The Writing Life: reflections by a working writer. The Writing Life

Reflections of a working writer, a university screenwriting professor, and the editor of Oregon Literary Review.

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Charles Deemer

Editor,
Oregon Literary Review

MFA, Playwriting, University of Oregon

Writing faculty, Portland State University (part-time)

Retired playwright and screenwriter.
Active novelist, librettist and teacher.

Email: cdeemer(at)yahoo(dot)com

The eagle flies!

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Finalist, Oregon Book Award

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"Can We Talk About Me For A Change?"
Playwright Debra Neff Nathans

Inkygirl
Debbie Ridpath Ohi, a weblog for writers (resources)

Silliman's Blog
Ron Silliman, contemporary poetry and poetics

Maud Newton
literary links, amusements, politics, rants

Darren Barefoot
Technical and creative writing, theatre, Dublin

Rob's Writing Pains
Journey of a struggling writer.

Mad, Mad World
Cara Swann, fiction writer, journalist, "reflections on humanity, random news & my life."

Writeright
Random musings on a writer's life and times.

Flaskaland
Barbara Flaska's compilation of the best online articles about music and culture.

Write Of Way
Samantha Blackmon's written musings on writing (composition and rhetoric).

Alexander b. Craghead: blog
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Rodney Bohen's daily commentary "on the wondrous two legged beast we fondly refer to as mankind." His pen runneth over.

Frustrated Writer
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scribble, scribble, scribble
Journalist Dale Keiger teaches nonfiction scribbling to undergraduate and graduate students at Johns Hopkins University.

The Unofficial Dave Barry Blog
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The official blog of science fiction / horror author Terence West.

William Gibson Blog
Famed author of Neuromancer and Johnny Mnemonic: The Screenplay.

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Joe Clifford Faust's "blog of a working writer: tracking writing projects, musings on the creative process, occasional side trips into music, media, politics, religion, etc."

A Writer's Diary
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David C. Daniel writes a screenplay online. "I've decided to publish the process as a way to push myself through it. From concept to completion, it'll be here."

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Official site of occult fiction author Sean-Alonzo, exploring symbolism, alternative history, philosophy, secret societies and other areas of the esoteric tradition.

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Maunderings of Alex Epstein, tv scribe, about life, politics, and the tv show I'm co-creating.

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'Plaint of the Playwright
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Glenn's adventures in screenwriting.

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Hebrew modern literature at its best, by Corinna Hasofferett.

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Robin Reagler's poetry blog.

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Author of the Sam Turner and Stone Lewis novels.

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Writer's Blog.
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The Writing Life
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It Beats Working 9-5
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Stealing Heaven From The Lips Of God
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The Writing Life...
"An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's."
J.D. Salinger

"All my best friends are writers and are dead."
A friend over beer, Berkeley, winter, 1959

"And it came to pass that all the stars in the firmament had ceased to shine. But how was anyone to know?"
The Half-Life Conspiracy

After October 31, 2006,
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The Writing Life II

(Posts archived here are from 01/10/03 - 10/31/06)

 
Wednesday, January 25, 2006  
Peter Watkins: What goes around, comes around
A lot is being made of the new Soderbergh film Bubble because he casts no-name actors, just regular folks, to give his story a low key "real life" feel. "A new way of making movies," goes one blurb. Sorry. Peter Watkins in England was doing this over 30 years ago.

I had the good fortune of meeting him in the early 70s at Salisbury State College where he was touring and showing his film, Punishment Park. Watkins films in a documentary style, using "real people," which makes his films look like actual documentaries but in fact they are fictions. This method caused a very heated debate. Many students in the audience thought this film was "real" depicting the "real" fact that the U.S. government was rounding up Vietnam War protesters and taking them to Punishment Park, where they were chased across the desert with marines in pursuit, to be killed or reach and kiss the American flag before they get killed. In these Politically Correct times, I can't imagine the controversy a film like this would cause. At the time, this is the closest I've ever seen a film cause a riot in the audience.

Watkins, clever devil, kept quiet and never reminded the audience that his film was A STORY, not a documentary, and just watched the heated arguments with a sly grin on his face. Earlier his actual documentary "The War Games" for BBC would not get shown as commissioned because of its devastating look at the effects of nuclear war. Later his biopic with the same documentary methodology (the mockumentary comic style derives from this) about Edvard Munch would give him wider recognition.

So Soderbergh is reviving a film style here, not inventing it (there were probably filmmakers doing this before Watkins ... certainly Citizen Cane has moments like this).

See Uncomfortable Truths: The Cinema of Peter Watkins.

There is a strong case to be made that Peter Watkins is the most neglected major filmmaker at work today. Over the course of forty years the British-born director has managed, against trying and often adversarial circumstances, to produce a highly original and powerful body of work that engages the worlds of politics, art, history, and literature. That these films remain obscure is a function of such factors as suppression by producers or weak-kneed film distributors, surprisingly unsympathetic—at times hostile—critics, and the filmmaker’s own legendary iconoclasm. Watkins has spent the bulk of his professional career in self-imposed exile from his homeland, a result of the BBC’s banning his 1966 film The War Game and the critics’ drubbing of Privilege the next year. By 1980, with so many of his projects aborted, Watkins publicly announced his retirement from directing and began to devote himself to studying and speaking on the effects of the overly centralized role of the mass media. While he eventually returned to active filmmaking, he has continued to publish and lecture extensively on the pervasive use in both film and television news of what he calls the "Monoform": a visual language comprised of rapid, "seamless" edits and an incessant bombardment of movement and sound.

Also see Films by Peter Watkins for information on each of his films.

1/25/2006 04:47:00 AM | 1 comments

Comments:
You're right on!

Netflix has Punishment Park and Munch. I was surprised but delighted and have them coming for a new look ... haven't seen them since they first came out in the early 70s.
 
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