Author: photog

Book Writing and Blogging

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Writing “The Sniper” was a massive learning experience for me.  Not only does it take up a lot of time but it also makes it much harder to do other things at the same time.  And vice versa!  Working, blogging and taking care of my other responsibilities really slowed down my book writing performance drastically.  And the time has come to begin writing the sequel.

So, something is going to have to give.  My decision is to cut back on the blogging.  Believe it or not even knocking out five hundred words has been taking a couple of hours.  And when I’m doing it at ten or eleven at night the quality has been way down.  The old brain just doesn’t click like it used to at that hour.

So, what I see happening is the posts will be hit and miss.  I’ll be able to keep the photos and quotes going without much strain.  But if I find myself scrambling for a theme, I’ll let it slide until I’ve got one that makes sense.  Quality over quantity.  It makes sense.

So, my apologies for my laziness but I am a man with definite limits.

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett – Some Observations on the Book

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Someone my age or older if he is familiar with Hammett’s story, “The Thin Man” probably has only seen the 1934 film with William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles.  And as I’ve reviewed elsewhere, it is a fantastically entertaining movie made up of equal parts comedy and murder mystery.

I have a copy of the Library of America volumes for Dashiell Hammett and for whatever reason this past week I decided to read the short novel that the movie is based on.  And to start with I’ll say I wasn’t disappointed.  It’s a good story and well written to entertain the reader with vivid characterizations and plenty to keep your interest piqued.  But one thing it isn’t is a blueprint for the movie.  So, I thought it would be interesting to just give my impressions on how the book and movie differ and then to say which version was more satisfying.

The first piece of bookkeeping is the suitability for general audiences.  Now the film was pre-code meaning that strict censorship of risqué images, language and themes was not yet being enforced in Hollywood.  But even saying that, the film version of the story would today be rated (at worst) PG-13 due to violent circumstances in the plot.  But in reality, a G rating would not be a terrible stretch.  Several of the characters were criminals and murder and other crimes are the focus of the story but everything was handled in a sanitized portrayal.  The book however leans heavily into the seedier aspects of several of the characters’ lifestyles.  There is allusion to sexual activity and the violence that is portrayed is much more graphic than in the movie version.  And as an example of an unusual bit of reality one character is compared to a lesbian in her “hatred of men.”

And as far as the characterization of some of the more important people in the story, the two grown children of the eponymous “Thin Man,” Dorothy and Gilbert Wynant are described as at the very least highly neurotic and very possibly dangerously disturbed due to the terrible parenting of their mother Mimi.  And this differs significantly from Dorothy’s character in the movie where she is portrayed very sympathetically.  And as one of the main characters Mimi is definitely portrayed as a much worse person in the book than in the film.  In the movie she’s a greedy, manipulative woman but in the book she’s close to a psychopath.  She brutalizes her daughter for almost no reason and she lies pathologically at every turn.  At one point she becomes so angry at Dorothy that she goes into a sort of blind fury as she tries to get at her while Nick restrains her by main force.  She is easily the ugliest character in the book.

As far as the characterization of Nick and Nora Charles, one thing that agreed in both versions is that they both drank hard liquor almost continuously both day and night.  Now in the movie it almost seemed to be a joke.  But in the book, it was just their routine.  I guess allowances would have to be made for the prohibition era mores and customs but to a modern reader it is very noticeable.  As far as their personalities they come off slightly harder edged than Powell and Loy’s remarkably affable screen personae.  Nick especially is quite willing to get tough with both men and women who get in his face.  At one point he has to stop Mimi from assaulting her daughter by lifting her off the ground and pinning her arms while holding her down on a couch while someone throws water in her face to calm her down.  In the final scene he becomes angry at the police Lieutenant Guild for not seeing that Wynant was the murdered man and knocks out MacCaulay as much out of anger as to stop him.  And in general, both Nick and Nora are not as “nice” as their screen versions.

The book characterizes most of Nick’s friends in upper crust New York City as morally compromised while his underworld acquaintances come off as “good fellas” if a little on the rough side.

Evaluating overall the contrast between the book and movie, what we have is a gritty detective story versus a film that is basically a light-hearted comedy as much as it is a murder mystery.  And considering the audiences that each of these stories were aimed at both are highly successful in their entertainment value.  The book was aimed at adults, probably particularly men.  The movie was a family entertainment with some double entendres thrown in for the adults.  But I think the short novel is well worth reading and I only wish he had written more stories for Nick and Nora.  The screen sequels never measured up to the original film but I’m sure Hammett could have provided more gritty adventures for his Nick and Nora.

20APR2026 – Quote of the Day

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The nation which is satisfied is lost. The nation which is not progressive is retrograding. “Rest and be thankful” is a motto which spells decay. The new world seems to possess more of this quality in its crude state, at any rate, than the old. In individuals it sometimes seems to be carried to excess. I do not by this mean the revolutions which periodically ravage the Southern and Central American Republics. I think more of the restless enterprise of the United States, with the devouring anxiety to improve existing machinery and existing methods, and the apparent impossibility of accumulating any fortune, however gigantic, which shall satisfy or be sufficient to allow of leisure and repose. There the disdain of finality, the anxiety for improving on the best seems almost a disease; but in Great Britain we can afford to catch the complaint, at any rate in a mitigated form, and give in exchange some of our own self-complacency, for complacency is a fatal gift. “What was good enough for my father is good enough for me” is a treasured English axiom which, if strictly carried out, would have kept us to wooden ploughs and water clocks. In these days we need to be inoculated with some of the nervous energy of the Americans.

