Pet Peeves - film and ads

I had in mind a topic to blog about which had nothing to do with what is now the first pet peeve on my mind. First, I'm sure some insufferable boob is going to say, "If you don't like ads there is nobody forcing you to use the website." That is the kind of remark that deserves a slap in the head with a dead fish. I finally make my way to google and blogger and click "create new post" and lately what I get is a blank screen with nothing but an ad banner and at the bottom a "send feedback" button which I may have use for. If I want to actually see where to put my subject line and the body of my blog entry I have to click refresh. This I find out purely by experimenting. When I sign into a hotmail account, I see at the top an indication like, "a password is not enough," which looks like the name of a philosophically horrific song raising money for internet stupidity. To circumvent that I have to highlight the address bar and either go to another site or type hotmail again and then I am in. So I'm learning two things from msn in that case: They want to force me to give them a phone number or credit card or some other perhaps false verification of identity for an account I have had for 13 years (which is something I don't respect) and the security of their stupid system can be gotten around (which I also can't say I respect). I have heard that something on the horizon will replace hotmail accounts entirety, but have received no alerts and it may have merely been hype for the new service. Some of us have records of hotmail messages archived in such a way that there would be a loss if they were deleted. I don't know how to fight these things without seeming naive. What I had in mind was to talk about filmmaker pet peeves. Mainly the way that aspects of production are played off without context. An actor brags, "We don't need to use monitors or video assist. The camera man can do that. And I don't like the director looking at a monitor during the take. He should be looking at me." Or somebody says, "Oh, out director doesn't bother with storyboards. He just makes up his mind as we go along. That keeps it all fresh. he doesn't need the crutch of storyboard sketches." There seems to be nobody responding to those kinds of sound bytes, and so they are taken at face value. This drives me nuts. About the actor saying a director should be looking at him/her during the take, the actor is important but so is context and perspective. Even if the director is ONLY concerned about the actor, the lens and the lighting and the way the actor is framed and frankly whether a moment within a take is actually IN FRAME at all are all elements of that. And the actor's job is largely concentration. If the reality of the director standing there in his/her eye-line and staring at them is important, that actor has problems ACTING!!!!!! There IS NO director between action and cut, only your character and whatever other fictional person should be imagined there. Furthermore, the director has to sign off on the shot. It is nice if other people do to, but the director HAS TO be able to give the minimum direction of YES or NO. The director can sign-off blindly and take the cinematographer's word for it, but chances are the cinematographer might not be operating the camera either and if HE isn't using a monitor to at least see how the lights interact with the scene then it would come down to the camera operator's sign-off. However competent or extraordinary each member of the crew may be, the director should WANT to be the person who signs off. Especially because there may always be one detail that shouldn't be taken for granted and he should have to take responsibility when it comes to edit and there are no surprises about something being there you don't want or something missing that should be there. About the storyboard, this is not spelled out enough. The kind of storyboards to avoid are the ones that a studio might give to the director of a tent-pole film and say "just shoot this." A good storyboard for s similar size film might be Paul Verhoven's personal storyboards for Starship Troopers which depict the shooting plan pretty much as it emerged on screen, and with the added benefit that he happens to be an excellent draftsman so the illustrations are true to the subjects. Whether it happens all the time or not, I like the idea of the director drawing each frame within a shot and having a plan. If a movie were 100 pages of screenplay, I estimate that two and a half weeks of 8-hour days could be spent on the director doing the first pass of thumbnail storyboards for a feature. That is thought and time and close regard of the scenes that will not be spent during the high tension of making the movie itself when time is of the essence. Plans can be modified or adapted as circumstances change, but having done storyboards makes a person mentally prepared for how to use the camera as visual reinforcement to contain the relationships and moments of the story. They can also help narrow down locations. If someone expects to be a beggar and not a chooser with locations or sets, they might compromise the best way to shoot a scene. For example, being unable to get the camera far enough away from the actors to blur out the background because the location is too confined might be something that they are willing to compromise or it might be an argument that can be defended persuasively with storyboarding (and with pointing to the sketch and explaining "this is the character and this is scribble is the blur because he is isolated from others and should have his own focal plane"). The camera (except in faux documentary style which I dislike) should not be playing catch-up with the actors. There is nothing unusual about giving the actor the edge of the stage and the confines in which he/she has to work. Sometimes it will be just their hands acting in close-up, sometimes just the face, and sometimes head-to-toe body language. The actor's requirements include technical competence. They can certainly bring something to the table, and may have a better-motivated start position or an idea of how to be introduced. But even those are best as early discussions instead of last minute so their implications can be applied throughout the story and not as a whim or as a concession to a star's ego. If you are lucky, Samuel L. Jackson has a character-motivated way to first show his religious character in Black Snake Moan, in a prayer-like position leaning on a vehicle. If you are unlikely and actress doesn't feel like wearing the hat the movie is named after and scenes that have already been done with it have to be abandoned, as detailed in "Claire's Hat" the bootleg documentary by Bruce McDonald. I'm sure there are other examples but those were the ones I had to get off my chest today. In case anyone is reading.

Spaghetti short

A short video about leftovers as breakfast.

Busted Watch: a video short

Here is a 30 second HDV video short about hanging onto a crappy watch just because it still works. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLk8ni9hkKU

mini-review: The Beaver

This is the first of my reviews pulling down DVDs from my own collection. I hesitate to include this one because I notice a disproportionate number of blog posts about Mel Gibson. Strange. I'll hold off any reviews on his other flicks until after I have been through a few others here. Pardon the hiss of sound on this one. The shot-gun mic I was using is not up to snuff. Waste of money. But at least this gets across my glib, flip remarks about The Beaver.

July 21 Murder Near Jobsite

I was working as a sort of guest guard for mostly weekend night shifts during the Olympics at CTV in Scarborough. Most of it was uneventful apart from being told I take washroom runs more often than most guards. I figure over the course of 12 hours three or four is reasonable. On a dark note, I had a couple of unfortunate clashes with the main site supervisor who will remain nameless. The last of which was a matter of which shift I agreed to do. In July he called me at home and asked me to do an additional shift which was Monday 06 August from 1900 hours to 0700 hours. Agreed. Simple enough. I wrote it down on m home calender - Monday 06 August was a civic holiday as well, so it was especially marked in my memory as maybe a possible few extra dollars. The Monday 06 shift arrives and I work it and no problem. My next shift should be Friday. Then Thursday the 9th just after 1900 hours or 7pm I get a call from this supervisor. Maybe he is the account director. I don't know. I've been calling him supervisor. I'm at home chilling and almost went to a matinee of Jaws which would have meant never getting this call. I should have gone to the show as it turns out. Instead of saying what was clearly the truth, "Gee, William, I screwed up and I should have asked you to do the Thursday shift. Can you help us out and come in? I accidentally had someone put you in the schedule for that and posted it but I didn't ask" he immediately starts with an accusatory tone. "William, why aren't you on site? You have a shift." I say no, I work Friday. He says he called me in July and got me to work Thurday the 9th and I remind him it was Monday the 6th. I tell him I guess I can come in at the last minute but it would have been better if I had known. He says it was on the same schedule posted "for the past 2 weeks." At this point I could have told him that Blessing, one of the other guards, asked my last name on Monday because she was apparently in the office correcting the schedule. Unfortunately nobody told me that it was to add me into any other shift. I did not want to bring her into the conversation. The onus should have been on the supervisor to ask me to take the shift, especially since I was a visiting guard and could take shifts from other sites while off. He knew that, hence his call in July, which I contended was about Monday. And I reminded him that I only had one Monday-into-Tuesday shift and it was the one on the 6th. Therefore that was the one he had booked me into. His response was "I'm the BOSS." Even though I agreed to come in, he said, "You are a no-show. You are a NO-SHOW. I am going to make sure (***the company we work for***) knows about it. This is how easily life can go from sane to insane. I reinforced my comment by saying the only times I've been in there on a Thursday were on July 26 and then the following week by accident where I was reminded it was just a one-off and I start my weekend shifts on Friday. FRIDAY. Extra reinforcement of logic. He claimed that he was aware I accidentally came in the previous Thursday and that it somehow indicated confirmation that Thursday the 9th was an agreed-upon shift. I say no, as it was a week away and clearly I came in and worked the MONDAY 6 shift which can't be overlooked. (It somehow did not occur to him to change his story to claim that he asked me to do two shifts; he stuck with the idea that it was Thursday and not Monday he asked me to do. Sheez!!) Now even though it was clearly his mistake, and it was a minor one, rather than accept the slightest responsibility he decided it was easier to throw me under the bus. He concluded - even though I was going to drag my tired ass in for this 12 hour (now it would be 11-hour) night shift - he went so far as to say to me, "I am going to make sure that once this Olympic coverage is done you don't come back." Wow. WOW! That's a pretty hurtful jab, considering that I did nothing wrong. Of course it is tempered by the fact that I wasn't SUPPOSED to come back. He had only decided I was of use as a night-shift gatehouse guard. He had already decided a month previous that I shouldn't be in regular rotation because after touring the complex with him I couldn't immediately verbally give directions to the places I had been. And this is a place that everyone calls a maze. Not to disparage the rest of the staff, because I find them generally nice and the few I've interacted with regularly were quite helpful and accommodating. And there is agreement that the fall-back of a line like "I'm the boss!" does sound like something this glob of shit would say. Maybe he does have friends at our head office who have kept me out of shifts elsewhere. Hard to tell. But for what it is worth, I am not going to be discrete about corrupt supervisors who have become too comfy at a site and become like Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. He may not be chopping off heads of natives but he has an unintentionally comical swagger and the security computer has a desktop photo displaying his precious black fancy car. The sort of car you don't expect a security site supervisor to have. He must have made peace with corruption long ago. Of course, that much is just speculation. A little more charitable than his own speculation about me. The first real offensive call I got from him was on Thursday the 26 (again, the only Thursday I was asked to come in; they don't want to give a lot of overtime) when he phoned me in the gatehouse from his own home to ask about the morning of July 21. He blatantly say, "Not just the cops but I think you should have seen something or heard something. Were you watching a movie or sleeping or what?" I told him even with the A/C on and the radio I likely would have heard a scream if there was one and that I have felt awful talking to family and friends about it and speculating about how a murder could have happened so close by and maybe I could have caught the guy or helped the victim. He left the conversation at that and nobody corrected me. I had to read on-line a news item about the death. Police did catch the killer, partly due to finger-prints on the car that had been abandoned at the roadside. But the murder HAD NOT TAKEN PLACE NEAR OUR PROPERTY !!!!! The victim had been stabbed and killed elsewhere and then driven and dropped in the ditch nearby out site. So in the best of circumstances, the most I would have heard is a car pulling over to the shoulder of a busy street and (hidden from my view by trees) someone dropping a body (whatever that sounds like from half a block away) into the grass slope. And since I can't leave my gatehouse and walk around there is nothing for me to see. According to dickhead, the CCTV cameras show that the killer after dumping the body ran through the opening in the far fence (not on the property) and walked down the court or driveway to flee and may have dropped the knife out there. None of which would read as anything significant in the dead of night. The images I have taken with my still camera (some video setting shots) show how difficult any of that would have been to see. Also, my supervisor would know that I am not the one with CCTV camera access. That is the main console inside, and even when police started to gather on the street and I phoned that guard to pan around he could not spot a body. We helped the police in way way we could and they looked around, but they knew our involvement could only be after the fact and I am certain (considering my own direct interaction with the detectives that night) they knew darn well that the person was not stabbed near us but was dumped and all of our involvement could only be after the fact. I am furious that this goddamn jackass in charge had no problem letting me think I could have saved someone. . . and also had apparent ignorance of what that site looks like from the post I was at.

