And this is where the “artist” in me gets his boxers all in a bunch. http://www.newyorker.com/online/2007/12/24/071224on_onlineonly_carver?currentPage=1 and teh constant “directors cut” editions really makes me wonder if the “independent” or “self published” folks aren’t the smarter folks. If you were to take a painting and “edit” it like most film and written material, you would be shot.
I am beginning to develop the theory that the “published” works in most industries do not really reflect the authors work, but the editors.
Makes me wonder if the lost interest in reading is due to the homogenous style and inbred nature of conceptual editing.
vic-K, pass the juice I need to knock myself off this soap box…
And Solyaris does have a nicely done product by Criterion Collection. I own it, and there are a lot of nice features. The translation to English is pretty good, and the transfer quality is beautiful. I wish some of his other films would get similar treatment. Several of them are only available with wooden, very literal translations, or bad quality transfers. It amazes me that many of them are not even in “print” in the U.S.
You know, I always thought that was William H. Macy, too!
When I first saw the word SOLARIS, my mind immediately flashed to that George Clooney disaster. That was the first and only movie I have paid to see (in this case I hired it) and didn’t watch through to the end. In my opinion, it was the worst movie I have seen.
I didn’t realise it had a history beyond that. Now I will have to find the original version (but I doubt my local DVD rental will have it).
Matt - grab the book (by Stanislaw Lem) on which both films were based. It’s a tough read, but worth it. Stuff like people falling into the surface of the planet only to have the planet spew up recreations of them as a baby, or their memories and so forth. Horribly and hallucinogenic, like I say, but fascinating.
Best,
Keith
Heh, I just gave Lem’s book a plug in the Other-Sci-Fi thread. Yes, definitely a good read and very thought provoking.
And yes, please do disregard entirely the Clooney rubbish! Oi!
Tarkovsky’s version is a little dated (visually and politically), and it was made on a Soviet budget, so don’t expect to be dazzled with modern tricks. But it is a very artistic and philosophic movie, and in that sense it does much more favour to Lem’s book.
I was a huge fan due to his overseas films, and remember, this was a time when sf adaptations were still soooo disappointing. So with no great expectations, I saw the film and got blown away. To me, it is a masterpiece, because it tackles perhaps the greatest question of all, “What makes us human?” and managed to bring up a lot of great thoughts and speculations, along with a stunning look and a story that kept you watching.
I always admire actors who do well in science fiction movies, because I think it’s the most challenging skill of all; to plausibly act and react to something that is not yet there. Or to something that exists only in the imagination. That’s why, when the acting in this genre sucks, it is of massive suckitude.
(On a side note, the greatest Enterprise Captains always had Shakespearean training. It obviously helps summon the proper gravitas.)
I think that now Blade Runner suffers from what often happens to cutting edge films, later… their innovations have become so widely copied, and so much a part of popular culture, that discovering it later, out of its historical context, it seems like so much same-old that one does not realize THIS was the one which started ALL THAT.
Reminds me of the comment I read recently where someone was disparaging Led Zeppelin for being “the greatest collection of rock cliches ever on a stage.” I will assume the poster was young, and didn’t realize Led Zep innovated all the “cliches” the poster was seeing… ya know, they weren’t cliches then, dude.
As both a writer, of sorts, and a publisher, I have no problem whatsoever with editing in writing. Sure there are books editors spoil and there are books editors and ghost writers make virtually in toto apart from an outline and some key bits done by a “name” that will ensure the book sells.
But there are a helluva lot of books editors help the writer to improve. A good editor does not pretend to be a writer, a good editor is the quintessential reader.
But you are forgetting, Jaysen, that a lot of the great art in the past was produced like this too. Masters would rough out the framework and the key parts of pictures; their apprentices would do the rest, albeit under supervision.
The result is still a masterpiece.
I am a pretty good writer and editor in my way, but I would not dream of putting out anything I hadn’t got someone to run the rule over (or rather, the red pencil) first. It is all too easy to be self-indulgent and to think you are communicating when, in fact, you are not. If I can’t get someone to edit it, then I will put it away for a few days then read it again with a fresh eye. I can often take 25-40% off it. Sometimes it needs 100% added. Then I put it away again – maybe for a week.
My wife is a significantly good painter, but I have no compunction about telling her how something is hitting the eye – or at least, my eye. I can’t produce the stuff, but I can appreciate it. She listens, because she knows she isn’t perfect and if I, as a sympathetic audience, aren’t getting the message she is trying to send, then she is pretty sure other audiences won’t get it either.
And finally, let me add one more thing; Picasso once remarked that there were a whole lot of fake Picassos out in the market place – and he had produced some of them himself. I presume he meant he just produced stuff without inspiration sometimes because he needed the income. He may also have meant that he needed a good editor to tell him when he had done poor work.
