Archive for October, 2005

October 27th, 2005 cos you know i have a soft spot for harold ramis

so everyone’s speculating like crazy over what the ‘untitled harold ramis/owen wilson project‘ is supposed to be, from seemingly stupid guesses like ghostbusters 3 and a team; to other snippets about a caveman or historical nature which were supposedly from ramis, but like the other predictions could turn out to be nothing anyway.

in a recent interview, ramis skirts around the issue of current dumb comedy after a criticism of the shortcomings of the frat pack, whilst plugging the owen wilson collaboration. smooth.

quoted from the article - interviewer in bold, ramis in italics.

With much of the new generation of comic filmmakers I get the impression they didn’t go to college, they aren’t well-read and they derive all their information and material from pop culture. It seems so facile and limited.

I’m developing a film for Owen Wilson right now. But I’m not trying to showcase him in another broad youth comedy. I want to show his fans something slightly revelatory.

How is what you were doing back then different than what the current crop is doing, which relies on gross-out material and the like?

I’ve used the word “lazy” to apply to these people. It’s how the Zucker brothers started; it’s how I started. People get stoned and sit around and watch TV and they see a commercial and say wouldn’t it be funny if we did that. If all you do is watch TV, you think that’s the world. There’s something that has become really uninteresting about cultural references. I’ve seen enough parody, I’ve done enough sketch comedy. I don’t need to see another parody of a talk show or sitcom. It’s formulaic and it’s easy. But it won’t go away because it’s like all of TV. You can keep reprocessing the same American cheese.

while not forgetting those words of wisdom, what i really want to know is, will the ice harvest be good or will it suck?

October 25th, 2005 s.e. hinton

The real secret to writing young adult fiction, according to Hinton, is the ability to connect emotionally with a character. As for the oft-quoted philosophy of “writing what you know,” well, that’s hogwash. “If you know what it’s like to be cold and can read up on Antarctica, you can do a book on Antarctica,” she said. “It’s the emotions.”

from here. maybe it’s the better way for fiction in general, since if you’re richard hell, all you write about is junkies and artists in new york. and besides, where does the (mostly disgusting) genre of fantasy come from? if i stuck to what i know, all i’d write about is chinese-australian girls who are at once pissed off at the world and overly sensitive, or mother-daughter relationships and the differences between being an immigrant and a first generation australian. but i will not. zzzzz

also, the special edition (aka ‘the complete novel’) of film adaptation of the outsiders is available…