It’s been waaaay too long since I’ve blogged. Holy crap. I need get in here more often and post stuff like I always vow I will (seriously, I’m going to write about Victorian pornography any day now), so my blogs aren’t all just “hey look at this stuff I did.” But I’ve left it too long, so whatevs. Here’s some stuff I did:
My very last Fantasy Magazine-hosted Films of High Adventure went up this morning! Sniff! Jesse and I decided to do Beetle Juice, because we both loved that film (still love it!), and we wanted to go out with a triumphant, fist-jabbing YES! Thanks for all the support, folks–we’ll get back into doing the column on our blogs once we both conquer a few deadlines.
The Crossed Genres Quarterly #1 is now available! It contains stories by Ken Liu, Christie Yant, Therese Arkenberg and myself, among others. I’m thrilled my work appears in such hallowed company. Yay!
I’ve had some recent good news, as well, in the form of hearing that I’ll have a few nonfiction pieces appearing soon around the interwebs. For Fantasy, I had the privilege to interview Edward Packard and Ellen Kushner about their experiences writing the Choose Your Own Adventure series, and talked to a lot of my friends about how much they enjoyed reading those books as a kid (as did I!). I’ll post a note when that goes up in April—I’m really happy about it, and many thanks to everyone who helped that piece along.
For Strange Horizons, I interviewed Jonathan L. Howard, and that will be going up in April, too. Howard is one of those authors who is just genuinely nice, pleasant to work with, and interesting. It was such fun to speak with him about things like role playing, horror cinema, and what the new Cabal novel will be about. Serious yay! In other Cabal-related news, “The House of Gears,” a Cabal short, will be appearing in Fantasy in April, and since I was already interviewing him for SH, I conducted his Author Spotlight. Whew!
I think that’s about it! I’m mostly excited about the Fantasy relaunch, though–it’s going to be beautiful and chock-full of amazing fiction. While you wait for that, however, you should check out Fantasy‘s February issue. It’s been one of our most amazing months, with fiction by An Owomoyela, a co-authored Gio Clairval/Jeff VanderMeer piece, and a delicious bit of weirdness from Tamsyn Muir. Next Monday we’re publishing an outstanding story by Megan Arkenberg, so make sure to mark your calendars to save some time for “The Celebrated Carousel of the Margravine of Blois” because woahmifreakingod. It’s the jam.
This month’s Films of High Adventure is up. Have you ever heard of the cinematic masterpiece Yor: The Hunter From the Future? Well, neither had I until Jesse made me watch it a few years ago, and then we re-watched it for the purposes of journalism. Enjoy!
Nick Mamatas is a smart dude, and he has written a book called Starve Better. From the Apex page: “Starve Better is a no-nonsense survival guide by a professional writer who knows how to use small press publications and writing for everyone from corporate clients to friends and neighbors to keep himself out of the soup kitchen line.” Good stuff, and needed—I’ll be picking up a copy! You can read the thoughtful introduction here.
Last night I made some awesome food, and I wanted to share the recipe! It’s Ethiopian-inspired, and was totally rad. It tastes really rich, but this is a low-fat, high-nutrient meal. You could definitely hit up your local Ethiopian place to get some injera to scoop, but I was too lazy for that last night, and this meal is perfectly good without! Also, this is good for busy people because it’s a crock pot dish, and the only active cooking when you get home is cubing the sweet potatoes and roasting them for half an hour. Plus, your house will smell insanely delicious when you come home in the evenings. WIN!
Ethiopian Yellow Split Pea Stew with Roasted Sweet Potatoes (serves 4 hungry people)
Put the following in a crock pot (except spinach), stir well, and let cook on low all day:
45 minutes before you want to eat, prepare the sweet potatoes:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Peel 3 lbs sweet potatoes (I used garnet yams), then cube into 3/4 inch cubes and throw in a bowl. Toss sweet potatoes with the following:
1 1/2 tbs. olive oil
1 tbs. agave nectar
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 tsp. berebere
Roast for 35 minutes, tossing after 15. They will get all caramel-y and delicious. When the taters have about 8 minutes left to roast, dump the spinach into the crock pot and stir in. Let cook until it is wilted and tender.
To serve, put sweet potatoes in the bottom of a shallow bowl, and ladle the lentils and spinach over top. Eat like crazy!
Jesse’s latest, The Enterprise of Death, is available for reviewers to check out! You can get an ebook arc here, or you can enter his contest to try to win one of three bound galleys! It’s a really fucking good book, and I’m not just saying that because my cat is a (minor) character.
