All Published Works – Enneagram and Encaustic

UNCUT GEMS

A lot of content nowadays is generated just to trash on someone else’s creativity. The worse a show is, the more people will make a video about it. It’s not my intent to be that person. My Enneagram reviews of unsuccessful shows are because I hope to find an answer. Usually it’s because I love the content and am disappointed that it failed. I believe that a great Story Enneagram structure will lead to a great movie.

Sometimes, though, a subjective reaction will overcome the objective reality of a solid Enneagram.

From my unused files, a case in point:

I can’t say I enjoyed Uncut Gems, 2019. This is a well-crafted movie, heavy with intentions. The filmmakers knew what they wanted to do. No, my dislike comes from the character and plot. Again, well-acted. I just don’t want to watch this protagonist. I don’t really care about his drama. He’s repugnant. I’m pretty sure this is what everyone was aiming for and they succeeded. Hat tip to them, and please never put this movie in front of me again.

LEFTOVER NINE

The movie opens in Ethiopia, 2010, as if it were a Raiders or Jurassic Park franchise. Locals work a gem mine under hazardous conditions. A man with a wounded, bleeding leg is pulled from a cave-in. The crowd is restless, angry. Miners still underground chip out a rock loaded with gems (or a single gem peeking through the layers). It’s shiny.

ONE

We dive into the gem. Colors, music, the kaleidoscope — it’s like an outer space nebula. This is a very particular shot. This gem — The Rock — is like Sauron’s Ring. It plays a protagonist of sorts, a force with an impact on agency. You could even say it has a magical influence. All of this is suggested in this shot.

Then the gem interior cross fades seamlessly into a colon interior. (Yes. I know.) Howard is undergoing a colonoscopy. Afterwards, the credits run as we follow him forward with his day. It’s New York City, 2012, Howard runs a sketchy jewelry store, and disorder emanates from him like a noxious gas. Even for the city, he’s loud and brash.

Bandcamp Friday

I mostly forget that I have music posted to Bandcamp, but recently I’ve been wondering if any of it stands up. I haven’t listened to Heart of Iron since I published it in 2019. After playing through the album, I would say that the singing is tolerable, the music is greatly enhanced by the musician who helped me record, and the lyrics are still my pride and joy in the project.

It sounds obscure and somewhat crazy now, but I wrote a musical screenplay of Jane Eyre. If you listen to the album and you’re familiar with the story, you might be able to guess which songs go with which part of the plot. (It plays in chronological order.) Fair warning, though: I sing Jane’s and Rochester’s songs. I tried to beef up my voice for Rochester, but that’s utterly ridiculous. I sound the same.

Bandcamp, I’m informed in a recent email, has brought back “Bandcamp Friday”, a day in which they waive their revenue sharing and pass all funds to the artist. Give the album a try, if you’re so inclined. On listening again to the songs, some were as I remembered — not bad — and a couple were worse. One song, though, “Fly”, which takes place at the story’s climax, gave me that great feeling every artist seeks on returning to past work: Did I write that? Damn.

The Story Enneagram of Fort Defiance

ONE

Establish the Emerald Rose Saloon in the late 1800s American west. Two middle-aged sisters own and run the place that their parents, now deceased, built. The elder, Izzy, is a more steady presence. The younger, Luisa, is more restless.

TWO

A mysterious wagon, coming into town at the head of a monsoon, crashes in front of the Saloon. Driver and horses are crushed. Only the cargo, a large box, remains intact. Emerald Rose customer Leon notices a handbill attached to the wood. He shows it to Luisa: a reward for return of the box to its owner in Fort Defiance.

THREE

Luisa agrees to upend her life and accompany (and finance) Leon’s trip. In order to smooth her decision with Izzy, Luisa plays their family song, “Desert Lullaby.” Moved, Izzy relents. She’ll travel with her sister.

Fort Defiance

I’ve published a new screenplay at Amazon!

Perhaps, lol, you will remember this post about my decades-long project. I claimed that the original story for Fort Defiance was dead. Time had passed and I had changed.

It turns out I was wrong. I considered how I could adapt the screenplay to suit who I am now. What’s interesting, at least to me, is that the core of the story hasn’t changed in 30 years. It exists separately from me, an entity in the world. I tinkered with the protagonist, making her older, but the basic bones of the plot are consistent. I’m so very proud to publish this — again — after all this time, and I believe the story became better with age.