You are arguing “critical review” which no one in their right mind would suggest is inappropriate or unwanted. The reality that I am irritated by is not “critical review” but “editorial reconstruction” as practiced by many publishers (my personal experience is the music industry but as I spend more time in literature circles I see that it is rampant here as well). The primary difference it the ability of the originator of the work to accept or reject the proposed change. If the originator can ignore the “editor” (used to represent the body proposing the change) then I would be less irritated by the idea (my daughter serves as my editor for now and 90% of what she suggests is implemented). My problem comes when the “artist” can not control the final work.
I think the word “artist” is key to my position. If you are paid to produce a specific piece, like a technical writer or a journalist, then this veers away from art into craft and I think the rules would change. For example a craftsman has to build a chair to spec, normally 17" from top of seat to floor, 15º angle of seat, 82º angle from seat to back, etc and those specs are provided by an outside agent. An artist can make a chair without a seat or back if they want and all that can be said is “you really can’t sit on it”.
When someone comes to me, or you, and says “we like what you have done in the past, would you do another for me” my position is that the artist should not be forced to “add a” or “remove a”. Things like “change this from the key of A to C” or “add a character named Joe that is modeled after my cousin” are off limits. Even worse is the idea that if you DON’T do it you don’t get paid.
Again, I think the basis of my opinion is that novels, albums, stories, and other creative works are art not craft.
Read a couple of David Halberstam’s books and then get back to me on whether journalism is an art or a craft. Read a little bit about Michelangelo’s fights with his patrons and then get back to me on how much freedom from outside agents the artist really has.
The reality is that outside agents pay the bills. The bigger the check, the more oversight the outside agent is going to demand. Don’t like it? Don’t sign the contract.
Many excellent writers come from journalism or other directed swriting, sucvh as advertising.
But back to movies and Sci-Fi.
V for Vendetta. I don’t think the treatment of the girl holds up, from my psychology PoV it leaves much to be desired, and the scene with the massed sub-machine guns shooting V with the body army doesn’t hold up either – I stray bullet and he would be dead and with those kinds of weapons shooting long bursts, there are lkots of stray bullets to be had (we in Australia are always mindful of an early armor wearer – Ned Kelly, the famous/notorious (depending on your PoV) bushranger (hold-up man) dressed himself in iron armor beaten our of ploughshares. The cops brought him down by shooting him in the legs.
BUT a great parable with wonderful pyrotechnics, a racy style and super graphics. I thought the acting was excellent; especially liked the worn out and harried policeman.
I believe the author of the comic didn’t like it at all in the end – he would have preferred his comic. My opinion – authors need to let go on these things. The movie is ALWAYS going to be different (although the BBC does a marvellous job on Pride and Prejudice but then Jane Austen was really a frustrated screen writer, wasn’t she? Having to write but having no screen at the time!
Moore doesn’t like any of the movies adapted from his comics. This is mainly because they are all horribly inferior and dumbed-down compared to the originals, but so goes Hollywood. He has even gone so far as to request his name be removed from all adaptations (that’s why V bills itself as “based on the Vertigo graphic novel”) and all compensation due to him from adaptations be shared out among his collaborators instead.
Basically, especially after the abomination that was LXG, Moore would prefer Hollywood left him well alone and didn’t make these movies at all. Unfortunately, because he doesn’t actually own the majority of his work (the comics industry is largely a work-for-hire industry, and even more so back when Moore was writing the majority of his popular works) he has no choice about whether or not they get optioned.
In principle I agree, but that’s kind of difficult to do when you get dragged through the courts, slandered, swindled and basically treated with contempt, as has happened to Moore with Hollywood.
The V movie is about the best screen adaptation of Moore’s work so far, but it’s still Janet & John compared to the original graphic novel. If you even half-enjoyed the movie, you should seek the book out.
Hmmm – I was leading with my chin from a position of pretty gross ignorance, as usual. Your information changes the situation somewhat; although if he weas working for hire in the first place, then he was working for hire and he had handed over ownership. I do some journalism on that basis. The degree of exploitation of freelance journalists these days is amazing. When I started in the game 40 years ago, an author was ceded some rights.
I had assumed he had some control over the optioning, in which case it would have been a lot different.
Then, of course, there iks the case of Tolstoy.
My daughter has read the book and liked it. She likes the movie too. She sees the two as cousins with significant family resemblance in the essentials.
Yes, of course, but at the time Moore was writing stuff like WATCHMEN and V FOR VENDETTA, work-for-hire was the only way to get work in comics without self-publishing.
The industry was very different twenty-odd years ago; another bone of contention is that there were essentially no perennial graphic novels (hardly any GNs full stop), so Moore (and his collaborators) signed both WATCHMEN and V contracts on the basis that rights would revert to them after a certain period of being out of print. But both books were so phenomenally successful that they have never been allowed to go out of print - a situation which was at the time of signing utterly unthinkable, and unprecedented.
He did have control over FROM HELL and LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, but both were optioned long before any of these adaptations actually made it to the screen. At the time, Moore (perhaps naively) believed that the producers would do everything they could to make a faithful adaptation, and that in any case his work and reputation would be unaffected by the movies’ quality. Needless to say, that wasn’t the case.
