The Great Escape

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(By moviegoods.com, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6629076)

I’ve been thinking on this film for a few days and wondering why it didn’t quite connect with me.

I’m not the world’s biggest fan of WWII films, to be fair. Not because of the time period or the events. But because too often filmmakers use the setting to say something very important about war, life, or whatever, and trip all over themselves doing it. Which I get. We’re talking about a period that shaped the modern world today. It just too often reeks of tryhard. It becomes more of a vanity project for the director than a portrait of a history. Oppenheimer is a good example. So loud and bombastic just to dramatize a handful of guys in a dusty lab drawing on chalkboards. Inglorious Basterds was kind of obnoxious. Saving Private Ryan was decent, overall.

No, I mostly enjoyed The Great Escape. It’s a good film. It could have been great. But for some reason the film felt at odds with itself, and I think the main reason is the inclusion of the Steve McQueen character, Hilts, or “The Cooler King.” Now, I’ve not read the source novel, but apparently Hilts was added for the movie. Likely studios didn’t want to finance the picture unless they could insert an A-List American star like McQueen. But this editorial decision did a disservice to the story, as the Richard Attenborough character, Bartlett, or “Big X,” should have been the primary character. He’s the one driving the plot. He’s the one who concocts the whole tunneling and escape system. He’s wanted by the SS. I wanted to know more about his background and his character. He was like James Bond. Instead, he gets sidelined so we can get glamour shots of McQueen and his antics that get him stuck in the cooler.

Hilts was portrayed rather sterotypically all-American, too. Aloof, cool, daring, and, of course, a huge baseball fan.

This is what I mean when I say too often studios use WWII as a vehicle to show off rather than to tell a good story. A particularly egregious thing to do when it’s based on a true story, such as The Great Escape.

There were some tonal mismatches, too. At times it almost felt like I was watching a sitcom rather than a war drama. I’m a big fan of the TV series M*A*S*H, so I know you can balance hijinks with solemnity. I also love films like Full Metal Jacket, which is rife with dark humor and outrageousness while still sticking to its theme of dehumanization. But then at the end you have a 50-man massacre when the Nazis mow down all of Big X’s guys, including Big himself, after they’ve recaptured them, and then frame them as attempted escapees.

I guess I went into the film expecting a tone more similar to Clint Eastwood’s classic Escape from Alcatraz than something closer to The Andy Griffith Show. Might have just been the audience sensibilities at the time. Escape was released not even 20 years after the war ended. It was still fresh on everyone’s minds, and many viewers were likely veterans themselves.

The tunneling sequences were well done. I’m a huge enjoyer of technical briefing and planning scenes, which are requisite in heist or prison escape films, no matter how “boring” they may be. Such as the one in Rififi when they test out stopping the alarm system.

Overall, The Great Escape was a worthwhile watch. But it’s a good example of how sometimes unnecessarily adding a character can detract from a story, even if it makes good business sense.

Sorry, My Vote Will Cost One Million

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(Photo by Jonathan Borba from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/one-hundred-dollar-bills-14820416/)

Last night President Donald Trump offered $5,000 to every American adult if Republicans win the midterm elections.

I think this is a fantastic idea. Elected officials should not be wasting time trying to win anyone’s vote based on silly things like policy or ideas. We all know they are going to lie and do their agenda anyway. Instead, both parties should simply bribe their voters.

Well, I prefer to call them payouts. Cash money, baby.

I like to vote as if I am in a Mr. Beast video.

There’s only one problem. Five grand is way, way, too low. In fact, it’s far below my going rate. What can five thou really buy you? A base model Honda Civic perhaps. If it were the early 1980s, that is. But we’re almost into 2027. We are in what most sci-fi movies call “the future.”

These days five big ones will hardly pay for groceries. I went to the store the other day and I saw a T-bone steak going for almost thirty dollars. Was that cow a celebrity? Am I eating the Brad Pitt of cows? Box cereal is approaching ten dollars. That’s a lot of money for a bag of shamrock-shaped sugar.

Then you’ve got things like rent, education. Everything else. Other costs that have ballooned all thanks mainly to heavy government spending. And the increasing costs of this Iran kerfuffle and funding Ukraine. I can’t imagine a Patriot missile is cheap. It’s not like they sell those at Costo.

No, no. I’m afraid I’m going to have to set the rate for my precious vote at ONE MILLION dollars.

See, one million I can work with. One million, after taxes, is still about $600,000, which is just enough to still make me feel good. You can’t really put a price on democracy, of course. But $600,000 gives me a new house, a new car, and enough left over for a white picket fence. The so-called American Dream.

One million may seem steep. But I’ve always highly valued my participation in democracy. Back in third grade, during a fierce competition for class president, I sold my vote for ten Chuck E, Cheese tokens, a Pizza Hut single slice voucher, AND a Butterfinger candy bar. Some called that outrageous. Ten-year-old me called it the price of doing business.

In truth, the government has been bribing people to vote for decades. It’s called welfare. So, this is really nothing new. It’s just more stripped down and to the point. I like that. I respect the hustle.

The way I see it, the government owes me big anyway. I never received any of that sweet Covid stimulus money, as I “made too much.” As if the Covid-19 virus would have skipped right past my nostrils just because it saw my bank account balance. Yeah, right. I also don’t collect any welfare. I’m what you call a “net-positive” citizen. I contribute more than my share. I am a giver, not a taker. So why shouldn’t I get to price my vote at a million? It’s my right. There are people called superdelegates, right? And electors. People with high status who actually do the voting for presidential nominees. Well, you can call me a SUPER voter then.

I look forward to receiving my direct deposit prior to the Election. I take my bribe money up front. In full. And I don’t do payment plans.

Saint Maud

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(By IMP Awards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62765453)

This film was at threat of becoming a discarded “air conditioning movie,” but I’m glad I stuck with it. I started watching this over a year ago on Prime, gave up on it around the first act, then finally returned to it last night to finish.

I do that a lot. I just did it to Soylent Green, in fact. Some movies, however “good” they are, just fail to grab me, and I put them off. It might be the result of simply getting older. I used to plop down in front of anything and let my eyes get glazed over. Now I’m like a mid-30s professional cat lady on a date–“I just didn’t feel that spark, that tingle. I need to really feel a connection.”

