Archive for Film and Media

| July 2, 2020
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Screenplays-a-Go-Go

Latest update: February 24, 2023

Here is a list of scripts I currently have in circulation. Don’t let the date at the top of this post fool you–I’m updating it regularly. I’m including the scripts’ loglines (one or two sentences that push the characters and conflict) and what, if any, honors they’ve garnered so far. If you are a producer, manager, or other industry professional interested in materials related to any of these scripts, please contact me at landrew42@gmail.com.

FEATURE SCRIPTS

  • Agave Agape (horror, sci-fi)
    • When a young gay man rents an apartment in a house where an eccentric scientist lives with her daughter, who has an odd relationship with the poison plants in their garden, he must resist taking part in their murderous designs or lose control of his life completely.
    • A loose adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic 1844 short story “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” now set in contemporary Los Angeles
    • Quarter-finalist, TSL Free Screenplay Contest, 2022; quarter-finalist, Filmmatic Horror Screenplay Awards, 2022; quarter-finalist, ScreenCraft Horror Screenplay Competition, 2022; semi-finalist, Other Worlds FF / Under Worlds FF, 2021
  • Birthday Beta (sci-fi, drama)
    • On the night before a cyborg’s birthday, when he expects to become the first “human” artificial lifeform, different members of his family return from the future with tales of disasters that follow from both accepting and not accepting the upgrade, throwing his choice—and the idea of choice—into doubt.
    • With a single location, a limited cast, and relatively few FX, this script is designed to accommodate a low- or ultra-low-budget production.
    • Selection, Miami International Science Fiction FF, 2022; selection, Bloodstained Indie FF, 2021
  • Boy in the Lake (teen horror)
    • An imaginative black teenage girl encounters a beautiful, supernatural, white young man who lives in a lake, but as she pursues him, she unwinds a history of occult activity tied to the lake and to the multiplying copies of the young man wreaking havoc all around her.
    • Semi-finalist, Hollywood Dreams IFF, 2021; quarter-finalist, Page Turner Screenplay Competition, 2021
  • Calling Cards (drama, thriller)
    • A lonely ex-professor receives a visit from a charming former student who performs a magic card trick that shows different ways, delightful and disastrous, that the evening could reshape their lives.
    • Finalist, The Great American Script Contest, 2021; selection, SoCal Film Awards, 2021; Best Feature, Psychological Thriller, Silver State FF, 2020; quarter-finalist, Screenwriters’ Network Screenplay Competition, 2020
  • Come Alive (comedy, adventure, sci-fi, LGBTQ)
    • A middle-aged gay couple’s attempt to rekindle their relationship turns into an absurd, hormone-fueled quest to defeat alien invaders and save a new LGBTQ society.
    • Hear professional actors read the first act or check out an interview with me that has some background about Come Alive, both thanks to the LGBT Toronto Film Festival!
    • Finalist, South Carolina Underground Film Festival; semi-finalist, RAINBOW Cinema Awards, 2020; selection, AOF Megafest, 2020; winner, live reading, FEEDBACK LGBT Toronto FF, 2020
  • Crash Café (thriller)
    • When a deranged but calculating man takes the customers in a café hostage by poisoning them and withholding the antidote, a strong-willed woman must lead the other hostages through a series of mind games so they can make it out alive.
    • With only one location–a single-room café–this script offers all the tension of a more demanding production without the demanding budget.
    • 2nd Place, Fade In Awards Thriller Competition, 2020; selection, Hollywood Dreams IFF, 2020
  • Crazy Time (horror, dark urban fantasy)
    • A traumatized woman’s belief that she suffers from a Biblical curse launches a quest in which she follows psychics, Satanists, preachers, and corporate executives toward an apocalyptic showdown with God.
    • Finalist, FilmQuest, 2020; selection, Shockfest FF, 2020; semi-finalist, Zed Fest FF & Screenplay Competition
  • The Dark Tetrad (horror, psychological thriller)
    • A gay man whose life is already in shambles attracts the interest of a young female serial killer who murders people around him, focusing suspicion on him while forcing a reckoning with his dark impulses.
    • Best Thriller/Horror Script, Hollywood Dreams IFF, 2021; finalist, Boston Screenplay Awards, 2021; quarter-finalist, Miami Screenplay Awards, 2021; selection, Marina del Rey FF, 2021
  • End of the Book (teen horror)
    • After unleashing monsters from cursed books, six teenagers must fight to survive a night locked in the shifting aisles of a labyrinthine haunted library.
    • Best YA Horror Feature Screenplay, Golden State FF, 2021; finalist, Best Feature Screenplay, The Thing in the Basement Horror Fest, 2020; semi-finalist, Los Angeles Crime and Horror FF, 2020
  • Familiar (horror)
    • When a black woman’s nephew is murdered by police, she uses an enchanted necklace that links her to a monstrous “familiar” who grants her wish for vengeance but creates an escalating cycle of violence.
    • Selection, LA International Horror FF, 2021; semi-finalist, Los Angeles Crime and Horror FF, 2021; quarter-finalist, Chicago Screenplay Awards, 2021
  • From the Walls (horror)
    • When a new arrival at a mental institution joins other patients in tracking down what they believe is a conspiracy involving the hospital staff, a mysterious basement, and shared hallucinations, she becomes part of mind-shattering and deadly events that could consume her.
    • Selection, Moody Crab FF, 2022; selection, Lit Scares International Horror Festival, 2021; selection, Shockfest FF, 2021
  • Grandma Sipinnit’s Wonderful Wine (comedy, family)
    • When the suburban Mallard family stops for directions at the isolated country estate of the Sipinnit family, they join a celebration of the estate’s “peculiarities,” which include a talking cow and dancing corn, and risk becoming trapped as a permanent part of the estate’s population.
    • Selection, Boston Independent Film Awards, 2022; finalist, Austin Comedy FF, 2023
  • Idolatry (horror)
    • When a naïve college student becomes fixated on the leader of a notorious literary magazine, he risks getting lost in a world of decadent brutality and stylized murder.
