Well, here we are. It's December 27, 2016, and Carrie Fisher has passed on.
There have been a lot of deaths in the entertainment industry and also deaths of historical figures such as John Glenn this year. I mean, a lot. It seemed like the year was just hyper-saturated with these people, who have by-and-large enriched our lives, leaving us.
Well, personally, my year kind of bookended in a way. Alan Rickman died early on in January of this year, and I am still not okay with it. I suppose I'll get better as the years go on, but I cannot quantify what that man's talent has brought to my table.
When I read the news that Carrie Fisher had been rushed to the hospital, getting off a flight, not breathing, cardiac arrest...I knew I had to prepare for the worst, but...you gotta understand.
I owned Princess Leia shoes.
I'm told that they were not the ones that Stride Rite was selling as Princess Leia shoes, but they were next to the display and I thought they should be part of it, so I said they were obviously Princess Leia's shoes and I wanted a pair. I wore those suckers through, too. Apparently they only sold boys' shoes in the Star Wars line (that's a rant for another day), but I figured Princess Leia would LOVE those shoes. I did.
The empowerment of Princess Leia, who took all my (Disney-soaked) notions of what a Princess was supposed to be (in an era way, way before Ariel started singing or Belle got plucky) and turned them unceremoniously on their ear, cannot be overstated for every single girl who got to experience Star Wars with a child's eyes in the theater, in an age far before digital--heck, in an age before the VCR was a common household appliance.
I was shocked--SHOCKED--that she was the one grabbing the blaster from Luke Skywalker (oh, how in love with Mark Hamill I was...which explains a LOT about me now) and valiantly trying to save everyone during her rescue attempt. Princesses did not do this! They waited, looked fetching, and responded demurely and appropriately, like Aurora in Sleeping Beauty. They did not call men scoundrels or scruffy-looking nerf herders (a fabulous line that I really do believe only Carrie Fisher could do that kind of justice). If they were patient and willing and demure, they got their reward.
Meanwhile, Princess Leia didn't wait for anybody to rescue her. The minute she got the chance, she helped the boys trying to rescue her by looking for an escape route, got the plans to the Rebellion, made the tough decisions. She got to fire the gun. She got to be the person in control a lot of the time.
And Carrie Fisher, as Princess Leia, freed a lot of girls from the prison of that Disney-fied idea of a Princess. In many respects, we're all in her debt for being willing to embody this character and to bring to the character that snappy dialogue that Carrie herself helped to rewrite and the chutzpah that many female characters have tried to emulate over the years.
But her portrayal of this beloved character is not the only reason that Carrie's passing devastates me.
After she hung up her Princess Leia hairdos (for a while, anyway), she went on to do other work, like being Meg Ryan's best friend Marie in When Harry Met Sally, or writing the book and then screenplay for Postcards from the Edge, a movie I recall vividly seeing in the Great Northern Mall theater, alone, as I did so often in college (and now, sadly). I remember reading (in Premiere magazine) about how this movie got to the big screen, how annoyed Penny Marshall was with Carrie for spending so much time with Meryl Streep now as Penny and Carrie had been great friends...I remember all of it.
That made Carrie Fisher a person to me, and one that I could really connect with.
Her brave sharing of what it's like to have a broken brain, however...I don't have the words right now to fully express what this sharing has done for those of us who share the broken brain problem. Clearly, Carrie had a brain that appears to have needed more heavy-duty care than mine, and I can assure you that living with mine has been no picnic. However, I suffer from Major Depressive Disorder, Type 1, with concomitant Anxiety. Yay! Despite everyone attempting to say that I was bipolar, given how buoyant I tried to be in the years around not being medicated or not being medicated properly, which I'm sure looked like I went from major ups to major downs...nope. Sorry. I just kind of am that way, which is then distorted and stretched and made all kinds of crazy by the massive depression that revolves around my neurotransmitters not getting from point A to point B properly. I am just grateful--massively, amazingly grateful--that there are classes of medications that work for me with very little depression leaking through; now when I experience depression, it's situational or driven by stress.
Carrie wasn't so lucky. She suffered from Genuine Bonafide Bipolar Type 1. As she would say, "You know, the crazy kind." She described it as getting very sad or getting very fast, which I thought was a very clever way for people to understand that her "ups" were not that happy, buoyant thing but rather this inability to slow the brain down (which accounts for her attempts to self-medicate to make the whole train in the head stop). She tried all the medications for her type of problem and they didn't work enough for her to not also self-medicate, so she started up with ECT, Electro Convulsive Therapy...or what they used to call shock treatments.
She speaks of these treatments at length in both of her autobiographical books Wishful Drinking and Shockoholic. She was never afraid to address it--or her problems with her father's philandering on her mother--or her troubles with her mother as an aging star from the studio system--or, in fact, pretty much anything. Carrie was kind of the original WYSIWYG, and I believe that talking about her problems in her clever, disarming fashion, was therapeutic for her.
I know it is for me.
And that's I guess where I land, now, in this idea that this kindred spirit, about whom I feel I understand so much and yet I've just scratched the surface...she's gone. She won't deliver more bon mots about her wonderful, difficult relationships. I won't get to share in the wisdom of her trials, her successes or failures, in navigating this complicated life that she leads. No more interesting stories about her father's last years of life, the trials of trying to be a better mother to her very beloved child, no cute jokes about Gary her dog. Her last words have already been written.
She's gone from us, and we're the poorer for it.
Rest well, our Princess, our leader, our fearless, amazing, wonderfully flawed Carrie. Thank you for being willing to be a mirror into the landscape of our lives, to reflect on your own, and for being just so brilliant with a phrase. I pray that I get to see you again, someday.
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
Saturday, November 19, 2016
Kate 2.0
Well, here we are. It's the end of 2016, or near enough anyway, and potentially the end of the world as we know it.
So I'm a little annoyed that the end of the world, I finally got a chance to get to a place I'm calling "Kate 2.0".
Let me explain as best I can:
We've all got areas in our lives where we are the "frog in the pot." We're going along, as best we can, and things look fine and suddenly--BAM. Looking back, we can see where the heat had been slowly rising, but it went slowly, and we ignored it.
I had a frog in the pot moment last Saturday.
