The Importance of the Denouement

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Once the story and plot have concluded all that remains for your prose or film is the denouement. This is a vital element of storytelling and one that if missing can seriously unsettle a reader or audience.

The purpose of the denouement is that it provides the space and time for the emotional climax of the tale to flower. If the story is a tragedy, it allows the audience to feel the weight of the loss or the futility of the character’s resistance to their fate. If the story has a conventionally ‘happy’ ending, then the denouement allows the audience to bask in the victory and empathize with the characters journey.

A denouement can be extremely short, sometimes in film a single freeze-frame can provide the emotional closure a story requires. Most are short segments that simply allow the reader or audience to cool down from the heat of the climax. An excellent example of this in film is Ripley’s recorded message in the original Alien. After igniting the engines, she has defeated the monster and there is no more plot to complete. However, ending the film with her watching the Zeta Reticulian parasite ejected in the void would have been unsatisfying. Our hearts were beating too fast to end it there, the denouement was absolutely essential.

Of course, a denouement can be overdone, creating a sense that a story or film never ends. The best example of that is the conclusion of The Return of the King where it felt as if the film had ended several times because the director was insistent on getting to the novel’s final line. That extended denouement did not work for everyone.

And when the denouement is all together missing the ending feels abrupt often leaving a reader or audience confused and shocked.

An American Werewolf in London has no denouement and nearly everyone the first time that view it are stunned by the unexpected and nearly slap in the face manner in which the film goes to credits and end song.

Think about your denouement and what you need it to do and how you will achieve it.

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There Are No Norms

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I have not written on the American Political disaster that unfolds about us recently not because it is unimportant or that I do not care but because in my heart I knew such writing to be futile. There are very very few my words may sway in even the smallest of measures. For the most part people are cemented into their camps and only November thru January will let us know if this ship of democracy founders or survives this tempest.

After yesterday’s SCOUTUS corrupt ruling I have to at least make some attempt, I have to speak the truth as I see it.

This heavily politized courts finds that people have no right to bodily autonomy because the words are not in the document but amazingly finds full and partial immunity to commit crimes for the nation’s highest ranking law enforcement officer. If Trump is returned to the Oval Office this petty, ignorant, vengeful man will turn the full power of the Federal government upon his enemies. He will order the IRS to audit, investigate, and harass the wealthy who spoke out against him. The FBI and the DOJ stripped of independence will be hounds sicked on political and personal enemies. The Office of the President will be for sale to those who enrich Trum personally. Hey, you want that carried interest loophole expanded? Well, he won’t sign the bill, the very definition of an ‘official act’ until you make the requisite deposit to his bank account. This vile greedy and hateful man has no loyalty, no patriotism and this country’s enemies around the globe know this fact.

Make no mistake in reading the decision neutrally. This partisan court which has already decided that stare decisis is for sucker and that have twisted and invented new interpretations to achieve their desired outcome will in no manner apply such reasoning for any democratic politician. This immunity is for one Republican at that solely.

We have but one path forward to save our Republic. We must vote Democratic at every level. We must give the majorities in both houses to the Democratic Party and ensure that a Democratic person holds the Oval Office. The ‘norms’ are gone and with that power the Democrats must jettison the filibuster and reform the court. If that is not done this election this cycle we may very well be doomed.

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Time and Familiarity Distorts Art

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By chance I am reexperiencing a couple of television series. To follow along with the podcast The Detective and The Log Lady my sweetie-wife and I are rewatching the surrealist mystery horror series Twin Peaks with an episode each Sunday evening. On YouTube I am enjoying watching millennial reactors experience the original series of Star Trek for the very first time.

Season one of Twin Peaks speeds along much faster than my faulty memory recalled. I had forgotten that the entire first series, as the Brit would say, totaled just 8 episodes. Not even half of a tradition American television season. My emotional memory of a slow, languid story that unfolded at a leisurely pace is entirely a construction that the mood of the series and the decay determine by the decades since its debut.

Star Trek has had a different course in my recent re-exposure to the program. I grew up watching reruns of the series in the 70s. (With very hazy memories as a child of the original broadcast.) I have seen every episode countless time, own the program on Blu-ray dice and have player the Roulette Episode game with myself where dice determine which story to watch.