    • Best Horror Feature Screenplay, Austin After Dark FF, Spring 2021; semi-finalist, Hollywood Dreams IFF, 2021; selection, LA International Horror FF, 2021; Honorable Mention, WriteMovies Fall 2020 Screenwriting Contest
  • Interview with an Alien (sci-fi, dramedy)
    • A woman who shares her body with a collective of microscopic aliens tells a life story intricately woven into sixty years of history, explaining why she will or won’t turn her back on Earth.
    • Runner-Up, Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy Script, Action on Film Megafest, 2021; Best Alien-Encounter Feature Screenplay, Miami International Science Fiction FF, 2021
  • Leanne’s Man (comedy)
    • As two nervous gay dads see their bright daughter through a series of dates from high school to college and beyond, they must balance their absurd overprotectiveness with recognition of her growing independence.
    • Semi-finalist, Filmmatic Comedy Screenplay Awards, 2021; quarter-finalist, ScreenCraft Comedy Competition, 2021; semi-finalist, 25th Annual Fade In Awards Comedy Competition, 2021; Gold Award, LGBTQ Unbordered IFF, 2021; selection, Action on Film Megafest, 2021.
  • The Masses (horror)
    • As the people of a small town succumb to infectious tumors that change their behavior, a strong-minded woman tries to save her children from the fascist nightmare that her husband and other townsfolk are creating.
    • Selection, Underground Indie FF, 2021; selection, Shockfest Horror Library, 2020; Honorable Mention, Hollywood Horrorfest, 2020; selection, Austin After Dark FF, 2020; Honorable Mention, The International Horror Hotel, 2020; selection, Shockfest FF, 2020
  • Miasma (horror)
    • As foul fumes fill their house, a couple in a strained marriage must fight through sickness, hallucinations, and violent impulses to save their children and escape.
    • Set in one location, a house, with only five characters, this script offers low-budget horror with high-octane thrills.
    • Finalist, Best Horror Feature Screenplay, Austin After Dark FF, spring 2021; semi-finalist, Filmmatic Horror Screenplay Awards, 2021; nominee, Best Feature Script, Independent Horror Movie Awards, 2020; selection, AOF Megafest, 2020
  • The Middle Reaches (horror/dark fantasy)
    • When five friends reunite to seek the truth about the otherworldly place where their high school friend disappeared more than a decade earlier, they journey into a dark realm of sex, violence, and creatures hungry to keep them forever.
    • Best Horror Script, Hollywood Horrorfest, 2021; semi-finalist, Stage 32 5th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Screenwriting Contest, 2021; Honorable Mention, The Santa Barbara International Screenplay Awards, 2021; Best Feature Script, Bloodstained Indie FF, 2021
  • The Neighbors (thriller/horror)
    • When an insurrection led by white nationalists affects the entire United States, an interracial couple in the suburbs must fight off deadly attacks from their neighbors.
    • Selection, Shockfest Film Festival, 2021; selection, New York City International Screenplay Awards, 2021; nominee, Best Thriller/Horror Script, Action on Film Megafest, 2021; selection, Hollywood Horrorfest, 2021
  • The Phantom Cuckoo (drama)
    • Diverse members of an extended family attempt to adjust to changes in where and how they live while personal and political differences threaten to tear them apart.
    • Set in one location with an ensemble cast, this script does away with other budgetary concerns to focus on performances.
    • Selection, Filmmatic Drama Screenplay Awards, 2020
  • Planet Bliss (sci-fi, drama)
    • After they discover the ancient ruins of an alien colony near the human settlement on Planet Bliss, three environmental engineers follow a signal only they can see to an encounter that alters their perceptions and reshapes humanity’s future.
  • Sam the Rhino (mystery, thriller, noir, LGBTQ)
    • A trans private eye’s search for his missing mother leads him into a web of intrigue with a wealthy family who may kill each other—and him—before they can help him find his mom.
    • Best Overall Screenplay and 1st Place, Suspense-Thriller, Indie Gathering International Film Festival, 2020/2021; Silver Award Winner, LGBTQ Unbordered International FF; Gold Award Winner, L.A. Neo-Noir Novel, Film, and Script Festival, 2020; semi-finalist, RAINBOW Cinema Awards, 2020; semi-finalist, Action-Adventure, Creative World Awards, 2020; semi-finalist, New York City International Screenplay Awards, 2020; quarter-finalist, Los Angeles International Screenplay Awards Diversity Initiative, 2022
  • The Teenage Tasting Collective (drama)
    • When the soul of their group disappears, five teenage friends embark on a “summer of dissipation,” trying to stay together while grief is tearing them apart.
    • Semi-finalist, Stage 32 Feature Drama Screenwriting Contest, 2022; quarter-finalist, Creative Screenwriting Unique Voices Screenplay Competition, 2022; quarter-finalist, SF Indie Fest Screenplay Competition, 2022; selection, London Film Awards, 2022; selection, International Diversity FF, 2022; quarter-finalist, The Great American Script Contest, 2021; selection, The Thinking Hat Fiction Challenge, 2021
  • Their Father’s World (horror)
    • After they naively try to resurrect their father by opening a door between worlds, three long-sequestered sisters face supernatural and psychological attacks based on their family history while trying to escape their haunted house.
    • Visit this script’s custom website, which links to where you can buy the script on Amazon or view the script’s nifty trailer, also on YouTube.
    • Finalist, Best Horror Feature Screenplay, Oregon Scream Week Horror FF, 2021; selection, Screamwriting Festival, 2021; Finalist, 13Horror.com Film & Screenplay Contest, 2020; semi-finalist, Stage 32 7th Annual Search for New Blood Screenwriting Contest; semi-finalist, Lit Scares International Horror Festival 2020
  • Trouble at Home (drama)
    • When troubled siblings return to their childhood home to visit their mother, they confront her about a lifetime of abuse, but when she becomes violent, they tie her to the bed, pushing acrimony to life-threatening extremes.
    • Best Screenplay, Conquering Disabilities with Film IFF, 2021; semi-finalist, New York International Screenplay Awards, 2021; quarter-finalist, Filmmatic Drama Screenplay Awards, 2021