Right, we’ll just ignore the hundred dates you’ve gone on over the past year that make feeling a spark about as likely as igniting a soaking wet match.

Anyway, what is Saint Maud about? This horror/drama centers on a young nurse named Katie who becomes an increasingly obsessive religious fanatic after losing a patient under her care, and is determined to save the terminal woman she’s currently assigned from damnation. It’s really a psychological portrait of mental illness. A deeply unsettling slow burn one, too. It reminded me a little of Don’t Look Now, the 1973 horror starring Donald Sutherland, which really takes its time before delivering one hell of a final stinger. The Blackcoat’s Daughter is another similar film, which is definitely one worth checking out.

Saint Maud has a pretty good last minute stinger, too. Maybe not as amazing as some claim online. But pretty good. I won’t spoil it here. But if you like waiting 90 minutes just to see if a flick’s final image makes it all worth your time, Saint Maud has got your back.

Aside from the last second bitch smack, this flick does a very good job of depicting loneliness and isolation, which are often the twin demons that lead to mental breakdown. Just ask Jack Torrance. There are some good creepy moments throughout. But you have to be patient for them. Frustrating, yes. But you need a Saint Maud once in a while to counter the roller coaster popcorn horror flicks like The Conjuring.

Saint Maud was worth it in the end, even after taking a one-year long sabbatical from my initial watch.

Charley Varrick (1973)

On By Dean Brooks2 Comments

(By http://www.listology.com/content_show.cfm/content_id.21307/Movies, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2772929)

At least now I know where Tarantino borrowed (or stole) that famous line from in Pulp Fiction.

“I’m gonna call a couple of hard, pipe-hitting niggas to go to work on the homes here with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch.”

Such a cold ass line from L.A. mob boss Marsellus Wallace. But it originally comes from the the 1973 crime thriller Charley Varrick starring Walter Matthau, based on the book The Looters by John H. Reese.

“They’ll strip you naked and go to work on you with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch.”

Like they say, “good artists copy, great artists steal.”

Varrick is a largely forgotten crime flick about a New Mexico crop duster (named Charley Varrick) who stages a daring bank robbery, only to discover he’s stolen mob money. Lots of it. About $750,000, or over $5 million in today’s dollars. Needless to say, this attracts the attention of a mob hitman, who looks like Anton Chigurh’s older white cousin.

The famous line is said by the bank owner, who is fretting about how because his local bank got hit it makes him look like the one who planned an inside job. The mob doesn’t believe in coincidences.

It’s a fun, twisty film with a creative set piece pitting a crop duster plane against a car. It reminded me a lot of No Country for Old Men. You’ve got the stolen mob money. An unstoppable hitman sent to retrieve it. A trailer park. Set in the dusty southwest. And plenty of that dry, cynical wit you expect from the genre. I also see some of the DNA that later settled in Breaking Bad. Come to think of it, Charley Varrick might be the first movie I’ve ever seen set in Albuquerque. Such an overlooked area. Most movies/TV shows pick either Texas or Cali. Almost never in-between.

Charley Varrick also features the prolific John Vernon as the troubled bank manager fretting about mob retaliation. An actor who looks like if the ’70s were a person.

The Feminine Paradox

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

The Lindsay Clancy mistrial, while disturbing, is not really surprising.

A sweet moment between mother and child, or a monster preparing to snuff a helpless victim? You decide. Photo by Варвара Курочкина from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/mother-hugging-her-baby-10935456/

There is a thing in science called the Fermi Paradox, named after physicist Enrico Fermi. Basically, it relates to the contradiction that although there is likely a highly statistical probability that alien civilizations are out there (and in abundance), there is a complete lack of evidence for any of them. 

Similarly, there is the Feminine Paradox. The fact that while it is highly certain that female violence occurs regularly, there is somehow a complete unwillingness by society to acknowledge the evidence that proves it exists. Or at least it’s something that society would prefer to treat as myth or legend. Like Bigfoot, or alien abductions. 

Female violence is like the daily horoscope in the newspaper. Given some press, taken seriously by few, but regarded as fantasy B.S. by most.

Male violence, on the other hand, is more like the weather report. Far more concrete and threatening. Something of which to furrow ones brows and be deeply concerned about. Often accompanied with prognostications, predictions, or even a unique name if it’s severe enough, as in the case of hurricanes. 

For sure, male violence is obviously far more prevalant. Comparing it to female violence is a bit like comparing cancer to dog attacks. 

But still, we usually put dogs down that bite people, right? It’s not like we let wild dogs loose to bite again because prostrate cancer is just so much worse. 

I find myself complicit in the strange social behavior of turning a blind eye to female violence. I’ve actually paid little attention to the Lindsay Clancy trial, depsite its grisly details. I don’t find the final result of a mistrial that surprising at all, actually. 

It’s funny. I grew up with a mother who was physically and verbally abusive. She would fly into these sudden rages over the slightest of provocations or misbehaviors. Inadequately raking leaves in the yard. Spilled milk. You name it. She preferred hitting me in the shoulder, though kicking me also became a specialty. Yet whenever I’d mention it to friends I’d either be ignored or it was laughed off as common. “Oh, yeah, my mom does that to me too sometimes.” 

Even funnier, every PSA I watched in school about child abuse always featured a man as the perpetrator. As a kid, I would sit there and think, well, that’s a little one-sided.

My mother went to twelve years of Catholic school. The nuns there were abusive to her, and liked hitting with a ruler to correct misbehaviors. So, she suffered herself at the hands of socially acceptable female violence. It’s understandable she grew up primed to continue the cycle onto the next generation. I don’t hate the lady. I try to understand her. I love her, in a sense, despite her abuse. Strangely, I have more contempt toward my step-dad, who never laid a hand on me, for being a bum, than my mother, who did. Such is the different and unfair standards by which we judge men vs. women. 

Currently, former Wheel of Fortune announcer Jim Thornton is getting excoriated online for being caught in a pedophile chat room. This after being fired by Sony. Meanwhile, Lindsay Clancy has a you-go-girl fan club, despite having killed her three little children. 

Here’s a thought experiment. If Thornton had previously changed his gender from male to female, then subsequently murdered three babies, then blamed feminizing hormonal therapy for her homicidal outburst, would she be deserving of exoneration? More importantly, would she still be announcing prize results on a daily word puzzle game show?

