I've spotted the first turtles of the spring. They occupy their office with unmistakable dignity.
I was going through some books to-day, getting ready to write the next chapter of my comic. Looking at this book about Robert Blake, I was reminded of one of the reasons I like used books so much.
On the inside cover is this:
That address may still belong to an apartment building. When I looked for it on google maps, I found a website for some kind of educational consulting firm, but given the floating world of American education right now, it could very well be a company operating out of an apartment. This book was likely sold at an estate sale, though. I believe I bought it, like so many, at the long gone Fifth Avenue Books in San Diego, which was largely stocked with books from estate sales. It was one of the most interesting shops in town but, like so many things in the process of turning San Diego into the most expensive city in the U.S., it was replaced by some gringo's idea of a sushi restaurant.
The book was printed in London in 1989 and the only price on the dust jacket is £17.95. This Katherine Aaron may have acquired the book in England or it was given to her by someone who'd been there. The neatness of the signature suggests to me someone fairly young, as does the nickname "Caddie", and the fact that she wrote her name in the book at all. My guess would be fourteen or fifteen, except a book about the leader of the Parliamentary navy during the Interregnum seems like an obscure topic for a girl of that age. Maybe she was a little older. But who knows. It's intriguing, in any case.
Further in, there's another name:
Is this the same person? The capital "A" in Aaron is written the same way but Carolyn is a very different name to Katherine. Maybe she was considering changing her name. The lack of spacing between Carolyn and Rose makes me wonder if she spontaneously decided to add the middle name as she was writing. Or maybe she was Katherine's daughter and she inherited the book.
I wonder what became of them and why they had to sell their book about Robert Blake.
I got home late from Osaka last night and didn't feel like watching a movie. In the morning I watched the second episode of Robert Blake's YouTube series. Recorded within the last couple years, the episodes are just him at home going through boxes of old photos. So far he's talked almost exclusively about his roles as a child. Apparently he didn't think too much of Lost Highway at that point in his life, something seemingly confirmed by David Lynch in this interview:
Although, this interview from the time of the film's release shows him being more positive about it--and also somewhat derisive of his body of work previous to it:
I guess people change. Which is a pretty good summary of Lost Highway, actually.
I didn't realise Lost Highway, in 1997, was Blake's last movie. I wonder why. His arrest didn't happen until 2002.
“There was times on that set where I even became almost unprofessional in a sense, where I just started changing lines … I would have to sit down with the writers, and they would be like, ‘Wait, what happened to the scene?’ And I would have to go through and explain why I couldn’t do certain things."
Ortega went on to give specific examples, quoting stereotypical “teenage” dialogue that clashed with Wednesday’s dark, brooding persona.
“Everything that she does, everything that I had to play, did not make sense for her character at all,” Ortega said. “Her being in a love triangle made no sense. There was a line about like, this dress that she has to wear for a school dance and she said, ‘Oh, my God, I love it. Ugh, I can’t believe I said that. I literally hate myself.’ And I had to go, ‘No, there’s no way.’”
Ortega even mentioned choreographing her own dance, the most iconic scene from the show, after discovering that Wednesday was originally meant to inspire a flash-mob, stating: “why would [Wednesday] be okay with that?”
Ortega implied that she had completely reshaped her character to give Wednesday more of an arc, saying, “I grew very, very protective of her, but you can’t lead a story and have no emotional arc because then it’s boring and nobody likes you.”
I don't agree that arcs are essential to creating good characters or stories but, for the most part, it sounds like she was definitely a better writer than the show's credited scribes. The fact that Tim Burton has just cast her in Beetlejuice 2 suggests it wasn't Burton she was clashing with, either, and that Burton had a relatively small creative role for a director on Wednesday. If they do another season, I hope they get better writers. Maybe they should just have Jenna Ortega do the writing.
Speaking of publicised rewrites, I've been amused by this ongoing story about Dave Filoni's supposed involvement in the filming of the Vader hallway scene at the end of Rogue One. Freddie Prinze Jr., star of Filoni's Rebels, recently claimed the Rogue One scene was 100% conceived and executed by Filoni even though Filoni himself claimed in an earlier interview that he'd never filmed any live action before his work on The Mandalorian. Then, finally, Gary Whitta, one of the original writers on Rogue One, said the scene was filmed by the film's original director, Gareth Edwards. It wasn't even part of the reshoots by the second unit director.
Which sounds a lot more plausible to me. I remember when Filoni imitated the sequence in the final episode of Rebels where it made absolutely no sense.
I bet at some point Filoni, or one of Filoni's people, told Freddie Prinze that story about Filoni making the scene for Rogue One, just like Filoni has successfully convinced people he created Ahsoka Tano. The guy's career is taking credit for things at this point. Meanwhile, what has he done since George Lucas sold Star Wars that wasn't running off fumes from Lucas and Jon Favreau? I suspect the upcoming Ahsoka Tano series will be the make or break point. When that show ends up sucking, everyone's going to stop buying into his PR except his most virulent stans. And that'll be yet another headache Disney can't afford.
I'm reminded again how Bob Dolman complained about Disney execs tampering in the writers room on the Willow series. And the stories going around about how the ending to the latest Ant-Man movie was changed to its current lame incarnation. And I'm reminded of the Disney Dark Ages of the 1970s and early 1980s, when a lack of a strong creative vision and too many unimaginative cooks in the kitchen nearly sunk the studio. And here we go again.
Robert Blake passed away a few days ago. The 89 year old actor was one of the Little Rascals, he gave an extraordinary performance as a killer in In Cold Blood (clip above), he starred in a popular cop show called Baretta, and he was the Mystery Man in David Lynch's Lost Highway, the role I best remember him for.
When you search for "Lost Highway clip" on YouTube, most of the most popular results are of Blake's character. Lynch made a brilliant choice in casting Blake well against type. His eerie black eyes and tenacious grin create the demoniac man more than the makeup and costume.
Quentin Tarantino dedicated his novelisation of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to Blake. Which has led people to draw comparisons between Blake and the character of Cliff Booth, played by Brad Pitt in the film. Both men may have murdered their wives, neither was found guilty of the crime, leaving only a court of public opinion to weigh in. It's a circumstance more familiar in a David Lynch movie or series, particularly Twin Peaks, which is populated by characters who seem to be different people depending on the circumstance and perspective.
Who was Robert Blake? All I can say for sure is he was a great actor and a fascinating man.
