Chateau Lloyd

It has long been axiomatic that most film adaptations from books are flawed if not outright terrible.  

What is far less common, however, is for the film to exceed the book.  The three examples I usually cite are Jaws, M*A*S*H and Last of the Mohicans.

The book version of Jaws contains several annoying side plots involving class differences in the seaside community (summer homes vs year-round residents) and Mrs. Brody cheats on the chief with Hooper, who in the book is a tall, stud rather than Richard Dreyfuss' brilliantly played shark nerd.

M*A*S*H bogs itself down with comparisons between service status (draftees vs regular army or reservists), and it comes across as totally cartoonish.  That element was toned down precisely because it was boring and rendered it even less plausible than it already way.

As for Last of the Mohicans, Mark Twain thoroughly dismantled James Fenimore Cooper more than a century ago, and Michael Mann's 1990s production is far superior to the written version.

A similar situation exists with The Big Sleep.  I've long enjoyed the Bogart and Bacall film, which while light on the plot, has excellent acting, great dialog, and is just wonderfully evocative.

When I saw a used copy of Raymond Chandler's book, I picked it up because I wanted to see how much had been changed, and whether the changes work.

In fact, a lot had been changed, and not for the better.  Back in the 1930s and 1940s, movies were still subject to the Hayes Code.

In the modern age, the code has been held up as horrifically stifling censorship, but it is no accident that films were much, much better when they had to use story, character and setting rather than just flash boobs to pack people into the seats.  Books, however, were under no such restriction, and so topics like homosexuality, drug use and pornography could be openly discussed in Chandler's book.

For the film, these topics had to be approached with care and ambiguity, which made for better storytelling.  I'd heard that the book's ending is better, but it's actually much worse - everything is tied into a tidy little bow that makes no sense.

Chandler has some great conversations, and writes well, but his characters as written simply aren't as compelling as the cast of the film.  I have no desire to re-read the book, but I know I will continue to re-watch the film.

One of my colleagues at Bleeding Fool has reported that Disney is now so desperate for recycled material that they are going to do backstories on all the characters they killed off in The Acolyte.

This is taking the strange obsession with retconning and prequels to its logical and absurd conclusion.

No story ever moves forward; that's dangerous.  Current writing emphasizes world-building and details rather than plot, character development and progression.

The Star Wars setting has immense potential for standalone stories, yet all Disney has done is try to recycle existing material, and in the process has created a host of contradictions that destroy the integrity of the thing.  When the stories were pushed forward, they were hateful takes on existing characters, so one can see why no one has had the stomach to revisit the disastrous sequel trilogy.

Yet.

I've written about prequels before and I don't like them.  Many of my settings could easily accommodate them, but why move backwards when one can move forward?  I suppose one could argue that if I did a book for The Vampires of Michigan about the bootlegging years, that wouldn't be a prequel so much as a different story in the same setting, especially if I use different characters.

That would be the only way I can see it working.  When I write a character, I don't generally create a full and massive biography just in case.  I flesh out only the details I have.  Going back and adding in more risks the integrity of what already exists, and one can see this in how much J.R.R. Tolkien struggled to make his concept of Galadriel work.  She had a backstory when he wrote Lord of the Rings, but as he dug deeper into the First Age, he went back and forth about who she was and how she got where she was.

The published version of her in The Silmarillion is not the final form, which was still in draft.  Instead, Christopher Tolkien, his son and literary executor, chose the most finished version, which was also in line with existing texts.

If a genius like Tolkien struggled to make prequels and backstories work, I'm far less qualified to bother with it.

I am thinking about sequels however, and many of my books are suitable for that.  This intrigues me because I've yet to try it, and it would probably be good for sales because the original book would get a boost.  It's been difficult to write of late, but I'm restructuring my schedule to make it more friendly for that pursuit.

Even better, I'm starting to get ideas about what scenes I would run.  Writing has been a helpful hobby for many years and I miss it.  Hopefully I'll be back in the swing of things soon.

Is any movie a better distillation than 1990s youth culture than Wesley Snipes' Blade?  It's got a bit of everything - the brash anti-hero, vampirism as a decadent (secular) lifestyle, and of course that sexy soft-core lesbian porn that was just starting to creep into the popular consciousness.