What is postpartum depression? Basically, hormonal shifts that affect mood and behaviors. Teenagers undergo vast hormonal shifts, too. Should they be held to account for any misdeeds? Some men have an excess of the hormone testosterone that compels them to violence. In fact, testosterone is often linked to violence and criminality. If a mother suffering from bad hormones can’t be blamed for slaying her offspring, can wife beaters be absolved because of too much testosterone in the blood? 

Just think of all the implications if one can’t be blamed due to hormones. What a real can of worms.

This Latest He-Man Film

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment
Mattel via Gizmodo

I finally caught Masters of the Universe, the newest He-Man film, on Amazon Prime. Which turned out to be mostly fun and engaging, but doesn’t quite land in the Franchise Zone that it was clearly aiming for.

And that may be for several reasons. One, the fantasy genre is tough as hell to break into. There are really only two major fantasy properties doing well in it–Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. I don’t count MCU stuff as fantasy, even when it involves Doctor Strange and Wanda Maximoff. The genre is so tough to crack that MOTU sadly bombed at the B.O., similar to another recent fantasy flick based on an IP that was largely popular in the 80s: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

Like Dungeons, MOTU follows the Guardians of the Galaxy formula practically to a T. A group of ragtag heroes led by a charismatic but clueless dude, band together to overcome a purple villain. There is a wisecracking robot, which reminded me of the other wisecracking robot from Rogue One. Even their designs are similar. There is the super badass warrior chick character in Teela to satisfy the feminist box check. You’ve got the mentor character in Man-at-Arms played by a somewhat wasted Idris Elba. I say wasted as I feel he was miscast in this. He’s a better actor than a lot of material he’s been in, like the umpteenth sequel to Fast and Furious and that weird Pacific Rim series. But he plays as a solid veteran overall.

Then, of course there’s He-Man himself, played by Nicholas Galatzine, though he goes by Adam for most of the movie until the very end. Galatzine does a pretty solid job portraying what has largely been a two-dimensional muscley avatar of goodness meant to just sell toys in the ’80s.

Now, I never watched He-Man much as a kid. It was one of the few classic cartoons of the era I missed out on, so the film couldn’t hook me with its nostalgia barbs. So, I could watch it with a more objective eye. Though I am a little familiar with He-Man’s mythology and such.

It’s hard to pinpoint why He-Man didn’t do so well at theaters. It might have been the fantasy thing. The overreliance on the Guardians formula thing. Or just the fact that it’s a nearly 45-year-old IP that really hasn’t been relevant since the Reagan Administration. The CGI and blue screen stuff was all done well for the most part. Nothing really standout.

No, I think He-Man did itself a disservice by not including a certain character–Orko, the hovering juvenile wizard thingy. As I recall from seeing bits of the cartoon, Orko is the pratfall-riddled comic relief. He’s the character meant for young kids to port themselves into the story. In the movie, he only appears at the very end, to deliver the “lesson of today’s episode” segment, as he often did in the cartoon. Seeing him, I was honestly baffled. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t in the story at all, and it struck me as a real missed opportunity. Mid-way through the film, the characters encounter a drunken and depressed Man-At-Arms character, which was obviously done to give him a redemptive arc. Something again I feel didn’t really work.

However, the characters should have encountered an imprisoned Orko instead. Then you could have had a sequence where He-Man has to motivate Orko to use his powers and help them escape. You would have set up Orko in the beginning as a young jesteresque wizard who always makes a fool of himself trying to perform magic, then arc him into a capable enough wizard who comes in clutch when needed. Orko has a fun personality, and the movie could have leaned more into the magical element of the world of Eternia. Orko would have also played very well in trailers for the film. In fact, I’d go so far as to say the film lost tens of millions by not including a kid-friendly character like Orko, and featuring him prominently. I mean, if you’re an eight-year-old kid, would you rather spend your afternoon with Orko, or a drunken bum Man-At-Arms? I know which one eight-year-old me would have picked.

Another missed opportunity was not including more Cringer/Battle Cat. He’s a cute, lovable scaredycat. You never turn down the chance to include a cuddly animal into a film that is meant for children. He-Man was basically made originally for 6-12-year-old boys. The 2026 movie seems meant for…aging Millennials in the 35-45 range? That’s a much smaller moviegoing demographic than the cohort that turned Super Mario Bros. into two billion dollar films. I mean, no kid cares about He-Man much less knows who he is anymore unless their parents showed them the cartoon or their dusty figurine collection. You have to make them care, and you do that by showing them characters that they will like and relate to. You can’t just lean on Member Berries. Think of how Pixar attracts a younger audience, even for films with more sophisticated themes, like Inside Out.

Aside from missing two huge characters that might have represented tens of millions in additional theatrical revenue (if not even more from merch sales), the rest of the film was okay. The humor mostly landed. There were perhaps a few more swear words than there needed to be. What’s with inserting profanity into films that are meant for families? I remember most family films in the ’90s and earlier to be largely free of it, save for one here or there. There are like at least ten in He-Man. There were a bunch in Spider-Man: Brand New Day as well. There’s no reason for it, really. Adult dramas more than make up the difference.

If this latest MOTU is the final word on He-Man, I think that would be just fine. We don’t really need anymore at this point.

Is ‘Heat 2’ going to be Michael Mann’s ‘The Irishman’? Or ‘Gladiator 2’?

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment
Heat 2

For those unaware, Michael Mann is planning to direct Heat 2. He also co-authored the novel with Meg Gardiner that is, of course, a sequel to the classic 1995 hit Heat starring Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino and the late great Val Kilmer. The book is centered on the character of Chris Shiherlis, who, you’ll recall, was the lone surviving member of the ace criminal squad.

Heat is a fantastic fucking film, it goes without saying, featuring the classic shootout in downtown L.A. following the McCauley gang’s ingenious bank heist.

But what about Mann’s 2022 novel? Does it live up the legacy of the crime thriller drama that spawned a million imitators and inspired the style of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight?

Well, to quote the wild Detective Vincent Hanna, “This book has a great ass, and I’ve got my head all the way up it! When I think of great books like Heat 2, something comes out of me.”

Okay, okay, I’m not that crazed. But yeah, I liked this book a lot.

And I’ve been on a thriller novel kick lately. I recently finished The Taking of Pelham One Two Three by John Godey (Morton Freedgood). I’m currently reading Death Wish by Brian Garfield.

I also liked The Irishman, the 2019 gangster flick, if at times it felt more like Scorsese was just playing his greatest hits. Plus it was ridiculously long, slow, and heavy to watch.

I haven’t seen Gladiator 2, and I doubt I ever will. I find it a little odd, this latest trend of big directors returning to the well of their best works and putting out a sequel decades removed from the original. The Irishman is not a sequel, but it feels like the spiritual successor and final missing piece to the Cinematic Universe of Goodfellas/Casino. Gladiator 2, I felt, was a strange sequel to make. What’s next? Braveheart 2?

It’s usually not best for an aging director to return to the world of their previous hits, especially this far out from the OG. However, Heat 2 definitely landed for me, and if the film is able to capture the book well enough, it should make for a fantastic sequel.

:::spoilers incoming:::

Therein lies a huge challenge. Heat 2 is basically three stories in one. Which works fine for a novel. I’m not sure how successfully that will translate to film. You have a “present” timeline set in 1995, right after the bank robbery and shootout, with Chris’s escape to Paraguay and his attempt to move up in a new crime organization. There’s the past storyline in 1988 with criminal mastermind gigachad Neil McCauley getting the band together for its first gig, and running afoul of psychopath home intruder and rapist Otis Wardell. Then you have the “future” timeline in 2000, with Chris’s return to L.A. to set up some illegal biz with weapons systems shipments or whatever with his new partner and girlfriend Ana, who’s trying to branch off independently from her crime family. All culminating in a final clash with Vincent Hanna, who’s still chomping at the bit to put bad guys six feet under and wants Chris like a junkyard dog wants a trespasser’s throat.

Well, I shouldn’t put that there is a “clash” with Hanna as he never even knows Chris is back in L.A. until the very end, and only after Chris escapes again. If I have a criticism, it’s that I would have liked to have seen more of Hanna hunting Chris.

Look, if you told me Heat 2 was going to be six hours long, I’d freaking love that. This flick is going to be The Phantom Menace for middle-aged dudes. But I’m not general audiences. I don’t see how this is going to get cut down to a coherent 2.5-3.5 hours without removing a TON. You have three movies here, really. The Paraguay stuff was less interesting to me, and frankly, a little hard to follow with all the backstabbing and double agent stuff. You have to have the 1988 sequence to introduce McCauley to set up the daughter of his girlfriend Gabriela, as she returns for the third act showdown with Wardell. So my guess is Paraguay will get cut down to make room for L.A. 2000, which will likely take up the whole second half.

Then there are the set pieces. If you thought the downtown shootout in the OG was awesome, the sequel has SIX shootouts. Yes, six. I think. I might have forgotten one or two. You’ve got Wardell’s home invasion, which turns into a shootout and car chase with Hanna and the cops. The first highway shootout in Paraguay. A cartel base robbery shootout. A shootout near the U.S.-Mexico border between McCauley and Wardell’s gang. The climactic highway shootout between Wardell and Chris. Then there’s a last-minute factory shootout. Yes, this book is packed with so much there’s even a lengthy shootout in the last THREE PAGES. Good lord.

Mann is going to have to go Avatar 2: Way of Water on this deal to fit everything in, and it looks like Amazon is going to carte blanche him. It worked out great for JC, we’ll see if it works for Mann.

Overall, I enjoyed the book a great deal and would highly recommend it. It kind of reminded me of Tom Clancy with all its globetrotting, multiple interweaving plots, and timeline shifts. Or the first half of Inception when Cobb is getting his team together across countries. Leonardo DiCaprio is perfect for this as Chris, a role he’s finally just confirmed taking. Though personally I find Neil McCauley the more interesting character. A shame he’s only in the ’88 stuff but obviously he didn’t make it past ’95. I’d like a prequel just about him.

As much as I know I’ll enjoy this coming film, I can see it getting dinged for its plot excess. Hanna is somewhat underutilized, though I think Christian Bale is a solid Pacino replacement for Hanna. Yes, Hanna is just as insane in this as he was before, and it’ll be interesting seeing Bale channel some of Al’s signature spastic energy. I’m not sure about the guy doing McCauley, Stephen Graham, but he was pretty good in The Irishman. To be fair, nobody can replace DeNiro, but we also don’t want to see a de-aged Bob like in The Irishman. I’ve heard Adam Driver is possibly doing Wardell, but I don’t see him in that role at all. And the latest is Inde Navarrette is in talks to join, so she’s either Ana or Gabriela, and I’m thinking it would be Ana. A great choice there as she was pretty iconic in Obsession.

If anything, I expect Heat 2 to serve as a strong sequel to Mann’s 1995 masterpiece. Will it break the Curse of the Underwhelming Long-Awaited Successor To A Big Director’s OG Classic that seemed to befell Gladiator Dos and made theaters allergic to the lengthy The Irishman (it premiered on Netflix)? Time will tell.

Thoughts On Adapting My Slasher Novella Into A Screenplay

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

So, a while back in October last year, I mentioned how I had written my first slasher novella since high school. It was a fun little project titled Cutthroat. Here’s the updated synopsis:

A group of job applicants arrive at a highrise for an interview, only to find themselves trapped and fighting for their lives against a psychopathic recruiter known as Cutthroat, who wields a briefcase full of nasty weapons and is out to kill all of them.

Cutthroat is a dark comedy/splatter horror in the vein of Happy Death Day, The Monkey, Evil Dead, or Peter Jackson’s all-but-forgotten gross-out ‘80s slasher Dead Alive. It’s bloody, profane, sickly humorous, and was a hell of a lot of fun to write.

I recommend cutting loose once in a while and writing something like a wild and crazy slasher. Especially if you get in one of those creative ruts, which I’m prone to myself periodically. Slashers may not be the most artistically satisfying things to write—God forbid we take time away from working on the next Finnegans Wake or Infinite Jest. But sometimes the writing equivalent of junk food just hits the spot.  

