DO WE NEED A HERO?

The other night, I watched an episode of "The Sopranos" on cable TV.

If you have never seen the series, Tony Soprano, the main character, is a mob boss who lives in New Jersey, has a family with two kids college age, has some inner conflicts, and has been to a shrink, which he keeps secret. Also, he is overbearing, screws around on his wife, and kills people occasionally.

In this episode, it is Tony's 47th birthday and his sister and brother-in-law talk him and Carmela into driving up from New Jersey to a cabin on a lake near Canada.

It is a lovely place. Peaceful, serene. 

The two branches of the family are there: Carmela and Tony, plus Janice and her husband Bobby, and their cute little girl, and her nanny, a black woman.

All kinds of bad things happen. These people are a mess, psychologically. They don't know how to get along with each other. Or with other people. Their answer to any conflict is violence. They don't respect anybody, least of all themselves. Talk about a dysfunctional family.

I guess that is the point.

They drink too much. Tony says something trashy about Janice, and Bobby punches Tony in the face. They fight, trashing the living room. 

Tony and Bobby do business with two French Canadian gangsters, and Tony assigns Bobby to kill a man so they can get the price down on some imported out-of-date pharmaceuticals.

It's just business to these thugs, who have no sense of morality or decency.

Again, I guess that is the point. 

By the end of the show, I felt sick to my stomach. What is the point of all this? These people are worse than animals.

I wonder how real gangsters feel about this show. I hope the real people have more class than the ones on TV.

Now, here is what I've been driving at: In drama or in fiction, do we need to admire the main character? Or any of the characters?

When I was teaching at Orange Coast College, way back in the mid-1970s, there was a woman named Grace Sawicki who taught there.  

Grace gave her students an outline for a good play, or a good story:

1. A strong character you admire tries to do something admirable and important to him or her.
2. She meets increasingly difficult barriers.
3. Things get worse, as the antagonist makes stronger moves.
4. She has a conflict with her previously held values. (Maybe she would never lie, but she has to lie to save her son, for example.)
5. She has to risk everything, at some point, and it seems impossible.
6. She wins or loses, and her life changes forever. She learns something and can't go back.

I think this formula works pretty well. I have followed it myself, and I have taught it to my own students.

But "The Sopranos" does not follow this at all.

Tony Soprano is a strong character. For sure. But there is almost nothing admirable about him. He is not like "The Godfather," who is trying to lead his family into respectability.

Tony is not a total sleaze, but he is violent, venal and without morals.

Years ago, in my own writing career, I had a big disagreement with my then-agent about this same issue. I had written a novel about a character who admires a slick con-man and ends up becoming a criminal. He starts out as a reporter and ends up in prison.

My agent said the reader of commercial fiction has to have a character he can admire and root for.

"The Sopranos" sure isn't like that.

But for me, certain episodes need someone I can hold onto. Someone I can admire and respect.

Otherwise, it feels like we are wallowing in pig slop. 

I don't want to see another episode of "The Sopranos" right away. (I had earlier seen three seasons on DVD and liked them a lot.)

This same question was raised years ago by "Long Day's Journey Into Night," a really depressing play by Eugene O'Neill.

I couldn't take it. My own family was too dysfunctional. The play needs a container, some perspective showing how sick these people are. Without that, we are just wallowing in the slop. It was a horrible experience, I thought.  

So that is the question. I don't mean a happy ending. I mean some ray of hope. Someone with decent values. Someone to admire and respect and root for.

Do we need that? Or do we at least need some form of reward? If the good guys don't win, do we need something we can take away and feel good about?

I sure do.

-- Roger

Copyright © 2011, Roger R. Angle

 

MINI-REVIEW: CATHERINE O'FLYNN

O’FLYNN, CATHERINE – “THE NEWS WHERE YOU ARE”

9/9/2011

I found the opening confusing, nonsensical and pointless.

In the prologue, an old guy named Phil is walking along a country lane feeling sorry for himself when he is run over by a car. Just before it hits him, he recognizes the driver, whose face is “white with fear and running with tears.”

Huh? WTF? I don't find this interesting or engaging or intriguing in the least.

In Chapter One, it is confusing who is who and what is what. It is supposed to be a father and daughter, but I couldn’t follow the dialogue, partly because "Mo" didn't seem like a girl's name, and I couldn’t see the point. What is there to care about? Where is the story? Is there a theme here? What is the relationship between these characters? And most of all, why should I give a damn?

I didn’t get far. I quit on Page 4.

Am I expecting too much? All I want is good writing, a character in some kind of difficulty or dilemma, and the sense that a competent writer is going to take me by the hand and lead me into an interesting world. Is that too much to ask?

Apparently it is.

-- Roger

Copyright © 2011, Roger R. Angle

MINI-REVIEW: GEORGE PELECANOS

I am always looking for good fiction to read. And that search seems to get more difficult all the time. The works in literary and popular magazines and the published novels touted on Amazon seem to get worse and worse. I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Anyway, here is a mini-review from a recent attempt:

"THE TURNAROUND" by George Pelecanos

9/8/2011 -- From an e-mail to my friend Adam:

I am trying to read "The Turnaround" by Pelecanos and can't get into it. I just do not care. He has not made me care.

I am on Pg 28, and I think the black guys are going to try to rob the Greek's diner, and he will chase after them and die of a heart attack. After all, he is a tough guy, an ex-Marine, but he smokes. 

I sort of like him, but there is no story so far. No dilemma, no story problem, no central conflict, no dramatic question. I don't care enough about the characters to keep reading. 

