Arnold Schwarzenegger has a blunt message for Nazis (better sound)

Weighed, Measured, and Found Crazy

The bad guy Count Adhemar in A Knight's Tale says to the hero William, "You have been weighed. You have been measured. You have been found wanting." Naturally, in the end, William's friends turn these words against Adhemar. The scene resonates with me due to my own insecurity and my long held ambition to make a mark as a writer and movie director. There are a couple of faces that spring to mind as being the sort of disgusting self-styled snob who would go so far as to try to mentally sabotage those of us who have specific goals to achieve. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` Someone running a screenwriting group ostensibly for writers to read and comment on each other's works in progress might be motivated primarily by the need to be the focus and the decider, perhaps pushing what might be called the dogma of Syd Field and Robert McKee format even in a culture where many different storytelling styles might be aching to get exposure and might not survive adaptation into the presumptive blockbuster streamlining. I can say that I have more memory of abuse from those communities than useful feedback. If anything, time can be wasted following the alternate rabbit holes of random opinions given without focused consideration. The preference is for feedback to come from people whose own work you admire and who will look at a draft as indicating what it is you care about and from that how well you are serving that concern. I made the mistake of being candid about my night job, due to the need to travel there after each monthly meeting instead of joining the rest or the writers for a beer. I had a security guard job. If someone chooses to look down on that, they ignore the fact that it did allow me to read screenplays and give considered notes on them. In the realm of sharing notes with strangers, online outlets like Zoetrope.com and Triggerstreet.com were somewhat useful and at least you could tell something about the reviewer by the willingness to rite more than 200 words and the specific relevance to the manuscript at hand. Nothing against the study of Syd Field's Screenwriter's Notebook for example or Story by Robert McKee and various other books about writing but these should be part of a Recommended Reading list and not sources for generic go-to comments to pass off as thoughtful coverage. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` If someone is a toxic person, even though they might appear to believe in the most humane left-wing ideology their fascist heart can be exposed by the tactic of attacking the individual speaker and assigning a pathology to them instead of engaging the arguments with logic and without the expectation that your "facebook friend" is the enemy. Even if it is disguised as a teachable moment, that can tend to be so crass that it is a slap in the face. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` The tricky trap is that there are some who believe or push the principle wherein the mental instability or trauma of a small percentage of those reading or following must set the tone and limitations of what can be said and how it can be said for fear of "triggering" them. While we all might have compassion for someone's trauma, this has escalated to the level of the victim as ruler. If one makes any complaint, he or she will be accused of "playing victim," yet complaints often do have to be conveyed one way or another. If someone has legitimate claim to vulnerability or victimhood, however, it is not a workable situation to stifle and censor all thought that fails to placate that person. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` I don't find it necessary to name names. If someone wants to be an idiot and say that I have spoken out about his/her actions, that is out of my hands. But the principles are more important than the personalities. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` Someone asked for volunteers for a project in her back yard. I responded with an e-mail and mentioned I have a camera I can bring. This was agreed. I was to document. I happened to bring two cameras, the second one being capable of shooting tape for an hour unbroken. So while walking around documenting the volunteer work, I allowed this person to frame up each or three camera positions - each one running an hour - that might be used as part of a demonstration. So I spent some time over there. As essential as the three hour-long shots might have been, there had been no effort to secure this for the project outside of my randomly showing up. As well thought out as the presentation might have been, this person then was not able to firewire onto a capture card of the computers on hand. Documentation of the volunteers on my other camera was easily imported. But I left my camera overnight so more attempts could be made to capture video. When that failed, I returned to pick up my larger camera and I spent another four hours trying to capture and also burn discs. Two discs went fine, but the third shot had some glitches and I wanted to know if I should persist. I e-mailed that there were two discs that turned out but not in full 1080 HD, only DVD quality. I also sent via Facebook a similar message and uploaded sped-up files of all three shots to indicate what was done, noting that at high speed I could be seen waddling around fast and that might be a distraction. I got NO RESPONSE as to the next step from this genius. Do I drop off the two good discs or try to get something out of the third? I had discovered that my camera playback/record heads needed cleaning if I was to record anything again. I looked into taking it in to Canon in Mississauga to get the lens cleaned and heads cleaned. (Turned out that exercise was horrible because Canon workers there won't make money from cleaning lenses or heads, only for a deposit over $300.) Time passed as no phone calls, e-mails, nor Facebook messages were answered. I did my distracting and anxiety-filled back and forth with Canon and their techs trying to scam me. And before I knew it, I was hearing indirectly that the presentation that had been planned never happened. I had gotten through by phone only to be told my timing was strange. I did not press to find out what this meant, and only then did I learn the thing was a bust. I had no indication as to whether I was expected to do more than I had. I had not spend five hours at a semi-friend's place and four more at mine working on that as a prank. There is only one communication style that is worth anything when you have deadlines and specific things that need to be done: Direct, clear communication with a specific intention. There is nothing between the lines in a non-response. There is only disrespect and perhaps madness. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` Ove the course of a year, my only communication to this person was two supportive notes (along with other people) on Facebook threads. One was about being small after being big for a while, and I said, "You are big." The other was about the Netflix series Sense 8 the Wackowskis did. I commented like someone else that even if their content might seem to message-driven and can be a bit much they know how to direct. Finally, a crazy falling out happened (if there was anything to fall out) because I commented on a linked blog that was factually weak. It was complaining about "the male gaze" driving movies and in its three cited examples it included Fifty Shades of Grey and neglected to mention that its director Sam Taylor-Johnson was a woman and that the novelist who had control over the project was also female. It also jumped through hoops with diagrams trying to prove that the geometry of the framing in Mad Max: Fury Road forced the movie to be more respectful to women.... neglecting to mention that Imperiator Furiosa and the whole movie was the product of writer-director George Miller and his 70 year-old male gaze. If you like the heroine of that flick, thank her maker. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` It did not help that a guy I had unfriended a year previous for abuse chimed in for some virtue signaling to throw shade on the ignorant sexist (me). The only lesson I learned from that back and forth and the following morning was as follows: If your Facebook account is beeping whenever someone posts, don't procrastinate about disabling that function. Don't let others and their random input drive your day. Also, make your point and then leave any conversation. There is a tactic some use in which they widen the scope of a discussion beyond the specific item for which you have an opinion. The wider the umbrella, the more disrespectful it is to clarity and the finer points. By the end of it, you can end up with your name all over the page and people seeing remarks out of context. This is baiting. The imbecile who chimed in also lured me to address side-issues and then the next day deleted his own remarks and left mine hanging without context. My own direct message to the owner of the page asking what was really going on was not answered. So I could see the value of my remarks: nothing. I deleted each of my posts. When the owner of the page realized this, there was a manic attempt to paraphrase the discussion with multiple highlights of my name - again to restore the vulnerability of my name being all over the page and this time with less context. I could have sent a printscreen or frame grab to Facebook with a complaint of harassment. That might have been the wise course of action. Instead, the person unfriended me. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` There was some back and forth in Personal Messages trying to get to the bottom of it all, and finding only spin and a completely false recollection of something from 15 years prior. Of the project, the only mention was one of being grateful for my help, although it is doubtful how that could be anything more than ironic. I was told this person likes me but that on Facebook I was a terrible person and a troll. I began to correct the errant memory that had been referred to from the year 2000, and got back a rambling and hyper mess of words telling me not to communicate again. My only response was to go a step further than unfriend and actually block this individual, which I should have done to my shade-thrower the year before. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` I have posted commentary tracks to a few of my short films on youtube, and I started with one for the short that was mentioned from 2000. The sound quality and picture were both murky once I posted it, so I took another stab at it. But because the first version included an allusion to this individual walking from the location, I got indirect feedback on it. The first time around, I had a prop - a VHS tape - and I mentioned something scandalous the self-righteous protester shot which had aired on TV. I had nothing to show from it, but I flipped up the tape guard and pointed at the half-inch tape and said, "There's the nude shot" or something to that effect. The second time, I could not find the tape prop so I let it go. I got an automated e-mail in an account that only a few people knew, advising that am instagram account had supposedly been started by me and that my name was something other than my own. There was a picture of a little boy on the fake account and some message like "I have a podcast." ```````````````````````````````````````````````` When some people get indirect they can be very creepy. I also received a mess of Facebook friend-requests from accounts that seemed fake, like a little girl I did not recognize whose parents I did not know and that was filled with professional-looking photos. Many fake accounts were like dating ads. I had to actually block some so that they would not automatically follow me. I was told that both my troll and this person I had recently blocked were conspiring together to send me these annoyances and also going after the page for my planned film. So their attacks did have quite a great deal of bashing me by name. I know that it caused one friend to stop replying to me (on matters unrelated) and his wife to unfriend and block me. I can only imagine the range of evil slander that has been spread - and over what? If I could anticipate that sort of enemy being killed, I am not sure that I would make an effort to stop that. I look forward to the obituaries of even that mundane level of adversary. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` My generation was raised on Norman Lear, Princess Leia, Mary Tyler-Moore, the Bionic Woman and Murphy Brown. Yet, we are likely to be called sexist for not being excited about the 2016 Paul Feig version of Ghostbusters. There are people who will "other" you and shun you for disagreeing with a sub-issue despite genuinely holding many of the same values. No matter how it is spun, it really may just come down to assholes in sheep's clothing. And mad, mad, mad vindictive jerks cloaked in the flag of decency.

Latest edit of The Fashion

The Fashion from William La Rochelle on Vimeo.