After finishing up the latest draft of my novella sometime in December, I decided to let the project rest for a bit. Then afterward, I thought why not go ahead and adapt it into a screenplay? I’ve been dabbling in screenwriting since around 2012. But admittedly, the format is not really my forte. There’s something I find very constraining and limiting about screenwriting. It doesn’t let you ruminate or really get into the heads of your characters. It’s like trying to pack ten pounds of material into a five-pound bag. Stuff has to get cut. Scenes truncated. Characters condensed or written out altogether. It’s tortuous, really. Which is why I stick mainly with novels and short stories.

Now, it’d been a while since I’d even written a script. My last attempt was in 2019, another horror, centered on an orphaned deaf girl who has to fend off her foster parents when they go psycho on her due to becoming influenced by a weird signal from outer space. Sort like a Twilight Zone episode meets The Shining. It predates Pluribus, the Vince Gilligan-created show on Apple that’s also about an extraterrestrial crank call from space turning everyone into zombies. While it’s a script I’m proud of, it didn’t go anywhere, and so it put me off trying again for a while. Though perhaps I’ll expand that into a short novel at some point. I’ve written twelve screenplays in total. A handful of them are worthy candidates for literary expansion.

Cutthroat the novella stands at a trim 73 pages, and just over 32,000 words. A typical screenplay of 120 pages will be about 20,000 words. Slashers have no right being any longer than 90 minutes (and preferably shorter), so you’re looking at 15,000 words, or even shorter. Most horrors are pretty Ozempic, textually speaking anyway, favoring propulsive cat-and-mouse type narratives. You’re not going to have too many, if any, dense paragraphs.

Well, you can already see an issue with the mechanics. I had to cut my story in half to make it fit.

Sounds pretty simple, right? Just take what you’ve got and divide it. Well, like those two mothers who went to Solomon arguing over custody of their baby, cutting your offspring in twain is harder to do than it looks—and I’m a very protective mom, er, dad, when it comes to my stories.

How do you decide what stays and what goes? How do you cut a nice, juicy conversation that goes on for two single-space pages in the book down to just a bite-sized half a page in the screenplay? Think of all the nuance you’re leaving on the table. Think of the plump details you’re trimming. That one banger line. Gone. Oh, man, the picking and choosing of what lives or dies on the page–that’s the true horror of adapting a horror script.

Well, turns out, it can be done, if you focus on one important thing—moving the story along as reasonably quick as you can. That’s kinda the whole point of a screenplay. It’s even in the word movie—to move. As in to zip along quickly. Even “slow” films move at light speed compared to their novel source material. Especially horror stories. We’re not digging into deep existential questions here. We want to move from one grisly slaying to the next as fast as possible.

You have to cut to the heart of the scene. Hit the broad strokes. Choose your best line or best sequence of lines that convey everything necessary and then move on.

If writing a novel is like preparing a huge rest stop buffet for hungry highway motorists, writing a screenplay is like making one specific dish, and the food critic waiting at the table is Gordon Ramsay. 

In the first draft I actually overdid the cutting, to the point that I wound up with a script at a super lean 82 pages, i.e. 82 minutes of screen time, give or take. While such length is fine and dandy for a Friday the 13th sequel (really, I have no idea how those films filled even 50 minutes, much less 80-something), for the next draft I added some more muscle and tissue to my skeletal framework. I was even able to add a few good lines here and there. As such, the screenplay version of Cutthroat and its novel source constitute two distinct visions of the same story. An unexpected and strange result considering I wrote both. I guess it’s a bit like having twins. They look the same. They share the same biology. But one’ll be an athlete obsessed with lacrosse while the other is content to spend the day watering their geraniums.                     

The latest “final” draft clocks in at a modest 88 pages. Just about perfect as far as slasher length goes. Borrowing from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, there’s a mid-credits scene and a post-credits scene, including sequel-bait. I have plenty of ideas for additional installments in the wacky, wooly world of Cutthroat. Except, like I mentioned, slashers aren’t exactly the most calorically nourishing for the soul. Much less irreverent, darkly comic, cynical ones like this one. Time will tell whether I will revisit my psycho recruiter fiend who likes to butcher desperate job seekers in various macabre ways in the future.

For now, Cutthroat the Screenplay makes for a fine regular entry into screenwriting contests. It’s short, brutal, and to the point. It’s my attempt at making a modern “iconic” horror movie villain like Art the Clown or M3gan, by tapping into the current zeitgeisty Gen-Z terror of jobseeking by introducing the “recruiter from hell.” At some point I’ll put the novella out on KDP. I’m still tinkering with it. I may hire an artist to make some mock-up renderings, or even do an audiobook of some kind. We’ll see about all that.                             

Is Speed Dating Worth It In 2026?

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment
Photo by Katerina Holmes from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/happy-couple-enjoying-romantic-moment-in-cafe-5911168/

(NOTE: The above does not typically happen during a speed dating event.)

Yesterday, I attended my first speed dating event in nearly 15 years. To put that in perspective, in 2011 we were only on the iPhone 4S. Bitcoin was as low as thirty cents. I hadn’t even moved out to the frozen hellscape of North Dakota. I was still living in the greatest city on earth–Philadelphia.

Fifteen years is a long time. I don’t know what prompted me to revisit the strange practice involving sitting across from strangers of the opposite sex for an hour and pretending to hear them in a loud, caucophonous setting, but I figured why not try it again.

Unlike my last two speed dating events, which took place in Philly, this one occurred in a town called Regina, which is in the Canadian Providence of Saskatchewan. I’d never visisted Canada, despite living near the border for almost 14 years, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and check out “America’s hat” while also trying my hand at speed dating again.

By the way, the town name Regina is not pronounced like how you pronounce a woman’s name. It rhymes with vagina. Just fyi.

Speed dating, in case you’re unaware, is an event often held in a restaurant/bar with a group of ten or so men and women, wherein you get to have a “date” with each person for about five minutes. For this event, the time limit was six minutes, a one-minute increase from my Philly ones. I guess it’s like those “Seven Minute Abs” videos back in the ’90s–just enough time to give you a workout with just good-enough results. Who says you can’t size someone up as a potential life partner in less time than it takes to make a Hungry-Man microwave dinner? We are in the Age of Snap Judgments, afterall.