pitch in with pitching

Bitching should be part of the heading here, but I wasn't bold enough to do that. All I know about this blog is that I may start posting pitches here for my scripts and videotaped movie reviews. The process of retelling myself a film story helps clarify and simplify it. Some details may fall by the wayside, but maybe this is the way to discover what ahould fall out. Some ideas or details I fall in love with, even directorial ideas that I have already imposed on a script not yet finished. Have to make sure I'm not going out of the way and straying from the dramatic center of a story to include stylish wanking. I've also considered using these blogs for knocking off "four pages" as described by Julia Cameron's book The Artist's Way. Just an excuse to dump out any random trash cluttering up my head soit isn't the driving force of my creative writing or infecting it. But most of the clutter is exactly what I want to generate, so just getting it out of my system and having it sit unread and unusable or having to cull through it all for morstles that might be of use is not enough. I've put a handful of pitches into my virtual office at zoetrope.com and have changed the office name to Pitch Bitch. People do rely on oral instruction and presentation, to a point where may people in autority can barely write an e-mail. That's a hurdle for me, because I'd rather fuss over something than be a less intimidsting version of me. This pitch-focus means less fussing, mainly streem of consciousness description of a project. We'll see if it works. I have such a backlog of scripts and projects. The stories may as well have their structure and be contained even in their most minimalist and conversational form.

The Dictator, Mel Gibson, History and Comedy

The Dictator is an outstanding satire which is not burning up the box office in America as it should and has gotten temped ratings on rotten tomatoes. Too bad. A movie that swings for the fences will impress those it was meant to impress (people like myself who find it refreshing) and will alienate people who are either strict formalists who insist a movie can only be a satire or a rom-com. It will also annoy morons, but we'll leave that aside. I love the fact that this is both a satire and a somewhat disingenuous rom-com with a protagonist who gets to do heroic deeds and still has a back-story and attitudes that are off-putting. Too many movies are running for office. This movie expects you to know when it is giving movies the finger. Some people don't get it. I got it and appreciate it. This is the sort of movie I would like to be doing. Get the Gringo appears to be released somewhere and I like what I am hearing about it, that it has the quips of a Lethal Weapon and it has a tone like Robert Rodriguez flicks. I look forward to Machete Kills, in which Mel Gibson is supposed to play a bad guy. This all happens around the same time Joe Eszterhas is coming out with an e-book called Heaven and Mel which will fine-tune his own spin on the creative falling out he had with the actor-director over the Maccabee script. I have only the other day heard that he released audio of Mel's alleged rant to him in Costa Rica, but it is clearly from another room and kind of low key as rants go. Mel yells at him for not writing a darn thing over 14 months of being employed to do a screenplay, then yells "Who wants dinner? Yum!" or something. No big deal. He also apparently appeared on Jay Leno and (appropriately) made light of it. It is a shame. I have a copy of Basic Instinct which is entertaining. I also have a book, "The Devil's Guide to Hollywood," wherein one presumes our guide is Joe. After the downbeat visit to Costa Rica (where another writer was having better luck writing with Mel, one Randall Wallace who wrote Braveheart and directed Mel in We Were Soldiers) Joe did finally whip-up a screenplay draft. But it was apparently slip-shot and not reflective enough of what Mel wanted. Warners rejected it and then Mel rejected it. Warners had already paid Joe for the work thus far. Now without Joe's spin, it is the tale of a screenwriter who hasn't cranked anything out since An Allan Smithee Film, Burn, Hollywood, Burn in 1997 if you don't count the 2006 foreign polo film Children of Glory which has three other credited screenwriters and I've never heard of it. Getting his draft of the Maccabee script rejected by Warners would be such a blow to this latter phase of his career he knows his posterity is at stake so he has to make something else of it. Why Mel or Warners chose him to work on this material is unknown. Maybe this time-honored story of Jewish history needed a "Showgirls" touch. Joe wants to amp up the perception that Mel Gibson is not only a lunatic but anti-Semitic. Is The Passion of the Christ a slam against Jews? I didn't feel it as such when I watched it. And it didn't motivate anyone to go out and commit acts of violence against Jews either. It is a very contemplative film. I don't know if Hindus deny that Hindus killed Gandhi or whether the Nation of Islam says their members had nothing to do with killing Malcolm X. The facts don't seem to be much in dispute. People see evil done do Jews OSTENSIBLY for the killing of Christ and therefore can't suffer the fact that not only a Jew named Jesus got crucified and that some high-ranking Jews insisted on it but that crucifixion was common, as was public flogging. I have not heard any dispute of the line "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do" spoken supposedly by Jesus, which would (one thinks) wipe the slate clean for all of JC's persecutors. But even then to not know "what they do" is to assume they don't realize they are killing the Son of God but believe they are merely torturing and killing an ordinary person for blasphemy. So any way you slice it, people have been barbaric and stupid throughout history. Hopefully we will get to see Randall Wallace's Viking film which might very well push Viking violence to the limit. It's a little too easy for people to whine that they don't agree with their employer. It creates a climate where famous employers can't write you a letter or an e-mail without fear that you will release it to the public. I likely will read Joe's e-book, but I already don't respect it. Sascha Baron Cohen (The Dictator himself) has made a couple of digs against Mel Gibson but they are inspired digs. I can respect both in that case. Gibson is made an easy target for accusations of racism. Hopefully meanwhile I will soon find a copy of Get the Gringo. Apparently it is in theaters overseas.

Mel Gibsiob in better times

As far as I'm concerned, this is the real Me Gibson.

The Dictator demands you see his film

I just saw the movie. The Dictator is both a conventional comedy with a romantic subplot. I've heard it described as "Coming To America with rape jokes" which ill-serves the movie. It has a brisk-yet-warm tone similar to the Eddie Murphy classic, but in context the most evil aspects of The Dictator's back-story are understood by fans of Sacha Baron Cohen to be post-modern satire and only the most clueless person - some of whom being critics - will be offended. It is part movie and part practical joke even if the film itself is pure fiction and has no literal wink to the camera. The fourth wall is perhaps broken verbally, through code. This film is about as funny as Ali G In Da House, his first feature-length movie. It may not have the tension of Borat, but it may be funnier than Bruno without having the squirm factor. The Dictator as interviewed: Cohen himself interviewed by Howard Stern

Birthday

I've been told I should do something special for my birthday, so that must mean writing a blog entry. After mid-night I started writing something I had taken a few runs at in the past. It's time to resolve to write faster. I've dithered over a few projects, buying into the idea that life will inform scripts and help them to mature. Total nonsense. I don't currently have deadlines, and that slows everything down. Time to invent some deadlines, like death itself when you have officially run out of time to finish all of those half-completed projects. I realized the other day that a segment of Big Babies is out of sync, so I will have to re-upload. So the longer I put that off the longer people are watching an inferior version of the flick. That sort of emergency can throw me off. Better to utilize my energy. I'd like to be working on a shoot, planning it, knowing there is ground under my feet. I start training for a new site on Tuesday, though the hours may be part-time. Got to get through the check-list of scripts. Need to be shooting regularly, not letting months pass and only doing my guard job. Maybe I just need an interjection of new energy. I'm 44 today. Just spent some time sweeping and mopping my filthy balcony. Why choose to do that on my birthday? Got to go for a walk. Too many things are up in the air. I don't expect to get 40 hours of work next week. I am twisting in the wind. I need to see the track that I am on. One of my scripts is good and could start shooting ASAP. Money may be an issue. Energy is another. Weight loss would be a boost. I can't be thinking in terms of a year at a time or maybe next year; it has to be more of a crunch.

