The Dreamer will not Awaken

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Filmmaker, Artist, and dreamer David Lynch as died. All artists are unique voices and visions, but few have the dreamlike quality that impacts generations such as was the films of David Lynch.

I first encountered Lynch’s visual language when along with a pack of friends I went to a local arthouse theater for a double feature of Roger Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors and David Lynch’s Eraserhead. I still have clear memories of sitting in that darkened theater telling myself that eventually the movie Eraserhead would start making sense. It never did, but its images stayed parked powerfully in my mind.

I next ran into Lynch with his big budget studio production of Dune, the least David Lynch film that man ever released. It is so unlike his vision that extended television versions do not credit him at his insistence.

My next encounter however transformed me into a fan when I went to the theater to see Blue Velvet. I came out of that screen struck with the beauty and the horror of his mind. The glory of a good and simple life, the depravity of a bad one and just how closely interlocked the two truly were.

When Twin Peaks hit the air, my take was that Lynch had brought Blue Velvet to television, but of course the series was both far darker and for more normal than that movie had been.

I cannot say I have seen all of his work, but what I have watched has stayed with me and haunts my thoughts more than most financial blockbusters.

Every death is the loss of a voice and every one touches the world in ways that vast and complex. Lynch touched many of us and he lives on in our dreams and nightmares.

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The Art and The Artist Part One Million

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With the further and now apparently well documented allegations that paint Neil Gaiman as a rather nasty piece of work we are once again thrust into the unresolved and unresolvable debate concerning separating the artists from the art.

First off, it is decision of personal moral standards. I hold no ill will or any negative opinion for anyone that decides to boycott or who continues to support the art an artist. We each make our own choices about how much compromise the broken world demands of us. No one can live in this universe pure and unsullied. Every choice we make has consequences and moral implications.

Personally, I think one defining line is asking how much of the art promotes the objectionable stands, beliefs, or actions of the artist. Roman Polanski should be rotting in a prison cell for forcibly raping a child. yet, his cinematic production of Macbeth or Chinatown do not promote such a world view and while both have a cynical approach to evil in the world, both recognize and clearly delineate that the evil is real and not an arbitrary illusion crafted by mere mortals.

Bryan Singer a talented filmmaker is always accosted with more than a little credibility of also sexually abusing minors. If true he should face legal consequences. But it is also true that his film X-Men is an allegory for the mistreatment of minorities and takes a stand against such bigotry.

Kevin Spacey’s career was derailed by allegations of sexual abuse and he cowardly tried to use he newly disclosed sexuality as a shield. A dodge that did not work and he was ejected from a number of productions. Spacey’s portray of Jack Vincennes as morally corrupt cop who comes to realize the evil he has helped perpetuate and tried to correct it is a deeply moving and touching job that gives hope to the concept of redemption.

In each of these cases and others I would argue that the art is not corrupted by the evils of the artist. These are also all films, and I think the boycotting of film productions if particularly problematic.

Film is a collaborative art and to boycott a film is not just a harm to the objectionable artist but to all the artist that work and profit from that production. Boycott the Harry Potter films due to Rowlings despicable beliefs and you also are striking against Radcliff who gives every appearance of a devoted ally. Boycotting film, for me personally, has too high of a ration of collateral damage to target.

Books are a different matter.

Only three entities profit from the sale of a book, the book seller, the publisher, and the author. Everyone else has already been paid and compensated for their time and labor. If you are one to buy books then your support for the book seller is unlikely to change, leaving just the publisher and the author. Given that I find the boycotting of books from questionable artist much easier to justify.

Luckily for me I was never much of a Gaiman fan with his novels, so not buying them isn’t so much a boycott as life as normal. For you, well that’s your decision.

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Celebrity is a Performance

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The Neil Gaiman story which went much wider this week with a long and disturbing account of his alleged sexual assaults and other nasty work has stirred up some very deep feelings of betrayal among his fans in the fantasy and horror communities.

I don’t blame them for feeling betrayed. Gaiman had constructed a nearly perfect public persona that invited respect and admiration. He doled out advice that encouraged artists of all stripes as they struggled with impostor syndrome, his stories celebrated the outsider, and they presented a level of inclusion that welcome many groups of people form whom society has always felt excluding and threatening.

But it his public persona was all for show, and the most vital lesson we need to take away from all this is that all public personas are for show.

