Author Archives: McPhedran

Greenland by Sea

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The ice sheets roiled up, the glaciers and jagged mountains blinding in the distant midday sun, all of it intermittently obscured by the wild tossed seas as we descended the immense trough and then rode back up, the terrifying magnificence there again.

Icebergs in Disko Bay

I had come out to this vastness because I had failed at life. I was unable to moderate. Or so she said. It was immoderate of me to reply to a “friendly reminder” from work with a “go fuck yourself”, immoderate to have another when I had so far to drive, and most definitely immoderate to call her a bitch – worse actually – when she told me about her friend who had never thanked her for the thank-you card. “Never replied,” were the exact words, but there’s no point in going over that again.

Ice in a drink

I was adrift now, alone with my failures and losses, just as I had predicted too many times in my head. The rocks and ice were my only buddies now. I couldn’t even get a signal to watch the game..

Writing the Perfect Chase Script

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I began a script many years ago with the idea of having a chase sequence from very beginning to the end, the very first shot to the last, nothing but a chase.

Nicholas Winding Refn’s Pusher films and The Safdie Brothers Good Time took a shot at the chase script, as did Ilya Naishuller in Hardcore Henry.

Ilya Naishuller’s Hardcore Henry

But they all fell short of the concept, getting lost in an excess of violence and drugs, always killing and stoned out of their heads. That’s what the world has raced off to apparently.

Nicholas Winding Refn’s Pusher I

But that wasn’t my idea. I just wanted to explore the idea of waking up in a strange place and being chased from then on. Like life, someone always after you.

Me and Ray Croc: Persevering Until the End

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Nothing in this world can take the place of good old persistence. Talent won’t. Nothing’s more common than unsuccessful men with talent. So is John Lee Hancock’s biopic film of Ray Kroc, The Founder bookended.

Michael Keaton plays capitalistic monster, Ray Kroc

You will be surprised to hear, as am I, that I am inspired by Ray Kroc, the fictional one anyway. It’s all I’ve got to go on now.

I’ve been frustrated over these some forty years of fighting to get something published. From my opening book, The Sacred Whore – which actually received brief attention from an agent – through Manitou Island, Black Ice and The Buzz Trilogy to the many Davis films and The Cx Trilogy, I have carried on.

The Cx Trilogy might be finished in a year, maybe Fuck Pedagogy before that. Persevering pathetically, proudly on, that’s me, on the way to…oblivion?

The Super Hero: Obsessed With What We Are Not

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I hate Superhero films. Hate them.

Where to even begin? Do any of these folks poop?

That might be an exaggeration. More to the point, they are like fast food. They might look and taste good, but they’re empty calories. They make people fat and stupid. And so that’s why I don’t like them, super-hero films that is.

Boney and dead

It was fine when we were kids and read them and then ran around in capes in the backyard, but these are adults who have bought into this nonsense. Not just heroes to the rescue but sexy smart-alecky kids in skin-tight outfits who care more about their followers than society.

Ready to save the world

Super heroes are clearly not the basis for a belief system. It’s time to get out of this terrible fog and get back to a more genuine spirituality, such as following a hockey team that never wins the championship.  

Brian De Palma’s Claims of Originality Are As True As It Gets

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I’ve never been much of a fan of the work of Brian De Palma. From Carrie to The Untouchables, his films, punctuated with heavy-handed moments, just plod along. But more to the point, he is a relentless visual plagiarist.

Melanie Griffith amps up Hitchcock’s titilation

Body Double is a poorly rendered sensational take on Hitchcock’s Rear Window, Blow Out a dull reimaging of Antonioni’s Blow Up, and The Untouchables climactic scene a trite frame-by-frame reproduction of Eisenstein’s Odessa Steps.

Frame by tortuous frame

All of this is just fine. Each to his own. That is until I read a De Palma quote in Julie Salmon’s book The Devil’s Candy, a exhaustive blow-by-blow account of the disastrous production of Bonfire of the Vanities.

Tom Hanks in one of his few duds

“Take an idea that has to be told in visual images. That’s what I always tell my students. It can be Super 8. Take any cliche – somebody killing somebody. Pure action, but make it original.” Original was the word he used. Original. Whatever you want to say about De Palma, love him or not, the guy just isn’t that.

Copies of copies of copies of copies and it become original again!

Which made me realize the simplest of things, a truth that emanates around the world today: Truth is anything you want it to be. You think it, and that’s what it is. So, here’s to that.

Polarized Everywhere All At Once

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The polarization going on in our spinning society isn’t political so much as intellectual. The less educated revel in what they know while the vaguely educated are forever pretending cleverness. The radical devolution of film provides graphic examples.