Indeed, in retrospect that was a clever marketing ploy by Hollywood, because while two men having sex is disgusting, two women having sex is merely absurd - and far more aesthetically pleasing.

In any event, I hadn't watched it in many years, which may strike people as surprising given my (fairly) recent authorship of The Vampires of Michigan.   To a certain extent, Blade was the Ur-text of that book insofar as it treated vampirism as a morally neutral biological phenomenon.  Obviously, the blood drinking was bad, but religious symbols and sacred objects were specifically mentioned as useless.

Garlic and silver were instead the primary threats to the vamps.

The storyline is unremarkable, and what sells the picture are the actors and the remarkably slick aesthetic.  Wesley Snipes is just so damn cool.  He oozes cool, personifies it - women want him, men want to BE him.  Modern movies simply cannot produce that level of charisma.

Put simply, it knew what it wanted to be and became that thing.  

That being said, there is a spiritual void at the heart of the picture which I had not noticed before - in part because it has been so long since I saw it.  When you are in your 20s, partying and lots of sex seems all that one could want in life.  Later on, other priorities emerge.

That was a large part of what inspired my take on vampires.  I very much enjoyed (and incorporated) fight scenes with cool weapons and people capable of dishing out (and taking) absurd amounts of damage, but the real heart of the matter to me was how one kept going after 100 years of orgies.  There had to be something more.

Anyhow, the film has held up remarkably well.

For the last few weeks Billy Joel's "Honesty" has been running through my mind.  The scope and quantity of lies in public discourse is simply overwhelming.

As the title of the post says - everyone is so untrue.

It is no accident that Man's from grace began with a lie.  Lying comes natural to evil people and often reaches the extent that they lie about everything, no matter how trivial or self-defeating.

We're to the point where once-respected organizations are now rejecting their own reportage in order to toe the Party line.  It's completely self-defeating, but so is evil.

As the song says:

I can always find someone who says they sympathize if I wear my heart out on my sleeve, but I don't want some pretty face to tell me pretty lies.  All I want is someone to believe.

Apparently, pretty lies are in great demand these days.

There is a strain of thought - popularized by Hollywood and contemporary culture - that lies indicate intelligence, and clever lies are the sign of a superior kind of person.  This has obvious appeal to prideful people lost in their vanity, and is of a piece with the elevation of cowardice to a virtue as well.

None of this is new, Chesterton and Belloc wrote about it more than a century ago, and Waugh's writings also address the issue.  A key plot point in his Sword of Honour trilogy is how an otherwise admirable British officer convinces himself that the smart thing to do is abandon his men on Crete and save himself, only to realize that while lip-service is paid to such cleverness, in practice society finds it despicable.  

The scandal is so great that punishment is out of the question, and he is hustled off to the Pacific theater, where he finds redemption through conventional acts of bravery and courage.

Of course modern society also rejects the notion of redemption or forgiveness.  There are only the Yard Sign Calvinists and everyone else.    As I noted a couple of weeks ago, one of the most consequential shifts in American culture was when progressive Christians decided that their mission was to condemn rather than convert.

If one isn't trying to draw people to eternal truth, duping them with lies seems a reasonable thing to do, especially if you merely want to keep them in line.

It's a self-limiting tactic, but siding with evil has always been a sucker's bet.  That's because the biggest lie of all is that one can somehow escape divine judgement.

When I was a child, I had a regular cycle of ear infections, and two of the dark memories that haunt me from that time are getting an injection in the butt and the taste of yellow Triaminic.

I've the worst one I had in many years and decided to go into the clinic to speed my recovery.  Before I left, I got word that come coworkers had tested positive for Covid, and I have to confess I thought it rather quaint.  It never occurs to me to test for that.  It's over.  Covid is just another cold and - as we now know - was not much more than that to begin with.  

The response was grossly disproportionate to the threat.

As it happens, I did test positive, but it was something of a footnote because like many others, I have no symptoms.  My problem is an ear infection, which I'm in the process of shaking off.

That in turn reminded me of Stephen King's On Writing, a book I read some years ago after a friend recommended it to me.  This was back when I was just beginning my authorial career, and I'm sure he meant well, but his advice - ignore the biography and focus on the writing tips - was exactly wrong.