I could go into the details, but I already tried to write that once here and it got incredibly bogged down. So I'm going to sum up and make my life-changing revelation boil down, in part, to one phrase:
People don't know jack.
I'm not talking specific people, or specific knowledge, but here's where I was the frog: I've looked to society-at-large, aka "other people", to tell me what's "normal", because when I was a kid and had to deal with the big bad world, it was terrifying. I was not well understood by my peers, so I looked to them for what a social norm construct should be.
And maybe I didn't know as a kid. But I do know now. Yet, I've still looked beyond my own knowledge, thinking it was inadequate.
Understanding that society as a whole has less of an idea than I thought they did about...well, anything, really makes me understand that I can be done with looking to a heterogenous mix of genii and morons alike to find out what I should be doing in order to be socially acceptable.
Because people don't know jack.
And it is this life-changing statement that, along with some other very specific, very personal revelations, that has led me to a moment in my life in which I genuinely am not the same person I was on Veteran's Day.
It's pretty darn wonderful.
I also came to an understanding about self-love that makes me wonder if most of my culture of origin ever read the book they tout. God said, "Read 1 John." So I did. And it has to be one of the most repetitive books in the Bible. Love. Love. Love. 51 times in the agape form. But it says some things about love that made me go...huh. For one thing, if you say you love God but do not love your brother, you are a liar. I would state that we as a greater culture could use more of this idea in our world, one that the fundamental movement gets so concerned with, because they are concerned with being right.
That's not why I'm writing this. That's for another blog.
Anyway, if I do not love my brother--in other words, my fellow man, even if he shuns me, hurts me, disagrees with me--then I do not love God. So I brought it to a conclusion: if I don't love me--if I don't follow what love is outlined to be in this book toward myself, I probably can't say I love God either.
And I love God.
Therefore I must also love myself. I'm not saying I exalt myself. I'm not saying I'm getting prideful. I'm not saying all the things that were dogmatically pressed into the grooves of my skull for more than 20 years.
I'm saying that it's okay to love yourself, because at the end of the day, it might just be you and God who practice being loving toward you. And so I must do this as well, and it's not sin.
Flee from those who would make you believe it is.
So, let's start adding:
1. People don't know jack
2. I gotta love me.
This whole thing combined, with those personal things I mentioned, into an almost alchemical process by which I ended up at a place that I believe is the top of Maslow's hierarchy--self-actualization.
I highly recommend it.
I always thought that people couldn't get to the top of that pyramid. I'm quite pleased that I was wrong. And I wish I could say that there is a formula for this journey, for getting here. There isn't. All those self-help books I've bought...none had the answer.
There are tools. I've used a lot of them. But at the end of the day, to get here is a corridor that is precisely wide enough for one human, and each corridor is bespoke.
So I pray that the country can keep itself together long enough for me to enjoy being Kate 2.0.
I really rather like it here.
So I'm a little annoyed that the end of the world, I finally got a chance to get to a place I'm calling "Kate 2.0".
Let me explain as best I can:
We've all got areas in our lives where we are the "frog in the pot." We're going along, as best we can, and things look fine and suddenly--BAM. Looking back, we can see where the heat had been slowly rising, but it went slowly, and we ignored it.
I had a frog in the pot moment last Saturday.
I could go into the details, but I already tried to write that once here and it got incredibly bogged down. So I'm going to sum up and make my life-changing revelation boil down, in part, to one phrase:
People don't know jack.
I'm not talking specific people, or specific knowledge, but here's where I was the frog: I've looked to society-at-large, aka "other people", to tell me what's "normal", because when I was a kid and had to deal with the big bad world, it was terrifying. I was not well understood by my peers, so I looked to them for what a social norm construct should be.
And maybe I didn't know as a kid. But I do know now. Yet, I've still looked beyond my own knowledge, thinking it was inadequate.
Understanding that society as a whole has less of an idea than I thought they did about...well, anything, really makes me understand that I can be done with looking to a heterogenous mix of genii and morons alike to find out what I should be doing in order to be socially acceptable.
Because people don't know jack.
And it is this life-changing statement that, along with some other very specific, very personal revelations, that has led me to a moment in my life in which I genuinely am not the same person I was on Veteran's Day.
It's pretty darn wonderful.
I also came to an understanding about self-love that makes me wonder if most of my culture of origin ever read the book they tout. God said, "Read 1 John." So I did. And it has to be one of the most repetitive books in the Bible. Love. Love. Love. 51 times in the agape form. But it says some things about love that made me go...huh. For one thing, if you say you love God but do not love your brother, you are a liar. I would state that we as a greater culture could use more of this idea in our world, one that the fundamental movement gets so concerned with, because they are concerned with being right.
That's not why I'm writing this. That's for another blog.
Anyway, if I do not love my brother--in other words, my fellow man, even if he shuns me, hurts me, disagrees with me--then I do not love God. So I brought it to a conclusion: if I don't love me--if I don't follow what love is outlined to be in this book toward myself, I probably can't say I love God either.
And I love God.
Therefore I must also love myself. I'm not saying I exalt myself. I'm not saying I'm getting prideful. I'm not saying all the things that were dogmatically pressed into the grooves of my skull for more than 20 years.
I'm saying that it's okay to love yourself, because at the end of the day, it might just be you and God who practice being loving toward you. And so I must do this as well, and it's not sin.
Flee from those who would make you believe it is.
So, let's start adding:
1. People don't know jack
2. I gotta love me.
This whole thing combined, with those personal things I mentioned, into an almost alchemical process by which I ended up at a place that I believe is the top of Maslow's hierarchy--self-actualization.
I highly recommend it.
I always thought that people couldn't get to the top of that pyramid. I'm quite pleased that I was wrong. And I wish I could say that there is a formula for this journey, for getting here. There isn't. All those self-help books I've bought...none had the answer.
There are tools. I've used a lot of them. But at the end of the day, to get here is a corridor that is precisely wide enough for one human, and each corridor is bespoke.
So I pray that the country can keep itself together long enough for me to enjoy being Kate 2.0.
I really rather like it here.
Wednesday, November 9, 2016
Well...
I know a lot of people are upset today. I'm one of them.
Some people are trying to understand how this happened--how a man who is a misogynistic pile of ignorance managed to win the White House. I'm one of them.