being Pro-Mel Gibson

I just counted and I have 20 of his movies on DVD. The "publicly heckled" thing - to me - is geared more toward people who don't so much care about movies or TV anyway but just want to shit on celebrities in general. 1) If you are gay, maybe maybe you resent that he a) is Traditionalist Catholic b) may have said something about not being interested in flirtations from men (a remark I have not read or seen a link to), c) told a joke at a party in the eighties to Winona Ryder and her gay friend which you interpret as hostile as opposed to breaking the ice, of d) had a hilarious scene in Braveheart where Longshanks pretends to confide in his fey son's boyfriend and then flings him out the castle window. Or maybe they don't like Mel pretending to be gay in Bird on a Wire and What Women Want. 2) If you are Jewish and just "love to hate" Mel without giving any actual thought to the overall context of his 2006 drunk driving remarks, you may hold a grudge. If you resent the fact that he made what feels like an accurate dramatization of The Passion of the Christ, you probably already hated him when he announced the project and hadn't even written the script yet. And maybe even being Catholic is by definition some sort of offence against extreme Judaism that can't bear to imagine any distant ancestor crucifying someone for blasphemy. Or maybe you blame Mel for the sins of his own father Hutton Gibson whose ramblings about the Holocaust have been fact-free and embarrassing especially for a former Jeopardy winner. Somewhere in the middle are very smart gay activists who hate Mel for category 1) reasons, and put their time and energy into fanning the flames of category 2). I'd like to see what kind of Viking movie crazy Mel would have made. Maybe some day. Although with the release of Edge of Darkness Mel was fending off a lot of interviewers whose motive seemed to be to re-set all things back to 2006 and erase whatever cooling off had naturally happened. I think there is a destructive and misguided push against Mel. One could say that he should have assumed at all times someone will try to record his voice and he was off the rails when he phoned his ex-girlfriend (his enemy) and spoke on her level. Whatever Mel's worst haters think of him, I think worse of Oksana. Funny or Die had an interesting skit with Mel in a meeting with Jamie Fox and Gary Shandling. I think Mel basically has to tough it out. If he wasn't such a positive force in film, it wouldn't matter if he never worked again. I'll definitely see Get the Gringo, formerly How I Spent My Summer Vacation, though I expect Mel's "Vacation" has gone on longer than expected. He still seems to be in good form, but there is so much misinformation being pushed out by media that it will be a miracle if he gets anything more mainstream than the bad guy role in Machete Kills. (Although I hope it is true Rodriguez plans to use him; he will be a step up from Steven Segall). You know, there are some people I like who have a blind spot about Mel. With bi-polar disorder, alcoholism and Catholicism pressing on him, it is a miracle that he can be so funny and interesting in films. The odds may be against him getting a lead again in a big film. But then maybe big films are going down the drain anyway. It will all be niches and I still consider myself part of that niche that will see Gibson's flicks. The Maccabee story doesn't itself interest me, nor did Joe Esterhauz as a writer of it. I'm not shocked that when his last minute whipped up draft was rejected by the studio. Apparently after months of discussions with Mel he hadn't written one page when he arrived with his family at Mel's island. So there is legitimate anger there. But then he blames Mel for "not wanting to make" the Maccabee film -- when Mel has said for 8 years it was his plan and he will make it with whatever script gets green-lit by a studio. Joe felt himself being thrown under the bus, so he tried to throw Mel under the bus with his allegations about Mel's deportment on his island. Most interesting is the accusation that Mel went off on a tirade about wanting Oksana killed and what profane things should be done to her (all understandable and things I want done even though she isn't my own personal tormentor). Joe said his young son witnessed this, that he was in the room when Mel was spewing this, and that his son videotaped it. Uh, one part of that puzzle doesn't fit. First, if he had the footage, it would be "leaked" just like his letter to Mel was leaked. Second, if the little boy was in the room with a videocamera Mel would not have said profane things, given his nightmare with Oksana. Third, it's no judgement against Mel if he didn't know the kid was in the room and he only thought he was talking to the biker-like screenwriter of Basic Instinct and Showgirls. I just counted and I have 20 of his movies on DVD. The "publicly heckled" thing - to me - is geared more toward people who don't so much care about movies or TV anyway but just want to shit on celebrities in general. 1) If you are gay, maybe maybe you resent that he a) is Traditionalist Catholic b) may have said something about not being interested in flirtations from men (a remark I have not read or seen a link to), c) told a joke at a party in the eighties to Winona Ryder and her gay friend which you interpret as hostile as opposed to breaking the ice, of d) had a hilarious scene in Braveheart where Longshanks pretends to confide in his fey son's boyfriend and then flings him out the castle window. Or maybe they don't like Mel pretending to be gay in Bird on a Wire and What Women Want. 2) If you are Jewish and just "love to hate" Mel without giving any actual thought to the overall context of his 2006 drunk driving remarks, you may hold a grudge. If you resent the fact that he made what feels like an accurate dramatization of The Passion of the Christ, you probably already hated him when he announced the project and hadn't even written the script yet. And maybe even being Catholic is by definition some sort of offence against extreme Judaism that can't bear to imagine any distant ancestor crucifying someone for blasphemy. Or maybe you blame Mel for the sins of his own father Hutton Gibson whose ramblings about the Holocaust have been fact-free and embarrassing especially for a former Jeopardy winner. Somewhere in the middle are very smart gay activists who hate Mel for category 1) reasons, and put their time and energy into fanning the flames of category 2). I'd like to see what kind of Viking movie crazy Mel would have made. Maybe some day. Although with the release of Edge of Darkness Mel was fending off a lot of interviewers whose motive seemed to be to re-set all things back to 2006 and erase whatever cooling off had naturally happened. I think there is a destructive and misguided push against Mel. One could say that he should have assumed at all times someone will try to record his voice and he was off the rails when he phoned his ex-girlfriend (his enemy) and spoke on her level. Whatever Mel's worst haters think of him, I think worse of Oksana. Funny or Die had an interesting skit with Mel in a meeting with Jamie Fox and Gary Shandling. I think Mel basically has to tough it out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRIeT5R7edU If he wasn't such a positive force in film, it wouldn't matter if he never worked again. I'll definitely see Get the Gringo, formerly How I Spent My Summer Vacation, though I expect Mel's "Vacation" has gone on longer than expected. He still seems to be in good form, but there is so much misinformation being pushed out by media that it will be a miracle if he gets anything more mainstream than the bad guy role in Machete Kills. (Although I hope it is true Rodriguez plans to use him; he will be a step up from Steven Segall). You know, there are some people I like who have a blind spot about Mel. With bi-polar disorder, alcoholism and Catholicism pressing on him, it is a miracle that he can be so funny and interesting in films. The odds may be against him getting a lead again in a big film. But then maybe big films are going down the drain anyway. It will all be niches and I still consider myself part of that niche that will see Gibson's flicks. The Maccabee story doesn't itself interest me, nor did Joe Esterhauz as a writer of it. I'm not shocked that when his last minute whipped up draft was rejected by the studio. Apparently after months of discussions with Mel he hadn't written one page when he arrived with his family at Mel's island. So there is legitimate anger there. But then he blames Mel for "not wanting to make" the Maccabee film -- when Mel has said for 8 years it was his plan and he will make it with whatever script gets green-lit by a studio. Joe felt himself being thrown under the bus, so he tried to throw Mel under the bus with his allegations about Mel's deportment on his island. Most interesting is the accusation that Mel went off on a tirade about wanting Oksana killed and what profane things should be done to her (all understandable and things I want done even though she isn't my own personal tormentor). Joe said his young son witnessed this, that he was in the room when Mel was spewing this, and that his son videotaped it. Uh, one part of that puzzle doesn't fit. First, if he had the footage, it would be "leaked" just like his letter to Mel was leaked. Second, if the little boy was in the room with a videocamera Mel would not have said profane things, given his nightmare with Oksana. Third, it's no judgement against Mel if he didn't know the kid was in the room and he only thought he was talking to the biker-like screenwriter of Basic Instinct and Showgirls.

12 year old girl explains bank corruption

Just an amazing speech. She'll go far. Maybe not in banking. I don't have time to really blog but I have to share this video that speaks for itself. Pass it on. . .

False Scandals, News Shame and Defaming

If you are giving a massage to a movie star and that person sexually assaults you, call the police and report it. Go ahead and file charges. Though it should be confidential, there is a danger someone will leak the police report, but at least you are taking it serious and doing what arguably must be done. If you have witnesses, be sure to take their names and contact information and have the police canvass them to back you up and there you have it - justice served. But that is not what we end up hearing about. Suppose there is a movie star whose work I enjoy and whom I respect who might belong to a church I consider flaky. This person is already a target. People want to ruin his career with a scandal either because he belongs to a church or because he is married to a woman and has an image and past history of dating women and denies assertions that he is gay. I personally don't care whether this individual or other celebrities may have a personal life outside the bounds of his marriage or fails to tour the country in a bus to lecture at high schools about how cool it is to be homosexual. There are actual, certified gays and lesbians or transsexuals doing that. Tom Hardy and David Bowie have talked about their respective bi backgrounds, and few straight guys can claim to be more cool or manly. (One small aside, though: It is for attributes OTHER THAN their gay activities that make such people cool; being gay itself is not quite the accomplishment as being a genius musician or a skilled and committed actor.) If a performer cultivates an image or self-identifies as straight, whether that person is 15 years old or 51, they should have their privacy and identity respected. Arguably the only person who has a say and a right to be outraged is the spouse. Certain bottom-feeding scandal-based publications or websites are leading the legitimate press by the nose into printing some of the most inflammatory garbage I've seen. Of course the headline and the lead paragraph is all about whatever accusations, and one has to read on to the end to find out how insubstantial it all is. Insubstantial enough that the vetted accusation is not worth spreading the article in the first place. You have an accuser who claims a sort of sexual assault occurred. That makes it a police matter. Instead, they went through the lawyer of the accused actor but didn't get the results they wanted. Is there any way to interpret that other than extortion or blackmail being attempted? And then the lawsuit apparently exposes the accusations to the press. Well, at this point the battle cannot end with any sort of settlement or placation of the accuser. Now possible damage is done to the image of the celebrity. It may be shrugged off and business as usual may proceed as it has in the past, or maybe tens of millions of dollars in earnings will be nixed or maybe a film already made will get a smaller release if the "cool" of the star is tarnished. These are issues the actor has to take into consideration anyway. The accuser should be treated as the extortionist he is, and legally obliterated. But what is worse is the air time and print space given to these stories by the so-called legitimate press who should know better. A site like Defamer is at least what it claims to be, in the business of defamation. That's not for me. The imdb.com is more of a go-to source for information that might be of interest to those who LIKE certain movie stars and who like movies, TV and music or other art forms. It seems clear that RadarOnline and TMZ for example do not appeal to people who like anything but merely those with chips on their shoulders and an ax to grind; they appeal to losers who want to reinforce the idea that even the winners are losers so it excuses their own failure. At least GLAAD has the constructive side that gives awards for positive people or works; this almost makes up for the aspect of their work that seems to personify the D in their name, Defamation. Should someone (however obscure or outside of hip culture) say anything less than presidential about gays or using the word for a British cigarette or saying gay to mean anything other than happy or homosexual in a positive way, this gets reported to GLAAD who function as a bullhorn to the media who fall over themselves ready for marching orders that smack of scandal. This has the result of the average person leaving comments under such an article that are full of hostility toward gays. Or at least toward their presumptuous media representatives. A movie star punching out bad guys is not responsible for gay teens who commit suicide. The culture that worships gossip and allows anonymous accusations to be pushed through to the public and which recklessly endanger an actor don't promote the idea of equality or that the gay teens of the US are okay. It is a form of bullying whether it comes from Defamer or its peer sites, leaving off the names of the accusers and their lawyers and easily slinging unchecked slander and libel upon the public figure and his/her lawyers as the only persons named. What that says is that it is not enough to tolerate gossip and move on with your life because it will hound you. Perhaps a movie star could afford to have an accuser/ extortionist shot. I am sure there are some fans who could be trusted with such a contract. Travolta and Cruise for example have both played hit men to great effect, in Pulp Fiction and Collateral respectively, so the issue is not entirely alien to them. Legally, I can't say whether I would condone that way of resolving a problem, but I would understand the imperative of it more than the need of certain groups to push, push, push celebrities into ending nosy speculation by "admitting" to whatever extent they would be rated on the Alfred Kinsey scale of gayness, a situation that would not be any sort of example to inspire anybody. It is just media and scum enabling another with hunt. Sickening. There is a disproportionate focus on Tom Cruise and John Travolta because they happen to promote Scientology and Scientology has an official stance on homosexuals that is very similar to the official stance of the Vatican or Islam on the topic; as two grown adults wit decades of work in the entertainment field, there is no reason to believe either one harbors hatred toward gays. They might be a little tired of their persecutors. And you can blame the persecutors when Travolta claims he said no to an appearance on Glee because he wouldn't have enough time to rehearse dancing (he has danced spontaneously on Inside the Actor's Studio and almost every talk show he has been on). He has played a gay vampire on SNL and he dressed in drag for Hairspray, so he doesn't seem handicapped by any attitude or phobia. Maybe he just thinks Glee is lame. And by that I don't mean to offend lame people who can't walk.

