Issue 191

News: My Newest Play will be Performed.
A few years ago, I wrote a short story, entitled "Trust Me" that was based on Chaucer's "Pardoner's Tale." The plot of the story was that three policemen are on the trail of a serial killer who calls himself "The Lord High Executioner." They question a homeless guy, and he directs them to go to a bridge. When they get there, they find a suitcase full of brand-new $20 bills. The most senior officer takes some of the money and drives off with it. Meanwhile, he and the two officers set up plans to kill each other: The senior officer spikes two wine bottles with arsenic for them, and the other two decide to shoot him. Both plans succeed, and it turns out that the homeless guy was behind it all along. A few years later, I decided to try and work out some of my writers' block by adapting that story into a one-act play for my college's PlayOn festival. I changed some parts of the original story, mostly filling up some holes I found I had put into the story (like how the elder cop managed to figure out how to get back to town after stranding his inferiors), changing the place names to actual Nebraskan city names (I had originally set the story in the town of "Fidgit." For the record, there are two truly difficult parts of writing: 1) Actually bringing yourself to get started [This is why I have come to only update this blog twice a month], and 2) Naming characters and possibly places), and adding a minor subplot relating to racism against Latinos, with regards to Officer Alvarez, a police recruit just out of the academy, and the most sane officer of the three. And, finally, it turned out that the play was actually chosen to be performed at Oakton's Third Annual PlayOn festival. In the first festival, I had written an adaptation of the Confessional scene from The Seventh Seal, that I hoped would be part of a larger adaptation of the film, updated to 1918 and the Spanish Flu Pandemic. However, the next year, I submitted two plays, and I thought that both of them were problematic; The first one was a monologue that was too difficult to perform, as the climax hinged upon the mononoguist being able to sing (Lip-synching is not an option, as it is supposed to be sung along with another recording) "Largo al Factotum" from Rossini's Barber of Seville (an aria notably difficult to sing) while miming raping an invisible woman, even going so far as to orgasm while singing the last "Della Citta." The second one was an attempt to try and adapt another short story that I didn't think would translate well on the stage, and I think I was right. Fortunately, this one worked out well. The only thing I think would be logistically problematic is how we would be able to create the police car on the relatively small stage of the Black Box theatre it would be set in. Unfortunately, I would not be able to see it, as during the time the play was playing, I would be in Wisconsin.

Quote of the Day: "The task of filling up the blanks I'd rather leave to you.
But it really doesn't matter whom you put upon the list,
For they'd none of 'em be missed — they'd none of 'em be missed!"
____________Ko-Ko, The Mikado, a Gilbert and Sullivan lyric quoted in the end of the play.

Issue 190

News/Review: Phantom Tollbooth: Book v. Movie.
A few weeks ago a big blizzard struck, as any midwesterners reading it would know. (What much is there to say about the blizzard itself? There was a massive amount of snow and I had to shovel it.) Just before the blizzard struck, I managed to get a book both in dead tree and audio editions, after discovering that Thirty H's apparently included an allusion to it an episode with a .58 child in Chapter 6. and most of the time I spent shoveling it, I had spent listening to the audiobook version. That book was Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth. Quite honestly, I think it's one of the best kids' books I've ever read, and my only regret is that I hadn't read it as a kid myself, and after listening to the interview with Norton Juster on the audiobook, I regret not having read it as a teenager, either, since, according to him, many people have written to him talking to him about how they read the book as children, teenagers, and as adults, and that it seemed like a different book each time. As it turns out, there will apparently be a new hardcover edition for its fiftieth anniversary in November (something I'd like come December), and I find it very likely that when I write my "Best Books of the Many I read in 2011" list next year, I am almost certain that it will be in the top five at least. And so, in honor of this, I must inform you that there is actually a film adaptation from the early seventies directed by Chuck Jones, which recently received its first DVD release through Warner Archives. But unlike some other films which took a ridiculously long time to come to DVD (like Wise Blood or The African Queen), there is a very good reason that it took this long: Simply put, it's bad. It's not a faithful adaptation at all. Needless to say, I've written two previous posts about film adaptations of books that changed some things significantly from their source material, but unlike Watchmen, where Zack Snyder did what he could to keep the film at a manageable length, and the 1959 version of the Brothers Karamazov, which attempted to reduce an 800-page novel into a 2 1/2 hour film by stripping away almost every subplot not directly related to the murder of Fyodor at the expense of many major characters. This film, directed by no less an animation god than Chuck Jones of Looney Tunes fame, has no excuse. The film's character designs are pretty good, even if they do deviate significantly from Jules Feiffer's illustrations (at this point, my main qualm about this aspect of the film is the fact that Tock the Watchdog's watch seems to be tucked into some sort of pouch on its body, and apparently downplaying the fact that he is supposed to be a "Watch Dog" with a real watch on his body. The fact that his voice actor is pretty bland doesn't help matters.) The film's major problem is with its pacing. It seems to be good in the opening scenes (where Milo manages to say the opening paragraphs of the book to a friend over the phone, thus finding a pretty good vehicle for putting the exposition in without the use of a narrator. However, after the scene in the Doldrums, the film begins to dramatically change from the book. Namely, in the book, after leaving the Doldrums, Milo and Tock head straight on to Dictionopolis, and then, after learning of the story of how the princesses Rhyme and Reason were cast out, decide to quest for them (with The Humbug, another character from Dictionopolis who lost much of his distinctive character in the film, drafted into joining by King Azaz the Unabridged), with several episodes following on the way. On the other hand, the film features Milo and Tock managing to encounter many of the people they found in the book long before they managed to get to Dictionopolis (on the one hand, there's nothing that wasn't in the book, but on the other hand, there was no 0.58 child anywhere in the mix). Needless to say, by the time the film finally gets around to giving the film its backstory about two-thirds of the way into the film (That's right. Important backstory that is supposed to set up the main plot of the book doesn't even get introduced into the film itself for about sixty minutes into the film's ninety-minute running time) there isn't much left for Milo, Tock, and the Humbug to do. It's like making a remake of Rain Man where most of the antics Charlie and Raymond get into happen in Cincinatti before they finally go to L.A. Yes; It would have been as poor a film as the real version is a poor depiction of autism. One more problem I have with the film is the treatment of the ending; in the book, as Milo drives away after reuniting the Mathemagician and King Azaz the Unabridged, they both remind him to remember the importance of words and numbers. This restarts the argument the two had been having about which one is more important that led to the imprisonment of Rhyme and Reason. With the disappearance of the Tollbooth from Milo's room, and the note that came with it, it implied heavily that the book's plot would happen again with some other bored child in Milo's place. In my opinion, this was a pretty effective twist ending. However, the film does not give any such implication. It's just a more simple "happily ever after" ending. Granted, the tollbooth still vanishes, and it even goes to the kid Milo was talking to on the phone. Unfortunately, by leaving out that little scene, Chuck Jones has managed to strip the scene of some crucial context making it poorer than the book's version. Simply put, if Chuck Jones had decided to keep the Book's structure, and maybe bite the bullet and add a few more scenes to make it longer than 90 minutes, it would have been a better film. However, he didn't, and I had enough material to rant about for quite a while.

Tract Review: There's two new tracts on Jack Chick's website, but they're both new versions of old tracts. One is a new version of "This Was Your Life," entitled "You Have a Date." The main differences are that the protagonist is now female, and instead of telling dirty jokes, has apparently had a lesbian experience as a teen. In addition, Jack seems to have realised that claiming whispering is a sin (as he did in previous versions of this tract) is idiotic. The other new tract was a new version of "The Attack" changed with a plug for a new book which no doubt regurgitates many of these arguments.