I could point out that it is not often that this nation in modern times has let one political party have the White House for more than 8 years, and that the fluke in that matter was one George H.W. Bush, who likely won due to the seeming prosperity years of the man he'd been Vice-President for.
I could point out that there are many people in this nation who are sick of being told they are wrong, and most of them are white, male, and have an education that does not extend beyond the high school years.
I am not minimizing that there are lots of groups of people in this nation who have been and continue to be oppressed based upon how this country came into being and how the greater American culture has seen the world.
But I am saying that if you continue to tell people that they don't have a right to embrace their own history--good or bad--they are going to rebel. They are going to get angry. They are going to feel like they are not being heard. And they are going to do something about it.
So people got out and voted for a man who has no qualifications to be President because he told them that it was perfectly fine to be who they are. He told them that it's okay to be mistrustful of others, and being mistrustful of people is a common fear among all of us. He preyed upon their fears and their desire to feel better about themselves.
That sounds a lot like Germany, 1933 to me. For those of you who don't know, Adolf Hitler got to be Chancellor because the German people were sick of being oppressed as the result of the Treaty of Versailles. The strictures put upon the German people by said treaty were overkill, and these people were sick of being told that they were wrong simply for being themselves. Hitler was terrific at rhetoric and delivering it well, blaming the problems on a subset of people already living within Germany.
Sound somewhat familiar?
I hope I'm wrong. I hope that this is America, 1976, and we're just heading into four tough but survivable years. (I will point out that Jimmy Carter, one of the few genuinely decent men to hold the highest office in the land since the turn of the last century, got the office because he wanted to help people, honestly. I cannot be persuaded that this is why Trump wanted the Presidency.)
At the end of the day, my reality is fairly simple: I am a middle-aged female in a country now run by a man who thinks that, should he find me attractive (never have I been grateful for being overweight before), he can grab me in the nether regions and have his way with me.
If you think that's an extreme case, the pending litigations of rape and reports of inappropriate conduct against the man 49% of you elected president (Secretary Clinton won the popular vote, folks) might persuade you otherwise.
That tells me about his character. Trump is good at rhetoric. But he is a horrible, terrible human being who makes Bill Clinton (many of you may know I do not like that man) look like Mr. Rogers.
I am not part of a minority of race or ethnicity. But I am a woman.
And I feel a bit like I am now a person with fewer rights today than yesterday. And that more of those rights will be threatened in the next four years.
I did not agree with many of Hillary Clinton's policies. I'm not overly fond of her. But I also think that she is a better leader than Trump who is far less inclined to take slights personally. And now this man has the Pentagon to go shoot at people who slight against him.
We are a country divided. And reality is that we have been for years and years. This man will not unite the nation--in fact, I'm not sure anyone will. But somehow, we have to find a way to work together--something, ironically, that Hillary Clinton was famed for in the Senate, getting people to work together.
I know that it might ask for a great deal to get Leslie Jones and Bill O'Reilly to work together, but there is something that I am fairly certain we all agree upon in this nation: the future of our children and giving them a solid nation and a prosperous future.
If we can take anything from this, can we take the idea that education is the only way forward?
Some people are trying to understand how this happened--how a man who is a misogynistic pile of ignorance managed to win the White House. I'm one of them.
I could point out that it is not often that this nation in modern times has let one political party have the White House for more than 8 years, and that the fluke in that matter was one George H.W. Bush, who likely won due to the seeming prosperity years of the man he'd been Vice-President for.
I could point out that there are many people in this nation who are sick of being told they are wrong, and most of them are white, male, and have an education that does not extend beyond the high school years.
I am not minimizing that there are lots of groups of people in this nation who have been and continue to be oppressed based upon how this country came into being and how the greater American culture has seen the world.
But I am saying that if you continue to tell people that they don't have a right to embrace their own history--good or bad--they are going to rebel. They are going to get angry. They are going to feel like they are not being heard. And they are going to do something about it.
So people got out and voted for a man who has no qualifications to be President because he told them that it was perfectly fine to be who they are. He told them that it's okay to be mistrustful of others, and being mistrustful of people is a common fear among all of us. He preyed upon their fears and their desire to feel better about themselves.
That sounds a lot like Germany, 1933 to me. For those of you who don't know, Adolf Hitler got to be Chancellor because the German people were sick of being oppressed as the result of the Treaty of Versailles. The strictures put upon the German people by said treaty were overkill, and these people were sick of being told that they were wrong simply for being themselves. Hitler was terrific at rhetoric and delivering it well, blaming the problems on a subset of people already living within Germany.
Sound somewhat familiar?
I hope I'm wrong. I hope that this is America, 1976, and we're just heading into four tough but survivable years. (I will point out that Jimmy Carter, one of the few genuinely decent men to hold the highest office in the land since the turn of the last century, got the office because he wanted to help people, honestly. I cannot be persuaded that this is why Trump wanted the Presidency.)
At the end of the day, my reality is fairly simple: I am a middle-aged female in a country now run by a man who thinks that, should he find me attractive (never have I been grateful for being overweight before), he can grab me in the nether regions and have his way with me.
If you think that's an extreme case, the pending litigations of rape and reports of inappropriate conduct against the man 49% of you elected president (Secretary Clinton won the popular vote, folks) might persuade you otherwise.
That tells me about his character. Trump is good at rhetoric. But he is a horrible, terrible human being who makes Bill Clinton (many of you may know I do not like that man) look like Mr. Rogers.
I am not part of a minority of race or ethnicity. But I am a woman.
And I feel a bit like I am now a person with fewer rights today than yesterday. And that more of those rights will be threatened in the next four years.
I did not agree with many of Hillary Clinton's policies. I'm not overly fond of her. But I also think that she is a better leader than Trump who is far less inclined to take slights personally. And now this man has the Pentagon to go shoot at people who slight against him.
We are a country divided. And reality is that we have been for years and years. This man will not unite the nation--in fact, I'm not sure anyone will. But somehow, we have to find a way to work together--something, ironically, that Hillary Clinton was famed for in the Senate, getting people to work together.
I know that it might ask for a great deal to get Leslie Jones and Bill O'Reilly to work together, but there is something that I am fairly certain we all agree upon in this nation: the future of our children and giving them a solid nation and a prosperous future.
