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Dear Bret Easton Ellis and Paul Schrader, You’re Famous, WTF Are You Doing on Kickstarter

17 May

I do love that tagline: “It’s not the Hills…” Hahahaha!

At first I saw that Bret Easton Ellis and Paul Schrader were making a movie together and I was all, Yessssssssssssssssss.

Then I processed the fact that they’re doing a Kickstarter project to fund it. Something about “creative control BLAH BLAH BLAH, not relying on the industry or a studio WANK WANK WANK.”

GUYS. Kickstarter is for people who are not Bret Easton Ellis or Paul Schrader. Kickstarter is for us poor suckers who want to someday be Bret Easton Ellis or Paul Schrader.

“A kind of DIY mentality, shooting with friends, shooting on low-cost equipment, then it moves to setting up a website, going on Facebook, and the next step is you’re going on Let It Cast to start casting, next step is you’re all of a sudden going on Kickstarter to bring in an audience base….and it’s all part of a new way– I mean, I personally think that films, right now, are sort of where they were 100 years ago, they’re being reinvented right in front of our eyes.” — Paul Schrader

OH MY GOD. Paul Schrader, we have a DIY mentality and we shoot with friends and shoot on low-cost equipment because we have no other options. Because we don’t have access to studios, or expensive equipment. And we’re hoping and praying and selling our souls that one of our “friends” turns out to be the next Bret Easton Ellis, we are not actually working with Bret Easton Ellis. 

You made it! You don’t have to do this crap anymore! You’re being nostalgic for when you were young and broke and poor and no one knew your names. That is the worst kind of indulgent, narcissistic, amnesia-fueled midlife crisis there is. If you really want to do a Kickstarter project, you should all be required to eat nothing but cereal and Top Ramen for the duration of the project, and you should have to beg your parents to keep paying your cell phone bills and also ask if maybe you can use their garage for a shooting location if you promise, promise, promise to clean up?

Look, I get that with the advent of the Internet, making art has become a free-for-all. How can “real” comedians be expected to survive when any jackass with a Twitter can make jokes all day long now? How can “real” authors survive when anyone can self-publish? But as Richard Russo points out, in a Seattle Times interview about Amazon publishing, all this technology isn’t bad for people who have “name recognition. And for brand-new writers who are having a hard time breaking in, Amazon is good for writers like us who have name recognition. And for brand-new writers who are having a hard time breaking in, they provide an outlet. It’s the mid-list literary writer who gets squeezed out when the market contracts.” 

We can worry about the mid-list artists, yes. But Kickstarter is for those having a hard time breaking in. Special report to Paul Schrader and Bret Easton Ellis: you have name recognition.

Just look at what they’re promising to funders— For $5,000, “Bret Easton Ellis will read and review your novel and have that review appear on an international blog or website” (cue angry, drug-fueled white boys coming in their pants). For $5,001, “Have your script covered by Paul Schrader– Notes to be delivered in person (NY or LA) or skype” (cue film majors vomiting on their own feet). 

They’re ruining it for the rest of us. How do we stand a chance against that?!? Sure, I can offer to read your script and deliver notes in person, but unless that comes with a sexual favor, I don’t think you’re going to care.  

Bret Easton Ellis and Paul Schrader, you should be funding Kickstarter projects, not pitching them. I’m sorry if you don’t like being famous, but that’s just too bad. Maybe you can make an angsty commerical about it. Look, I get that you two aren’t Tom Cruise and Michael Bay, but you’re certainly not that college kid with a video camera and a skateboard for a tracking shot. You shouldn’t be trying to recreate your lost days of obscurity and despair that the world might not let you do what you loved. 

You should be in the process of giving back by giving some young unknowns a chance, the way somebody once gave you one. You’re siphoning our dream gasoline! Step away from the straw. It’s too skinny and there’s too little fuel for all of us to get a hit as it is.

I hope this is a hoax. Internet, would you do some research and get back to me? I’ve got to go burn all my hopes and dreams.

MM

Dear 50 Shades of Grey

27 Apr

Have you guys heard of this book 50 Shades of Grey? It’s a novel– a softcore BDSM novel. Apparently it’s remarkable because it was the #1 bestselling e-book on the NYT list and #3 on Amazon’s best-seller list in March.

This means that someone actually noticed that women buy and read a) romance novels and b) smut. Maybe it means that someone noticed that women have sex? I doubt it, though. That seems farfetched.

For whatever reason, this particular one has caught on and women aren’t “ashamed” to pass it on to their friends. As the Jezebel article says, “Another anonymous woman said that her friends were obsessed with the erotic novel, which was the first of its kind that they felt comfortable discussing openly. ‘Women just feel like it’s O.K. to read it,’ she said. ‘It’s taboo for women to admit that they watch pornography, but for some reason it’s O.K. to admit that they’re reading this book.’

I keep picturing moms in the grocery aisle opening their raincoats or reaching a hand between their torso and their front-carrying baby backpacks to pass the e-code to the book off. They slide by each other saying, “Oreo’s? Oh, no, honey, those aren’t good for you.” 

Look, this is what we’ve known since the kindle arrived: that electronic reading would make smut more widespread– or at least, more often read in public. 

But still, I’m unclear on why women who weren’t “passing” their smutty books around before this one suddenly feel compelled to share Shades of Grey. Do they feel like it’s “ok” for some reason in this case? Do they feel like it’s so good it would be selfish to keep it to themselves? Shades of Grey, despite what these women may think, is not the first of its kind.

Yes, women don’t often discuss their favored arousal media. It’s still pretty taboo. Is it because unlike porn, which we all assume men are watching, we don’t assume our BFF has a stash of smut? So trading favorites requires first a confession (and an unpredictable reaction) before getting down to brass tacks? But how often do men sit in the boardroom or watch their kids on the soccer field being like, “You catch Jessica Rubber’s latest stretch act in Cumby?”

