Chris Dee: Aaron Sorkin

Monday, February 7, 2011

Wearing a Duck

Remember that great scene in My Favorite Year: Benny Stone, freshman writer on King Kaiser’s Comedy Cavalcade finally has a date with the girl of his dreams. She regrets that she is the one person working at the show who isn’t funny. He says anybody can be funny. He’ll teach her a joke. “A guy walks into a psychiatrist's office with a duck on his head. The psychiatrist says, ‘Can I help you?’ And the duck says, ‘Yeah, can you get this guy off my ass.’” She laughs, he prompts her to tell it back to him. She straightens her dress a little in an endearing ‘here we go’ maneuver and begins: “A man walks into a doctor’s office wearing a duck.”

Homaged here in Studio 60, Sorkin goes on to explain the phenomenon:
You can’t tell a joke. Like a young child, you hear it, get it, and then can’t reconstruct the moving parts.

This is what we're facing in mainstream comics. A real writer comes along, say Jeph Loeb. He crafts a cunning mystery, putting the long-neglected theme rogues front and center, and weaves in a heartbreaking tragedy of Bruce's inability to trust following the structure best suited to the purpose: Aristotelian tragedy. Since a good mystery requires a good red herring, he constructs one tailor-made to grab the fanboy's attention and keep it rived on the ball in my RIGHT hand. He teased the one thing that all sane comic readers knew would never happen, he teased breaking one of the 3 commandments, he teased Jason Todd was still alive. He then revealed the image they were all waiting for - if Jason were alive today, what would he look like - in a full page at the very end of the issue, giving them a full month to fizz and and enjoy themselves. Then he went on with his story... that's what storytellers do.

Here's what comics writers do: not understanding how any of the moving parts worked, they latched onto things at random: it was the character of Hush himself, not the mystery that made it such a success. And the return of Jason Todd! Like Pacific Islanders lining an improvised runway with torches and sitting a guy on the end with coconuts strapped to his head like headphones, thinking it will make planes land filled with supplies - you know, the way it did during the war. It looks just like it used to, why don't the planes come?

Last week's blog, I quoted the late John Barry bemoaning modern composers who are "just playing with notes." Yesterday I posted a quote of Aaron Sorkin about those demonizing education and intellect. We have a PROBLEM here: people allowed to write, edit and manage major comic titles who have not learned the basics of their own craft - and who scoff at the idea it is necessary. Not only have they been allowed to ruin something that was once a pleasure for thousands of ex-readers, they have taken up a slot that could have been filled by competent and talented writers who would appreciate it.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
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Monday, January 31, 2011

The Elite

I got caught up on quite a lot this weekend, but one thing I didn’t get to was the blog. I had tagged a piece from Aaron Sorkin’s acceptance speech at the Golden Globes a few weeks ago. In the final seconds, he thanked the female nominees “for helping to demonstrate to my young daughter that ‘Elite’ is not a bad word, it is an aspirational one.”

I hadn’t decided where to go from that starting point, until this morning when the first news I saw was the death of Hollywood composer John Barry. Barry produced some of the most transcendent film scores: Somewhere in Time to Dances With Wolves, Body Heat to Chaplin. Making any music that can transport the listener is an extraordinary gift, but to do it in movies where it’s not all about you, using your talents to contribute to this larger thing and taking it to a higher level, that goes beyond mere excellence into the realm of the extraordinary.

Being the best at what you do is not a bad thing, it is something to aspire to. Starting off with more talent, insight or smarts, that’s a gift, not something to be ashamed of. Studying and working hard to make the most of your talents, that is honoring the gift. Challenging yourself, pursuing excellence for its own sake, these are all good things.

Robert Browning said a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?

The Handicapper General of Vonnegut’s Monkey House said you should strap weights to the ankles of a ballerina.

The flock in Jonathan Livingston Seagull said not to fly any higher than the rest of us. Know only as much as you need to in order to get out to the food, scarf down some fish, and get home.

I’m going with Browning, and I’m listening John Barry’s music today while I do it.

In a 2005 interview in The Guardian, Barry criticized modern composers who "have nothing to say" and are "just messing around with notes." He blamed not just the composers themselves but the directors and producers who allow "45 minutes or an hour of music that doesn't mean a damn thing."

I'm sure they all called him an elitist as if it were a bad thing. I'm also sure he didn't care, because like Sorkin and Stoppard and Sondheim and anyone else who takes the trouble to get it right, he knew that the lazy and mediocre will always try to repackage their deficiencies as a desirable norm, and any deviation from that norm as a character flaw:. Just as the Millerite must recast the brave and selfless hero as a psycho with a death wish, those lacking talent, initiative, ambition, intelligence, discernment, self-discipline, torso strength, mathematical aptitude, eloquence, spatiality, or simple compassion will always, always, always relabel to cover their deficiencies. Don't let them get away with it.

John Barry was better than most people who try to make music. How do I know that? Because there is a soul revealed in score of Somewhere in Time, and that soul is beautiful. It begins with Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, and what it spins from one short variation that's like a minute long could have become sickeningly sweet, cliche'd or trite in the hands of someone who didn't understand the raw materials he was working with. It is music of loss and loneliness, of longing and of love. If you don't think the people who understand those qualities and are brave enough to dig into themselves and bring out what they find there - to expose that most personal part of themselves to the world in order to make a work of art - if you don't think those people are better than the rest of us, think again.

Elite isn't a bad word. It is an aspirative one.