I have not written a film review in quite some time, but how could I resist The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo? I know that not everyone is a big fan of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy. I happened to love all three books. I’ve seen the three original Swedish films, which I have to say aren’t particularly awesome. The production quality of David Fincher’s version is much better (as one would expect), the music is terrific, and the acting is superior. Fincher introduces a bit more of a noir aspect to the movie that I quite like, and it does not have the same unfortunate “made for TV” feeling that the Swedish version has. The focus of the new film is Lisbeth Salander (played wonderfully by Rooney Mara). Lisbeth is no longer the sidekick, but the main attraction. Whether you see this as good or bad may rest on whether you’re a purist when it comes to adaptations, and whether you agree with Fincher’s instincts that this is a story about a new kind of heroine, a techno-existential-anarchist who is completely incapable of socialization but has no qualms about making societal judgments of her own. In my opinion it would have been awfully difficult to stick too closely to Larsson’s complicated book. Niels Oplev tried really hard to do this in the Swedish version, and it didn’t work out so well, to the point where he made a movie (three of them, really) that only the people familiar with the original work could appreciate.

That’s not to say that Fincher’s film doesn’t have its confusing bits. It does. And some of the scenes with Mikael Blomkvist (played by Daniel Craig) are surprisingly flat. Maybe Craig is too quietly macho and self-confident to play the character the way Larsson wrote him. Craig’s Blomkvist is a bit one-dimensional. And I’m not sure that saying Fincher’s version is better than Oplev’s is a ringing endorsement. However, if you’ve read the series you’ll enjoy seeing the American adaptation of this one, and if you haven’t you’ll still get a sense of Larsson’s story. That might be as good as it gets for a book of this kind being made into a film. The novel is a quintessential reading experience, meant for readers, written by an author who reached a level of excellence and distinctiveness not many can match over the course of a writing career. My advice is to read the book and accept the movie for what it is: Hollywood’s attempt to make everyone happy, handcuffed by the requirements of the entertainment industry, with source material that’s hard to present in a coherent fashion in a reasonable amount of time (two hours, 38 minutes in this case), and the need to make big money on a big budget picture. Not easy when you roll it all together. Well done, considering. Still, the book is better.

For those interested in the film credits: Based on the novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson; directed by David Fincher; screenplay by Steven Zaillian; released by Columbia Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures. Principal cast: Rooney Mara (Lisbeth Salander), Daniel Craig (Mikael Blomkvist), Christopher Plummer (Henrik Vanger), Stellan Skarsgard (Martin Vanger), Steven Berkoff (Frode), Robin Wright (Erika Berger).

Here’s the quote about my story in its entirety:

“Over the past view decades, the assassination of John F. Kennedy has become one of alt-history’s most fertile furrows. An anthology, “Alternate Kennedys,” appeared twenty years ago, and included a story called “The Winterberry” (1992), by Nicholas A. DiChario. It featured a brain-damaged, childlike John F. Kennedy, who, having survived an assassination attempt, has been locked away for decades in what seems to be Hyannis Port.”

He goes on to talk a bit more about JFK alternate history stories in particular, mentioning both Don DeLillo’s Libra and Stephen King’s new novel 11/22/63 (which I’m currently reading). For me, this is a gigantic thrill. I’ve admired the magazine for years, and to see my name in it made for a very nice Thanksgiving. Thank you, Mr. Mallon. I’m currently trying to figure out how to frame it.

My name notwithstanding, it’s a great article and offers an interesting and informative overview of a few of the seminal works in the field. Highly recommended!

I’ve recommended Daily Science Fiction to several of my pals, and I’ve subscribed to it myself, so I’m going to give it some props here. If you sign up for a subscription, you’ll get a science fiction or fantasy story emailed to you every day for free. That’s right, absolute zero. I’ve been enjoying my subscription. You never know what you’re going to get, and the stories take only a few minutes to read. Check out their site. It’s great. For you writers out there, it’s a paying market. Sign up and have some fun!

Sometimes ya just gotta read! Here are some authors I’ve been enjoying recently: Philip Pullman, Steven Millhauser, Susan Neiman, Gore Vidal, Alain de Botton, Philip Roth, and my former student Arlene Webb.

Happy Halloween!

