From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V2 #46 Reply-To: aml-list Sender: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk aml-list-digest Monday, May 5 2003 Volume 02 : Number 046 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 2 May 2003 10:22:24 -0600 From: "Eric Samuelsen" Subject: RE: [AML] Mormon Arts Retreat (Community of Artists) Alan Mitchell wrote: >And by the way, who does one have to sleep with to get an invite? As I understand it, each discipline has a 'group leader' person, who = selects the ten artists from that discipline who come. My theatre guy = is Marvin Payne. In Lit, I think it's Kristen Randle. So you'd need to = sleep with Kristen, assuming Guy doesn't object. Eric Samuelsen - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 2 May 2003 10:44:14 -0600 From: "Eric Samuelsen" Subject: RE: [AML] In Defense of Obscurity I would like to respond to this very briefly, while also unashamedly = plugging my new show. Eugene Woodbury wrote: >But not because Shakespeare himself used obscure language. Quite to the >contrary, he wrote in the vernacular to the time. Shakespeare became >obscure because of the inevitable evolution of the language. This >explains why Shakespeare is often more "difficult" than the more >formal language of the KJV--vernacular evolves much faster. This is mostly, but not entirely true. Shakespeare loved to invent = words. His coinages have greatly enriched the language, and of course, = coining new words was accepted cultural practice in his day. But I = don't think it's unlikely that his audiences had to listen carefully, or = that they had to wrestle with words they'd never heard before, the = meanings of which they had to grapple with in context. I'm facing a unique challenge right now; one I'm enjoying, I should = hastily add. I'm directing a play by Shakespeare's younger contemporary = John Fletcher. It's called Rule A Wife and Have a Wife, and as best I can tell, it was = probably written around 1640. Fletcher was the young guy in = Shakespeare's company at the time that Shakespeare was the old guy; WS = and Fletcher probably collaborated on several plays, including Pericles = and Henry VIII. =20 Anyway, this is a play that nobody today has heard of. If I were = directing a similar Shakespeare comedy--Taming of the Shrew comes to = mind--I could count on at least some of my audience knowing the play in = advance. Not so much with Fletcher. =20 Fun story, BTW. A rich young heiress, Margarita, a spoiled brat, wants = to marry for the sake of her reputation, but she wants to marry someone = who will do exactly as he's told and not worry about it if she wants to = fool around. She meets a young doofus named Leon, who seems perfect. = Only he turns out not to be such a doofus; he's actually smart and = brave, and is only pretending to be a dope. Eventually he wins her = heart, and they settle into a genuinely equal marriage. A subplot = involves a maid, Estifania, and a soldier, Miguel Perez. They each have = become persuaded that the other one is rich, and marry, and learn that = they're both poor. They finally make up, but only after going after = each other with swords. =20 So. Anyway. What I've done is re-write the language. I'm not = contemporizing it much (like I did a few years ago with Holberg's = Erasmus Montanus). But I am replacing obscure and archaic words with = more contemporary ones. If I can replace "'sblood! I'll own t'it!" with = "All right! I admit it!", I think I'm giving the audience a fighting = chance to understand what's going on. And since Fletcher set the play in = Spain, I decided to do him one better and move it to California, ca. = 1840. To Zorro, specifically. I think the play is going to be a lot of fun. Come see it. It's a = rolicking comedy which we've tried to make even more rolicking, with = lots of sword fights and mayhem. Certainly appropriate for children; = I'm taking my kids, at least, including my nine-year old. =20 It plays in the Margetts Theatre, on the BYU campus, in the HFAC, = starting May 14, running until the end of the month. W-Sat = performances. Tickets available at the HFAC box office, (801) 378-4322. Eric Samuelsen - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 02 May 2003 16:27:44 -0600 From: Barbara Hume Subject: [AML] Mormon Horror (was: Validity of Memory and Nonfiction) At 12:21 PM 5/1/03 -0600, you wrote: >Anyone else know of fictional Mormon horror? What about Orson Scott Card's Lost Boys? barbara - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 2 May 2003 16:57:31 -0700 From: "Jongiorgi Enos" Subject: [AML] Re: Mormon Horror Richard Dutcher has the best Mormon horror story I've ever heard (not having read Michael's, of course). A clever fusion of aspects of both genres and a truly interesting "excuse" to introduce such a mixed genre. But as far as I know, he's not interested in publishing it, he just did it to see if he could. It is a little-known fact that Richard is one of the best horror writers out there, but he hasn't seen fit to publish or produce any of them. But he's scarier and hipper than most of the fare that comes out in that genre. I keep twisting his arm (grin). Personally, though, and this comes from my time in movie marketing, I think its a generally silly idea (from a commercial sense) to try and do such an (albeit interesting) fusion. I'm going to disgust the higher-brow of this set by my next cultural reference, but there was an applicable line on "Friends" last night. Monica and Chandler are trying to have a baby. She comes in and asks him if he has any plans for that night, and trying to be funny and sexy, he gets a look in his eye, melodramatically sweeps everything on the kitchen table off onto the floor, and then gestures at the table with a suggestive expression. Monica (a confirmed neat freak), says: "You're trying to turn me on by making a mess?... KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE!" The joke is applicable to this discussion. Granted, there will be a tiny market segment of Mormon lit readers who are also horror fans, and might appreciate the merger. But I think it is safe to say that besides me and Richard and Michael and maybe Kim and a couple of others, you are talking about a very small group. Say it's even several hundred. Say even 1000. That's still pretty shy of the 20,000 you need for an approximation of profitability. And it's not just a question of money. What if you horrify (in a bad way) and thereby alienate a significant portion of the core audience who bought you because they were expecting a "safe" LDS