I despise Stephen King.  I dislike what he writes and how he writes it.  His politics are abhorrent and he seems like a very bitter, angry old man, which is strange given the immense fame and fortune he has achieved in life.  He's pretty much the prime exhibit that secular materialist goals only get you so far.  True happiness and love come from God, and the closer one draws to Him, the greater the joy and peace one will find.

That is why King's autobiography was of interest.  It was no shock to me that he had an unhappy childhood with frequent ear infections and painful treatments (in his case, the doctor just pierced the eardrum with a hot needle).  His family was poor, and he was surrounded by decrepit spooky stuff that he later incorporated into his works.

To me, that is the value of literary biographies/autobiographies - to see where the inspiration came from and how they came to write what they did.  Once you've visited Fort Monroe, you can understand  why so much of Edgar Allen Poe's work centered on oppressive masses of damp, dark masonry.  He wrote what he knew, which was the interior casemates of the fortress where he served part of his time in the U.S. Army.

I don't get sick very often, and once again I'm reminded that part of why we get sick must be to make us appreciate being healthy.  I'm certain that I will do that, and hopefully it will be soon.

For the past couple of days I've been unable to get into the site.  This may or may not have been related to the catastrophic computer failures that devastated the travel sector, but it's a reminder that the technology that now seems so vital to us is actually both fragile and still quote new.

I'm in the middle of middle age, yet I can remember burning through paper checks to pay bills not that long ago.  I now keep my ledger on a spreadsheet rather than on paper, but I can go back to it fairly easily.

An entire generation of people have no idea what I am talking about.

For a long time, modern technology increased both society's convenience and resilience.  Telephone and radio allowed for instantaneous long-distance communication, greatly enhancing responses to disasters or public safety emergencies.  Our medical system engaged and destroyed diseases like smallpox and brought polio to the brink of extinction.  

Yet at some point, it all turned sour.  Our communications are now extremely vulnerable to the extent that a backhoe digging near St. Louis a few years back crippled American computer networks.  This latest incident is a reminder that the profit motive can result in tremendous advances but also dangerous weaknesses.

The same is true of medicine.  Where bright minds once battled disease, our doctors now seek to unmake humanity itself, telling troubled children that they can and should be mutilated and chemically castrated in order to make them feel better.  The Covid pandemic demonstrated that modern medicine  is more about asserting authority than healing.

The key takeaway is to look at other networks for support.  Friends, family, community, parish - these are far more resilient and much less prone to corruption and exploitation.

I came across an intriguing column over at Crisis Magazine discussing whether Protestants are progressives.  I think the answer is "yes," but that it requires some qualification, which is that American Protestantism is different from the European form.

European Protestantism was built around state churches that were formalized as result of the Wars of Religion.  The formula Cuius Regio Eius Religio ("whose realm, his religion") placed the form of worship in the hands of secular rulers, and if the ruler was Protestant, a state church was the result.

What this did was shackle Protestants to the existing order.  It was all well and good to use critical study on the Bible and deconstruct its meaning, but Nineteenth Century German theologians were still tethered to the existing political order.  It was only once that order was destroyed by World War I that more radical interpretations could be given a wide hearing.

Because of the dislocation of the world wars, European Protestantism didn't swing progressive, it simply died.  Yes, the remnants of state churches have embraced female clergy and now sexual liberation, but they're doing so to catch up with society, not lead it.  The Marxist heresy was a much stronger influence that latter-day Lutheranism.  Indeed, I'd say every European country has more practicing Marxists than state church adherents.

American Protestantism, on the other hand, cut its ties from the old regimes long ago.  Only the Anglicans retained any real connection with the mother church.  The other churches gradually lost that connection as the congregations assimilated into American culture.  This happened for three reasons.  

The first was pure logistics - it was hard to keep sending pastors across the ocean to minister to people whose knowledge of the old country rapidly faded.  In time, new seminaries were established in America, but different conditions and social realities pushed them away from the home office.

Add to this the ethnic mixing that immediately took place.  While inter-denominational marriage in Europe between a Swedish Lutheran and a German as possible, it was much more likely in the U.S.  Many of the communities set up shop and (to give a local example) Michigan's Upper Peninsula had Finns, Swedes and Norwegians all lumped together, each with their own church.  In time, intermarriage made remaining in a given liturgy less relevant.