• We begin with breakfast with my pal Rick Wilber, his son Rich, and famous SF author Ben Bova.
• After that you’ll see some pics of the fest, where I spent much of the day. The highlight was the Robert Olen Butler reading and chatting with him briefly afterwards, where I got a chance to tell him that his short story collection, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, was the one of most lyrical and haunting books I’ve ever read. (He smiled and told me that readers like me are the reason he writes. It was a very proud moment!)
• I was a judge at the con masquerade, so I’ve dropped in a few pics from that fun event.
• The Novelists, Inc. conference was also in town down at the Tradewinds on the Gulf, so I was able to grab a meal on St. Pete Beach with my pals from Rochester, Pat Ryan and Kathy Shaffer. It was great to see those guys, and spending time with them reminded me of home. (The last picture shows them posing with a disinterested pelican.)

The weather all weekend was to die for, 80s and sunny, a nice cool breeze, and no trace of humidity. I hope the pics give you an idea of what a grand weekend it was, and what a fine time I had. This was why I decided to move to Florida, after all. Sweeeeeeet!

It’s good to remember times like this as we all struggle with our individual rat races day in and day out. Money buys a lot of things, but not hearts and minds. 

I also took advantage of the long weekend to visit with all my Rochester pals and have a few beers and wings at our favorite local dive, Mo’s Mulberry Street. We enjoyed a long night of conversation and catching up. I had a blast, didn’t get much sleep, and returned to Florida exhausted but happy.

Currently reading:

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, David Sedaris (one of my favorite authors)

A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (re-reading one of my all-time favorite novels)

Spook Country, William Gibson (one of the brilliant SF minds of my generation)

Writing:

For you folks writing and creating out there, who may be struggling with a project the way I’m struggling with my novel right now, the great American filmmaker Billy Wilder once said, “You are as good as the best thing you’ve ever done.” Remember that. None of us are at our best every single day. Life just doesn’t work that way. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t any good. Sometimes it’s easier to get down on ourselves than it is to get up. Success comes from continued effort, trying and trying, over and over again. We won’t hit our best if we don’t keep working at it. We owe it to ourselves to rock on!

Completely wiping out my past has done wonders for me, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone. Before the move I spent hours sifting through my personal belongings, including every single photograph, piece of paper, baseball card and comic book I owned. And then I got rid of everything I could. If I didn’t need it, or I couldn’t make an emotional case for saving it, out it went. I was horrified while I was doing it, but now, honestly, I feel reborn.

How many people get a chance to start their lives over in a whole new place? It’s a rare opportunity, and I plan to take full advantage of it by writing more, having some fun, exploring, meeting people and building a new life from the ground up. I’m now looking at my life as a two act play, and this is the beginning of Act 2. I’m off and running!

More on my mental adjustments to come in future posts. For now, here are some quick notes:

• I found the little indie film theater down in St. Pete Beach (the Beach Theatre) and saw Tree of Life. The theater was great, the film so-so.
• I’m reading Molly McCloskey’s Circles Around the Sun. Molly is a good friend, a remarkable Irish-American writing talent, and this is a fantastic memoir about her brother and his struggles with schizophrenia. Please read it if you can!
• I’m in a writing workshop with two pals of mine, Mike in Seattle and Rigel in London. We’ve been trading chapters since the beginning of the year. Our final work is due at the end of this month, so I have a serious writing weekend ahead of me. 130 pages of my next book by end-of-day Sunday.  WoooZa!  Wish me luck.

Here’s the official beginning of my Florida photo series. The first shot is the wee little lake at my apartment building. The pool is just off to the right of it, which I’m ashamed to say I haven’t been in yet. The second is Fred and Ethel, the ugly ducklings who lord it over the lake. You can walk right up to them and they just scoff at ya.

The dream was so remarkable to me in part because I hardly ever remember my dreams, but this one I held clearly in my mind well after I woke up. And it was visceral. I could feel the dream, not just see it. It didn’t make much sense to me at first, but once I started thinking about it I understood where the dream was coming from. For the past two months I’ve been preparing to move from my hometown to a faraway city in another state. The process has involved going through a lot of my old belongings, throwing things out, weeding through photographs and personal memorabilia from childhood, high school and college, and even selling off my comic book collection. I suspect that all of this just started adding up and playing with my subconscious. In the dream, I was packing away my childhood in a box and pushing it under a table, putting it away, I guess, just as I’ve been doing in my waking hours.

The move has been daunting, an overwhelming amount of work, an avalanche of details, too many goodbyes and emotional ups and downs, but for the most part I’ve seen it as happy work. I’ve never lived anywhere but Rochester, NY, the place where I was born and grew up, and I will miss my home terribly, yet my subconscious appears to be happy about it. The dream left me feeling nostalgic and emotional, but not sad. The exact feeling is hard to capture in words. Maybe it’s best described this way: If I were to experience this same exact dream on the last day of my life, I would be content, remembering only the good things that happened to me and forgetting all the bad things. The kid in that dream was looking to the future and not at all concerned with what he was leaving behind.