Jeff VanderMeer’s short story collection, The Third Bear, was recently featured over at Largehearted Boy, for their Book Notes series. If you’re interested in such things as authors discussing how music and words interact and (potentially) enhance one another, you should check it out! It’s interesting stuff. There’s also a free PDF of “The Quickening,” which was the only new story in the collection! Fun times–and if you like the story, consider buying the anthology. All royalties will go to funding the translation aspect of VanderMeer’s forthcoming Leviathan 5 anthology, which seems like an amazing, worthy undertaking.
The Innsmouth crew is doing a lot of cool stuff recently! They just posted the cover for their Historical Lovecraft anthology, which I have every confidence will be completely awesome (and it features an absolutely filthy novelette by yours truly). Currently they’re accepting submissions for their Candle in the Attic Window anthology, which will be Gothic fiction, and I hear they’re eager for shorter stuff, non-repulsive people, and mummies.
Also, I’ll be at World Horror this year, so that’s awesome! I’ve never been, and I’m looking forward to meeting new folks and seeing old friends. It should be a lot of fun! Thanks in advance to the con committee for all their hard work!
I can’t vouch for this as I haven’t read it, but my dawgg Jesse hooked me up with a link to a book called The Vegan Revolution…With Zombies, and while the whole “something…with zombies” trend is not perhaps my favorite, this looks kind of awesome. Apparently, much of the action revolves around vegans holing up in Food Fight! grocery in Portland, an awesome store in its own right—and if you click and look at the cover of this book, you can see Sweet Pea (maybe the best baked goods on the planet), Herbivore Clothing Company, Food Fight! (of course), and Scapegoat Tattoo, where I got the little demon-dragon on my wrist that was up on Suvudu a while back. Seems awesome!
Next up: Lately I’ve been cooking out of Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s newest, Appetite for Reduction. I tested for the cookbook, and so I knew it was pretty rad before it came out—but holding it in my hands and having a bit more time for cooking lately, I’ve been exploring a few of the recipes I didn’t get a chance to test. So far, favorites (new and old) have been the Sushi Roll Edamame Salad, OMG Oven-Baked Onion Rings, the so-simple and so-delicious Five-Spice Delicata Squash, Curry Laksa, Bistro Broccoli Chowder, Red Lentil and Root Veggie Dal, Sweet Potato Drop Biscuits (which should also have an OMG in front of them). There are, however, two recipes that stand out to me: Edamame Pesto and the Veggie Potpie Stew. That stew—fuck, I’ll just come right out and admit that if I could feasibly eat pot pie every day of my life, I would, and that stew managed to exceed my ridiculously high standards. So, so good.* There are 125 recipes in the book, and most come in at under 400 calories per portion. I can’t recommend it enough. I’m actually up at the coffee shop writing this, with my copy next to me, as I brought it up to menu-plan for the week. I love all of Isa’s cookbooks, but this one has me enthralled.
…but if you feel like splurging a bit, she did just put up her recipe for Orange Cranberry Nut Muffins up on her blog, and I think they’re the greatest muffins I’ve ever eaten.
Well, not to make this all about Isa, but last Friday she talked about veganism on NPR! It’s an interesting listen; I always think it’s nice when actual conversations about diet and ethics occur; I think sometimes it’s really hard for people to talk about the politics and ethics behind consumption, the environmental impact of our choices, and all that goes along with such things—but the more we do it, the easier it will get! Bonus: they played my favorite vegan anthem of all, “Be Healthy” by Dead Prez. Woo!
Finally, I’ll conclude with an article that was in The Washington Post called “You’ve Come a Long Way, Vegan,” which is one of the best recent writeups on veganism I’ve seen. That it came out through a major media outlet makes me even happier. For me, the best part was finding out there’s a vegan guide for Afro-American women out there called By Any Greens Necessary, which has to be my favorite title of anything (after Veganomicon, of course, but that’s a given, no?).
Yay! Happy Monday, everybody!
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*I’m allergic to mushrooms, so I subbed seitan in my version. It turned out great! I know a few folks who aren’t so very fond of fungi, so I recommend the switch for them, and for people like me, who get the dreaded Mush Mouth.
I’m sitting here eating Unfried Fried Rice from Appetite for Reduction, the low-fat cookbook I tested for last year, and it occurs to me that I should do one o’them end-of-year thingies I’ve been seeing all about the webz. It’s been a crazy year in general for me—as a writer, as an editor, as a daughter, and as a consumer of media, as well, so yeah. Some documentation seems in order:
As a writer:
2010 saw my first fiction sale ever, and then three others. In January I sold “In Sheep’s Clothing” to Running with the Pack, and the anthology—and my story in particular—got a bunch of reallynice reviews and shout-outs. Then about midyear I heard “The Devil’s Bride” would be picked up by Palimpsest, and in October “The Infernal History of the Ivybridge Twins” was selected to be part of Innsmouth Free Press‘s forthcoming Historical Lovecraft anthology. Finally, Crossed Genres accepted “The Red Terror of Rose Hall” to be part of their subscriber’s content. I’m very proud of all of these!
