{"id":24899,"date":"2016-03-02T01:58:43","date_gmt":"2016-03-02T09:58:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=24899"},"modified":"2016-03-02T01:58:43","modified_gmt":"2016-03-02T09:58:43","slug":"rebelfire-nightmare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2016\/03\/02\/rebelfire-nightmare\/","title":{"rendered":"RebelFire nightmare"},"content":{"rendered":"

During my nice, mundane days, I’ve begun a mega-tidying. Not a Marie Kondo-type tidying, mind you. I wouldn’t tuck my purses inside my purses, even if I owned purses, which for many years I have not (see the “head in the clouds”<\/a> subhead at that link if you wonder what the heck I’m talking about).<\/p>\n

I am, among other things, tidying my computer files and finding the best places to tuck various guns, knives, and power tools. Serious tidying, that.<\/p>\n

Along the way, I found the backup files of both the job culture book (which I knew I had somewhere) and RebelFire<\/i> (which I didn’t know I had). I foresee Kindle-izing in my future.<\/p>\n

In the directory with the not-quite-final RF book files I found yet another forgotten piece of the history of Jeremy, Cedra, and the band RebelFire. A movie script.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Yeah. I wrote a movie script. Ten years ago. Finished it up in February Ought-Six. Co-creator Aaron Zelman and I put it on a site where Hollywood people supposedly come looking for undiscovered wonders (yeah, riiiight). Went nowhere.<\/p>\n

During my tidying I also found, in a box of old JPFO merchandise and lore, a copy of RF labled (I will not use the person’s real name, for reasons which will shortly become apparent) “Joe’s script mark-up copy.”<\/p>\n

And that reminded me of another<\/i> movie script that I didn’t<\/i> write. One that also went nowhere — and for which failure I thank my luckiest stars.<\/p>\n

Here’s the story.*<\/p>\n

A couple of years after RF was published and I wrote my script, Aaron hired another writer — the aforesaid Joe — who claimed to have Hollywood contacts, to write a different RebelFire script. Since I co-owned RF, they had to get my permission, which I happily gave.<\/p>\n

Then I saw Joe’s script. And oh my feakin’ unholy gods of the underworld. <\/p>\n

In some ways, it was a masterful adaptation. Joe made excellent choices about what to leave in, what to omit, and what to change. With one exception. Where suddenly, and repeatedly, I was dealing with a script written by a lunatic.<\/p>\n

That exception was the female characters. The guys — fine. Jeremy, Rey, Fish, Erik — all real, multi-dimensional people. All very true to their book-selves.<\/p>\n

But the women. I. Could. Not. Believe. To say that Joe had turned them into cardboard characters would have been giving way too much credit to cardboard. To say he objectified<\/i> them would have been to make inert objects glorious by comparison. <\/p>\n

In the book Jeremy’s mother is an unpleasant parent, but she’s in only a few opening chapters and her main purpose is to drive her beleaguered teenage son batty and help inspire him to escape. <\/p>\n

In Joe’s script … she’s omnipresent and whenever we see her she’s (OMG) on her knees coldly offering sex acts in exchange for political favors. Whut??? (And in a young adult story, yet!) <\/p>\n

Then Cedra. In the novel, she’s the slightly older, infinitely more street-smart, painfully neurotic, highly attitudinal street rat who helps Jeremy survive his encounter with the city but who treats him like a PITA she must endure against her will.<\/p>\n

In Joe’s script? Would you believe we first glimpse her on horseback? On the beach? Where she artfully flips her long, lustrous, lovely hair over her gorgeous model-beautiful face while eying Jeremy with unbridled anticipation? <\/p>\n

I am NOT FREAKIN’ KIDDING. I think she even lustfully licks her full, sensuously parted, glistening, cherry-red lips. Heck, she may even be riding the horse naked. Been a while. I don’t recall every detail. I just know that script-Cedra bore no resemblance not only to novel-Cedra, but to any actual human-woman-person outside of a commercial for feminine hygiene products.<\/p>\n

Got worse from there, too. I won’t go into detail, but it was bad. Sometimes you’d think this was a story about Jeremy defying a murderous harpy (with a vagina dentata<\/em>!) rather than the all-seeing state.<\/p>\n

Yes, movies objectify women. This is no big surprise and after all these decades is a trope that appears here to stay. <\/p>\n

But this was sick stuff. Woman as man-killing harlot. Woman as seductress and sexual plotter. The end. Nothing more. Females are not human beings. They don’t have actual personalities. They are just the sums (and artful users) of their lady parts. How Joe got any of that out of the source material he otherwise obviously respected, I cannot imagine.<\/p>\n

Seriously warped view of half the human race.<\/p>\n

I’ve never been a stay-up-all-night person. Even when I was young and wild and on heavy stimulant drugs, I’d crash sometime before dawn. But the evening I read Joe’s script, I stayed up all night — didn’t go to bed until the next evening — writing a long critique and pleading — pleading — with Aaron and Joe not to do anything so sick and stupid. I pleaded that these characters were not human and not appropriate. I pleaded that young women liked RF, too, and that they deserved a Cedra they could identify with or at least like and admire. I pleaded that this was suicidally wrong<\/i> in every way.<\/p>\n

I had to plead because I realized, too late, that though I had review rights to Joe’s script I failed to negotiate veto<\/i> rights. <\/p>\n

But in the end, Joe’s script died as thoroughly as mine did. And after getting over the horrors (OMG, what if this guy really does have Hollywood contacts?), I never thought about it again until I found that marked up copy of RF in that box.<\/p>\n

Aaron and Joe are both gone from the scene. Joe’s script is probably still in the files of one of my defunct computers. But I don’t think I want to look it up again. The memory is bad enough without any reminder.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

* If you’ve never read RebelFire<\/i> or read it so long ago that you don’t even remember who the characters are, sorry. You can still buy personally autographed copies of RF via The Zelman Partisans for $15 or get one free (along with other goodies) with a three-year membership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During my nice, mundane days, I’ve begun a mega-tidying. Not a Marie Kondo-type tidying, mind you. I wouldn’t tuck my purses inside my purses, even if I owned purses, which for many years I have not (see the “head in the clouds” subhead at that link if you wonder what the heck I’m talking about). I am, among other things, tidying my computer files and finding the best places to tuck various guns, knives, and power tools. Serious tidying, that. Along the way, I found the backup files of both the job culture book (which I knew I had somewhere)<\/p>\n

Continue readingRebelFire nightmare<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-and-movies","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24899\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}