Believing the Lie

Today, we're going with a themed approach. First up is the new short story by Rusty

I got a first look at this one as I did the editing on it. However, that doesn't stop me from being able to give an objective review (no matter what Amazon thinks).

What I can say for sure is that it's definitely worth a read, and you can get it here. (Check out that awesome editorial credit!) I mean, for $0.99, it's more than worth it.

"Going Home" is a solid story about a man who has chosen a lie over the truth. When you get to the end, you can begin to understand why. To me, it's interesting because of those times when people willfully choose to believe lies rather than face the truth, something that is much more common than we like to believe. It's not long. It's not that deep, but it does reveal that those depths exist. It raises a lot of questions, not the least of which is "wait! what happens next?" Carl is good at stories that leave you wanting to know more, and this one is no exception.

Next up is Life of Pi, which I finally got around to watching. I was less than impressed.

Sure, it was full of great visuals. Amazing visuals, even, but those don't make the story. [It's the same reason I could never follow a crappy story in a comic book just because it had good art (Spawn).] The story in Pi was very much lacking. The only reason it gets such a "wow, that was so deep" response is that it's one of those stories (the movie for sure and probably the book (though I haven't read the book)) that people can't figure out. Rather than say "I don't understand," they instead say, "that's so deep." Especially the critics, who can never just admit that something doesn't make any sense. Vague symbolism is always a sure way to baffle the critics into saying something is great. [One of my college professors was the same way. The sure way to getting an "A" from him on a paper was to write something beyond his understanding or deliberately vague enough that it seemed beyond his understanding. Rather than say "I don't know what you're saying here" or "This doesn't make any sense," he'd just put an "A" on it.]

However, the biggest problem with that aspect of the movie is that there is a message in there, revealed twice during the movie but obfuscated rather than just stated plainly: believing a lie is better than believing nothing. Or, as it's put forth at the end, "It's better to believe a beautiful lie rather than an ugly truth." That's a sorry message to be delivering and one I just can't get behind. No matter how pretty the package it's wrapped in, and Pi is a pretty package with beautiful bows and ribbons. It's not enough to disguise the ugly truth of the movie, though. Well, maybe, actually, it is. For most people.

The other big issue I have with the movie is that I hate (I mean I absolutely can not stand) getting to the end of a story just to find out that it didn't happen. [I mentioned this same thing in my review of Looper.] Don't waste my time with a story about a story that didn't happen. Don't have it turn out to be a dream. Don't have it turn out to be a time loop that gets closed off so that none of it happened. Don't have it turn out to be a hallucination to cover up something that the character can't handle. You've wasted my time at that point.

And, in Life of Pi, it reduces the only interesting part of the movie to the 30-40 minutes that happen before the storm. Then it's over. And that was hardly a story and one in which nothing really happened other than that someone survived a horrible stranding at sea.

And, sure, you can get all wrapped up in discussions about whether the tiger was God or what the heck was that island supposed to be, anyway, or whether he just made up the story he told the insurance people about the cook just so that they would have something they could grasp, but none of it matters. It doesn't matter because of the statement, "Which is the better story, and wouldn't you rather believe that thing than believe the truth?"

So, yeah, sure, Pi was pretty. It deserved the awards it got for those aspects of the movie, but it certainly wasn't a "best directed" movie. It was a hardly directed movie. I'm glad I watched it; I even kind of wish I'd seen it on the big screen just for some of the scenes on the ocean; but I don't think it was a great movie. It might look all deep when looking down on it, but, if you put your feet in, you'll find it's just a wading pool.

The Reader Net

I've decided that writing is like fishing. No, not that kind of fishing. Not the kind of fishing where you get up really early on Saturday morning and sit around in a boat all day long with your beer and your line dangling in the water. Although it can be like that. The kind of fishing where you just catch one fish at a time.