LITTLE WOMEN (2019)

My breakdown of this version, Little Women (2019), is going to be very strange. If the filmmaker decides to take an extremely well-known story and change its ending, chaos can ensue. In this case facts about Louisa May Alcott are incorporated into the climax. I didn’t know any of these details and found the end confusing and infuriating.

It felt Author’s Message to me, and in a way it was. No matter how interesting real life information is, if you go against audience expectations, especially ones so deeply ingrained as they are for this story, you have to be crystalline. LW2019 doesn’t cross that bar.

It makes for a very interesting Enneagram pattern.

ONE

The girls are adults. The beginning of the movie starts near the end of the characters’ arcs. Okay, fresh and interesting. Jo sells a story, Amy is in Paris, Meg spends money recklessly, and Beth plays the piano. Professor Bhaer is introduced; he and Jo see each other at a pub and dance together.

I don’t understand why this scene exists. (The movie, at two and a half hours, needed trimming.) It’s Four-ish stuff put in the middle of the opening. That’s the danger of leading with your ending, it seems.

Jump to Seven Years Earlier. Meg’s hair is burnt by the curling iron and Jo’s dress is burnt by her carelessness. Classic scene. Laurie comes to the dance and the March family meets their neighbor. Meg twists her ankle, Laurie’s carriage takes them home, and here’s Marmee, Hannah, and the bustle of Orchard House.

You see the problem here, right? This is all Four stuff! Where is our anchor to begin the story? No scene is edited to stand out.

Except one.

LITTLE WOMEN (2017)

Every filmed version of a beloved story will have some things that are ho-hum and some that are the best of any of the movies. For Little Women (2017), a three-part miniseries, Emily Watson’s Marmee is a triumph. Top actresses are cast as Marmee, so the field is particularly strong. Watson’s work and the script she’s given to deliver are truthful, painful, and joyous. This is a must-watch.

Some of the other choices, however, are not as strong. Let’s look.

ONE

At three hours runtime, LW2017 can add details the others leave out. We get Father March at the war right away. Both parents are much more present throughout, giving a complete family in the storytelling.

The very first scene has the girls trimming a lock of hair to send to him for Christmas. It’s a very weird sequence, though. Close-ups, corset laces, shadows, scissor blades . . . why shoot this like soft-core thriller content?

TWO

As Marmee returns home she crosses paths in the road with Laurie in the carriage, coming to Grandfather’s house for the first time. Laurie is Trouble, of course. He disrupts the March life in many ways. It’s not the most visually descriptive or inventive Two, though.

THREE

I am utterly and totally making something up here. We see Father, still nursing the sick in the war, cover the body of a man who’s died. Again, this is a strange choice. It establishes Father, the war, and, most pertinent of all, death. We all know what happens later with Beth. Does this moment foreshadow or portend that? I don’t think so. We know nothing about this corpse and have no connection to it.

But here it is, sitting after the Two and before the Four, so it’s what we have to work with.

LITTLE WOMEN (1994)

(In honor of the month of December, I’ve pulled out a series that was written for my book but didn’t make the cut.)

For me, this version, Little Women (1994), is the gold standard.

ONE

Credits, beautiful music, snow, and a Christmas wreath. Time of year and era are established visually. Jo narrates. As you may know, I’m not generally a fan of narration. It’s more of a “tell” than a “show”. Because this story is a novel, Jo’s narration feels like she’s just reading to us. It’s not the worst use of narration.

Marmee comes home, chilled, and the family gathers to read father’s letter. Throughout, the film is beautifully framed, like a portrait. The arranging of the five women is evocative. You’re watching a time gone by. Perhaps you’re remembering illustrations from books you read as a child. This family is loving and close.

Also, this family is missing its father. The women are surviving and thriving, despite hardship. Whatever guidance a father would provide, whatever comfort or strength, is not weighed.

Tribe of Liars: Gage and Wrigley

I started dipping into my writing archives last week, and now look where I ended up! Tribe of Liars is an extensive world created by our family. It’s a gaming IP with detailed character backgrounds, all unrealized or in process.