This saturation of the series, with a judgment set by decades of rewatching that fixes the good and bad episodes into their hierarchy is quite shaken when a new viewer comes along.

Let That be Your Last Battlefield has long been on my list of some of Trek’s worst episodes. Aliens with superpowers that exist solely to put the plot of a deterministic course and a ‘message’ presented with all the subtly of a frying pan to the face made this episode painful to watch.

And yet people new to the series, without their opinions set my decades of judgment, can find the story engaging and relevant. My familiarity with the episode exaggerated it faults until I could no longer see its charms.

Oh, it remains a poor episode and the faults I have mentioned are glaring with my experience as a writer, but the bod doesn’t always overpower the good. It is important to try and keep that fresh new viewer experience alive.

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It Has Begun

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Last week and continuing for the rest of the calendar year I have begun writing my next novel. No, the werewolf book hasn’t found a home or an agent but in the game you cannot wait. Anyway, the best way to keep my mind off the waiting is to throw myself into the newest project.

This is my untitled American Folk Horror set on an island commune established at the height of the counterculture in the late 1960s and one that harbors a dark secret.

My earlier novels have nearly all been carefully outlined and plotted before I began writing. That is until The Wolves of Wallace Point which quite by accident became my first book written without a preplanned outline. I will admit that after a few thousand words I stopped and sketched an act breakdown but not a full outline, just enough to know what events ended each act.

This book is looking to be a hybrid creation process. I have carefully crafted the core characters with their backstories and motivations, and I have fully plotted and outline act 1 of 5 but not the rest. I know my acts and I think what I will do is outline each act when I complete the previous one.

I have in mind a character death/murder that I have hopes will be the most unsettling and terrifying thing I have ever written, and I can’t wait to get there.

5500 words have already been committed to the first two chapters and a modest production rate of 800 words per weekday should see the first draft completed before the new year. Only the final product will let me know if this has been a worthy experiment or an utter failure.

Fear of failure cannot be allowed to stop you, or one will never get anything of value completed.

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Movie Review: The Bikeriders

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Exploitation movies are ones that often focus on outcasts and other characters not part of ‘mainstream’ culture usually with an emphasis on violence, drugs, and sexual activity.

Slice of Life Movies are a genre that are more staid, calm, and depict the day to day living of a set of characters usually family or close friends without a plot that presents some existential danger.

By Focus Features – IMP Awards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74764749

The 1960s and 1970s saw a marked growth in exploitation cinema including the ‘biker’ subgenre and the withering of the Slice of life genre so one might expect 2024’s The Bikeriders to be a modern interpretation of exploitation but in reality it is a slice of life where the family is the chose family of the motorcycle club The Vandals.

Inspired by the photobook and interviews found in The Bikeriders as photojournalist and author Danny Lyon and his immersion into the real-life motorcycle club The Outlaws, The Bikeriders is fictional with fictional characters closely modeled on reality.

Told primarily by way of interviews that narrate flashbacks the film follows the growth and eventually degeneration of The Vandals as its nature and membership changed during the late 60s and early 70s. The story’s principal point of view is that of Kathy Bauer (Jodie Comer), her love and marriage to Benny (Austin Butler) and the man that divides Benny’s loyalty the club leader Johnny (Tom Hardy).

While there is some violence in this film it is not exploitative and it is not glorified. The Bikeriders at its heart seems to the be about the hole at the center of modern masculinity. Johnny starts the club on a whim and Benny’s deep laconic loyalty is never fully explored. For both these men and most of the members The Vandals fills some missing emotional need, a need that neither man ever explores or voices but drives them to lethal dangers just the same.

This is not a film that wears its thesis statement on its sleeve. The message is left entirely up to the audience for interpretation. Life and death seemingly come at random without reason or meaning throughout the story and there is scarcely any plot. It is a character study of particular people in a particular time, one that will play quite well on streaming at home.

The Bikeriders is not for everyone, but it is an interesting film with vividly drawn characters that remain with after the reels have stopped spinning.

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John Grant: a Study in Masculinity, Arrogance, and Self-Loathing

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Last night in preparation to listening to the podcast The Evolution of Horror‘s discussion I re-watched 1971’s Australian social horror Wake in Fright.

Spoilers

The film, based on the novel of the same title by Kenneth Cook, follows young schoolteacher John Grant on his scorching Christmas vacation. After losing all his money gambling Grant is stranded in the town of Bundanyabba in the parched Australian outback. He descends into a multi-day drinking binge with local men, partakes in a cruel, vicious kangaroo hunt that is more slaughter than hunt, and a likely drunken homosexual assignation. After failing to kill himself and spending the rest of his vacation in hospital Grant return to the even smaller town where he teaches and rents a room answering queries with, yeah, he had a good holiday.

From the moments we meet Grant silently waiting out the end of the school day so he can flee just like the children he teaches it’s clear that he harbors a deep disdain for the people of the outback. This is not alienated by the somewhat larger town of Bundayabba ‘The Yabba’ and he treats these townsfolk with similar condescension. Grant’s action however reveals him to be no more intelligent and in fact less so that the locals enjoying their drink and gambling when he loses all of his travel funds playing ‘Two-up.’ The ancient saying is that pride goes before the fall is concretely fact for the character of John Grant.

While the character displays a deep abiding disdain for the locals, he is shown repeatedly lacking the internal will to resist their peer pressure. He introduces himself as John Grant but when the local cop more than once calls him ‘jack’ a common enough nickname for people named John, Grant never corrects him, despite never during his staying introducing himself that way. Again and again Grant when pressed by other men caves to the pressure to drink, a strong indication that internally Grant is incomplete and possibly at war with himself.

During an evening of binge drinking Grant is led for a nighttime stroll by the adult daughter of one his mates. Janette in a direct and forward manner attempts to seduce Grant into sexual intercourse but after wordlessly and timidly complying he is unable to perform, scrambling off the prone woman to vomit. It is interesting that in a film that stays with John during his multiday alcoholic binge and takes to the effort to deal with going to the toilet the only depiction of retching is when he is sexually engaged with the film’s only substantial female character. Even after his same-sex drunken encounter where many movies would insert a reference to the character vomiting, Wake in Fright does not. John Grant’s sexuality is left an unanswered question with a very reasonable interpretation being that he is deeply closeted and in the hyper-masculine world of the Australian Outback quite self-loathing.

Masculinity plays an important element in Wake in Fright. It is always men who insist on John joining them in drinking. It is men who question why John would prefer talking with a woman to drinking. It is to men that John seems always trying to prove himself with boasts of his skill with a rifle and eventually with his attempt to match their physical prowess wrestling with and slaughter by hand with a knife an injured and immature kangaroo. John’s holiday plans had apparently been to travel to Sydney and be with Robin and yet the entire time he is stranded in ‘the Yabba’ he never attempts to call her for assistance. In the novel is apparently clear that the phot he carries is of a woman he has seen, knows somewhat but is not romantically involved with. The film never directly touches on this fantasy of a romantic relationship, but his visions of ‘Robin’ are never full scenes but something more like a teenager’s imaginings. It is what John Grant thinks being masculine is and something he can’t achieve.

Wake in Fright ends ambiguously on the nature of Grant’s character. The audience has no clue is his comment that he enjoyed his vacation was simply a polite but meaningless response or if in retrospect he did enjoy his sojourn to ‘the Yabba.’ There are dramatic gestures such as tearing up the photograph of Robin or any overly emotional reaction to the town on his return. Any change, revelation, or acceptance of Grant’s character by Grant is purely internal for John Grant alone.

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The Most Unlikely Movie I want to See This Year

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It’s not The Bikeriders which looks fascinating though I suspect I am going to have trouble with the accents. No, the movie I am almost certain to make a trip to the cinema to watch is MaXXXine the direct sequel and third film in the ‘X’ franchise.

A24

When X originally debuted in 2022 I had little interest in seeing it. Slashers are my least loved genre of horror films and nothing in the advertising gave me any reason to suspect that X would pierce that disinterest. Then a number of horror cinema podcasts began touting the movie’s style and quality and I relented taking in a late-night screening at my local multiplex.

X bored me with cliche character acting in stupid manners that no actual person would. It was repeat with the tropes and worn-out ideas from countless other slashers with only the barest of novelties.

