Where do you get your ideas?

I'm not sure when this originally ran, but it must have been sometime after October 2007, when the Peanuts book was first released.

Where do you get your ideas?

It is a question many of us would like to ask the creative people whose works we enjoy – artists, novelists, composers and filmmakers who chart new worlds or who combine familiar elements in unfamiliar ways – even though we realize they have been asked hundreds of times.

For Charles Schulz, creator of “Peanuts,” the answer to that cringe-inducing question was most likely “everywhere”– his own insecurities, family, fellow artists and faith – even when he denied it was so.

This is evident from a new biography, “Schulz and Peanuts,” by David Michaelis. Again and again, Michaelis demonstrates how Schulz drew from even the homeliest details of his own life to create what was essentially a thinly veiled autobiography coded into the deceptively simple squiggles that became Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy and the rest of the Peanuts gang.

Schulz’s WWII experiences – leaving home for boot camp shortly after his mother’s death, surprising himself by coming out of a self-imposed shell to be a leader, his service in France and Germany – transmogrified into Charlie Brown’s experiences at summer camp (he becomes well-respected before returning home to anonymity) and Snoopy’s prowling of the war-ravaged countryside as a World War I flying ace.

Similarly, Schulz’s failed romances earlier in life became the impetus for Charlie Brown’s unrequited love, the Little Red-Haired Girl; childhood trips to the movies with his grandmother inspired a memorable strip where Charlie Brown is fearful his grandmother will leave the theater after the newsreel; and his cousin Patty and her roommate Elise led to the creation of Peppermint Patty and Marcie.

Schulz was a magnet, metaphorically drawing these ideas to himself and then literally drawing them onto the Bristol boards he shipped to United Feature Syndicate.

He took a working-class upbringing, filled with the requisite share of hits and misses, and parlayed it into a goldmine. Only last week, on a Forbes list of top-earning dead celebrities, Schulz was number three, behind cultural icons Elvis and John Lennon and ahead of luminaries like George Harrison and Albert Einstein.

Sometimes, when reporters asked Schulz if he was Charlie Brown, he answered yes. Increasingly, later in life, he would become more philosophical, noting that he modeled aspects of Charlie Brown clearly after himself, but not entirely.

Creative people always reveal pieces of themselves in their works, whether they intend to or not. Edgar Allan Poe, orphaned at an early age and all but abandoned later by the family who took him in, wrote always of alienation, isolation and loss, although these themes were dressed up in the rags of gothic fiction as premature burials, pestilence and insanity.

In the same vein (pun intended), Alfred Hitchcock’s films betray – among other things – a man fascinated by aloof women, especially blondes. Steely blondes meet ghastly fates in at least three of his movies – Kim Novak falls to her death from a bell tower after being remade a blonde by an obsessed James Stewart in “Vertigo,” Janet Leigh is knifed to death in the shower by a character with his own women/mother issues in “Psycho,” and poor Tippi Hedren endures a horrific winged attack in “The Birds.”

Hitchcock did not write his own screenplays, but he was definitely instrumental in their creation and evolution.

Would Poe, who wrote about the art of writing, have recognized his tortured past in his own work? Would Hitchcock?

In both, we can see evidence of the puppeteer behind the stage. How much or how little we read into these peeks is up to us, along with how much credibility we give such readings.

Similarly, in each “Peanuts” strip we can almost see Charles Schulz moving his ink-dipped pen across the page, giving life to his characters the way Beethoven, the idol of Schulz’s Schroeder, gave life to one of his symphonies: one captured squiggle at a time.

Free writing advice is often worth what you pay

I had the opportunity to speak to a writers’ group over the summer, and I hope I didn’t scare them away from the craft.

They were a wonderful audience, although hard-up for guest speakers if they had to invite me. My goal was simple: not to send any of them screaming into the street, breaking pencils and smashing keyboards and vowing never to write again.

They thought writing is great fun, an outlet for pent-up creativity. Most of the time, I feel that way too. But when ideas won’t come, writers without regular deadlines can step away for a day or so, no harm no foul.

Writers on deadline don’t have this luxury. Even when ideas aren’t there and words won’t come, fingers must keep pushing keys or pencils pressing paper. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of muscle memory, typing the same words over and over until something new squeezes out.