Archibald Primrose

Are We Up to the Challenge

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With all the strange things going on in our world it’s pretty easy to throw your hands up and say that there’s no hope for things to get better.  You hear about the decline in education and the challenge for young people to find jobs when corporations are using artificial intelligence (AI) to replace most of the work that entry level employees used to do.  And that doesn’t even include all the other madness that’s engulfed our society lately.  I mean, the litany of dystopian phenomena is staggering so I won’t just list them again.  Should we just give up?

No, we must do the opposite.  We must return to basics and approach life by concentrating on the essential aspects of life and avoid as much as possible the “noise.”  So, if all you hear about is kids degenerating into uneducated, psychologically unbalanced basket cases who lay around all day immersed in their cyber-world, then the thing to do is get involved in helping the kids discover what’s “real” in the world.  Teach them real skills; how to work with tools, how to maintain their cars, how to repair things around the house, how to prepare for a job interview, how to talk to a girl in real life.  Stuff like that.

There is no doubt that forces are at work that threaten the stability of our society.  DEI and other identity obsessed programs have done terrible damage to the work place but bewailing this situation isn’t an adequate response.  Young people have to be informed that “giving up” on life is not an option.  Every avenue for advancement must be explored in this most prosperous country in the world.  If only women and foreigners are allowed to be doctors and engineers then become car mechanics or carpenters or buy a small business and build it up yourself.  But whatever it takes young men have to show initiative and the willingness to struggle to survive.  Blaming “boomers” or global warming are just excuses and more needs to be done.  And the way to show the young that there’s hope is by encouraging them and helping them with their struggles.  Share whatever skills or expertise you have and help them discover how to persevere in a challenging environment.

I remember a movie where one of the main characters had a mantra, “Struggle and survive.”  Well, that’s very good advice for our present day.  Giving up seems to be what everyone says is the way forward.  The answer to AI is a universal basic income (UBI) where the government pays you just for breathing and no work is required.  Of course it will have to be the most marginal of existences.  You’ll probably have to live in a closet and eat whatever crap they want to feed you.  But the fact that this is being pushed by the Left shows that it’s a sign that they just want you to lay down and die.  And that is exactly the philosophy (nihilism) that we must eliminate from the young it is basically a death cult and it has infected our society.  And each of us involved in keeping our families alive will have to fight it.

Keeping My Options Open

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One of my oldest friends has been advising me on the possibility of making a film treatment out of my book and sending it to Hollywood to become the next “Project Hail Mary.”  What immediately came to my mind was Hollywood taking the story and making the evil president, Donald Trump and making Bogey a leftist trans-woman.  Yikes!

But what was surprising is that there is actually an AI capable of taking my story and converting it directly into a film treatment.  And it has an enormous capability to annotate the details necessary for actually filming the thing.  There are notes on casting each of the characters (appearance, age, personality, voice), locations, special effects, visual effects, weapons, special personnel (e.g., armorer), special equipment, weapons, etc.

And then it used the dialog from the book and adapted it for the screen; shortened and elided from it to bring the screen time into a realistic movie length.

Now I haven’t finished going through this document but so far what I’ve seen seems very interesting.  It’s basically my book.  And that’s exciting.  I was assuming the story would be too long for a movie without very serious pruning of scenes that I’m attached to.  But we’ll see.

Now, I’m aware that Hollywood doesn’t make movies from books that don’t sell millions of copies.  They’re looking for a built-in fan base for their product.  So, no studio in their right minds would take a chance on spending potentially hundreds of millions of dollars on an unknown story.  But it’s always fun to dream about these things.

And that brings me to Andy Weir’s story.  He self-published “The Martian” on Amazon and only eventually got a book deal when he had already built up an audience for it on his own.  And now he has two hit movies made from his books.  Think about that.  Someone who couldn’t get a publishing contract ends up with a smash hit movie that everyone in Hollywood probably hates because it has a white guy as its hero and he doesn’t have the usual diversity cast to allow the movie to be an Oscar contender.  They broke all of Hollywood’s rules to make this movie by not having a girl-boss as the hero surrounded by the usual multi-cultural struggle session ensemble.  It just brings tears to my eyes.

Chances are I won’t be duplicating Weir’s experience.  My book is not an uplifting tale of human endeavor.  Mine is a tale of revenge and destruction.  I openly attack the Left and my heroes are identifiable people on the Right.  So, no.  I won’t be getting a Hollywood deal.  Ever!

But despite all that I’m excited about what is now happening in Hollywood.  The Ellisons bought Paramount and have now shut down the travesty that was Star Trek – Star Fleet Academy.  They’re buying Warner Brothers and they’ll probably shut down the people making terrible stuff like “Supergirl” that’s coming out soon.  And now we see Amazon/MGM making stuff like “Project Hail Mary (PHM).”  That’s a pretty good chunk of Hollywood already.  And with PHM looking like it’s going to break the $600 million mark and become a big moneymaker, even places like Netflix and Disney will say to themselves, “Hey, why can’t we get into some of that “normal film-making” that those other guys are doing and make money for a change?  Let’s call that photog guy and get an option on, “The Sniper” before the Ellisons scoop it up.”

Or something like that!