As for non-fiction (or is it?!?!) my interview with zombie polka band The Widow’s Bane went up at Strange Horizons. That was a hoot, and I’m so pleased it found such a great home. Also this year, Jesse Bullington and I embarked on a quest to re-watch old movies from our childhood and blog about them. Right now “Films of High Adventure” is on hiatus due to both of us being busy (though our review of Dungeons & Dragons went up on Fantasy last week and I failed to make a note of it here—it was such fun), but throughout the year it’s been an interesting project to say the least. A hoot and a holler, yes indeed.
Since this is a rare writerly update from me, I’ll also talk about what’s up with my novel. Last year I typed THE END on the MS, edited it, and sent it on its merry way to an agent. That agent contacted me, and we talked on the phone about the book. While she didn’t wish to represent it at the time, she did say that if I wanted to rewrite portions of the MS, and do some other stuff with it, she’d be willing to give it a second looksee. All her suggestions made sense—total sense, actually—and so that’s where I’m at right now with my big project. It’s been difficult, but I’m starting to see a new book emerge that’s, I think, a better book, and so even if a revised manuscript is all that comes out of this, I sense it will be a net gain.
As an editor:
Last year I was already on board with Fantasy Magazine at the year’s dawn, but toward the end of the year, things started to get wild. It began with some changes for Fantasy: the editor and fiction editor announced they’d both be stepping down, and that John Joseph Adams would be taking over full editorship in March of 2011. In the wake of this, I was asked to take on managerial duties for John’s (now) two magazines—Lightspeed and Fantasy.
So far, this has been a total pleasure. Working with John is a lot of fun, and the Lightspeed team as a whole are awesome folks! I anticipate good things for Fantasy as 2011 progresses and we remodel a bit.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t note a few of my favorite short stories this year, so in no particular order, my highlights for Fantasy (and a few from Lightspeed after I started) are:
In the early months of 2010 my family found out that my dad was battling pancreatic cancer. This came as a shock to us all, as my dad is one seriously healthy dude. We had no idea just how much time we would have with him, but 2011 opens with my dad being healthier than he was this time last year, according to the doctors (I mean, as far as I understand it). His tumors, as of his last scan, were not particularly bioactive, meaning the hard-core chemo he was on did some damage to the cancer. He is working out, walking at least 10k steps every day, and eating healthy. It seems like he is baffling his oncologist and various other doctors with how well he is doing, so that’s awesome. I’m hoping 2011 holds even more remarkable health improvements for him. Big thanks to all who sent happy thoughts his way, in the form of prayer, well-wishes, emails, or anything else!
As a reader/movie-watcher/listener/video game player:
2010’s movie watching was largely “Films of High Adventure”-related, but there were a few others that rocked out and deserve a note. This year I actually saw a few movies that came out in 2010: Kick-Ass, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and, um. . . Splice, but since that movie caused my first-ever film walkout, I dunno if it counts. The others were good! I also watched Hero, which was awesome, A Town Called Panic, which I liked far more than I thought I would, Moon Warriors, Mr. Vampire 2 AKA Crazy Safari, and the two late-in-the-year standouts, The Draughtsman’s Contract and The Prestige. Good stuff. I’m certainly leaving out a few, but those are what I can recall off the top of my head.
As for books, I think my Best Book of 2010 (that, shockingly enough, came out in 2010) would absolutely be Johannes Cabal the Detective by Jonathan L. Howard. I also read the first in the series in 2010, Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, which was great—but I think Detective blows it out of the water. I actually participated in an inquisition of Herr Cabal around the time the book came out, which was a lot of fun, but the book stands on its own. It’s tremendous.
Also of note, I read Imaro by Charles Saunders in 2010, and that rocked my world, as did Elric of Melnibone and its sequel Sailor on the Seas of Fate. I also read Flora Segunda, which I loved, and a bunch of other stuff but I rearranged my books (read: put them on top of the bookshelf because I ran out of space) and now I can’t remember what I read this year. I’ll keep better notes in 2011.
I don’t ever listen to albums as they come out (I suck at keeping up with music) but omfg, Cee Lo Green’s The Ladykiller has been making doing the dishes actually fun.
And to round this out, as a gamer, motherfucking Cataclysm, nerds!
So that’s a year in review. I’m certainly neglecting things, like awesome new friendships made at World Fantasy and elsewhere, novels beta-read for my friends, things of note I’ll probably edit in later, and other stuff I’ve done/thought about/enjoyed/whatever (like, say, the fact that I actually typed THE END at the end of two manuscripts this year, but one will never-ever see the light of day), but I have to go to the bank to get quarters. It’s the first laundry day of 2011! Woo!
