Am I That Elitist Critic Who Hates Everything?

I don't really like movies so much. By which I mean: I don't like movies. I usually hesitate to mention this to people, because the reactions I receive are frequently more than I can bear.

FRIEND

What do you mean you don't like movies?

ME
Don't really like 'em. They're... not really... my thing.

FRIEND
You can't dislike all movies.

ME
I've liked some movies before, but generally I don't want to watch a movie.

FRIEND
But you like TV? TV is the same as movies but not as good.

ME
That's not really accurate... Let's just forget about it.

FRIEND
No. You have to explain this to me.

ME
It's just not really a form of storytelling that appeals to me.

FRIEND
I mean, some movies are bad, but you can't tell me you didn't like Gone With the Wind/The Godfather/Shawshank Redemption/Lord of the Rings/The Dark Knight/Inception!!

ME
I didn't see those movies...

FRIEND
You DIDN'T SEE the best movie of the year/our generation/all time?!

ME
No... because I don't like movies?

FRIEND(?)
How can you say you don't like movies when you haven't seen Citizen Kane/Aliens/Schindler's List/Iron Man/Avatar?!!

Then they all look at me with the same expression - a mix of contempt and pity. Disappointment. "I thought I knew you," their eyes say.

Someone actually once said, "This makes me lose respect for you."

Look, here's what it is. I prefer a form of storytelling that can explore greater depths of character. Features don't have the time for it. But besides my personal preference in the types of stories I want to see, think about this:

Most movies are trash - just like most of what's on television is trash and most books are trash. The thing about movies is that it is way more difficult to sift through the rubbish to find the good. It's harder to walk out of a movie than it is to change the channel or put down a book. It just is. What books and television offer me is a much greater potential for hours of enjoyment. A TV series or a novel or a feature film is equally likely to be terrible, but if you find a good television show you've found 13, 22, maybe even 100 hours of fun.

Even the best movie can only promise you 2-3 hours' amusement.

Sorry, Eddie.

Why We Hate Time Travel

Time travel. Everyone hates it, but it remains one of the most-explored ideas in speculative fiction. Why do we hate it? Why are we continually subjected to it? Can it be saved from the realms of the implausible and the mind screw?

To begin an attempt at answering these questions, we should first be reminded of Sturgeon's Revelation, courtesy of our friends at TV Tropes. Sturgeon's Revelation states that 90% of everything is crud. When someone ponders, "Why are there so many sucky romantic comedies?" the answer is: "Because 90% of everything sucks big time." But this only begins to explain the public's hatred for time travel stories.

For answers we might look to the best examples, the 10% of time travel stories that don't completely bite. They're hard to find. In fact, I would posit that an even smaller percentage of works execute time travel well. In my mind, this involves jumping two major hurdles:

1. Time travel elements must not alienate your audience.

2. Time travel must be woven into the narrative in such a way that it is inextricable from the emotional journey of the characters.

Clearing the first hurdle allows your story to be enjoyed by its audience. In order to use time travel to its full potential, you must leap the second hurdle as well.

In a Treehouse of Horror episode of The Simpsons, Homer travels back in time and accidentally changes something. When he returns to the future, everything is different. He keeps jumping between past and present in an extended gag of making mistakes in the past and discovering a vastly different present. The episode succeeds in not pissing off the audience because the time travel serves the joke. However, time travel in this instance is purely a comedic device and not truly a part of the story. In fact, there is no story here. It's merely a montage based around different variations on a fill-in-the-blank joke. It's entertaining, but we're looking for something better.

The first story arc of the Young Avengers comic books involves the villain Kang the Conqueror. The Avengers have defeated Kang before, but because he's a time traveler he's allowed to return as many times as the writers desire with no further explanation than "time travel". It is revealed that one of the Young Avengers is actually a younger version of Kang who has come from the future to stop himself from God I can't even finish this plot summary it sucks so bad. The time travel is certainly a part of our characters' emotional journeys, but the number of graphs and charts and 3D models I would need to draw to begin to understand what is happening give this work a big thumbs down.