How were you feeling early on? What caught your interest? Nothing is catching mine.

Adam wrote back that the pace didn't bother him, and that he was interested in the social situation, which involved race relations, and that he liked the characters.

OK, so we have different taste.

-- Roger

Copyright © 2011, Roger R. Angle

THE 'SLOW BURN'

A friend of mine likes what he calls the "slow burn" of certain novels, TV shows and movies. He thinks you should set up a dramatic situation and then let it simmer, giving the audience little information or drama and making them wait, and wait. And wait.

He likes that. Not me. But I suppose that depends on your taste and temperament. It also depends on the story.

A slow pace works for me at times. Some people think "Unforgiven," with Clint Eastwood, is slow. "Blade Runner," too. But I don't see a slow burn in either case.

If a story is too fast, it can lack character development and motivation, so it can seem meaningless, full of mindless action without emotional context, like "The Bourne Stupidity"--er, "The Bourne Supremacy"--and "The Bourne Ultimatum."

My favorite Bourne movie is the first one, "The Bourne Identity." The director, Doug Liman, said they tried to make the movie in such a way that you could take the action out, and the story would still work.

What a great idea. A man after my own heart. Finally, some brains in Hollywood. But of course, the geniuses who run things couldn't leave well enough alone. So, for the next two Bourne movies, they hired a new director, and the series lost its way in mindless action.

The first Bourne movie worked so well because of character development and the stakes each character had in the action. Jason Bourne is trying to save not only his life but also his soul and his values. Marie falls in love with Jason because of his values and is trying to save that love. So the action has an emotional context. 

In Bourne two and three, those emotional stakes are gone. What they needed was not a slow burn, but a deeper reason for the audience to care.
  
I am not a big fan of a slow burn. But I am a big fan of emotional stakes. Pacing alone, slow or fast, does not by itself make a story work or create suspense.

With all due respect to my friend, he can have the slow burn.

-- Roger

Copyright © 2011, Roger R. Angle

WISH ME ART

When is a political statement a work of art? And vice versa?

I have been working on my political story, about a Minuteman who thinks he is guarding the border and helping the USA by keeping people out. He meets a lovely Latina and has to deal with his emotions. 

This is my first political story, and I have always believed that if the message overwhelmed the art it wasn't art at all.

I turned for guidance to Goya and his "Disasters of War," possibly the greatest artistic statement against war.

Are these etchings political? I would say so, for they certainly don't glorify war. French soldiers rape women and behead men and cut them into pieces. These sights are horrific.

My favorite etching shows women fighting back. One woman has a small child under her arm while she is killing a soldier with a spear. Good for her, I think as I look at it. Good for her.

Certainly these are great works of art.

So I am hoping that my modest story (38 pages and 7,000 words so far) will be a work of art.

Wish me luck. And wish me art.

-- Roger
 

Copyright © 2011, Roger R. Angle

GIVING A LITTLE BIT AT A TIME

'BREAKING BAD' #7

I have watched the whole first season now--seven episodes--and I can finally say I truly like it. It is a great show, if you have the patience to sit through some tedious parts. (Link:)
http://www.amctv.com/shows/breaking-bad

I identify with Walt. Getting old is kind of like having terminal cancer. The future doesn't seem like forever any more. There are some things you can’t do. You feel weak and tired at times for no reason. Your hair gets thin. The larger society doesn’t care what you’re going through.

I read an interview with the show's creator, Vince Gilligan, who says he believes you should give the audience as little information as possible as you go along. (Link:)

http://www.wga.org/content/default.aspx?id=4100

I think that is why the show is so tedious and boring at times.

But when you look back on it--when it sits in the mind, as one of my professors used to say--it compresses agreeably. 
Overall, I recommend it. You have to be patient, but the rewards are worth it.

-- Roger

'BREAKING BAD' #4: UNEVEN

EPISODE 4

This show is uneven for me, from one episode to another and within episodes. In Episode 4 the teaser is hilarious. Walt is the new drug kingpin? I laughed out loud. Then Hank the nark will take care of Walt’s family? LOL. Good examples of dramatic irony or superior position. Masterfully written.

But EP 4 is painfully slow and tedious at times. I had to grit my teeth and force myself not to fast-forward. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about Jesse’s tweaking. Seems pretty stupid, so he seems stupid, which is not appealing.

But later he suffers in a sort of noble cause when he doesn’t rat out his little brother. So he seems like a better guy. I found the stuff with Jesse’s family hard to sit through, in both scenes. When we meet them, they are unbearably dull. That scene would work better for me if I knew who they were. Such square people are J’s folks?

Walt’s revenge on the egotistical jerk is great. Walt knows just what to do. A little highlight.

I know you can’t use dramatic irony all the time. But in EP 4, two other sequences would have worked better for me if they had used it: if we had known ahead of time that the two bikers were actually Jehovah’s Witnesses and if we had known that the joint really belonged to Jesse’s saintly little brother. As it is, we are scared along with Jesse, and then the effect turns. And the family scene is really boring. Then it turns at the end of the scene. So dull-dull-twist, both times.

The family scene is similar with Hank and Walt recounting the dull details of courting their wives. Snore. Again, dull-dull-twist. I almost didn’t last through the dull parts.

These shows don’t have a captive audience. We can bail out any time, and I almost did, several times in EP 4.  

So far, the best episode was EP 2. Overall, I'd give the show a "B." It's not in the same league as "The Wire" or "Deadwood," but it's pretty good. So far.

-- Roger