(I hate name-dropping, but I feel I should give these statements some credence: I’ve collaborated with Moore, spoken to him many times and actually quizzed him about Hollywood back when all this malarky started. I’m by no means a close friend, but I’m also not talking out of my arse )
I would never suggest that a craftsman was not able to produce art. But there is a distinct formulaic approach to craft that is not applied to art.
I guess I have been lucky with the commissions that I have done so far. I typically don’t do “can you create me a” type requests, but the ones I have done ended pretty well. I only had one person that was unhappy, but the real boss (his wife) loved it so it didn’t matter.
To further a thought that is niggling in the back of my head… Is a commissioned piece still art? Thinking on this reply causes me to think not. If I create a work to sit on my shelf for no other reason than to express my thought at the moment, then someone sees it and wants it is it more art than if someone walks up and hands me a list of requirements or desires, hands me some cash, and then gives me some freedom within the bounds established?
The text book answers don’t hold up to reality.
As you can tell, I don’t do much for $$ anymore. Too depressing.
It was certainly commissioned, as were most of the important works of the Renaissance.
I would argue that the art is inherent (or not) in the result, not in the motivation for its creation.
In many fields, major works are almost impossible to complete without a patron. Without commissions, they would not exist at all. That’s certainly true of large scale art, due to the amount of time, space, and materials required. While major works of literature can be completed without a patron (i.e. before signing a contract with a publisher), I wouldn’t say that presence or lack of patronage has much correlation with the quality of the finished work.
The idea of the “pure” artist, free of commercial concerns, is very very new. (As is the distinction between art and craft.) To me, it smells like a way for rich dabblers to look down their noses at the likes of Dickens.
(1) The modern theory of what is “art”, with it’s “highest?” expression in “Brit Art”: to be art a work has to be shocking … if it’s not shocking, it’s not “art” but mere “decoration”. So to the likes of Charles Saatchi, Nicholas Sarota, et al., the Sistine Chapel and all the other great works of the past are merely decoration, unless you extend the notion of “shocking” to the point that it has become meaningless. As a most typical example — an aside for you — about 6 years ago, the Tate Gallery invited Tracy Emin — she of the unmade bed, which to my mind is not art, but is merely disgusting manipulation of a gullible public, not even shocking — to do the decoration of the Christmas tree in the lobby of the museum. She placed a postcard with the words “Christmas tree” on the floor where the tree would normally go. The sycophantic hailed this as a great example of Brit Art. I wrote to the Times to suggest that Tracy Emin’s Christmas tree was the ultimate proof that Brit Art was the Emperor’s new clothes. They did not publish my letter.
(2) One of our final year MA students specialising in translation has just had a really crushing time with her thesis supervisor, who made her rewrite different chunks of her thesis every day even after it had been sent to the externals, without ever saying what it was that he thought needed rewriting about that chunk — she if course is on a PC, so no Scrivener! One of the things he forced on her at draft 2 stage — I think she had to do 11 rewrites in all — was his definition of translation, that the process of re-expressing a text in another language is only a translation if it is done for money!
Would it have been considered art when it was created? It easy to say yes today, but we do not have the same context or view of the work. I am not suggesting that it isn’t a magnificent work or even that it is not art. Not being a painter I wouldn’t be capable of more than a simple “I like that”.
I agree that a “patron” opens new avenues of potential to an artist. But there are not many patrons left. Today we have “art investors” and “labels” and “publishers” whose goal is NOT art, but PROFIT. This takes them from “patron” to “broker”. Patrons buy for their use, brokers sell what the have bought.
And here is where we ask with whom the problem lies. In my opinion the issue is with the broker (for the record my personal experience with “production art” is in music, as both a musician and production, so my opinion may be shaped by forces that are unique to this field and even this particular quadrant of the globe). When the broker takes the “art” then twists it and modifies it beyond recognition is it still the same piece that the artist created? And even if we claim that it is still the same piece, would it still be the artists work since it no longer resembles what the artist created?
Many folks today would answer with a loud “NO”.
As you can tell I have not had the best of experiences. And I am not alone. At least not in the music industry.
My experience is that it is not the rich, but the desperate that turn to self publication. I do not look down my nose at folks who make their living with their art or craft. As a matter of fact I envy them. How much more fulfilling would my life be if I was doing something that let me express what is rolling around inside? Not just as a pastime, but as an occupation? Yes I would need to give up a little and “do what the man wants” but I would be validating a lot of sweat and tears. The folks that I know who are “closet artist” like I am feel the same. So why don’t we?
Because we are too stubborn or arrogant or idiotic to compromise what ever position we happen to occupy. For me it was the message and sound of the music. For Geoffrey it was the meter of one very personal poem (he should have simply withdrawn it). For Christie it was a stage presence that she was not comfortable with. Were we wrong? Maybe. But as “pure artist” we are able to call our own shots. And sometimes we shoot ourselves in the foot and limp for the rest of our lives.
I am not rich. I am not a dabbler. I just don’t like the way things are being done.
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