Wishful

November 2

I need help from your collective conscious. For a story I'm writing, I need movie trivia. Specifically, I need trivia about movies that might have been -- for example, David Lynch was offered the opportunity to direct The Empire Strikes Back, but he had other commitments -- imagine what that would have done to the Star Wars franchise! Or the rumored "alternate endings" to Casablanca. Or the fact that Nicole Kidman was supposed to star in Panic Room, but hurt herself on the set of Moulin Rouge, so Jodie Foster starred instead. That's the sort of stuff I want -- movies that were never made, but might have been (like the Tim-Burton-Directed Superman that never quite materialized), alternate endings, alternate directors, alternate writers, alternate stars, projects that died a-borning. I don't really want fictional movies, just films that might have been made, but weren't. Any genre of film, from any country, from any era. I'd prefer there to be some basis in reality, but interesting apocrypha is welcome, too. Send me e-mail or just post on my comments board. Help! The sooner the better. If you suggest something and I use it, I'll try to work your name into the story somewhere, as star or writer or director of some obscure made-up cult film, for example, or as a minor character, or something. Never say I'm ungrateful!

I read more stories in Conjunctions; Jim Morrow's excellent "The Wisdom of the Skin", Jonathan Lethem's "The Dystopianist, Thinking of His Rival, Is Interrupted by a Knock on the Door" which I found strange and delightful (I sometimes really hate Jonathan Lethem's work -- I think Amnesia Moon is a terrible novel, for instance -- but other times I like it very much; this time I liked it), and Jonathan Carroll's "Simon's House of Lipstick", which I thought was well-done but a bit predictable. I look forward to reading the rest of the stories -- there's not a single item on the contents page that I'm not looking forward to.

Hmm, let's see... today saw further adventures of our incompetent mailman. (Actually, I'm being unfair -- we have a different mailman seemingly every week, and probably only 7/8s of them are incompetent) The mail didn't come until about 7 p.m., and I found it all laying on the front porch rather than in the mailbox. The outgoing mail in the box hadn't been taken away. The mail on the porch wasn't even our mail -- it all belonged to our landlady, who lives behind us, and has a different house number. Our house number is clearly visible on the porch, where the mail was left. I checked on the landlady's porch, and none of our mail was lying there, so I don't know what became of it. I hope, if it was misdelivered, that someone will bring it to us. Or perhaps even now one of our neighbors is reading our magazines and watching our DVDs...

Four condos have been built a block down on our street, hideous crackerboxes squished together on a tiny plot of land. There's a sign out front of them now, announcing that they're for sale starting at $399,000. Heather and I saw this and laughed and laughed. If and when someone is stupid enough to pay that kind of money for such a horrible little box in this neighborhood, we'll probably stand on the sidewalk, point at them, laugh, and shout "Enjoy your first burglary! Have a good first mugging!"

There will be graffiti all over that sign by Monday morning, I wager.

Our neighborhood isn't that bad, but given that people are losing their jobs and streaming away from the Bay area in record numbers, I can't imagine that such hideous little places in a less-than-stellar neighborhood are going to go for that kind of money. But maybe I'm wrong. It wouldn't be the first time.

Last night we watched Final Destination, which is one of my favorite horror movies -- very little gore, lots of suspense, and the antagonist isn't a guy in a hockey mask, it's Death. My only complaint is that Beck's old song "Death is Coming to Get You" doesn't play at any point in the movie... it'd be perfect over the closing credits, for example. Ah, well. Perfection is so rare.

Tonight we watched The Lathe of Heaven, which was surprisingly good, for a TV movie, and which I think actually improved on Le Guin's book, at least in terms of the ending. In the book, Le Guin apparently couldn't think of a good ending, so she just went New Wave on it, and I was afraid the movie would culminate with the characters swirling around against a psychedelic void, but it wound up in a very satisfying way.

We bought the last couple of volumes of Preacher, so now we have the whole run, and in the past two days I read volumes 6-9. It's such an amazing comic, one of my favorites.

Life has been quiet and good. Heather's working on grad school applications, I'm revising my novel and putting together the next issue of Star*Line. I proofed issue 25.6 today, and it should be coming out soon -- it's the first issue I edited, and it's amazingly good, with fabulous poems by Mary Anne Mohanraj, Ed Lynskey, Charlee Jacob, Mike Allen, Marge Simon, Andy Miller, David Kopaska-Merkel... well, I could go on and on, but I'll restrain myself. Lots of good poems. I think it's a tremendously strong issue. Even if you haven't joined SFPA (and why not?), single issues are available, and I hope you'll all order one. I'll give you the info when the issue's gone to press.

Sigh. I hear from people at World Fantasy that there's drinking and merrymaking going on... I so wish I could be there. Then again, today the weather was perfect, and Heather and I walked to Piedmont and shopped a bit, whereas in Minneapolis it's probably testicle-numbingly cold, so there are compensations. Of course, I'd be inside in Minneapolis, so the weather isn't really relevant...

Oh, last thing, for relatives, and for Heather's mom, and so forth: my Xmas list. I did a wish list over at Amazon, with stuff ranging from the reasonable to the ridiculous. Who knew Tanya Donnelly had another album out? How did I not know this? And Lisa Loeb has two?! Egad. Making the list was fun. I could've kept adding stuff -- especially books -- for ages, but I limited myself to an hour of browsing-and-wishing...

Happy November, all.

Words written since February 1, 2002: 176,100

Words written since last entry:
Still revising, but I'll be doing a story, soon.

Send me the mixed-up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

Tim Pratt
P.O. Box 13222
Berkeley, CA 94712-4222

Spare change for plant food?