An Honest Answer To A Stranger’s Attempt at A Withering Question

Posted on June 15th, 2016 by Adam-Troy Castro

I am not a strong swimmer.

You can tell that from looking at me. I don’t have the body of a swimmer. I look like what I pretty much am, in bodies of water: a buoy.

But I enjoy doing things that look like swimming, to the point that I maintain (falsely to the wider world, but accurately insofar as the activity’s effect on me) that it is impossible to remain depressed in a swimming pool.

It cheers me up and energizes me.

And one of things I like doing, in my undignified paddles back and forth across the deep end, is dive to the bottom.

I like being underwater. I know a lot of much stronger swimmers who don’t. They panic too easily. But making my way back and forth across a pool, I absolutely love pausing in mid-lap to flip around, position myself vertically, and head straight for the bottom.

As part of this operation, I wind up sticking both my fat legs straight up in the air.

So on one recent visit to the pool, after about twenty minutes of this, I take a momentary break and am confronted by a pinch-faced, disapproving woman stretched out on one of the lounges.

“You,” she said, in a tone meant to be withering. “Do you like being a child?”

I gather at once that I am supposed to be shamed by this.

So I give her the answer it deserves. “Yup. Absolutely. But more importantly, why don’t you?” 

Tags: Assholes, Life Wisdom, True Stories | Category Life Wisdom

GUNS OF THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1969)

Posted on May 20th, 2016 by Adam-Troy Castro

Tonight’s film from the MAGNIFICENT SEVEN COLLECTION, of which I’ve said before it is likely best to consider to consider all the films but the first DVD extras in support of the splendid John Sturges original, was GUNS OF THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1969), which wisely makes no attempt to torture all possible plausibility by again re-uniting all three characters who survived the first two films. That would be just silly.

Instead, it brings back only the Yul Brynner character Chris Adams, now improbably played by George Kennedy, who is again summoned to a crisis in Mexico, but this time brings along six guys unrelated to the action of the prior two films.

We started with James Coburn, Steve McQueen, and Charles Bronson. Now we get Monte Markham, Bernie Casey, an already-long-in-the-tooth James Whitmore, and Joe Don Baker.  A certain devolution in terms of star power, befitting the fact that all this franchise really had, at this point, was loyalty to a brand. At this point in Hollywood history, westerns (which once comprised more than half of all movies made) were not dead, but they were coughing very hard.

I am relieved to tell you that this movie, while still not good, is still better than RETURN OF THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, a small achievement, but closer to that film than THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, and about a million miles of bad road away from the inspiration, SEVEN SAMURAI.

Still, this is better than being buried up to your neck the hot sun and having brutal Mexican soldiers order their horses to kick you in your head, which is something that happens to a couple of dozen prisoners of the bad guy in this film.

One of the reasons this film is better than the first sequel is that George Kennedy, watching this sorry spectacle, gets to act sickened instead of just grimly resolute, as the Yul Brynner incarnation of his character might have done. He goes after the bad guy, at the end, because he’s personally offended by that kind of behavior, and this is a commendable attitude.

Also, when he finds out at the end of the final battle that four members of his team have died, he gets to act shocked and sickened all over again – though frankly I don’t why he’s always so surprised by this result; so far, every time he’s led men into one of these missions, four have died and three have survived. His continued insistence on always putting together teams of seven is here explained by the claim that he now sees it as a lucky number, which would really piss off the doomed characters played by Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Brad Dexter, and Robert Vaughn in film number one. Sure, they would say. It’s a lucky number for you, asshole.

Four points.

One: early on in the film, he rescues Monte Markham from being hanged as a horse thief by pointing out to the townspeople that nobody asked the horse to testify, and having it identify its owner. This he does by positioning the complaining party one side of the street, and Monte Markham – who IS guilty — right in front of the water trough, which the horse naturally heads for. This saves Markham’s ass in the eyes of the townspeople, and I’ve got to tell you, what this says to me is that this must be the stupidest town in the west.