I sold a story to Crossed Genres! Many thanks to the editorial team over there. I’ll post about the inspiration for “The Red Terror of Rose Hall” when the publication gets closer, since it came out of some unusual places.
I recently watched a completely fantastic movie, The Draughtsman’s Contract. Wowza-bo-bowza and holy fucking shit. I really cannot recommend this film enough—doubly so for anyone who thought Dangerous Liaisons would have been so000 much better were it about English people being horrible to one another instead of the French. What? Is it news to anyone that I’m an unrepentant Anglophile? Anyways, it features fops, more fops, foppery, wigs, a soundtrack by Michael Nyman (the guy who did the soundtrack for Ravenous), more fops, and people being unrepentantly terrible to one another for dubious reasons. Also fops. If for some reason you need more convincing, here’s the first scene. Tell me that’s not wonderful.
Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s Appetite for Reduction is out! I tested for this cookbook thus may vouch for its awesomeness.
Thanksgiving came and went with food and relaxation and me learning to (at long last) play Magic: The Gathering. Wow, it’s fun! Also, I made really excellent pumpkin pie, and have put that recipe at the bottom of the post.
Things with Lightspeed and Fantasy have been going really well! There are some great stories coming out at both venues during December, so make sure to keep checking on Mondays and Tuesdays for delightfulness! Or, alternatively, why not buy the ebook version of Lightspeed and be the cool kid who’s read everything before everyone else?
As you may have noticed, Films of High Adventure is on hiatus. It’s temporary! But we’ll still have a December installment up at Fantasy.
OK. Time for noms!
Molly’s Vegan Pumpkin Pie
I wanted to take advantage of the pie pumpkins at the farmer’s market this year. I’ve never made pumpkin pie from scratch, and felt it was High Time. It ended up being something of an emotional roller coaster. It began with feeling smugly domestic as I put the pumpkin in the oven to roast, panicking when it didn’t taste particularly great, getting friends on the internet to calm me the hell down by reminding me that pumpkins are not delicatas and need sugar before tasting good (thanks, Erin, and everyone on the PPK!), risking ruining pie by making up my own recipe, and then feeling as triumphant as an objectivist setting her oil wells aflame as I bit into a perfect slice. Well, not quite perfect. It was a tad overbaked, but I think 5 minutes fewer in the oven would have produced The Perfect Pie.
There are as many vegan pumpkin pie recipes as there are vegans, and the unique challenges involving making the perfect pie are heatedly discussed every holiday season on vegan message boards. The main issue is that unlike say, a chocolate mousse pie, tofu in the batter can often give the finished pie a tofu-y taste, and while I’m pretty inured to tofu-taste, something about pumpkin pie really brings out the bean. And yet! Adding a different binder in the form of soaked cashews really makes the tofu invisible in this version, for real. I baked it in the morning and by 5 or 6 at night it had completely set up and sliced beautifully. It did crack, as you’ll see below, but not much, and wasn’t at all watery.
My only caveat here is that I live at high altitude and thus I upped the oven temperature and baking time. I’m pretty sure that those below 5k feet could get away with an oven temperature of 350 and the standard 50 minutes to an hour baketime!
Ingredients:
2 cups home dry-roasted pumpkin (see instructions below)
¼ c cashews
¾ c silken tofu (water-packed, NOT vacuum-packed)
2/3 c natural sugar plus more by the tablespoon if you want it sweeter after you make up the batter
1 inch fresh ginger, grated
1 ¼ tsp real Ceylon cinnamon (ooooohhhhh)
mace and nutmeg and cardamom to taste
Instructions:
Dry roast the pumpkin the night before. I roasted it at 350 for about 90 minutes, all told. Before roasting, I prepped it by cutting it into thirds, scooping out all the guts and seeds, and putting it on a baking sheet (sprayed) w/cut sides down. When it was super-soft I took it out let it cool. It was perfect and didn’t need to be strained. It also tasted completely filthy so don’t worry if you try it and it’s horrid.
After finishing the roasting bung 1/4 cup of cashews in a bowl w/enough room to cover them with three inches of water. Let sit over night.
For the batter, drain and wash the cashews, then whiz them in a food processor until they’re thoroughly whizzed. Add the tofu until it’s puree. Add pumpkin and sugar. Blend until looks like pumpkin pie batter and you can see absolutely no tofu chunks or cashew grains. This will require scraping the bowl using a rubber spatula to get everything that’s settled to the bottom to incorporate. Add spices and ginger. Taste, adjust sugar. I added about two tablespoons I think but I would add a full quarter cup next year depending on how sweet the pumpkin is.
