Max Barry's Blog, page 16
August 9, 2011
I Had to Make a Book Trailer
Machine Man
August 3, 2011
Skype with Max
Also: win an original manuscript. I wasn't sure which to go with as the blogtitle. Which do you think is more alluring? It's the manuscript, isn't it? Well, it's
too late for that now. Stop going on about it.
So two new promotions today. PROMOTION #1:
WIN
A MACHINE MAN MANUSCRIPT! This is a mid-2010 working
draft of the novel that I scribbled notes over. It's 413 pages. I don't
know how I'm supposed to mail that. The postage will ruin me. Anyway,
you can win that, and magnets and books, if you enter before August 9 and
live in the US or Canada. Yes, this one is a North American promotion.
Don't look at me like that. I don't control the global publishing industry.
PROMOTION #2:
SKYPE WITH MAX! Since I'm not doing a book tour,
I decided to Skype myself around. That sounds kind of dirty. But the idea
is you get the joy of my virtual presence
with none of the body odor. It's win-win. Basically I'll call you and you
have ten minutes to
ask questions or show me your cats or whatever you like. Well. Not whatever.
Keep your clothes on. But you get the idea.
To qualify for this, you buy three books. I had to pick a number that
was low enough to be reasonable, yet high enough to prevent me spending
the rest of my life delivering this promotion. So I chose three.
For this you can live anywhere in the world. You see, when it's up to
me, I remember my friends in far-off corners of the world, like England.
I remember you.
P.S. I haven't received my magnets yet, but when I do I'll give some of those
away to people outside of North America, too.
July 31, 2011
Antipodean Machines
Machine Man is out in Australia and New Zealand today, because of the timedifference. We're eight days and fourteen hours ahead of the US. I don't know
if you knew that. It's because the Southern Hemisphere rotates slightly faster
than the Northern Hemisphere. That's why the seasons are different, too.
Also, most of what you think is an accent is actually just the
Doppler effect.
Anyway, the point is that residents of Australia and New Zealand should now be
visiting bookstores and moving my book to more prominent positions.
Bookstore owners say they hate that, but they're just crotchety because of the whole
collapsing industry thing. They'll thank you when that eye-catching
cover brings in more foot traffic.
Northern Hemispherians have to wait until next week. You know my Australian
publisher did this specifically to annoy you. Not only that, but they're running
a promotion whereby antipodes can get a free e-copy with every print edition. I'm not sure
how that helps anyone, come to think of it. I guess if you like the look and feel of print books but the convenience
of digital, it's good. Or if you want to test which medium you prefer by
reading the exact same book once on each. If that describes you, details are craftily hidden
on this page.
July 21, 2011
July 8, 2011
Dogs and Smurfs
aside for major prizes and all-new hand-wringing about why it is so.
Because, I don't know if you've noticed, but male writers get taken
more seriously. Also, stories about men, even if written by women,
are considered mainstream, while stories about women are "women's fiction."
This despite the fact that women read more than men, and write
more, and are over-represented generally throughout publishing.
As the father of two girls, one aged five and one ten months,
I know why. It's because of dogs and Smurfs.
I can't understand why no-one else realizes this. I see
these knotted-brow articles and the writers seem truly perplexed.
Dogs and Smurfs: that's the answer.
Let me walk you through it. We'll start with dogs. I have
written about this before, but to save you the click: people assume dogs are male.
Listen out for it: you will find it's true. To short-cut
the process, visit the zoo, because when I say "dogs," I really mean,
"all animals except maybe cats." The air of a zoo teems with "he."
I have stood in front of baboons with teats like missile launchers
and heard adults exclaim to their children, "Look at him!" Once I saw
an unsuspecting monkey taken from behind and there was a surprised
silence from the crowd and then someone made a joke about sodomy.
People assume animals are male. If you haven't already noticed this, it's
only because it's so pervasive. We also assume people are male,
unless they're doing something particularly feminine; you'll usually say "him"
about an unseen car driver, for example. But it's ubiquitous in regard to
animals.
Now, kids like animals. Kids really fucking like animals. Kids are little animal
stalkers, fascinated by absolutely anything an animal does. They read books about
animals. I just went through my daughter's bookshelves, and they all have
animals on the cover. Animals everywhere.
And because publishing is terribly progressive, and because Jen and I
look out for it, a lot of those animals are girls. But still: a
ton of boys. Because of the assumption.
Here's an example: a truly great
kids' book is Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers. I love
this story, but on page 22, after being called "it" three times, an
otherwise sexless penguin twice becomes "he."
This would never, ever happen the other way around. The only reason
a penguin can abruptly become male in an acclaimed children's book
without anybody noticing is because we had already assumed
it was.
Then you've got Smurf books. Not actual Smurfs. I mean stories
where there are five major characters, and one is brave and one is smart
and one is grumpy and one keeps rats for pets and one is a girl.
Smurfs, right? Because there was Handy Smurf and
Chef Smurf and Dopey Smurf and Painter Smurf and ninety-four other male
Smurfs and Smurfette. Smurfette's unique
personality trait was femaleness. That was the thing she
did better than anyone else. Be a girl.
Smurf books are not as common as they used to be, but Smurf stories
are, oddly, everywhere on the screen. Pixar makes practically nothing else.
I am so disappointed by
this, because they make almost every kids' film worth watching.
WALL-E is good. I will grant them WALL-E, because Eve is so awesome. But
otherwise: lots of Smurfs.
Male is default. That's what you learn from a world of boy dogs
and Smurf stories. My daughter has no problem with this. She
reads these books the way they were intended: not about boys,
exactly, but about people who happen to be boys. After years
of such books, my daughter can happily identify with these characters.
And this is great. It's the reason she will grow into a woman who
can happily read a novel about men, or watch a movie in which
men do all the most interesting things, without feeling like she
can't relate. She will process these stories as being primarily
not about males but about human beings.
Except it's not happening the other way. The five-year-old boy who lives up
the street from me does not have a shelf groaning with stories about
girl animals. Because you have to seek those books out,
and as the parent of a boy, why would you? There are so many great
books about boys to which he can relate directly.
Smurf stories must make perfect sense to him: all the characters
with this one weird personality trait to distinguish them, like
being super brave or smart or frightened or a girl.
I have been told that this is a good thing for girls. "That makes girls
more special," said this person, who I wanted to punch in the face.
That's the problem. Being female should not be special. It should
be normal. It is normal, in the real world. There are all kinds of girls. There are
all kinds of women. You just wouldn't think so, if you only
paid attention to dogs and Smurfs.
Is it the positive role model thing? Because
I don't want only positive female role models. I want
the spectrum. Angry girls, happy girls, mean girls. Lazy girls.
Girls who lie and girls who
hit people and do the wrong thing sometimes. I'm pretty sure my daughters
can figure out for themselves which personality aspects they
should emulate, if only they see the diversity.
It's not like this is hard. Dogs and Smurfs: we're not
talking about searing journeys to the depths of the soul. An elephant
whose primary story purpose is to steal some berries does not
have to be male. Not every time. Characters can be girls just because
they happen to be girls.
P.S. Don't talk to me about Sassette. Sassette was like the three millionth
Smurf invented. You get no credit for that.
July 6, 2011
June 30, 2011
Magnets: How do they get into my possession?
of those countries that hates me, like the UK. Seriously, UK. What have I
ever done to you? Aside from those
Bedford blogs. Those were totally
justified. Bedford is horrible.
Anyway,
the point is: look at me with this actual book! The publishers
have started printing. A couple days ago I was asked
whether I'd miss the sensation of holding a physical copy of my book,
since I allegedly believe ebooks are destined to take over from print.
And as much as I wanted to say no, because, hey, bring on the electrons, the answer
was yes. I do find it incredibly rewarding to hold my book, made real. I mean made physical.
Ebooks are real. I never said otherwise. But a thing, a touchable, material
thing, does validate the book's existence in a straightforward and
undeniable way. When I
dreamed of being a published writer, I was mostly imagining a shelf full
of physical objects. Those objects may not be important, in the long run. They may
be the medium and nothing more. But boy, they are something.