If we can take anything from this, can we take the idea that education is the only way forward?
Sunday, June 12, 2016
Orlando
Dear Heavenly Father,
Sometimes, things happen here on Earth and I don't understand them. I don't understand why some places on the planet have to be water-poor and sun-rich, and vice-versa. I don't understand why people have innate fear of the unknown, even as I have the same fear. I don't understand why Nashville is getting a fifth season on CMT while my beloved Person of Interest is dying an ignoble death on CBS.
I do not understand why people have to judge in the face of tragedy.
If I were in Your shoes (and I think everyone can be grateful that I'm not), I wouldn't want people who are more interested in hate-mongering than in compassion speaking for me. I would be smiting them down with the blistering heat of a thousand suns.
I would also not want to drive away ten percent of the world's population by letting these people continue to speak for me.
If you are gay and you are reading this, I have a message for you from the Almighty: God is very interested in you. He is interested in how you treat people. He is interested that you understand that He loves you and died for you. He is interested in laughing with you, and loving who you love, and sharing in the life you have. More than anything, God is interested in you talking to Him.
[I think if everyone focused on that, we'd have a better place to live. Myself first and foremost. And by the way--God is interested in the exact same thing for everyone. He's an equal-opportunity God.]
Christians, if you insist on alienating people because you think you understand the word of God so infallibly that you cannot possibly be wrong, then I suggest you take a really, really, REALLY hard look at yourself in the mirror, because you will be judged by the same measure. I don't mean by your sexual preference. I mean by your zeal for Jesus, not your zeal for condemnation.
In other words...until you have endured this, shut up. The Pharisees thought they had it right, folks. And I see an awful lot of Pharisees in the church today.
I would far rather err on the side of compassion.
So on behalf of Christians, I'm sorry that Dan Patrick needed to stick his foot in his mouth and "appeal" to a subset of people who are interested in hate-mongering. I don't know why he did it, and I know that God is going to have major words with him for it. I'm sorry that we feel the need to persecute that which we do not understand.
I'm not apologizing for the Donald because I'm pretty sure he's not part of any tribe that I belong to.
And God, please, heal all of us. We are all the walking wounded--today and every day.
Love,
Kate
Sometimes, things happen here on Earth and I don't understand them. I don't understand why some places on the planet have to be water-poor and sun-rich, and vice-versa. I don't understand why people have innate fear of the unknown, even as I have the same fear. I don't understand why Nashville is getting a fifth season on CMT while my beloved Person of Interest is dying an ignoble death on CBS.
I do not understand why people have to judge in the face of tragedy.
If I were in Your shoes (and I think everyone can be grateful that I'm not), I wouldn't want people who are more interested in hate-mongering than in compassion speaking for me. I would be smiting them down with the blistering heat of a thousand suns.
I would also not want to drive away ten percent of the world's population by letting these people continue to speak for me.
If you are gay and you are reading this, I have a message for you from the Almighty: God is very interested in you. He is interested in how you treat people. He is interested that you understand that He loves you and died for you. He is interested in laughing with you, and loving who you love, and sharing in the life you have. More than anything, God is interested in you talking to Him.
[I think if everyone focused on that, we'd have a better place to live. Myself first and foremost. And by the way--God is interested in the exact same thing for everyone. He's an equal-opportunity God.]
Christians, if you insist on alienating people because you think you understand the word of God so infallibly that you cannot possibly be wrong, then I suggest you take a really, really, REALLY hard look at yourself in the mirror, because you will be judged by the same measure. I don't mean by your sexual preference. I mean by your zeal for Jesus, not your zeal for condemnation.
In other words...until you have endured this, shut up. The Pharisees thought they had it right, folks. And I see an awful lot of Pharisees in the church today.
I would far rather err on the side of compassion.
So on behalf of Christians, I'm sorry that Dan Patrick needed to stick his foot in his mouth and "appeal" to a subset of people who are interested in hate-mongering. I don't know why he did it, and I know that God is going to have major words with him for it. I'm sorry that we feel the need to persecute that which we do not understand.
I'm not apologizing for the Donald because I'm pretty sure he's not part of any tribe that I belong to.
And God, please, heal all of us. We are all the walking wounded--today and every day.
Love,
Kate
Saturday, March 26, 2016
The Strange Case of Sophia Stewart
Recently, I ran across a post with a headline about the "Mother of the Matrix", a woman who claims that she sent her script in answering a 1986 advertisement to the Wachowskis (who back then were the Wachowski Brothers) and never heard back.
Fast forward thirteen years, and she is astounded to realize that her script was used to make one of the most successful films of all time. Lawsuits abound.
Did I mention that this is an African-American female writer?
Sounds incredibly scandalous, salacious, and entirely in line with some of the things people in Hollywood have done before.
Except for the fact that it's all in the mind of Sophia Stewart.
One newspaper--a college paper in Utah--credited Ms. Stewart with winning her original lawsuit in 2004, based on the interview with Ms. Stewart. The sophomore writer took her word as gospel--and that one piece of journalistic poop has spun into this nightmare.
Ms. Stewart also claims that the same "script" was used two years before she sent it off to the Wachowskis by one James Cameron and his "partner in crime" (her words) Gale Anne Hurd and transformed into The Terminator.
The.
Same.
Script.
Now, there are plenty of copyright laws that are dubious at best. James Cameron liked the look of the first three minutes of an old episode of The Outer Limits...and copied that style for three minutes worth, essentially, and now Harlan Ellison has a writing credit on The Terminator as well. Whether the visuals that were used were even in Ellison's original script, I cannot say--I've not read it. But I can tell you that Cameron thinks this was a horrible thing for Ellison to do--they had to settle out of court because at the time Cameron didn't have the money for a lawsuit and the company backing the film told him outright that they would come after him if they lost--and Cameron said in print that he'd been inspired by and/or "ripped off" said three minutes of film time.
If he'd not said anything, nothing could have been proven.
So, the Terminator and the Matrix. They have the following in common:
1. Machines that take over the world.
2. An innocent (sort of) who is thrust into a world beyond his/her comprehension, with a guide who has lots of experience in this "new world".