While the Marvel Soap Operas are a harbinger of the end of us, the film snobs are not making anything better with their pronouncements. Sight & Sound, a touchstone for great filmmaking recently published its #1 Film of all time. It wasn’t The Godfather, Citizen Kane, not even Aguirre, Wrath of God, but instead: Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.

Delphine Seyrig plays Jeanne Dielman

And while Chantal Ackerman’s three-hour marathon is right up my alley of slow cinema, it most certainly is not the best film ever made. It is a test in patience, of understanding the irrelevance of anything, something like that, but there is no story, certainly not a story that takes three hours to tell.

Making dinner.

A series of static images of day-to-day life does deserve our attention, especially from a woman’s perspective, but this is storytelling is not for very many at all.

Making dinner. Again.

Granted that Best Films of All Time lists are a sophomoric thing, but I do wish the list-makers made more of an attempt at inclusion – not box office mojos or political issues – but films that we will watch and relate to as a connected society.

Sarasota Jungle Days: You Can(‘t) Go Back

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The memories of Sarasota Jungle Gardens are vivid in my head: a macaw on a little bike, another one on my arm, alligators basking, flamingos silhouetted against the bright water in the sun, marvelous things all around.

I don’t remember how I got there. I don’t remember any of the who’s and what’s. It was just the magic of being there.

And so I went back, many years later, and listened to the ponytailed guy’s well-worn bits about his cranky colorful birds, and watched the children watching him, wowed by the birds meows and cackles.

The show went for 15 minutes, me and the other kids getting restless before it was over, and I walked around the zoo, glancing at the snakes and owls and lemurs before getting back to my car. The magic was no more. I had to call my lawyer and start the lawsuit against them for using my image without permission.

Thoughts and Prayers: Fantasy Football Over All

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I once had great faith in the American system. I mean, they talked such a great game, from FDR through MLK to AOC. But in the end, I came to realize that rhetoric is no more than hot air. The rich get richer, the poor dumber and the country more fucked-up every day. And that’s how people want to keep it.

America is founded on a dishonest claim. Jefferson, a slave holder, wrote that “all men were created equal”. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. The same duplicity plays out today in a constant depressing spew, from gerrymandering and Super Pacs to a politicized Supreme Court and gun rights over lives, all of it designed to keep the status quo.

The recent collapse of NFL football player Damar Hamlin speaks to this issue. Pundits and journalists spoke only of their thoughts and prayers for Hamlin while the fans were honestly more focused on their personal stake in the game. Given America’s pretense of faith, they will take time to finally getting around to talking about what they care about, and Hamlin will just be a footnote to an odd year in fantasy football.

The Worst/Best Piece I Have Ever Written

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Having completed the 9th (or 11th?) draft of Anori, I have no clue what I have written. Some of it flowed just as I remembered. Others parts had to be reworked…to what effect I have no clue. Dee was consistent. I think. As was the tone. On the verge of death or already dead. Something like that. Anyway, I shouldn’t be blogging about this. I am a cotton-headed ninny muggins at present.

Instead I will offer this quote from Ken McGoogan’s book Dead Reckoning on the taste of polar bear cub meat: Apart from its tenderness, the cub’s meat had a particularly piquant taste, and we greatly regretted that the old bear had not had twins.

Writing Process: Editing Asshole

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All editors are assholes because they think they know better than everyone else. I’m editing Anori for the nth time, and I know that I am an asshole. More than usual anyway. (Meant as a joke? Needed? Find a better means.)

Editing is about honing the narrative, dumping the meaningless characters, trite dialogue and extraneous description. It’s about writing something that has truth to it. (Truth? As in? Clarity needed here.)

Editing also ruins the simple pleasure of enjoying a film. (Why simple? And why film? Have you mentioned this previously?) Before going to bed, I went through the channels and watched bits of Coppola’s The Godfather Part II and Kubrick’s Paths of Glory. I have seen both numerous times, but they now came off as dull, dominated by weak dialogue and predictable archetypes, nothing more than melodrama.

Michael Corleone in between saying melodramatic things

The 2005 version of King Kong was more engaging with its sentimental ape and girl in a nightgown. Even the reboot of Hawaii Five O, with its B actors and trite Chat GPT script, had more entertainment value. It wasn’t pretending to be something it wasn’t. (What? You’ve lost me here.)

Detectives Steve and Danny look for truth in Hawaii Five O

Less is more. That’s the mantra of the editor. Which would leads me to believe that none is the ultimate aim. And so why write at all? (Indeed. Consider deleting this post.)