Some promotional stuff is brewing. First, if you're in Australia, Scribe is doing
a very cool thing whereby you can buy the print version and get a
Booki.sh e-copy for free. See
here under
"ebook bundle".
If you're not in Australia, and can get to San Diego for
Comic-Con 2011,
Vintage will be giving away Advanced Reader Copies* and
more importantly AWESOME MAGNETS. Look at these things. You can mix
and match human and artificial parts. You know you want that more
than life itself. That isn't just me.
If
you can't get to San Diego, you can win magnets and possibly something else
via a competition I haven't invented yet. The important thing is I promise
there will
be access to magnets. Stay tuned. And suggest some competition ideas. Because
seriously, I need to think of something.
Finally: US book tour. There isn't one. Or at least, not a physical one.
This is mainly because flying an author thousands of miles to sell
three dozen copies of a book is not very cost-effective.
Especially when that author tends to order a lot of room service and make
long international phone calls. But also because I have an idea for a virtual
book tour, which is cheaper and appropriate for the novel and
solves the problem of people complaining I'm visiting
every city in the world except their one.
Details to come on that, too. I just wanted to let you know early so
you're not hanging around postponing your vacation in case I come
to Tallahassee that precise weekend. Go ahead. Book the flight.
You deserve it.
(* Advanced Reader Copies are early versions
given out to reviewers and bloggers and, for some reason, Comic-Con 2011
attendees. Sometimes these wind up on ebay and people like you wonder if they
should buy them. I think they make neat collectibles, but they're inferior
to the final book in three ways: the text is uncorrected, meaning it
contains typos and things I changed at the last minute,
the cover and front/back matter is different, and the production
quality of the book itself is lower. Also I don't get paid for ARCs.
So that's four ways.)
June 18, 2011
I'm a Star
until it came time to do it, at which point I was seized with terror. This was because
everyone around me seemed to know exactly what they were doing and be
very good at doing it, while I'm a writer who can't act. I knew that whenever
something went wrong during a shot, people would shout out, "RESET, RESET,"
or "CUT" or "MAX BARRY GODDAMMIT HOW HARD IS IT TO TAKE ONE STEP
TO YOUR RIGHT" (probably), and did not want to waste everyone's time.
They were doing such an incredible job; why was I making it harder? My very
presence was an insult, implying that anyone could do this. If an actor
wanted to insert a few sentences into a novel I was writing, how would I feel about that?
Like no freaking way was that happening, that's how.
So I felt indulgent. But of course every person I spoke to was
completely encouraging and happy for me, so it may have been all in my head.
Anyway, I completely nailed the "neurotic" part of actor right off the bat.
I was a waiter. In an earlier blog I said I was going to be an exec in a strip
club—which I really should have mentioned to my wife before
the day I was leaving, I discovered—but the schedule changed so instead I
was a waiter. I had a line but convinced the director to drop it, because I
lost confidence in being able to make recognizable sounds out of my talking
hole. Instead I mostly just stood next to Amber Heard and gave her things
while she delivered a monologue about feminism in the
workplace. This was a good match of roles to talents. I was like the
caddy of a great golfer, if the golfer was world-class and beautiful and
at one point wearing a corset, and the caddy had never held a club before
and was concentrating on not swallowing his own tongue.
Here's me paying intent attention to the director, Aram:
Beside me is Shane, a very cool guy who I talked to a lot on set; he's a producer
who in this moment is standing in for Amber. I must be standing on
a box or something because no way is Shane this short. That's some kind
of film trickery. The ear belongs to Scott, whose job is to herd people into the
right positions at the right time by bellowing instructions. He is awesome.
Everyone is awesome. Julio Macat, the cinematographer, who I wish I got
a pic with but never did, is flat-out brilliant and a genuinely lovely human being.
Every day I was on set I learned more about what these people do
and how good they are at doing it.
A lot of exterior shots were filmed that day and next, so the internet filled with
paparazzi pics. I think I am supposed to be disappointed at, you know,
these vultures suckling at the teat of celebrity, but come on, HOW COOL DO THESE LOOK.
No-one felt a need to take a paparazzi shots of me, for some reason. I had to
do it myself. So here is
me in my trailer
on the day of my cameo. (I don't know why I
got a trailer.)