Gaiman, Whedon, Cosby are but a few names of men with public faces that made them admired are people who lifted up others and presented what appeared to be images of our better selves. The truth for each of these turned far darker than most expected.

Everyone who is some form of celebrity presents a public face that is not their true self. Some do it to market themselves and their art. Some do it to cover up an inner insecurity that never leaves them. Some do it because their true selves are not readily accepted in wider society. This is particularly true for those in the closet. But some do it to conceal their monstrous nature.

On the outside looking in we cannot not their true selves, we can only know what they project, the image that they create and distribute for their own purposes, some of which are mercenary, some self-protecting, and some nefarious. This is way it is important to never place anyone on that pedestal of admiration.

Praise the art, praise the skill of the artist, but do not believe that simply because of the art that they are good. They may be, there are noble, good, and great people everywhere, but you cannot know them save by their actions and even then, your data set is limited by what they want you to know.

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Folk Horror Review: Robin Redbreast

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Produced and broadcast December 1970 as part of the BBC anthology program A Play for Today is a modern set piece of folk horror. Originally broadcast in color the only surviving elements are a 16mm B&W copy due to the BBC’s notorious penny-pinching habit of recording over their master tapes.

BBC

Norah (Anna Cropper) a thoroughly modern woman, having been dumped by her boyfriend of eight years, decides to abandon the city and live for a few months in a country cottage that she and her ex-had purchased just before the dissolution of their relationship.

The isolated village and its inhabitant are quaint and strange to Norah’s modern sensibilities with the woman she hired to help clean and maintain the cottage a busybody and gossip. When Norah discovers that there is an infestation of field mice in her cottage she’s directed to seek out Robin a local man who can perform the extermination. She finds Robin (Andrew Bradford) in the forest practicing martial arts nude.

Robin, though simple-minded, attracts the lonely Norah but slowly it begins to seem that the villagers have arranged everything to induced Norah and Robin into a relationship with some dark unspecified purpose at their goal.

I first heard of Robin Redbreast on the documentary about Folk Horror but at that time aside from one massive collection of films, it what not available anywhere to view. Recently it has become available to stream in the Ad-supported service Tubi and at a brisk one hour and twenty minutes it doesn’t require a deep commitment of time.

I think that the accident of only as B&W element surviving actually works in the film’s favor, giving it the village a feel of something not quite of modern times, very fitting for folk horror which is nearly always about the collision between tradition and modernity.

Limitations of both budget and technical capability do hamper some aspects of the production. A sequence that is supposed to be from a frightened bird’s perspective is achieved solely through crash zooms and whip pans of the camera that are quite off putting. There are a few conveniences of plot but overall while not approaching becoming a favorite for me of the folk horror genre Robin Redbreast was worth at least a watch.

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Series Review: The Penguin

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2022 saw the release of Matt Reeves’ interpretation of the classic DC Comics character Batman. Taking a more film noir approach the movie emphasized Batman as a detective over the character as a martial artist. The movie also introduced us the Colin Ferrell as Oswald Cobb, The Penguin. Reimagined as a lower class criminal hungry to make a name for himself and now HBO/Max has released a limited series focusing on the character.

HBO/Max

The series opens just weeks after the events of The Batman, the underworld is in chaos following the downfall of its leading mafia bosses, the poorest areas of Gotham are devastated by disaster, and corruption remains king in the city and its administration. Oz, (Colin Farrell) doesn’t so much seize the opportunity created by the chaos as his hand is forced due to his impulsive nature and fragile pride. Scrambling to stay ahead of vicious gangsters including Sofia Falcone (Cristin Miliot) recently released from Arkham Asylum, and the consequences of his own poorly thought-out actions Oz has only on his side a naive street kid, Victor (Rhenzy Feliz), left homeless by disaster and Oz’s own mother slowly succumbing to a terrible wasting neurological disease.

Where The Batman lived with the constraints of an MPAA PG-13 rating, The Penguin thrives as a gritty R-rating equivalent, awash with language and violence that is only tolerated by the rarest of comic book movies. The series is part organized crime thriller with only a single shot to drive home that this is the home of Batman and deep character study of a people trapped and formed by their tragic histories.

The past weekend Colin Farrel took home a Golden Globe for his performance in The Penguin. Farrell is utterly transformed not only by the magical make-up effects that hold up even under insanely tight close-ups but by Farrell’s own fantastic performance. His voice, his accent, his physicality all belong to a man named Oswald Cobb (yest that changed it from Cobbelpot.) and it’s a powerful and moving depiction of a man that can charm and lie and always has his own best interests at heart.