  • Undying (horror)
    • A white supremacist terrorizes a neighborhood. No matter how hard a diverse group of would-be vigilantes tries to stop him, the murderous bigot refuses to die.
    • Selection, Hollywood Dreams IFF, 2020; finalist, WriteMovies Horror Award 2019; finalist, 13HORROR.COM Film & Screenplay Contest, 2019; finalist, Big Apple FF, 2019
  • Unreal Anthony (drama)
    • A young man with a mental illness follows advice about trying to connect with new people, but his mind puts up barriers, ranging from the comic to the disastrous, that keep pushing connections out of reach.
    • Selection, AOF Megafest, 2018; 2nd Place, Drama, Indie Gathering International Film Festival, 2018
  • Why She Did It (psychological horror/thriller)
    • After their daughter’s apparent suicide, a divorced couple searches her apartment for hints about her motives, only to find clues that implicate one another as well as more sinister forces that might be closing in on them.
    • With few characters, locations, and VFX, this script is designed for an ultra-low budget.
    • Best Horror Feature Screenplay, Silver State FF, 2022; Best Unproduced Script, Miami Indie Film Awards, 2022; finalist, Best Screenplay, Oregon Screams Horror FF, 2022; selection, Shockfest FF, 2022.
  • Wonder Drugs (drama, contemporary fantasy)
    • A woman with a mental illness tries new drug therapies and goes on a hallucinatory journey—through a giant garden, a mall in the clouds, a live volcano, and more—in search of a whole, stable sense of self.
    • Best Feature (Written Word) and Overcomer Award, Conquering Disabilities with Film IFF, 2020; selection, Hollywood Screenings FF, 2020; semi-finalist, Los Angeles CineFest, 2020; selection, Marina Del Rey FF, 2019; selection, Chicago Screenplay Awards, 2019
    • For a three-minute reading of a scene, compliments of the AOF Megafest, click here.
  • Wound Watchers (horror, psychological)
    • A young woman with PTSD joins an experimental group led by a doctor with a technique that allows him to enter patients’ traumatic memories. When a dark presence follows the doctor into the group’s minds, she and the others must fight to survive their own magnified traumas as well as the invader’s appetites.
    • Semi-finalist, Filmmatic Horror Screenplay Awards, 2023

Some of my short scripts have also gotten some love on the festival/competition circuit, so I’ll mention them:

SHORT SCRIPTS

  • Charlie’s Mother (extreme horror)
    • A sadistic kidnapper teaches a self-involved young man a grotesque lesson in family values.
    • 3rd Place, Outré, Hollywood Horrorfest, 2019; selection, Shockfest FF, 2020
    • Based on a story from my collection Leaping at Thorns
  • Complicity (supernatural / surreal horror)
    • When a man starts accepting mysterious payments through the mail, he also starts sleepwalking–and people in his neighborhood start losing their eyes, ears, and tongues.
    • Semi-finalist, ScreenCraft Shorts Competition, 2019
    • Based on a story from my collection Leaping at Thorns
  • Hidden Subjects (thriller)
    • When a middle-class couple has dinner with a colleague fired for sexual harassment, double entendres thinly veil a darker secret.
    • Semi-finalist, Filmmatic Short Screenplay Awards, 2020
  • Selfie Stick (psychological horror)
    • A disillusioned millennial records and uploads intimate videos of himself, charting a decline into madness and murder.
    • Finalist, 13HORROR.COM Film & Screenplay Contest, 2019
  • Silence (supernatural / surreal horror)
    • After an insecure woman visits an unusual house, the people in her life gradually disappear.
    • Finalist/Nominee, Best Writing, Close Up: San Francisco Short Film Festival 2021; Semi-finalist, Your Script Produced! Studios: Season 2, 2021; 2nd Place, Supernatural Short Script, Hollywood Horrorfest, 2020; finalist, Hollywood Just4Shorts Film and Screenplay Competition, 2019
    • Based on a story from my collection Leaping at Thorns
  • Tapestry (supernatural / surreal horror)
    • Knowing her turn will come soon, an ambitious young woman watches her co-workers succumb one at a time to a malady she suspects is connected to the tapestry in her boss’s office.
    • Finalist, Hollywood Just4Shorts Film and Screenplay Competition, 2019
    • Based on a story from my collection Leaping at Thorns
Category: cooper's fiction, Film and Media | Tags: , , , ,
| November 28, 2018
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Suspiria 2018: New Blood in Nightmares of Power

Dario Argento has said in several interviews, including the one I had with him, that he saw no need for a remake of Suspiria (1977) and was generally opposed to the idea. I’m generally in favor of remakes of films I like, but I took Argento’s point. Remakes can’t harm their sources, and they might do impressive things with already-proven concepts—however, I assumed that a remake of Suspiria would suck. Argento’s Suspiria doesn’t offer much in terms of story or character to work with; in its greatest moments, it is almost pure style. In remaking such a film I saw a strong temptation to imitate, but I saw little room for productive play. In other words, I didn’t see where a remake could go, so I expected it wouldn’t go very far or accomplish very much.

I am happy to say I was wrong about Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria (2018), which manages excellence by straying far from its namesake in some respects while staying tethered at key points. The look, sound, and pacing demonstrate the relationship succinctly. In place of Argento’s shocking palette of primary colors and assaultive sounds by the prog-rock band Goblin, the new Suspiria offers hypnotically drab greys and browns and the lulling experimental tones of Thom Yorke. The two approaches are almost inversions of one another, but they both result in dream-like atmospheres, in nightmarish worlds where witches seem likely to lurk.

 

Attached to Argento’s assaultive aesthetic is a tendency to pile one bizarre or violent set-piece onto another, leaving little room (or need) for character and story and allowing the film to come in at a tight 98 minutes. Guadagnino’s more meditative approach is almost an hour longer, 152 minutes, and it uses that time to provide what the earlier film denies. The new film uses the older film’s characters’ names and gives many of them the same or similar roles in a famous Dance Academy, but for a setting it trades in Freiburg and the fairy-tale-archetype-filled Black Forest for 1977 Berlin, which has a hard and specific reality underscored by news reports about terrorism and many lingering shots of the Wall. In their new setting, characters start over, developing backstories and nuanced emotional relationships that their more archetypal counterparts wouldn’t recognize. Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson) is still an American newcomer to the Academy, but now she’s an untrained former Mennonite from Ohio who has issues with her mother that inform several dimensions of the film. Her backstory is perhaps especially important to her relationship with Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton), still the functional leader of the Academy and now a dark maternal figure for Susie. No longer campy and two-dimensional, Madame Blanc is prominent in the post-World-War-II dance world, having given the definitive performance of Volk (“people,” a politically suggestive title if there ever was one) in 1948. She treats Susie at times as a daughter and at times an apprentice, grooming her to take the role she once defined on stage and preparing her for a different role in a witches’ conspiracy.