3. A foretold "savior" that will help those under the regime of the machines.
That's about it.
We've been afraid of sentient computers since before HAL came along courtesy of Arthur C. Clarke (Forbidden Planet, anyone?). And don't get me started on savior stories, because I don't think the Gospel writers are suing for copyright these days.
I can see that there are similarities, yes. Fighting a war with the machines that humanity is losing. Humans reduced to living in a state of constant combat. But the story of Neo and the story of Sarah Connor/John Connor are not the same story, any more than The Terminator and Back to the Future are. Both deal with time travel in roughly similar proportions (30/40 years). In both cases a couple has to get together to make sure a kid is born. Both Kyle Reese and Marty McFly get stuck in the past (for a while, at least, for the latter). But Biff Tannen isn't exactly the Terminator, no matter what George McFly once thought.
I'll tell you plainly that I have not ponied up the $9.95 (Kindle) or $24.95 (paperback) to read the "script" Ms. Stewart copyrighted in 1983, since for my money I'd also be getting a lot of her nearly incomprehensible legal actions against everyone in show business. I do find it interesting that she did not attempt to sue James Cameron for many years, and her primary focus has been the Wachowskis. (I have read reviews from people who have read the manuscript, and the complaints are all the same--it's unfinished, a bit of a mess, there is some sort of savior, but her story is about aliens taking over, not machines, and that anyone who sees either the Matrix or the Terminator in this manuscript is a lunatic. There are plenty of positive reviews for Ms. Stewart's works on amazon.com--but these people also have never reviewed anything else on the site. They all hail her as a fantastic writer who clearly is the most gifted woman in the history of mankind and known civilization. Almost like they were plants.)
Let's look at her complaints against the makers of the Matrix.
The Wachowskis--in 1986 going by the names of Andy and Larry--were 21 and 18, respectively. I do not know if they put out an ad for scripts that they would then turn into animation, which was the purpose of the alleged advertisement. Larry (now Lana) had not finished high school when said ad appeared, and I cannot find information as to what trade that ad was published in. That's not to say that they didn't do it, but the Wachowski family was not known as a family of means. They were living in Chicago at the time, which is also where Ms. Stewart states she was also living. So it's entirely possible that they ran a simple ad in the Chicago Tribune, received her script and tossed it into a pile. Ms. Stewart claims she never heard anything from the Wachowskis.
This may have happened, but I have serious doubts about the veracity of anything Ms. Stewart claims at this point.
For one thing, she keeps alleging on her website (for those of you willing to subject yourselves to it, http://www.truthaboutmatrix.com) that she has won a $15 BILLION settlement against these yokels.
As my father would say, "Now wait just a damn minute."
Think about it. If an African-American woman won a settlement that astoundingly large against Warner Bros., The Wachowskis, and Joel Silver, who would be the first person to demand an interview?
That's right: Oprah.
For one thing, Oprah would no longer be the richest woman of color in the country. That alone would force her to sit down with Ms. Stewart to get a couple of things right. For another, Oprah made her talk show empire...in Chicago. They would have much to discuss.
Yet I do not see Oprah lending her support to Ms. Stewart. I doubt Oprah is aware of Ms. Stewart's existence. I do believe Oprah would genuinely want Ms. Stewart to be the rightful author of all Matrix-related items, because it would be such a boon to the African-American creative community.
And...crickets from Team Harpo.
This, more than any other single thing, tells me that Ms. Stewart may not have all her facts straight.
Despite Ms. Stewart's best efforts to have you believe that she's some sort of incredibly gifted genius (and by all means buy her books, because even billionaires need serious cash flow that only amazon.com can bring), I'm going to tell you what actually happened here:
Ms. Stewart told everyone who had ears that she had been wronged. She was contacted by a lawyer, one Jonathan Lubell, who said that he would represent her for $50,000 and put things right. Going through the information, however, said lawyer apparently did not think that Warner Bros. et al would actually go to court and fight this, or he thought he'd taken a clunker of a case that he was sure to lose. No matter the reason, he never informed Ms. Stewart when the defendants wished to take her deposition. As the defense took this to mean she refused deposition, the case was thrown out in 2004.
Had she been deposed in the first place, the case would likely have been thrown out anyway, but this gave her legal grounds to try again. Ms. Stewart did win the right to have another trial, given the presumed negligence of Mr. Lubell and his team. That case was also thrown out of court.
So Ms. Stewart, thinking she couldn't have a fair case in California, pled her case again. And again. Most recently (2014), she pled her case in Utah--a two-fold case: one against Mr. Lubell and his firm (since Lubell is now deceased), and one against Warner Bros. et al. This is the case about which she has documents on her website (and I can read some legalese--I mean, it's not exactly a second language to me, but I can decipher it and I cannot decipher the stuff she has put in the documents on her website. I mean, I know something of substance is in there somewhere, but I think I'd do better as a gold prospector in Syracuse, NY right now than finding the substance in the pdfs on her site). I had no trouble in deciphering the actual verdict in said trial, which I found on one of the many websites that have trivia about this case.
In case you are curious, Mr. Lubell and his associates were found to be negligent and ordered to pay the legal fees from the 2004 case and some other related fees to the tune of roughly $350,000. (As the original case was thrown out, she was ordered to pay the fees that the Wachowskis, Warner Bros., and Joel Silver all incurred.)
The subsequent case against Warner Bros. in 2014, despite her "expert" testimony that used monetary figures from websites such as Box Office Mojo and imdb.com as part of said expert testimony (not, say, the actual ledgers from the company that made the movie), was found to not have merit and the judge recommended that no damages be awarded to Ms. Stewart for this or any other similar case brought in Utah.
I highlighted that because I thought that maybe Ms. Stewart needed someone to explain it to her, and just in case she's as megalomaniacal as I think she is, perhaps she'd find this blog and finally understand the judgment.
The interesting thing in all of this is that this is a story that simply won't die. I wonder why people want to continue to feed into a woman who considers herself to be the most gifted writer in her generation without any proof. (Cough Neil Gaiman Cough). For certain, she's the only one who says so, because I have yet to see any of her other work, which I find highly suspect. Why do we know nothing of her writings between 1983, when she claims she "finished" her manuscript (as I understand it, the manuscript she's selling is not exactly finished, and really, she's had plenty of time to do so) and 1999, when the Matrix hit the big screen? Would we not already know her name in creative circles? While I do think it may have been more difficult as an African-American woman to be recognized as a writer than as a white man in the 1980s, it wasn't unheard of or impossible (hello, Gloria Naylor. Hello, Terry McMillan).
