New Pixar Movies Announced

[this post originally appeared on wired.com's Geek Dad]

Retro video game fever: A still from "Wreck-It-Ralph"It’s the 25th anniversary of Pixar Animation Studios, the obscenely-successful cartoon company that has pretty much revolutionized the animation business. The company began in 1979 as the humble Graphics Group, once part of Lucasfilm; then it was snagged by Steve Jobs over at Apple in 1986, before finally being bought by The Walt Disney Company in 2006. Value at time of sale? $7.4 billion. According to Business Week, the transaction made Jobs the largest shareholder in the Disney empire.

Anywho, Pixar has continued its forward march into blockbuster heaven with this summer’s Cars 2, which despite mixed reviews has already reached the $500,000 worldwide gross mark. Yee haw.

At D23 expo, Disney’s own Comic-Con-like, fanboy/girl event that wrapped up Sunday in Anaheim, California, production company big-wigs announced the line-up of animated Disney films for the next two years, 2012-2014.

As reported on BuzzSugar, Pixar projects in the pipeline include:

The Untitled Pixar Movie About Dinosaurs: “What the world might have been like if dinosaurs were never wiped out by a giant asteroid, but continued to exist on Earth.” Holiday 2013 release.

The Untitled Pixar Movie That Takes You Inside the Human Mind: “explor[ing] the reasons why we get songs stuck in our head, why we dream, and even why we remember.” Spring 2014 release.

Scottish heroes: A still from the Pixar movie "Brave"Brave: ”Pixar’s first female-driven film stars Boardwalk Empire’s Kelly MacDonald as Merida, a princess set on escaping her fate of an arranged marriage to one of three idiot clan leaders.” With Billy Connolly and Craig Ferguson. June 22, 2012 release.

Monsters University: A prequel to Monsters Incorporated “that will take us back in time to show how Mike and Sully became buddies.” Billy Crystal and John Goodman return. 2013 release.

And here are two releases not technically from Pixar, but from DisneyToon Studios and Walt Disney Animation Studios, which like Pixar are overseen by cartoon god John Lasseter, but are separate and independent studios within the Disney animation empire:

Wreck-It Ralph: “Inside the world of retro, 8-bit video games” with a look that apparently “stay[s] true to the look of classic video games.” With the voice talents of John C. Reilly and Sarah Silverman. 2012 release, from Walt Disney Animation Studios.

Planes: Cars but with airplanes. “The only non-Pixar animated project debuted at D23, Planes stars John Cryer as Dusty, a cropduster who decides to take off an adventure around the globe.” Spring 2013 release, from DisneyToon Studios.

Clearly, even at the ripe old age of 25, Pixar shows no signs of stopping.

Guillermo Del Toro: The Interview, Part II

[this originally appeared on wired.com's Geek Dad]

Here’s Part II of my conversation with Guillermo del Toro, director of Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone, Mimic, Pan’s Labyrinth, Blade II, and the two Hellboy films. [Read Part I of the interview here.]

Del Toro, a former special effects makeup designer, has his own aesthetic: melding of the man-made past — the handcrafted technology of wood, leather, brass, iron — and the organic world of slugs, bugs, and tentacles. He has a fascination with mechanical gadgets, the colors amber and steel blue, and body parts embalmed in jars. You might say he’s invented his own genre: not the clockwork and piston of “steampunk,”’ but more gut-and-gears, something I call “steam-gunk.” (For a peek into del Toro’s sketchbooks, see this previous wired.com link to a fascinating video).

His latest film is one he didn’t direct, but he did co-write and produce: Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, a throwback to old fashioned haunted house films, starring Guy Pearce, Katie Holmes and Bailee Madison. The family moves into an old mansion and the daughter discovers an ancient evil inhabiting the basement’s ash pit. Scary stuff ensues.

When not prepping for his next stint behind the camera (the giant robot battle film Pacific Rim), Del Toro told me that he’s preparing for the rapidly-approaching age of “transmedia” and “multi-platform world creation,” when audiences will read books, play games, watch movies and webisodes, all set in the same world. To that end, he’s been working in fiction (The Strain is his post-apocalyptic, vampires-in-NYC trilogy) and a Lovecraftian horror video game.

But whatever the media, del Toro’s goal, it seems to me, is never to gratuitously freak us out. Rather, he just wants to touch us. Or as he puts it, “to make beautiful and moving images, and beautiful and moving stories within the genre.”

One of the homunculi from "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark"Ethan Gilsdorf: To me, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark was interesting because typically in a film set in a haunted house, the horror that has happened in the past gets reflected in ghosts, or in things that are more spiritual. In this movie, these little creatures, the homunculi, are really a different kind of manifestation of that curse.

Guillermo Del Toro: The idea in the movie is that these creatures presented predate even the time when the land was colonized. There is a small reference in the movie about how in the colonies they built a mill and it sank into the caves. So the caves in that area have lodged these creatures which are very old. They predate man setting foot in there.

EG: Do you have a sense of why horror movies, especially those with supernatural elements, remain critically underappreciated? I suspect it’s related to the same way that other kinds of genre movies are received, but in some way horror has had less of a critical reevaluation, unlike science fiction or fantasy which seem to be genres people don’t pass judgment on as quickly as they used to. With horror or movies of the supernatural, there is still a stigma in the critical community. Any thoughts on why that is the case?

GDT: The movies that depend on an emotional reaction — being comedy, melodrama, horror — because precisely they are trying to elicit an emotion from the audience, they become almost a challenge to audiences and critics. It’s very hard for the critical audience to admit they got emotional in a movie. It’s sort of admitting defeat. A movie that tries to provoke on a purely intellectual level is always going to be met [more favorably] … Those who claim [they are] stimulated intellectually by that movie almost by proxy are defining themselves as intelligent. They are defining themselves as affected on a higher level. Movies that depend on an emotional reaction are oftentimes almost a dual situation: you go to a comedy as a critic or an audience member, almost saying, “Come on, do your worst. Make me laugh.”

And the same in horror movies. Being scared is often regarded as a childish or immature emotion. It’s very hard to establish that you are affected by [this kind of] movie without admitting that you love stuff that is more challenging.

Historically, science fiction requires more production value than horror. And other genres like comedy or melodrama don’t depend on the budget. There’s never been a categorization like a “B-[movie] melodrama” or whatever. Horror movies [are] a very quick and cheap entryway into the mainstream, in a way. They are very numerous and very visually objectionable, if you will, and very visually low budget and industry-defying. They are qualified as cheap products to cash in. That is true of many of the movies of the genre. But not all of the movies of the genre.

EG: What are some of the movies that you’ve seen that have affected you? I know the original version of this movie, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, you said was one of the scariest pieces of television that you’ve seen. What are some of the films, either recently or ones that go back decades, that you would say have frightened or disturbed you the most?

GDT: The list is the usual. The Shining, Alien, The Innocents, The Haunting, Jaws, The Uninvited with Ray Milland, The Dead of Night (the British movie), The Curse of the Demon … But recently I was very affected by a Korean movie that is very, very extreme called I Saw the Devil. I was very, very affected by it. It’s a very in your face, a broad, brutal, movie, but highly effective.

EG: How do you see your own work having grown or evolved over the years since you first got started as a filmmaker? How do you think you’ve changed?

GDT: Well, I think that technically I’ve become more proficient at certain things, but in terms of artistic intention, I think from he get-go, from Cronos on, I’ve always tried very hard in my own way to make beautiful and moving images, and beautiful and moving stories within the genre. That has been basically unwavering in my intention in creating things. Even in the more commercial movies like the two Hellboys, I tried very hard to fabricate beautiful images, and beautiful moments. Even in a movie as hardcore as Blade II I tried very hard  [to make] a beautiful image here and there.

EG: Do you ever long to do something that’s fairly conventional, in terms of just a straight up drama or straight up comedy or something that doesn’t necessary include these more fantastical, supernatural or pulpy elements?

GDT: Not really. [Laughs.] I don’t think it’s in my DNA. I really think I was born to exist in the genre. I adore it. I embrace it. I enshrine it. I don’t look upon it or frown upon it in a way that a lot of directors do. A lot of directors make a horror movie as a steppingstone. For me, it’s not a steppingstone, it’s a cathedral.

EG: Do you feel like you have a particular lesson that you would like a young filmmaker or a beginning filmmaker, or for that matter a beginning writer, to take away from your work? Is there something that you hope an astute student would be able to appreciate of what you’re doing?

"Don't Be Afraid of the Dark": Dinner at the haunted manor, with Guy Pearce, Katie Holmes and Bailee Madison (Courtesy of FilmDistrict Distribution) GDT: No, I’m not trying to teach anyone anything. I think that’s a waste of time. I do hope that people who like [one of my movies] like it for the right reason. That they like it because they see how many of the moments in the movies run counter to what they are just supposed to do. The Devil’s Backbone’s ghost, I tried to make him more moving than scary. I tried to make him pitiful and beautiful. I tried to make the vampire sympathetic in Cronos. I tried to make the real world far more brutal in a way than the world of horrors that the girl experiences in Pan’s Labyrinth. And so forth. But they are not lessons by any means. They are just strands of my work that I hope that the people who like it notice.

EG: Are you at liberty to talk about The Hobbit and share any thoughts about what is going on? Are you in touch with Peter Jackson and what’s going on down there in New Zealand?

GDT: We stay in touch. I said what I had to say. I really love having had the experience. Now it’s in Peter’s hands and I’m actually waiting for it to come out and I’ll be the first in line. Other than what I had to say, that there’s nothing else to add.

EG: Give me some thoughts on your field and the direction you think filmmaking is going to be headed. Whether this relates to the kinds of stories we’re going to be absorbing, the kinds of narratives, like filmmakers collaborating with game designers, or other changes.

GDT: I’m a firm believer that the narrative form, the storytelling form, for big genre stories, will very rapidly invade into transmedia, in multi-platform world creation, in the next ten years, when we’re going to have the movies, the video games, the storyline, the TV series or webisodes and this and that, all coming at us consecutively if not simultaneously to give the audience a real sense of a world creation. I’m not talking about [every film] — there will be all kinds of films always — just in the genre filmmaking I expect it will be changing. I’m very interested and very actively training myself by designing and directing a video game. I’ve been working on it for the last year and I still have three more years to go to develop the video game. … So by the end of the four years I will have had a bit of a tenure in video game making.

EG: Is that game going to be related to a film you are working on, or is it independent?

GDT: No, this is just my apprenticeship into the gaming world. And my experience has been a very beautiful and productive one. It’s with a company called THQ and it’s game called “inSANE.’’