Then all you do is pour the batter into a pre-made crust and bake at 350 or 375 for 50-60 minutes! Woo! Let cool until totally cool.
After next week’s post up at Fantasy, “Films of High Adventure” is going on hiatus for a while due to Jesse and myself needing to devote more time to other projects. But! This week we celebrate my dad’s birthday by watching one of the movies he showed me as a wee Tanz: it involves Mars, red money (Mars is red!), red dust, red blood spurting out of people, and a red-faced Austrian body builder as a secret agent who thinks he’s a construction worker who thinks he’s a secret agent. Maybe. What could it be?
Film: Total Recall (1990)
WHOSE RESPONSIBLE THIS??? Direction again by dirt-dog par excellence Paul Verhoeven (Starship Troopers, Basic Instinct), his follow-up to last week’s RoboCop. Final screenplay by half a dozen people after dozens of attempts (including one by Pier Anthony) to adapt a Philip K. Dick short story that featured very few gunfights and mutants—of those who penned the final version, most notable is Dan O’Bannon (Alien, Return of the Living Dead). Soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith (Pretty Much Every Cheesy Action Film From the Last Three Decades) and some decent special effects by frequent Verhoeven collaborator Rob Bottin (RoboCop, The Thing). “Acting” by Films of High Adventure All-Star Arnie Schwarz, Sharon Stone (so, so many turkeys), Rachel Ticotin (uh, Con Air), Ronny Cox (the main OCP baddie in RoboCop), Marshall Bell (the coach in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, Magistrate Claggett in Deadwood), and the dependably angry Michael Ironside (Scanners, Starship Troopers)
Quote: “You blabbed, Quaid! You blabbed about Mars!”
First viewing by Molly: I have no idea. Young, young, young. My dad got really excited when it came out, and so it was one of the rare grown-up sci-fi action movies I saw as a kid.
First viewing by Jesse: Elementary school—another one my dear, departed grandmother showed me.
Most recent viewing by both: A couple of weeks ago.
Impact on Molly’s childhood development: I thought it was pretty fucking cool, that’s for sure. I was never a huge Arnold fan—I found him alarming as a child, and still do, honestly—but I remember being impressed by the things that impress children inclined towards mutants, three-tittied hookers, psychically-implanted memories, and x-rays that show guns, too.
Impact on Jesse’s childhood development: Decent. I generally preferred fantasy to sci-fi but this one had mutants and ultra-violence, so it was alright by me. I remember not understanding that atmospheric pressure affected the human body and thought the reason Arnie et al inflated on the surface of Mars was that the red sand was poisonous or something. That shit freaked me right the hell out:
Random youtube clip that hasn’t been taken down for copyright infringement:
Molly’s thoughts prior to re-watching: Pretty excited. My dad’s birthday was the 16th of November, and I wanted to do this review this week in celebration of his enthusiasm for science fiction and fantasy that was so formative for me. I didn’t recall (oh ho!) much of the film other than the asphyxiation sequence at the end and the three-tittied whore, quite frankly [Jesse says: also, dude, three-tittied whore is not the preferred nomenclature. Tri-breasted sex worker, please].
Jesse’s thoughts prior to re-watching: Cautiously intrigued, as I am with most Verhoeven screenings these days. That he has talent is undeniable; that he uses said talent in the service of vicious, intentionally trashy indulgences of his nihilism is equally undeniable. Yet I seem to remember this one having an honest-to-goodness, no-strings attached happy ending. . . which of course made me think I must have missed something the first time around.
Molly’s thoughts post-viewing: I feel like there’s a whip-smart sci-fi action movie lurking behind the façade of Total Recall. By this I mean that the film could have spent a lot more time exploring the nature of memory and subjective reality, but chose instead to over-rely on chest-thumping and man-worship. That said, it’s still fucking awesome in the way only big-budget sci-fi action movies can be: loud and bullet-riddled, and filled with questionably-futuristic technology, hot babes, awesome dudes, evil corporations, and cool stuff.
I think I prefer RoboCop of these two films simply because it manages to be (1) gorier, (2) smarter, (3) populated with more interesting characters, (4) more violent, and (5) less misogynistic all at the same time. That’s no small feat, but it’s true. That said. . . Total Recall will always have a place in my heart, like Legend, in that even though they’re both questionably good, I saw them at a young enough age that they were utterly mesmerizing and highly educational. Also, Total Recall is obviously the forerunner of Tank Girl, which I didn’t realize until this re-watch. Really! Tank Girl substitutes post-apocalyptic earth for Mars and a suit-wearing corporate grey-haired water lord for a suit-wearing corporate grey-haired air lord. Psychic mutants become warrior-kangaroo-men, and hey! Presto! A script! Sort of [Jesse says: think I still prefer Tank Girl, though—Ronny Cox is good, but he is no Malcolm McDowell, and Arnie sure as shootin’ ain’t half the thespian Lori Petty is].