I’ve already written on my misadventures in speed dating in an article, “Why Don’t Men Attend Singles Events?” linked here. And I went into this new foray bearing what I’d written in mind. But thankfully, this go-around was slightly better overall.

To begin, the proportion of men and women was almost the same. There were ten men and nine woman, as one apparently cancelled at the last minute. This was way better than two I did in Philly, where it was supposed to be 15 men and women, but wound up being like 12 women and 15 men. I don’t know where the idea came from that men don’t attend these sorts of events. There are always plenty of dudes for these things.

The age group for the event this time was 34-46, as opposed to 25-40 or something for the ones in Philly I did. It’s been awhile. So, what’s changed? Is speed dating worth it in 2026? Is it even worth it at all?

Well, for starters, in both of my iPhone 4S-era events, I never matched with anybody. And in this last one, I didn’t either. This is largely my fault, as I’ve always been notoriously selective. I think it was Billy Crystal who said when it comes to how the sexes choose mates, “Women need an excuse, men just need a place.” Well, what the hell does the guy who starred in City Slickers know about anything? Not a damn thing.

There is a clear bifurcation in the age group 34-46 between those who are serious and those who just there because. It’s palpable. Whereas in the 25-40 groups most of the women were just there pregaming before a night out, or fooling around with their besties. Nobody was taking it seriously then. But in the older group, everyone’s a lot more business and frank. So, in that sense, it was better, because at least you know everyone was kind of there purposefully.

Like I mentioned in my previous article, as I entered, I immediately employed my male gaze “Terminator vision” to search for potential mates, and instantly I realized there would be likely none. Look, it’s tough out there no matter where you look–dating apps, churches, the corner bar, etc.–I blame romantic comedies for psyoping everyone into thinking “love” just falls in your lap. In reality, you’ve probably got about the same odds as winning $500 on a scratch-off lottery ticket. Like, it happens often enough. You’ve heard about it happening. You probably have a family member who won as much. But you could visit every gas station in the state and buy ten tickets from each and still end up broke.

Anyway, after a cheesy ice breaker involving some stupid bingo game, our group was ready to begin. I took my seat at table number 2. We were all given little lists on a clipboard so we could write down someone’s name if we matched with them. Even though it’s only been 24 hours, I don’t even remember the first woman I sat across from. She was not a match, obviously. It’s weird. Anymore when I talk to people, I tend to really only hear key words. It’s like my brain has been Google-ized. This goes doubly so for whenever I’m talking to a woman. Soon as I hear things like “my kid(s)” or they start ranting about politics (more on that later), that’s it, I’m out. I no longer give a shit what they have to say. It’s not that I really care about someone’s politics. It’s just that I don’t like people who make poltics their whole identity, especially when they’re just like a boring office worker. And I don’t date single moms for the same reason I don’t visit Chernobyl or eat out of the dumpster.

The first woman I can remember mentioned that she hadn’t tried speed dating before, but had done “speed friending.” This was new to me, as I wasn’t aware such a thing even existed, as obvious as it sounds. But she had just moved to the Regina area, and it was a way to meet some new people. Not a bad idea, I thought.

The next woman I recall was a lawyer. She wasn’t really a match, but she was cool to talk to. She had a sleeve tattoo. I asked her if she was concerned about AI stealing her job. She wasn’t because AI gets a lot of legal stuff wrong. It’s useful for very basic stuff, but it can’t replace the human connection that clients need. Just as things were getting interesting, the bell rang, and it was time to move on.

The event organizer called for a ten-minute break afterward, which gave me some time to chat with two women at the next table over. One didn’t want kids and the other was um, “plus-sized”–so, neither were matches, needless to say. It was fun talking to them, though.

Next came another gargantuan single mom (this was to be a recurring theme at this event) who happened to be a Canadian Royal Mountie. I would have loved to learn more about that job, but unfortunately, she kind of buried the lead and only mentioned it right as the six-minute timer sounded. It’s all’s well, though. She probably wouldn’t have appreciated me asking if she looked up to Dudley Do-Right as a kid.

Because of the one woman who cancelled last second, I had a table all to myself at the next switch. But afterward, I met with a Nigerian lady who had moved to Canada years ago and was working as an accountant. Very nice woman. Sweet. Attractive. Not a match for me, sadly, as I am not into Black women. I felt deep sympathy for her, though, as I know that Nigerians are very family-focused. It’s part of the reason why Nigeria is one of the only places on earth right now having a population explosion. She was stuck in dreary Saskatchewan away from her family in Africa, in a place she probably had little real chance of meeting available Nigerian men, or Black/African men whatsoever. All while being too educated to just go back home and find a husband there. That’s a tough spot to be in. Regina seems like a liberal place, but interracial relationships are actually still quite rare, despite what the media may have you believe. I wish “Daisy” well.

The next potential partner became anything but very quickly as she asked me point blank if I was visiting Canada to “escape the Trump bullshit.” Now, like I said before, I don’t really care about a woman’s politics, but I really don’t like it when someone has no decorum and immediately starts spouting obscenities like we’re at a frat party. I don’t know you. You don’t know me. It’s best to be polite and well-mannered at first, at least. Especially from someone who was at least in her mid-30s. It’s quite rude. However, I can’t resist winding such a person up, so naturally I assumed the role of being the world’s biggest Trump supporter, telling her I had forgotten my MAGA hat in my car, and had wanted to wear it in to the event. This prompted her to go on a screed about the Epstein files, and how Trump had forced a 13-year-old girl to give him a blowjob, and how this girl had bitten his penis. To which I replied that none of that had been verified, and in fact Trump’s only mentions in the Epstein files had to do with him and the dead former socialite creepster douchebag crossing paths on occasion at parties and such, nothing to do with underage sex or trafficking or visiting the infamous island. We went around and around. She was very impressed with the penis-biter, even wishing she could have been that girl so she could have been the one to bite Trump’s penis. An odd thing to aspire to, I thought, but whatever. We parted quickly enough. She, too, was not a match, just in case you were wondering.

The next woman, and the last one I recall, was one of those strong and independent types who had traveled to like 25 countries. I figured as such when I saw the short hair and the sleeve tat. They are usually a dead giveaway that one is in the Don’t Need a Man Camp. But she seemed very self-aware and accepting of the fact that she was set in her ways and not changing, and didn’t see a place in her life for kids or a family. That’s the nice thing about this age group. They tend to be honest and upfront, at least.