EG: I see that we are out of time.

GDT: I want to thank you again for this.

EG: Thank you very much. Guillermo, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you.

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark opens Friday, August 26.

[Note: Portions of this interview originally appeared in a different form in an article for the Boston Sunday Globe]

Guillermo Del Toro: The Interview, Part I

[This posting originally appeared on wired.com's Geek Dad]

Guillermo del Toro and star Bailee Madison, on the set of "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" (Courtesy of FilmDistrict Distribution)Guillermo Del Toro, the director behind personal, vision-driven films like Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone, and Pan’s Labyrinth, plus commercial blockbuster action vehicles like Blade II and two Hellboy films, has been involved in more than his share of film projects over the past few years. But he hasn’t personally helmed a picture since 2008’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army. So fans of del Toro the film director – not the screenwriter, producer, executive producer, video game designer, novelist, and creative consultant – will have to keep waiting.

Perhaps he has simply been the victim of bad luck.

Originally recruited to co-write and direct The Hobbit, del Toro even relocated his family to New Zealand. But after interminable production delays, he backed out, and now Peter Jackson is directing. Del Toro’s next project was to be an effects-laden, 3D adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s novella At the Mountains of Madness. Yet studios balked at the $150-million price tag (even with Tom Cruise attached). It turns out del Toro’s next directorial effort will be a Japanese-style monsters versus robots film called Pacific Rim, with a slated release date of 2013.

In the meantime, fans will have to sate themselves with a new project heavy with the del Toro imprint but not officially part of his directorial oeuvre: Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, a throwback to old-timey haunted house films. Though he only co-wrote and produced the film — the director is newcomer Troy Nixey — Don’t Be Afraid (opening Friday) contains many familiar del Toro themes: a flashback prologue; mysterious and maleficent creatures, and a hidden world of fantasy revealed by a child protagonist.

The original Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark was a 1973 ABC made-for-TV movie about a young couple in an abusive relationship who inherit an old mansion. Del Toro has claimed that, for his generation (he was 9 at the time), this was “the scariest TV movie we ever saw.” Del Toro began co-writing his version with Matthew Robbins in 1998, but the production had its own delays. Switching the focus to the couple’s daughter, he realized the plot was too similar to Pan’s Labyrinth, so he put the project on hold. He kept pursuing it over the past dozen years, finally beginning production two years ago when he felt the time was right.

Shot in Australia, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is set in present day Rhode Island. An architect (Guy Pearce) and his interior-designer girlfriend (Katie Holmes) renovate and move into a lavish mansion. The architect’s introverted daughter, Sally (Bailee Madison from Bridge to Terabithia), reluctantly joins them. The de rigueur prologue concerns the previous owner of Blackwood Manor, a Victorian-era, Audubon-like illustrator and naturalist who became enslaved to an ancient evil inhabiting the basement’s ash pit.

I had a chance to speak with Guillermo del Toro, via telephone from New York City. We had met in person last year, when del Toro was in Boston promoting The Fall, the second book in his horror novel trilogy The Strain, co-authored with Massachusetts resident Chuck Hogan. (The final volume The Night Eternal comes out October 25.)

Ethan Gilsdorf: Hello, Mr. del Toro. It’s a pleasure to speak with you again. We met about a year ago in Boston when you were promoting The Fall. I was the guy who wrote that book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks. We traded books, I seem to recall.

Guillermo del Toro: I remember that, yes. You went to New Zealand for Lord of the Rings.

EG: I’m glad you remembered! Yes, I was that crazy nut who traveled there to see as many of the Lord of the Rings filming locations as I could in three weeks.

GDT: [Laughs]

EG: Yeah, it’s all in my book. So, I should probably get right to the questions since I know you have a limited amount of time. I saw Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark last night and I very much enjoyed it. Can you talk your decision in this case to co-write and producer rather than direct this film yourself?

Blackwood Manor, home to nasty and evil forces. (Courtesy of FilmDistrict Distribution)GDT: I co-wrote the movie with Matthew Robbins in 1998. And in the interim, I did Pan’s Labyrinth. I thought anecdotally and superficially the two movies shared certain traits. A young girl arriving at a foreign place, to an old mansion, discovering creatures underground. I thought about it and I thought, although it was very different, I thought it was superficially, professionally, too much in common. I didn’t want to repeat. I thought, however, I would be very, very involved in the making of the movie.

EG: Troy Nixey, the director you chose, comes from comic books. He illustrated for the Batman franchise and Neil Gaiman’s Only the End of the World Again, among other things. But Nixey had made just one short film, Latchkey’s Lament. Why did you pick him?

GDT: Yes, [Nixey was] a first time feature filmmaker. He had done a wonderful short called Latchkey’s Lament, and I saw that short. It’s really, really quite beautiful. It’s available to see on YouTube. You can just type “Latchkey’s Lament” and you can see why he got the job. [See the film here]

EG: For someone like Nixey, who has gone from a short film to a pretty major production, with some major actors and obviously a lot of special effects work and so on, I wonder if that required any special attention on your part? Were you there on the set quite often to oversee things, or did he get to run with things on his own?

GDT: Yes, this is the movie I have produced where I have been the most involved in every facet of it. It’s the only movie I have produced where I have been, almost 90 percent of the time on the set, every day, because it was a big job to go from a short film as I say to something that intricate and that complicated. Also, we did it for a budget and a very tight schedule. Ultimately, we delivered the movie under budget and under schedule. Which was great, but to do so was a very complicated process.

This is a haunted house movie. Better bring your flashlight. (Courtesy of FilmDistrict Distribution)EG: There have been so many movies made over the years that try to scare people or try to disturb them, or try to effect them emotionally. I was wondering when you are selecting your projects, whether you are directing or want to direct, or just to be attached to, how do you think outside of the box? Particularly with horror movies, it does seem like they are a dime a dozen at this point. How do you be original?

GDT: I think that the case of the genre of horror movies, they are a way to make a quick buck. There are very few filmmakers both on the producing and directing side who actually approach [horror] with the desire to create something either of substance or something beautiful or powerful. Most of the people just try to get a [big opening] weekend and DVD sales.

The first thing is, I don’t get attached, or I rarely get attached, to something I’m not generating from the get go. Don’t Be Afraid is no exception. I started working on this project actively about 16 years ago now. We wrote it in 1998 which was about 13 years ago. And I have not stopped pursuing it actively. So I really just try to get involved in things I feel truly passionate about, and if I happen to be able to control the rights or hold the rights, I don’t let them go. I just hold onto the project until it gets made. If I don’t control the rights, that’s a different matter.

EG: You grew up in one culture, Mexico, and largely work in another, by which I mean the American film system. Obviously your audiences are world-wide, but a good chunk of them are American. Do you find there is a universal thread that connects audience sfrom one culture to another, in terms of what disturbs them or what haunts them? Are there specific kinds of themes that always work?

GDT: I think that no matter what culture you come from [you] are afraid of the   darkness, and what lurks in it is an absolutely common fear. I think that Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is tapping into the most primal, almost universal, childhood fears. That’s what attracted me from the get-go to the idea of making this remake, a complete re-telling of this story. The movie from 1973 was about a very specific, abusive relationship between a husband and wife, and it was very much a product of its time. … I decided to turn it into a sort of a very dark fairy tale. Precisely, as I say, that taps into universal fears — the invasion of the more intimate spaces, the home, the bedroom, the bed — and little by little we show that these creatures can be anywhere at any time, watching from the dark.

And that’s the end of Part I. Tune in tomorrow for Part II, when the conversation with Guillermo del Toro continues. Among other topics, we discuss why the horror genre is underappreciated, how he sees his own evolution as a filmmaker, his relationship with Peter Jackson, his new video game project, and — of course — what scares him.

[Note: Portions of this interview originally appeared in a different form in an article for the Boston Sunday Globe]

Horror story: With “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark,” Guillermo del Toro keeps infusing horror with “beautiful and moving images”

by Ethan Gilsdorf

[originally appeared in the Boston Globe, Sunday Aug 21, 2011]

scene from del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" 

In director Guillermo del Toro’s estimation, most horror movies are cheap products to cash in, a quick and dirty way for studios to make a buck. Originality and artistry are discouraged.

“Few filmmakers,’’ del Toro said, “approach horror with the desire to create something either of substance or something beautiful or powerful. Most of the people just try to get a [big opening] weekend and DVD sales.’’

Del Toro, the man behind personal, vision-driven projects like “Cronos,’’ “The Devil’s Backbone,’’ and “Pan’s Labyrinth,’’ as well as the commercial successes “Blade II,’’ and two “Hellboy’’ films, has never seen horror as a temporary career move.

“I really think I was born to exist in the genre,’’ the quick-witted, outspoken Mexican filmmaker said in a telephone interview from New York City. “I adore it. I embrace it. I enshrine it. I don’t look upon it or frown upon it in a way that a lot of directors do. For me, it’s not a stepping stone, it’s a cathedral.’’

To make other kinds of film - comedy, drama - well . . . “I don’t think it’s in my DNA.’’

The latest spawn from del Toro’s imaginarium is “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark,’’ a throwback to haunted house films of yore. Though he only co-wrote and produced the film - the director is newcomer Troy Nixey - “Don’t Be Afraid’’ (opening Friday) is still glazed with many familiar del Toro tropes: a dark prologue; the weight of ancient, historical forces; subterranean dungeons and mazes; and a hidden world of fantasy.

The original production was a 1973 ABC made-for-TV movie about a young couple in an abusive relationship who inherit an old mansion. Del Toro has claimed that, for his generation (he was 9 at the time), “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark’’ was “the scariest TV movie we ever saw.’’

In 1998, del Toro began co-writing his version with Matthew Robbins, switching the focus to the couple’s daughter. Realizing the plot was too similar to “Pan’s Labyrinth,’’ he put the project on hold. “A young girl arriving at a foreign place, to an old mansion, discovering creatures underground,’’ del Toro said. “I didn’t want to repeat.’’

The film remained on the back burner of del Toro’s mind for more than a decade, but he kept pursuing it, finally beginning production two years ago. Shot in Australia, “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark’’ is set in present day Rhode Island. We assume it’s Newport, given the lavish mansion an architect (Guy Pearce) and his interior-designer girlfriend (Katie Holmes) have renovated and moved into. The architect’s introverted daughter, Sally (Bailee Madison from “Bridge to Terabithia’’), reluctantly joins them.

