Knock on the sky and listen to the sound.

The point, as it were, was to find the answer outside the confines of logic. I have as such decided to throw logic to the wind, say fuck it, and do everything that scares me. Especially as I'm pretty sure that I've hit rock bottom. I have a nugget of wisdom to share, and you might laugh because I've been struggling with it since as long as I could remember, always knowing the answer and yet unwilling to accept it.

Fear is not real, it is a reaction created by your mind to answer that which you cannot explain. Fear of failure is irrational, and as I have learned, words are wind. If you need me, I'll be over here laughing at who I was and following my dream.

Staring at a distant mountain.

A few notes on living a creative life, from Neil Gaiman

134th Commencement
May 17, 2012
I never really expected to find myself giving advice to people graduating from an establishment of higher education.  I never graduated from any such establishment. I never even started at one. I escaped from school as soon as I could, when the prospect of four more years of enforced learning before I'd become the writer I wanted to be was stifling.
I got out into the world, I wrote, and I became a better writer the more I wrote, and I wrote some more, and nobody ever seemed to mind that I was making it up as I went along, they just read what I wrote and they paid for it, or they didn't, and often they commissioned me to write something else for them.
Which has left me with a healthy respect and fondness for higher education that those of my friends and family, who attended Universities, were cured of long ago.
Looking back, I've had a remarkable ride. I'm not sure I can call it a career, because a career implies that I had some kind of career plan, and I never did. The nearest thing I had was a list I made when I was 15 of everything I wanted to do: to write an adult novel, a children's book, a comic, a movie, record an audiobook, write an episode of Doctor Who... and so on. I didn't have a career. I just did the next thing on the list.
So I thought I'd tell you everything I wish I'd known starting out, and a few things that, looking back on it, I suppose that I did know. And that I would also give you the best piece of advice I'd ever got, which I completely failed to follow.
First of all: When you start out on a career in the arts you have no idea what you are doing.
This is great. People who know what they are doing know the rules, and know what is possible and impossible. You do not. And you should not. The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them. And you can.
If you don't know it's impossible it's easier to do. And because nobody's done it before, they haven't made up rules to stop anyone doing that again, yet.
Secondly, If you have an idea of what you want to make, what you were put here to do, then just go and do that.
And that's much harder than it sounds and, sometimes in the end, so much easier than you might imagine. Because normally, there are things you have to do before you can get to the place you want to be. I wanted to write comics and novels and stories and films, so I became a journalist, because journalists are allowed to ask questions, and to simply go and find out how the world works, and besides, to do those things I needed to write and to write well, and I was being paid to learn how to write economically,  crisply, sometimes under adverse conditions, and on time.
Sometimes the way to do what you hope to do will be clear cut, and sometimes  it will be almost impossible to decide whether or not you are doing the correct thing, because you'll have to balance your goals and hopes with feeding yourself, paying debts, finding work, settling for what you can get.
Something that worked for me was imagining that where I wanted to be – an author, primarily of fiction, making good books, making good comics and supporting myself through my words – was a mountain. A distant mountain. My goal.
And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain I would be all right. And when I truly was not sure what to do, I could stop, and think about whether it was taking me towards or away from the mountain. I said no to editorial jobs on magazines, proper jobs that would have paid proper money because I knew that, attractive though they were, for me they would have been walking away from the mountain. And if those job offers had come along earlier I might have taken them, because they still would have been closer to the mountain than I was at the time.
I learned to write by writing. I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work, which meant that life did not feel like work.
Thirdly, When you start off, you have to deal with the problems of failure. You need to be thickskinned, to learn that not every project will survive. A freelance life, a life in the arts, is sometimes like putting messages in bottles, on a desert island, and hoping that someone will find one of your bottles and open it and read it, and put something in a bottle that will wash its way back to you: appreciation, or a commission, or money, or love. And you have to accept that you may put out a hundred things for every bottle that winds up coming back.