Two: I made my wife snarf food at a certain point where we noted that the seven this time include an old guy, a suicidal man dying of consumption, and a guy with one paralyzed arm. A major come-down, we noted, from the squad of uniformly dangerous men who populated the first film. Then I said, “It’s the Best-We-Could-Do-At-The-Time Seven.” And Judi snarfed, which was really the most entertaining moment of the entire enterprise.

Three: During the final battle, angry black guy Bernie Casey fulfills action-movie protocol and dies first. It is only by seconds, as the repentant one-armed racist played by Joe Don Baker dies almost immediately afterward later trying to avenge him, but yes, the black guy dies first, technically. Or maybe he’s still lingering when Joe Don Baker dies. Either way, he gets shot first. (The two have previously bonded, despite a rough beginning, by longish conversations over who has it more rough, a black guy or a white gunslinger with only one working arm, which in 1969 was enlightened.)

Four: At the end, George Kennedy and James Whitmore ride off, virtuously leaving behind the six hundred dollars they and the others were paid to come to the aid of the oppressed. This act, likely a partial inspiration for the tribute film THREE AMIGOS, makes perfect sense for Kennedy’s character Chris Adams, who actually seems to relish having to ride down to Mexico every couple of years for little or no money, shoot a whole lot of people, and get more than half his team killed. But when the Whitmore character was first introduced, we learned that he was slaving away on a failing homestead, supporting a family he had to feed a gaseous diet of beans, and desperate for the money he needed to dig his place a well that can transform his failing farm into a successful one. So if he doesn’t get any money, he’s still royally fucked. I would like to imagine that his old buddy Chris came up with the bright idea to refuse payment at the end, and that the two of them rode all the way back to Texas or whatever, where Whitmore’s piece of shit farm still sat ready to suck away all the energy of his retiring years, before his old buddy Chris told him what was up. Boy, that would have been a fun scene.

Tags: Bad Movies, Charles Bronson, George Kennedy, James Coburn, James Whitmore, Seven Samurai, The Magnificent Seven, The Three Amigos, Westerns, Yul Brynner | Category Movies

Writing Advice: When A Learned Eminence is Wrong

Posted on May 17th, 2016 by Adam-Troy Castro

The name of the story is “The Last Straw.” It is not one of my more famous stories. It is certainly not one of the more successful. I wrote it twenty years ago, spent ten years trying to sell it, and ultimately sold it to the Tampa Tribune. You can find it it in my short story collection A DESPERATE DECAYING DARKNESS.

I can tell you that I always had affection for it, and that it has always been a hit when I read it in convention settings, though it has never earned me much.

To tell you the advice I didn’t take, and why I’m still glad I didn’t, I need to quickly summarize the story.

It’s the frenetically-told story of young single mother Janet Watson, who here suffers one of the worst Mondays of her life. She has troubles getting the four-year-old ready for the Day Care Center, troubles with the oncoming Period From Hell, troubles in traffic on the way to the Day Care Center, troubles with the snotty lady at the Day Care Center, troubles getting in touch with the oaf of an ex-husband who should have sent the tuition check; troubles at work with the company stooge who clocks her in at ten minutes past nine, troubles with the boss, troubles all morning with nasty customers; troubles with HR, which has just summarily canceled the vacation about to begin; troubles during her lunch hour with the Dentist, who delivers grave news about her periodontal health; a traffic ticket on the way back to work; more troubles with the boss; more troubles with asshole co-workers, more troubles on the phone with the ex-husband who continues to dodge her; a last chewing-out by the boss; complaints from the Day Care Center about aggravating problems with her kid’s behavior. I mean, a Day from Hell.

Throughout all this, she keeps encountering news updates about her municipality’s latest serial killer du jour, a baby-faced, round-cheeked guy whose sketch is inescapable on local news and the front page of local papers, Mama’s Boy. Mama’s Boy goes after young mothers raising young children by themselves. He has killed six in the past three months. Janet does not go two hours, throughout this long and horrific day, without encountering a fresh reference to this guy, but let’s face it; for her, on this particular Monday, it’s background noise.