Most of my middle school writers do that kind of fishing, in fact. There's a few of them that write and share stories with each other all the time. The only problem is that they are the only ones that "get" the stories because they're full of all kinds secret language and stuff. Some of these get turned into me in the creative class, and I have to always say, "this is great but no one else will understand it." And I know, because a few of them have been read in class, and the students not in that group always respond with "I don't get it."

See, they are dangling their lines in the water in their secret fishing hole with their special bait and catching a few fish. One at a time. So, yeah, you can do that kind of fishing, but you'll never be able to do it as more than just a relaxing way to spend a Saturday in your boat if that's your route.

A real fisherman needs a net, and that's where it's like writing, because writing is like weaving a net to catch readers. But writers have to weave their own nets, which I kind of doubt that fishermen have to do anymore, although they did used to have to do it. And the smaller the fish you want to catch, the finer you have to weave your net. Stories have to be that way, too. Woven so as to catch readers.

And, well, size matters.

You have things like Harry Potter that end up being pretty finely woven and catch hordes and hordes of readers. And there are things like Twilight that also catch hordes of readers, a lot of the same kinds of readers, but it's not woven quite as tightly (because, hey, sparkly vampires?), so a lot of potential readers slip through. And, then, you have nets that are built for particular types of readers (like sci-fi or historical fiction or horror) and most everyone else slips through. [And I don't actually know to what degree or if fishing nets differ, but I suppose they must. I'm not looking it up, though.]

But my real point is this (and I've arrived at this mostly because of the discussion around Looper this week): Holes in your net are bad.

Fishermen spend a lot of time repairing their nets. They know having holes is bad. Too many holes, and the fish just swim right on through the net. When your livelihood depends upon catching the fish, you have to weave that net tight and make sure you take care of the holes. And this is the part that is liking writing, because anytime someone says "But why..." or "How come..." or "What...," you've made a hole in your net and some reader has slipped through. If there are enough holes, they pretty much all slip through.

I suppose that's why so many writers like to resort to "magic," and I don't mean actual magic, because anything can be used as "magic." For a long time it was computers. A lot of people are using nanotech as "magic" these days (there's even nano "magic" in Looper, although it's never mentioned in the movie (it was, however, in the writer's head)). If you can't use magic as "magic" because you're not writing fantasy, science as "magic" is the next best thing. At any rate, when a reader says, "But why...," the author can wave his hand and say "magic" and believe that closes the hole in the net. It doesn't always work that way, though, because, readers will only go for that so many times. Of course, different readers have different limits.

The best way to deal with those holes is to make your story as plausible as possible (not as possible as possible, although that's not bad, too, but  the story hinges on plausibility, not possibility) and make sure the details are there so that people never have those questions. Basically, if you have the question, someone else is going to have the question, so you better just go ahead and answer it (again, this is from listening to the writer/director of Looper who decided over and over again not bother with the 15 second answers to the questions that even he had (as he said, he didn't think it was worth spending the time to answer those things in the movie)). Never believe that the reader doesn't care or won't notice, because a lot of readers are out there looking for holes or are just good at finding them.

As for myself, I'm not out looking for holes, but I'm a pretty slippery fish, and I ask a lot of questions. All the time. It's in my nature to question, well, everything, so, if you have an unanswered question, there's a good chance I'm gonna find it. I do get that other people aren't quite like that as much, but there are other people out there like me. And worse than me. I mean, you think I'm bad, you should see my wife and the way she treats books and movies. I'm way more accepting of handwavium than she is.

All of that to say: Weave a strong net. Weave a fine net. Weave a large net.
Then throw it out in the water.

Thrown for a Loop

I finally got around to seeing Looper. Hmm...
I'm not actually sure what I think about it. There are parts of it, like the acting, that are pretty great, although I'm not the big fan of Joseph Gordon-Levitt that everyone seems to be. I'm just not seeing what the big deal is. Bruce Willis, on the other hand... Well, I like Bruce.

Time travel stories are... difficult. Star Trek is proof of that. I think two things play into it: 1. No one can agree on how time travel would actually work if it's possible. Or if it's possible. 2. Because of that, writers like to use it as a magic wand. It's one of those things I kind of hate in science fiction, when the writer uses some bit of science like it's magic just because no one knows how it works. If you want to write magic, go write fantasy.

Still, all in all, I don't think the time travel was handled too poorly in Looper other than the constant paradoxes that were never addressed. What I have a problem with is being lied to, and, in essence, the movie hinges on a lie, and that really bothers me.

Now, I don't have a problem with being deceived through sleight-of-hand and trickery. The Sixth Sense is so great because Shyamalan  never lied to the audience. He laid everything out there for us to see and allowed us not to see it. A couple of movies that are very similar except that one lies and one doesn't are The Prestige and The Illusionist (which I talk about for a bit here). The Illusionist achieves its climax by lying to the audience (through omission) all the way through, which is the only reason we are unable to piece the plot together. I really have no respect for that.

Now, if you haven't seen Looper, there will be spoilers.

The whole story of Looper hinges on  the belief by the audience that young Joe dies when he falls from the ladder. At that point, the movie jumps back as if that is the moment that causes the reset. When it starts over, we accept that we are seeing a different time line because of the presentation, and it's not true. It's not like in The Sixth Sense when Crowe gets shot. Afterward, the audience just assumes that Crowe didn't die even though Shyamalan tells us several times, "look, this guy's dead." We just can't see it. In Looper, the truth is never offered until the end, when the lie is revealed, and that's just a cheap way of doing it.

To make matters worse, the director or the writer or someone comes out and tells us that the movie isn't going to make any sense and not to think about it. Young Joe and Old Joe are sitting in a diner together, and Young Joe asks Old Joe about time travel, and Old Joe says, "I don't want to talk about time travel because, if we start talking about it, then, we're going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws." Rough translation: "Don't think about it; just watch the movie. We can't explain it either." On the one hand, I'm glad they're honest about it. "Look, we just want to tell our story, so don't go trying to logic it, because it won't make any sense." [And it doesn't.] On the other hand, I'm kind of insulted. It says to me that they didn't want to bother with telling a story that makes sense, which devalues me as the audience. And, then, they lie to make it work.

The other thing that really bothers me is that the movie didn't happen, and I hate stories that didn't happen. I hate getting to the end and finding out that it was all a dream or a vision or a whatever. I mean, this was as bad as Next with Nicolas Cage. You get to the end and find out that, really, the movie ended right there when Young Joe kills Old Joe at the beginning of the movie. That's it. End of story. Everything else is just "closing the loop" and doesn't actually exist. I really felt cheated.

Even so, there are some good moments in the film. When Old Seth is trying to get to Young Seth and losing body parts all along the way... man, that's just freaky. It doesn't make any sense from a paradox perspective, but it's creepy enough that you don't care. The horror of that moment as his fingers start disappearing is gut wrenching. Also, I really liked Paul Dano as Young Seth.

There's a lot of humor, dark humor, in the fact that Old Joe keeps beating the crap out of his younger self. There's the urge to slap Young Joe for not listening to his older self, but, then, that's how all kids are, right?  And there's the fact that the good guys don't win. How could they? There are no good guys. But there aren't a lot of movies these days where the protagonist (hero or anti-hero) fails, and that's almost enough to make Looper worth watching all by itself.

If you're willing to just turn your brain off and watch and if you don't mind being lied to, Looper is definitely worth your time, just don't ever say, "But why...?"

Oh, also, a big part of why Looper works is the inherent belief of the audience (and that includes me) in the badassness of Bruce Willis. There is nothing in the movie to support Joe being any kind of badass. In fact, he's more of a loser, drug addict than anything else. However, because our image of Willis is that he's a badass, we don't question him single-handedly taking down a criminal organization even though there is nothing in the movie to support this.