Anyways, there’s apparently a remake in the works, and it’ll be interesting to see what a 21st century overhaul of this film might look like [Jesse says: maybe with Colin Farrell! I have no idea what his career did to make him hate it so. . .]. I really like Verhoeven’s grimy futures as seen in Total Recall and RoboCop, and if the new film is all shiny and Mac store-looking, I can’t imagine it will be as good. I like that these two films look like they could be our real future; that they could be the near-future that will one day be the far-future of Wall-E. Verhoeven is far too cynical to make near-future films where somehow the world has, I dunno, decided all of a sudden that polluting rivers, littering, strip mining, and overproducing unnecessary commodities so we can all enjoy the planet’s resources is Not Cool Anymore, since. . . well. Yeah. The evidence for that happening anytime soon is not particularly compelling. But in the true Verhoeven style, what we get is all that in the background, for the nerds to ponder. For everyone else, there’s explosions and boobies and one-liners! Thanks, Mr. Verhoeven, for giving us what we want and then sneering at us for wanting it, as you laugh all the way to the fucking bank. It’s what you do best.
Jesse’s thoughts post-viewing: Molly’s summation directly above is pretty much the most accurate description of his Hollywood output that I’ve ever read, and she also managed to connect Mr. Showgirls himself to Wall-E, no mean feat. For my money, Total Recall is decent viewing both by Schwarzie and Verhoeven movie standards, with many a well-executed effect, action scene, and bit of tawdry silliness to help grease the rails. The movie, as Molly pointed out, isn’t nearly as clever as it should have been, and compared to the superficially simpler but surprisingly nuanced RoboCop it’s fairly one-dimensional. Of course, that one dimension has mutants and nudity and mutant nudity and guns guns guns and fights fights fights, so it’s not as bad as it sounds.
The scenes where the film strains to be more than a simple action movie and almost succeeds are easily the most interesting, such as when Sharon Stone and the doctor from Rekall try to persuade Arnie to take the red pill to wake up from his artificial reality (and no, I don’t know why we didn’t cover The Matrix for this month, either, other than neither of us could bear re-watching it anytime soon). Although the scene in question quickly devolves into grunting and punching and shooting, it’s interesting to note that everything the doctor predicts comes to pass in the course of the film, which leads to the possible interpretation that Total Recall really is about a construction worker going crazy from a virtual vacation and not, as is usually thought, about a secret agent rediscovering his identity only to reject it for a nobler one.
The concept is never again overtly referenced in the film, but in the commentary Verhoeven somewhat gleefully offers that the fade to white that concludes the happy ending could be Arnie’s character finally being lobotomized following the hallucinations that have made up the bulk of the film. Given the director’s bleak track record, it’s easy to hypothesize which version of events he favors. So much for that happy ending—thanks for another bedtime story about the human race, Uncle Paul.
High Points: All the classy moments, from Arnie using an innocent bystander as a human shield to just about any scene with Sharon Stone—such as when Arnie greases her and says “considah that a divorce.” The part where Arnie takes the bug out of his nose. Definitely not Arnie’s acting. Johnny cabs, which are an infinitely cooler method of knowing where you are than Garmin or Magellan:
Final Verdict: ARGHHHHHH!!!!!!! But, you know, in a good way.
Next Time: We conclude Memory, Humanity, and Dystopia Month with Blade Runner over at Fantasy Magazine.
More happened this week than just me writing a review of RoboCop:
I linked this in my FoHA, but omg: if you like NSFW silent comics about Victorian ladies in ruffly underpants and their robotic lovers, you should probably go check out Chester 5000 XYV.
Please make sure to mark your calendars for Barbara Barnett Stewart’s story “Mortis Persona” that’s going up on Fantasy on Monday, November 15th! This story made me cry and drool and cheer all at the same time.
There’s a really cool group blog I just found out about, aimed at supporting early-career writers. Check out Inkpunks for really thoughtful advice!
Memory, Humanity, and Dystopia Month continues today with a film about a robotic police officer. I wonder what it could be?
