With the BFG Movie Coming and All

In honor of a very special day, I thought I'd revive this old post about a book I found, um, intriguing, with some interesting asides (see below!).

My first thought as I read this book was Wow! Dahl is on LSD! Which makes sense for a book published in the 80s (is Dahl a child of the 60s/70s?). But no, he wasn't on psychotropic drugs. The book is Freud and Jung with a dash of Platonic forms. That says it all, doesn't it?

Ok, on to at least one real thought: BFG’s fabulous voice of made-up words, rhythm and bizarre syntax that never muddles meaning makes the book vivid and real, and surprisingly easy to read. Logic, however, seems a non-essential factor in this book, and in fantasy for this age in general. Example: the BFG can’t understand the natterbox spiders (he doesn’t know the language), but he can understand the chatbag cattypiddlers. Um. Why? Not that I really care because, hello, natterbox spiders and chatbag cattypiddlers are just too freaking awesome.

Yet I can’t get away from a Freudian reading of this book. Case in point, the giants have these frankfurter lips, right? And we all know what hot dogs represent... And they have this slimy drool, and little Sophie ends up in a giant cucumber-like (phallic much?) vegetable and is then taken into the giant’s mouth ... Yes, yes, I know. A stretch. It’s just creepy to me, like the author is subconsciously working through some latent memories he can't make sense of. Anyway, enough of that. Now for additional disjointed and seemingly random thoughts:

I love how the BFG is so childlike while the giants are rather obviously bullies, though the “message” is a little too heavy-handed for me, and a wee wittle one-sided. There's a line about human beans (yes, beans) being the only ones that kill their own kind, which isn’t true at all. I had enough hamsters as a child to know they often kill one another, and they eat their young (or in the case of Peaches, half of one of her young. The other half she left for me to find). On that note, I was a little annoyed by the social commentary. It seems the book was half parody (jack and the beanstalk references), half fantasy, and half cultural critique (yes, I know my halves don’t add up). Yet even with all the talk of how human beans kill one another, the giants (only doing what comes naturally to themselves, unlike the awful humans) get a pretty severe punishment. 

Moving on: Stephen King wrote somewhere that horror is having people react in expected ways to unexpected events. Here a giant meets real England and a table is made for him of grandfather clocks and a ping pong table. Dahl gives great authenticating details of the butler needing a ladder to set the table, it taking four footmen to carry the clocks, and so on. Such great humor here, and the fart jokes, and by the bellypoppers and portedos. I’m laughing aloud. In public. People are looking at me. 

On the downside, it took to page 118 (Sophie trying to save the school kids) for there to be strong forward motion. The plot was muddled throughout and not tied up too neatly at the end. Maybe because the whole thing is just some Jungian shared dream? It was all Dahl’s dream, obviously, since he is the BFG who, we discover at the end, is writing the story. Obviously, right? RIGHT? 

So although I found the book creepily Freudian/Jungian, and although I did enjoy the wild creativity and fun use of language, I do hope Dahl got himself some good psychotherapy. 

As an aside, I loved the bit about why there are blank pages at the back of an atlas—to draw the places no one has ever been. Isn’t that a metaphor for writing? And for life itself? 

A second aside: Dahl and I share a birthday! Which just so happens to be TODAY! Happy birthday to us!

Third aside: affiliate link up there, yo. 

What Am I? Exploring Screenwriting

February or March, 2011 I read a screenplay. In many ways it's a whim. The writer said, "I love getting feedback," and I said, "I love giving feedback." So I read it, and after a few weeks - since I was deep in my final semester of Hamline's MFA - the writer finally said, "So where's my feedback already?!?"

Uncharacteristically, I sat down and wrote out an email in response. I put very little time or thought into it, largely because I'd already put a lot of thought into the script. I wrote something like:

I really love this and this and this.
I don't think this and this and this are working because of why and why.
I suggest doing this and this because of why and why, to enhance that and fix this and that.