Fine. The movie was not for me, and I chalked it up to learning where my tastes differed from those on the podcasts. The prequal film Pearl came and went without sparking any interest in me and this year we get MaXXXine which follows the sole survivor of X and her quest for fame in Hollywood.

Something in these trailers have hooked my attention and curiosity. The cast looks fantastic and despite my utter disappointment with X and its illogical script I am being pulled into MaXXXine’s orbit.

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Juneteenth: A day to Remember Dreams and Nightmares

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June the 19th 1865 is the day the freedom loving Texans were, at the end of a rifle, forced to free the people that they had enslaved, the final state of the traitorous Confederacy to do so. It was not the end of slavery in the United States that would come officially later the same year, but it was a vital and important step along the long rocky road to freedom. A road we still stumble down.

This is a day of celebration as it was the date that the United States Army freed the enslaved peoples of Texas partially validate the great principals upon which this nation is founded. It is also the day to remember the horrific hundreds of years of nightmarish torment our nation visited up a subjugated population. Like an element in a state of quantum state that is simultaneously wave and particle America’s history is both pride and shame.

That the founders of this nation expressed all too human hypocrisy does not negate the amazing ideal that ‘all men are created equal’ nor does that bold septimate absolve them of their evils. The inspiring belief that freedom and equality are due to all people has unleashed a forced unlike any other on this planet and the failures to live up to those aspirations is a source of shame but also a motivation to do better.

Far too many people only want to think of history in one mode or another. That the centuries of slavery are an original and inescapable sin upon everything this nation has achieved, or that the evils of the past are dead and bear no relevance today. Both extremes are wrong headed.  It is the wave and particle duality again. It is both things and it is neither thing. It is the history that we must celebrate and the shame we must never forget.

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The Birds is Overrated

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The podcast The Evolution of Horror for its current season is covering horror films in which nature is the source of horror with Nature Bites Back and last week’s episode reached Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film The Birds.

Universal Studios

While I am familiar with the movie and even have some vague memories of it playing on the television while I was present, I cannot actually say that I ever watched the film in its entirety. Now I have and my verdict is that it is vastly overrated.

I am a fan of slow-burn horror which is what The Birds should have been but there is slow and there is full stop dead in the water. The first half of the film is socialite’s Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) and her jesting infatuation and meet cute with Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor). She follows him to his weekend home in the idyllic coastal village of Bodega Bay just north of San Francisco. Meets his former flame, his little sister, and cool, aloof mother. It is nearly 50 minutes into this film titled The Birds before the first bird strike occurs. There had been no real build-up to this, no ominous images of avian observation, in short from the master of suspense there had been no suspense.

The second half of the film is the building level of bird attacks that comes in widely spaces waves with the attack at the restaurant and gas stations providing the most dramatic clips. (It also displays Bodega bay’s fire department as incompetent as they attempt to use direct water sprays to fight a class B fire.)

The films 3rd act retreats to a siege story as the principal characters become trapped in a house, boarded up tight against the flocking fatalities. Then after suffering one last massive valley from the birds the characters in the lengthy pause between waves get into a car and drive away.

I am not bothered by the fact that the cause of the attacks is unknown. I am not bothered by the fact that there is no clear indication that the attacks actually ever end. That sort of ambiguous ending is something I can very much get behind. I am bothered that the characters’ survival and escape has nothing to do with the characters and the choices that they make. There is no moment of decision. No moment of insight. No moment when someone is terribly torn between what they want and what needs to happen. The birds pause and the characters drive away, utterly and completely devoid of agency on any of the characters’ part.

The Birds is a film I shall not watch again.

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The New Novel

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I am about ready to begin writing my next novel. An American Folk horror set on a commune where things are not as idyllic as they appear.

A title for this piece still eludes me but hopefully something will appear as I compose the work. I have sketched out all the major characters, their histories and their relationships. I know all my major twists and I have in mind what I hope to be a truly horrific scene of one character’s death.

The plan is to begin the actual writing this week, while continuing more of the groundwork for the second half of the novel and completing the book by the end of the year. If I land around 90,000 words that requires a daily output of just around 750 words per day, excluding weekend.

No word yet if my publisher like my werewolf novel but the only thing worse than waiting for word is waiting while doing nothing.

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