Film: RoboCop (1987)
WHOSE RESPONSIBLE THIS??? Paul Verhoeven (Total Recall, Basic Instinct), perhaps the nastiest, most cynical director of the modern age. Screenplay by Edward Neumeir (who later “adapted” Heinlein’s Starship Troopers for Verhoeven) and Michael Miner, both of whom would probably rather be remembered for this collaboration than their sophomore pairing, Anacondas: Hunt for the Blood Orchid. Suitably epic soundtrack by Basil Poledouris (Conan the Barbarian) and impressive special effects by Rob Bottin (The Thing). Acting by Peter Weller (Naked Lunch, Buckaroo Bonzai) Nancy Allen (Carrie, Dressed to Kill), Kurtwood Smith (the dad from That 70s Show causing the same sort of alarming OMG-it’s-that-guy reaction that Paul Riser evokes in Aliens), Ronny Cox (Total Recall), Robert DoQui (Coffy, Nashville), and Twin Peaks alum Ray Wise (Leland Palmer), Miguel Ferrer (Special Agent Albert Rosenfeld), and Dan O’Herlihy (Andrew Packard) as scumbags of various stripes.
Quote: “Excuse me, I have to go. Somewhere there is a crime happening.”
Alternate quote: “I’d buy that for a dollar!”
First viewing by Molly: Last week.
First viewing by Jesse: In the fourth grade, at this kid Nathan Fisher’s house.
Most recent viewing by both: Last week.
Impact on Molly’s childhood development: Very little. I remember it being on the TV at my friend Amanda’s house (Amanda had not one but two older brothers and parents who didn’t give a crap if their kids watched R- or X-rated movies) and being vaguely intrigued. I remember inquiring of one of these aforementioned older brothers, “is RoboCop human inside the suit?” and the answer being “No, he is a robot.” Being a mere child, I did not realize that robots, too, could have feelings and experience angst (thank god the internet was created to teach us such lessons—link NSFW, but worth your time if you like robots and ruffly underpants), and thus figured I would not care about RoboCop’s fate. How wrong I was.
Impact on Jesse’s childhood development: High. I remember being totally unprepared for the wanton violence, and, of course, totally impressed by it. The toxic waste scene freaked me out more than just about anything else from my childhood—I’d seen The Toxic Avenger, so I knew these things were plausible.
Random youtube clip that hasn’t been taken down for copyright infringement:
Molly’s thoughts prior to watching: Uneasy. I don’t really like Paul Verhoeven’s movies in general. I mean—the ending of Starship Troopers, where a haz-mat besuitted scientist gives an unsolicited gynecological exam to an alien still troubles me (around the 3:30 mark), and Verhoeven also directed the only movie I genuinely wish I could un-see: Flesh and Blood. Even Ladyhawke had some moments I didn’t loathe—not so with Flesh and Blood, which made me actively wish I had never been born so I would not have then grown up into a person who was watching Flesh and Blood. Christ. BUT N-E-WAYZ Paul Verhoeven also directed Total Recall, which is pretty awesome, and Jesse assured me that RoboCop was more in the TR mold than F&B. . . even though he also mentioned that it was “a movie that would probably make me hate everything.” With that sort of endorsement, what could go wrong?
Jesse’s thoughts prior to re-watching: Wary. Verhoeven’s mean-spirited, bleak view of humanity has depressed Molly before, and though the pleasure I take in Molly’s reactions to some of these turkeys may appear to be sadistic, I don’t actually like making her unhappy—at least not in the way that Paul Verhoeven makes her unhappy. For one thing, it’s hard to tell if he’s misogynistic or simply nihilistic to the point of hating everyone regardless of their gender. His tendency to cater to the lowest common denominator while simultaneously mocking said denominator for being so low and common is something that puts as many people off as it wins over, and though I enjoy a good-natured torture session along the lines of a Yor: The Hunter from the Future or a Beastmaster I’m not so keen on making her genuinely miserable with the screenings I select.
Molly’s thoughts post-viewing: Man, was I ever surprised by RoboCop! It’s really good! Who knew, besides everybody but me?
Jesse’s review pretty much encapsulates my feelings on the film, but I have to say, I was impressed for a number of reasons. First and foremost, I was amazed by the ridiculous amount of violence of the film—wowza. I mean, I’ve seen enough movies to know something bad was going to happen to the dude who trained the gun on the ED-209, but I was surprised by the sheer number of bullets pumped into that poor bastard. Same goes for the scene where the dad from That 70s Show and his assorted thugs kill Murphy—that shotgun blast to the hand was pretty agonizing to watch, as was the rest of that scene. And oh god oh god where the ginger-bearded bad guy drives a truck into a silo of toxic waste and survives long enough to melt and wheeze in a completely nauseating manner. . . I am going to stop thinking about that right now.
I was also impressed by how merciless and accurate the depiction of a privatized future America was, too. Interestingly enough, Jesse and I watched this the night of the overwhelmingly depressing mid-term elections, as America was voting tea baggers and other sundry assholes into office. Though it feels ridiculous to even type the words, I’mma say it: RoboCop hit a little too close to home for me that night. The fact that an overwrought parable like RoboCop (fucking RoboCop, man) made me so uneasy is both a testament to the state of America in 2010 as well as the overall quality screenwriting and directing of the film.
