They’re Digging in the Wrong Place

“Always knew someday you’d come walking back through my door.”

I fully support the WGA strike. Reading these stories about what writers have been going through lately has been a real eye-opener, mostly because there’s been this naive (at least on my part) belief that writers at a certain level had it better, especially in terms of money, benefits, and job security.

When I started writing, there was an expectation that you’d need to intern and/or write for exposure (AKA free!) for a certain amount of time before you became a Paid Writer.

I remember shadowing a crime-beat reporter who had me sitting in a hot courtroom all day and writing notes while he was sleeping off a hangover in his car. He published the story the next day with all my work. No credit. No payment. I was 17 years old.

I remember working my ass off on a story for a Tampa publication. The editor had promised to pay me $50 and instead sent me 50 copies of the magazine, which, as the editor said, “was basically the same thing.”

I can’t remember all the stories I wrote for “free copies” or “free beer” or “free food” in the 90s. So when I finally did get paid checks like $25, I felt like a millionaire. But that never included insurance or job security. And you could never appreciate it because you were always chasing the next thing.

The expectation was that if you kept your nose down and continued to eat shitdid the work, sooner or later someone would take notice and bring you in from the cold. And then you would be a Real Writer.

None of that, of course, was true. But it’s disheartening to see how bad things have gotten for writers in the meantime. The struggle never ends, even if you are working for one of the most popular TV shows or internet sites - and that kind of realization just breaks my idealistic brain.

"It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage."

Here’s an excerpt from my essay “Pop Goes the Culture” (soon to be published in Notes from Paraspace, available on August 15th):

I originally wrote that in June 2016. It’s not only seven years later but I finally did get the chance to see one of Indiana Jones’ adventures when he was 80 (I know he’s meant to be 70 in the movie, but work with me here). What a time to be alive!

I have some things I want to say about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. So if you haven’t seen the movie or don’t want it spoiled, I’ll let you know when it’s time to scroll down. And I’ll mark where it’s safe to start reading again. 

I like the majority of James Mangold’s movies. And I was delighted when it was announced that he’d be directing the next Indiana Jones movie. 3:10 to Yuma showed that he has a good eye for action without compromising on the emotional payoff and Logan showed that he knows how to give established heroes a proper sendoff - so Mangold seemed like a no-brainer.

For the most part, Mangold delivered a solid entry to the Indiana Jones saga, one that is a step above Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and fits snuggly alongside Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in terms of quality. It’s nowhere near the high watermark of the original, and at this point, I think it’s safe to say that the lightning in the bottle they achieved in 1981 will never be replicated again for this franchise.

As I wrote in my Letterboxd review:

Now that I’ve made all of those qualifications, it’s time for me to admit that I did not like the movie. Some of it has to do with what I wrote in the above 2016 essay and a lot of it has to do with this being the purported final Indiana Jones movie.

In “Pop Goes the Culture” I write about how it’s weird that we are cutting and pasting the past and transplanting it into the present and how this is leading to “an entire generation of children [being] raised on their parents’ recycled pop culture.”

As a fan, I am happy to see pop culture properties that have been around for decades (Superman will be 100 years old in 15 years). But I don’t think that their existence should be at the expense of new properties and ideas for newer generations.

Because every time you see the success of legacy shows like Fuller House (5 seasons) and That ‘90s Show (picked up for a 2nd season), you’re seeing the instant death of an original idea that could have been.

Every time you see the headlines for the recasting of James Bond, you’re seeing an original idea crashing and burning.

(The James Bond franchise is a good example of a mediocre idea that manages to avoid death by swapping in a new actor every decade or so. With 60 years’ worth of movies, even the writers get tempted to make sense of the continuity within the reboots and try to flesh out Bond’s backstory as a way to defy the franchise’s inertia. But at this point, especially after Daniel Craig’s run, what’s left to say? It’s no accident that the internet’s headcanon for the series is that James Bond is a codename because it tries to retroactively give the impression that it always made sense.)