Somebody asked about writer’s block. I said I don’t believe in it. I subscribe to the William Zinsser theory. In his must-read book, “On Writing Well,” Zinsser treats writer’s block like a myth. Plumbers don’t suffer from plumber’s block, carpenters don’t have carpenter’s block. They just do the job.

I told the group that when I can’t come up with the words but know that a column is due, I mentally strap myself into a chair in front of a computer and tell myself that I won’t stand up again until I’ve completed a draft.

I’ve never had to literally strap myself into a chair, but the day may come. For now, I tell myself that I can get up and get a drink, eat a snack or use the bathroom only after I’ve written an allotted number of words. If that happens in twenty minutes, great. If it happens in three hours, not so great.

Is this fun? No. Is it productive? Most of the time. Good for my bladder? Assuredly not.

Procrastination in writing is like procrastination in most things, I suppose. When most of us face an unpleasant task, we find other things that must be done first. Need to make that tough call and eat crow over something you’ve said? Suddenly, Fibber McGee’s closet beckons, or the attic must be cleaned, or the sink screams for scouring.

I go through a whole series of maneuvers before I reach the writing “strap-in” point, which I call writing crow instead of eating it. Usually, I do tasks I hate even more, but ones that require little concentration. If I’m mowing or sweeping or, heaven forbid, waxing the car, I’m avoiding a particularly rough topic.

I used to fool myself when I did these things, saying that they really needed to be done. Now I’m honest: I’m ducking out on writing, I’ll say, but only until 10 a.m. Or noon. Or whatever time I select.

When I do start to write, thought, I don’t get up until I’m done. Usually, the morning is my best time. But I’ll sit there all day long if I have to, trying not to fiddle too much on Facebook or Twitter and often failing. I’m only human.

One weird writing tick I possess is a reluctance to move on to a new sentence until the one before it is as good as it can be. This often means that when I’m done with a column, I’m really done, because I’ve pored over it dozens of times, one sentence at a time, until I reach the end. My first finished draft is often simultaneously my thirty-first draft.

While I tell my students that there is no wrong way to write, except not to do it, I also tell them that my method is one of the worst. It’s easy to work for hours and have only two or three paragraphs to show for your efforts. Two or three perfect paragraphs, but far from a finished piece.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t go back later — a day or two, at least — and revise. Revision is, for me, the part of writing that is true joy. I especially like to peel away excess words and rewrite sentences when the piece I’m revising is so old that I can barely remember writing it. That’s when I’m most honest, when I can effect the most changes. Sadly, I seldom sit on a piece that long.

So why am I telling you this today? Because I’ve been sitting here for hours already, and I really have to use the bathroom. And now I can.

Originally published September 2014.

If 'The African Queen' were remade today

About three minutes.

That’s how much time elapses in “The African Queen” from the moment the Germans tighten nooses around Charlie and Rosie’s necks until the gunboat explodes.

Before you can say “Hollywood classic,” Bogie and Hepburn are swimming toward shore, none the worse for having endured a swarm of mosquitos, a broken propeller and — in the case of Bogart’s character — serious withdrawal after the teetotaling Hepburn pours all his gin into the river.

When thinking about how slowly “The African Queen” unfurls, how much care director John Huston takes to define both lead characters and their upstairs/downstairs-type romance, and how this languid pace is contrasted by a brisk and efficient finale, it’s hard not to compare the film to Hollywood blockbusters of today, where characterization takes a backseat to endless explosions and one-liners, and where the pace is always faster than Ricochet Rabbit ping-ping-pinging off walls in those old Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

If “The African Queen” were made today — say, by director Michael Bay — instead of 1951, it would be a much different film.

For one, Rose would show more skin. Her schoolmarmish outfit, despite being appropriate for a missionary woman in 1914, would somehow find a way to be torn open at the midriff, and ample cleavage would be revealed as she helped navigate down the river.

Charlie would have a dark and haunted past, one that tied in with the Germans skulking about in their gunboat. Maybe he would be a German expat instead of Canadian, and the commander of the gunboat would be his brother, just waiting for this opportunity to finish off his woebegone sibling.

