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Name: Cunningham
Home: Los Angeles, CA, United States
About Me: I am a pulp screenwriter; producer and marketer of movies; author of short pulp fiction and other media. I am affectionately known as "The Mad Pulp Bastard" because I get to the "pulp" of the matter... See my complete profile
"I write for fanboy moments. I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I’m afraid of. I write to do all the things the viewers want too. So the intensity of the fan response is enormously gratifying. It means I hit a nerve. "
I am still tired from last night's show because it was chock full of the awesome. My ears are still ringing, and the mad pulp bastard is acting like the old, slow bastard.
Such is the price we pay for rock n' roll.
Last night as we rocked out, it occurred to me (because this is how my brain works) that the best rock n' roll songs are stories, and the best concerts are novels with each song being a chapter. With that nugget of insight, the following are my further observations on "story" by way of Ulrich, Hettrick, et al...
1. COME IN SWINGING:
The guys started the show with a rapid-fire head-banging tune that got the audience quickly off their feet and into the experience. They also came in late, which built the expectations up in the audience to a fever pitch.
2. CONCENTRATE ON THE ESSENTIALS:
This was a stripped down show. Three guitars, a drum set and amplifiers on a sparse black curtained stage. The amplifiers were set up so that the readout panels with their glowing diodes and LCD's providing a line across the back of the stage and defined the space.
And truly that's all that was required. The rest was audience and creators...
3. CONNECT WITH THE AUDIENCE:
Even though the band was separate from the audience they consistently asked questions, got feedback, threw stuff into the crowd and roused everyone to cheer and rage. They always made sure to go back and reconnect somehow with every new song.
4. STORYTELLING IS A COMMUNAL EXPERIENCE:
Stories are meant to be shared and spread. People texted with their phones. My date Twittered the whole thing.
Lots of classics thrown in there - Enter, Sandman - One - Sad But True...
6. BUT NOT EXACTLY HOW THEY EXPECT:
As you can see they flipped up a classic song by adding Flea to their mix (which was a good fit). They worked new songs into their playlist, changed guitars up, changed the arrangements. They played on everyone's expectations and brought something new to the table.
Storytelling is a lot like Rock n' roll. The good stories are memorable and leave your ears ringing the next day. The great ones inspire you, and make you question how they were constructed.
Posting will be light for the next week or so as I get ahead on some projects (who am I kidding? I mean catch up...) and write my ass off. I also have some events that require my pulpy presence.
Just to update everyone:
The Knightmare will now be a two-part radio podcast. That means reconfiguring the second part a bit which I am doing now...
and several other things that I can't even hint at yet...
In the meantime you can speculate in the comments on what I'm cooking up and tell me what you'd like to see from Pulp 2.0. It can be anything pulp/movie/comic related.
Nine Inch Nails on a Red Right Hand telling a Story2oh to the Writerboy
It's days like these that I embrace the Scribosphere. By digitally connecting the dots one can see a storytelling epiphany about to happen (which is a good thing)
For those of you who don't know, let me give you the rundown:
Jill Golick's Story2oh project got kicked off of Facebook because part of FB's terms is that all their profiles have to be of real people (Ha!). This was after Jill made a presentation at CaseCamp -- a gathering of new media types to discuss the future.
It was all a real pisser because there was suddenly two camps: One that said that there must be transparency (mostly new media folk) , and the other camp that said that the story's the thing (the writers). The new media folks couldn't get past the "deception" aspect of what occurred, and the writers couldn't get past the fact that Facebook has rules regarding deceptive profiles which in essence hamstrings the idea of storytelling across profile pages.
Meanwhile, over in the corner of the blogosphere was Michael Patrick Sullivan posting over his love of Trent Reznor and the Nine Inch Nails Alternate Reality Game/Project YEAR ZERO. I read Michael's post and checked out Reznor's site.
And I was completely blown away by the scope and planning of it all. Year Zero is a Mission: Impossible made flesh (with a constantly remixed soundtrack courtesy of Reznor's licensing scheme). Real life goals and rewards and digital game-play enmeshed like my mamma's spaghetti on a Saturday night.
Thing is -- People became involved in Year Zero knowing absolutely nothing other than the whole thing was "cool." There was no transparency. In fact, I would go as far to say that it was all Mystery and Conspiracy and 100% Make-believe. It was all one big entertaining game, art project, marketing plan, concert promotion, exercise, political statement.
And the audience, the people who actually matter in this whole storytelling scheme of ours, they couldn't be happier.
So you new media types listen up: Trent Reznor is giving you the finger (with a pointy Nine Inch Nail on it) regarding transparency. Fuck transparency. Because really all that matters is the thing that goes all the way back to cave paintings and campfires:
It's always about entertaining the audience. Always.
For the creative folk : Alternate Reality Games (ARG's) are here to stay, folks. A new form of storytelling that embraces experience as well as plot and character. We won't, can't be just writers anymore if we want to compete in this arena. We have to be careful how we do it, who we do it with, and what the consequences will be if we screw it up.
I want to see some ARG's geared to my interest though. I think the video promotion for Icon's KICK-ASS comic book may apply. What sort of stuff do you want to write/produce/create? Would you like to see clues to something intriguing in the next issue of Astonishing Adventures? Integrated video playlists from YouTube? An art contest? A costume contest? An event of some sort?
A couple of weeks ago I picked up two new comics on the rack from Radical Comics. The titles were HERCULES and CALIBER and feature some work by some great talents whom I'm a big fan. But I have to admit that it was the pricing of the comics that lured me in and not the packages themselves.
HERCULES is a great comic concept and is ripe for the comic book format - so much so that it seems that just about every publisher has a version of the character somewhere in their library. What makes this Hercules different however is the "300" approach to the story. This Hercules is certainly a man-warrior of his time with all the pluses and minuses that implies. He isn't necessarily a gentleman - he's violent, brutal and yeah, unforgiving - but there is an appeal there.
That is, if you can get through the haphazard storytelling of the pages within. Images sort of blend together and if you hold the comic five feet away from your eyes you can't tell what's going on! Text is poorly placed and the story doesn't flow from one page to the next. I would have said it was a "technique" to mimic the chaos of battle, but the panel placements are equally confusing for scenes that are "calm."
The Hercules comic features a cover by Steranko, but for the life of me I would have shot the proofer who accepted this print job. The printed cover is waaaay too dark and doesn't accurately reflect the image I'm posting here. It's muted and well, ugly. That plus the gloss coat makes for a dark and unimpressive package that doesn't pop off the shelf.
The same problems that appear in Hercules also appear in CALIBER. A confusing story that is a remix of the Arthurian legendfor the "westerns audience" is made moreso by the poor placement of word balloons. My head had to bob up and down IN THE SAME PANEL to read the conversation between two characters that btw had too much text in the first place.
So if I was soooo disappointed with these why did I pick them up? Well, they were each a dollar and that lowered the bar sufficiently for me to try them out. When the price goes up for the second issues I won't be there because $2.99 or $3.99 is too much to pay for stories that don't work. Even if they are sandwiched within glossy cardstock covers.
Radical is in need of a radical reinvention of its product if it's going to survive.