Therefore, while I think that this is an interesting exercise, I do think that Ms. Stewart may suffer from sort of psychological disorder. God knows I feel like I do after researching this for several days now.
I need better hobbies.
Fast forward thirteen years, and she is astounded to realize that her script was used to make one of the most successful films of all time. Lawsuits abound.
Did I mention that this is an African-American female writer?
Sounds incredibly scandalous, salacious, and entirely in line with some of the things people in Hollywood have done before.
Except for the fact that it's all in the mind of Sophia Stewart.
One newspaper--a college paper in Utah--credited Ms. Stewart with winning her original lawsuit in 2004, based on the interview with Ms. Stewart. The sophomore writer took her word as gospel--and that one piece of journalistic poop has spun into this nightmare.
Ms. Stewart also claims that the same "script" was used two years before she sent it off to the Wachowskis by one James Cameron and his "partner in crime" (her words) Gale Anne Hurd and transformed into The Terminator.
The.
Same.
Script.
Now, there are plenty of copyright laws that are dubious at best. James Cameron liked the look of the first three minutes of an old episode of The Outer Limits...and copied that style for three minutes worth, essentially, and now Harlan Ellison has a writing credit on The Terminator as well. Whether the visuals that were used were even in Ellison's original script, I cannot say--I've not read it. But I can tell you that Cameron thinks this was a horrible thing for Ellison to do--they had to settle out of court because at the time Cameron didn't have the money for a lawsuit and the company backing the film told him outright that they would come after him if they lost--and Cameron said in print that he'd been inspired by and/or "ripped off" said three minutes of film time.
If he'd not said anything, nothing could have been proven.
So, the Terminator and the Matrix. They have the following in common:
1. Machines that take over the world.
2. An innocent (sort of) who is thrust into a world beyond his/her comprehension, with a guide who has lots of experience in this "new world".
3. A foretold "savior" that will help those under the regime of the machines.
That's about it.
We've been afraid of sentient computers since before HAL came along courtesy of Arthur C. Clarke (Forbidden Planet, anyone?). And don't get me started on savior stories, because I don't think the Gospel writers are suing for copyright these days.
I can see that there are similarities, yes. Fighting a war with the machines that humanity is losing. Humans reduced to living in a state of constant combat. But the story of Neo and the story of Sarah Connor/John Connor are not the same story, any more than The Terminator and Back to the Future are. Both deal with time travel in roughly similar proportions (30/40 years). In both cases a couple has to get together to make sure a kid is born. Both Kyle Reese and Marty McFly get stuck in the past (for a while, at least, for the latter). But Biff Tannen isn't exactly the Terminator, no matter what George McFly once thought.
I'll tell you plainly that I have not ponied up the $9.95 (Kindle) or $24.95 (paperback) to read the "script" Ms. Stewart copyrighted in 1983, since for my money I'd also be getting a lot of her nearly incomprehensible legal actions against everyone in show business. I do find it interesting that she did not attempt to sue James Cameron for many years, and her primary focus has been the Wachowskis. (I have read reviews from people who have read the manuscript, and the complaints are all the same--it's unfinished, a bit of a mess, there is some sort of savior, but her story is about aliens taking over, not machines, and that anyone who sees either the Matrix or the Terminator in this manuscript is a lunatic. There are plenty of positive reviews for Ms. Stewart's works on amazon.com--but these people also have never reviewed anything else on the site. They all hail her as a fantastic writer who clearly is the most gifted woman in the history of mankind and known civilization. Almost like they were plants.)
Let's look at her complaints against the makers of the Matrix.
The Wachowskis--in 1986 going by the names of Andy and Larry--were 21 and 18, respectively. I do not know if they put out an ad for scripts that they would then turn into animation, which was the purpose of the alleged advertisement. Larry (now Lana) had not finished high school when said ad appeared, and I cannot find information as to what trade that ad was published in. That's not to say that they didn't do it, but the Wachowski family was not known as a family of means. They were living in Chicago at the time, which is also where Ms. Stewart states she was also living. So it's entirely possible that they ran a simple ad in the Chicago Tribune, received her script and tossed it into a pile. Ms. Stewart claims she never heard anything from the Wachowskis.
This may have happened, but I have serious doubts about the veracity of anything Ms. Stewart claims at this point.
For one thing, she keeps alleging on her website (for those of you willing to subject yourselves to it, http://www.truthaboutmatrix.com) that she has won a $15 BILLION settlement against these yokels.
As my father would say, "Now wait just a damn minute."
Think about it. If an African-American woman won a settlement that astoundingly large against Warner Bros., The Wachowskis, and Joel Silver, who would be the first person to demand an interview?
That's right: Oprah.
For one thing, Oprah would no longer be the richest woman of color in the country. That alone would force her to sit down with Ms. Stewart to get a couple of things right. For another, Oprah made her talk show empire...in Chicago. They would have much to discuss.
Yet I do not see Oprah lending her support to Ms. Stewart. I doubt Oprah is aware of Ms. Stewart's existence. I do believe Oprah would genuinely want Ms. Stewart to be the rightful author of all Matrix-related items, because it would be such a boon to the African-American creative community.
And...crickets from Team Harpo.
This, more than any other single thing, tells me that Ms. Stewart may not have all her facts straight.
Despite Ms. Stewart's best efforts to have you believe that she's some sort of incredibly gifted genius (and by all means buy her books, because even billionaires need serious cash flow that only amazon.com can bring), I'm going to tell you what actually happened here:
Ms. Stewart told everyone who had ears that she had been wronged. She was contacted by a lawyer, one Jonathan Lubell, who said that he would represent her for $50,000 and put things right. Going through the information, however, said lawyer apparently did not think that Warner Bros. et al would actually go to court and fight this, or he thought he'd taken a clunker of a case that he was sure to lose. No matter the reason, he never informed Ms. Stewart when the defendants wished to take her deposition. As the defense took this to mean she refused deposition, the case was thrown out in 2004.
