: The shows were caught in their own rut of predictable “surprises” and non-twisty twists. Everything was a cycle: New person comes to town. New person is trouble in some fashion. New person turns out to be related to someone in town. New person falls in love, gets married, decides not to trust his/her new bride/groom with some crucial detail, new person loses love. Next!

Today, we may not have Pine Valley or Llanview – but we have Highclere Castle and whatever name Don Draper’s firm is currently operating under, with “Downton Abbey” and “Mad Men.” Even “Law & Order: SVU” is a soap these days – will Olivia find happiness? Get a baby? Be tormented by a new serial rapist? – a complete rewriting (or evolution, depending on who you talk to) of that franchise’s DNA.

But these shows work because their writers are canny about the stories they choose to tell. As Joanne Froggatt (who plays Anna on “Downton Abbey”) explained, show creator Julian Fellowes is clever about how he compiles what are obvious soap tropes.

“He’s almost got a cheekiness and a humor to it, which is a difficult thing – to have drama and humor,” she said. “With any series, to keep people interested you have to build on your stories and keep on your toes. Julian’s stories are based in truth – in season one, where a Turkish diplomat dies in Mary’s bed, that was based on a true story he read, diaries found in a friend of his’ home. Some things you think couldn’t possibly happen are based in truth – life is stranger than art sometimes.”

One other benefit: Shortened seasons mean shows don’t have to drag out plots for the sake of filling up airtime. One of daytime soaps’ biggest problems was that they put out about 260 hours of show per year (five hours, each weekday, every week). Cable shows we love today do 13 hours per year, on average; a big-output broadcast series like “SVU” may nearly double that. But for sheer content, soap operas ruled. It’s just that the content was stretched really, really thin.

And prime-time soaps? They’ve been with us a lot longer than cable, says Harry Hamlin, who currently appears on “Mad Men” but got one of his best-known jobs in the 1980s, on “L.A. Law.” “That was a soap,” he said. “ ‘Mad Men’ is a soap. ‘Homeland,’ these are all soaps,” he said. “And when I use the word ‘soaps’ I use it in a non-pejorative way. It’s about people and their lives and how they evolve over time. Those first years on ‘L.A. Law’ there was a part of me who thought I was slumming it – but looking back now I see it was brilliant storytelling and filmmaking.”

I see more of you murmuring now. You understand: It’s all right to be a soap opera addict. It’s the communal hearth fires that we come together over, the place where we tell stories and know one another from how we interpret them. That’s all right, it’s okay. It’s not really an addiction, it’s a way of life. And who knows? Soon enough we may go back to the more sterile, “Just the facts, ma’am” way TV used to be, if only to cleanse our brains’ palates.

At least, that’s what Rene Balcer thought might happen when we spoke in 2006 and shows like “Desperate Housewives” and “Lost” were starting to dominate weekly police procedurals. Balcer served as a showrunner at one time or another on all three major “Law & Order” franchises, and he knows that world best. No wonder he’s eager for it to return.

“The idea of following a single story for an hour has endured for a few thousand years; I think it’ll endure for another few thousand,” he said. “Even big stories with ensemble casts, they fall out of favor too. Six years from now, the pendulum will probably swing away again. Maybe sooner? Who knows?”

We’re still waiting, of course. Tune in tomorrow.

This column originally appeared at Curiosity Quills.

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