story? You could really kill yourself from a commercial standpoint. And it doesn't count to be flippant and just dismiss market demands. I mean, artists have to make a living and we HAVE to think about this stuff. I happen to like genre fiction, and I have tinkered with stories in a broad variety of market categories. But when I'm contemplating an LDS market, I get very careful with what story elements I include. I just got off the phone with David Howard an hour or so ago. We had a very long conversation about this very topic. In the course of developing an LDS comedy screenplay, we are very conscious of trying to figure out what we can and can't get away with in our jokes. Comedy that is to sex-oriented, or too bathroom oriented, or too irreverent about sensitive areas of spirituality, general authorities, key church figures or personalities, etc., we are having to very carefully consider. And it's a serious dilemma. We are driven by market forces. We are raising and spending huge amounts of other people's money, and we have to show a return to stay in business. If we tick off or alienate a core group we suffer. On the other hand, if we get too tame, the work suffers. It gets even more complicated when crossing between literature and film. I have a feeling (but no hard evidence as of yet) that LDS film audiences and LDS book audiences are somewhat different, especially when you have to figure profitability into the margin. Vera asked Curtis Taylor the other day. Well, we had a dilemma last year when he approached me to direct a screenplay of his comic novel "The Invisible Saint". Apparently, the book sold pretty well. I think he sold something like 50,000 copies of the thing. But the script I read totally turned me off. Too irreverent in parts, goofy in others. I just didn't think it would fly. Curtis argued that the book sold well, but I had to remind him that for a film to work we needed a heck of a lot more hits than 50,000. I might have been wrong in my assessment. Especially given the financial record of "The Single's Ward" and "The R.M." And I may be making some mistakes in my own comedy. Jacob Proffitt's thoughts about British comedy were very interesting earlier. How do you tailor certain elements to certain audiences? And do different audiences get turned off or on by different elements? And how much can you get away with? Mormon horror seems by definition an impossible sell. Even "Brigham City's" serial killer theme turned off a significant portion of the first-run audience and we felt that hit in the box office. Marketing outside of Utah also dropped the ball, which had something to do with it, but subject matter had a large share of the difficulty. And I could see it coming. First time I read the script I knew it would take a hit, but it was still worth doing. But full-blown Mormon Horror? I'd would rather strip out the LDS elements and have a good mainstream genre novel then try and cram something down the throats of a market that would by and large reject it out of hand. How do artist's deal with market factors in tailoring their work to a given target? We all have to do it. Anyone who has ever made their living from writing knows that pressure to target product for a specific market. But like Eric's play about the LDS prostitute? Probably a good play. But it will NEVER be accepted (broadly) by the LDS audience. Which is tough, cuz it might have some important things to say. A dilemma, a dilemma. I don't know where I stand. But I do know that I edit and/or target my work, and that that limits what I "can" and "cannot" do for the LDS market. Maybe I'm a scardy-cat, but I don't have a lot of time, and I want my work to sell. So I could never do Mormon Horror. But that's just me. Jongiorgi Enos - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 02 May 2003 12:46:12 -0600 From: Barbara Hume Subject: Re: [AML] STANSFIELD, _The Gable Faces East_ (Review) At 04:20 PM 4/30/03 -0600, you wrote: >Stansfield, Anita. _The Gable Faces East_. Covenant, 1999, 499 pp, $14.95. >Reviewed by Katie Parker I found this book a bit disappointing in that I didn't think the prose style was up to Anita's usual standard--it seemed to me that she might have pulled out an earlier work that would sell now because of her name value. On the other hand, I thought it stronger than most LDS fiction of this nature because the characters seemed more like people and less like Object Lessons. I objected to some of the same things Katie did, although I take exception to her saying that the characters shouldn't have had certain feelings. One does not simply decide to have or not to have a feeling, especially in terms of wanting to have a person. I tend to think that feelings themselves are not wrong, but you can do wrong things in an attempt to satisfy them. I disliked two things about the book: the way that Jess treated Alexa, expecting her to put her life on hold indefinitely while he figured things out without confiding in her, and the way the writer used Richard as a plot device, first to separate Jess and Alexa in order to have conflict, and second to kill him off when it was convenient to put Jess and Alexa back together. Richard was an appealing character--a truly good man--and his creator treated him most shabbily! As for the physical attraction the characters had for each other, that's perfectly normal and natural, and it annoys me that Mormon readers seem to think that it isn't. Especially since that's one main reason it's hard to tell a true story in the Mormon venue: the expectation for characters to behave like people in a church video, in which dressed-up, smiling children listen attentively to a scriptural recitation during Family Home Evening without squirming, giggling, scowling, slumping, belching, whining, cutting their eyes toward the television, demanding that the cookies be served now, or punching their siblings. barbara hume - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 2 May 2003 15:03:28 -0600 From: "Paris Anderson" Subject: Re: [AML] In Defense of Obscurity "Eugene Woodbury" wrote: For the first time I read a "modern" translation (the NRSV, it turned out) of Paul's letters, and discovered, to my enormous surprise, that Paul had in fact written concise, well-reasoned examinations of the theological justifications of the new Christian religion. Paul didn't need to be decoded, Paul only needed to be read. What? the first great apostate made plain? Where can I get a copy? What is NRSV? Paris Anderson - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V2 #46 *****************************