This brings us to the nature of Protestantism to fragment and veer into new and exciting heresies.  As noted above, in Europe, the requirement of obedience to the Crown kept Protestant theology in check.  With that restraint removed, anyone could set up their own independent church, and many did.  Those that wished to cling to legitimacy found it impossible to retain the old ethnic connections, so they created theological unions, albeit on ethnic lines. 

Thus the three main Lutheran denominations in the U.S. still have an ethnic form, but it's entirely overshadowed by theology.  The Missouri Synod is ethnically German, and theologically conservative.  The Evangelical Lutheran Church of American (affectionately known as "Auntie ELCA"), was formed out of the Scandi churches and is very liberal.  The Wisconsin Synod is also German and theologically conservative, but also extremely insular (it refuses to provide military chaplains due its distrust of government and Christian pacifism).

The same process affected other state-affiliated churches of the Reformed or Anglican nature.  For example, the Methodists split from the Anglicans and have been splitting ever since.

I think this is why American Protestants fell so quickly and so thoroughly into the purely political sphere.  It is also why they stopped caring about saving souls and instead busied themselves with perfecting man - and punishing the ones regarded as defective or "deplorable."

This is how we get Yard Sign Calvinists.

The Catholic Church also has its liberal/progressive wing, but it is dying off because the mainstream remains orthodox and there is an increasing focus on this orthodoxy (Pope Francis notwithstanding).

As the article states, there is a movement to try to anchor Protestantism and I agree that the effort is likely doomed to fail.  Once one tries to find immutable, eternal Christian principles to hold onto , Catholicism becomes the natural choice.

Americans are used to abundance.  When we want something, the assumption is that so long as we have enough money, we can get it.

The strange thing about this abundance is that over time, we actually approach things as if they were scarce.  Even though various things may be plentiful, we act as though we have to get them right away because they may go away.

This is fueled by our credit-based economy, which further feeds the need for instant gratification.

Thus, instead of looking at something we want and saying "that looks neat, when I have the money I will get one," we jump to "I need it sooo bad and I need it now," as if it's the last one on earth.  This is the "scarcity mentality."

Sadly, the pandemic has only increased this tendency because we actually did run out of stuff.  If you didn't have enough toiler paper, you had a problem.

Opposing this is the "abundance mentality," which could be regarded as a complacency regarding the availability of things, but I think it also ties in to focusing on all the things you have rather than the things you want.

The best illustration of this is the difference between hoarding and collecting.  True collectors buy things with great discernment.  There's almost a reluctance to buy something lest it taint the integrity of the rest. 

You know you've met one of these people when you suggest something that seems to fit and they stare at you with disgust.  "You think I would want one of those?!" 

Hoarders are by definition far less discerning.  Heck, some even stockpile their own poop.  They always want more and can't let anything go.  They suffer from a scarcity mentality.

Indeed, one of the hallmarks of that mentality is keeping broken or semi-functional things (often multiples of them) out of fear that they might be needed.  That is to say, they could become scarce.

I'm increasingly trying to embrace an abundance mentality, and in particular focusing on the intangibles, like love, grace, and comfort.  Instead of looking at books I want, I will take a moment to look at books that I have.  

This is particularly useful for me when I find myself in awkward financial circumstances because a bunch of bills or unexpected expenses pile up.  Before lamenting the postponement of future purchases, I find it useful to step back and look around at the things I already have, and how blessed I am to have them.

Some call this "the attitude of gratitude," and I think its an essential feature of well-formed Christians, especially American ones.  We have received unprecedented prosperity, though at the moment that seems to be imperil.  Instead of asking why we must make do with less, why not be glad at all that we have?

Indeed, I think much of our current turmoil is because we've come to take God for granted, and assume that we're entitled to peace and prosperity just because. 

A cursory glance at history shows this to be false, but Americans are often terrible at that subject as well.

American culture borrows heavily from the Puritan tradition, and it's so deeply embedded that even American Catholics have unconsciously absorbed a lot of its assumptions.

This wasn't always the case.  Catholics were once considered outside the American mainstream and targeted for persecution by the Protestant majority.  The "Blaine Amendments" which barred public funding of religious schools were an attempt to cripple Catholic education.  At that time public schools included religious instruction, and it was of course Protestant in nature.

