DRONES DRONES and MORE DRONES! AS I WRITE THIS PATTERNSON AIR BASE WAS CLOSED FOR A FEW HOURS : WE THE PEOPLE

DRONES  DRONES and MORE DRONES!  AS I WRITE THIS PATTERNSON AIR BASE WAS CLOSED FOR A FEW HOURS

by Christine Trzyna

"I know what it is.  Ever see the movie Independence Day?.... Harley believed the drones buzzing around New Jersey (but also now many other locations) were launched by aliens from another planet.

I had, in a theatre, in 1996, gone to see that movie. I was in college. I needed a study break.  I went to the theatre in the middle of the afternoon by myself. I thought I was in for a film about the American Revolution. 

As the mothership launched babyships, as the sparce audience tried on what it would be to look up and see the sun blotted out by massive black UFO's that could obliterate the White House with one fire beam and was predictably filled with demonic creatures, I sat back and also realized that the film was a masterpiece of screen writing. Rare for a fast action film, and a film with a large cast of characters, the screenwriters had managed to give each character enough dialogue for us to get to know them. Best, every "story" of these characters managed to have a beginning, middle, and end, and each of them some success, even if that meant dying loved. When the crop-duster Viet Nam vet, Russel, who couldn't even spray the right field, and who had been an embarrassment to his children, volunteered to be the hero who would fly the American space-jet right into the mothership, which meant his death when it exploded, I think the whole audience felt they could relate to this "every man" who had photos of his kids on the dashboard.

Oh, and that scene in which some Arabs on walkie talkies (or were those cell phones?) says "It's the Americans!" (who had the plan that was going to save the world) in the very front row, in uniform, a row of American soldiers on leave stood up and gave victory fists to the screen.

Ah yes, "The Americans!"  We The People... The preamble to the American constitution, which I'd memorized in the fifth grade. "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

All weekend I watched drone coverage. One expert said that drones were worthless when it came to filming or photos at night (and don't we have the International Space Station?) but were good at sniffing for gas leaks or radiation. Another said they appeared to be American made. Reports of thirty of them coming off the set towards land made fears of a "mothership" - possibly Chinese or Russian, maybe North Korean, or even Iranian were real. Reports of wing-spans of six feet or eight feet, the size of cars - Volkswagen Beetles perhaps - which, if shot down, might crash and squash houses and humans - were truly scary. These drones are, reportedly, much faster than the ones we manufacture and, therefore, they escape from the drones we do. Also, the cost estimates of what it might take to actually manufacture them and fly them, especially when they show up in hoards, is in the millions, so this could be one very expensive hoax.

"Damn it, why doesn't Biden just shoot them out of the sky!" yelled my Republican friend. 

The GOP hearings on what the protocol might be for shooting them down happened.

In my opinion these drones ARE A THREAT to the normal functioning of airports and flight and the SHOULD be taken down. They are ALSO A THREAT TO OUR DOMESTIC TRANQUILITY. And therefore, what I would do - since most likely someone is watching and hearing the TERROR they are causing - should be given a warning.  And then, carefully, sadly so for the creatures of the sea and the ecosphere of the ocean, we should shoot them down over it.

But where I differ from many, is that I STILL TRUST THAT OUR GOVERNMENT and OUR MILITARY AS A FUNCTION OF THAT GOVERNMENT, aims to protect us, especially from invasions and war on our land.

I think of the courageous civilians of the Ukraine, who have had to defend themselves from Russia's attack upon them, a war so far from the tradition of the battlefield... I can say that I could never ever deal with such an invasion. So, if they are hesitant to tell us things that would put our spies in danger, I get it. If those drones carry micro nuclear devices that would blow if shot down and they don't want us to know it, I get it. The drones are very likely Human-made. If they are being piloted by aliens from another planet...

C 2024 Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

ERIC EDSON LECTURE ON SCREENWRITING STORY STRUCTURE and THE RITUAL OF STORY

Am not involved in screenwriting but this lecture is worth the listen for any writer.  Every genre has its conventions - limitations - such as how much time a person who is reading or watching is going to spend.  Eric Edson's lecture makes me wish I were back in college.

I disobey the idea that a blog post should only take a minute to read.

Visual storytelling (film) is different than novels...  Emotion and Character through BEHAVIOR.  Plot and character is the same in film.  No narrator telling us what's going on.

Hero and adversary creates conflict.  Only 14 categories provide characters of either helping or hindering a hero from getting to their goal.

ROBERT TOWNE (1974) : PREFACE AND POSTSCRIPT TO CHINATOWN

No script ever drove me nuttier, as I tried one way and another casually to reveal mountains of information about dams, orange groves, incest, elevator operators, etc. As in most states, it finally comes down to exile or death; my wife in her wisdom banished me and my growing shame to any island of choice - in this case the cheapest, closest and as it happened, most perfect, Catalina.