Cristin Milioti, a performed I was unfamiliar with before this series, is another stand out talent in a cast packed with talent. With the subtlest facial expressions she informs the audience that this character’s mental health is always in question and the danger she presents is never far from the surface.

The Penguin is an outstanding series that twists and turns as it walks the viewer into the hell that is Gotham’s underworld where hope has long since died.

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My Writing Report Card

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It is a new year and I am not one for resolutions, but it is a time to look back at what I wanted to achieve and what I did achieve.

I set one writing goal for myself in 2024, to write a full folk/cosmic horror novel before the end of the year.

Now, I did not set this goal in January but rather July, the first half of the year was finishing up the previous horror novel, getting it out the door to a publisher I had worked with before and begin the tedious process of searching for representation. All those goals were met by July with the agent hunting a continuing endeavor. That left six months to go from a vague concept to a completed first draft for the new novel.

As my last post indicated I did not quite meet that objective. The first draft landed at 84 thousand words on Jan 3rd, 2025, three days late.

Considering the unique process this book followed to its initial draft I’m quite pleased. Normally, I am an outliner, produced pages and pages of notes, characters backgrounds and a detailed map of the plot and the story as it unfolds. Not this time. With only a vague notion of what I was going to do with the story, and shockingly for me, no clearly defined ending, I just began writing.

I expected that if I made it past 10,000 words then the project had a better than fifty/fifty chance of reaching completion. I found a few sticky spots where I stopped my weekday writing to let ideas cook and figure out the next few events but generally, I maintained a steady pace of 800 to 1000 words each weekday.

In fact, had I not on the final week of the year taken two days off to detail notes for the table Top RPG I run I would have met that December 31st self-imposed deadline.

Now I need to do serious revision work. I had to create new backstory elements for the protagonist halfway through the draft and that means the first half doesn’t line up with the second half. There are characters that appeared in the second half that need to be established and such, but overall, I am happy with the draft and the project.

I give myself a solid B as a grade and look forward to the next three months as I mold this thing into its final form.

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Goal Not Met

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So, in late June early July I began writing my American Folk/Cosmic horror novel. An experiment for not only was it a genre I had never attempted in long form before but I began the manuscript without an outline.

My goal was to have a completed first draft, but not an edited one, by the end of the year on December 31st, 2024. Today is that date and the manuscript is not finished.

It is close, it is amazingly close, but with mere hours until the close of the year and a full day at the day-job still to complete I have to face the fact that I missed the goal.

There were writing days between July and today when I did not write. This new process of flying without a map produced a few times when in the middle of the story I became more lost and disoriented that usual. The end of the year is also a time when the day job become quite busy and pushing myself into serious amounts of overtime, while profitable, instigated migraines and cost me writing time as well.

Still, I did quite well. When I say it is close to being completed, I am talking less than a few thousand words. A day or two of writing and it will have been landed. Granted because of the no outline process the edit and revision process will be far more extensive than for other manuscripts. Halfway through the story I realized I had a motivation issue with the protagonist. What I had given her was not enough to propel her through the entire story. A change to her profession fixed that trouble, adding additional reasons for her to continue in a dangerous environment but that means new scenes and more rewrite for what had already been crafted.

Still, I like what I have written. I like the concept, and I look forward to completing the manuscript.

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Series Review: Dune Prophesy

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Set ten thousand years before the coming of the Kwisatz Haderach Paul Atreides the series Dune Prophesy concerns itself with the early Imperium following the Machine Wars when humanity freed itself from sentient computers and the founding of the Bene Gesserit.

HBO

Thirty years earlier the sisterhood, before becoming the Bene Gesserit, suffers a crisis with their found Mother Superior dies and power struggle erupts between factions, a struggle won by the fanatically dedicated and deeply emotionally scarred Vayla Harkkonnen and her sister Tula. With careful mechanizations over the following thirty years, they are now close to bring the emperor’s daughter into the sisterhood and through her placing one of their own onto the throne. Their plans are disrupted when a mysterious solider who apparently survived a sandworm attack appears in the court with a deep burning hatred of the sisterhood and strange inexplicable powers.

Dune Prophesy is the next cinematic adaptation of the novels and stories created by Frank Herbert and successfully brought to the movie screen by French Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve. With an ample production budget and a cast of veteran and new actors the series is a wonder of dramatic science-fiction television, a worthy follow-on to the pair of films from Villeneuve.

