As any college writing professor will tell you, the end of the semester is not about playing. Rather, it’s about reading.
In my case, it’s getting through two and a half dozen scripts in the time it takes to….
Oh, never mind.
gah!
All that matters is the grades are due soon and I AM NOT DONE.
Have I read some really good stuff? You bet!
Have there been others that….. Oh yeah, absolutely.
’nuff said
But mostly it’s been encouraging. Gen Z has A LOT on their mind and they are paying attention. They might not be writing exactly about our literal times (Note: Though some are). But even when it’s an adjacent reality of sci-fi, end of the world, animated pirates or the impossibilities of having a live, in-person, honest to goodness relationship with….something….they’re paying attention, taking notes and making something out of it.
That’s why part of this week’s Saturday Night Live season 51 finale episode felt, well, especially appropriate.
Hosted by this guy
No, it wasn’t the cold open where POTUS is visited by the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein (Note: Yes, they went THERE). Or even the moment when it segued into beer pong with the current Dept. of Defense and the current FBI director (Note: No, we’re not mentioning their names even one more time in print).
Instead, it was Ferrell’s return as the somewhat sadistically gay/bitchy high school drama teacher – Mr. Koenig – about to post the cast list to this year’s school play but holding back just a few minutes more because he delights in watching those kids literally squirm.
I beg you to judge me!
I long for those days.
When the only thing to squirm about was not getting cast as the lead in “Grease.” Or in my case, “Fiddler on the Roof.”
Watch, enjoy and wait for the special guest at the end of the sketch. And if you get especially SNL nostalgic by the end, you can always add another few cents to the coffers of my husband and me (Note: I?) and purchase the book we co-authored, The SNL Companion: An Unofficial Guide to the Seasons, Sketches and Stars of Saturday Night Live.
Yes, that was a plug. Because the book has the extra added bonus of being released right before you know who won the 2024 election.
Gracias
More from the real world next week.
And no, I’m nothing like (much like?) Mr. Koenig in real life.
I like movies and TV shows that earn your trust and make you believe what is, by definition, contrived.
Yes, all movies and tv shows are contrived.
obviously
As I tell my writing students when they resist a good plot point in their work because they fear it will come off as artificial:
What you really fear is that it will seem contrived.
Meaning every writer’s, or liar’s, job is to massage a moment to the point where it seems perfectly believable for the person in the moment they’re in.
This has worked for me as a writer, and as a college professor, for most of my adult life.
But what do you do when the actual events in the world seem too ludicrous to be true in the reality you’ve lived in for all of your life?
Ok but it’s still really bad, right?
And what effect will that have on you and all others falling under the dreaded monicker of content creators (Note: Ugh, I hate that term, it preemptively makes us all sound like we’re A.I. assembly-line worker bees, which I suppose is the point) going forward?
Is there no action a person or character takes that could be deemed too outlandish? Will there be no plot point out of the bounds of logic?
NO RULES
Can an American POTUS publicly attack the sitting Pope – the leader of approximately 1.3 billion Catholics – as “a tool of the radical left,” “weak on crime,” and “disgraceful” as he simultaneously posts a picture of himself as Jesus healing the sick to millions of his followers on social media?
What about a U.S. Secretary of Defense holding a worship service at the Pentagon (Note: Normally we could stop there) where he quotes what professes to be a bible verse from Ezekiel 25:17 that is actually A SPEECH WRITTEN BY director-screenwriter Quentin Tarantino to mimic a bible verse delivered by a fictional hitman played by Samuel L. Jackson in the 1994 breakout hit, Pulp Fiction???
You gotta be kidding me
The answers are being rewritten even as I write, and every time one awakes to another bizarre rant from [Fill in the world “leader” (ahem) of your choice].
This week I went to an actual movie theatre to see The Drama, a sort of oddball mélange of rom-com, pathos, suspense and cross-cutting frenzy fueled by the star power of Zendaya and Robert Pattinson.
Criminally attractive people
Playing a Gen Z meet-cute couple about to be married and thus subject to a few nervous drunken nights with friends, the film essentially poses the bizarre question: What would Mr. Pattinson’s character do if this fantasy gal he was in love with, nee Zendaya’s character, admitted that she almost did a school shooting when she was a teenager?
She DID NOT DO IT, mind you. She just thought about it and planned a little of it until logic and goodwill won her over.
Yes, it’s concerning, but… would it cause you as Mr. Pattinson (Note: You wish!) to melt down to the point where you __________, or prompt more than a few friends or co-workers to advise you to call the police and have her arrested for something she never did years ago?
Really Robby?
Call me crazy, but I had some issue with that.
On the other hand, I didn’t grow up with school shooting drills or in a time when being gunned en masse in junior high school was a possibility. (Note: The worst it got for me was being jabbed by several long sharp knitting needles going up the stairs to class by several very tough girls in school that I avoided at all costs).
As for the students I sent to see The Drama, some agreed with me but many didn’t at all have an issue with it. Nor, obviously, did, Z or RPatz, who signed on to do the script. Nor did many filmgoers, as $110 million worldwide at the box-office proves.
Or does it?
Box office don’t lie!
Maybe it was simply RPatz & Z they wanted to see. And who could blame them? They seem cooler and hotter than any one of us will ever be in whatever they do onscreen, which is part of what makes them movie stars in the first place.
Not every TV show has to be as believable as the E.R. workers in The Pitt, or create as convincing of an earned alternate reality the innies and outies are given in Severance.
Why am I only talking about handsome Robbys?!?
And certainly we don’t require everything to be as smart, dense and grounded in the actual politics of its day as Oppenheimer. The well-reviewed and well-attended response to the campy and luxuriously contrived Barbie, which went on to create that beloved Barbenheimer effect in the summer of 2023 is evidence of that.
A quaint time three years ago when there was something for everyone.
Not the current, creeping, heat-seeking reality of almost everything for just a few.
:upscale()/2016/05/09/890/n/1922398/6ae75f8f69ee4c37_14.gif)
notes from a chair 