And speaking of retroactive, it’s also interesting to see Marvel and DC - through their use of the multiverse - grabbing every one of their respective older movies and TV shows (even the bad ones!) and including them in their recent movies - sometimes as Easter eggs, other times as punchlines (I’m looking at you, Flash) - as a way to tell you that It All Matters.1

I guess what I’m getting at is, was there always the expectation that we’d get to see Indiana Jones’ life from the beginning, middle, and end? Was that the purpose of the saga? Outside of blowing into the embers in my cold heart, why did it have to go on?

In case you haven’t heard, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is meant to be the last Indiana Jones. If anything, it’ll most likely be the last Indiana Jones movie Harrison Ford stars in.2 

I suspect that the difficulty with this story wasn’t so much creating another MacGuffin for our hero to chase, but finding a way to bring this series to a seemingly natural endpoint.

<SPOILERS>

So how do you do that?

Do you have him ride off into the sunset? No, that’s been done.

Do you kill him off? As dramatic as it may be, no one really wants to see that.

Do you have him win back his divorced wife AND get over the death of his son (both of these major life events will have happened off-camera between the last movie and this one)? Sure, let’s do that.

(And they don’t really do that either. He’s literally knocked out and dragged back to the future to confront his ex-wife with no mention of his son’s death.)

No attempt was made to weave some kind of theme for the whole series:

• The need to preserve the past over the need to use it to alter the future.

• Indiana Jones needs to reconcile his belief in science with everything he’s seen in life.

• Indiana Jones, in his old age, realizes that his story hasn’t been properly told.

• Nazis were and have always been bad.

Instead, the movie’s denouement seems to land on: Despite everything he has accomplished, Indy’s relationship with Marion Ravenwood is the most important part of his life.

And I’m not against it, but isn’t that what the last movie already established?

At the end of the movie, Indiana Jones is still potentially a drunk, most likely wanted by the police for murder (remember that?), without a job, and past his prime. He didn’t learn anything about himself that he didn’t already know. And now that he’s happy, he still has to live with the fact that he wanted to die just days before, and was willing to strand himself centuries in the past to make sure he could never reconnect.

(Did anyone else think that the big reveal was going to be that they had returned too early? And that Indy would have the chance to save his son?)

In fact, the part with Indiana Jones in 213 BC and wanting to be left behind so he can study it (for a few hours before dying, I guess) offers the best possible theme for the whole series: his obsession with putting the past in a museum at the expense of his own present, his own life, his own relationships. Now there’s a story worth exploring.

The choice for making Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny came down to this: do we go out the way we came in and create a rip-roaring rollicking adventure, or do we tie it all together and bring closure to the series?

They decided to do both, and in the process, they stumbled twice.

<SPOILERS/>

Have you read “Ninja BBQ”?

Can you keep the secret?

"Fortune and glory, kid. Fortune and glory."

Going back to writing, I think about the future a lot for writers like me who pump out about a book a year. And if you can cultivate a community on sites like Patreon or Substack who will read everything you write, how many do you need to make a living?

I think the magic number is 1000.

I know that feels terrifyingly low, but imagine 1000 readers supporting you every month for $5. You can have perks and share chapters or new short stories, and you know this audience will buy your new books.

I think small creative ecosystems like this are going to be the future. It’ll require the writer to be more than a writer, but these days they’re already their own marketers, social media managers, etc. So what’s the difference really? Thinking of it now, it’s essentially a literary version of OnlyFans. Hmm…

Look, I know what I’m saying isn’t revolutionary or particularly new. I just think a lot of writers get resentful because they thought their work was going to set the world on fire. But if you approach it more practically and break it down, and come at it with the mindset that you’re going to blow the minds of, say, 100 people, you can build from there. Establish your community. Make your ecosystem. If you don’t become a New York Times bestseller, you at least found an audience that allows you to make a living doing the thing you love the most. And if one of your books happens to become huge along the way, then it’s all desserts.

That’s it for this week. I know how lucky I am to have you here. So thank you for reading.