Ted Mann I talked to, Ted Mann in Bradbury bio: A Startling Coincidence

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of discussing Canadian estate law with Ottawa lawyer Ted Mann as part of my research and revisions to my horror novel Monstrous. 

While wearing my book reviewer's hat last night, reading Jonathan R. Eller's Bradbury Beyond Apollo, I discovered this passage on p. 29 about Bradbury trying to adapt his stories for film.

"Both men had a point, but the uneasy relationship became even worse when Ted Mann bought into the project.

Mann was the dynamic cinema-franchise owner and entrepreneur who would soon buy one of Bradbury's favourite Hollywood landmarks, Grauman's Chinese Theatre and place his own name on the marquee. He had also moved into film production, and his first producing credit was Warner Brothers' 1969 production of The Illustrated Man-a project where Bradbury felt as if he were an outside in all aspects of production."

This is simply the kind of startling coincidence that I cannot make up, but it certainly looks like I have.

Bam! Revising breakthrough

And then, while riding the ghost train in my imagination, boom!, there I saw yet another solution. As I rewrite Monstrous, I see that a scene shouldn't be occurring in a store just down the road from a retrofitted inn. I guess I wanted to work in some ginchy, scary bits like in the film Splinter, where the characters are trapped in a convenience store. Only, in my work-in-progress, I wrote the nearby store as, alternately, a park store and a convenience-store-type setting. Thing is, neither choice makes sense, because a park store would be closed for the camping season by mid-October (when the book is set), a convenience store wouldn't be zoned commercially and allowed to be built near either a campground or retrofitted inn.

So, my settling doesn't makes sense, legally or simply, realistically. So I mulled this over, talked with my fellow writer partner about it, and they asked why must the setting be a store? What do the characters need there? And, in answering her, it dawned on me that they need a particular item in the store in order to fight seemingly supernatural entities. So she suggested that I simple move or change the setting to a tool shed or equipment shed.

Armed with that solid idea, I revised part of the scene in the store (still in-progress, in fact) and I realize the characters must enter a different setting and meet the same character, but all that can be done in a toolshed. A ranger or groundskeeper could, theoretically, be there doing maintenance and they could seek out his help. And he is so much fun, this salty, should-be-retired park ranger. He is in utter disbelief and outraged to be placed in a weird and horrifying situation. 

In fact, the whole scene could have a whiff of 1950's horror, with younger characters trying to convince an older character that something terrible is happening.

So, bam!, indeed. This scene does play out quite differently. Oh, and a hint about what my characters are up against. I've got a werewolf, a ghost-fighter and a warlock. What are they looking for? Salt, of course. For the badness that is about to descend on them. 

Mesmerizing: The Deuce, a show about the rise of porn in NYC

Binging on The Deuce, a three-season HBO series focusing on the rise of the porn industry in New York City in '71-'72 (s1), '76-'77 (s2) and '84-'85 (s3) produced by James Franco (in a double role as a twin brothers Vincent and Frankie Martino) and Maggie Gyllenhaal (as sex-worker-cum-porn-director Eileen "Candy" Merrell). While The Deuce is not the most uplifting show, it is realistic, a fascinating and at many times mesmerizing fictionalization of pimps, hustlers, cops, club managers and the mob gangsters among the proliferating porn industry. Complex characters figures, and many queer ones, figure in the story, even if they are not always redeemable, and aging with each season. The show is quite historically accurate, as far as I can tell, and my knowledge of porn history is considerable. It's also a vicarious trip through Times Square at the height of its decadence and danger, so it's fascinating voyeuristic stuff. Franco and Gyllenhaal are astonishing, as is most of the cast.

Season one is a slow-burning lover, but transfixing.

Thanks, Pete, of Movies 'n Stuff for providing season 3.

Gretel & Hansel briefest review

Gretel & Hansel is kind of a solid piece of revisionist filmmaking. Shot like The Witch or Beyond the Black Rainbow. Mesmerizing soundtrack a la It Follows. Solid acting. Neat reframing, but still same fairy tale, explaining what happened before and after the witch. Lush with mature shots, which I am admittedly a sucker for during pandemic.