Then I flew home to Melbourne, Australia. Which was heartbreaking, because I want to live on
that film set for the rest of my life, but also wonderful, because I got to hold
my girls (three new teeth for Matilda. Three!) and sleep for longer than five hours
and get back to writing things.
This trip was amongst the most hands-down incredible things I've ever
experienced. It was astonishing on many levels: hearing actors delivering
lines I wrote, seeing characters and locations I'd imagined coming to life,
being embraced so warmly by the cast and crew, watching how films actually
get made, surviving a cameo. I'm so grateful to every person involved.
And I know nothing will ever beat it: that even if I'm fortunate enough to have more
work produced, it won't be like this first time, where reality smashed through
the ceiling of my expectations and kept heading up. I went over there fully
prepared to be disappointed, at least in some respects. And I was wrong.
This is going to be a good movie.
June 11, 2011
Perfect Day
City That Never Sleeps? I thought. More like City That Never Gets Up. This seemed funny because it was my fifth day in a row with less than four hours sleep. I'm basically only functional thanks to to the adrenaline of having my book turned into a movie. I walked through the Flower District, which is what I assume that street with nothing but flower shops is called, and Madison Square Park, where I once saw an outdoor film, and, without warning, found myself in Union Square, staring at the bookstore where I gave my first ever book reading from Syrup in July 1999.
(Edit: I am mixing up my locations. In the comments, Nic Woolf informs me that my first reading was at Astor Place,
not Union Square. I think this is right. Union Square was where my first agent, Todd Keithley, had his office
when he sold Syrup to a publisher.)
Today began in pure joy, with no trepidation about what to expect. I knew it was going to be awesome and just felt happy to be exactly where I was.
In the morning, we shot some footage of Scat being dragged into a corporate office:
I then had my costume fitting for my cameo role on Tuesday. But I am skipping right over that because I want to talk about what happened in the afternoon. And please forgive for indulging in detail, but I want to get this all down, because it is so very important to me.
The afternoon was Amber Heard's first scene. I hadn't had the opportunity to see Amber in anything much before, and what I did see, she was not very 6-like. Aram, the director, had sworn to me that she was perfect for this role, but I was still anxious, because, like I mentioned yesterday, 6 is special to me. I was bracing myself for the inevitable realization that she was not going to be portrayed just like I had imagined.
We were shooting at the top of the Met-Life building, where thick mist turned what should have been a glorious vista over Central Park into an otherworldly diffuse light that was actually far more interesting.
I didn't know what the hell we were doing here, because when I wrote this scene it was set in an office corridor.
In it, 6 is fuming about a character trying to usurp her (named @ in the book, Three in the movie). 6 fumes a lot in Syrup. It is a core part of her. And what I was most afraid of was an actress interpreting this as a weakness. A flavor of helpless frustration, instead of honest anger. This is important to me not only because it goes to the heart of who 6 is, but also because the way women are demeaned in the workplace for showing emotion drives me fucking insane. (Latest example: here.) 6's dismissal of male expectations of female behavior is one of her best qualities.
So anyway. Amber Heard turns up. She is blond. I struggle a little with that. But I'm prepared to go with it. It's a very severe blonde. Then they set up the scene and Amber starts pacing. She radiates fury and is fearsome and so, so 6.
Then she and Scat exchange a series of lines that I first wrote in the book and reworked into their current form over five drafts and four years. Writing those drafts involved more bullshit than I can possibly describe. For a long time I wrote all day and ate dinner then went back and wrote more, seeing my family for a grand total of about thirty minutes a day, in the service of those drafts. And after enough of this, I decided it was all for nothing, because it was probably never going to be produced.
This scene looks astonishingly beautiful, because instead of the simple office corridor I imagined, it's taking place in this striking corporate-industrial cavern. And watching this, where everything was either exactly as I imagined or else better, which I had given up hope of seeing, just broke me. I cried. Later, when I went out to call Jen and tell her what had happened, how all that shit hadn't been for nothing, I cried again.
I'm sleep-deprived. I'm a little weepy about everything. But I will never forget this day.