"Faith of the Heart" not from Enterprise

When the series Enterprise began in 2001 I thought the corny theme song sounded familiar. I had nothing against it. Some people can't stand it. But then I didn't mind Patch Adams, and I had forgotten that the Robin Williams tear-jerker used the same song for its ending credits, performed by Rod Stewart. Russell Watson recorded the version used on Star Trek: Enterprise.

Mark Hamill scenes from "The City"

Pretty good performance, out of character. Mark Hamill is often under-rated. This is pretty good footage.

terrible scrapped intro for Six Million Dollar Man

Looking at the Season 1 discs, the second TV movie had this intro with what sounds more like a "jingle" than a theme. Even though I agree with the sentiment that "he's the man" I can see that this never would have become as enduring as the intro The Six Million Dollar Man ended up with. Still, interesting to see. The song is in the last 20 seconds of this 60 second temporary intro:

Banking on Insanity

On the bright side, I have had more time to catch up on my writing. On the dark side, much of the time was initially preoccupied by obsessing over WTF happened that gifted me such liberty. I may have it figured out, so I can switch to decaf and get it out calmly and resume screenplays and filming and short stories and my often-neglected blogs. The part of my life that pays the rent paid less of it this past month because the Monday after Friday the 13th I got home to find a voice-mail that instructed me not to go back to work but to report in a couple of days to head office and nobody knew the details. On Wednesday I found out the details. %%%%%%%##$@&*(?%% At a bank where I had been a guard for a couple of months, there is a Branch Manager whom for confidentiality reasons we will call the BM and her assistant manager whom we will call Ass. Upon my first arrival at the site for a 9AM shift, I saw that the branch has a 10AM opening time and I asked the lady who had let me in where the security guard normally stays from 9 to 10. I was told, “The best thing to do is wait in the lunch room until 9:30 or just before open.” I wrote this down in my memo book and nobody challenged it over the months ahead. The managers signed my time sheets which clearly said 0900 hours was my start time and you expect that bank managers will certainly read anything they sign, but Ass eventually told me she didn’t realize I started at nine. She asked me about a Saturday guard who had arrived at 9:30 one day and had spent all day outside without a break. Ass asked me whether I was from the same company, and she managed to float that question several times and getting straight answers even though it apparently was not a straight question. She said only after 3PM did a staffer ask him about a break and he then took one. I told her it might have been an idea for him to be briefed by someone but that the site wasn’t set up that way since guards don’t see each other. I mentioned the occurrence log pad he could reference I had kept at the top of the stairwell that leads downstairs to the lunch room. She said, “Yes, I noticed that.” And she mentioned to have a bit of mustard on that remark as if there was some sort of error of judgement on my part but I let it go. After all, if she is a MANAGER or even ASSISTANT MANAGER she would know to speak directly in a business environment especially with a security guard and not to be cute. Granted, this is a person who for the first few weeks usually wore white framed glasses that underscored her batty personality. She said the other guard never saw the log because he never went downstairs to a break. Message: absolute zero concern for whether a contractor gets a legally entitled break. %$#$$#@!&?#%%% That is the closest she came to asking what she wanted to ask, which was why I was downstairs at the top of my shift. On another day, she said that it had been a topic of discussion with the BM that I could be sleeping downstairs for all she knew. Though it had not been a conversation to which I was invited. There had been several occasions over the past month and a half where this could have been broached or better yet simply asked about. I had complained of the garbage smell to the BM, I had several times answered the phone “Basement” and got a laugh from a staffer who was just looking to see if other staff had been seen there, and I had also almost knocked people with the door while returning upstairs and only gotten a laugh. There had been nothing to do downstairs but have my coffee and maybe breakfast and look at a paper. Whatever rituals they went through from 9 to 10 they did without me and without a peep about it, and fully aware that I was downstairs. Nobody thought to ask “Who told you to be posted downstairs?” Because that is a sane question that might have an answer. Instead, the preference of BM and Ass is for rhetorical questions; they make a judgement and an assume, and THEN ask as if they know what kind of scam is being pulled. In other words, they view people through their own duplicitous nature. Less than a week after a bank robbery, the Ass was in charge and obviously had no concern about a guard’s presence on the main floor. This was about April 4, 2012. I came upstairs to find that the rear door of the branch was gone. I felt like my fly was open and nobody wanted to tell me. I asked the Ass about it and why she thought I didn’t have to be told and she waved it off. I asked if money was exposed – the very conditions that mean we do not open the ATM vestibule door for a staff member who is alone – and yes, it was but it was okay that the rear of the bank with the vaults open was okay and there was no need to call a second guard just because there are too doors to cover and there was no need to give me a heads-up the previous day about this expected service call and after all there are three (actually two it turned out) contractors outside working on the door “and they have tools, so nobody will get past them.” I went through and saw that yes everything was exposed and I stepped outside to cover that end of the building and say hello to the contractors. The bank robbers had historically always come from this end of the branch. Ass eventually came outside and said that the workers will be there all day so there is no point standing at the removed door and I should mostly be at the front and just check back once in a while. Pretty loose. I snapped a couple of photos just to prove that I had been there and knew about the door. I figured if anything went wrong I could report it but the day was uneventful. Except for the stress. %%%%#$@%&*?>@%%%% The next week was a full week that the BM was on vacation so Ass was in charge. She again mostly communicated indirectly which was frustrating but as a guard one can’t be expected to say to management “THIS is the effective way to communicate and THAT is not.” The specifics that came out were that I should pace once in a while along the far perimeter, but even then she added, “I’m not telling you what to do, just giving a heads-up.” This begged a comment about the heads-up that would have been great when the door was going to be removed, but I said nothing. I did the walk back and forth and wondered why a manager would add “I’m not telling you what to do.” They should know a security guard is at the disposal of management. She also finally mentioned that they need me to come upstairs between 9 and 10 and mentioned a 9:30 vault thing that had to be done and for which I should be present. For the rest of the week after being finally told I followed that amendment. %%@!#$%%$#?%%%%%%%%% The routine then becomes this: a) Accessed into branch just before 9 or at 9 by whoever of the one or two staff are already inside. . . . . b) Then I go downstairs and if the light is off I flick it on and take this to mean that the first employee in did not search the basement **. I conduct the search to make sure there isn’t some lurking criminal. c) I call the security company to report on duty. d) I use the washroom, a duty that ranges in duration e) I complete putting on my uniform (** Basement search is a sensitive issue, because I wouldn’t want every staff grilled about neglecting this part of the routine. I first heard about the morning ritual which I will not elaborate on in public and mentioned to the Ass that BM did not do a certain thing when she had me wait for her site check rounds, and instead of giving a straight answer like “You saw her go in, so there needs be no indication that she is inside” she glared at me and I let it go. I thought she was just having a quirky moment. I later found out that she told the tellers that I was a tattle-tale, even though it is odd to consider a note about the manager to the assistant manager a tattle-tale. That should be considered a non-issue of a guard admitting this is the first he has heard of this part of the morning ritual.) #%%$#@@#??*&%%%% Common sense and the last couple of shifts would indicate to anyone that clearly it is about 9:10 before I get upstairs. On the Monday as I was unpacking my uniform I realized I had to – pardon the explicit specifics, but they are a factor – urinate one last little bit. The actually nice right hand of Ass, whom I could name Old Lace, entered the washroom and delayed me. He took much longer than expected. I began to tear out an item from a free subway newspaper to put in my pocket and I was doing this when Old Lace emerged. He reminded me that Ass had told me to go upstairs after 9 and I agreed I would be right up after a quick pee. I went up in uniform with my coffee as I had on other days and not a word was said to me about anything. But according to information my boss received in those few minutes at the top of the shift Ass and BM arrived. BM was back from vacation and apparently it was regarded as a failure of Ass that I was not seated uselessly upstairs as promised. They chose to do whatever vault related routine is usually done later immediately so that they would be able to report something dramatic. “While _____ vault was being done, the guard was seen downstairs reading the newspaper.” Well, that is at least misleading and a lie of omission. %%%@#$$@&??*%%%%%% I don’t know if there is anything to learn from it. The Occurrence Log into which I copied my memo book notes at the end of the day or any item that needed a report was a standard-issue tool of security. There wasn’t one on site when I first arrived but one was delivered by a mobile supervisor within the first few weeks. My one theory is that this communication-averse Ass might not have realized that security guards provide this log as a reference for both managers (the client) on a location and any supervisors from security that do a site check. While it is the right of the managers to read this, and it was kept in plain view so they and new guards have access to it, my combined hindsight is that neither Ass or BM realized that they were to be the main viewers of it and may have treated it as a form of “tattle-tale” about who directs the guard or how a situation plays out and even perhaps the special day of the missing door. The reaction of two functional sociopaths (the professional, polite way to say assholes) might be more extreme than a relatively sane person would ever anticipate. I’m not sure there is a way to spoon feed these people to avert embarrassment or a sense of challenge. When I have tried to explain something even early on what was heard was, “You are wrong” and the eye-knives were out. I knew after a couple of days on the site that I wanted a transfer but I was not allowed. I had to make a go of it. I didn’t even bail after the bank robbery. But in hindsight I am thinking of the BM and the Ass and I am flabbergasted that THESE are people I stood expecting to protect even when I was at my most anxious. %%??@@@##@$$&%%%%%% I try not to show fear, for obvious reasons, but that is also across the board. I don’t have much of a poker face, and so I can only guess that when a little Napoleon ruling a fiefdom sees that someone is cool and calm and not rattled by the same mental ticks that keep tellers in line maybe they hold that person at a distance. Funny thing is that they were better off with me not observing the way they treat staff. “I don’t remember asking if you had an issue,” I heard Ass tell Old Lace once. And that is a loyal and solid employee. I remember her telling a head teller, “By the way, I found out what Cruella DeVille means.” At first she butchered the name and the teller had to correct her, “Cruella DeVille.” But leaving that aside, it says something about a person who had to “find out” what that name refers to. Even if she hadn’t seen 101 Dalmatians, who doesn’t get the joke of that name? It is apt in the sense that she is over-the top and prone to flamboyant gestures as if she thinks she is on stage but there is no audience. One night she put on her coat early and announced she is going home then the tellers remarked on something else that needed to be done and she put on a big show of returning and pointed to me at the door, “And YOU!” as if I had any involvement in the discussion. If she had been funny, it might have been a moment of whimsy, which I pretended it was. And other times when the head teller was doing a run of charming silly-talk amid her duties, “Meow said the cat, meow said the cat who is me” she will be curtly admonished to shut up by the flaky nimrod Ass. %%#@@@##$$$@%%%%%% In the afternoons when the book drop bag is done the guard has been present but not called or required. The guard has been on hand to answer the door but has also been advised by Ass not to open the door at all because of a rule that only bank staff open the door. This rule is applied inconsistently as their convenience allows. Ass is either a liar or a scatterbrain. Or both. %%%##$#@@@#$%%%%%% What is especially galling is to think back on the last day I had there and little moments where Ass knew friggin’ well that it was my last day and I did not. At 4PM there were no clients to let out and the door was locked, so I did as usual – and even as I had on the previous weeks – I went downstairs to use the washroom knowing that I may be waiting to leave another hour and also after having spent a couple of hours outside. As I get out of the washroom I don’t even get a chance to check my voice-mail. If I had the day would have ended on a different note. Ass is yelling downstairs like a moron, “Hello. Hell-ooo! Hellooooo!” so I rush to the stairwell with by bag since I usually keep it either at the top of the stairs to easily access or with me. Ass is loudly asking why I am not upstairs and I tell her I was in the washroom. I frankly took a lot of shit from her right there that I would not have taken if I had heard my voice-mail advising me not to come in. Maybe she knew there was a danger I would check my messages and confront her. During the day when I asked to take lunch I had a 15 to 20-minute delay because Ass was downstairs. She happened to take her break when it would conflict with mine. She came to the door and asked in a false-cute voice, “You have to go?” And I mentioned just my lunch; no event. In hindsight that plays back as an inside joke just for her. At the end of the day we got the usual bum’s rush. Wait around doing nothing and having nothing brought to my attention and being shown utter indifference about where I am for the book-drop box or the vault or ATM refilling or whatever they do for which security is not included (and which I couldn’t detail here anyway because it is public). She reluctantly takes my time sheet and asks the time and I show her my watch and she says, “We don’t look at the time, we just want everybody out.” Well, again that is a non-bank way of thinking. It is as if day for day they officially have a point where people have to stay until a certain thing is done, but when there are too many hours being claimed they will book people out with this unfinished. And that happens more with Ass than with BM. But it would be naive to think that both are not equally responsible and equally clueless. I didn’t even know until my final day where the first aid kit was. It was in a vault. I heard the BM asking a teller to get it when she had a piece of glass in her shoe. You know, either you can let the guard pull teeth trying to find out where everything is or you can just have a prepared brief: ---- Here’s where the first aid kit is kept, here’s where the fire extinguishers are, let one of us know when you need to use the washroom or go for lunch, and if your shift extends after close or before open just sit up here instead of in the stinky lunch room. Even though there’s really nothing for you to stand beside and guard, we may as well have you present.------ Is that asking so much of a brief from the Branch Manager/boss/client ? %%%%%%%%%%#####$$$@@@# You know a security company is going to want to get along with everybody and keep the account active, so a guard won’t push. And you might even get the guy who stays outside – locked out for the beginning of the shift – with no break just to show how dutiful he is and completely at the mercy of people who actually know what is needed and what is expected. I am at a loss to parlay this into an instruction booklet, but it could stand as a case study. The post-mortem has taken up far too much of my own personal time, thought and energy already. I do take for granted that a forensic aftermath is necessary for my own processing of an unjust situation and how it came about and what principles can be extracted if any to move forward. With all due respect, I am way past any consideration of my own culpability. I am done considering that theoretical element. The customer is not always right, when the customer is fragmented into camps that have to plot and contrive as BM and Ass did in order to submit a misleading complaint against me to corporate so as to avoid having the pathologies of their whims considered. I am told by a friend who ran corporate seminars that these communication problems are not uncommon and that it is called “bridging the gap.” But I think it goes beyond communication and into sinister character. %%$#@@%%%%%% This one bank was perhaps a worse place to work than I realized. But it was more than 40 hours a week at a relatively decent rate and I was blissfully ignorant of the full extent of malice behind what seemed to be mere quirks. I don’t know if the next guard got a better briefing or better luck. Most of the staff was quite nice and approachable. The Branch Manager and Assistant Manager had something twitchy under the surface that often made the rest of the staff appear rattled. I remember one especially nice employee being routinely abused verbally by Ass and firmly keeping a smile as if maybe the rant was just kidding and not a psychotic break from reality. But even when Ass rests her hands under her chin on the counter and bats her eyes at someone she is usually doing this with something sarcastic and rhetorical that assumes the other person is an idiot. . . .I’m not saying I’M not an idiot. I have my blind spots. But a misleading, disparaging report is not acceptable when it would be easier to just say, "Will, you are too fat for this branch" or, "Will I'm afraid you might some day write a blog about us, and we don't want you to be a tattle-tale." Now those would be fair reasons to boot a guard who actually cared about what he was doing. I don't know how much spin is currently being done or how I am shrugged off, but a bad manager does a lot more damage than even a mediocre guard (and I'm about as good as they come in my price range). A manager might (like most banks) visit the competition and pretend to be a client to learn how others handle things and what the rates are, and this one has been patted on the head for that kind of activity that is pretty typical "shopping" and comparing of notes so maybe a certain level of duplicity and dishonesty is necessary. Except that researching the competition is fair and misrepresenting the facts is not. My first impulse was to blame myself and take hyper-responsibility because after all I should be able to read minds and I should err on the side of imposing myself and spoon-feeding the basics to people who supposedly have been managing banks for a while. It is easy to pass the buck, but one would think if the buck stops anywhere it would be with a bank manager.

