7 Phalle 131 E.P. (Aug. 16, 2003) - 11:17 a.m.

Wizard: The Pretention

This was supposed to be my little contribution to Fair and Balanced Friday, but I decided the real heavy hitters can take care of themselves. Besides, every time I start talking about politics, all the things I want to say come spilling out in a gush of flaming bile, and the next thing I know, some poor shmuck is sending me a bill for his melted monitor.

So I'm not going to talk about the bozos of the world. Frankly, what they have to "say" speaks for itself. Instead, I'm going to talk about a few other idiotic decisions past and present. Harlan Ellison, in his review of Greystoke, says the essence of human tragedy can be summed up in the film's writing credits, which go to P.H. Vazak and Michael Austin.

I seem to have misplaced my copy of his collection Harlan Ellison's Watching (in which the review appears), so this will be from memory. (Ellison is fond of a quote from one Olin Miller: "Of all liars, the smoothest and most convincing is memory." Hence the warning.)

Apparently, the film's producers came to Rick Baker and asked him how long it would take him to make ape suits of the quality needed for the mangani. "Two years." But if he had unlimited funds? "Two years."

So they went to Carlo Rambaldi, that season's hot ticket for making the E.T. animatronics, and asked him how long he'd take. "Oh, I can do it in eight months for $400,000."

One year and a million bucks later, with no ape suits in sight, Rambaldi was off the project, Baker was on, and when the guy who hired Rambaldi in the first place wouldn't walk, Towne walked away from the screenplay he'd been circulating for a decade or so, and his pseudonym of record was attached. The script was then given to that season's hot ticket, fresh off his Oscar triumph, and he took a screenplay which (Ellison says) struck the perfect balance of "noble" and "savage", and gave the savage short shrift so he could get back to Merrie Olde England and be in his element. (First, though, he reportedly arranged for the first scene shot to be the death of Kala, so that Baker had to keep patching the maternal ape-suit for the chronologically-earlier scenes that came after.)

As the pudding salesman once said, I told you that story to tell you this one about the idiotic decision taken by the High Sheriffs (that's Joe Bob for "suits") at Warner Bros. If they really think they're going to be able to fit the pivotal book of the series into one film, they're fools. But the writer, again, is the poor fool who's going to pay.

We interrupt this muttering for a realization. Only a year ago, I was still in Mississippi. And two years ago, CB was down there with me. (We're coming up on the second anniversary of the night I saved her life; I hope I'm not making her survival meaningless.) It's astonishing how far I still have to go, sure, but equally astonishing how far I've come (and not just in geographic terms � there were days we thought I'd never be positioned to make the move my brain had been wanting to make for years).

As a lead-in to current news, I took this quiz a while back and got the same answer then as I did more recently.

Making it appropriate, then, that I'm participating in CB's GURPS Mage: The Ascension chronicle campaign. I'm playing a Verbena, because CB wanted/needed one, but I came up with a non-standard yet plausible concept. After some skullsweat, and with some help from the Generic Universal Roleplay Utility, I pushed forward and have him pretty well fleshed-out. And I've provided our GM with some story hooks � barbed ones, judging from the way she talks about them.

Of course, I've got a character in reserve. Maybe two.

My #1 result for the SelectSmart.com selector, Mage Tradition Selector, is Cult of Ecstasy

You are a member of the Ecstatic Cult. Break all
the boundaries lest face being stuck in a rut
for eternity.

What Magickal Tradition Do You Belong In?
brought to you by Quizilla

Akashic Brotherhood

"First you must learn the craft of magick.
Then forget the craft and embody the art of
living through Do."

Which WoD Mage Tradition do you belong to?
brought to you by Quizilla

But that's all you get to find out about him/them for now. I may tell you more when I know it myself, depending who you are.

-30-

�

last time, on The Slack Shack - our next inciting exstallment