The film traffics in another frequent del Toro theme: fantasy as escape from conflict. In “Pan’s Labyrinth,’’ against the backdrop of Fascist-era Spain, a girl suffers under a totalitarian father. While “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark’’ isn’t set during wartime, Sally feels besieged by her parents’ divorce. Ignored by the adult world, she hears whispers from the basement. Her parents don’t believe the mischievous, rat-like homunculi that pour from the house’s innards truly exist. This is another classic del Toro thread: It’s the lonely, abandoned child who finds the secret doorway to the spirit and fairy world.

“I decided to turn it into a sort of very dark fairy tale,’’ del Toro said, “that taps into universal fears, the invasion of the most intimate spaces, the home, the bedroom, the bed. Little by little we show that these creatures can be anywhere at any time watching from the dark.’’

The de rigueur prologue concerns the previous owner of Blackwood Manor, a Victorian-era, Audubon-like illustrator and naturalist who became enslaved to an ancient evil inhabiting the basement’s ash pit. This opening back story (told in flashback) infuses the present with the horrifying past, but del Toro keeps his modern day protagonists in the dark. The gap between what the audience and the characters know is meant to provide the story’s urgency and tension.

“I think that no matter what culture you come from,’’ del Toro said, “the darkness and what lurks in it is an absolutely common fear. I think that ‘Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark’ taps into the most primal, almost universal, childhood fears. That’s what attracted me from the get-go to the idea of making this remake a complete re-telling of this story.’’

The former special effects makeup designer has his own aesthetic: a melding of the man-made past - the handcrafted technology of wood, leather, brass, iron - and the organic world of slugs, bugs, and tentacles. He has a fascination with mechanical gadgets, the colors amber and steel blue, and body parts embalmed in jars. You might say he’s invented his own genre: not the clockwork and piston of “steampunk,’’ but gut-and-gears “steam-gunk.’’

The goal is never to gratuitously freak us out. Rather, he aims to touch us. Of the boy ghost in “The Devil’s Backbone,’’ del Toro said he made him more “pitiful and beautiful’’ than scary. In “Cronos,’’ he depicted a sympathetic vampire. Even the crowd-pleasing action movies “Hellboy’’ and “Hellboy II’’ fit the del Toro ethos of flawed hero-outcasts; the protagonist, an orphaned demon rescued from Nazis, grows into a pathos-filled, cigar-chomping wiseacre, acutely aware of his oddball nature and still compelled to save the day. In “Pan’s Labyrinth,’’ del Toro created a “real world far more brutal . . . than the world of horrors that the girl experiences.’’ He has been unwavering, he insisted, in his intention “to make beautiful and moving images and beautiful and moving stories within the genre.’’

This time around, to realize those images and stories, he handpicked Nixey, a 39-year-old Canadian comic book illustrator for the Batman franchise and Neil Gaiman’s “Only the End of the World Again,’’ among other things. Nixey had made just one short film, “Latchkey’s Lament.’’ It captured del Toro’s attention.

“I saw that short. It’s really, really quite beautiful.’’ Watch it on YouTube, he said, “and you can see why he got the job.’’

Nixey still can’t believe that’s how he came to direct “Don’t Be Afraid,’’ but he was always clear that making his short would help cement his talent for filmmaking. “When I set out to make ‘Latchkey’s’ it was with the intention of proving that yes, OK, I can do this. I can think in terms of a movie,’’ said Nixey, a 17-year-veteran of the comics industry, speaking via telephone from New York. “But my first love had always been movies. This was me seeing if this was in fact what I was supposed to do.’’

Because “Don’t Be Afraid’’ was Nixey’s first feature film, del Toro was “very, very involved’’ in the production. “It’s the only movie I have produced where I have been almost 90 percent of the time on the set, every day,’’ del Toro said. “It was a big job to go from a short film . . . to something that intricate and that complicated.’’

Nixey agreed it was “a big leap’’ to direct a star-studded, multimillion-dollar film, but having what he called “my favorite filmmaker’’ and “a creative genius’’ nearby helped. “He [del Toro] said at the beginning, ‘I’m here when you need me and I’m not when you don’t.’ But I’m no dummy. He’s this amazingly talented, successful filmmaker with an imagination that I’ve never seen before. So, yeah, why wouldn’t I want to pick his brain when I had questions?’’

To see this Nixey-del Toro collaboration, audiences have had to be patient: The film was actually finished in 2010, but the protracted sale of Miramax delayed its release by months. Not only that, but del Toro fans have been wondering when their beloved master will direct again; he’s served as producer on this film and consultant or producer on more than a dozen other recent projects, but he hasn’t helmed a picture since 2008’s “Hellboy II: The Golden Army.’’

Del Toro has been bedeviled by bad luck and bad timing. He relocated to New Zealand to co-write and direct “The Hobbit,’’ but when that production repeatedly stalled, he backed out. Currently, Peter Jackson is filming the two-part adaptation of Tolkien’s fantasy book.

“We stay in touch,’’ del Toro said about his relationship with Jackson. “I said what I had to say. I really love having had the experience. Now it’s in Peter’s hands and I’m actually waiting for it to come out and I’ll be the first in line.’’

After “The Hobbit,’’ a $150-million, 3-D adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s novella “At the Mountains of Madness’’ was announced as del Toro’s next project, but studios balked at the price tag. It turns out del Toro’s next directorial effort will be a Japanese-style monsters versus robots film called “Pacific Rim,’’ which at this year’s Comic-Con he boasted would feature “the finest [expletive] monsters ever committed to screen.’’ Convinced that video games will continue to intersect with film and TV in “multi-platform world creation,’’ del Toro is also midway through “apprenticeship into the gaming world,’’ a multi-year project designing a Lovecraftian horror game called “inSANE.’’ He's also releasing book three in his horror novel trilogy "The Strain" (co-authored with Chuck Hogan); the final volume "The Night Eternal" comes out October 25, 2011.

Whatever the medium, del Toro keeps pushing the boundaries of this horror genre, which he said continues to be stigmatized because it depends on a visceral, not intellectual reaction.

“Being scared is often regarded as a childish or immature emotion,’’ del Toro said. “It’s very hard for the critical audience to admit they got emotional in a movie. It’s sort of admitting defeat.’’

If that’s the case, then may del Toro keep conquering us.

Gygax Biopic in the works

The Examiner.com has reported and confirmed a rumor that’s already been echoing through the dungeons of D&D talk: that a Gary Gygax biopic is in the works. Michael Tresca wrote:

George Strayton confirmed he is … the scriptwriter for a $150 million movie based on Gary Gygax’s life. George describes the film as a ‘combination action movie and bio pic.’ The movie will tell the story of how Gary created Dungeons & Dragons, switching between his real life and the fantasy realm of Dungeons & Dragons.

Strayton is the CEO/Lead Designer of Secret Fire Games, as well as a writer for TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys andXena: Warrior Princess, and the animated feature Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight.

Another morsel: Tresca said that “George let it slip that a ‘huge star is playing Gary.’”

I’m game.

That said, some skeptical voices have already begun to pepper the blogosphere. As James Maliszewski says over at Grognardia, “I’d frankly be amazed if any studio thought that the life of Gary Gygax had enough mass appeal to be made into a movie, let alone one with a big budget and a huge star.” It’s an excellent question.

This certainly raises the question if the non-nerd world is ready for a biopic on an essential, but for many, still unknown pop culture innovator who helped usher in a new gaming and leisure genre. The Whole Wide World, the 1996 film about Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian, and starring Vincent D’Onofrio and Renée Zellweger, proved that more obscure subjects for biopics can be made. But … while that film was largely well-received critically, it tanked at the box office.

The life of Gygax and genesis of D&D certainly sounds like a promising idea for a movie. Who among lovers of RPGs won’t want to see the reenactments of D&D’s early years? Those behind-the-scenes scenes of early play-testing? And to settle once and for all the junk food dilemma — did Gary prefer Doritos or Cheetos?

More updates on this as I hear more.

Two New Books Lavish in 80s Video Game Culture

READY PLAYER ONE By Ernest Cline [Crown, 374 pp. $24.00]SUPER MARIO: How Nintendo Conquered America, By Jeff Ryan [Portfolio, 292 pp., $26.95]It’s easy to cast a long shadow of nostalgia across your geeky past, now that you are standing taller.

There’s no shame, no risk of ridicule or reprisal, now that nerds top the food chain. More confident, you might even find yourself admitting, “Sure, I used to play Dungeons & Dragons. Had an 18th-level paladin named Argathon. One righteous orc-slaying dude.’’

I do. I played more than my share of video and role-playing games during a less friendly era, the 1980s. Fantasy and science fiction had not come out of the closet. The financial success of genre franchises had not yet made geekery acceptable. Gaming culture was nonexistent.

A bonus of my then fringe game habit: It felt user-driven, indie, even subversive. When free time, not money, was my currency, gaming created a peculiar, and intimate, community. I inserted real quarters into singular machines shared with others. No Internet. No interruptions from texts. Total immersion in virtual worlds was possible even as, paradoxically, cutting-edge special effects were analog, not digital.

And a game of Donkey Kong, its chunky graphics about as sophisticated as the dungeons I sketched on graph paper, might last only a minute, while a game of D&D, limited to the primitive technology of dice, pencils, and brainwaves, would take months.

Differing both in approach and success level, two new books -- Ernest Cline’s dystopian sci-fi novel “Ready Player One’’ and Jeff Ryan’s historical reportage “Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America’’ -- plumb and pay tribute to the genesis of our gaming culture. To a time when to find out who was the best at Asteroids or Galaga, you hoofed it down to the mall to witness the heroism gracing the “high score’’ screen, where someone’s tag -- “ZAK’’ or “LED’’ -- was hallowed only in the halls of your local arcade.

Ryan, a video game critic, painstakingly charts the Japanese company Nintendo’s startling success. When its 1980 Space Invaders rip-off Radar Scope failed, technicians retrofitted 2,000 of the machines with a new arcade game, designed by an underling named Shigeru Miyamoto. Donkey Kong was born, as was the character Mario, based on a real mustachioed landlord who once showed up at Nintendo’s US headquarters to collect the rent and “grew so incensed he almost jumped up and down.’’ The red overalls and hat came later.

Ryan does a fine job describing Nintendo’s growing rivalry with Atari and Sega and subsequent shrewd moves, as arcades shuttered, to dominate the home console market. Super Mario Bros. became the “dense’’ game-changing killer app, Ryan writes, which “called for deep exploration instead of facile button mashing.’’ A new generation of gamers could explore endlessly, wandering tubes, hopping platforms, and collecting shells and coins. Nabbing the high score wasn’t the point. Mario helped kill quarter-based game culture.