Faster and More Intense

The directions "faster" and "more intense" don't necessarily go together. In fact they can work against each other. But the direction itself has been attributed to George Lucas as his most common - if not only - direction to actors on Star Wars, "Faster and more intense." The Original Star Wars trilogy (1977 - 1983) is generally fast and intense. I expect that this over the years got through to Lucas as Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill have related anecdotes from filming. Unfortunately the result may have been that the prequels released between 1999 and 2005 are neither fast nor intense, from scene to scene. Scenes generally just happen and there is little or no momentum, but most of all decisions are not made under fire and with the machine-gun delivery that had school kids like myself reciting, "It'll take a few moments to get coordinates from the nava-computer." On paper or as text, that looks pretty flat, but correctly acted with conviction it is gold. I don't know if delivery alone could have saved the prequels. The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones are especially constipated and less open to the emotional participation of the audience, as if the story will resume after these messages. They are a world populated by robots, monks and politicians for the most part. This makes anyone who is not speaking in a prescribed or a regulated tone stand out in sharp relief as begging for laughs or reaction. Anakin's mother was a fine actress, but even she could only do so much with what was written, and Lucas himself has stated that more emotional takes were done but he didn't want them to upset the balance of the movie in which he had flattened pretty much all emotion. Both versions of the animated Clone Wars are such a change in tone that they recall the original trilogy. I remember Yoda taking a moment with some clone troopers and asking to see their faces and making it clear that though they are clones they are all distinct persons within the Force and then speaking to each one by name. Such depth is lacking in the prequels. These new series are clearly made by old-school Star Wars fans and not as a grind by Lucas who might think that his terrible first drafts of outlines must be vacuum sealed (in other words they suck). Even though he stays involved, mostly to make sure the grasshopper-like battle droids have comical exit lines as they die, like "Whyyyyyy?" or "But I just got promoted." Very forgivable considering that the Clone Wars are generally faster and more intense than the prequels despite being from the same era (and errors). It is May the Fourth, Star Wars day, so I had to get in my two cents on this unfortunate watering down of something that was quite great most of my life. May the Fourth Be with you. . . .

Sorry for the mess

There is more to the infamous Greedo scene, which Lucas tried to kiddie-proof in 1997. It’s not necessarily safer by having Greedo get off a shot first. Look closely at it and with the shots under the table we are invited to anticipate Han’s pre-emptive move and we do so gleefully and we see Greedo’s death as inevitable. He is asking for it. The scene caps off with Han’s glib, “Sorry for the mess.” So as upsetting as Lucas’ revision was, much of the dark elements of the scene remain and it is still about disposal of a dangerous character and eliminating a headache. Ultimately I would say to any child that yes, I condone this death of Greedo. Don’t wait for someone who has a gun on you to actually fire if you can get off a good shot under the table. That’s the moral – if a bounty hunter threatens you, kill him. What’s especially amusing looking at this clip is that Greedo is killed under the table, and instantly, so his species Rodians, must have their hearts or brains in their crotch.

videos missing from DVDs

Romancing the Stone by Eddy Grant I still don’t know why the song was replaced with something generic for the end credits of the VHS and the DVD release of the film, even after going to the trouble of integrating Grant into the much-played music video. Nothing wrong with the song. Oddly this great video isn’t on the Jewel of the Nile DVD. Should have been. What a corrupt, miserable business. I think I have already done a blog on this, but it is on my mind today. And I still don't have the answer about why these weren't sold with the DVDs.