The writer responded with something like: "OMG WOW. Can I hire you to help me with my screenplay?" I told him I'd help him for free. He insisted on a contract. I caved. And it's a good thing.

How to Read Your Movies: Kindle, Aldiko and More

I was looking for (free) content for my kindle/eReader and didn't want the typical free stuff - classics and self-published drek full of typos and hackneyed plots and characters. Plus I wanted to research screenwriting, beyond the handful of books I've read in the past year. 

Since reading fiction is the best way to improve in my writing, the same would hold for screenplays, yes? Yup. Add to it, once you get used to the format, which is WoNkY as H@cK to the uninitiated, screenplays are really fun to read.

And heaps of them can be found online in PDF or other formats, totally free. My fave source: Script-o-Rama. Hard on the eyes, yes, but zillions of totally free scripts. And another list, the Black List ...

I now have a bunch of scripts in Aldiko, and have had some fun surprises. Like Bridesmaids was funnier as a screenplay. It was so funny that, though I'd seen the movie already, I rented it again after reading it. Because the read had me in stitches. But just like the first time, it wasn't as funny as I'd hoped. Humor on the page vs. humor on screen ... huh. Who knew they were different?

Next in my TBR pile, folder, whatever: Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Let's see if breathless longing feels the same in text. I hope so.

Waxing In-elegant: Credit Jumping and Ballet Recitals

The definition of Inelegant. Of tacky. Of rude. Of crass. Of immoral. Of just plain wrong. That would be: Credit Jumping. Which, for those who might not know, is leveraging an author (extorting? intimidating? coercing?) into hiring an "editor/writer" who then gains a credit for the work via shared byline or outright stolen byline - for very little work.

Keep back. The ginger is breathing fire today.

On a happy note. Proud Mama's little Mud Pie performed her first ever ballet recital. She loved every minute.

Unlike this dear creature (the girl on the left). Poor thing, but hooray for her for walking on the stage at all.

When Books Become Films

Last night I popped in the latest arrival from Netfix, the movie adaptation of Christopher Paulini's Eragon. I was so excited - a chance to lose myself in a great epic fantasy, like Lord of the Rings which I could read or watch a thousand times and never find boring. And since Eragon has been compared to LOTR many times (though mostly with the word "pilfer" somewhere in the sentence), I was expecting great things.

My husband and I like to predict whether a film will be any good during the opening credits. Actually, it's mostly my husband who likes to do this, and I like to say, "Just watch the movie!" and then to gloat (in a mature way, of course) when a flick he said would be awful is actually good. Especially if it was my pick and not his.

But this time I couldn't help but join in the prediction game. When a film opens with a tawny-headed Hobbit frolicking in the woodlands it's quaint and endearing. But the tawny Ed Speleers, the 17-year-old slightly petulant, thoroughly milk-toast Eragon? Not so much.



By the arrival of the dragon egg, Stephen and I were cracking jokes, "No! Take the red pill the red one! Don't take the blue pill!" (Sorry, forgive my Honey I Shrunk the Kids meets The Matrixmoment there.)

Once the rubbery baby dragon started devouring rats, we were switching to our one clear television channel to see when 20/20 would be finished with the un-viewable segment on some man who murdered his children but kept the love of his wife. So for another half-hour we flipped. The dragon is telepathic! switch The woman forgave him. switch The evil king is John Malkovich! switch Creepy music and, "Mania and depression can be a murderous combination..." switch Is that a dragon or a giant rubber chicken that's been painted blue? switch So call your doctor about Galbatorix. May cause stomach upset, diarrhea, and incandescent glowing of the eyeballs. Oh, good, the segment's over.

Usually I like to read a book before I watch a movie. I saw Lemony Snicket first (and loved it) but found it was just too close to the books for me to read them - too redundant. I was so disappointed; they're such smart and funny books. But here, regardless of how different the book may be, I no longer feel compelled to read it, and given it's door-stop proportions, this is about two week's reading I may now spend on other things. Bonus for me!