Rosie’s plight would also be accentuated. Charlie’s evil brother, attracted to her bare midriff and heaving bosom, would attempt to persuade her to leave the bumbling Charlie. In a scene of candlelit faux romance, the bound-and-tied Rose would spit on the brother, much to the delight of the audience.

Either Rosie or Charlie — or maybe both — would be schooled in ninja-style fighting tactics, somersaulting over the gunwale, dodging bullets, shrugging off copious amounts of head trauma, and going all John Rambo on the Germans, who would be unable to subdue their foe despite outnumbering him or her sixty to one.

And that three-minute climax? Fahgettaboudit. Now it’s thirty minutes, filled with hair-raising escapes, hand-to-hand combat and explosions. Plenty of explosions. Because a modern movie without explosions is like a White House press conference without Sean Spicer — no fun.

And while the 1951 “African Queen” can get by with just one jury-rigged torpedo, made from material that Charlie has (somewhat plausibly) onboard ship, that’s not a big enough boom for modern audiences.

No, in 2017, Charlie would be an arms smuggler with a heart of gold, and he would have a boat full of bombs, guns and grenades, all of which could be pressed into service to make his humble craft a floating engine of death.

But wait, there’s more. That German gunboat would be carrying a nuclear bomb. Nevermind that it’s 1914, it would have one just the same. Or the time period would jump to the modern day, because nobody likes period pieces anyway. And that bomb, when it explodes, could start a chain reaction that would destroy all of East Africa, and possibly the entire world.

Because stakes have to be global and involve billions of people for a modern movie to mean anything, don’tcha know?

And, yes, Charlie’s torpedo-lined boat hitting the German gunboat would appear to be the catalyst for apocalypse, making Charlie at least as big a menace as the one he’s trying to stop, but luckily Charlie or Rosie is a nuclear scientist and, if he or she has just a few minutes alone in the bowels of the gunboat, can defuse the bomb, so that the impending explosion kills only the evil Germans and none of the good guys, except maybe for a sidekick who has to succumb to prove that the stakes were really high.

And if the audience buys a lot of tickets, you’d better believe that Rosie and Charlie will be back in a few summers with “The African Queen: Dark Corridor of Dripping Death” or somesuch.

Well, it makes no sense and it makes good sense, because that’s how movies are made today. Strap yourselves in, pass the earplugs and check your IQ at the door.

Originally published in June 2017. 

Replacing the vacuum

Watching the canister of my new vacuum fill with dirt is almost hypnotic.

The air swirls round and round with cyclonic force, and soon, as if by magic, the little hamsters whose treadmill-pattering feet drive the motor have allowed the machine to collect another load. It is a measure of how empty my life is that I find this compelling.

My new Bissell Powerforce Helix is the first time I've gone the bagless route with a vacuum. A creature of custom, I've always preferred to use bags, even though my wife has told me for years that the world of suction has moved beyond this old model and in exciting new directions. In my usual Luddite fashion, I have resisted, but now in a matter of days, I have become an enthusiastic convert.

Not that the switch has been easy. First came the realization that my old sweeper had gone from sucking in a good way to sucking in a bad way. Even after hours on the surgical table, during which I replaced its belt and cleaned its hoses (all while hearing the narration from the opening credits of "The Six Million Dollar Man" in my fevered head -- "We can rebuild him ... We have the technology ...), it was doing little more than moving dirt from Point A to Point B. Somewhere, somebody was playing the requiem dirge.

A trip to the store revealed that replacements run the price gamut from $47 to $599. I find the concept of paying $599 for a vacuum ridiculous, although I suppose if you're the type who gives the butler a c-note to pick up a loaf of bread and milk from the store and doesn't bother asking for the change that it makes sense.

My philosophy with any type of mechanical equipment -- including sweepers, lawn mowers and automobiles -- is to purchase the least expensive models, work them hard and replace them three times more often than people who buy expensive versions.

Look, I know myself: I'm not going to keep up on the maintenance, and my three extra purchases are going to cost the same over time as one large cash outlay. Plus, I get the enjoyment of three new pieces of equipment to a do-it-yourselfer's one. So keep polishing and finessing that Cadillac of mowers or Porsche of vacuums if you want; I'll be footloose and fancy-free with my Kia Soul and Nissan Cube models.