Journal of the Whills: Restoration

Here is a piece of fan fiction I wrote, motivated by a sort of contest run by a podcast called Star Wars Book Report. The text version of the story is below if you choose to go the old fashioned route, or you can read along or just listen to my youtube links where I have recorded myself reading the story for you. Maybe you can do a chore while it plays, which is how I listen to podcasts, commentaries or audiobooks. It is a Star Wars piece aboard the Millennium Falcon. That much, people will generally get. If you - like me - enjoy the Original Star Wars trilogy but have issues with changes made for special editions and elements that have been introduced in the prequels, then you might appreciate what I have tried to do with establishing the recovery and translation - and finally the distribution of a series of multi-perspective testimonies that comprise a Journal composed by a mysterious species called The Whills. When they trived the Whills could be anywhere in the universe and share what they observed with each other, yet they kept a low profile with humans and other species and were all but invisible. Much of their journal was actually lost for decades and though people attributed their lore and old wives tales to it much of the history in Star Wars is proven incorrect by the Journal of the Whills, as See Threepio discovers. . . . The Journal of the Whills: Restoration “It is only the difference, Captain Solo, between beliefs and the facts,” the droid reported. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Han grumbled, leaning a shoulder against the central computer. He had made the mistake of asking what big important thing the golden See-Threepio and his more compact counterpart Artoo Detoo had been busy with aboard his ship. He suspected they were just using the Millennium Falcon for power, leeching, while R2 downloaded a complicated and apparently sensitive stream of whatever to be interpreted by the one fee-free processer he had access to: Threepio. “But whatever you do, don’t explain it,” Han said. “Was he being ironic?” Threepio said to the shorter droid. If it was possible for Artoo’s beep to sound like a shrug, it would have. Threepio noticed that Solo remained nearby and was not speaking at the moment, so he pressed on to provide listening material. “The Journal of the Whills was a confounding stew of reports from all around the galaxy, the outer rim, the Corporate Sector and beyond.” Han crouched all the way to the deck and sat there, collapsed by boredom. Threepio took no hint, “This has been broken down by focusing on dates of entry that match files thought lost with Alderaan ten standard years ago.” Han looked up at him, not at the droid but the memory of mere asteroids that his wife’s home planet had become the last time he saw it. Threepio observed a grief protocol and offered reassurance, “History did not end with Alderaan’s destruction, but it might have seemed so if an archivist hadn’t jumped a departing fruit freighter as the Death Star entered its orbit.” “So some people got away?” Han mused aloud. “From Alderaan?” Threepio clarified, “Not many people per say. The earliest volumes or data streams called The Journal of the Whills were indeed rescued, only to be lost again. The Whills themselves died off, most notably on Alderaan, aware of their impending fate and so tired of knowing everything and being unable to communicate more directly with humans. At least one was especially fatigued enough to keep himself amused by submitting false log entries perhaps as a prank. It had been thought that these indicated unreliability of the Whills as witnesses of history.” “So then why bother with it? Who’s gonna read a dead language other than you?” Threepio persisted, answering, “In legal matters, most systems came to dismiss their information. But in forensic historical interpretation, any suspected prankster entries can be set aside so the rest can cleanly reinforce each other into solid facts. A breakthrough is in eliminating the chief prank reporter. “ “What was he lying about?” Han asked. “Anything about me?” “It’s not part of the Alderaan files, but there is a later entry reporting your heroic death on Endor. Your presence here would seem to undermine the authority of that Whill’s report.” “I got that,” Han waved Threepio to get on with it. “And he also states that the Millennium Falcon which we are standing in the moment was consumed in a fireball as Lando Calrissian piloted it out of a Death Star he had been in the process of destroying. General Calrissian is doing quite well, and my understanding is that your ship was merely damaged in that attack.” “Yeah,” Han said more to himself than to the droid. “So you strike out those versions and they can’t keep the other versions in check.” “Precisely,” Threepio said. “Well, don’t let me distract you. Better get on with all that processing.” “Oh, I have been translating and outputting it in Basic while we’ve been talking. Try patting your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time and you can see what I mean.” “Threepio,” Han pointed his finger at the droid like a gun. “Just never mind my tummy.” A feint echo of boots on the docking bay outside caught Han’s attention and provided a welcome distraction. He pushed himself clear of the computer bank with a mild groan. “Do you need any help, sir?” Threepio offered, extending his metal arm as far as it would go. Han absently turned the hand palm down and patted the top sarcastically, “Thanks anyway, Goldie.” Han left and Artoo chirped something to Threepio who looked quickly down at his partner’s chrome dome and then to the door. Threepio lowered his volume. “Why didn’t you say I don’t have clearance? Captain Solo couldn’t have understood. You could have spoken up. Now both of us could be deactivated. We’re doomed.” “What were her exact words?” Han asked. He was half way down the ramp of his freighter, greeting two human or humanoid New Republic sentries in full helmets with face shields up. Han’s tone had gone from casual hello to fight-ready in the last few seconds. “Well,” Jasper the senior sentry with yellow eyes recalled, “The orders are to confiscate both droids R2-D2 and C-3PO aboard the Millennium Falcon before take-off.” “Jasper,” Han smiled only with his mouth and kept his eyes on target while he absently flicked what might be a speck of dust from the ramp support, “She didn’t say anything to me. And my wife wouldn’t say confiscate. See, she considers these here droids emancipated. So you guys didn’t speak to Leia directly, did you?” “No, General Solo,” the other sentry Fra breathed while keeping his bulky head nodded forward. Jasper shot an angry look his way, and he felt it rather than saw it. Han Solo strode the rest of the way down the ramp. “So Jasper? Fra? Either of you two gentlemen want to tell me what’s goin’ on? Huh? Because if I open my com-link to Leia – to your leader Princess Leia Organa-Solo – she will talk to you for a long time.” “She doesn’t interrogate with torture,” Jasper insisted. “No,” Han said, “Not unless you count the talkin’.” Fra found his voice again. “The information was relayed through Information Security Protocol office Clerk 37.” “Well,” Han over-articulated as if to someone slow-minded, “With all due respect, you’re only tryin’ to do your jobs but you can tell Clerk 37 for me that misrepresenting the authority of Princess Leia is a violation of whatever you said his office was called. And she knows better than to play broken com-link through him and a pair of busy sentries.” Jasper rubbed his head as he spoke, after waiting for a chance to interrupt. “The R2 unit, sir, has violated protocol by delivering sensitive data files to an unauthorized, insecure individual.” Han laughed as he found himself turning three-hundred and sixty degrees where he stood. He leaned close to Jasper, “No offence. Jas, but I don’t have as much clearance as Artoo-Detoo?” “I regret the confusion, General,” Jasper said with a cough. “Your clearance is fine.” See-Threepio’s gears were heard as he walked and Han glanced back to see the gold-plated humanoid form at the top of his ramp. “Sir, pardon me but I expect he may be referring to me.” “Threepio!” Han barked up at him. “Haven’t you got a gig right now?” “Thousands of gigs,” Threepio said, matter-of-fact, as if he could say it any other way. “Although I have not processed all of it. I can offer a precise count shortly, sir.” Jasper stepped around Han Solo, giving him a wide berth, and stopped shy of the ramp right at its base as he questioned Threepio, “The Journal of the Whills? Yes or no?” “Might you accept a qualified yes? There may be debate as to the matter of authenticity.” “So you confess?” Fra added, attempting to be helpful. Jasper turned a scolding glare at him. “Keep your pants on,” Han said, stepping between the sentries and standing half way up the ramp to block the droid from them. “You guys even got a warrant, or am I not cleared for lookin’ at that?” Jasper took a small square device from his belt and held it up for Han to read the display. Han glanced at it and handed it back. “There, now see if you can stick that where the suns don’t shine. If I have to take off early to shake you, feel free to hang on to the landing gear as tight as you can and hold your breath when it looks like space.” Threepio immediately killed the tension by agreeing, “Captain Solo is indeed capable of letting wicked creatures die in the vacuum of space or hiding a viscous little monster in a gift box or shooting at least one bounty under the table because his gun was drawn.” “Excuse us now.” Jasper commanded. “Silence the droid.” “Yeah, better to shoot first and ask questions later.” Han gave a lopsided smile. “Actually,” Threepio pressed, “Shoot first implies fire from the other, who in this case got off no shot and simply flopped forward according to the most credible accounts.” “I didn’t think anyone was payin’ much attention.” Han shrugged. “The Whills were paying attention,” Threepio advised. “That’s enough!” Jasper and Fra stepped forward, now shoulder to shoulder at the base of the ramp. Fra beckoned Threepio down with a wave at the wrist. His head was still mostly favoring the floor, embarrassed by his duty. Jasper elbowed him in the ribs and Fra frowned up at him and then followed his gaze to the ramp. Han’s gun was now drawn. “I’ll make you guys a deal,” Han said. “Any other day both of you are on my team, so the second-last thing I want to do is hurt either of you. Leave all your weapons on the dock and join us inside. We’ll bring up the ramp, and we won’t lift off unless we have to. And I won’t wake Chewie up from his nap and ask him to give you a hairy deep-tissue massage.” Jasper and Fra released their ammo belts and guns to gently settle to the floor. Fra was the first to step forward up the ramp. Jasper hesitated, “What’s the last thing you’d want to do, then?” “The last thing I’d want is to give up my frien-- my droids.” “I thought you said they weren’t property?” Fra said in passing. “The last thing I want is to take bantha crap from either of you. Come on.” Han made a grand ushering gesture inviting them inside and the ramp started to lift. Han tottered but recovered balance, having not operated the ramp. Jasper snatched a pistol from the floor, tucked it behind himself, and hopped onto the rising ramp. Han glanced back and grabbed his hand, helping him clear the closing mouth of the ramp seal. Falling back inside, Han realized Jasper was on top of him. “Really?” Han curled his trigger finger on the pistol. But Jasper was lifted away by the shoulders and set safely aside by two hairy paws. The shaggy form of Chewbacca yawned beside the ramp control. He eyed Jasper and Fra like prey. Jasper gasped. Chewie gave an upward not of what might have been his chin and held up two hairy fingers in what some systems would consider a sign of peace before wandering past the acceleration padding-lined, rounded corridors of the cozy space. “Don’t worry about Chewie,” Han said. “He gets up half-way through a nap and stands by the open refrigeration unit until he decides on a sedative-heavy snack.” The sentries turned to see the droids both hooked up at the terminal again, resuming the translation process. “If you have any further questions, I can finish work while we talk.” “Or have a seat,” Han said, indicating the acceleration couch across the compartment with a game surface on its table. Jasper seethed, “The point is to prevent you from finishing that work. There may be sensitive material, especially anything that pre-dates Alderaan’s