Tilda Swinton as Madame Blanc

 

What the witches—the teachers who run the Academy— are conspiring about is exceptionally vague in Argento’s film. Argento keeps their meetings offscreen (we overhear bits), but Guadagnino shows the coven in session, casting votes and revealing divisions as they choose either Madame Blanc or Helena Markos (also Tilda Swinton), the unquestioned head in Argento’s version, to go on as leader. Guadagnino’s witches are searching for a young woman to play a part in a ritual that somehow sustains the coven, which in turn sustains the women within it (the coven has protected the women through World War II and other catastrophes). The exact nature of the ritual is mysterious at first, but it does become clear. If, as several critics have argued, the earlier film’s coven provides a murky view of authoritarian power and violence, the new film imagines such power wielded by and for women who have specific goals—but their power is unstable. Resolving this instability becomes a major motivator for the plot and allows for multiple conflicts to unwind at the conclusion, providing an ending far grander in scope than the earlier film’s.

 

A central question for any viewer coming from the graphic violence of the 1977 Suspiria is likely, How does the witches’ power look on screen? The infamous opening sequence of Argento’s film, which culminates in the gruesome deaths of two young women in glorious Technicolor, is gone, but the 2018 Suspiria is anything but tame in its depictions of violence. Whereas Argento relies on camera movements and editing to suggest magic, Guadagnino exploits his source material—dance—and makes physical movement the stuff of spellcasting. Thus in one of the film’s most memorable and cringe-inducing sequences, Susie tries dancing the role Madame Blanc defined in Volk, and, as she channels the witches’ will, each of her jerky motions results in violent bends and breaks in another young woman’s body.

Dance works dark magic

At other moments, touching and hand motions pull off magical feats—bones shatter, arteries explode. While not as vibrant or elaborate, the violence of the 2018 film is just as extreme, and it’s located at the heart of the women’s profession, linking their physical power to their supernatural power. In this version, then, witches’ power—and perhaps women’s power—is deeply embodied, and their politics are literally and figuratively a dance that can break bodies apart. The breaking of bodies recurs in the setting, a broken Berlin, and makes resolving instability in the coven (and the larger political world) more urgent. The film’s trajectory drives toward a unity and stability whose cost is purification through violence, a heavy imprint of the fascism that the coven’s exercise of power ultimately reflects.

The dance troupe–a vision of unity through violence?

 

If the power the witches wield is ultimately fascistic, it is a sublime alternative to the power on offer by the patriarchy. Men get little representation in the 2018 Suspiria. Two police detectives stop by the Academy to investigate and get completely brain-wiped by the witches (who stop to fiddle with one of their absurd-looking penises just for kicks)—these men are a joke. The important male character is Dr. Klemperer (also played by Tilda Swinton), a psychoanalyst who makes the mistake of dismissing Patricia (Chloe Grace Moretz), a student who flees the Academy and its witches at the beginning of the film, as delusional. Years earlier, he also dismissed concerns about Nazis pressed by his lover Anke (Jessica Harper, who plays Susie in Argento’s film), which caused him to lose her. He sets off on parallel investigations, searching for Patricia and Anke, and as a result he gets caught up in the witches’ conspiracy, taking on a role that demonstrates the relative weakness of psychoanalysis and male judgment before the power of the women who lure him into their rites. Suspiria (1977) and Suspiria (2018) are nightmares about witches, and thus they are nightmares about powerful women. The more recent film uses Dr. Klemperer to show how utterly a man might be diminished by the consolidation of a nightmarish form of female power, diminished not just in the present but in the revelation of a lifetime of impotence.

Tilda Swinton as Doctor Klemperer

 

On the surface, Guadagnino’s Suspiria looks and sounds almost unrelated to Argento’s, and a viewer looking for a repeat of Argento’s masterful sensual assault will leave the new film disappointed. What I found in the 2018 version is a film invested in the earlier version’s DNA—nightmarish reflections on power—combined with characters and storylines well-worth following. In addition to not wanting a remake of Suspiria, Argento has expressed dissatisfaction with contemporary horror. I don’t know if he has seen Suspiria 2018 or gone on record about it, but I think if it were a film of a different name, he might like it. It takes the art of horror film seriously, and it gets impressive results. That’s Argento’s legacy, and Guadagnino’s film, for all its deviation from Argento’s templates, fits perfectly.