I freely admit that my bargain-basement vacuum doesn't do some tasks as well as more expensive versions. For example, that $599 model has more attachments than a corrupt politician -- you could sweep the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or pull little Timmy out of a well once you snapped together all its nozzles and hoses.

The new Helix also wouldn't do much to repel burglars or fend off cookie-peddling girl scouts. It's so light that an infant could bench press it. When I was younger, we had an all-metal Electrolux sweeper that I swear my great-great-great-grandfather once used to defend the Alamo, and that a great-uncle brandished when he stormed the beach at Anzio. I myself earned gym credit for using it every Friday night as part of the all-house cleaning regimen.

(That's right -- we cleaned the house on Friday nights when I was a boy. None of this "go hang out with your friends at the mall" and "Internet on your smartphone malarkey" for my generation. Wanna know what my Internet was? A set of Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedias that we earned one volume a week at Sparkle's Market. I shudder to think how many broccoli spears I had to choke down just for volumes W and XYZ alone.)

So I won't be defending Casa Schillig from home invaders with my Bissell Powerforce Helix anytime soon. But if all else fails, I can simply turn it on. If my attackers are anything like me, they'll be so entranced by the sight of swirling cat hair that I can pick them off one by one with the toaster. Which is also fairly new, but still packs a pretty mean punch.

Originally published in March 2012

Size matters

Size matters in pop culture. Or maybe it just matters to me.

Since childhood, I’ve been fascinated by stories that hinge on size differentials. People who shrink, monsters who dwarf skyscrapers, bugs the size of Cadillacs — give me any or all of the above and the odds that I will like the book, movie, poem, radio drama or synchronized swimming event where they appear, especially if the big things are juxtaposed against smaller ones.

Most kids like monsters, I think, but I always preferred the really tall ones. The Frankenstein monster is more appealing than Dracula because Boris Karloff, who plays the monster, is taller than Bela Lugosi, who plays the vampire. (Plus, Lugosi has that really thick accent and walks like he’s stuck in jelly. “I vaaaant to succck your bluuuud,” he says, inching along at the speed of your average tortoise, while toddlers crawl past and old men in wheelchairs lap him. Not much fear factor there.)

We all root for the underdog, which is why we all cheer for David and his slingshot against Goliath, and why “Rocky” kept spawning sequels until the sight of Sylvester Stallone without his shirt became too grotesque for even the most stalwart of moviegoers.

I just take the term “underdog” more literally than most, wanting to see the conflict reflected in extra inches, feet and yards. After all, who could be more underdog-like than people fighting giants, or characters shrinking to the size of dandelions and trying to avoid a size 10 shoe?

As a last hurrah to the carefree days of summer, when long afternoons afford time to ponder such trifles as the greatest stories about things that are bigger or smaller than normal, here are a few of my favorites:

Jack and the Beanstalk — The story that started it all for me. Little boy, magic beans, giant vegetation, big guys who live in the clouds, even — if memory serves — a singing harp. And you can’t top the suspense of Jack chopping down the beanstalk as the giant descends, screaming “Fee Fie Fo Fum!”

King Kong — Maybe my favorite movie — and movie monster — of all time. Big ape, big dinosaurs, little people running and screaming in terror. What’s not to like?

Godzilla — Everything from King Kong applies, but with the addition of nuclear weapons and radioactive breath. Plus, Godzilla has been better translated into other mediums than Kong. The 1970s Marvel Comics version is still my favorite comic-book series of all time. ’Nuff said.

The Shrinking Man — Filmed as “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” this novel by the late, great Richard Matheson has the main character exposed to a mysterious mist that slowly reduces him in size, until he is living in his daughter’s dollhouse and fighting off a domesticated cat that is, proportionally, the size of a double-decker bus. If you’ve ever fantasized about shrinking to thimble size and dueling spiders in the basement (and who hasn’t?) this is the book/movie for you.