Ryan can be insightful, and his prose colorful, but also distracting. Images and metaphors compete and clash - the Zucker Brothers follow Derrida, a music reference is slammed cheek-by-jowl with a baseball analogy. At times, the text seems translated from the Japanese. What is “a nebula’s improvement in graphics’’? A “veritable sleuth of unsold Teddy Ruxpins’’? It’s also difficult to picture the graphical evolution of Mario and his game world when the book has no illustrations.

Most frustratingly, we never hear directly from any Nintendo designers, not even Miyamoto or company head Hiroshi Yamauchi. Curiously little on-the-ground reporting of personal travails or internal corporate tensions. After the first 100 pages, the narrative devolves into a cheery laundry list of game releases. It’s as if Ryan reported the book from the distance of the Internet.

Still, “Super Mario’’ remains an important link to understanding how we got from Donkey Kong to Wii, and why the wee Jumpman still rules. “Mario is the id: working off of instinct, never having much of a plan, always able to leap into the middle of things. We all become younger as we play Mario, because when we’re Mario we simply play.’’

More so than Ryan, Cline banks on blatant nostalgia for our geeky pasts. The year is 2044 and the young protagonist of “Ready Player One,’’ 17-year-old orphan Wade Watts, narrates his own progress in an elaborate, online scavenger hunt. He lives as an economic refuge in a crime-ridden shanty town, “The Great Recession was now entering its third decade,’’ Watts says, and like many who have given up on the “real world,” he spends his waking hours as an avatar, named Parzival, in a massive, Matrix-like virtual space called OASIS.

Created by a reclusive, Reagan-era game designer, the game melds Tolkienesque riddles with ’80s pop arcana - from Matthew Broderick’s lines in “WarGames’’ to dungeons designed by D&D co-creator Gary Gygax. Solve the puzzles and you inherit the game designer’s vast fortune. An old-fashioned “high score’’ leader board pops up periodically in the narrative to remind us who’s winning.

Such is the post-apocalyptic, nerd-friendly premise of “Ready Player One.’’ Watts is one of thousands of other players known as “gunters,” or “egg hunters” because they are looking for Easter eggs, or clues, hidden in the thousands of designer virtual lands that populate the OASIS. Watts steeps himself in the period, eschewing the world of 2044 to effectively live and breathe the era’s most mundane factoids, memorizing characters  from “The Breakfast Club,” plot points from “Star Wars,” tactics for an obscure arcade game like Joust. Clearly having fun with the reader, and himself, Cline stuffs his novel with a cornucopia of pop culture, as if to wink to the reader, “Remember the TRS-80? Wasn’t it cool?’’ The conceit is a smart one, and we happily root for Watts/Parzival and his gaming buddies on their quest for the big egg -- and hope they win before a villainous, corporate-run gaming guild declares “game over.’’

Not that the novel is without its problems. Cline, the screenwriter who gave us “Fanboys,’’ oddly chooses a first-person narrator. What is the occasion for a 17-year-old explaining the plot of “Blade Runner,’’ or that “ ‘2112,’ Rush’s classic sci-fi-themed concept album’’ hit record stores “in 1976, back when most music was sold on twelve-inch vinyl records’’? Long, awkward passages of  exposition bog down the story, and conflict with Watts’s own distinctive narrative voice. A third-person, roving point of view would more logically allow for these passages of authorial intrusion. Also a bummer: Much of the action is virtual, statically describing Watts’s online moves: “I took a screenshot of this illustration and placed it in the corner of my display.’’

One can picture much of this working better on the big screen, where asides won’t be needed. We’ll hear “She Bop” on the soundtrack or see a character wearing a “Muppet Show” T shirt and get it. No surprise, Cline’s movie adaptation of Ready Player One has already been sold.

But ignore these narrative hiccups and “Ready Player One’’ provides a most excellent ride. Once the story is up and running, and the novel blasts to its world-ending climactic battle, I found the adventure story and its revenge of the dorks dream fully satisfying.

Both Cline and Ryan’s books lavish in the toys and pastimes of our youth. And also nostalgia, which may soft-focus the hard and real edges, and yet we're happy to lavish in it nonetheless. We aging humans traffic in it. Perhaps we must to make sense of our past lives.

Like the film “Super 8,’’ these two books play also into a final fantasy: that things were once simpler. Today, some attribute the violence in Norway, unfairly, to video games. Suddenly ’80s pop culture looks less troubled. But of course, the arcade and role-playing games of yore were controversial scourges bent on the destruction of youth. Remember?

Sculptor for Gygax Memorial Named

Gary Gygax at Gen Con 2007 [photo: Alan De Smet, via Wikimedia Common]Hello from Gen Con, in Indianapolis, the gaming convention where I’ve been hanging this week. I’ve spent some time with the Gygax family and following their effort to raise money here on behalf of the Gygax Memorial Fund, which aims to raise serious dough for a monument. This just in:

“The Gygax Memorial Fund is thrilled to announce that Stefan Pokorny has volunteered to sculpt the memorial in Lake Geneva. Stefan is well known to gamers as the founder and chief sculptor of Dwarven Forge, and also a classically trained sculptor whose bronzes and busts can be seen in the New York Public Library and fine art galleries.”

Folks at the Gygax Memorial said that: “As a lifelong fan of Gary’s, helping to create this memorial is a dream come true for Stefan, and the Gygax Memorial has always wanted to the sculptor be a gamer who looked forward to spending time with Gary at Gen Con each year. The stories Gail, Luke, and Stefan shared over dinner last night were a testimonial to how much Gary’s memory means to people and the way that the vision of his memorial is bringing people together.”

Luke is Gygax’s son. Gail is Gary’s wife.

Glad that things are moving forward. Long live Gary!

My Super 8 Summer of Escapism

From the 1978 Sears catalog -- do your chores, save your allowance, and all your movie-making dreams can come true.The film Super 8, which hit theaters a few weeks ago, weaves in pop cultural touchstones that triggered for me a nostalgic tsunami: whispering into walkie-talkies, perfecting techniques for monster makeup, and wearing my hair in a hobbity mop. A project in mind, I’d madly pedal my Schwinn bicycle (with banana seat and sissy bar) from one part of town to another to hatch it, just like Super 8’s Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) and his buddies.

Coincidentally enough, Super 8 also eerily evokes an American boyhood experience similar to my own upbringing in small town New Hampshire. No, I never saw giant spider-like creatures emerging from train crashes and I didn’t film them. But in the late 1970s, enthralled by the same films that Super 8 director J.J. Abrams clearly was — Spielbergian monster and alien encounter movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. — I was determined to be next blockbuster kid. And weirdly, like me, Abrams was born in 1966 and was 12 in 1979, the same year the movie takes place.

Like the boys in Super 8, I armed also myself with a movie camera. I built sets with HO-scale train props, and MacGyvered Revell airplane and boat models to make my own Star Wars-like space ships. Focusing on animation rather than live action films, I’d shoot clay blobs one frame at a time, enacting monster wrestling matches and deep space dogfights. This being an eon before iMovie and YouTube, I edited my footage with crude equipment, assembling each scene with plastic splices, and showed them to an audience of my family and friends.

As I wrote in a recent aticle for Salon.com, my journey through the realm of adolescence to the kingdom of adulthood began to reveal itself as a tricky maze filled with traps, monsters and dead ends, not to mention broken mothers. Like Joe Lamb, whose mother dies in a freak factory accident, my mother was gone, suddenly stricken by brain damage. Like that kid, I was saddled with a heavy cloak of loss I couldn’t come close to articulating. I felt abandoned, and the solution for how to navigate this new life was not published, upside-down, in the back of any book of brain teasers. I longed for answers.

The Super 8 movies I shot provided one avenue of escape. Then, in and around directing my latest Claymation fantasy feature that summer of 1979, another path appeared. I learned how to face my demons in another way. I learned that sometimes, checking out from reality was not merely a fun diversion, but necessary. I was shown a clever trick—how to step away from my own body and mind, my family, and travel to places I’d never even seen. A new, more powerful way out. I discovered Dungeons & Dragons. [More on that story here.]

Soylent Green, and Gaming, Is People: Final Thoughts From Gen Con

Is your Basic D&D set worth millions?The booths have been dismantled, the games put away, the green goblin face paint washed off, and the last of the trolls, pirates and grognards have been swept from the halls of the Indiana Convention Center.

Gen Con may be over, but the ongoing campaign is not.

While of course the main reason gamers flock to Gen Con is to demo new product releases – and for sure, there were oodles of new merch on the convention floor, from Fantasy Flight Games’s Star Wars card miniature games to Wizards of the Coast D&D Neverwinter campaign setting – what I noticed, above all, was the spirit of gaming.

There's an ad in the Indianapolis Airpoirt about "gaming," but that ad means casino gambling: poker, blackjack, slots. What I mean, and what Gen Con ultimately aims to promote, is true gaming. Play that's not about beating the system or bilking other players of their riches, but sharing the experience of adventure and fun.

Gaming is people. (Soylent Green is also people, but that's another story.)

Reflecting back on my four days at Gen Con Indy, here are some final words about the power of table-top and role-playing games.

All weekend long, I wandered the vendor floor, the hallways and game rooms, but I kept returning to the Gen Con auction. Here, folks unload old games of all types, from D&D products to an old copy of Tunnels and Trolls to a forgotten board game like Dark Tower or Pac-Man. On Friday night, the best of the best collector items were bid on and bought. I watched Kask and fellow TSR veteran game designer Frank Mentzer (founder of the Role-Playing Games Association), both serving as auctioneers, scrutinize an old D&D Basic set, trying to ascertain whether it was a first or third printing and whether the shrink wrap and Toys “R” Us sticker were authentic. I was fascinated by the love and passion these games attract, as well as the desire to get the details right. And the humor: After the winning bid on that Basic set, the auctioneers tore open the shrink wrap to see what was inside. (Sorry, winner, it was nothing special.) The desire to know the "guts" trumped any persnickety OCDism to keep the package intact for posterity's sake.

Thankfully, more than just old timers are keeping the old RPGs alive. Publishing collectives like The Old School Renaissance Group and voices like the Blog of Holding are intent on honoring the groundbreaking heritage of D&D. A downloadable gaming product called Old School Hack is doing its best to introduce a streamlined, D&D-like RPG experience to a new generation of players. “A hack of a hack of the original Red Box version of a certain popular hack-and-slash fantasy game,” is what the folks say about their wee little product. Old School Hack also won the best free product “gold” award at Gen Con’s ENnies, the game industry’s version of the Oscars/Emmys. I applaud Kirin Robinson, the man behind OSH, who humbly notes, “I’m certainly not any sort of professional game designer, just another hobbyist looking to put together a fun game.” Here are all ENnie winners.