There in the fall of 1972, inside the flaking white and green trimmed dusty, clapboard of Banning Lodge, perched between Cat Harbor and Isthmus Cove, I wrote the heart of "Chinatown" - with the aid and comfort of two friends, one who lived with me and one who visited me in banishment - Hira my dog and Edward Taylor, since college my Jiminy Crickett, Mycroft Holmes, and Edmund Wilson.  Eddie would periodically drop out of the sky on a Catalina Seaplane, Hira would chase forty head of buffalo into the windsock waving at the shore line of Cat Harbor, just on a whim, and I would whine and wring my hands - and slowly discover my invisible collaborator on "Chinatown."


EXCERPT FROM
Writing Los Angeles
A Literary Anthology
Edited by David L. Ulin
Library of America publisher
Copyright 2002

Page 679-680

IT HAPPENED ON FIFTH AVENUE : FILM CIRCA 1947 : HOMELESSNESS CIRCA 1947 : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW

A vintage Allied Artists film - staring Don DeFore, Ann Harding, Charlie Ruggles,  Victor Moore, Gale Storm.


This is an improbable but touching film in which a man who would otherwise be homeless lives the life of a millionaire by infiltrating the boarded up Fifth Avenue, New York, mansion of the second richest man in the world.  We see the man, his bowler hat, heavy coat, and cane, as he walks down the street, lifts up a man hole cover, and lets himself into a shut down but extremely livable mansion.  It's a squatter's dream with a stocked pantry and apparently a stocked cigar closet too.  This squatter knows well how to live the high life.  He is a highly principled person.  We never ask while watching "What did he do to deserve this?  When spring comes he has somewhere else to squat.  (He's nice enough to leave the place as he found it.  But in fiction we are always asked to suspend disbelief.)

Soon the rich man's daughter leaves finishing school on a whim to be a singer in New York and comes to live in the mansion as her bolt hole.  Then other people who have no homes - a couple with children, a single man down on his luck - come to live there.  These well dressed homeless are World War II veterans and mom's who wear their millinery and high heels while living in vehicles.

After the second richest man in the world - an Irishman! - has his detectives locate his wayward daughter, he and his ex wife come to visit and influence their daughter to get back to her education and privilege.  Of course, stereotypically mom is sympathetic to her daughter  because she has fallen in love with a man down on his luck.   Once upon a time she and her husband lived in a lousy apartment when they were first starting out.  You have to start somewhere.

But by the end of the film you know it; the rich man's heart softens to approve his daughter's less than greedy and materialistic romance and eventual marriage to that man.

The World War II veterans with no jobs and no homes decide to pool their money and get investors so they can establish a kind of shelter town in an abandoned army base.  Eventually the rich man gives in and supports their efforts, even though when he got word of their idea he bought it all up for himself.

Review:  While watching I was thinking how heartless people have become in the last 60 years. Old films with heart create a kind of happiness in one's own.  I was also thinking about the screenwriters of that era who were pitching their ideas to movie makers.  This film, posted as "an original story by Herbert Clyde Lewis and Frederick Stephani," was meant to be watched by hopeful Irish (20 years before we had out first and only Irish Catholic in the White House), by hopeful World War II Veterans (soon women who had worked in Industry would be encouraged by the government through well placed magazine articles and such to get married and be stay at home moms.  They were no longer supposed to take a job away from a man!), and by those who hoped that class differences could be melted (but seems to me we are nowhere near that yet.) 

To have a heart, to have hope, you must also have believe that people are essentially good.

That notion that people are essentially good, is what made this film one of four in a series called FILM FAVORITES, Classic Holiday Collection Vol 2.

C 2013 Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR (1948) AMERICA DAY BY DAY

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR  - Published 1948 from "AMERICA DAY BY DAY"

(I would've never guessed Simone spent time in Pasadena or Hollywood.  Reading through,  Beauvoir saw the dark side of Los Angeles life.  She finds what we take in stride as not ordinary. In this excerpt, she is amazed by the way Angelenos buy things on credit and gives her opinion on American cities and neighborhoods that reveal class structure.)