Had she been deposed in the first place, the case would likely have been thrown out anyway, but this gave her legal grounds to try again. Ms. Stewart did win the right to have another trial, given the presumed negligence of Mr. Lubell and his team. That case was also thrown out of court.
So Ms. Stewart, thinking she couldn't have a fair case in California, pled her case again. And again. Most recently (2014), she pled her case in Utah--a two-fold case: one against Mr. Lubell and his firm (since Lubell is now deceased), and one against Warner Bros. et al. This is the case about which she has documents on her website (and I can read some legalese--I mean, it's not exactly a second language to me, but I can decipher it and I cannot decipher the stuff she has put in the documents on her website. I mean, I know something of substance is in there somewhere, but I think I'd do better as a gold prospector in Syracuse, NY right now than finding the substance in the pdfs on her site). I had no trouble in deciphering the actual verdict in said trial, which I found on one of the many websites that have trivia about this case.
In case you are curious, Mr. Lubell and his associates were found to be negligent and ordered to pay the legal fees from the 2004 case and some other related fees to the tune of roughly $350,000. (As the original case was thrown out, she was ordered to pay the fees that the Wachowskis, Warner Bros., and Joel Silver all incurred.)
The subsequent case against Warner Bros. in 2014, despite her "expert" testimony that used monetary figures from websites such as Box Office Mojo and imdb.com as part of said expert testimony (not, say, the actual ledgers from the company that made the movie), was found to not have merit and the judge recommended that no damages be awarded to Ms. Stewart for this or any other similar case brought in Utah.
I highlighted that because I thought that maybe Ms. Stewart needed someone to explain it to her, and just in case she's as megalomaniacal as I think she is, perhaps she'd find this blog and finally understand the judgment.
The interesting thing in all of this is that this is a story that simply won't die. I wonder why people want to continue to feed into a woman who considers herself to be the most gifted writer in her generation without any proof. (Cough Neil Gaiman Cough). For certain, she's the only one who says so, because I have yet to see any of her other work, which I find highly suspect. Why do we know nothing of her writings between 1983, when she claims she "finished" her manuscript (as I understand it, the manuscript she's selling is not exactly finished, and really, she's had plenty of time to do so) and 1999, when the Matrix hit the big screen? Would we not already know her name in creative circles? While I do think it may have been more difficult as an African-American woman to be recognized as a writer than as a white man in the 1980s, it wasn't unheard of or impossible (hello, Gloria Naylor. Hello, Terry McMillan).
Therefore, while I think that this is an interesting exercise, I do think that Ms. Stewart may suffer from sort of psychological disorder. God knows I feel like I do after researching this for several days now.
I need better hobbies.
Sunday, March 13, 2016
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
It's 2016.
In addition to being a leap year, it's also an election year.
That alone makes me cower, but reading what's happening out there in the primaries? I cannot write the depth of my shudder. I simply don't have the words.
And for the five of you who will read this, whether you're conservative or liberal, registered Democrat or Republican...you should be scared.
Absolutely nobody out there is going to be good for this country who is presently running.
There's a reason for this, and it's an incredibly simple reason:
TOO MUCH INFORMATION.
Nobody who SHOULD run the country is going to be ABLE to run for the presidency, let alone run the country. We know too much, and people find things out, and now we have this great medium by which people can find out nearly ANYTHING.
In THIS culture:
In addition to being a leap year, it's also an election year.
That alone makes me cower, but reading what's happening out there in the primaries? I cannot write the depth of my shudder. I simply don't have the words.
And for the five of you who will read this, whether you're conservative or liberal, registered Democrat or Republican...you should be scared.
Absolutely nobody out there is going to be good for this country who is presently running.
There's a reason for this, and it's an incredibly simple reason:
TOO MUCH INFORMATION.
Nobody who SHOULD run the country is going to be ABLE to run for the presidency, let alone run the country. We know too much, and people find things out, and now we have this great medium by which people can find out nearly ANYTHING.
In THIS culture:
- Reagan doesn't get elected (back door policies in relation to Iran uncovered before he ever hits office)
- FDR doesn't get elected (wife is a lesbian; he would look ineffectual and be called a socialist)
- Kennedy doesn't get elected (are you kidding?!?!?!?!?)
- Nixon doesn't get elected (again: are you kidding?!?!?!?!?)
- Clinton doesn't get elected (for ten thousand reasons)
I'm not saying any of the above should have been elected or not. I'm saying that in this culture, none of them would have been. The only ones I can say for sure WOULD still be elected are Jimmy Carter (because the country needed to cleanse the palate after the Nixon debacle) and Eisenhower (because the country was ready for a change after 20 years of Democrats in the White House).
EVERYBODY in politics is dirty. Yes, BernBros, EVERYONE. It's the question of the person who might have some sort of soul still left and enough brain to put it to good use for the good of this nation. It's why Giuliani won't run...he knows he'd never win because he'd get pulled through the mud. But in terms of brain, he's a better choice than just about everyone currently out there. And in a population-exploding, refugee-crisis, EU-shutting-down, Zika-scare world, we need someone with a lot of brain who will wisely be surrounded by other people with lots of brain.
NONE of these morons are trustworthy. ALL of them have major issues. Who are you going to trust? We're learning that nobody in power is worthy of it--because to get there, you must be corrupted. Plain and simple.
For those of you from my subculture, you know I'm not an End Times person. I'm not. I just don't know if it's the end times for THIS country.
No wonder I want to stick my head in the sand and go pet my dog.
Saturday, January 16, 2016
Why I won't be seeing The Revenant (WARNING: NSFW)
I won't be seeing The Revenant.
I don't care that I "should" see it because Leonardo DiCaprio is going to win Best Actor for this movie. He's not winning for this movie exactly, by the way. He's winning because he gave very good performances in several other movies, and no one else is really a threat in this category this year (no offense, Eddie Redmayne, but you are no Tom Hanks; you are not the definition of the American Sweetheart, and nobody thinks you're worthy of getting two back-to-back Oscars--even if you are the politically correct choice this year).
Leo isn't the reason I won't see The Revenant.
Neither is Tom Hardy, who has been publicly called out on treating those who work for him like dirt. No, I'm not doing this just because Tom Hardy is in it--I don't dislike him enough to avoid him, and I do think he is a good actor.
I won't see the movie because Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu endangered the lives of his crew repeatedly while making this movie so that it could be within his "vision".
I won't see the movie because seeing it is, in some way, condoning that kind of behavior.
Also, it would mean that I am somehow supporting a man who is (and I do apologize; I have no other terminology for it) a blight on the human condition.
In other words, an asshole.
I am not overstating it when I said that Inarritu endangered the lives of his crew. He also endangered the lives of some of the extras by potentially freezing them to death in wetsuits that had broken. It's a wonder these people didn't die.
IATSE, the labor union for film workers (also theater and TV) was called to the set three times after complaints kept piling up about the unsafe working conditions. The main production company (there are five attached to the film) stated that these conditions were not unsafe (from the safety of their Hollywood offices, I might add--the one producer that did go up there made things worse with Inarritu and caused a significant delay).
About all of this, Inarritu has said the following:
"When you see the film, you will see the scale of it," promises Inarritu. "And you will say, 'Wow.'"
I absolutely refuse to give that kind of ego credence to continue to push the limits just because this man is, in his own words, "an artiste". So much of what he wanted to create did not have to occur in the dead of winter in Alberta, CA. (Which is another point--these IATSE crew members were indigenous to the area, most of them. They know what it's like to deal with such conditions. And they complained--which is exactly like someone in Syracuse complaining about snow conditions. It had to be BEYOND THE PALE for them to say, "Whoa, stop, we shouldn't be doing this.")
It was so bad that, apparently, Tom Hardy yelled at Inarritu about the conditions and what he, Hardy, was asked to do while being significantly injured from filming Mad Max. Inarritu wouldn't budge--what Hardy wanted to have done was nothing special, but having a safety apparatus that would have to then be digitally erased was not part of his "vision", and therefore Inarritu refused--so Hardy decked him, and with a single punch laid him out flat.
Egos are nothing new in Hollywood--thanks for playing, Michael Bay, James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, John Frankenheimer--but there are egos and then there is idiocy all in the name of someone's "vision" that some idiots down there in H'wood decided to fund to the tune of $135 million dollars. I have a vision that children don't go hungry in this country, and I don't see New Regency Cinema shelling out for my special vision. Then again, I'm not an "artiste" by their standards.
Maybe I'm just not an asshole.
So no, thank you, I'll take a pass.
P.S. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, aka the governing body behind the Oscars, really messed up this year by not including Straight Outta Compton for Best Picture--nobody would expect it to win in a year when Spotlight was made, honestly, but for crying out loud you include a cultural touchstone like that (same for the new Star Wars, really). They messed up for not including Ridley Scott for Best Director, Michael B. Jordan for Creed, and most of all not including The Peanuts Movie for Best Animated Feature.
Now I want popcorn.
I don't care that I "should" see it because Leonardo DiCaprio is going to win Best Actor for this movie. He's not winning for this movie exactly, by the way. He's winning because he gave very good performances in several other movies, and no one else is really a threat in this category this year (no offense, Eddie Redmayne, but you are no Tom Hanks; you are not the definition of the American Sweetheart, and nobody thinks you're worthy of getting two back-to-back Oscars--even if you are the politically correct choice this year).
Leo isn't the reason I won't see The Revenant.
Neither is Tom Hardy, who has been publicly called out on treating those who work for him like dirt. No, I'm not doing this just because Tom Hardy is in it--I don't dislike him enough to avoid him, and I do think he is a good actor.
I won't see the movie because Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu endangered the lives of his crew repeatedly while making this movie so that it could be within his "vision".
I won't see the movie because seeing it is, in some way, condoning that kind of behavior.
Also, it would mean that I am somehow supporting a man who is (and I do apologize; I have no other terminology for it) a blight on the human condition.
In other words, an asshole.
I am not overstating it when I said that Inarritu endangered the lives of his crew. He also endangered the lives of some of the extras by potentially freezing them to death in wetsuits that had broken. It's a wonder these people didn't die.
IATSE, the labor union for film workers (also theater and TV) was called to the set three times after complaints kept piling up about the unsafe working conditions. The main production company (there are five attached to the film) stated that these conditions were not unsafe (from the safety of their Hollywood offices, I might add--the one producer that did go up there made things worse with Inarritu and caused a significant delay).
About all of this, Inarritu has said the following:
"When you see the film, you will see the scale of it," promises Inarritu. "And you will say, 'Wow.'"
I absolutely refuse to give that kind of ego credence to continue to push the limits just because this man is, in his own words, "an artiste". So much of what he wanted to create did not have to occur in the dead of winter in Alberta, CA. (Which is another point--these IATSE crew members were indigenous to the area, most of them. They know what it's like to deal with such conditions. And they complained--which is exactly like someone in Syracuse complaining about snow conditions. It had to be BEYOND THE PALE for them to say, "Whoa, stop, we shouldn't be doing this.")
It was so bad that, apparently, Tom Hardy yelled at Inarritu about the conditions and what he, Hardy, was asked to do while being significantly injured from filming Mad Max. Inarritu wouldn't budge--what Hardy wanted to have done was nothing special, but having a safety apparatus that would have to then be digitally erased was not part of his "vision", and therefore Inarritu refused--so Hardy decked him, and with a single punch laid him out flat.
Egos are nothing new in Hollywood--thanks for playing, Michael Bay, James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, John Frankenheimer--but there are egos and then there is idiocy all in the name of someone's "vision" that some idiots down there in H'wood decided to fund to the tune of $135 million dollars. I have a vision that children don't go hungry in this country, and I don't see New Regency Cinema shelling out for my special vision. Then again, I'm not an "artiste" by their standards.
Maybe I'm just not an asshole.
So no, thank you, I'll take a pass.
P.S. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, aka the governing body behind the Oscars, really messed up this year by not including Straight Outta Compton for Best Picture--nobody would expect it to win in a year when Spotlight was made, honestly, but for crying out loud you include a cultural touchstone like that (same for the new Star Wars, really). They messed up for not including Ridley Scott for Best Director, Michael B. Jordan for Creed, and most of all not including The Peanuts Movie for Best Animated Feature.
Now I want popcorn.
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