It’s obvious that the team that brought RoboCop to fruition love their dystopian novels about the dangers of capitalism and what treating people as commodities does to the world, and were intelligent enough to update the old warhorse of Brave New World into relevance. The early shout-out to Henry Ford Hospital pleased me immensely, but then later when a Lee Iacocca Elementary School is referenced. . . that’s brilliant. It’s those little flourishes—as well as updating the shiny bright nobody-has-feelings-but-at-least-they-have-bread-and-circuses of BNW into the more reasonable if ickier future of environmental pollution, lowered standards of living for disposable segments of the population, and general public despair and dilapidation as the rich get richer—that make RoboCop a much better film than Verhoeven’s Total Recall, which I felt had a smart movie lurking somewhere inside of it. Alas, with Arnold in the lead, couldn’t really rise above anything more than him shooting Sharon Stone and saying “considaaah this a divorce” or whatever the fuck happens in that moment. RoboCop, by contrast, is much smarter, much more pointed in its critiques, much better.
In the end, RoboCop is a really weird movie, and watching it for the first time at age 29 is a pretty weird experience, too. I do wonder what I would have thought of it had I seen it at a significantly younger age. I don’t think I would have been able to handle it as a child at all. . . I mean, I had nightmares for quite literally weeks after watching the tequila- and monster-fueled rape scene in Poltergeist II. In high school I probably would’ve resisted the core message of the film due to my objectivist leanings at the time (or re-framed it into a parable about how Man’s Greatness Shines Through and blamed the corruptness of the individual corporate bad guys instead of capitalism as a system). In college I. . . I dunno. Might have become enraged, as that was my default mode? Probably. But as a seasoned adult (or something) I must say: RoboCop is a damn fine movie.
Jesse’s thoughts post-viewing: Hey, very nice! And by very nice I mean incredibly dark and nihilistic and devoid of any sort of catharsis, but by Verhoeven standards this is positively charming. I pretty much agree with Molly’s take on his work in general and this film in particular, although I’m perhaps less turned off by the filmmaker’s unrelenting pessimism.
Verhoeven may be subtle as sledgehammer, but he’s also archly subversive, and certain scenes carry far more weight and gravitas than one would expect from an action movie about a robotic police officer. When RoboCop/Murphy and his partner Lewis are all kinds of fucked up following the penultimate shoot-out and lie bleeding to death in a lake of polluted sludge, Robo reassures Lewis that OCP, the corrupt corporation responsible for the events of the film, “will fix everything. They fix everything.” Murphy may have rediscovered his humanity but he’s still a literal tool of OCP, and though all the Hollywood villains are dispatched by the time the credits roll nothing has really changed—the status quo has been protected, and OCP can continue with business as usual.
For being a movie about a moralistic cyborg cop cleaning up corruption, RoboCop studiously avoids buying into the chest-thumping and flag-waving of most 80s action movies. On the contrary, part of what makes it such a fascinating film is how Verhoeven rejects these conventions of the genre and instead fashions a cautionary tale of the dangers of unfettered capitalism—the privatization of the public sector is nothing short of catastrophic in Verhoeven’s universe, and has led to tv addiction, public apathy, desensitization to violence, environmental collapse, and general misery for the majority of the population. That Verhoeven’s film satirizing America’s desensitization to violence was so bloody its initial cut was rated X plays into what we were talking about earlier regarding the director’s tendency to simultaneously give the audience what they want even as he mocks them for enjoying it. He may be a nasty man with a mean sense of humor and utter contempt for humanity, but at least he’s interesting.
High Points: All the weird Korean commercials it spawned. The effects, which hold up incredibly well and kick the shit out of most CGI nonsense. That such a nihilistic “hey, fuck you dumb Americans” movie spawned a stereotypically American kid-friendly franchise complete with toned-down sequels, action figures, video games, comic books, and cartoons. The mingling of ultra-violence with blacker-than-the-chambers-of-a-dead-nun’s-heart humor, such as this early scene:
Final Verdict: Pretty awesome.
Next Time: We continue Memory, Humanity, and Dystopia Month with Total Recall.
Well! Last week was super-busy in a good way! I was recently promoted to Managing Editor of Fantasy Magazine–and I will also now be the new Managing Editor of our sister magazine, Lightspeed, since both magazines are now being edited by the amazing John Joseph Adams. I am very happy to be assisting him throughout the transitional period and afterwards!
While there won’t be much that changes on the outside over at Lightspeed, JJA will be making a few alterations at Fantasy. We’re undergoing some restructuring, and our content focus and submission guidelines have already shifted slightly. Keep checking back over the next few months–exciting times ahead!