[Side note: In a funny, tongue-in-cheeky move, at the ENnie awards ceremony, every time Wizards of the Coast won a silver or gold, the “Imperial Death March” theme from the Empire Strikes Back would sound. Hanging out at their spectacular, ruined castle booth a lot this weekend, I know Wizards has a sense of humor.]

Moosetache Games: Teaching that not all kids games involve a video monitor and controllerSeriously, evil empire jokes and fancy booth bling aside, Gen Con also reminded me of about the enthusiasm of the hundreds of indie gamer designers who exhibit their dreams here. Their only hope? To get a few dozens players excited about their new adventure. Tiny companies, like Moosetache Games, who debuted their new card game Hike, a family card game that encourages cognitive learning and teaches children about nature, took the time to teach anyone who wanted to learn. After all, the best way to try a new game is to play it. And no better way than from the folks who make it.

I also hung out with the folks behind an exciting new project, Dungeons & Dragons: A Documentary, who (like me) aim to tell the whole story of how a simple yet innovative, fantasy role-playing game changed the course of millions of lives, and the history of our culture. And how D&D is still inspiring people to be creative writers, thinkers, and problem-solvers .

And I spoke to Gail Gygax, wife of the late Gary Gygax, and their son Luke Gygax, who are intent on making sure that the legacy of Gary and his contributions to the game are remembered. They both gave a moving tribute to Gary at the ENnie awards. And their Gygax Memorial Fund is still soliciting donations. You can even record your own video testimonial for the website.

Which brings me back to my over-aching feeling upon departing Gen Con: that table-top, roleplaying gaming is really about people. Gaming brings folks together around a table to banter and bargain and be boisterous. To share a playful experience outside of work, responsibilities, outside of the boxes we have drawn around ourselves. Adults need as much free, unstructured down time as kids. Let’s not forget that. We need to goof off, too.

And as cool as richly-imagined digital worlds can be, in game playing, it's the quality and passion of the company around the living room table that count, not the impressive gadgets and graphics. This is a lesson we especially should teach kids, who need to understand that not all games need involve a video monitor and a digital graphics. The power of the raw imagination needs to be preserved.

Hope to see you at next year’s Gen Con (or any of the hundreds of smaller game cons that have sprung up, including Gary Con IV in March, 2012, where you can game with many gaming legends).

Now, go play a game. Have fun.

6 Things I’m Looking Forward to at Gen Con

Ax me if I'm a geek. See you at Gen Con.I’m headed to Gen Con, the granddaddy of all gaming conventions. The big d20 throwdown runs Thurs-Sun, August 4-7 in Indianapolis, Indiana. And I’m pretty excited to go (it’ll be my second time). Here are some of the highlights I’m looking forward to seeing and experiencing:

1) The annual Gen Con Auction, what the organizers say might be “possibly the longest running yearly auction in gaming history!” (their exclamation mark). In particular, I’m stoked about the Collectables Auction (Friday at 7:30 pm) where celebs from the old D&D TSR days — Tom Wham, Tim Kask, Frank Mentzer, and the like — are rumored to appear to run the show.

Perhaps you are in the market for an old Chainmail rule book, a first-printing Monster Manual or D&D Basic Set, or the rarest of the rare, an Original D&D “woodgrain box” set. Going, going, gone. Details here.

2) The Kickstarter for Adventurer Conqueror King. Game publisher Autarch is renting a penthouse suite in one of the convention hotels to run a continuous mini-campaign of Adventurer Conqueror King, what looks to be a cool new game system/complete tabletop RPG that supports all the goals those whinny characters in your campaigns have set for themselves. Autarch says ACK lets players build strongholds, lead armies, scour the wilderness, start a thieves’ guild, even name a spell after themselves. Seats at this demo are mostly for backers of the company’s Kickstarter crowd-funding effort, but they’d love to have you stop by and check it out; if a spot opens up you’re welcome to jump in. Stop by the Old School Resource Group, booth #1541, for more info on where to find the location.

3) The Gygax Memorial Fund, an effort to build a memorial to D&D co-founder Gary Gygax, is raising money, via a few ways: A) debuting a new book, Cheers Gary, a collection of Gygax’s answers to fan questions; widow Gail Gygax and editor Paul Hughes will be at their booth signing copies; B) other merch(bribes?) for donors to the fund include an original D&D monster infographic poster; a Gygax Memorial T-shirt, a Tower of Gygax” T-shirt, and a signed copy of Fantasy Freaks & Gaming Geeks (by yours truly). Come and stop by the Old School Resource Group, booth #1541, or see the Gygax Memorial Fund for more info.

4) As always, Wizards of the Coast, the makers of D&D, occupy serious acreage on the exhibitor floor. According to my sources, WOTC  will unveil an “extensive suite of products and in-store play offerings around the legendary city of Neverwinter.” These are to include a comic mini-series, a board game, organized play sessions, and a new novel from New York Times best-selling author R.A. Salvatore. The setup alone for their booth is super-cool and castle-like. You can’t miss it. More deets.

5) If you’re a fan of Ed Greenwood (the dude who brought us  the Forgotten Realms campaign setting and many of its best-known characters, including Elminster, Larloch, Manshoon, and Szass Tam) will once again be leading his “Spin a Yarn with Ed Greenwood” seminar (officially, SEM1127817, Friday, 2:00 PM, Marriott Indiana Ballroom G), which promises “a rollicking group storytelling experience that’s always memorable and highly amusing.” A chance to see a master storyteller in the flesh.

6) The Artist Alley. I can’t help it. I love fantasy art. Elves, caves, towers silhouetted against a moonlight night, devil-faced foes snarling as they hold battle axes dripping with slime. Here’s a chance to indulge yourself.

Shameless self-promotion: I’ll also be signing copies of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks at the Troll Lord Games booth (#709) at Gen Con. Exact time TBA. Check here or follow me on Twitter (@ethanfreak) for updates.

Happy Birthday, MTV

Who killed the video star? Was it MTV? (Pictured: Video for "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles)Wait, I’m how old?

Yep, MTV — that’s “Music Television” for those of you who may have forgotten what the acronym “MTV” stands for — just turned 30 years old yesterday. It was on Aug. 1, 1981 that MTV aired “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles. Since that time, MTV indeed did sort of kill the radio star. Or, at least, MTV ushered in a new age of image-, not music-based, music consumption.

Once upon a time, MTV more or less controlled the music industry, or at least the popular understanding of music and its increasingly coiffed image. If you recall, MTV played music videos hosted by on-air hosts known as “VJs.” Remember Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, J.J. Jackson and Martha Quinn? Wasn’t J.J. really annoying?

Kids like me growing up in a small, rural town didn’t have cable. So to catch MTV, I had to hang out at my friends’ houses in the next bigger town to see the likes of David Bowie, Duran Duran, Adam Ant, Culture Club, The Fixx, The Police, and The Cars strut down the street, play their guitars on rooftops and enact some hokey drama involving street gangs, locker rooms or candles blowing in the wind.

The channel quickly has its imitators: HBO had a program called Video Jukebox, SuperStation WTBS created Night Tracks, NBC launched their MTV-like Friday Night Videos, ABC had its ABC Rocks, and TBS started the Cable Music Channel, then sold it to MTV, who turned it into VH1.

In its day, MTV had a profound impact on the music industry and popular culture. But by the 1990s, the video had lost much of its appeal and novelty, and MTV began programming (and pioneering) reality TV series such as “The Real World,” “Jackass,” and talk shows such as “Loveline” and “The Jon Stewart Show,” and later, celebrity-based reality shows like “The Osbournes.”

The times they have changed. I prefer to think of those days of the 1980s,when like parrots we’d repeat the slogan “I want my MTV” and stay up late watching Van Halen, RATT, and Def Leppard videos (in between watching Heavy Metal for the 7th time and checking to see if the signal from the Playboy Channel was still scrambled. Yep, still scrambled).

Here’s a link to the other 10 “first” videos that ever aired that day: Aug. 1, 1981.

The occasion of MTV’s  anniversary is an opportunity to reflect on how we consume music and the Hollywood star system. And what changes the Internet has already wrought. It’s YouTube and Facebook that monopolizes our time. Do people even listen to the radio any more?

Meanwhile, is it fair to say that iTunes killed the video star?

[This post originally appeared on wired.com's Geek Dad]

On His Birthday (Today), You Can Help the Memory of Gary Gygax Last Forever

[Originally appeared on wired.com's GeekDad]

Logo for the Gygax Memorial Fund. Also the Gygax family heraldry, this shield was used by the knight on the cover of the AD&D DM's Guide and was the coat of arms of the city-state Fax in the campaign setting of Greyhawk.Today (July 27) is the birthday of Gary Gygax, who would have been 73 this year had he not passed from this earth in 2008 to dance forever on the astral plane, which (according to the DM’s Guide) is a realm of thought and memory, and also the place the gods go when they die or have been forgotten.

Gygax, D&D’s co-founder, is gone, but certainly not forgotten. One way he’s being immortalized is in bronze and stone. Previously I wrote for GeekDad about the Gygax Memorial Fund and the increasing likelihood that a monument in his honor will be built in Gary’s hometown of Lake Geneva, WI. The city has granted parkland for the memorial, and the fund has incorporated as a 501(c)3 nonprofit.

Now the next step is to raise money, and the hope is for much of the dough to be croudfunded, with this year’s Gen Con and Gary’s birthday as the impetus.

D&D die-hard and occasional Geek Dad contributor Tavis Allisontells me that at this year’s Gen Con (Aug. 4-7), the fundraising for the monument begins in earnest. Gen Con, you see, was Gary’s baby.

Over at the booth for ye Old School Renaissance Group (booth #1541), a collective of publishers and fans working to carry the torch of Dungeons & Dragons the way Gygax and co-creator Dave Arneson imagined it, Mr. Allison says Gary’s widow, Gail Gygax, will be “talking about conversations she had with her husband before his death about how he wanted to be remembered, the resulting vision for the statue, and the goals of the Memorial Fund.”

And I can’t imagine anyone who stops by to drop some spare change in the bucket will be refused.

This illustration by Erol Otus is the cover of a new book Cheers, Gary a collection of Gary's correspondence with his fans. The image is Gary, as the wizard seen on the front of the original D&D box set.To encourage you to give, Tavis says that cool donor rewards include T-shirts with the Gygax Memorial logo, and a book calledCheers, Gary “which selects the best of his correspondence with fans at the EN World Q&A threads.” Editor Paul Hughes will be signing books, which have an Erol Otus illustration on the front cover depicting Gary as the wizard seen on the front of the original D&D box set.

