Ms. Wormwood: Calvin, can you tell us what Lewis and Clark did? Calvin: No, but I can recite the secret superhero origin of each member of Captain Napalm’s Thermonuclear League of Liberty.
Now if a joke is in bad taste or it’s not funny, okay, that’s awhole different thing, but how you craft a joke is really what the writer’s job is, and I don’t think that technique should be subject to any editorial constraints.
Isn’t it sad how some people’s grip on their lives is so precarious that they’ll embrace any preposterous delusion rather than face an occasional bleak truth?
Reading those turgid philosophers here in these remote stone buildings may not get you a job, but if those books have forced you to ask yourself questions about what makes life truthful, purposeful, meaningful, and redeeming.
If you’ve ever compared a film to a novel it’s based on, you know the novel gets bludgeoned. It’s inevitable, because different media have different strengths and needs, and when you make a movie, the movie’s needs get served.
If you give a little credit to the concept of the artist, I think you ought to indulge excesses a bit, because that reflects the personality of the writer.
Problems often look overwhelming at first. The secret is to break problems into small, manageable chunks. If you deal with those, you’re done before you know it.
The whole idea of hobknobbing and schmoozing and the concept of an “elite” class of celebrities better than the common people has always made my stomach turn.