Jurassic Park — Again, you’ve got dinosaurs, plus the theme of humankind’s naïve belief that it can trump the natural order and Jeff Goldblum (in the movie) nattering on about chaos theory while an angry T. rex uses his colleagues as toothpicks. The sequels aren’t worth a tinker’s damn — or a tinker’s dam, depending on which etymological story you believe — but they do have big dinosaurs vs. little people, so they can’t be all bad.

(I really wanted to like Michael Crichton’s “Micro,” by the way, because he’s the author of “Jurassic Park” and it’s about shrinking people to microscopic size, but I couldn’t get into it. Too much pseudoscience, not enough screaming people. It’s no good if people don’t run around and scream.)

I could rattle off a whole slew of pop-culture references that fit the bill. Here are a few: The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Gorgo, Reptilicus, Ant-Man, the Atom, Tarantula! (a movie so exciting that the exclamation point is part of the title), Tom Thumb, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Johnny Sokko, Ultraman, munchkins, Yoda, Tom and Jerry, and Fantastic Voyage.

Pacific Rim — the best movie almost nobody saw this summer. Giant creatures crawling from a hole ripped in the space-time continuum in the Pacific Ocean? Check. Global chaos as said monsters attack? Check. Humans piloting giant robots in a last-ditch effort to save the world? Check. One of the coolest sci-fi/fantasy films since the original Star Wars? Check and mate.

So there you have it — incontrovertible evidence that the bigger they are, the harder we fall for them. Or that I do, anyway.

Originally published in 2013. 

Of apes and flying monkeys

Charlton Heston drops to the sand and pounds his fists into the surf.

“You maniacs!” his character screams. “You blew it up! Damn you. God damn you all to hell!”

The camera pans to reveal a half-buried Statue of Liberty, proof that Heston’s time on the “Planet of the Apes” has really been spent on his own Earth, ravaged by a nuclear holocaust that left monkeys in charge.

It’s one of the most indelible moments in American cinema, and it turns 50 this year.

In retrospect, Heston’s character is incredibly dense. After all, he and his fellow astronauts crash on a planet with earth-like atmosphere and gravity. They encounter mute humans biologically identical to themselves. The apes in charge speak and write English. Chimpanzee archaeologists find dolls, dentures and medical devices identical to those of Earthlings.

But not until he sees Bartholdi’s creation in the muck, its torch-bearing arm still held high, does he connect all the dots and have a head-slapping, “I shoulda had a V-8” moment.

But all this is Monday-morning quarterbacking several decades after the fact. When I first encountered the movie back in the early ’70s, on TV and not in the theater (I was born the same year the film was originally released), Heston’s belated realization didn’t concern me at all.

Instead, I was captivated by the talking apes, by the idea of a world scarred by some unfathomable disaster, by the mix of science-fiction and prehistoric savagery, and by the satire, even if I didn’t recognize it by name.

It helped that “Planet of the Apes” copied — one might even say “aped” — the structure of another favorite of mine, “The Wizard of Oz.”

Both are based on books that were monkeyed with by Hollywood. Both feature main characters who are transported far from home— Dorothy in her house because of a tornado, and Heston in a spaceship because of a wormhole. Both become strangers in a strange land, yet not so strange that we can’t recognize aspects of our own society. Both play with the idea of dreams — Heston muses that he is in one (maybe explaining why he is so accepting of apes speaking English), while Dorothy literally wakes up from one.

And, of course, both feature simians. The flying monkeys in “Wizard of Oz” have haunted many a childhood, and maybe the images of gorillas on horseback have, too.

Dozens of viewings haven’t cooled my crush on “Planet of the Apes.” If anything, I’m more enamored by its accomplishments.

Everything “Star Wars” did, the Apes franchise did first. Largely desert setting? Check. Nihilistic, cynical character? Check. Incessant merchandising, bottomless sequels, pop-culture cache? Check, check and check.

Additionally, the Apes series gives audiences serious social issues to ponder between our bites of popcorn. On the Deep Focus Film Studies website, writer Bryn V. Young-Roberts notes that the film examines a world where “a white man is now an ethnic minority,” complete with scenes that echo the Civil War, particularly as one of Heston’s fellow astronauts is an African-American male shot dead in a cornfield and Heston himself is blasted with a high-pressure hose, similar to police breaking up civil-rights demonstrations in the same decade the film was released.