Category: Film and Media |
| September 8, 2016
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Wording with Thorns

Only the fiction of my horror stories is exaggerated. The supernatural is mostly metaphor and code. The horror is real.

A lot of people—especially people with majority privilege—like to complain about political correctness. Think about this. Think about lying in your loved one’s arms at home at night, sleeping soundly. You wake up because so many arms have grabbed you that you can’t move. You get one more glimpse of your lover—you know instantly that she or he is going to be dead soon. Next, you’re tied to a stake, and bundles of burning sticks are being thrown at your feet just often enough to keep the agony high. These bundles are called “faggots.” You’re called a faggot, too, because your life is worth no more than tinder because of those you love. Watching you die is someone’s entertainment.

burning-at-the-stake1

If you think you have a right to complain about political correctness, and you have a shred of decency, you may not realize that there’s no exaggeration in the previous paragraph. More often than not in the name of Jesus Christ, people brutally and LEGALLY murdered their neighbors who expressed same-sex attraction from medieval times through the Holocaust (we wore pink triangles in the concentration camps, lest you forget). In the year 2016, homosexuality is still punishable by death in the Muslim world, not just in Iran (where the method of choice is live burial, like in the Edgar Allan Poe stories), but in nations the U.S. calls allies.

buriedalive

After the U.S. stopped putting homosexuals in prison, it still locked us up in mental institutions, using electro-shock and other methods to “cure” us that would likely be considered violations of the 8th Amendment and the Geneva Convention (remember American Horror Story: Asylum?). True story: homosexuality was officially considered a mental illness in the U.S. until the 1970s, and a lot of people in the U.S. still act like it is. Read the news about which minorities are a plague this week. When people treat you like you’re an illness, they want to cure you. What do people do with illnesses? Eliminate them. Hitler had a final solution. Do you?

electro-shock-therapy-sees-a-resurgence

The world really is that bad. So when you worry about political correctness as a Great Satan, I think you’re missing the forest for the trees. If you want to complain about idiots who try to use political correctness as an excuse to censor art, please be my guest. I gladly say fuck those motherfuckers: I hope their intestines spontaneously explode from their bodies and form a slide for them to ride straight to hell.

reanimatorintestinespooljpg

I gladly say inappropriate things and create some of the most incorrect characters imaginable in my fiction. Some people who are fighting against political correctness feel that free speech is under threat, and to the extent that they’re right, I’m with them, but political correctness should be about acknowledging the power of language, which is something every good writer (and, in my opinion, good human being) should reckon with. So, fellow language-users, consider these two critical points:

  • Hate speech is a clear and present danger. If you’re arguing about limits on your free speech, remember that there already is one: you can’t shout “fire” in a crowded theater. Why? Because that’s an instance of speech that threatens the safety of a group of people. Dictionary.com defines hate speech as “speech that attacks, threatens, or insults a person or group on the basis of national origin, ethnicity, color, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability”. “Faggot” devalues the lives of gay people and encourages murders like that famous murder of Matthew Shepard. Likewise—more on this in a moment—when a group of people on Facebook attacked me by using the words “handicapped” and “bipolar” as insults, it clearly fit the definition of hate speech related to disability and therefore did not qualify for protection under the first amendment.normalboring
  • “Use” and “mention” of words are distinct. I have mentioned the word “faggot” many times here. I have referred to its history of hatred, but I have not used that history or used the word to apply to a specific human being. This distinction is subtle and difficult for many people. So is the distinction between in-group use and out-of-group use. Language is about contexts. Political correctness helps people less familiar with contexts to navigate them. Unless you’ve known me for a good long time, you’re better off not using the word “faggot” in my presence. I’m bipolar and I’m gay. A really close friend might call me a crazy fag, but the probability that you’re that person is close to zero.

So I referred to a recent experience with hate speech related to disability. Despite the persistence of ex-gay camps and such that insist on trying to “cure” homosexuality, the mainstream no longer treats it as an illness, which is good, because it seems like a fine thing to me. I can’t say the same about the other stigmatized category I’m in. So people feel much more justified in treating me like I’m an illness to be eliminated. Take your meds. Wipe yourself into an oblivion where you won’t bother us anymore.