The big goal?  Raise $500,000 via Kickstarter. Allison thinks it’s doable, with your help, of course.

“I think there is real potential for the Fund to achieve the $500K goal for this campaign through crowdfunding alone. This would be the most ambitious Kickstarter goal in history, but it’s not unprecedented and if Gary doesn’t have ten times the dedication than Robocop does I’ll eat my dice bag,” Tavis says.

To help continue the Fund’s momentum, and in recognition of everything Gary meant to gamers everywhere, Allison asks for your assistance in getting the word out about these efforts. Even if you can’t make it to Gen Con, please pay tribute to Gary’s birthday and the role D&D played in your life by posting news to your blogs, social networks, and communities that the Gygax Memorial Fund will be at Gen Con booth number #1541, and that folks can donate in memory of Gary at Gen Con, or directly on the website,http://www.gygaxmemorialfund.com/.

See you in the dungeon.

‘Trollhunter’ director pays homage to Norwegian folklore

The troll hunters approach a massive “Jotnar" troll[This article originally appeared in the Boston Globe]

by Ethan Gilsdorf

Eighteenth- and 19th-century Norwegians believed in trolls. These huge humanoids wandered wild, marginal places and wastelands and caused trouble when they encountered humans.

Nowadays, no one believes in trolls. But they still haunt and inhabit Norway’s folkloric consciousness, a still-pristine landscape of woods, mountains, and fiord lands, largely as comic characters. Think of the dim-witted troll in the Norwegian tale “The Three Billy Goats Gruff,’’ easily tricked by the goats and the butt of jokes.

“Trollhunter,’’ which opens Friday, dusts off those fairy tales and updates them with a fresh, 21st-century coat of adventure and suspense — and ironic reality check.

Trolls exist.

But “fairy tales don’t always match reality,’’ grumbles Hans, the film’s misanthropic antihero.

Written and directed by Norwegian André Ovredal, “Trollhunter’’ shares the first-person-reportage feel of “The Blair Witch Project,’’ as well as the shaky-camera monster-movie vibe of “Cloverfield.’’ Ovredal’s vision also includes doses of Steven Spielberg’s effects-driven shock and awe, as well as that director’s prevailing mistrust of authority.

“I wanted to blend my love of ‘Indiana Jones’ with my love of trolls,’’ said Ovredal, 37, in Boston to promote his debut feature. Which explains why Hans the troll hunter wears a fedora.

As with “Blair Witch,’’ what the audience sees, ostensibly, is footage shot by students. There are three of them, investigating a series of bear killings in the wilds of Norway. They hope to interview the “poacher.’’

Finally agreeing to let the video crew follow him, the poacher is revealed to be Hans, a middle-aged, burned-out government employee working for the fictitious Troll Security Service (or TSS, an echo of the PST, Norway’s version of the CIA). His job: keep the troll population under control. Meanwhile, TSS bureaucrats devise bogus explanations — tornadoes, floods, bears — to explain any isolated troll-wrought damage or deaths.

The troll hunter is played by Norway’s most famous and controversial comedian, Otto Jespersen, known for his crass, dark sense of humor. Here, Jespersen doesn’t aim for laughs. The portrayal is straight. “There’s nothing heroic about what I do,’’ he deadpans to the wide-eyed college kids.

While the troll hunter is supposed to ensure Norwegians never learn that trolls exist, Hans eventually tires of the cover-up and lets the students document his methods. In doing so, “Trollhunter’’ manages to pay homage to Norway’s rich folklore and take jabs at government bureaucracy and politics. He complains he gets no overtime pay. After every killing, Hans must fill out a “Slayed Troll Form.’’ The current controversy over building electrical towers in Norway’s hinterlands is cleverly woven into the plot. Let’s just say those high-tension lines serve a purpose beyond bringing power to the people.

“Because Norway has such rugged landscapes, it’s not surprising that many of the creatures of their cultural lore are connected so deeply with the earth and its perils,’’ noted Sandra Hordis, a professor at Arcadia University, in Glenside, Pa., who specializes in medieval literature and folklore. “They are beings sprung from soil and stone, and have come to permeate much of the folklore of the region.’’

Trolls have given their names to natural features such as the rugged, dolomite formations called Trollholmsund and Trollstigen, a dramatic mountain road that translates as “Troll’s Ladder.’’

Ovredal, who is known in Norway as a director of commercials, and his special-effects team wanted their trolls to have idiosyncratic and distinct personalities. Their creatures aren’t the Hulk-like, Middle-earth trolls Peter Jackson brought to life, nor are they the cute, neon-haired dolls from the 1960s. These trolls were inspired by “The Fairy Tales of Asbjornsen and Moe,’’ a book from the 1850s that Ovredal’s grandparents read to him as a boy.

“I never read ‘Lord of Rings’ and never played the game D&D [Dungeons & Dragons],’’ said Ovredal. “There was a missing, collective mythology I had to create.’’

Ovredal worked out a detailed “natural history of trolls’’ as fastidious as an entry in the D&D “Monster Manual.’’ His lexicon delineates four species: the one-armed “Ringlefinch,’’ the three-headed “Tosserlad,’’ the cave-dwelling “Mountain King,’’ and the massive “Jotnar.’’ All have oversize faces and bulbous noses. Norwegians know that sunlight turns trolls to stone. In Ovredal’s world, flashes of bright light also can make them explode. Here’s the scientific explanation: The UVB rays accelerate vitamin D and calcium production in their bodies, which either calcifies or detonates them.

In a nod to folklore, “Trollhunter’’ also includes a bridge scene reminiscent of “Three Billy Goats Gruff.’’ And just as in the “fee-fi-fo-fum’’ nursery rhyme, these trolls can smell Christian blood.

The director cut his teeth on Spielberg’s alien and fantasy films such as “Jaws,’’ “E.T.’’ and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.’’ In those films, he said, “We have to figure out what is psychologically true in the fantastic.’’

But overall, “Trollhunter’’ is more skeptical than Spielbergian. Ovredal likens his film more to “Man Bites Dog,’’ the Belgian mockumentary about a film crew following a serial killer. He didn't want to make the “typical Norwegian socialist-realist film.’’ Like “The Host’’ for South Koreans, perhaps this overlooked Scandinavian nation needs its own monster movie.

“I hope they experience an adventure they have never seen before,’’ Ovredal said of US audiences. “A sense of humor that’s different. A monster they’ve never seen before. [And leave the theater] with a big smile on their face, and talk about it.’’

Ethan Gilsdorf can be reached at www.ethangilsdorf.com.

Video games and kids: How young is too young?

A screenshot from Star Wars Arcade: Falcon Gunner. Too much for 8-year-olds?[This posting originally appeared on wired.com's Geek Dad, then was republished by CNN.com]

I was visiting my nephews, again. Within seconds of seeing me fiddle with my iPhone, my older nephew, Jack, who is 8, asked me, again, if my iPhone had any videogames on it.

"Uh, no, sorry Jack," was my reply, letting a white lie skip through my teeth. I knew his mother and father might be none too pleased to see the two of us hunched over the tiny screen playing "Star Wars Arcade: Falcon Gunner" or "Lego Indiana Jones 2."

What his parents are doing is difficult. They've chosen to keep Jack videogame-free for as long as possible.

Of course, Jack has gotten a taste of videogames. He gets to play on special occasions, and will probably play at friends' houses where the rules are different.

I suspect his parents will persist until they can't hold out any longer, until peer pressure from schoolmates, combined with the reality that kids of Jack's generation will be inexorably bound to video technology like none before them, forces them to relent.

Perhaps it's a lost cause. Still, key questions can be raised here, and they are good ones to consider.

What is the appropriate age to let kids loose in the digital playscape? Are videogames OK for 8-year-olds? Seven-year-olds? Six? How young is too young?

Some games are appropriate for certain age groups and some games aren't; obviously, no one is allowing their 5-year-old to play "Grand Theft Auto." (Jeezum, let's hope.)

I'm no expert, but I've been reading up on some of the research. For one, the trend is that each year, younger and younger kids are experiencing screen time.

This article references a study saying that since 2005, "the average age that U.S. youngsters started to use electronic gadgets had fallen from just over 8 to just over 6 1/2."

Educational psychologist and author Jane Healy recently wrote: "My position is that children are better off without computers before the age of 7. By age 7, their brains have undergone a great deal of maturation and the basics should be in there. They can start to expand the type of thinking they can do so they can actually start to get something worthwhile using good software, for example, good simulation programs."

To my mind, the issue goes beyond the debatable ill-effects of videogame violence -- which I debunk in this op-ed, suggesting that videogame violence can be a good thing.

To me, the issue isn't about fears that games instill violent behavior, but rather that videogames are usurping the power of more conventional toys. There may be merits to shielding boys and girls like Jack from their digital futures, at least temporarily, if kids can first learn to amuse themselves without automatically reaching for a game controller.

The truck, the toy sword, the soccer ball, the sandbox, the board game, the pad of paper, the book: All can be as magical and entrancing as anything a game studio can cook up. Perhaps this is the rule of thumb: Once a love of non-digital play is instilled in young minds and habits, then let kids run free through the wild world of pixels.

Obviously there are no definitive answers. These are questions that have been discussed on Wired.com before. But I hope this space can continue to provide an excellent forum to discuss the issues. I'm curious to hear your viewpoints. Please comment below.

And, next time I see my nephew Jack, I'll have a better idea of how to counter his whining -- sweet whining, but whining nonetheless.

Gygax memorial makes progress

Gary Gygax the way the folks at "Futurama" drew his cartoon versionLake Geneva, Wisconsin, was always a mythical land of enchantment to me, a kid raised far away on the east coast who spent much — OK, way too much — of his allowance on Dungeons & Dragons gear.

While the mailing address — TSR Hobbies, Inc., POB 756, Lake Geneva WI 53147, U.S.A. — felt like an imaginary realm, I knew it was also a real land where that mysterious co-creator and co-godfather of D&D lived and worked: Gary Gygax.

When my local hobby shop didn’t have a module or rule book on their shelves, I’d mail in my order form directly to the source in Lake Geneva (with my check, of course, that covered the price plus “shipping and handling”). The elves and orcs who toiled there would fill my order, and in a few weeks I’d get a package in my mailbox. And the next crucial adventure could continue.