WAIT! Before you leave due to the awfulness of my made-up porn pun:

1. Did I mention IT DOESN’T SOUND SEXY? Or like a healthy expression of sexuality?

The smut in this novel– which is supposed to be an exploration of BDSM, remember– doesn’t even sound that risque. One of the women who writes at Forever Young Adult (who, yes, spends her time reading and reviewing young adult literature, so it should’ve been pretty easy to push her literary sex boundaries, since one can imagine she mostly reads awkward make-out scenes) says, “Y’all. Y’ALL. Look, I knew this book was not going to be good, OBVIOUSLY, but I thought AT LEAST the sex scenes would be good! Or at least so shocking that I was a little bit prudishly appalled by them. BUT NO…Ugh, I actually turned to my boyfriend this weekend (why was I reading this while with my boyfriend? I don’t know) and told him that the sex in this book was turning me off sex entirely. (His response?  ’Let’s find you something else to read.’)”

And obviously all of the sex takes place in a monogamous, heterosexual, committed relationship that is based on love. That is the only way women like their sex. 

Did I mention that she’s a virgin when they meet? She hesitates to commit to his demands because, while she loves him, she doesn’t know if this is what she wants/likes. He makes her agree before she ever has sex for the first time. Healthy! 

2. Did I mention that IT’S FAN FICTION?

Christian and Anastasia are based on….drumroll….

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Dear Facebook Timeline

23 Apr

We all hate it. We all hate change every time it happens on FB, yes, and then like lemmings we throw ourselves off the cliff and continue to overshare online. Really, FB’s tagline is “TMI.”

So why? Why do we hate timeline? Why do some of us (guilty) hate it so much that we continue to hold out, hoping against hope that Zuckerberg will just never notice us lurking in the corners?

We carefully avoid that stupid little button that says “Get Timeline Now” like a hyperactive kindergarten teacher shilling naptime. You know it’s not really for your own good. Even as kid you were all, “Yeah, and what’re you going to do while I sleep?” Now that we have friends who are teachers we know: check Facebook. (How’s that for a transition?)

1. It’s stupid hard to find things on people’s profiles, even stuff you saw just a minute ago and you know definitely is there.

It’s even harder on Timeline than it used to be. Speaking of, why doesn’t FB have a better topical search button yet? It’s called “google search” and my understanding is that it’s basically HPV: already there, just waiting to be found.

2. You have to be a graphic designer to use it and what if I’m not, Facebook, GTFO.

Seriously. Timeline requires some sort of aesthetic/graphic aptitude: your cover photo and profile picture have to complement each other. Have you seen someone’s profile where they don’t? It’s ugly as sin. AND WHAT IF I DON’T HAVE GRAPHIC APTITUDE, FACEBOOK. YOUR MOM HAS IT.

I already have to make graphic design decisions concerning this blog and god, shoot me now. you’ll notice it hasn’t changed in two years, and didn’t change in the 2 years before that. And every time I do post a photo I realize– oh wait this has to look not-barfy against that yellow banner. Do any of you want to come draw sketches for me?

3. Have you even looked in the mirror lately, Facebook? That isn’t body dysmorphia disorder. You’re weird now.

Timeline does not look good with FB’s surrounding layout– the way that little bar at the top scrolls down with it? The settings buttons at the top which keeps the cover photo from truly being a banner, which is how we’re accustomed to seeing it work on blogs? It’s like a truly terrible tumblr theme.

It only took me seventeen tries to get a decent cover photo / profile pic combo! You?

The huge gaps in the profiles of people who almost never use FB look awful– thus forcing you into an “all or nothing” sort of use. That is, if you want your own wall to look palatable. You know how you know it’s a bad design, though? Even if people do post photos all the time, if the pictures aren’t through the same filter, or taken with similar lighting, they look strange lined up next to and against each other. Our eyes can’t reconcile them. There’s a reason movies don’t generally film every other shot with different tints to them. Film editors are paid billions of dollars to fix such discrepancies.

All those “buttons” under the cover photo (“friends, maps, etc.”)? First of all, you have to use those functions for it to be visually appealing, which most of us don’t. See that blue box with “158″ and the thumbs up in the picture above? It looks dumb. It needs an image. Second of all, the colors of them also should be in the same color family. (Right? “Color family” is a thing? See above lack of visual design ability.) But you have no control over what those buttons display.

4. What it leads to: the apocalypse and paid Facebook wall designers.

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Dear Confessions from a Girl who is Moving in a Month

20 Apr

I’ve stopped doing laundry. I haven’t vacuumed in a month. 

Should I even bother to replace the olive oil? What size should I get? How many ounces of olive oil do you use in a month?

I have the strangest impulse to keep buying books. This is my last month of graduate school! I should leave here with a complete library of every book I’ve ever loved and ever meant to buy, every book on my reading list. I should read all of the books I own that I have not read before I am allowed to leave. 

The stacks of paper in my apartment are taking over. I live in a studio. When there are stacks of paper and books on every flat surface, there is nowhere to sit, no other room to go to. I’m surrounded, essentially, by failed drafts. 

On the other hand (there is always at least one other hand, if not more)…

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Dear Tumblr

17 Apr

Dear Tumblr,

I know you’re winning, but suck it! You basically hate words and you have a terrible search function!

…So I’ll see you in a few months to a year, when I finally adapt and come around, ok? I’ll bring prosecco? No? you guys only drink local microwbrews over there? Sigh. What if I wear overalls with iron-on patches that I crotcheted myself? 

…Best practical joke ever, right guys?

(From the never-ending brilliance over at xkcd.)

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