Month: February 2025

Similar Wars, Different Worlds

/ JD Byrne / 1 Comment

A while back I read a good write up about the 1953 version of War of the Worlds over at Reactor in which someone explained  (down in the comments) that the version most of us had seen on TV was a kind of stepped-down version in terms of the Technicolor, but that the currently streaming version was restored to its full glory. That sounded like a good excuse to watch a movie I hadn’t seen for a long time and set me off on a little dig into the story and the ways it’s been told.

The story, of course, started with H.G. Wells, whose novel first appeared (in serialized form) in 1897.

It’s a simple tale – Martians invade England, deal death and destruction to all in their path, but are felled in the end by Earth pathogens they aren’t equipped to deal with. It’s been adapted for the big screen twice (and in numerous other ways, including a rock opera!), in 1953 by producer George Pal and in 2005 by director Steven Spielberg. I consumed the book and both movies in pretty short succession and it’s interesting to see what parts of the book each film emphasizes, while not sticking completely faithfully to its text.

To be fair, that’d be a hard ask. The unnamed narrator of the book is a fairly average upper-middle class guy – he’s neither a scientist nor in the military, but he’s well read and thinks philosophical thoughts. The book follows him as he experiences the first landing of the Martians, including failed friendly attempts at first contact, and then as he (and others) flee as the tripod war machines make their way towards London. Above all, the book creates a sense of loneliness as the narrator loses his family (temporarily), his society, and any real hope in his future. Even though the book Martians never leave England it feels like the story of the last man on Earth. The ending, when it comes, is less happy than it is more a relief. Given how foundational the book is to modern sci-fi it’s hard to even quantify it as “good” or not – it’s just part of the bedrock.

The 1953 movie changes some things dramatically.

The main character, Dr. Clayton Forrester (yes), is not only a scientist but an expert on all things Mars, so he’s much more involved in the response to the Martian landing. It does, as in the novel, include a misplaced attempt at friendship (savagely parodied in Mars Attacks), but there’s a bigger focus on the military response, futile as it is. Forrester is more man of action than passive observer and he’s got others with whom he’s involved (including a love interest), so the emphasis on loneliness really isn’t there. This version also has a pretty heavy-handed religious overlay, with God getting the credit for the bugs that kill the Martians in the end.

The 2005 film in some ways hues more closely to the spirit of the novel, but also makes major changes.

The main character here is Ray Ferrier, a dock worker very much in the everyman vein, who, because this is Spielberg, has two children he has to look after the entire time. There is absolutely no chance for peaceful contact, however, as the aliens just pop up from underground (not sure that makes sense) and start wreaking havoc. Ferrier and clan are thus constantly on the run. While changing the setup, this movie keeps interesting details from the book, such as the Martians plucking up humans to use for food (the 1953 Martians are just killing machines) and a late-story run in with a madman who knows how he’s going to rebuild the world in his own image. Overall, this version does a better job of making the main character (and his kids) seem very very small in the grand scheme of things.

I won’t say either movie is better than the other. The 1953 version’s Martian machines – they look like they’re hovering but there really are legs, if you squint at the right times – will forever be what they should look like, slow and sleek and terrifying. The 2005 version does a better job with the characters, I think. Neither quite gets the central spine of the book, the feeling of loneliness, but that’s understandable.

One thing’s for certain – we’ve been beaming this story out there for decades so that if the Martians ever do come for us, they’ll probably be armed with antibiotics as much as heat rays.

See Me! Hear Me! Feel . . . What, Exactly?

/ JD Byrne / Leave a comment

A couple of weeks ago, after some weather-related fits and starts (fuck winter, seriously!), I got a chance to sit down with the fine folks at the Reading Room Ruffians podcast. We talked about writing in general and specifically about Moore Hollow, since they’d all just read it. It was a fun hour that I’ll think you’ll enjoy. I was really pleased they liked my twist on the zombie story.

Watch here:

Or click here to get links to their pod on all sorts of different platforms.

And here if you don’t get the reference in the post title.

I Enjoy Making Art (and You Should, Too)

/ JD Byrne / 1 Comment

A while back I saw this headline:

And let’s just say I had an instant reaction:

My second reaction was hoping this dope wasn’t related to the Shulman brothers of Gentle Giant fame (doesn’t seem like it). I cooled off a bit and figured maybe he was being taken out of context or something.

Reading further didn’t make things any better. I had thought, perhaps, that what Shulman meant when he said people don’t like making music these days was something about how creators have to spend so much time doing other stuff (building brands, being terminally online, etc.) that “making music” in a business sense is not as fun as it once was. He was talking about professionals, in other words.

Nope. He’s just a douche:

“It’s not really enjoyable to make music now. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software,” Shulman explained. “And I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music.”

It’s an interesting and arresting angle.

Not really and here’s why – the vast majority of people who make music do so only for their own amusement or the amusement of those few around them. Most musicians aren’t trying to make it big, or even make a living, making music. They’re making music because it stirs something in their soul, fills a need in the way they interact with a world. Put simply – for most musicians being “good” is irrelevant to why they make music in the first place.