As has become typical of television of late the season is rather shot with just six episode none of which are bloated with any filler. Also, as it has become the practice in the industry the series doesn’t answer all the questions raised leaving some for further seasons.

I thoroughly enjoyed Dune Prophesy and anticipate further interesting and unsettling seasons.

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Season’s View: A Christmas Carol (2019)

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Charles Dickens’ novella A Christmas Carol has been endlessly adapted to stage, screen, and television often attracting some of each generations greatest actors to the role of Scrooge. The adaptations have run from dramatic to the farcical, but few are as unique as the one aired on the BBC and adapted by Steven Knight.

BBC

Produced by Knight and Ridley Scot this television adaptation retain the core plot, a miserly and mean businessman, Ebenezer Scrooge (Guy Pearce) is visited by spirits on Christmas Eve that by showing him the truth of his life and life in general effect a change to transform the man into a person of altruism and compassion. What Steven Knight however makes serious alterations to the nature of Scrooge’s cruelty and the deep emotional psychological wounds the man carries, while presenting the events in the truly terrifying nature implied by their mere existence.

This adaptation is a piece of horror fiction with the supernatural as something beyond comprehension and therefore something frightening to the soul. The series, for it was presented in 3 parts originally, is also visually fantastic. I can think of no other adaptation that wows with such amazing shots as this one. Instead of trying to make the three spirits the focus of inventive make-up or special effects director Nick Murphy works on the dream logic and unreal aspect of Scrooge’s vision and travels.

This program is not for family viewing. It deals with hard subjects of not only cruelty but also of abuse, exploring abuse in Scrooge’s childhood that he revisits in a manner on the world as an adult. Knight is clearly aware that victims of abuse often through their unhealed wounds become abusers themselves. As such Scrooge’s eventual transformation is not one created but ignorance of the world being removed but of a man facing the horrors of his past and understanding how they made him the monster he had become.

Dark, gothic, and a true piece of horror the 2019 A Christmas Carol is a wonder that terrifies and transforms. It is available for purchase on Amazon prime for a mere $2.00.

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Movie Review: Nosferatu (2024)

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In 1897 Stoker’s novel Dracula was published becoming for more than a hundred year the definitive text on vampires. 25 years later German director F.W. Murnau released his film Nosferatuwritten by Henrik Galeen, a script that was found to have infringed on Stoker’s novel. Despite the court ordering all copies destroyed, the fact of the international release proved a boon to global cinephiles and Nosferatu survived.

In 1979 Nosferatu climbed from its cinematic grave with a new remake starring eclectic actor Klaus Kinski.

Focus Features

And now after another several decades Christmas 2024 brought us another adaptation by celebrated horror director Robert Eggers (The Witch, and The Lighthouse.) but taking care to credit Stoker’s original novel as well as the 1922 screenplay as source materials.

It is 1834 and aspiring estate clerk Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) is dispatched by his employer to a distant client, Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard) leaving his new bride Ellen (Lilly-Rose Depp) with close friends (Aaron Taylor-Johnson & Emma Corrin). Count Orlok, the titular Nosferatu, harbors insidious plans to leave his isolated castle and feed upon the citizens of a modern city and is particularly drawn to the virtuous Ellen. Thomas, along with friends and associates is drawn into a battle against evil and death trying to defeat Orlok.

Robert Eggers delivers a dark, moody, and gothic tale of horror and evil beyond reason, with stunning desaturated color from cinematographer Jarin Blaschke. This is not a tale that utilizes a charismatic foreigner as a metaphor for sexual desires and repressions but one of an evil drawn from the dead that desires to bring death to everywhere it travels. Orlok unlike Dracula in most adaptations does not seduce, he feeds. He is not attractive but repulsive and when he is easily visible the Count’s nature as a walking corpse becomes revolting apparent. This film depicts the horror of being the victim of the Nosferatu and of the unending torment of being one. It is not accident that the tag line on the poster is ‘Succumb to the Darkness.’ We often talk of succumbing to a disease and that is never the desired outcome.

 Eggers slips between the world the characters inhabit and their dreams and nightmares so easily that the audience just as the poor cursed characters often cannot know what is real and what is phantasm.

Perhaps the consistently best director working in horror today Robert Eggers’ filmography is one of artistic success to artistic success here is hoping that addition to his massive talent Nosferatu finds the commercial success that studios desire.

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