Aside from the assortment of characters I met, the venue proved the worst part of the event, as the acoustics were absolutely horrendous. Like, I could hardly hear what someone was saying sitting right in front of me with everyone else talking and their voices bouncing off the hard walls. This is the third time I’ve run into this issue, as my last two speed dating events in Philly suffered from the same problems. It makes for a very frustrating experience. But for $25, what can you expect? High-definition doesn’t come that low priced.

Most of the women were pretty nice. Many were intrigued that I was from the U.S., but other than the Anti-Trumper, I didn’t get any comments, negative or positive, about my American-ness.

—

Some final thoughts. Speed dating is really no better than any other type of matchmaking or social event like going to a bar, as far as I can see. It’s only advantage is that it obviously involves real human interaction in a controlled environment. But you’re actually just as good on the dating apps, believe it or not. I suppose some people have had luck with speed dating. For me, I really just look at it as a fun social exercise and a way to improve my communication skills. When I can actually hear people, that is. But due to the bad sound acoustics, I find myself just sliding into that “smile and nod” routine where you can’t tell what the hell someone is saying and you’re trying to be polite. That’s uncomfortable and kind of ruins the whole scene. I think if speed dating is to be improved, it needs to be held in a place with seperate booths, or maybe outside if the weather is nice. Someone where you can actually speak at a reasonable volume and hear the other person clearly. I would go again. But it’s not like I put any stock into it as a viable means of meeting a partner. For me, it’s just a fun diversion for an hour or so.

How Boomers Actually Got Screwed By Cheap Housing

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

The true cost of buying a house for a “pint of blueberries.”

Source: Pexels

Every once in a while I like to indulge in a bit of “nostalgia-gazing.” This is when you look backward and become wistfully lost in reminiscence. Maybe you look up old neighborhoods or homes you lived in, schools you attended, or places you used to frequent. You might even take a road trip out to those places.

During one such bout of backwards-gaping, I happened to look up a house my family rented way back in the halcyon days of 1991 located in West Chester, PA. West Chester is a quiet, middle class town with a few upscale neighborhoods and cul-de-sacs. It’s an idyllic place with a small town feel, located just 40 minutes or so west of Philadelphia. It’s still one of the places I consider “home,” even though I haven’t lived there in over 30 years. Such is the impact of certain places we live in as children.

Anyway, I decided to look up my old house–an abode where I once enjoyed a Jaws-themed 10th birthday party, where my friends all dressed as different sea creatures. I was the Great White shark, of course, as I was obsessed with the movie at the time. I found a link to the house through Zillow, and up came the house’s sale history as well as the current estimated value. My family only rented the house from 1989-1991 before moving out after the school year in June, after which it was bought in ’91 for a whopping $150,000.

That sure sounds cheap by today’s standards. Especially when the estimate for the current value of the house is $750,000. And that’s actually cheaper than many of the surrounding homes in the circle in which we lived. Some homes just across the yard on the next street over are well past the million dollar mark.

You won’t find much affordable in West Chester, PA today, unsurprisingly. Homes tend to start around $650,000 and go up rapidly. The town is a perfect example of what many Millennials and Gen-Zers (and I suppose some underperforming Gen-Xers, too) gripe about when it comes to the inflated price of homes.

“The Baby Boomers had it so easy! They had cheap housing! Why, back in the late 80s and early 90s, you could practically buy a house for a pint of blueberries! Now a house costs a first born and your eternal soul just for a down payment! I’m gonna rent until I die!”

We’ve all read the histrionic and hysterical pronouncements on social media. We’ve all seen the memes. It’s an outraged generational war cry: “The Boomers had it easy!”

But did they really? I don’t think supposed “cheap housing” tells the whole story. I think there’s a lot of ill-informed and misplaced criticism here when it comes to the affordable housing shortage, as well as some selective memory on the part of Millennials. It puzzles me sometimes seeing my generation so appallingly ignorant. After all, we were there, too. As kids, but we were there. Sure, I spent my days jumping on enemies in Super Mario Bros. and watching Saturday Morning Cartoons. But I was there. I remember the context of the supposed “easy times.”

My family was not rich. We were lower-middle class. Even the “low” cost of $150,000 for that house was too much for us. Hell, the house we wound up buying some years later in another area was like half that price. We struggled. I was the oldest of four kids. My three younger half-siblings were born 5, 7, and 9 years after me.

See, people forget that the Boomers were BREEDERS in addition to “cheap” real estate beneficiaries. Boomers did what people have been doing for eons–they purposefully set out to get married and have kids. My father had seven. My mother had four. My step-father had three (my three half-siblings). And they had those children starting relatively young. My dad was 18 for his first. My mother was 24. Most of my aunts and uncles had children, sometimes multiple, before the age of 30. It’s only recently that couples are having fewer and fewer kids. It used to be common to have three or more. My grandmother had eight, for instance.

And what do you have to do when you have a lot of kids? Well, if you’re responsible, you put them up in a HOUSE. A house becomes a priority by default. And not because a house is a “good investment” or an asset or whatever else the finance bros want to call it. But because it’s an absolute necessity.

And therein lies the first major counterargument against the “Boomers had it easy” mantra. Boomers were forced to buy houses because they had lots of kids. Kids need toys. They need their own rooms. They need yards. Kids need a lot of stuff, actually, and a house is the best way to contain all that stuff.

For most Boomers, their house was EVERYTHING. It was the black hole that sucked in all their available money. Most Boomers were not rich. They were middle-class. Most Boomers did not invest in the stock market. They did not buy gold. They did not buy silver. They did not buy bonds. Obviously Bitcoin and crypto did not exist back then.

No, most Boomers had a little savings account that earned maybe 5-6% interest, and their house. That’s it.

Today, it’s never been easier to invest in the stock market. Download the Robinhood app and in seconds you too can be FOMO-ing into the latest meme stock or crypto that some dude on the internet told you is “going to the moon, brah.” Financial awareness has never been higher than now. Go on Youtube and there are a million finance dudes who will happily educate you on everything from “diversification” to the “4% rule,” to the “FIRE movement,” as well as on more complex investment instruments like LEAPS, scalping, daytrading, and more. But who knew about any of that stuff back during the Boomer’s time? No one. Because even today the majority of people remain woefully ignorant on financial matters.