June 10, 2011
It's Definitely Real: Syrup Shoot, Day 1
Here is me meeting the director, Aram Rappaport, for the first time without a Skype connection. I am grinning like a kid on Christmas morning because of all the trucks. And the people carrying stuff. And the trailers with names on the doors that say SCAT and SIX* and SNEAKY PETE.
Inside the building, four rooms were dressed as Scat & Sneaky Pete's apartment and the rest were for monitors and thick cables and busy people and electrical equipment worth more than my house. It was so authentic I didn't realize this at first. I don't know what I thought; maybe that we were passing through someone's disheveled bedroom en route to the warehouse with the wooden sets. But then it was gently explained to me.
When writing, I tend not to imagine physical details very precisely. I get a strong feeling for personalities and emotions, but what stuff looks like, that doesn't really bother me. Here were those vague, floating impressions given weight and detail. It was freaking amazing.
Here I am in Scat & Sneaky Pete's living room.
A lot of people were very busy carrying stuff and testing things and then filming began. I watched this on a monitor in another room, with a set of headphones to hear what people were saying. It was without doubt the most surreal experience of my life. I'm not sure I can explain this any better than to simply say that a whole bunch of highly talented people began to recreate with astonishing fidelity stuff I once dreamed up. It was hard to shake the feeling that they were doing it just for my personal benefit. Like I had a terminal illness and this was my Make-A-Wish. The very first scene filmed was the one where Scat bursts into Sneaky Pete's bedroom and says, "I have an idea." I guess this was chosen for sensible logistical reasons, but, boy, was it eerily perfect.
It was also my first look at Shiloh Fernandez, outside of "Red Riding Hood" trailers, and holy hell, he is wonderful. He said lines and they magically became way better than they sounded in my head. He was Scat sprung to life. (People call him "Scat" even when he's not acting, which reinforced my feeling that I had invented him.)
Sneaky Pete is different, because in the book he's Asian and in the film he's Kellan Lutz. He has the silent shtick but for different reasons, so he's more like a new character, rather than a hallucination made material. Throughout the day I felt this difference between stuff that was different from the book, which was merely fearsomely cool, and stuff that was the same as the book, which was like having my brain excavated.
I have a lot more respect for actors than I did twelve hours ago. They deliver a line with the exact same feeling ten times in an hour while being bombarded with instructions on where to stand and exactly how far to lean forward and can you do that with your left hand instead of your right and by the way the entire crew is waiting for you to get this exactly right so no pressure. It makes me feel like a chump because when I get tired or lose interest during my job, I just go get a snack or check my email.
I have more respect for the sheer volume of time and talent that is poured into creating a few seconds of good cinema. It seems kind of appalling to me now that I can dash off a couple lines with no regard for lighting or sound or framing or whether the camera operator's knees can actually bend that way. (The camera operator is basically a circus strongman wearing a Transformer. The physical demands of what this guy does for ten or twelve hours in a day I cannot comprehend.) So much of what I do I actually leave up to you, the reader. A film needs to fill all that in, so around my words people are pouring in new ideas, making it expand as it solidifies.
At the end of the day, I met Shiloh and Kellan and found them to be incredibly friendly and charming. I feel so grateful to these guys for not sucking. I should probably think of a better way to express that. What I mean is: you know when you have an awesome dream and you try to explain it to someone? And as it's coming out of your mouth you realize this actually sounds incredibly lame. These guys are making the dream sound awesome.
I seriously can't shake the feeling that I'm talking to Scat.
Tomorrow there's the first scene with 6, played by Amber Heard, which I can't wait to see because 6 is very dear to me and god help Amber if she screws this up. Actually I'm just really excited. I've had a few sleepless nights about how this is going to turn out but now I'm blissing. It won't be just like how I imagined, of course, or an exact reproduction of the book; neither of those would make good movies. Instead there is a spirit here that feels exactly like what I was trying to capture almost 15 years ago, and a bunch of incredibly dedicated, smart people from the director down working harder than I ever have to make it happen.
(* "Six" is wrong, of course. It's 6, the number. I pointed that out to the the producer, trying to be funny, and he assured me it would be fixed as soon as possible, but maybe not right away because everyone was so busy. So then I felt like an asshole.)
