Well, dear readers, I thought it would be fun to do Silly Thriller Conventions today, in honor of all these terrible thrillers I’ve been watching of late, all of which are cut from exactly the same cloth in terms of scripts, mumbling performances, direction, and music. So, here are a few to start, and you can continue on the discussion board with more of your own.
1. Endless shots of the city at night from on high, usually followed by a shot in daylight with cars and everything sped up, streaking the screen with light. This happens at regular intervals for no reason whatsoever.
2. All characters must enter their homes at night in total darkness – once inside it never occurs to them to turn on the lights, so that we can invariably be surprised when someone pops out of the darkness. Note to characters: It’s nighttime – turn on the damn lights.
3. This is one of my favorites. We’re in a very dangerous situation, life or death, most likely. One character invariably says to another character, “Stay put and don’t move.” So, what does the character do at the earliest possible moment? Move, of course. Brilliant. And never with a good result.
4. On screen text identification of every location. Los Angeles. Rome, 8:30. Bethesda. FBI Quantico. Two Weeks Earlier. Six months earlier. Today. I mean, why don’t we just go all the way? Living Room. Toilet. Taxi. Train. Just so we for sure know where we are at all times. I especially love when we have an on screen text identification that says Washington, DC while we clearly see the White House of the Capitol Dome in the background.
5. A loud whoosh must accompany any camera pan. Mind you, nothing is happening when the camera is panning, but we must have the loud whoosh. Why, is anyone’s guess. If a character is walking or lurking in the background, the same whoosh must be used.
6. Any door shutting must be accompanied by the loudest door shutting noise possible. It doesn’t matter if it’s a huge steel door, the door of a safe, or the front door of a house, the door shutting noise can usually be heard over in the next state. Conversely, if photographers are snapping away, we must have explosion-like noises accompanying them. Never mind that cameras today make no noise.
I’ll let you dear readers take over from here. Yesterday was a day that moseyed along. I only got about five hours of sleep, so that made me a little grumpy. I had a morning meeting to discuss fixes at our upcoming pick-up horn session for And the World Goes Round, and we now have our plan. I had two poached eggs and an English muffin. Then I picked up one package, after which I came home. I then answered e-mails, had telephonic conversations, made a bunch of notes for a project idea I have, although I’m kind of on the fence about it because I’m just not sure about the person I would do it with – they would have to be really jazzed about it, and somehow I’m getting the idea they won’t be. That may just be me, though, and we’ll have to see. But it’s a really solid idea that could be a whole mess o’ fun to work on. Then I sat on my couch like so much fish.
I really was so tired I just needed more pabulum for my brain, so naturally I went to Netflix and got exactly what I wanted. The first motion picture I watched was entitled The Double, starring Richard Gere. This is yet another motion picture that only played a week in about four cities before going directly to video and cable. In fact, they don’t even bother reporting the gross, which basically means it made nothing at all. There are so many of these lately, one wonders if there’s something devious going on – I mean, who can afford to lose thirty million dollars just like that? It was a rather silly and convoluted motion picture. Naturally there are multiple twists, the first of which is given away twenty minutes into the picture. The others you can see coming a mile off. They really ought to lay off the twists for a while.
Then I went to Gelson’s and got a half-rack of ribs, some mac-and-cheese, some macaroni salad, and that’s what I had for my evening snack. I then watched another motion picture on Netflix, this one entitled The Last Stand, a film from last year starring the one and only Arnold Schwarzenegger. Had this film been made in the 1980s during his heyday, it probably would have been a hit. But this is almost thirty years later and the world has changed and so have audiences. It did poorly at the box-office. That said, as stupid and horribly-written as it is, and as over the top violent it is (you know what I mean – huge squibs of blood), there was something fun about watching the aging Mr. Schwarzenegger do his thing, and do it he did. The pace was frantic and it was directed by some Hong Kong guy.
Today, if you must know, is Father’s Day. Those who’ve read the Kritzer books know all about my family and my father, so I don’t need to rehash it here in these here notes. I happen to be a father, too, one with a perfectly wonderful daughter who gets the jokes. So, a very happy Father’s Day to all you Fathers out there in the dark. I don’t think I’ll be celebrating, since most people I know will be celebrating on their own. I’ll just eat something, say whoopee, and relax.
Tomorrow, we’ll have a rehearsal in the late afternoon with Sandy and Lanny, then later in the evening I think I’m seeing a little show in the Fringe Festival. The rest of the week is rehearsals every day, some meetings and meals and hopefully some good things that need to happen will happen.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, eat and relax, mostly the latter. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them – plus we’ve got the Silly Thriller Conventions, too. So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, after which it will be the day of the fathers.