So what is happiness anyway? I’ve been giving this question a lot of thought lately. How do we know when we have it? Do we ever know, or do we ever have it? Is it an ideal that we’ll always be searching for and never find? I believe I’ve been given a rare opportunity to live the second half of my life in a completely different way from how I lived the first half. This thought (and the reality of it) has been doing some interesting things to my psyche. I might write more about it in future posts. I’ll think a bit more on it and keep you posted. In the meantime, wish me luck. The movers come for what’s left of my stuff (not much) on July 5. And then I fly off to sunny Florida on July 8, where I hope to meet my belongings right around the same time. I’m shutting down my cable connection and computer equipment soon, so I’ll look to post again from my new home.

Sweet dreams, everyone!

1. I just received proofs from Philosophy Now Magazine for a review that will appear in Issue 85 and includes (without giving away too much) a brief look at some of the works of James Blish, Phillip K. Dick, China Meiville, and Marcos Donnelly.
2. Realms of Fantasy has informed me that the incredibly talented artist Peter Ferguson is assigned to my upcoming short story “Barbie Marries the Jolly Fat Baker.” Check him out if you get a chance. He’s amazing. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with.
3. Work on my next novel continues, and even with all the madness of my move I’ve been able to get a little time each morning to work on it. If I haven’t said this before, I’ll say it now: Work on your writing every day, even if it’s just for a few minutes. It WILL make a difference.

I’ve been reading some pretty good stuff, so here’s a quick share: Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur (yes, there’s a movie in the making). Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (my book club at work is reading this one). Brandon Sanderson’s Elantris (just for fun, a great read). I have a weakness for Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels (just finished Nothing to Lose). And I’ve started reading Little Bee by Chris Cleave.

Okay, I’ll stop there for now. Here’s a picture of me and my long-time-dearest-friend-bartender Susi taken this past Thursday night at Tommy’s Mulberry Street bar and grill, after a very tasty, tall dark Guinness (maybe two). Susi is one of the finest people I know, and one of the many I’ll miss when my ship sets sail next month. (Thanks to my pal Alan Vincent Michaels for snapping the pic — and for twisting my arm to post!)

(Necessary aside: My writer pals know how much I adore typewriters. I use a classic Olympia electric from time to time that allows me to joyfully pound away on the keys as I did all through high school and college. It’s a delight that, unfortunately, children today will never experience. In Juan Jose Campanella’s film, a fine Olivetti is introduced early in the action, and then consistently reappears as a supporting character. Campanella, needless to say, has won me over as a fan for life.)

Beyond the typewriter, as if that weren’t enough, this Argentinean film with subtitles won the Academy Award for best foreign film in 2009 and is a must see for writers. It’s about a criminal court investigator named Esposito (Ricardo Darin), now retired, who decides to write a novel about a murder-rape case that obsessed him 25 years earlier. We see through flashbacks how Esposito relentlessly pursued the killer, how the case unfolded, and how it consumed him then even as it consumes him now. We also see the love between Esposito and his boss Irene (Soledad Villamil) slowly, achingly smolder as the story twists and turns its way forward to present day. Secret is not about Esposito writing the novel (or using the typewriter for that matter), but what we do see here is a man struggling with the writing process, just as all writers do, because he’s trying to write something real and honest and true to his heart. He doesn’t sit down in his chair one day and instinctively know how to do it just because he wants to. He sees immediately how damned difficult it is. This is pretty realistic stuff.

Secret is compelling from the beginning, the performances are stellar across the board, and the mystery will keep you guessing right to the end. The title of the film is telling as well. So much is conveyed through the characters’ eyes, and the director spends quite a bit of film on long, thoughtful looks (I think it’s fair to call them eye-shots). Esposito’s eyes give away his secret love and intensity. Irene’s eyes speak of her hidden longing. A lifetime of agony can be seen in Morales’ eyes (the victim’s husband), and even the murderer is undone, in a way, by the look Irene sees burning inside him. The film is based on Eduardo Sacheri’s novel La Pregunta de Sus Ojos (The Question in Their Eyes)—yet another reason to love this film. God bless writers one and all. Kudos to Campanella. It’s magnificent work. Highly recommended.

Of further interest:

The Secret in Their Eyes trailer

It doesn’t hurt that Esposito and Irene are one of the most beautiful and electric couples you’ll ever see on screen together. At times, they’re hypnotizing: