Social Hooper McFinney's RPF Bar & Grille 7.0 - "Keeping blind people away from Priuses one step at a time"

Hello again and happy new year everyone. I'm back.

edit: I'm putting my foot down and saying having a flu sucks.

 

If you're back; I want to see your rodian!

 

Ramza, I finished reading Hills like White Elephants and The Snows of Kilimunjaro by Ernest Hemingway.
I get it.
The dialogue in Hills just blew me away. I can't remember the last time someone managed to paint a breathing, vivid picture in my imagination with so few words. The trick with Hemingway seems to be that you have to imagine how a character is saying what they're saying, because that seems to make the scene and the image blossom in your mind.

I'm going to heavily paraphrase a Harlan Ellison article here. He once wrote that writers like Hemingway, Pinter, and Stephen King shouldn't work, but they do. And trying to film their works is usually impossible for standard Hollywood fare, mainly because the dialogue taken at face value is the kind of thing that just does not translate well to film. Consider this from Kilimunjaro (which strikes me as the weaker of the two):

"Where did we stay in Paris?" he asked the woman who was sitting by him in a canvas chair, now, in Africa.
"At the Crillon. You know that."
"Why do I know that?"
"That's where we always stayed."
"No. Not always."
"There and at the Pavillion Henri-Quatre in St. Germain. You said you loved it there."
"Love is a dunghill," said Harry. "And I'm the cock that gets on it to crow."
"If you have to go away," she said, "is it absolutely necessary to kill off everything you leave behind? I mean do you have to take away everything? Do you have to kill your horse, and your wife and burn your saddle and your armour?"

I mean, really. Try and imagine a pair like Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet giving these lines on film. In the hands of most Hollywood directors, these lines march dutifully out of the actors' mouths like the Valiant Six Hundred squaring up for the Charge of the Light Brigade. But they do work in the story because Hemingway, like Stephen King, makes you feel how the lines sound. I know that sounds odd, but I can't think of a better way to describe it. I'm not sure if I fully buy Hemingway's "iceberg" theory, but my God the man knew how to write dialogue. (Ellison thinks the stories work because Hemingway, Pinter, and King are all allegorical writers, in passing.)

Anyway. Hills Like White Elephants is on the net, and deserves a good read. Do not look up any notes about it, ignore textual analysis, just go and find that short story and read it.

 

Hemingway just gave me a headache when I had to read him for intro to poetry and American lit. Where's the love for WALT WHITMAN?? Lol

 

IMMMM BORED!!!!!

 

Do not speak his name!

 

Wasn't Whitman the one who wrote a poem about how you had to go and look at space to find aesthetic appeal because he was incapable of seeing the beauty of the math? I mean, that's not precisely how he phrased it, but...

 

There's this whole discussion on Hemingway going on and I'm just over here reading Timothy Zahn

 

Well that's just not write...

Sent from my Comlink

 

Feeling a bit pen-sive, Solo?

 

Wow...for nearly a week after New Years the RPF is still dead

 

Not as evil as Gladstone Gander.



Pictured: Satan.

But yeah, so, the Carl Barks collections Fantagraphics has been putting out are seriously great.

 

So I had to reread that sentence because, at first, I thought you wrote Carlton Banks. Which immediately made me think of this.

 

Nah, I was never into Fresh Prince - too young when it first aired, too old when it was in reruns.

Only way to repair that is with posting. Perhaps the time has come for me to endeavor on one of my traditional esoteric flops. 10 posts? 5? None? How low can it go?

 

But it is hard to post..when there is nothing to post TO!..

Unless you like talking to yourself....

~ ~

 

Here. Conversation starter.



Discuss.

 

TOO MUCH DANG DISCUSSION!!!!

WE SAID ROLE PLAY, DANG IT!!!

Personally, I love his cat-a-pult crossbow. I could use one.
I have a few folks I would love to test it on...

That being said....

ROLE PLAY, DANG NAB IT!



~~

 

*Quickly replaces Ktala's coffee with decaf. Then proceeds to pull out a cat-a-crossbow and firing at random customers. Random customers being Saintheart and Ramza.*

 

AHEM....



NEVARRRR!!!!!!!

 

*Loads the cat-a-crossbow with special kitten-level ammo. Fires at Ktala in an attempt to distract her from the fact that her coffee is now decaf and dives behind the bar*

 

Sorry...Thats something you could NEVER distract...or hide...

THE CAT KNOWS...

 

Cat-based projectile weapons! My one weakness!



OHHH WHAT A WORLD! WHAT A WORLD! I'M MELTING! MELLLLTIIIING!

 

So now this is a thread about fighting with cats because of decaffeinated coffee.

...Okay.

*finds a good seat and sips sparkling elderflower presse*