Pages 337 - 338)

"A year ago N. married a GI (Ivan Moffatt), who is now a scriptwriter in Hollywood.  When she came to join him, they hadn't a penny between them, and I. was earning very little money.  N. was expecting a baby.  Thanks to the credit system they practice here, they could rent a kind of barn and transform it into a livable house, and also buy a car, something absolutely necessary in this city of vast distances.  Now I.s' situation has improved, but his salary is almost entirely consigned to paying off his debts.  Besides, a law requires parents to take their children to the doctor once a week during their first year; this is very costly.  It's hard to balance the budget every month.  I know all that and also that I.'s car is red.  So I am utterly astonished to see a little yellow car standing in front of the station.  N. tells me, "It's ours. I. bought it last week just so we could drive around."  "Nothing simpler," adds N.M., "since you buy without paying!"  Obviously.  But I'm stunned by such ease.  Los Angeles also stuns me.  This city is unlike any other. Below me, the downtown looks just like the downtowns of Rochester, Buffalo, and Cleveland, which themselves evoke New York's downtown and Chicago's Loop.  It's the tall buildings housing banks, stores, and movie theaters, the monotonous checkerboard of streets and avenues.  But then, all the neighborhoods we drive through are either disorganized outlying districts or huge developments where identical wooden houses multiply as far as the eye can see, each one surrounded by a little garden.  The traffic is terrifying; the broad roadways are divided into six lanes, three in each direction, marked off by white lines, and you are allowed to pass to either the right or the left.  You can turn to the right only from the right lane, to the left only from the left; this last maneuver is often prohibited, which complicates one's itinerary.  At intersections the car that has arrived first has priority, a rule that provokes thousands of disputes..."

Page 339)

"Hollywood, as everyone knows, is where the studious are.  The stars live in Beverly Hills,. To see their houses, you have to enter an artificial park humming with neither the muffled life of the countryside nor the feverish life of the city; the luxurious villas are surrounded by a false solitude.  Avenues lined with garages and with flat-roofed boutiques, barely one-story high; a blue coastal road above the sea; vast camps of parked trailers, those caravans in which many homeless Americans live on the outskirts of towns; working -class sections filled with monotonous shacks..."

from
Writing Los Angeles
A Literary Anthology
Edited by David L. Ulin
Library of America publisher
Copyright 2002

DINNER RUSH : THE BEST MOB MOVIE I'VE EVER SEEN : CHRISTINE TRZYNA DVD FILM REVIEW

DINNER RUSH : THE BEST MOB MOVIE I'VE EVER SEEN : CHRISTINE TRZYNA DVD FILM REVIEW

Speaking of more restaurants with heavily curtained dining alcoves.




A Bob Giraldi Film, staring Danny Aiello.  Written by screenwriters Rick Shaughnessy and Brian Kalata...
 Lately I've become sensitive to editing, and this film was edited and filmed to have a reality TV sort of haywire.  The camera and the action and the dialogue quickly moves through the film, interspersed with fast clips of restaurant reality; the ambiance on deck and the chaos of the kitchen. 



It's all very effective, and perhaps because at times you feel a little hopped up to follow the story, a little confused.  The the tension builds, and having seen a lot of mob movies you're expecting a murder at any time, but when it comes it's a surprise!  You've been lulled.

Dinner Rush is perhaps the best mob/Mafia film I've ever seen.  The plot revolves around bookie and restaurateur Louis Cropa acted by Danny Aiello, whose partner was recently killed by two young thugs from the Queens who want to take over some businesses, including the restaurant, and the turf.  The bookie's son has a gambling habit and is in hock to these two thugs $13,000.

The restaurant is one of the hot spots of New York and an important critic has come to sample and write about the Nuevo Cuisine, while Louis mourns not only his partner but also the days when an Italian restaurant featured meat balls.
 
Louis himself is low key but, as all his loyal and some not so loyal employees know, his word is a command.  Who will obey?  Who won't?

Cut. Action. More action.  Did you hear that?  Overhear that?  Did that just happen?

C 2013 Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved

ANTHONY HOPKIN'S SLIPSTREAM FILLED ME WITH ANXIETY : THE WORD IS SHATTERED : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW

Anthony Hopkins, known for his work in some scarey freaky films,  wrote the screenplay, directed the film, and worked as an actor in the film, so I had to see this. 

Slipstream was edited with disturbing breaks and rapid images.  OK, I had trouble following the story and maybe that has something to do with the fact that I have never watched reality television and love long periods of deep concentration. 

So I read the back of the DVD package to get a clue, and then realized "OH, OK this is a story about a screenwriter (could be any writer) who begins to live in his script/ the world he has created, so much so that he looses his sense of reality. 

A viewer really had to pay attention and pick up clues quickly.  I apparently was unable to do this.  Yet, I understood what was intended and realized that Anthony Hopkins had effectively conveyed to the viewer exactly what it was he wanted to!  In this case the DVD package wasn't lying when it said "Soon, he is thrown into a vortex where dreams, time, and reality collide in an increasingly whirling slipsteam.

Let me explain that early on a female character does define "slipstream" for the viewer, and so I thought this had something to do with reincarnation, which is a subject I've long been very fascinated with.  However, there was nothing I was cognitive of while watching that seemed to be about past lives.  Perhaps what was being suggested was instead the phenomena of Deja Vu, the feeling that you have been to a place or scene before, which some people attribute to past life memories.

This film also left me with a temporary depression.

As a result, I didn't give it a second go to try and figure it all out.

C 2013 Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights