Meta Meta Blogging or Cheating Cubed
Meta is usually cheating. "I have nothing to blog about so I'll blog about having nothing to blog about." Barf. Meta- film is usually heinous, yes, even when Charlie Kaufman pens and Meryl stars. I can't believe he got away with that in Adaptation: 'Oh, shit, my manuscript is due, and I've done nothing... I'll just write about a character with writer's block, and what the hell, I'll name him Charlie Kaufman, maybe a repulsive twin brother character will distract the audience from my appalling lack of creativity.' Self-referential garbage. And this very (horrible) post is meta...CUBED: writing about writing about writing. Save this post as an example of what NEVER to do. 99% of meta-anything is doomed.
posted by Aethlos at 6:43 PM
7 Comments:
I need to get you out of the house!
"After Being John Malkovich, Adaptation came as a disappointment." Discuss.
Some good may yet come of a bad post - which may be considered an alternative topic for debate. Your choice.
I must have a way to creative imagination to even see this as an option about my writing. If I've got block, I don't write. I can see uses to the self-exploratory meta. But my mother told me the difference between inside voice and outside voice.
kb
ha,ha,i dont know if you meant to crack me up,but you did with this one.
I love Adaptation!
Do you also dislike 8 1/2? Because it's the same idea, only Italian.
i just felt like adaptation could have been something REALLY brilliant... if he wouldn't have gone meta... if he wouldn't have taken the easy way out. I LOVE Kaufman's work, i think he's a genius, and i would love to see what that script would look like if he had to adapt it AGAIN, but this time without cheating. He admitted on Charlie Rose that he was CERTAIN the studio would reject that draft outright, and when they received it they were clearly perterbed, and he thought he was going to have to start over from scratch, but they warmed up to it eventually. Ugh. So disappointing. What i hated most about it was how his twin brother was a screenwriter, and did it in three acts, and took the classes, and all that... how he actually laid his ENTIRE struggle with the script out in the film. Argh...! Maybe it irritates me so much because i've been to film school. And in film school that is the most common cheat, and most annoying thing every hack student tries to create - a film about how i'm going to make a film about making film. That book could have been made into something else... and perhaps something GORGEOUS. :)
The persistence of writers to write about frustated writers confounds all media formats. Just like plays about frustrated playwrights. They become self-servicing in-jokes that leave the civilians out of the loop.
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