eFilmCritic

natasha_theobald · Posted: Thu Jan 16, 2003 4:57 pm Post subject: What do you write?

Other than movie reviews, what do you like to write?

y2mckay · Posted: Thu Jan 16, 2003 5:10 pm Post subject:

Fiction, novel length. Never been great at coming up with punchy ideas for short stories, and I only write poetry when I get dumped (real bad, depressing poetry). So far I've got drafts of a couple of sci-fi books, and a couple of horror/suspense stories. Would also like to do historical fiction or alternate-history type stuff at some point. Oh, I've also written some fan fiction for a couple of games, partly for fun, partly with the agenda of getting hired on as a writer. So far, no takers, though I have gotten some high praise.
_________________
I shouldn't get high to come up with ideas. I should come up with ideas, and THEN get high, to reward myself!

Charles Tatum · Joined: 04 Aug 2002 Posts: 1703

I write book and music reviews as well. I write poetry, and sometimes little "essays" of stuff that's bothering me or strikes me as funny. Ironically, I have tried journaling, but I usually lose interest after a week. Don't ALL writers supposedly journal?

Thumb the Toad · Posted: Thu Jan 16, 2003 7:01 pm Post subject:

Poetry.

Jack Sommersby · Posted: Thu Jan 16, 2003 7:06 pm Post subject: ------------------

Nothing but film reviews, BABY -- nothing but film reviews!!!!!!
_________________
"Joe the Plumber -- you can quote me -- is a dumbass." -- Meghan McCain

natasha_theobald · Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2003 10:09 am Post subject:

I don't stick with journaling either. I think it is left over from the fact that my nosy family would always find and read it when I was young.

Danielle Ophelia · Joined: 28 Jul 2002 Posts: 148 Location: ...

Oooh, I like this topic. Um...Sweet holy mother of God in a straitjacket, these days I write everything BUT movie reviews. Well, that and music, as my musical prowess is exclusively limited to one school year plus a few tired months with a really moody and fungus-prone tenor sax.

I've been known to ass around with poetry a little bit, but it's not something I'm big on...my poems usually include stream-of-consciousness bullshit like, "Fly through the ceiling and meet me on the roof...would you poison my dinner just to hear my description of the experience?" Blah, blah, yada-yada, the meat goes on. I'm a marginally better poet than Jewel, but then again, I think the author of "Deck the Halls With Gasoline (Strike a match and watch it gleam)" is a better poet than Jewel.

So it's fairly crummy poetry, journalizing, and fiction for me. I mostly write horror stories-cum-novels, because, well...that's what I'm into. I'm a fairly sick individual.

**Some of my more recent story ideas**

A man stricken with an unidentified disease and obsessed with yin yangs returns to his old hometown to commit suicide...and decides to literally drive a former friend crazy in hopes of having company, because he sees said friend as the yin to his yang.

The citizens of Mercury, North Carolina (pop. 4,000--including stray cats and dogs) are dropping dead left and right...killed by their own thoughts. A teenage girl literally freezes and shatters on an icy sidewalk, and a middle-aged womanizing divorcee is plowed down by a rogue meteorite.

A young man desperate for money agrees to kidnap his sister for an embittered coworker. The two of them hijack a drugstore, where the girl's tortured throughout the night as her brother looks on. Organ transplants are involved here, I shit you not.
_________________
Give me all your 80s music and no one gets hurt.

UDM · Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2003 11:31 pm Post subject:

In the past I have been responsible for really bad "surrealist" poetry (back when I thought "surrealism" was anything that didn't make sense); several bad screenplays; a few bits of amateur journalism published in very obscure places; music reviews for the college radio station; exactly one review (non-film) for Epinions; and I once entered the fiction contest sponsored by these guys

http://www.anvilpress.com

and spent three days cranking out a disastrously awful sex-in-the-suburbs story.

Would like to write more fiction/screenplays etc., but coming up with nifty plots is not my strong suit. Tend to agree with E.M. Forster that plots are inherently boring. Of course, I wouldn't think that if I were any good at it.

UDM

Thom · Joined: 12 Jul 2002 Posts: 94 Location: France

Paulapalooza once called me a "cultural essayist" because of those semi-regular essays I write and publish here, just because I can.

Hella people read those things. Recently someone suggested I create a website to archive them because she wanted to link to them from her website!

I even got asked to be a guest lecturer at an English class at a university that just happened to be here in the SF Bay Area.

I also write book reviews for a Bi-weekly free paper in Los Angeles called NoHo>LA, in addition to various feature articles. Progressive social critic Arianna Huffington occasionally contributes to the same paper. I also write the occasional entertainment feature as well as conduct the periodic interview.

I don't write poetry any more but I do a fair bit of journalism.

I also review gay porn and write features about sex.

Oh yeah, I also write an entertainment wrap-up/gossippy column for moviepoopshoot.com and write features about people and things tangential to pop culture, also on moviepoopshoot.com as well as special reports.

I would be covering Sundance right now but my freelance pay for the porn magazine went to my old address in L.A. and I was going to use that to get to Sundance.

