On Hype and Madness (third in a series)

Part Three: Realization

"When my spirits are bad--ROBINSON CRUSOE. When I want advice--ROBINSON CRUSOE. In past times when my wife plagued me; in present times when I have had a drop too much--ROBINSON CRUSOE. I have worn out six stout ROBINSON CRUSOES with hard work in my service." 

-Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

photo courtesy of www.esquire.com/

Why does hype work in the first place?

Everyone likes movies.  Or at least, I've never met anyone who didn't like any movies at all. 

For those of us who still have faith that movies that haven't come out yet can still be any good, it's exciting to learn that a studio or a filmmaker or an actor that we've had success with in the past is working on a new project that we can see one day, but not yet.  To be sure, it is that "but not yet" that makes the news all the more fascinating.

There's a useful amount of time for excitement over an upcoming work to have in our lives, and sadly I suspect that that amount of time can be best measured in seconds, or maybe minutes, but not days, and certainly not weeks.  A few minutes of chatting about a new movie you want to see with friends, with whom you may go see it?  Good for you!  Watching or re-watching a review of a trailer by a video blogger not related to the actual production of the movie in any way?  Oh honey.

It would be great if the world and our lives were filled with nothing but good movies that are worth watching.  Sadly in the long run movies are like most other art forms: a few are great, many are good, most are mediocre or fail at being worth the time.  Scaled way down to just the arena of the newest movies, and further to just those that look promising (admittedly a very narrow field at times), this rule still seems to hold true: not every movie we want to see will wind up being worth seeing.  Is it still worth seeing the bad ones for the sake of the occasional good one we find?  Yes, absolutely.  Is it still a bummer to see a promising idea turn out lousy?  Of course.

But what if the odds seem to be stacked in our favor?  A director we trust, a screenwriter we worship, and a premise that seems as enticing as a freshly unwrapped burrito?  It can be a wonderful thing to think warmly of how excited we are to see a movie when it's ready, but going down the road of constant thought will most likely lead to problems.  As noted before, the more time one spends raising their interest in a movie, the more likely you'll be walking in with expectations that can't be met.

So what do we do?  Keep living through the cycle of fascination, expectations, and disappointment again and again?  It's certainly an option, and it's a consumer pattern that Hollywood has used to the hilt for decades.

But if you're like me, and want to find a way to enjoy life between trailers and release dates on one's own terms, rather than those of whatever work one is awaiting, then I have an idea about how to use hype to our advantage.

Obviously, not indulging in over-research, or fan speculation, or wild theorizing about what the movie will be like will help.  The less time spent thinking about the movie ahead of time, the less likely you'll be walking in with expectations that can't be mt.

But I think there's something else here that may be fruitful to explore in a way beyond simply abstaining from getting excited about the project at all.

A while back, I found a tumblr post by a young lady named Emma Coats, who works in animation and used to be at Pixar, and who keeps up an excellent tumblr account called StoryShots, which is about illustrating, filmmaking, and storytelling.  In this particular post, which you may have seen copied elsewhere on the web, she outlined 22 things about storytelling that she learned in her time at Pixar.  I haven't put all 22 of them to the test so far, at least not consciously enough to report on whether they all work for me, but number 10 was one that nearly knocked me over when I saw it.

#10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.

(for the full post, click here)

This is more or less what I've been trying to do my whole life without realizing it.

What was it, I kept asking myself, about my Superman craze that made getting over Man of Steel so much easier than getting over Prometheus?  If I could figure that out, I thought maybe, I could stop having to 'get over' movies at all.

Even after reading the post on Emma Coats' page it took a while to see clearly, but I believe that the idea she lays out in #10 above is exactly what set Superman apart from H.P. Lovecraft and company, and is also the key to why hype takes hold of me so firmly.  

Here's my idea: when something gets me hyped, when I find myself thinking about it again without being reminded to, I will grab right back at it, and spend a little time, say an hour, indulging in the thin that got me started. Instead of waiting to see if the obsession will be an j tense one, i'll pretend it's intense as can be before it gets that way. But while I do that I will be working.

Doing this means some research: most if the details of the movie will still be hidden, that's the point, but who is making it, and why, and what they've done before, and where the ideas already on display came from, these should all be things I can figure out on my own. Figure out the story of the project, so that it takes on depth a d perspective not as a thing I might get to see one day,

Then I'll be trying to figure out, by careful consideration during and for a while afterward, what it is a about the thing that's got me hyped that has my attention. Taking it to prices and looking over what I saw, there must be something there that matches something in me, something I can explore more fully in real life and bing more fully into the light.

And once I realize what it is that really has my attention, apart from the tantalizing promise of "one day," then I'll have a foundation for making an effort in real life that can transcend and replace my interest in the whatever it is that first grabbed me.

I watch the trailer because the way the house looks in the opening shot. If it turns out I like the idea of making houses, then I can get some books on design and play with those ideas. I can try to find something new in it.

If I'm entranced by the idea of the image of flying in sunlight over ice fields, then I can put a pair of characters into a plane over a glacier, and wait to see in that story how they both it there and why. Maybe there'll be a surprise there that I can use to make something new.

If I want a story about abiogenesis and the replacement of artificial life with the real thing, I should just write that story, write my heart out over it, and see what comes.

Because whether I wind up using any of what I find or not, I'll at least understand what it is that interests me and why, and I think that's extremely useful knowledge for a creative person to have, apart from understanding and being true to yourself being a meaningful end in itself.

So don't live in Internet speculation and endless revisiting of the publicity materials. Get out and do something in real life about it, or at least try to split apart and scour those elements that have grabbed you by the brain, and see what you can make of them yourself. This is something you can do without waiting for other people's

release dates.

First law of the web: type is cheap. The Internet is only as rich as the real lives of the people attached to it.

But I haven't climbed all the way out of this yet.  This advice is a theory I'm working on, and testing. I will try and report later if it pans out or not.

Take this advice as somewhere between if we were talking over this at length after too many beers, and I said "Wait, what if??" and if we were trapped under a collapsed building and I said "Hey that looks like a way out I'll go see."  I may wake up tomorrow horribly hung over and not remember any of this.  I may walk into the obviously dark tunnel and never come out again.  We'll see!

Try it yourself, and see if it works for you.  To me it sure seems to beat waiting around idly for other people's work to be ready forever.

There are new trailers coming out all the time, and sooner or later one or two may be too tantalizing to ignore forever.  Will this outlook work in the long run?  Who can tell?

Coda: Believe the Hype

"There's always money in the banana stand."

photo courtesy of http://arresteddevelopment.wikia.com/

Is hype ever a good thing?  Of course!

There is one kind of hype that is always worth considering.  It's what all the marketing departments of all the major producers of content in the world are secretly after.

It's the hype that beguiles us so irresistibly, and comes to us so naturally, that it pre-dates the written word, and possibly h. sapiens ourself.

For the basic idea of when I think hype works at its best, I meta-refer you to one of my favorite comics from XKCD:  http://xkcd.com/1053/

Or for a different perspective of what I mean, try this quote from the wonderful little Pixar flick Ratatouille on for size:

“But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the *new*. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends."

I'm talking, of course, about positive recommendations, the word-of-mouth .

We're social animals.  When one sees something truly good, truly new and worth seeing, among the first reactions we have is to want to tell people we like and like to spend time with about how good it is, so that they can see it too.

Whether or not this behavior is reinforced by theories of group behavior or evolutionary psychology is a question I'll leave for other minds or another time.

I only know that it's true for me, and for most folks I've had to do with over the years.  When I know what I like, I want other people to know about it, too.

Word-of-mouth has its drawbacks, of course, and can easily fail as spectacularly as the usual kind of hype can.

I, for one, have a bad habit of extolling the merit of anything that has surprised me with some quality where I expected none from the ground to the sky.  Also tastes differ wildly between individuals, and even between viewings.  And the worst enemy of any good work's reputation, the over-sell, is always lurking wherever too much good buzz has started to accrue.

A good friend of mine instructs people, when he wishes them to see something, just to "go see it."  He does his best not to inform their expectations, other than the honest report that he found it worth watching.

This is less fun than a warm conversation between two friends who have both seen the same work and both found it to be delightful, but is possibly just cautious enough to recommend as a policy, at least for known exaggerators like myself.

In short, hype is not bad.  Hype is not good.  Hype is a tool.  The trick is to use it to your creative advantage, rather than being used. 

Get excited about things!  Just be sure to investigate your reasons for doing so, because you may learn something more valuable to you than learning how someone else's story turns out.