The problems of failure are problems of discouragement, of hopelessness, of hunger. You want everything to happen and you want it now, and things go wrong. My first book – a piece of journalism I had done for the money, and which had already bought me an electric typewriter  from the advance – should have been a bestseller. It should have paid me a lot of money. If the publisher hadn't gone into involuntary liquidation between the first print run selling out and the second printing, and before any royalties could be paid, it would have done.
And I shrugged, and I still had my electric typewriter and enough money to pay the rent for a couple of months, and I decided that I would do my best in future not to write books just for the money. If you didn't get the money, then you didn't have anything. If I did work I was proud of, and I didn't get the money, at least I'd have the work.
Every now and again, I forget that rule, and whenever I do, the universe kicks me hard and reminds me. I don't know that it's an issue for anybody but me, but it's true that nothing I did where the only reason for doing it was the money was ever worth it, except as bitter experience. Usually I didn't wind up getting the money, either.  The things I did because I was excited, and wanted to see them exist in reality have never let me down, and I've never regretted the time I spent on any of them.
The problems of failure are hard.
The problems of success can be harder, because nobody warns you about them.
The first problem of any kind of even limited success is the unshakable conviction that you are getting away with something, and that any moment now they will discover you. It's Imposter Syndrome, something my wife Amanda christened the Fraud Police.
In my case, I was convinced that there would be a knock on the door, and a man with a clipboard (I don't know why he carried a clipboard, in my head, but he did) would be there, to tell me it was all over, and they had caught up with me, and now I would have to go and get a real job, one that didn't consist of making things up and writing them down, and reading books I wanted to read. And then I would go away quietly and get the kind of job where you don't have to make things up any more.
The problems of success. They're real, and with luck you'll experience them. The point where you stop saying yes to everything, because now the bottles you threw in the ocean are all coming back, and have to learn to say no.
I watched my peers, and my friends, and the ones who were older than me and watch how miserable some of them were: I'd listen to them telling me that they couldn't envisage a world where they did what they had always wanted to do any more, because now they had to earn a certain amount every month just to keep where they were. They couldn't go and do the things that mattered, and that they had really wanted to do; and that seemed as a big a tragedy as any problem of failure.
And after that, the biggest problem of success is that the world conspires to stop you doing the thing that you do, because you are successful. There was a day when I looked up and realised that I had become someone who professionally replied to email, and who wrote as a hobby.  I started answering fewer emails, and was relieved to find I was writing much more.
Fourthly, I hope you'll make mistakes. If you're making mistakes, it means you're out there doing something. And the mistakes in themselves can be useful. I once misspelled Caroline, in a letter, transposing the A and the O, and I thought, “Coraline looks like a real name...”
And remember that whatever discipline you are in, whether you are a musician or a photographer, a fine artist or a cartoonist, a writer, a dancer, a designer, whatever you do you have one thing that's unique. You have the ability to make art.
And for me, and for so many of the people I have known, that's been a lifesaver. The ultimate lifesaver. It gets you through good times and it gets you through the other ones.
Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do.
Make good art.
I'm serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it's all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn't matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art.
Make it on the good days too.
And Fifthly, while you are at it, make your art. Do the stuff that only you can do.
The urge, starting out, is to copy. And that's not a bad thing. Most of us only find our own voices after we've sounded like a lot of other people. But the one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.
The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you're walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself. That's the moment you may be starting to get it right.
The things I've done that worked the best were the things I was the least certain about, the stories where I was sure they would either work, or more likely be the kinds of embarrassing failures people would gather together and talk about  until the end of time. They always had that in common: looking back at them, people explain why they were inevitable successes. While I was doing them, I had no idea.