So we get to the final scene. Janet arrives home with three grocery bags and a squalling toddler, and is sticking her key in the apartment door when the bags break all over the hallway linoleum. Freaking, she runs into the house, dumps the kid in the playpen, runs back out to the hallway, fights off the neighbors big stupid great dane who thinks that this bounty has all be laid out for him, runs in with gooey dripping packages to drop them in the sink, runs back out to get more of the food, makes four trips between the hallway and the sink while her kid screams in the next room, and takes her last trip just in time to hear the message come through on her answering machine that her beloved Uncle Leo has died and that the funeral is tomorrow.

She is literally spinning in emotional overload when she spots the baby-faced, round-cheeked guy standing behind the couch with the butcher knife in his hand. She realizes that he is not emerging from hiding. He has been standing there, in plain sight, all along. She actually did see him all four times she passed through the room, but was too frazzled to actually REGISTER what she saw. It is, of course, Mama’s Boy, here to kill her next.

He comes after her.

I remember the end of the story, verbatim.

”He did not even manage two steps before Janet’s voice shook the entire building like the wrath of God.

”DON’T. EVEN. THINK. IT. BUDDY.”

”Mama’s Boy looked in her eyes and saw his own immediate future written there. It was not pretty. Not pretty at all.

”He almost made it to the window before she brought him down.

”(Two line-break).

”Starting Tuesday morning, when news of his condition hit the papers, everybody started being very, very nice to her.”

THE END.

Okay, so there you have it. A nice three-thousand word story with, I believe, a strong punch line. And when I had trouble selling it, I went to my friend, the then-bestselling horror writer, to ask him if he could discern what was wrong with it.

He told me that the ending sucked.

He told me that the beginning was okay, even if I put in too many of the aggravating frustrations that made up Janet’s day. He said that I needed to add about three thousand additional words, about the battle for survival that ranges throughout the three rooms of Janet’s apartment, where the killer keeps coming after her and she keeps fighting back with the tools on hand, determined to keep the maniac from her daughter. He said that she should be wounded and keep fighting anyway, come close to death and keep fighting anyway. He said that she should finally win, at horrible cost,driving herself to an act of incredible, vividly-detailed savagery as she ends the guy in some ruthless and bloody manner. There should be the lingering impression being that she would never, ever be the same. He offered to suggest ways to make Janet’s battle for life a grueling ordeal.

I listened to all this and said, “Aren’t there other stories like this? I’m not saying I’ll never write a conventional woman in jeopardy vs. crazed killer story, but it wouldn’t be THIS story; it wouldn’t be the story of a serial killer who attacks the wrong woman at precisely the wrong moment.”

He said that there was a reason why that kind of story was popular, and built careers. He said that if I wanted I could make a novel of it. Maybe the serial killer takes the baby and Janet has to go after him, on her own, to save the child. That could last hundreds of pages, and indeed has; see, for instance, McCammon’s very suspenseful MINE. Why, I could…

”But,” I interrupted, “then it wouldn’t be THIS story. I’m sorry. The ending is non-negotiable.”

The bestselling horror writer shrugged and said that I clearly couldn’t take constructive criticism. I think I can, and have. I also think he completely missed the point of what I was going for, in this particular instance. The story is by all commercial measurements no giant hit, but is a nice little artifact that I’m proud of; it’s certainly not a clone of every other story of its kind, but its own separate creature, something that could have only come from me at that particular moment. There were critical successes in my future. I don’t love this story any less, and I believe I showed substantial good sense in protecting it.

This has been an object lesson in the importance of occasionally saying No to story advice from learned eminences.

Thus endeth the lesson.

Tags: horror, Life Wisdom, writing | Category Life Wisdom, Writing