Years ago, one of my local writer colleagues made a very good point about making art. When people ask writers if they’ve ever been published or artists whether they’ve had an exhibition, they’re tying the doing of art with the high-level consumption of it, with sales. As a comparison, my colleague suggested, nobody asks a bunch of middle-age guys playing basketball at the Y if they’re training for the NBA. Rather, we recognize the value of doing the thing just for the sake of doing it, not to produce a product for which other people might pay money.

As a writer I like to think of myself as a professional – I work very hard on the text, work with editors and cover designers to produce a polished final product. As a musician, I am very much an amateur. I make noise when the spirit takes me and, if something comes out that makes me particularly happy, I’ll upload it to share with others. But I don’t deceive myself that I’m doing anything other than having fun and, maybe, another person or two might have fun with it, too. Which isn’t to say I don’t have fun writing, too – if I didn’t I wouldn’t do it – but I have different goals in each area.

Doing anything well, much less competently enough for others to pay you money for it, is hard. It takes work, long-term effort, and lots of failure. You know what doesn’t require any of those? Making are because you love it. Your sculptures can be lumpy. Your stories can peter out in the end. Your songs can be stiff and not particularly catchy. Did you enjoy making them? The answer to that question is the only thing that matters in the end.

So I will disagree with Mikey and suggest that the vast majority of people who make music – or any kind of art – enjoy it simply because that’s the whole point of doing it in the first place. Sure it can be frustrating, but the answer is to take a break and take the dog for a walk, not to turn to some soulless piece of AI to do the work for you.

Make art for yourself. And have fun.

2024 – My Year In Movies

/ JD Byrne / Leave a comment

After a week off to craft a spooky story for the NYC Midnight Short Story Competition, it’s time for the final installment of my look back at the year just past and highlight some of my favorite, or just most interesting, media I consumed (not necessarily new, but new to me). It’s time to talk about some movies  . . .

I Saw the TV Glow (2024)

You remember that episode of The Pink Opaque where . . .. No, of course you don’t, but if you’re any kind of genre fan, you’ve started a conversation that way about Babylon 5 or Buffy or whatever. This movie taps into that shared obsession, with two characters bonding over their love of the fictional The Pink Opaque (long ago in the past where a printed episode guide plays a role). What spools out though goes far beyond a TV show to deal with issues of self, identity, and shared experiences. It also has some scenes that completely freaked me out in the best way (including a superlong monologue that shouldn’t work, but really does). Do I understand it on all the levels other people do? Almost certainly not. Still one of the best things I’ve seen in a long time.

Rebel Ridge (2024)

“Semi-action movie about civil asset forfeiture” is a hell of an elevator pitch. It’s down to stars Aaron Pierre and Don Johnson (you heard right) that it works so well. Pierre plays a man who comes to a small Alabama town to pay his brother’s bond – in cash. It’s seized by the cops who classify it as drug proceeds. This is a real thing. The frustrations Pierre experiences pretty well match reality, before things get thrillier the closer to the end we get. There’s some violence, but it’s doled out well and this isn’t a pure-bred action movie. Stay away if you just want to see Pierre kick ass; watch it if you want a pretty clever interrogation of a problematic practice that, somehow, manages to even make the cops pretty well rounded in the end.

The Zone of Interest (2023)

It’s hard to imagine a more somber, only-watch-it-once kind of film. A slice of life about a German family who happen to live across the wall from Auschwitz (in the titular “zone of interest”). Dad’s the commandant. The bold choice of director Jonathan Glazer is that what goes on over the wall is never directly shown, but the sound designed is punctuated with sounds of terror and cruelty that make it unmistakable. What does it say about the commandant and family that this appears to be their dream home? Nothing good, of course. A harrowing watch, but worth it one time.

Blow Out (1981)

If you ever wanted a movie that showed you how people had to edit sound recordings in the pre-digital era, this is it. John Travolta plays a sound guy for low-budget horror films who, while out one night trying to get some good sounds, accidentally records the murder of a sitting governor and presidential hopeful in a car crash. There’s a damsel in distress and a lot of leg work that goes into putting together the pieces, all of which zings with energy and down-to-earth competence. That Travolta winds up right where he started just makes it all the more perfect.

Anatomy of a Fall (2023)

I’m a sucker for a courtroom drama – so how about one set in a courtroom that is so foreign to my common-law system experience that it was like science fiction? I mean, that’s not the only great thing about this movie, a clever did-she-do-it (there’s no doubt it was either her or an accident) that spends just as much time in the home where the death happens as it does in the French courtroom. Some of it – particularly the round-table out-of-sequence questioning of the defendant – is so odd that I had to do some reading afterwards to see how realistic it was (pretty accurate, within the bounds of dramatic license, or so I read). Did she do it? I’m not sure anybody knows (the lead actress, if I recall correctly, said she didn’t know!).