butimacheerleadernewdirections

When people make fun of us, I really just want to point out to you normals that you’re literally incapable of fathoming how un-fun it is. Unless you have my mental condition, your brain is not equipped to handle what mine processes. I am THAT different from you. But if I say that, people will think it’s some sort of arrogance or exaggeration. But it’s biochemical certainty. Part of what I try to do with my horror fiction is give you people glimpses. Edgar Allan Poe did that, too. Word is he was bipolar, and having read all of his work, I feel fairly confident his diagnoses would have had much in common with mine (never been an alcoholic, though). Lots of you have some hero-worship for him… mine’s a little different. I think he was in my club. Chances are, you’re not. Bipolar pride. Woo-hoo. Now turn down the fucking lights and remember we’re all going to die.

walkitoff

For the last few election cycles, gay people were the favorite category to pick on. This time it’s the mentally ill, as we’re clearly the cause of all the shootings and such (nevermind that all the stats show we’re far more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators of violent crimes, thanks in part due to asshole horror writers who don’t do research). Seems I can’t get a break. Like it or not, the zeitgeist is with me, and I am with you. My recent bouts with illness have left me feeling too in touch with contemporary psych, but a little bit of Freud stands strong: the repressed shall always return…

Which reminds me, when you call something “exemplary,” you mean it stands as an example of your highest values. The person who led the mob that used hate speech against me was called “exemplary” by an organization specifically for his behavior on Facebook, I put myself in reach of this bigot because of his high standing in the organization, yet the organization (which has a sordid history with alleged racists and rapists) refuses to act at all. I suppose I AM crazy to think “sane” people would see that “political correctness” is about decency, and, to quote a popular writer, “We endorse things by our participation in them.” People in the organization are hypocritical enough to dismiss me as too touchy and therefore not worth considering as yet another crazy “victim” of their membership’s hate.

Perhaps decency is just too damned rare. My mania is quixotic.

donquixote

 

UPDATE: The “organization” referred to in this blog post is the Horror Writers’ Association. When the recipient of the HWA’s President’s Award, given for his “exemplary” achievement not in literature but in the FACEBOOK COMMUNITY, encouraged a mob to attack me with hate speech on Facebook, I reported the incident to the President and Vice-President of the HWA. I was informed that the HWA “would never tell any member or any of our volunteers what they can say on their own page.” This echo of the HWA’s doomed position in an earlier incident chilled me. I’ll borrow from Brian Keene. In a “statement regarding their decision to allow an avowed white supremacist and fascist serve as a Bram Stoker Award Juror” they tried to defend themselves by citing a “principle of supporting and practicing freedom of expression.” Of course they backpedaled when they realized that being a horror writer isn’t an excuse for lacking human decency… but I’m concerned that Keene is right about history repeating itself, and although I may not be one of the HWA’s greatest victims, they’re standing fast by a bigot who’s proud of hate speech against people with mental disabilities. They stand by calling him “exemplary.”

TOP RESPONSES FROM HWA

“I would never tell any member or any of our volunteers what they can say on their own page.” (The HWA President, Lisa Morton, who gave the President’s Award to Patrick Freivald for his “exemplary” standing in the horror community due to his work on Facebook–she is therefore the person most directly responsible for representing the HWA in endorsing his Facebook values, which demonstrably include supporting hate speech against the disabled)

“You’re not a special snowflake. Sorry. [You are] Using Bipolar disorder for excusing passive aggressive behavior.” (The Vice President, on why HWA won’t act in response to my complaints about hate speech–he later berated me aggressively, all on record)

Several other HWA “luminaries” have read the hate on Freivald’s page and assented to the party line that I “overreacted to something that never happened in the first place.” Lisa Morton angrily severed contact–as if she had been wronged–when I alluded to a film about rape, but whether she likes it or not, her methods are tried and true for squashing rape victims. Nope, I’m not as bad off as such victims in this case, not by a long shot, but I’m sick of HWA grabbing at any excuse to shut down dialogue that points out what everyone knows: they’ve got deep, deep problems.

Category: Book Thoughts, cooper's fiction, Film and Media |
| April 27, 2016
One comment

REEL DARK in the Spotlight

Have you ever been afraid of the movies? Not afraid AT the movies–any good horror film should give you chills–but scared that the movies themselves could somehow darken your world?

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Get ready to be shocked out of your seat. After a limited release in 2015, Reel Dark is back in 2016 with this stunning new cover by Aaron Drown Design and two new tales, Michael West’s sojourn into apocalyptic soundscapes “Ave Satani” and Alexander S. Brown’s love-song to late-night horror-hosts “Grotessa.” In all, it’s a collection of twenty authors who in prose and poetry combine elements from across genres–horror, sci-fi, and noir, of course, but also the western, comedy, and others–in order to show us the mayhem the movies might work on the world.

Here’s the lineup:

Russ Bickerstaff, “24 per second: Persistence of Fission”

Hal Bodner, “Whatever Happened to Peggy… Who?”