I still don't. And where would be the fun in making something you knew was going to work?
And sometimes the things I did really didn't work. There are stories of mine that have never been reprinted. Some of them never even left the house. But I learned as much from them as I did from the things that worked.
Sixthly. I will pass on some secret freelancer knowledge. Secret knowledge is always good. And it is useful for anyone who ever plans to create art for other people, to enter a freelance world of any kind. I learned it in comics, but it applies to other fields too. And it's this:
People get hired because, somehow, they get hired. In my case I did something which these days would be easy to check, and would get me into trouble, and when I started out, in those pre-internet days, seemed like a sensible career strategy: when I was asked by editors who I'd worked for, I lied. I listed a handful of magazines that sounded likely, and I sounded confident, and I got jobs. I then made it a point of honour to have written something for each of the magazines I'd listed to get that first job, so that I hadn't actually lied, I'd just been chronologically challenged... You get work however you get work.
People keep working, in a freelance world, and more and more of today's world is freelance, because their work is good, and because they are easy to get along with, and because they deliver the work on time. And you don't even need all three. Two out of three is fine. People will tolerate how unpleasant you are if your work is good and you deliver it on time. They'll forgive the lateness of the work if it's good, and if they like you. And you don't have to be as good as the others if you're on time and it's always a pleasure to hear from you.
When I agreed to give this address, I started trying to think what the best advice I'd been given over the years was.
And it came from Stephen King twenty years ago, at the height of the success of Sandman. I was writing a comic that people loved and were taking seriously. King had liked Sandman and my novel with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens, and he saw the madness, the long signing lines, all that, and his advice was this:
“This is really great. You should enjoy it.”
And I didn't. Best advice I got that I ignored.Instead I worried about it. I worried about the next deadline, the next idea, the next story. There wasn't a moment for the next fourteen or fifteen years that I wasn't writing something in my head, or wondering about it. And I didn't stop and look around and go, this is really fun. I wish I'd enjoyed it more. It's been an amazing ride. But there were parts of the ride I missed, because I was too worried about things going wrong, about what came next, to enjoy the bit I was on.
That was the hardest lesson for me, I think: to let go and enjoy the ride, because the ride takes you to some remarkable and unexpected places.
And here, on this platform, today, is one of those places. (I am enjoying myself immensely.)
To all today's graduates: I wish you luck. Luck is useful. Often you will discover that the harder you work, and the more wisely you work, the luckier you get. But there is luck, and it helps.
We're in a transitional world right now, if you're in any kind of artistic field, because the nature of distribution is changing, the models by which creators got their work out into the world, and got to keep a roof over their heads and buy sandwiches while they did that, are all changing. I've talked to people at the top of the food chain in publishing, in bookselling, in all those areas, and nobody knows what the landscape will look like two years from now, let alone a decade away. The distribution channels that people had built over the last century or so are in flux for print, for visual artists, for musicians, for creative people of all kinds.
Which is, on the one hand, intimidating, and on the other, immensely liberating. The rules, the assumptions, the now-we're supposed to's of how you get your work seen, and what you do then, are breaking down. The gatekeepers are leaving their gates. You can be as creative as you need to be to get your work seen. YouTube and the web (and whatever comes after YouTube and the web) can give you more people watching than television ever did. The old rules are crumbling and nobody knows what the new rules are.
So make up your own rules.
Someone asked me recently how to do something she thought was going to be difficult, in this case recording an audio book, and I suggested she pretend that she was someone who could do it. Not pretend to do it, but pretend she was someone who could. She put up a notice to this effect on the studio wall, and she said it helped.
So be wise, because the world needs more wisdom, and if you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise, and then just behave like they would.
And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make good art.