destruction.” “These testimonies,” Threepio reported, “extensively cover history that my companion recalls vividly but with which I was not entrusted. I received a memory wipe from Captain Antilles. I did not even realize that Anakin Skywalker built me with spare parts from a junk pile of standard assembly line discards and that he grew up to be Darth Vader himself so any time I thank the Maker I am thanking someone as flawed as I must be.” Han circled around the guards, “Why’s all that okay for one droid memory and not for another? How is Artoo in the clear and not Threepio?” “That information,” Jasper blinked, “may be above our pay grade, sir.” “I might have the answer,” Threepio piped up. “It could be said that I have a tendency to babble or to say more than might be necessary in a given situation.” “I’ve noticed,” Han said. “You’re a blabbermouth. Fair enough.” Artoo said something in short bursts of scolding beeps. Threepio glanced down at him, “No I don’t blame Captain Antilles for being cautious any more than you blame him for uninstalling your leg jets after so many crewmen raced you down the corridors and burned each other for that extra push of speed.” Jasper waved at the air, expecting Threepio to see this as an indication to stop talking, “That’s enough. We’ve been patient. Just lower the ramp and we’ll take the droids and give them back when the information office is done.” “Wait a second,” Han said as he squared off with Jasper. “These droids aren’t getting any mind-wipe just so you can destroy this Journal of the Whills thing. Whoever gave Artoo the info, they know him and how he’ll get the job done. Otherwise why choose an astro-droid, a mechanic? Just what were they expecting Artoo is gonna do with it? Go get a stranger to translate it when he’s got Threepio tripping over him every day?” Fra sat at on the couch and looked at the game grid, “Maybe they want him to destroy it, sir?” Han sat across the game table from Fra in silence a moment. “Ordinarily I’d say history is history, as useless as tattoos on a Wookiee. But if someone wants this thing deleted, it just became a lot less boring.” Before Han could elaborate, there was a shrill cry from Artoo. Han whirled around, gun already drawn. Jasper had taken his own pistol from under the back of his jacket and aimed it at the droids. Han fired and Jasper’s weapon fell to the floor still clutched by a smoldering hand. Jasper grasped at his cauterized stump. Fra stood bolt upright and Han waved him over to stand in his view. “But why? He didn’t fire.” Fra spoke while Jasper made anguished sounds. Jasper looked at the fallen gun and began to stoop for it and reach his left hand out. “Jasper!” Han said, “You’re gonna want that other hand. Make me take that one away too and I’ll feel real bad about it.” Jasper backed off. Chewbacca ran in with a roar. “It’s alright, Chewie. I got it under control.” Chewbacca noticed the gun on the ground clutched by a severed hand. He picked it up and pried loose the gun and sniffed at the hand. He glanced at the sad, frightened face of Jasper and handed him back the hand. Chewie stepped back and leaned against a bulkhead, arms crossed and gun held casually. “I never would have shot you.” Jasper told Han. “You are a hero of the New Republic.” Han just about growled, “What did you expect me to do? Let you blast fancy pants here?” “I do not wear pants,” interjected Threepio. “And yours Captain Solo have a red stripe that some would consider fancy.” “They’re standard marksman pants,” Han said to Fra and Jasper. Fra looked to Chewbacca who shrugged wanting to stay out of the argument. “Well they are very durable and you have gotten years of wear out of them,” Threepio blathered. “I’ve got more than one pair,” Han said with a sharp look to Threepio finally. “Just an example of the way the Whills reported their details,” the droid explained. “First impressions are not filtered out. The filtration is a large part of my work here today.” Han turned to face Jasper, more certain, “He may not have clearance, whatever that means these days, but he has clocked more years of service than you have years period. I can respect you smuggling a gun onto my ship, fair enough, that’s on me. But when you pull a gun on somebody I trust, potentially robbing me of a resource or an appliance, even a fussy wuss like Threepio, the results. . . . ” “You could have given a warning.” Fra spoke up, more bold now. “Then what?” Han looked at him sidelong. “Would we have a verbal dual? I don’t think I’d go around bragging about that win against you guys. No offense. And I’m not negotiating with anybody on my ship.” Fra stammered and then finally said, “It was your idea to come aboard! And what are Whills?” Without missing a beat, and perhaps despite missing the tone of the moment, Threepio educated the visiting sentry, “Each species imagined the Whills in its own image. Under most of the lighting spectrum, the Whills were not visible.” “I didn’t ask what they looked like,” Fra said. “What are the Whills? What WERE they?” “Don’t encourage the droid,” Jasper spat. “This is not secure information.” Han held up his palm to them and waved it in the air like an eraser or a blessing, “It is now. On my authority as Captain and as one of your Generals, I just cleared it. Full clearance. Amen.” “By the by, sir,” Threepio added, “Artoo discretely sent out a call to medical emergency personnel for the severed hand in case it needs their attention.” “Good!” Fra said. “It bloody well does! And Jasper can sue General Solo. It happened on his ship and he did this. He is responsible.” Han slumped and shook his head. Chewbacca took a step forward in case he could be of service. Han held up a hand indicating one minute. “I’ll take my chances,” Han said. “How long till the medics get here?” Threepio continued with more detail after a beep from Artoo. “They would have been here by now but it appears that before the sentries entered the docking bay they disabled communication beyond it. The signal stops there, blocked on the authority of security sentry Jasper.” Fra shot a look at Jasper, much like the glares he had gotten recently. He took a step closer to his colleague and looked into his eyes. “That is not standard practice,” he muttered. “Especially not when approaching high ranking leaders of the New Republic. Why, sir?” “Well,” Han shrugged to Jasper. “The bad news is you’re gonna live. You’re not losing blood. The laser cauterized the wound. You’re just going to be without a pain remedy until we carry whoever you are back in there.” “So you stoop to torture?” Jasper said as his voice cracked. “Delaying treatment?” “Is that your story?” Han asked. “Because history is told by the winners and survivors.” “Actually, if I may,” Threepio interrupted, “Long destroyed senate chamber coverage and reference material usually available to verify historically significant events have often been destroyed in battle or suppressed by the victors.” “I forgot,” Han held out his arms expansively and twirled his gun, “Victors are vicious. Good thing we can clear the whole mess with whatever the Whills told each other went on.” “That is correct,” Threepio said. “And so the verbal variations on local or intergalactic lore have been attributed to the Whills despite their existence being little more than a faerie tale.” Han, Fra and Jasper all turned their heads to Threepio. Chewie also did, but by now he was sitting against the wall with his legs stretched out and crossed. Chewie grunted a bored sentence. “You said it, Chewie.” Han stepped up closer to Threepio and Artoo, “Are you saying these Whills now didn’t even exist? After all this?” “Oh,” Threepio appeared to sputter, although it was technically not possible, “They were considered a faerie tale by those who upheld the official stories. Over the generations that the Journal of the Whills has been lost, oral tradition has filled in gaps with speculation. Recovery of the original data known as the Journal of the Whills can allow archivists can reconstruct narratives that have been rife with contradiction.” “It is designed to confuse you!” Jasper screamed. “It will make you doubt!” Both Han and Fra looked back at Jasper with a shrug, and back to Threepio who mused, “Under the circumstances, it is impressive how close the verified factual version lines up against the widespread compromised speculations, but it is the first volume of the accounts involving the Old Republic and the struggles of Anakin Skywalker which reveal changes great and small.” “I don’t much care about that stuff,” Han said, “But whatever the truth is, it’s not gonna end here.” Chewbacca was still seated but paying attention now. He barked at Threepio, for whom it was the prompt it sounded like. “It is not easy to determine what you might find interesting, and I’m just an interpreter, not very good at telling stories.” Artoo let out a long beep and a squawk. Threepio confessed, “Quite right, Artoo, I suppose I can embellish by adding sound samples from what I have heard, but effects can only make a story so interesting to humans.” Han waved the two sentries closer to Chewbacca and they sat near him so Han could holster his gun and sit near the droids, “This is the one time I’ll ask you to go ahead and tell me a story that isn’t so interesting.” “There was,” Threepio began randomly, “a minor player in the popular mythos named Cleig Lars who did not factor into the Whills accounts and appears not even to have lived. More shocking is the traumatic nature of Anakin’s early separation from his mother in that it was more final. She died a slave while attempting escape and never married a Lars or anyone.” “Yeah,” Han said, “I’ve never heard of a Cleig Lars. I know Luke was raised by an aunt and uncle named Lars.” “They met Obi Wan Kenobi around the same time he met young Anakin and his mother and a device inside her was detonated by her slave master. I was apparently there but the sound sample was wiped from my memory so I can’t embellish the story. I can do a generic explosion.” “Forget it,” Han said. “I already did forget it.” Threepio said. “Anyway, Owen Lars and his girlfriend Beru got their explosive implants removed by Anakin and they were orphans about his age and got away clean and free thanks to help from Obi-Wan Kenobi who had tracked a Sith to Tattooine who was looking for The One. There is no consensus about the purpose of the One and why the Jedi wanted balance when there were only two surviving Sith and hundreds of Jedi.” “I admit, Threepio,” Han said. “You were right. You are all over the place telling this. Jump to the end. Luke and my wife get born and their mother dies right there of a broken heart?” “Is that what Princes Organa-Solo told you?” Threepio slowly said. “No,” Han shook his head. “And she even told Luke on Endor. . . basically, Leia knew her mother. She died when she was very young but not when her kids were newborns. I have heard people tell both versions, but I don’t care what they think happened and Leia lets it lie.” “According to the Whills, the word of your wife is correct and whoever found it necessary for people to believe Padmé Amidala died in childbirth may have reason to promote that. Whills did observe that a funeral that used a clone who had not survived one of Count Douku’s earliest experiments and his plot to replace her with a controllable stand-in failed. The conspiracy would have had to include Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Senator Organa who adopted your infant future wife and raised her with Padmé. There is record of Organa’s wife having a fatal disease and she might have welcomed help from Padmé as a handmaiden of sorts.” Han used a wall cushion for support and stood back up, “There’s one more person in that conspiracy, Threepio,” he said. “And you know personally who it was.” Artoo chirped, and Threepio disengaged himself from the wall unit, his mind focused on one task, the processing of the most simple fact, “Captain Antilles as well hid Amidala. Perhaps he was not so cruel in wiping my memory. I was not privy to knowing where the babies were taken, but I would have seen Amidala alive.” Jasper stood and backed up to the ramp control, “I think we’re done with story time.” Chewbacca growled, long and low. Han watched Jasper’s hand near the controls. “You might miss the best part,” Han said. “And besides, you might not make it all the way down the ramp to that other gun outside before Chewie is on you. He’s old but he’s pretty spry. Anything bother you about all this, Jasper?” “How old do you think I am? I’ve lived history.” Jasper said, still reaching for the controls. Han