So what is an example of the best kind of time travel story? I'm surprised to hear myself say this, but Back to the Future. The time travel is simple enough to understand and fully integrated in the story of Marty McFly becoming entangled in the early stages of his parents' high school romance.

Here's a better one: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. The mechanism of Henry's spontaneous time travel is mentally acceptable because it follows specific rules (everything only happens one way; nothing can be changed; Henry's body travels in time, but no objects, clothes, or food in his stomach, etc. etc.). Time travel is intricately woven into the plot - Claire's life is linear and Henry's time line jumps around. Better still, time travel has a huge effect on the character's emotional stories, the most obvious example being the strain it puts on Henry and Claire's marriage.

Seriously, read The Time Traveler's Wife. (Seeing the movie is not the same thing.)

So why are we continually subjected to time travel fiction? I think it's because it holds so much possibility. There's no better way for us as human beings to take a look at where we've been and where we're going. Time travel stories have the power to be transcendent - as long as they don't get seriously fucked up along the way.

Grammar Naziism

Just a little post for a little thought. This exchange is adapted from the script for my smash-hit play, Eternity in the Hearts of Men:

GRAY
It was a donation.

DOROTHY
From who?

Did that make you cringe a little? Yeah, me too. It should be "From whom?", huh? Every time I read that line or hear it spoken aloud I feel a little twinge of shame. So why not fix it? (I'm sure you're one step ahead of me already.)

Because I'm not writing a science paper or a newspaper article or a medical brochure. I'm not writing prose or a poem. I'm writing a character. Some characters speak perfect English and some do not.

It sounds wrong, but I know that if Dorothy said "whom" it would sound even wronger.

This Post Contains SEXY SPOILERS for 'Friends', 'Who's the Boss?', 'Wings', and the 'Harry Potter' Book Series

When Friends started airing on NBC, it became a real game-changer for episodic television. On Friends, you had six attractive young people who could be paired up romantically any way you wanted, with the exception of Ross and Monica who were brother and sister. The show gave us Ross/Rachel and Chandler/Monica of course, but also played with Joey/Rachel, Phoebe/Joey, Phoebe/Ross, Joey/Monica, etc. etc.

This sounds like an obvious technique because it is so common now, but earlier shows didn't have this dynamic. On Who's the Boss?, the only two characters that could get together were Tony and Angela. On Wings in the original cast there was really only Joe, Helen, and Brian. You would never see Antonio hooking up with Fay or Roy seducing Helen. Shows were not created with such loose premises.

Now let's talk about how this idea can bleed into other types of stories, outside of the small screen.

This technique can easily be applied to other forms of episodic storytelling. Any story that continues for a very long time is perfect for this sort of dynamic. Look at the Harry Potter books. There were countless relationships spawned during the seven volumes that could not have been predicted early on, but rang true nonetheless. For four books, readers wondered if Hermione loved Harry or Ron. In Chamber of Secrets, no one could have guessed that Harry would end up with Ginny Weasley. There was Fleur and Bill who hadn't even appeared on the page together before they started dating. Also Hermione/Viktor, Harry/Cho, Ron/Lavender...

Superhero comic books have been applying this technique forever. Superheroes are always smokin' hot, making it easy to pair them off in countless ways.

Here's a novel idea, though. Or maybe not, but I just thought of it. Use this approach in your short format stories, too. Your plays and novels and short stories and screenplays. I don't mean that you should actually cram all these hook-ups and break-ups into a short story. But your story will be operating on multiple levels if your reader thinks it could happen.

Phoebe could make out with Joey. Harry could fall in love with Hermione. Your protagonist could fall for their best friend, or their best friend's boyfriend, or their boyfriend's best friend.

When you have a variety of sexy, single characters thrown together - that's the kind of work that makes people write fan fiction. And who doesn't want that?

6-way orgy? It could have happened...