Ever since Gygax passed away in 2008, his widow Gail Gygax and others have spearheaded an effort to honor him and his contribution to gaming lore with a public monument in Lake Geneva. The Gygax Memorial Fund website just announced that goal is one step closer:

The Gygax Memorial Fund has reached a huge milestone. We have been granted land for the memorial site at Donian Park. Donian Park is a four acre open space site which encompasses a wetland and the 100 year recurrence interval floodplain along the White River in downtown Lake Geneva.

On the website for the Gygax Memorial Fund, there’s a link to donate, if you are so inclined. There’s also a forum to share your testimonials of how Gary and D&D changed your life for the better.

Long live Gary!

Stake Land hits its mark

Young Martin (Connor Paolo) faces a vampire in "Stake Land"Post-apocalyptic scenarios never used to be inundated with the undead. Take the classics: Soylent Green, Planet of the Apes, The Terminator. Plenty of unsavory characters who’ve fashioned impressive wardrobes out of leather, your pick of unspeakable acts. But no zombies.

Of late, our dystopian worlds tend to be overrun with the plague-ridden. Whatever killed off the humans and caused the US government to collapse was not nuclear, not alien, but viral, spread one sweet bite at a time. Ah, sweet human flesh.

In the case of Stake Land, blame a vampire epidemic. Unlike standard animated corpses, who stumble about while comically shedding limbs, these “vamps’’ are more orc-like: buff, agile, growling, with a bad case of ’roid rage. We don't know where they came from, or what caused the plague, but you don't want to mess with them.

Still, the standard wooden stake to the heart does the trick. Or twisted and hammered into the sternum. Or jammed into the brain stem. Each type of undead --  "vamp," "scamp" and "berserker" --- has its own special way to stop ticking, and "Mister" knows each special way to kill 'em good.

When Stake Land begins, a lone, vampire hunter known only as Mister (Nick Damici, of World Trade Center) saves young Martin (Connor Paolo) just as the baddies kill his parents and munch on his baby sibling. Through spewing black blood, Dad's last burbling words to Mister are "Save him." The misanthropic takes Martin under his wing and trains the boy in anti-vamp hand-to-hand combat. There's a nice scene of the kid waiting in an oversized football helmet and pads, armed with a wooden spear, as Mister unleashes a zombie captured in the trunk of his car expressly for his impromptu boot camp. 

The boy deemed ready to kick his own undead butt, together, surrogate son and father cruise northward in a clunky gas guzzler hoping to reach Canada, a.k.a. “New Eden,’’ a promised land where life is supposedly better and the weather's too cold for the vamps to survive. At night, they chain length of metal fencing to the car's exterior to protect them as they sleep. Sometimes they stay up at night to lure the zombies with bait like a teddy bear, then pounce. Mister collects teeth from his trophies They pick up a nun, played by a shorn, haggard-looking Kelly McGillis (a long way from her Witness and Top Gun days), a pregnant girl country singer (Danielle Harris), and an Army deserter (Sean Nelson). In the weakest plotline, they must fight off a creepy cult leader (Michael Cerveris) and his burlap-wearing minions. It seems that in the future, the end of the world has encouraged nihilistic Christian sects -- what else is new? --- and this cult has a way of air-dropping the undead fodder on the encampments of the living, terrorist-style, much like medieval siege engines hurled plague-ridden carcasses over the ramparts to infect castle residents. There's also marauding bands of cannibals (though it's unclear if, taxonomically, they're undead as well or just hungry).

As in The Road Warrior, a young narrator’s experience is the prism through which we see rape, death, devastation. We watch Martin morph from wide-eyed boy to jaded young man. Damici plays Mister as all brood and no bluster. More of a tight-lipped western drifter than sci-fi action hero, he keeps watch while the others sleep, and utters advice like “One day you’ll learn not to dream at all." The ultimate coming of age training.

Other undead movies needlessly foreground the action. Stake Land has its fight scenes, and they're shot conventionally, with none of that slow-mo, high-flying acrobatic all in vogue. Here, they action is also secondary. While paying debts to John Carpenter's Escape from New York and Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films, director Jim Mickle (Mulberry Street), who wrote the script with Damici, has his own aesthetic, which smartly lingers not on violence but on the silent, poignant details of this desolate world— a ruined factory, an abandoned home the travelers scavenge for food and a place to sleep, a Virgin Mary figurine left on a makeshift grave. The beautifully bleak vision is enhanced by Ryan Samul’s exquisite cinematography and composer Jeff Grace’s plaintive piano and violin arrangements. In one touching moment, McGillis recognizes that one of the attacking vamps is a fellow sister of the cloth. She winces as the nun is finally laid to rest, but not before the bitch is skewered by a stake.

This doomed world may feel familiar, full of paranoia and desperation, but Stake Land remains one of the genre’s smartest entries in years. As in The Road, our hope hinges on the survival of this makeshift family. Which suggests the hidden purpose of zombie movies: Given these folks’ post-apocalyptic woes, can the recession be all that bad?

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winning book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, his travel memoir investigation into fantasy and gaming subcultures the Huffington Post called “part personal odyssey, part medieval mid-life crisis, and part wide-ranging survey of all things freaky and geeky," National Public Radio described as "Lord of the Rings meets Jack Kerouac’s On the Road" and Wired.com proclaimed, “For anyone who has ever spent time within imaginary realms, the book will speak volumes.” Follow Ethan's adventures at http://www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.

D&D Haiku, Tolkien on Crack, and Other Mischief: Latest FF&GG newsletter

D&D Haiku, Tolkien on Crack, and Other Mischief: Summer 2011 Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks News!

Thanks for tuning into this, the next installment of my intermittent Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks newsletter.

There are plenty of news, rumors and geekery recommendations since you last heard from me.

Read the news here!

D&D poems [starring the Umber Hulk, Gelatinous Cube and girls]

The muse has hit me like a vorpal sword.

I've been working on some poems for an upcoming comedy performance (called "Funny As a Crutch," Mon, June 13 in Boston)—and it was impossible to resist the temptation to pen some D&D-inspired poems. For those of you who can'y make it, or for those of you itching for a sneak peek, here's a taste of some of the material I'll be reading. Note to 4th edition D&D players: I'll be kicking it old school).

Wizard: "Does this work on the ladies?"D&D Haiku

1.

Sister Jess takes a peek:

dice, graph paper, B.O.

Too many teenage trolls.

2.

Shopping list: rope, sack,

chain mail bikini.
D&D or 
is this S&M?

3.

Roll the dice. The world

stops. Sorry, page 7 says 
fire-
ball won’t work on girls. 

Umber Hulk Love Poem

The Umber Hulk, in love.

Another tiff. Another row. Another rift.

Predictably, I was sulking in my burrow,

dragging earth with iron claws. Chucking loam.

OK, I was tunneling down, I was deconstructing love,

mulling who knew how to better cook tubers and shrews (me),

whose turn it was to weekend with the other’s in-laws (she).

Why this union was corridor-like, one path, blind.

I reached the end of my passageway, Some unbudgeable rock.

But suddenly, my she-hulk arrived. She removed

her bedroom gloves and cracked her knuckles.

“What about your nails?” I asked. She shrugged

and burrowed beside me.

I paused to I admire her large, bipedal form,

that insectoid aberration, her ape-like build.

Her body a dull black, shading to yellowish gray on her front.

Lovely.

Her ivory mandibles. Still ivory.

Twenty years and I still admired her ability to confuse

any creature that sees all four of her eyes.

I still desired her.

“My umber love,” I cooed.

“You’re my knight, ” she replied.

We hunkered down. We dug.

We hunted for soft sweet human flesh together.

Hobbits taste good too.

A Rap for Geeky Heroes

Let’s say you’re Harry, Frodo, Leia, or Sam,

Matthew, Mark, Luke or Han,

Or Perseus, Jason, the Tin Man,

Jesus? Kenny of South Park? Another sacrificial lamb.

You’re bored in your corner of the galaxy – Kansas,

Tatooine -- raised by Bilbo, nagged by Aunt Beru,

‘cuz your parents, they gone, they ancient history, they been embalmed.

Your mother, probably she was Bambi's Mom.

You might got some prophecy, scar on your forehead.

Cursed, perchance. Wimpy. Better off dead.

So, our brave hero, you’ll need a mentor to guide you,

someone to edify, inculcate, enlighten your mind.

I’ll teach you Jedi dice tricks, Jedi beer pong tricks,

the chicanery of Cheetos, Doritos, Dew,

how to cast spells like Force Field, Atmospheric Dry Ice,

Glowing Blue Saber (or Sword), How to Be Nice,

How To Hit Armor Class Zero –- THACO!

I’ll be with you, beside you, crit your attacks,

you levitate rocks and I’ll be chillin’ piggyback.

You want to hunt for heart, courage, brain-ing?

Now’s the time to remove your +2 Wheels of Training.

I think I’ve prepped you to accept danger unaided,

set out the door, flip down your blast shield,

take the first step unafraid-ed, so launch your path,

level up from hobbits to jawas, pixels to bloodbath,

stop at this tavern, then wear a disguise,

you’ll know thine enemy, he’s the one with red eyes.

Embark on your voyage, your crusade, your trek to a far-away earth,

middle-, high- or low-, you’ll walk and you’ll walk, lose some of that girth,

and finally arrive at your destiny, that one doom, that ironic fate,

that M. Night Shy-a-malan-ding-dong for which you can’t wait. 

The final reel twist? No, I am your father.

And Frodo is your step-brother (I boinked our evil step-mother),

who, by the way, had sex with Voldermort.

And Gary Gygax is your father. Got it?

You sigh. Your brow doth furrow. Boo hoo. Your puppy eyes widen.

You ask, “What must I do?” Poo or poo not, I reply. There is no try.

You will take the Ring, to Mordor, or to East Timor.

WTF. Join the Peace Corps. I don’t care what you quest for.

Any damn thing. Just get the flip outta here.

The Gelatinous Cube Vs. Laurie McClintock

What are the moves of the gelatinous cube?

Few.

Undetected, invisible, pretty much

a 10 by 10 block of Jello.

“Gelatinous cubes are nearly transparent

and are difficult to see (and thus surprise on 1-3),”

so says then Monster Manual, page 43.

Yet I like the idea of the cube, waiting, eating time,

hoping for lost damsels to blunder by in the dark,

like me, on the couch, in my living room.

alone with Laurie McClintock.

The Electric Light Orchestra plays on the turntable,

“You got me runnin' goin' out of my mind,

You got me thinkin' that I'm wastin' my time.

Don't bring me down,no no no no no.”

The “nos’” accompany the rising of crescent of cicadas outside

on this sad, after-dark August of the Carter Administration.

The gelatinous cube is silent.

The gelatinous cube makes no move.

The artists copped out. On page 43, there is no picture of the gelatinous cube.

Just a blank space, like my angsty ribcage.

Like that useless weapon between my legs, invisible to girls.

“The gelatinous cube is one of scavengers not uncommon

in dungeons,” says page 43. “As these monsters travel about

they sweep up metallic and other items which are ‘indigestible’ to them.”

I want to collect Laurie McClintock’s necklace.

Snare her earrings with my tongue.

Unlock that rusty chastity belt, or gauchos, or whatever.

I wonder, what sort of breasts sprout under her sweater?

Stalactites, or stalagmites?

I scavenge her in the dungeon of my mind.

“You got me shakin' got me runnin' away,”

You get me crawlin' up to you everyday,

Don't bring me down,no no no no no ...”

The gelatinous cube still makes no move. Wisely:

“If a gelatinous cube touches (hits) an opponent,

a saving throw versus paralyzation must be made,

or the creature touched anesthetized for 5-20 melee rounds.”

“The ‘cube then surrounds the victim,

secretes digestive fluids, and digests a meal.”

Laurie McClintock has been anesthetized.

I want to secrete on her, then eat her.

Then Laurie McClintock fights back.

“Gelatinous cubes can be hit by all forms of weapons,” page 43 declares,

by which it means swords, axes, daggers, morning stars.

Pole arms. Just not “electricity, fear,” or “holds.”

Alas, Laurie McClintock’s hold is powerless on me.

“You're lookin' good just like a snake in the grass,

One of these days you're gonna break your glass.”

I realize ELO makes no sense. The cicadas taper off.

Lights blind the driveway. “No no no no no.”

High beams shimmer through the living room window.

My glass body shimmers. It’s Laurie McClintock’s Mom. 

The fight is over. She gets up. Goes to the door.

The gelatinous cube makes no move.

D&D Grammar Lesson

To be. Conjugate. Repeat after me.

I am an elf.

You are an elf.

He is an elf. Is she an elf?

We are all elves, and dwarves, and halflings.

I really hope she is an elf.

There are too many he-elves around here.

Simple present: I have five pounds of dice.

Simple past: I killed thirteen orcs.

Conditional: If I had known your mom couldn’t drive, I would have brought the pizza. Dork.

Present perfect: Ethan has played D&D every Friday night for five years straight.

Future perfect: By senior year I will have kissed a girl. A real one.

Adjectives:

Write the comparative and superlative forms of the following adjectives:

Awesome: Awesomer. Awesomest.

Evil. Eviler, Evilest.

Wicked, More wicked. Cool.

Vocabulary:

Open your Dungeon Masters guides to page 123.

Use any of the following “prostitute phrases” in a sentence:

Slovenly trull, cheap trollop, saucy tart, wanton wench,

expensive doxy, aged madam, rich panderer, brazen strumpet.

Repeat.

Dialogue:

Caroline: Zorg, est-ce que tu veux aller au cinema avec moi?

(Caroline: Zorg, do you want to go to the movies with me?)

Zorg: Non. Me detest toi.

(Zorg: Non. Me hate you.

Zorg est malfaisant chaotique.

(Zorg is chaotic evil.)

Conjunctions. Co-ordinate conjunctions include: and, but, or, nor, for and yet.

I became ill by eating the Cheetos and drinking all the Dew.

The jocks should have arrived or will be arriving soon to take our dice away.

The Dungeon Master had promised to not to kill us but did not keep his promise.

Let's Put on a Show!

Henry hams it up.I was hanging out with my nephews over the weekend.

Jack and Henry are aged 8 and 4 respectively. A couple years back, Jack took tap dancing lessons.

When he outgrew his shoes, and became a wee bit self-conscious about being only boy in the dance class, he hung up his vaudeville dreams. But now the shoes fit Henry. And before I knew it, while we were all eating dinner, the tap shoes had been produced and Jack was giving Henry a crash course in everything tap.

“You go like this,” Jack instructed, kicking his lower leg back and forth while the rest of us tried to finish our pizza. “Click and click and click.”

Meal over, the boys disappeared. To treat Uncle Ethan, they had secretly decided to put on a show.

This was DIY at its best. They went over their routine somewhere upstairs. Total rehearsal time: about 15 minutes. They selected their costumes: a dress shirt, their Dad’s tie and silly hat and sunglasses for Henry; and just a shirt for Jack. Total time allotted for costume change: probably 5 minutes.

Then Jack returned to announce that the show would commence in the living room.

“Would you please, you know, shut off your phones and other noisy things,” Jack announced to his audience of three. The kid is 8, going on stage manager.

As for the spectacle itself, there was dancing, and hamming it up, and Jack whispering instructions to Henry as he clicked and clacked his way to tap dancing glory. “Now Henry will do something he’s been working on himself,” Jack announced as third act began: Henry pretended to pour tea, then blew out a candelabra of three lit candles.

Fred Astaire and Gregory Hines they were not, but the show was unbelievable in its own way.

The Uncle shouted “Encore!”

The parents shouted, “Bedtime!”

 The impromptu performance reminded me of my summer days as a kid. I was always putting on a play, or a puppet show, or making a Super 8 claymation movie, or writing a new Dungeons & Dragons adventure, or painting a mural, or building a tree fort — or planning a D&D adventure/performance/movie in a tree fort. I would make grand pronouncements about some new creative direction I had decided to devoted my life to. Summer vacation was always a time for projects, a chance to try out new material. Even if my audience was three: my sister, brother and mother.

My nephew’s nutty, goofy, fearless example recalled those days, but also imparted a key lesson. Namely: be brave. Risk embarrassment. Put yourself out there. Try out that new material. Test it in front of real people (not just the real people in your mind.) Gussy up the barn, sew a curtain from that old bolt of gingham, reunite the jug band and put on a show!

Some writers crave limelight but sit back and wait for the light to find them. “I’ll just wait till someone calls me” is a common myth about building your literary career. It doesn’t work that way. You have to make your own calls.

Putting on your own event is also a good antidote to that grumpy feeling creative people can get. You know the one I’m talking about: that everyone else seems to be getting recognition except you. Miffed that you’re not being invited to read your poems for that new hot reading series? Bummed that the such-and-such bookstore or library or nightclub won’t host you? Find a non-conventional venue like a bar or church basement or backyard, write up a press release, make a Facebook event and invite your friends. (My pal Jane Roper hosted a great book launch for her novel about summer camp, Eden Lake. The event took place at a VFW hall and featured a sing-a-long and Sterno cookers for DIY s’mores.)

Put on your own show. It’s a great way to get experience performing your work, and to test out new material. One piece of advice: I do recommend writing and rehearsing for a bit longer than my nephews did.

[If you'd like to see my efforts in this gingham-and-jug-band arena, four performing pals and I are putting on a performance of writing, comedy and music called "Funny As a Crutch" on Monday June 13 in Cambridge, Mass. The show includes dirty limericks, educational raps, recipes for cooking raccoon, Dungeons & Dragons-inspired poetry, children's stories that shouldn't be read to children, and fiction about the miracle of motherhood as seen from the bottom of a martini. More information here. Hope to see you there.]

Hobbit talk

NOT in The Hobbit? Artist John Howe's vision of Dol Guldur, Sauron's fortified hangout and HQ tucked away in the forests of Mirkwood.As I recently wrote about in my posting at Geek Dad on wired.com, there's some interesting talk in the Tolkien fan world about The Hobbit movie adaptation.

First, it was confirmed that Orlando Bloom would reprise his role as Legolas in The Hobbit production now being filmed by Peter Jackson and company down in New Zealand. As many of you know, while Legolas features prominently in The Lord of the Rings, the blond elf does not appear in J.R.R. Tolkien’s earlier book, The Hobbit.

Then, a few days ago, the news was made official that The Hobbit would in fact be two films. (The rumor mill knew this for eons.) “The first film, titled The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, will be released on December 14, 2012. The second film, titled The Hobbit: There and Back Again, is slated for release the following year, on December 13, 2013,” it was declared on the production’s Hobbit Blog.

The simple choice to make two more complex films out of one simple, 300-odd-page kid’s book has pricked up the ears of some fans—i.e., me, for one—and has made other fans prickly.

Upping the ante was what Peter Jackson revealed on his Facebook page earlier this week about the plot of The Hobbit movie:

“I’m not going to say just what and when, but I will confirm that both the White Council and Dol Guldur will feature in the movies. And not just in one scene either. Just how to visualise it has been a challenge, but fortunately Alan Lee and John Howe went crazy with ideas, and it should look pretty cool.”

For the unwashed, Dol Guldur is Sauron’s fortified hangout and HQ in the forest of Mirkwood for more than a millennia of the Third Age (back when he goes by the handle of the Necromancer). The White Council is sort of like the Council of Elrond, an All-Star assembly of Middle-earth heroes, formed in response to the rise of Dol Guldur. The members include the Wizards Saruman the White and Gandalf the Grey, Lady Galadriel of Lothlórien, Master Elrond of Rivendell and a few others. These goings-on are only alluded to in The Hobbit.

The latest announcement explains the reason why Cate Blanchett will be back to reprise her role as Galadriel. It also makes sense that Christopher Lee will be back to play Saruman (although, as of yet, this has not been confirmed). Less clear is how Legolas/Bloom will be integrated into the movie.

To work in these elements, Jackson and the other screenwriters have made it clear they’ll be adding material not actually in The Hobbit, but drawn from other sources in the Tolkien lengendarium. But as reported in The Guardian and elsewhere, some question the wisdom of this move. Is turning what is essentially a kid’s book into high epic fantasy more along the lines of The Lord of the Rings such a great idea? Remember, both in tone and in treatment, The Hobbit was written for and targeted mainly to children, with very little of the heady, wearying Sturm und Drang of LOTR.

Of course, PJ and the gang at Wingnut and Weta have not only oodles of fans to please, but oodles of money to make. And most of those LOTR fans are movie fans first and foremost, not readers of the trilogy. So fashioning a plot and movie look-and-feel that’s as seamless with the Middle-earth millions already know from the LOTR movies makes money sense.

Tolkien purists put their trust in Jackson the first time around and, squabbling aside, most were generally pleased with the elements he added and subtracted to LOTR. The appearance of Legolas, the White Council and Dol Guldur is plausible; these logically would have happened concurrent with the events of The Hobbit.

Still, I can imagine the most fevrent fans of The Hobbit (the book) might want to revoke Jackson’s creative license.

But I can also imagine the cheers in the audience when Legolas appears wherever he’s going to appear. We’ll have to wait till Christmas of next year out find out.