When Catholics began to leave their cultural ghetto in the 1960s, their children quickly assimilated the American Protestant culture and its version of history.

In this telling, the Revolutionary War was about escaping from the sinister power of Rome and the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition.  The truth was radically different.

The Pilgrims, for example, were fleeing Anglican persecution, not Catholicism.  The Puritans took an ultra-scriptural approach to their theology to the extent that they banned Christmas because it was not explicitly written about in the Bible.

By the 18th Century, the British government was no longer hunting down Catholic priests and burning them, but Catholic subjects were confined to an inferior legal status.  Catholic Emancipation did not take place until 1829, and while the legal restrictions were removed, their remained (and still remains) a strongly anti-Catholic element in British society.

The Revolutionary War of course predated the Constitution, but many of the guarantees in the later document reflect wartime goals - the principles the Patriots were fighting for.

Thus, the Constitution's prohibition of religious tests to hold public office was a repudiation of current British law.

Aleteia has a timely piece on George Washington's friendly stance towards Catholics, and how - despite being a nominal member of the Church of England - he fully supported Catholic aspirations and even donated to the construction of a new Catholic church.

It was therefore an easy case to make for Catholics to actively support the American Revolution, which promised greater liberties for them than virtually any other group.

This episode not only offers additional reasons to admire the genuine greatness of our first president, but is a useful lesson in political pragmatism.  Instead of debating which candidate is more morally acceptable, it may be wiser to ask which one is more likely to leave you free to live out your faith in peace.

It's worth noting that the chief of staff for the Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War was Gen. Vincente Rojo, a practicing Catholic whose armies busied themselves in destroying churches and slaughtering clergy.  Whatever his personal belief, he was actively fighting against the Church.

Last night I watched the original theatrical release DVD of Star Wars with my grandkids.  The elder was my age when I first saw it (4) and the younger predictably fell asleep (which was part of the point).

After decades of fandom and the current culture war over the franchise, it was refreshing to see the film through the eyes of a child.

She was very impressed, saying "Wow!" during the opening sequence and reacting throughout the film.  By the trash compactor sequence (which terrified me back then), she was sitting in my lap for reassurance.  She loved the battles and cheered at the end.

And - like my generation - she wanted toys from the film.

I think there are several issues wound up in Star Wars and these have concealed the essential greatness of the original films.

Obviously, the dominant issue now is the fundamental reworking of the entire franchise, an action that seems motivated by sheer vindictiveness towards the original fans.

The original films succeeded because they pointedly were set in an imaginary setting and the sides were clearly identified as good and evil.  It's right there in the screen crawl.  There's no need to overthink it or break it down using critical theory.

The characters work because they suit the actors, who had some leeway in how they interpreted their roles.  

There is also the weird obsession of George Lucas with tweaking his films.  It's one thing to digitally remaster something and clean up bits of dust and lint.  It is another to actually recut the thing, splicing in scenes, altering dialog, even switching out actors and voices.  It is said that George Lucas' then-wife (Marcia) and the editing team saved the film with last-minute changes and that because of their acrimonious divorce, George wanted to reverse as much of that as he could.

The "special edition" is a worse film, breaking up the flow, introducing unnecessary special effects and severely compromising the narrative.  Moreover, it has given the new owner, Disney, license to do the same.  The reason the canon remains unsettled is that its creator couldn't settle on one.

In reality, the original theatrical release is the true version - it set the world on fire and created a series of film so popular than fans would camp out in front of theaters in order to be the first in line to see them.

Everything since has been mediocre, graded on a curve because they no longer have to stand on their own merits, but are instead compared to others in the genre.  Basically, Star Wars has created its own ghetto, walling it off from mainstream audiences.

This is the problem with franchises - the bigger they get, the higher the entry costs becomes for new fans.

Put simply, a new prospective fan now has dozens of hours of catching up to do.  From 1977 to 1983, it was 'all too easy' to stay current.

All of which is to say that war over Star Wars has sadly overtaken the quality of the film and its superb sequels.  Adding to this tragedy is the bizarre decision by Disney to trash earlier films in order to excuse their abysmal offerings.

I suggest taking a break from the very online arguments and simply watching the originals as if for the first time, looking over the details, savoring the sound track, immersing oneself in the story.

It helps if you have a kid with you.