Today, investing in a variety of assets is seamless and nearly cost-free. Back in the ’80s and ’90s you had to visit a broker in person. You had to mail them a check. You had to pay PER stock transaction. And it wasn’t cheap, either. I remember as late as the mid-2000s paying $9.95 to Scottrade just to buy a few shares in Apple. Most exchanges today allow you to trade stocks at no cost.

Back then, almost nobody knew about index funds, mutual funds, ETFs, dollar-cost-averaging, “buy the dip,” or anything else. The typical Boomer investment portfolio was their savings account, a CD, a government savings bond or two, and perhaps a few physical stock certificates in IBM their parents handed down, some baseball cards, and maybe a family heirloom like dishes or something.

And their house, of course. Their house, that certainly took up the lion’s share of their assets.

And how did they do with those “investments?”

Well, on the surface, they seemed to do okay. The house that my family passed on in 1991 sold for $150,000 but today is worth a staggering $750,000. Wow. That’s a 500% return. That’s good, right?

No, that’s awful. So, so awful. Especially over 35 years. Even if the house was worth $1,000,000 it would still be a bad return given that time frame.

And that’s only looking at the base price of $150,000, too. Houses have ongoing costs. You’ve got maintenance, insurance, property taxes, and of course the interest on the mortgage. Over that 35 year period until today, my Boomer mom and step-dad would have likely put in around $300,000 minimum, which means they would have only just barely more than doubled their money.

Also, there’s a little thing called “opportunity cost” that makes this awful return even worse. Opportunity cost is what you miss out on by investing in one thing versus another. By investing $150,000 into a house you miss out on investing it in other things like stocks, gold, and silver. Remember, for Boomers, their house was it. It was harder to invest in even simple things like mutual funds. If Boomers had exposure to stocks it was largely through their jobs, which may or may not have had a 401(k). They might have had an IRA or a personal brokerage. Just like today, most people did not invest in the stock market. Or anything, really.

But let’s look at how some other popular asset classes did during that 35-year time period. From June, 1991 until now (March, 2026) the S&P 500 Index has gone up over 1600%. Gold went up around 1200%. Silver 1700%. And the Nasdaq Index went up an unbelievable 4700%.

That means the return on that $150,000 investment becomes:

S&P 500 – $2,400,000.
Gold – $1,800,000.
Silver – $2,550,000.
Nasdaq – $7,050,000.

In an equally weighted portfolio (25% in each asset class), the return comes out to around $3,450,000.

Suddenly, that supposedly large $750,000 becomes rather puny, doesn’t it? If you had invested your money into pretty much anything else except housing from back then until now you would have made vastly more money.

“But, but, but, Boomers were also able to invest in those things in addition to enjoying cheap housing.”

Absolutely. A small minority of them did, anyway. But if the statistics on stock ownership of today are any indication, many of them did not. Or if they did, they didn’t own much for it to really matter. According to Pew Research Center, 58% to 62% of U.S. households today own stocks. The top 10% of households own almost 90% of all stocks. The top1% own 50% of all stocks. While the bottom 50% of households own only 1% of stocks. That’s even with widespread frictionless trading apps like Robinhood and others, and the YouTube and social media algorithms giga-pumping financial knowledge bombs on you left and right. I’d guess that almost certainly stock ownership was probably a lot lower back then than now.

Yes, in the purest technical sense, Boomers got housing “cheap.” Not “pint of blueberries” cheap perhaps. But certainly way cheaper than today, nominally-speaking. And now they are enjoying much higher valuations on their homes. But at what cost? No matter how you slice it, a barely 2x return over 35 years is absolutely abysmal relative to almost anything else. Even a CD with a rate of 5% beats it.

My West Chester, PA childhood home represents a good average. Homes in Southern California, of course, and other places, have gone up a lot more. But you can’t just look at the prices and compare them to decades past. That doesn’t give the whole contextual picture.

The average Boomer struggled just like the average Millennial and Gen-Zer does today. They had limited passive income, or no passive income. And even if they were aware of investment opportunities, they had to sacrifice investing into them for the sake of their families’ needs (i.e. you). I remember my mom being very aware of Microsoft back in the ’90s, and mentioning how we should put some money into the stock. But we were so poor at the time that my half-siblings and I had to go door-to-door selling candy to help pay the bills. Do you have any idea what a mere $1,000 into Microsoft stock back in 1991 would be worth today? At least $250,000, not counting dividends reinvested.

In actuality, the Boomers got screwed on housing. They were forced to buy homes because they had larger families. At the time, interest rates were much higher, sometimes even into the double digits. So they were also forced into loans with ruinous rates. Having a house balloon into a million-dollar asset today is great, don’t get me wrong. But it’s cold comfort when looking at how much was sacrificed to get it. And how many decades it took. And then there’s the question of whether or not you can even sell it. Many homes today are stuck going unsold because there are fewer qualified buyers.

The Boomers are not faceless amorphous entities. They are our parents. Often, I think my generation and Gen-Zers apply too much bad-faith and cold-hearted criticism toward them when it comes to housing. When I think back to that house in West Chester, I just think of the house ten-year-old me got to enjoy a Jaws-themed birthday party. I think of the hole I dug in the backyard all summer for some reason. I think of the many friends I played with in that circle and on other streets. It doesn’t represent some great investment I was cheated out of. Even though I only got to live there for two years, I’m glad I got to live there for the time I did. If I could, I’d move there again. But I can’t afford it. And I’m almost a millionaire. Yes, that’s disheartening. I make a substantial income and have a solid net worth and even I can’t afford to live where I did as a child.

Look, the housing market is ridiculous today. No one’s denying it. But we have easy access to many other types of investments and opportunities with way better rates of return. Interest rates are much lower. We’re far more mobile now than people were back then. Many have the freedom to work from home. We have more options. Boomers didn’t really have a choice. They still had to contend with a lot of traditional social and cultural pressure on their shoulders. It was “get married, have kids, and buy a house.” Imperatives that many today, even ones with money, are ignoring or avoiding.