On a recent viewing, I was intrigued by the orangutan character Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans), the minister of science who also doubles as the simian protector of faith. The two roles are in opposition, a fact that does not bother Zaius much. But his desire to hide the truth, which includes lobotomizing any humans who can talk and suppressing any and all scientific evidence at odds with his religious symbol system, speaks to the dangers of mixing politics and religion and to the wisdom of separating church and state.

That’s heady stuff for a movie where most of the characters emote from behind latex masks and yak hair, but it’s also what allows it to remain socially relevant on its golden anniversary.


Originally published in March 2018.

The Bechdel Test and my reading list

I learn more from my students than they ever learn from me.

Case in point: Last week, one of my seniors mentioned a three-part test to determine if a book or movie has strong female characters. A little digging turned up the name — the Bechdel Test, named for cartoonist Alison Bechdel, who popularized it in a 1985 comic strip.

The first criterion is that the work must feature at least two women. Next, the two women must speak to one another. And their conversation must be about something other than men.

The Bechdel Test was a revelation for me. I started thinking about the works I assign to my classes and how they fare under these criteria. The short answer? Not too well.

Freshman year is “Romeo and Juliet.” It has several strong female characters, including Juliet, her mother, and one of Shakespeare’s most masterful creations, the Nurse. All three talk among themselves. Unfortunately, their conversations revolve around Juliet’s impending engagement or her desire not to be engaged. This play of doomed love fails the Bechdel Test.

“To Kill a Mockingbird” is somewhat better. Narrated by the wonderfully strong Scout, Harper Lee’s novel features several conversations between women about rabid dogs, gardening, and missionary trips to Africa. It passes the Bechdel Test.

“Of Mice and Men”? Only one woman there — Curly’s wife, who doesn’t even merit her own name (which may have been Steinbeck’s point), and the ghost of another, Lennie’s Aunt Clara. No conversations between the two. Fail.

I don’t teach sophomores, but junior year brings “The Scarlet Letter,” which almost passes because at least it has two female characters — that hussy Hester Prynne and her daughter, Pearl — who talk a lot about the minister and the Black Man (the devil). But as one student noted, even if some of their conversations veer from strictly male-centric, they’re still “all about sin,” so that doesn’t count. Fair enough. Fail.

Next up, “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker. Many strong female characters, many conversations among them about a host of issues, including men. Pass.

But then along comes “The Things They Carried,” Tim O’Brien’s tour de force about Vietnam. Great book, but woefully lacking in female characters. Fail. “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” “The Catcher in the Rye,” and “All the Pretty Horses”? Classics, all … but fail, fail, fail.

Senior year is the worst. Some selections don’t get past the first Bechdel hurdle: Having two women as characters. “The Lord of the Flies” and “Bartleby, the Scrivener” have zero. “The Road” has one in flashback and one who appears for about two pages near the conclusion. “1984” has one. “Macbeth” has two — the scenery-chewing Lady Macbeth and Lady Macduff — but they never speak to each other. “Hamlet” has a duo, Gertrude and Ophelia, but their conversations are limited to the title character. “Great Expectations” and the perpetually jilted bride, Miss Havisham, and her man-hating acolyte, Estella? Fergedaboudit.

To be clear, I don’t consider Bechdel to be a true test, per se. Books don’t really pass or fail based on arbitrary character counts, content, length or lexile levels. But in environments like school, where being as inclusive as possible should be a major goal, a blanket exclusion of fifty percent of the audience in the vast majority of titles gives me pause.

An argument could be made that school reading lists are still the province of Old Dead White Men, also known by unapologetic Eurocentrists as the Canon, and that the lack of female characters who live independently of men is merely a reflection of the social reality in which these writers worked. An argument can also be made — one which I can’t in good conscience refute completely — that replacing acknowledged classics with more contemporary titles merely to balance a ledger based on somebody’s idea of political correctness is problematic.

So I won’t be making a wholesale replacement of my reading lists next year, but I will be pondering more deeply the titles I select and their implications. After all, my students deserve an accurate representation not only of the past, but also of the world outside their classroom window.

Originally published in The Alliance Review in April 2015.