Alexander S. Brown, “Grotessa”

James Chambers, “The Monster with My Fist for Its Head”

L. Andrew Cooper, “Leer Reel”

James Dorr, “Marcie and Her Sisters”

Sean Eads, “The Dreamist”

JG Faherty, “Things Forgotten”

Amy Grech, “Dead Eye”

Jude-Marie Green, “The Queen of the Death Scenes”

Karen Head, “Amnesia”

Jay Seate, “It’s a Wrap”

Caroline Shriner-Wunn, “Confessions of a Lady of a Certain Age” and more poetry throughout the book!

Rose Streif, “Caligarisme”

Sean Taylor, “And So She Asked Again,”

Pamela Turner, “Rival”

Jason S. Walters, “Low Midnight”

Mike Watt, “Copper Slips Between the Frames”

Michael West, “Ave Satani”

Jay Wilburn, “Cigarette Burns”

Category: Book Thoughts, Film and Media |
| February 21, 2016
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Trouble Where Arthouse Meets Megaplex

Recent articles have lauded the movie The Witch for flying from the festival circuit to grace the mainstream’s megaplexes with its arthouse horror presence. I’m a snob about snobbery: while some arthouse fare is brilliant, a lot of it is pretentious crap. Please don’t misunderstand me. A lot of films in general are crap. I just prefer crap to be unpretentious. Otherwise, arthouse films have as much of a chance at being brilliant as other kinds of films, and that’s what irks me about critics getting in a twist over The Witch because it’s an arthouse film errantly appearing at a theater near you. The unstated assumption is that because of its origins, it has a better chance of being brilliant, and what’s more, there’s something unusual about brilliance being near you.

thewitch_online_teaser_01_web_largeThis blog isn’t about The Witch, so before I go on: The Witch is good, not particularly pretentious and only a little artsy. Not in my top five similarly-themed films (maybe Suspiria, Antichrist, Haxan, Inferno, Rosemary’s Baby); perhaps top ten.

So then, I’m talking about that familiar opposition between arthouse and mainstream, an opposition that usually valorizes the arthouse as good for you and therefore good. Also, there’s a sense that arthouse is not your house, at least if “you” are of the masses. Art opposes product, mass production and mass consumption, things for and by the masses. Art is, in a word, elite, and therefore it stinks of elitism. Art is art in part because it excludes masses.

But wait! Here’s the problem. Art comes from an art-ist. It comes from an individual, whereas mass production comes from a production company, a corporation. By opposing product, art also opposes the economy of scale that makes masses faceless.

I am not interested in theorizing art or artists here, but I am interested in a difficulty I feel, and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in feeling, when I try to take a stand against arthouse snobs. “Arthouse” seems anti-democratic because it’s exclusive, but it seems democratic because it’s humanizing.

First, I’ve got to say that people who think indie/arthouse/festival-born films are automatically better than big-production studio pedigrees likely have not been to many film festivals. Imagine that actor you hate—you know the one—who seems to have a new movie out every time you turn around. Now imagine you’ve gone into one of that actor’s movies, except it’s not that actor, it’s someone just as annoying who reminds you of him, and no one else in the movie can act, either, and the sets are really fake, and the camera is off-center. And you’ve just noticed that one of the other leads is in the theater sitting next to you. And your seat is really uncomfortable. And the sound is a little tinny. No, not all, not even most indie/arthouse/festival movies are like that. But some of them are.

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However, then you go next door, and you see this film directed by this woman you’ve never heard of starring this other guy who’s totally awesome with this girl who’s clearly going to be a star, and you think you should be going to film festivals every weekend. You settle in and have your brain massaged for about two hours, and when you’re done you feel edified and refreshed, the intellectual version of someone in a soft drink commercial, colored by your emotion of choice: fear, longing, joy, passion, sadness, rage. Your average indie/arthouse/festival experience doesn’t offer very many chances of getting off like that, but it might offer a few.

Sometimes the goods get you, but sometimes you do get the goods. Spitting on the arthouse snobs may reject one form of elitism, but too-copious spitting risks rejecting artists who do good work, artists who can’t help that ultimately, their work, too, has become a differently-branded form of product that carries its own advantages and disadvantages in different markets. Tempting as rough shaming may be, we must work to educate the ignorant snobs who think the origin of a thing (or a person) necessarily relates to its quality. Yes, some firmness of hand may at times keep them from forcing terrible films and the like down our throats. Otherwise, they can help to promote good ones, such as The Witch (and the others on my list of witch-y favorites) and study hard to learn that the claim to be acclaimed need not be self-fulfilling.

Category: Film and Media, Sundry Musings |
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