The following is the opening to one of my unfinished short stories or novellas detailing two of the characters. It’s fiction, which is a strange writing beast to me. I prefer the leanness of screenwriting. However, I’m in a weird blogging lull, burned out on generating content. And I genuinely believe that creative work needs to breathe in the world rather than stay locked in a folder. So, here goes.

Gage and Wrigley (Chapter One, Part One)

Gage is generally considered good-looking. You really can’t get around that; people treat him with the preference the beautiful generate. Your definition of handsome will define how his beauty manifests, though, so create him as you will. What you can’t get around is his mechanical ability. This guy likes to engineer stuff.

Right now coffee and sausage cook over a campfire. Look closer. What’s the contraption next to the breakfast? A boiler uses steam to power an experimental crossbow that you now hold in your hands and are prompted to shoot.

In case you couldn’t tell, you’re in a tutorial.

You’ve got a steam-power meter for a beginner’s weapon. When you press the x-button you ratchet a clumsy mechanism into place. Right trigger to release the valve that sends steam to the piston, and away your arrow flies toward your target.

Try hitting an acorn in that oak tree over there.

Checking that the tubing was hot and the steam ready, Gage angled the crossbow to point into the branches of a nearby oak. A magazine of arrows, each with a piston behind it, tilted into position. Aiming at an acorn in the tree, Gage prepared to release the valve to the first firing pin.

A gray squirrel hopped along the branch and grabbed the exact acorn Gage had sighted. As the squirrel ran back along the branch, it looked directly at Gage.

Okay.

Blinking, Gage hiked up his goggles and gave the squirrel a dirty look. He rotated the crossbow on its base and found another acorn. The squirrel dropped from a higher branch, plucked the acorn out from under Gage’s nose, and jumped into the foliage.

“Look, you little . . . This better not be what I think it is.”

Again he lined up a shot. No hesitation this time. Gage released the valve, steam pushed into the piston, and it smacked the arrow. The arrow flew true, headed right for an acorn, when the squirrel dove past and stripped the acorn out of the arrow’s path.

“What!” Gage shouted. “You crazy damn squirrel, what are you doing?”

The squirrel sat on a branch and looked at Gage. “What do you think you’re doing?” it said. “I’m trying to gather my breakfast.”

GHOSTBUSTERS

This review was originally written for my second book, but I didn’t consider the piece good enough to include. I still think about it, though. The franchise has continued to add more content, and I can see myself diving into the extended stories and characters. In honor of Halloween, I post this rejected child.

This is my first time watching Ghostbusters (2016), and it is an astonishingly bad film. I thought maybe people were hating on it because it remade a beloved franchise, but no, it’s genuinely not good. I’ll go over its Enneagram, and then I’ll tell you where it really went off the rails.

ONE

First caveat: I’ve seen Ghostbusters (1984) many times, but I couldn’t recite the specifics of its Enneagram to you without watching it again. I suspect, though, that this movie hits the same highlights as the original. Certainly, its One is similar.

A museum, the Aldridge Mansion, has a ghost appear to the tour guide. We all remember that the original movie begins at the library with an apparition. Introduce the supernatural: check.

Then we go to campus and meet Erin (Kristen Wiig). She links up with Abby (Melissa McCarthy), with whom she’s been estranged for years, and Abby’s associate Jillian (Kate McKinnon). The three of them go into the Aldridge to investigate the apparition. In the original we meet Bill Murray scamming psychology students; Dan Aykroyd reels him in for the library investigation. Again, we have the character we’re supposed to like best (Wiig/Murray) who’s the voice of skepticism and the long-time friend (McCarthy/Aykroyd) who is the enthusiast. They team up and away we go.

It’s strange. Murray’s Venkman practically begs you to find him repulsive, and yet we’re captured. Wiig’s Erin is much nicer and more sympathetic, but the whole opening is flat.

It’s published!

Acting the Enneagram is now available at amazon. You may have noticed I’ve become more interested in how a character’s Enneagram impacts the overall success of the story.

In this book I go over the basics of Personality Typing for the Enneagram using movie characters and posts from the blog. I add some never-before-seen Storytelling Enneagram breakdowns for an assortment of movies, and then I mash the two sections together.

Going forward look for me to try more of this weaving of Enneagrams in my posts and in future books. I’m convinced this is the best way to write, create, and critique film and television stories. Besides, it’s fun!