Excuse me Sir, I believe that's my ride.

I didn't die, I'm just havin Summer fun. Or rather, I would if the sun ever came out. Or if I stopped working for a minute. Brb blog readers, life is calling. ^_^

Did we just drive past Bradley Cooper?

Things I've learned since leaving film school.

1) Debt sucks, it takes for ever to pay off, and it makes you broke.
2) Minimum wage jobs also suck, especially when you have the affore mentioned debt. (see #1)
3) Nobody gives a shit about reality stars except the people who watch their tv shows. Having had a few of these staged in my presence recently, I can tell you their more scripted than the dramas gracing your screen. Although, the stars are totally just as stupid as they appear.
4) Traffic in LA only sucks, because people here are stupid. No, really, there's totally no problem with the infrastructure. Shocking, I know.
5) Everybody really is an actor, or a writer, or has a friend or a cousin or an uncle who "is totally in the biz".
6) If you call and bitch about your pizza being undercooked, the non-English speaking asshole on the other end of the phone will berate you for trying to rip off his business by demanding a replacement cause he "totally asked the cook, who insists it was cooked properly. Therefore, you lie."
7) People here really do get ahead by kissing ass, I've seen them at it.

Aside from that, I'd say its like everywhere else. Only a little bit sunnier. Which I'm okay with.

Now for something different, anyone get to book three of A Song of Ice and Fire? (A Storm of Swords) I'm like halfway through, and I seriously need to talk to somebody about what is going on!!!! D-:

I've been cheating on you... With another blog.

Sad, but true. While I'd like to think that I'm good enough to blog on two separate websites the initial go getting kinda sucked it outta me. Have no fear, I have returned!
Not that anything super interesting happened while I was gone. I've seen more random celebrities than I could shake a stick at, including most recently David Allen Greir (sp? lol), very odd. Then again, this is LA so I should just get over it. :-p
BTW If you wanna check out my new posts, their up over at a website called ElectroKami . I'm one of a couple people who work on the site, but I think it's pretty sweet. All Tech, Movies, Videogames, Code-writing etc. Good times.

Anyway, I have a new obsession. If you know me at all you should be aware of the fact that I flitter to shiny objects like flies to those fluorescent bug zappers. My recent shiny object is HBO's new series Game of Thrones. 

 It's no secret that I love fantasy. (Especially a well renowned book series called (and sadly, cancelled tv show) The Sword of Truth.) This show however, is sooooo much more. I recommend it even for people who don't get fantasy. The books are even better. I burned through the first one, which clocked in at around 800pgs, in a week.  It's an epic show about Lords and Kings and Bastards, and Usurpers all vying for rule of a country called Westeros. It's got some amazing acting and writing talent, as well as a TON of amazing Shakespearean actors from over in England. Including two newcomers who are becoming two of my favorite actors, Richard Madden and Kit Harrington.
Check it out. That's all I have to say right now. <3

Action, Action and a little more Action.

Recently it came to my attention that I haven't exactly been doing as much research as I could for an upcoming script I'm working on. It's an action script, which I'm planning to write, direct and edit. To say this is a massive undertaking would be a massive understatement.
Anyway, I decided to go on an action film extravaganza and indulge in some of the best low-budget/high-budget/blockbuster/hong-kong cinema action movies ever made.  Drawing a blank as one usually does when in search of a movie, I took to the net to dig up some gems. Unfortunately, their top ten lists just don't balance out with what I wanted. There's a lot of fan wank out there, and people seem to be afraid to leave the quintessential films off their lists. In answer to this disaster I present:

MEAGAN'S UBER ULTIMATE ACTION FILM *TOP TEN LIST

*please note that I am liable to change my mind at any moment and for any reason, and these really AREN'T presented in any order. Also, I feel like I should note that I fully understand that there are dozens of glorious films that just didn't make the list.  (also, yes I can count, I'm aware that there are 12 films listed below. Deal with it.)
TYFYT.

1) WaSanGo (aka Volcano High) - Tae-Gyun Kim
    One of the greatest Korean movies to ever be dubbed into a comedy by a bunch of rappers and MTV. This movie is a guilty pleasure that I'm definitely not guilty about loving. It has also inspired countless North American shit fests such as my favorite disaster The Covenant, and the horrible Dragon Ball live action film.


2) Police Story - Jackie Chan
    It's all about the stunts. Real people, doing real stupid shit. Nuff said.

3) Hard Boiled - John Woo
    This film changed the way action movies are filmed, and edited. Not to mention it completely re-wrote how action sequences are choreographed. On top of all that, it's hard to not get behind a protagonist who not only successfully smokes with a toothpick in his mouth, but also keeps the same toothpick there until the end of a violent gun fight.

4) Aliens - James Cameron
   It's a well known fact that while Alien is a horror film, James Cameron's Alien is a full on action film. Featuring one of the most magical actors ever, besides Sigourney Weaver that is, Micheal Biehn. Who starred in Terminator, Planet Terror, not to mention a ton of other epic films. Basically, this movie made the list because it's scary, it's an edge of the seat kinda movie. Once it grabs you in the opening scene it never lets go even after the credits are rolling.
 

