Once Upon a Time in Georgian England

In his (fantastic) biography on Sergio Leone, Something To Do With Death (p299), Christopher Frayling writes about Once Upon a Time in the West:

Stanley Kubrick admired the film as well. So much so, according to Leone, that he selected the music for Barry Lyndon before shooting the film in order to attempt a similar fusion of music and image. While he was preparing the film, he phoned Leone, who later recalled: 'Stanley Kubrick said to me, "I've got all Ennio Morricone's albums. Can you explain to me why I only seem to like the music he composed for your films?" To which I replied, "Don't worry. I didn't think much of Richard Strauss until I saw 2001!" Barry Lyndon could have been Once Upon a Time in Georgian England: the music, the choreography, the deliberate pace, the ritualized duels. Leone reckoned, though, that maybe Kubrick didn't quite have the common storyteller's touch to pull it off.

The Tortured Indecision

Having the entire day laid bare before me, my biggest problem seems to be where to begin? Talk about a luxury problem, huh?

It’s honestly not an easy thing to come to terms with.

On the one hand it makes sense to start working full time with something as soon as possible, to secure some funding for the lean times.

On the other hand, since I’ve got a handful of months funded, what better way to burn through them than on the things I’ve been daydreaming while I’ve been stuck in a 9 to 5?

And I’ve had a lot of those day dreams. I mean, a lot.

I’m one of those people who’s cursed with too many interests and too many options in life. There’s another luxury problem for you. I secretly admire and want to be those people who burn for one thing, and one thing only and dedicate their entire life to it, and from that desire, create meaning.

Neal Stephenson said it best:

“I am fascinated,” I insisted, “That’s the problem. I am suffering from fascination burnout. Of all the things that are fascinating, I have to choose just one or two.”

- Neal Stephenson, Anathem, hardcover edn, Atlantic Books, 2008, p. 733.

Yes, I still have a burning desire to do games. I love games. Games are great. But other than the fact that the only larger company operating in Denmark, is my former employer, I’m also paradoxically struggling with on the one hand wanting to do large games, and on the other finding the process of doing exactly those kinds of games to be an oddly uncontrollable and often times frustrating process.

Regardless, short of a lottery win, or finding an unknown, but very generous rich uncle or a straight up miracle, there’s little chance of starting up a games company capable of doing the kinds of games I’d like to do, so that desire will have to take a rest for a while; which I’m actually happy to see happen just now.

I do wish games would grow up. That’s one of the things I’ve been proud to have been a part of at Io; Kane & Lynch did things with storytelling that I’ve yet to see other games pull off. It’s not rocket science; you’d think the games industry would be able to get their head out of Michael Bay’s ass for a moment and take in the putrid smell left in the wake of the ‘Louder, Faster, More’ mentality.

Which brings me to movies.

I love movies more than I love games. I’ve always known that, but haven’t really been in a position where I thought it was a viable alternative to chase. Denmark is a far from Hollywood. Hell, it seems even Hollywood is far from Hollywood. But then who knows, maybe one day…

Anyway, the closest I’m likely to come to movies anytime soon, is my sharing with seemingly half the globe, that most romantic of romantic daydreams: writing.

Yeah. I know.

I can’t even settle between wanting to do a novel, a graphic novel or a screenplay, so how the hell will I ever find the focus to pull off actual writing?

Beats me; but I keep coming back to it, and have often times made inroads, though I’ve yet to finish anything I’ve been genuinly proud of, not to mention anything that’s had substance to it. But it is unmistably a desire that keeps bubbling to the surface, and one I finally have that most precious of components to deal with: uninterrupted time.

Then there’s the whole design/programming/UX package, which more than any of my other interests has the curse/blessing factor of just being something that comes quite naturally to me. It’s the kind of thing I have to actively try to not do, to find time for my other interests. What a hassle, huh?

But I truly love it, and right now is as exciting a time to be a part of that as I could imagine. I’ve wanted the time to really dig into some of the things I’ve started with K2 as well as various other projects I’ve got sketches of lying about the apartment, but have found them daunting to tackle at night and on weekends; but perhaps now I’ll finally be able to do something about it?

And then there’s the mountain of books I’m either reading, or wanting to read, not to mention the myriad other projects I’ve always wanted to try my hand at.

At the end of the day it comes as much down to who I can do it with, as it does to what I do. Once I start working fulltime again, it’ll be web design for now. Maybe that’s what I’ll do for the next ten years; maybe I’ll seque back into games. I don’t know. All I know is that I want to do it with people I love and respect. That’s what it’s all about anyway.

And yet…

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Columbian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

- Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, paperback edn., ROC, 1992, p. 254.

Stanley Kubrick and the Bad Films

‘I used to want to see almost anything. In fact, the bad films were what really encouraged me to start out on my own. I’d keep seeing lousy films and saying to myself, “I don’t know anything about moviemaking but I couldn’t do anything worse than this.”’

- Stanley Kubrick, Stanley Kubrick: Interviews, softcover edn., Mississippi, p. 103.

Stanley Kubrick and the Phone

On the 7th, it’s a decade since Kubrick’s death, and so I wanted to spend this week tributing my favorite director, by leading up to the day with some small pieces from or about him. This first one comes from Michael Herr’s excellent ‘Kubrick’ book:

He viewed the telephone the way Mao viewed warfare, as the instrument of a protracted offensive where control of the ground was critical and timing crucial, while time itself was meaningless, except as something to be kept on your side. An hour was nothing, mere overture, or opening move, or gambit, a small taste of his virtuosity. The writer Gustav Hasford claimed that he and Stanley were once on the phone for seven hours, and I went over three with him many times. I’ve been hearing about all the people who say they talked to Stanley on the last day of his life, and however many there were, I believe them all.

- Michael Herr, Kubrick, hardcover edn, Picador, 2000, p. 3.

'Their's not to reason why'

I normally keep quotations to my tumblr account, but this one I came upon while idly flipping through Troublesome Words, and it felt like deserving of more prominence:

‘Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die’ is often heard, but is wrong. The lines from Tennyson’s ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ are ‘Their’s not to reason why,/ Their’s but to do and die’. Note that the closing words ‘do and die’ give the lines an entirely different sense. Finally, it should be noted that Tennyson’s punctuation of ‘theirs’ is irregular.

- Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words, 3rd ed. paperback, Penguin Books, 2001, p. 149.

Baddest Motherfucker in the World

“Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Columbian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

- Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, paperback edn., ROC, 1992, p. 254.