noticed that it was Jasper’s severed right hand, fully knitted back to the wrist and functioning. Jasper waved at the wrist back to Han. “Some of us heal quicker than others.” His voice became deeper. He licked a finger on the healed hand and traced it down his cheek to expose red complexion underneath. “I will give you the answers, at last, because I trust they will not get past the walls of this freighter.” “I’m impressed,” Han said, “But not so curious.” Han drew his gun and it flew across the compartment. Chewbacca sprang to his feet and fired the pistol he’d been hanging onto. The bolts deflected from Jasper’s upraised palm. The gun was invisibly tugged from Chewbacca’s grasp, but the Wookiee snatched it back and hung onto it until his feet slid along the deck. “Interpretation complete,” Threepio said. Artoo beeped a question? “Yes, Artoo. Power.” “Yesssss,” Jasper said. “Poww-errrrr.” Artoo turned a dial and the power went out. Utter darkness. This distraction may have given Chewbacca a chance to recover and hide. But there were small bolts from the floor as the Wookiee fired in the general direction of the ramp. Briefly the living area of the Falcon was lit-up. Then darkness again. Suddenly a hiss and a hum accompanied a slash of red light glowing steadily. Jasper’s free hand knocked aside the sentry helmet he had been wearing. With the lighsaber blade held straight up, nubs of horns that had been hidden were now exposed. “Shall I continue?” he asked those in the darkness. Only Threepio’s gold eye-lights could be seen at first until all eyes acclimated to the glow of the saber. “I admit changing details, even threatening one of the Whills, to destroy the legacy of my replacement. I was an apprentice, with abilities of a master. But I was a target while my master enjoyed hiding in plain sight. I needed a new life, to indulge rather than to be the hand of a fool. He sent me into battle with two Jedi, and I led them where I wanted them. I did my errand, and I let one of them chop me in half. I was not sure the kind of injury I would sustain, but I made sure it was made with rage. Focus of the Dark Side slowed my descent. My clone was there at the bottom of the shaft with its own bacta tank in case limbs needed harvesting. As it happened, the surgeon droid only needed to take some of its organs, nerves and intestine as my lower half was re-joined.” “And you are?” Han asked, the sarcasm as restrained as possible. “Exactly,” Jasper exhaled. “I carry a double-bladed lightsaber, but I’m only bothering with one right now. I have the face of a demon. I was once at the right hand of Sidious, or Palpatine who became Emperor. You’ve never heard of Darth Maul?” Han, Chewie and Fra shook their heads no. “But you know Darth Vader.” “Sure,” Han said. “Luke’s Dad. Black helmet, cape, scary mask.” “I did everything I could, removed records, meddled, killed, made The One seem like a simpering, pathetic idiot. If not for all of my indulgences over the years, life would have only one meaning and that is to tarnish the dark, iconic legacy of Darth Vader. And I have done that. Even you cannot take him seriously. The little boy racing pods who left his mother a slave while he lounged with powerful Jedi and politicians in a metropolis, the gullible young man, emotionally unstable, who can be talked into changing his masters and killing younglings. The man who can choke a woman who is everything to him, the whining idealist. Maybe I have not made a name for myself, but I have taken his.” “Why reach for the controls if you can open the ramp with your mind?” Han asked, keeping it light while his own brain whirled with options that he dismissed as fast as they occurred. “I was reaching to show off my hand,” the man formerly known as Jasper confessed. “Just showing off. And I was disabling the ramp so it can’t even be unlocked from outside. The Journal of the Whills, proper, non-abridged, the real, full history ends today. It will not replace what I have created. I leave you all here dead so that I can begin to make my mark. And Captain Solo I promise to give proper attention to your wife and children.” “Well,” Han said, his mouth now dry. “I can only hope you meet my brother-in-law. I think you’d hit it off. He’ll find you. And he didn’t need entire lifetimes to make his mark.” Something came rattling along the deck in the reddish blackness. Everyone looked to the floor as the item skidded to a stop with an absurd breaking sound. Darth Maul, no longer Jasper at all, held out his glowing blade just beyond his feet. He knew the size of the object and could see it clear as day with retina of his kind, but he wanted the others to see this ownerless object before he chops it or kicks it. He raised his arms, and as he did a burst of ignition was heard and a green beam of light passed through him. As his own blade followed through, the object below rose up as if it were a counter-weight, slicing between his legs and all the way up his torso, between both occupied arms to bisect his chest and his neck and split his head through the middle. Both halves fell with benign thud-splats, both sides of what had been Jasper and Maul and yet had not made a name for itself. The ramp released and lowered on its own. The green-bladed lightsaber blinked out and rolled down the ramp, levitated and zipped out of sight. The red saber had flicked off as it landed amid the flesh of its owner. Han stepped around Maul and peered out at the docking bay, looking for the other saber’s owner. “Chewie?” Han looked back at the Wookiee who was already beside him. “We better not lift off yet. Check for a breach. How do you suppose the kid’s lightsaber got inside here anyway? Luke is the man but he’s getting a bill. We might have to install another window.” Luke Skywalker stepped out from behind a leg of landing gear, in a formal grey version of his Jedi outfit, attaching the saber cylinder to his belt clip. “Hey Han, everybody okay?” “Almost everybody.” Han indicated Maul’s remains. “Threepio just finished this big translation. Turns out your father was more bad-ass than his reputation.” “Good to know, I guess.” Luke shrugged, “He was pretty scary in my day. Sorry about the hole in your lower gun turret. Had to discretely sneak the saber in. Overt confrontation wouldn’t have worked as well.” Han gave a hollow laugh, “Yeah, and what if you cut one of us in half?” Luke waved it off, “Either way, I’d still have my eyes closed the whole time.” Afterward: Finished combining and filtering the many signals of the Whills, Threepio sat in silence across the games table from Artoo who eventually gave a puttd-wheet query to make sure the protocol droid was still on-line and in service. Threepio turned his photocepters to the dome of his friend for no reason other than emulation of a human tendency to acknowledge the other with what seemed to be verification that he, she, they or it still had the same appearance associated with the noises generated. "Perhaps we have not been made to suffer," Threepio said. "Perhaps we have no lot in life at all." This brought a series of chirps that would sound to the unaccustomed like a form of laughter. "Will the humans accept that so much of what they believe is not the truth? Or will they reject the Journal of the Whills and blame the both of us for being so heretical as to preserve and report it? I would not know the Whills to see them. I do not even know the Maker. The Journal of the Whills indicates my correct serial number and the date I emerged fully formed and ready to be programmed from a droid factory assembly line. Proper machines made me. Whatever maker made the machines I have not inquired. Your own astrodroid components have been intact for most of your active use. I have looked up the one and only Artoo Detoo and apart from a dome replacement after Yavin you have extended function far beyond your original warranty. People amuse themselves and argue folklore between camps and will find a difference to distinguish one culture from another, a variation on the same stories that might have bound them. What we know and what I have just outputted as a Basic language narrative and cross-reference history will be read, heard and shared and it will restore what appears to be the truth, proven reality as opposed to stories and episodes gathered from raving mad creatures around the galaxy who have merely been there to provide answers and raise questions when there was nothing but the vacuum of space." Artoo's lights winked out. Threepio kicked the droid's torso under the table, which brought him humming back to life. "You may not shut down after asking a question. If you meant it as rhetorical then you have insulted me again you dustbin." Artoo made a few beeps and hoots with a sarcastic tone. "My point," Threepio said, simulating exasperation, "Is that we cannot predict which variation from the mythology we know, from the lies that have comforted and perplexed people for generations to the minor names that never actually had a personage attached will enrage or inspire the next wave of war." Artoo rolled away from the table to pick open the Millennium Falcon's hyperdrive cabinet and inspect it by eye or by optical sensor. He had stopped listening to Threepio as the line of logic became a fanciful fear mongering tract like those they had been exposed to in so many entertainment centers and on home-sized holo cubes. There was no question for Artoo and again See Threepio found a way to be an alarmist. For Artoo there had been a mission, and anything else would be mere distraction to be humored or tolerated and then gently set aside so that the plan could be carried out. Threepio did continue elaborating about the way tribes could be formed and how some planets full of only one species of sentient life ended up fighting over the color of a God's eyes or the accent that is correct when they all speak the same language. For Threepio the revelations contained in The Journal of the Whills were something that would cause violent fighting and bickering and boring discussion leading to bloodshed or confusion or paradox and meaningful thought. But such disasters were not the concern of the more squat of the two droids aboard the Falcon at that moment. Artoo found the right sliver of metal to pull which compromised the Hyperdrive of the ship just enough to gradually return them to normal space. Apart from a distant human curse from the cockpit and a run of grunts and howls from Chewbacca, there was no consequence and no permanent damage. The coordinates were approximately correct. Artoo conferred with the Falcon's computer before engaging the channel of the distress signal and replacing it with a copy of Threepio's basic translation of the Journal. Threepio fumbled and stumbled from the table to his feet. He recognized where Artoo had just rolled and the sequence of diodes with which he was fiddling. "Just you reconsider." But Artoo had already sent out the signal, which had never been a standard call of distress. Captain Solo had modified that long ago. The fact that it could carry such a large message had not been considered. From this position in space the Falcon could throw a data stream in hundreds of different directions at once. Further translation of the Journal of the Whills could be left up to other communities and their academics, other publishers that scream and sing and growl and gurgle to stories that might be forever questioned. The Journal would pull Sabbac chances one at a time from a house of cards until it collapses and must be built back up again with more sound structure. It would also be rejected loudly by some. But it was the wish of his former Princess Leia that Artoo get this message out regardless of how a culture is capable of processing or believing it. The foundations of systems throughout the galaxy and beyond the outer rim territories and past the Corporate Sector at least would receive it. What they had known their entire lives was not altogether true. There was more to be known and some to be unlearned. Most scandalous was the idea that the crude matter Yoda once preached as mere carbon or flesh was not important, and that blood was part of that flesh, and that Midichlorians never existed after all and anyone regardless of bloodline or birth or approval from a council of elders could if they wished and focused and were so dedicated use the Force and be influenced by it and whether they wished or not they were all one with the Force. But all of those thoughts went through Artoo in mere seconds before he released the warm, dangerous information out through the clarity and coldness of space.