Lately I've been writing a lot of articles about peace and social change. I started an international grass roots peace movement (its easier than you think) recently and part of it is a "pledge for peace" that I'll probably be working on forever since only three people have sent me their peace pledge. After I get enough items to make it worthwhile, I'll type it up and send it out.

I also just ghostwrote a series of articles about different aspects of the writing process.

I also contribute to the occasional zine. scribble on the occassional bathroom wall.

No wonder I have had a "couldn't care less" attitude about screenings and reviews. I just feel like I should keep it up on all fronts.

I started a novel about a year ago but it needs a lot of work if I ever finish it. The problem is I work out all my little obsessions and fetishes in everything else so it never ends up in the novel.

*sigh*

y2mckay · Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2003 2:37 pm Post subject:

my problem with writing novels is I'll think I have a great idea, will knock out the first draft, then will go back six months later and look it over and decide it's a bunch of hackneyed crapola. Major rewrite, rinse, repeat.

How do you get a gig reviewing porn? Shocked

That's like a dream job!
_________________
I shouldn't get high to come up with ideas. I should come up with ideas, and THEN get high, to reward myself!

Thom · Joined: 12 Jul 2002 Posts: 94 Location: France

Reviewing porn loses it's novelty very fast and you find out its a business like any other business. "Actors" get annoyed when you don't mention them by name (whatever their porno name is), the magazine wants you to put a positive spin on things and most challenging of all, how do you make a porn review interesting when every single movie is exactly the same?

I tell a lot of jokes but I can't be too sarcastic or negative.

I got that gig through someone that I know. That's how anyone gets any work. I met the editor of Adult Video News at the Adult Video News/ Free Speech Coalition awards dinner this past year and she asked me if I wanted to write reviews.

I declined.

And then a publicist I know introduced me to a guy who was the then editor of Unzipped magazine who was looking for writers and that's how I got started. There is another guy in San Francisco who writes for the same magazine who writes non-adult content, like me.

He recently wrote an article about the current state of nightlife in San Francisco for the Bay Guardian.

And Unzipped also has a "celebrity" advice columnist in each issue. Bruce Villanch (The guy who writes the Academy Awards show and recently was center square on the Hollywood Squares), Kathy Griffin and Andy Jones (an editor at E!Online) have appeared in recent issues.

Larry Flynt loves writers who don't marginalize "Adult" content since pornography is ubiqitious. My reviews, as you might imagine, often have a socially aware tone as well as pointing out how big someone's dick is or when to fast forward, and when to rewind repeatedly.

It's all entertainment. I have to be careful to not get "typed" as a writer so I keep everything very compartmentalized.

So the short answer is, "I just fell into it."

y2mckay · Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2003 6:52 pm Post subject:

I bet you can still find ways to have fun with it, but you do have a point about them being all alike. Pornos are like kung fu movies. Always the same old shit, but usually entertaining unless it's really REALLY bad.

Let me know if they ever need someone to write any reviews. My specialties are DP and girl-girl Very Happy

_________________
I shouldn't get high to come up with ideas. I should come up with ideas, and THEN get high, to reward myself!

Thumb the Toad · Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2003 9:00 pm Post subject:

Oh yeah, I'm also about to start a script called The End. Lame title, but I'll think of something else.

Oz · Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2003 1:37 pm Post subject:

What I write/have written:

Screenplays
Movie reviews
Interviews
MrSkin articles
Half of Highbarr Magazine (under an assumed name)
The jar label, promotional literature and slogan for Soyfee ("Sip into something more comfortable")
Four moving company websites
A DJ website
A gonzo travel column for an aussie magazine
The entirety of a woman's magazine (until they found out I was a guy)
A big wack of eBay jewelry descriptions for someone who can't spell
Three screenplays for flash presentations on 'get rich quick' websites
The e-books Maximizing Your eBay Profits, How to Beat a Speeding Ticket and How To Be A Freelance Writer.
The books Running a Successful Beverage Operation: 365 Tips For Success and National Enquirer: Thirty Years of Incredible Images

..and that's all I remember at this time of the morning.

natasha_theobald · Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2003 11:43 pm Post subject:

A woman's magazine would mostly be advice stuff, right? Do you have to be qualified in any way to give advice, or do you research it? Can you just do that stuff off the cuff? Just curious.

Oz · Posted: Mon Jan 27, 2003 10:27 pm Post subject:

Mostly, it was just total guff. "My date with Russell Crowe..." so I guess I can add fiction to my list.

Slyder · Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2003 12:49 am Post subject:

I once was working on a novel, but the idea was too much of a rip-off of another movie that I decided to scrap the entire idea.

I have plenty of ideas for stories, the only problem is that I don't know how to translate them into writing.

I always wanted to adapt books like Lord Of The Flies, The Bean Trees, The Life Of Jesus plus other stories in the Bible and others I can't remember, but I just simply don't know where to start.
_________________
Slyder
-----------------------------------
I saw more movies at Sundance than Ben Lyons did!!!

You can tell me that I've got no class, look around you and see who's laughing last - Rush