5) Sin City - Robert Rodriguez
    This movie is great. Probably the best comic book adaptation ever. Equal props have to be given to Frank Miller who not only wrote, but also inked and colored the graphic novel, because Rodriguez literally took half the shots straight off the page. It goes to show you how a green screen and cgi can make a movie, rather than be the crutch that causes the film to fail.

6) Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair - Quentin Tarantino
    If you thought the parts individually rocked, see my blog below. This will blow your socks off.

7) The French Connection - William Freidkin
   Just go watch this one, you'll get it.

8) Die Hard - John McTiernan
     John McClain has a rough Christmas, Action movies are once again completely re-stylized, and running around bare-foot never seemed like such a bad idea. The Everyman finally wins, and evil English guys are always worse than American ones. I think there's just something sinister about that accent.... ;-)

9) Smokin' Aces - Joe Carnahan
   While not a widely accepted movie and found a little hard to follow,  Joe Carnahan's Smokin' Aces makes the list for it's enginuity, it's originality, and the fact that the new Captain Kirk place the freakiest fucking Nazi skin head since Edward Norton in American History X. Favorite scene? When the elevator doors open, and all hell breaks loose between the different hitman all out to get Buddy Israel.

10) Fist Of Legend - Gordon Chan
     Jet Li vs an entire Dojo.
    
11) Independence Day - Roland Emmerich
    Will Smith was on fire as far as choosing epic films. Anything that combines Action with attacking aliens is pretty much good in my book. Plus, you cant help but love those epic speeches that make you feel like Aliens planning to destroy your entire race aren't really any match for a bunch of ex-military dudes and a drunk in a crop duster. (see original ending.....)

12) The Karate Kid - Harald Zwart
   I went in about to strangle Jackie Chan for his treachery, and smack Will Smith for destroying my childhood. I left wondering why Daniel-son (wtf...) was such a wuss and how the fuck wax-on wax-off taught him anything when clearly Jacket-on Jacket-off is where it's at.

Honorable mentions go to: Bloodsport, Pitch Black, The Fast and the Furious, The Last Dragon, Anything Jackie Chan, The Transporter, Speed, The Matrix, Indiana Jones (all of em), Commando... and anything else I feel like giving a shout out to, or for that matter forgot to mention....


What makes your list?

The Whole Bloody Affair

There is one man who shows us again and again why the Hollywood machine is a detriment to Cinema. Quentin Tarantino. He is truly brilliant, and when he delivers a four hour movie complete with an intermission, the studio lucky enough to have that treat land in their laps should sit back and just let it happen.
Last night I had the ultimate privilege of going to my favorite L.A. theater, the Beverly Cinema to see Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair screened in it's entirety. The exact same film reels used at the Cannes Film Festival, complete with French subtitles. It was in a word, GLORIOUS. I owe a slap to whoever made him hack and cut this into two parts. Now don't get me wrong, Kill Bill Vol:1 & 2 are amazing. Up to this point, I really couldn't see how the complete version could have been that much better. I obviously am seriously lacking in imagination.

First of all, it was unrated. No MPA imposed b&w over the slaughter of the Crazy 88's. Which was extended on top of that fact and really, you miss so much of the art and effort put into that scene. There are some magnificent, ridiculously long, shots which follow characters around and switch perspectives all in a seamless movement. The animated origin of O-Ren Ishii is extended and shows some truly brutal carnage.My favorite aspect of seeing this film in it's original form is the fact that while split in two the second film seemed lacking, when released as one film the story and the arc and the plot all moves along perfectly. The structure is perfect, everything is awesome. This really needs to be released on DVD or Blue-Ray so that everyone can experience it.

Also, according to Tarantino, Kill Bill 2 (or 3 depending on how you look at it...) will take place 10 years after the resolution of the original film. Giving B.B. Time to grow and have a normal life. I'm hoping, that she'll be right beside her mother kicking ass, cause that kid had a sadistic side. Who's with me?