Some blogging odds and ends

Some stuff that might be interesting to you, but at minimum is important to me.

I’m not going to Howard Days this year. I was never planning to do so, but enough people have asked me that I figure I’d make it official here. I LOVED my first Howard Days experience and would gladly go again, but time and budget won’t permit me to go every year. I’ll just have to enjoy it vicariously and remember my experience of a year ago, which Deuce Richardson recently recapped on the blog of DMR Books in fine fashion here and here.

No book review requests, please. A public message that I’m not accepting any further books for review at this time. Recently I’ve received several requests to review new S&S and S&S adjacent titles, from authors and publishers, even a work in progress. I just don’t have time, due to personal and professional obligations. For more reasons why I made this decision please read this prior post. This is not to say I won’t be reviewing books here on the Silver Key, but they will be books I voluntarily seek out.

A terrific Mad Max conversation. I listen to a fair number of podcasts on topics that range from political to self-improvement to all things fantastic. Weird Studies with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel has remained in my rotation when others have fallen out because the hosts are so damned good—even though I probably skip 50% or more of the episodes. I’m just not interested in the occult or tarot or TV shows I haven’t watched (i.e., most of them), but when these guys turn to a topic I love—i.e., the Mad Max film franchise—I’m in. This episode does not disappoint, even though it’s (as always) lit-crit heavy and intellectual AF.

A one-star review and 5-star feedback. I got my first one-star review of Flame and Crimson on Goodreads, from an individual whose review reads, “Meh, DNF.” This bothered me to some degree; I would never one-star a book I didn’t finish. But whatever, the book is definitely not for everyone and evidently was not for this dude. On the other hand, this recent email from a reader warmed my cold heart all the way through:

Hi Brian, I just wanted to tell you I'm on my second read through of "Flame  

and Crimson" and I'm enjoying it equally as much. I first read CONAN in the  

late 1960's as a teenager and found a world and a hero to identify with on  

an internal level. Here were stories that led me to realms of the fantastic  

and a cast of characters to cheer or boo, they even convinced me buy some  

weightlifting gear. (I never achieved the frame of the fabled warrior.) So  

many thanks for the research, the writing and the publishing of this  

wonderful book. It makes a 70 year old feel young and vital again.

That makes it all worth it, including the one-star reviews.

Blind Guardian powers into Worcester MA on Saturday. My personal heavy metal tour makes its next stop at The Palladium in Worcester this weekend, where I’ll be taking in legendary German power metal band Blind Guardian. With my old friend Dana, who introduced me to these guys a couple decades ago to my delight. Thanks Dana. Any band who writes concept albums based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion gets my attention, and these guys are always amazing.

I’ve got a college graduate. My oldest daughter Hannah, 22, just graduated from Colby-Sawyer college with a degree in professional and creative writing, and already has a job offer which she’s accepted teaching at a local boarding school. I couldn’t be prouder. She’s both like her Dad and very much her own person and I’m looking forward to watching her continue to grow into young adulthood. I’m a lucky man. 

The Road Warrior: Introspection and action make for one great film

Part 8 of a 10-part series in which I examine my favorite films, and the reasons why I love them so.

Picking up where Mad Max left off, 1981's The Road Warrior continues the story of Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson), a spiritually shattered ex-patrolman wandering the post-apocalyptic Australian roadways. In Mad Max, Max's wife and child were killed by a murderous gang of bikers, and while he exacted revenge, Max crossed a metaphorical boundary at the conclusion of that film, abandoning the rule of law and order for revenge and barbarism.

As The Road Warrior begins we find Max living a solitary, nomadic life, scavenging for gas and food and avoiding all contact with the scattered, dying remnants of the civilized world:

In the roar of an engine he lost everything, and became a shell of a man, a burned-out, desolate man, haunted by the demons of his past. A man who wandered out into the wasteland. And it was here, in this blighted place, that he learned to live again.

But events unfold that soon thrust Max back into human contact. Always low on gas, he discovers a fuel depot protected by a group of survivors under siege by a small army of savage looters, led by the massive, iron-masked Humungous. While his initial foray into the depot is driven purely by greed, Max is ultimately forced to make a choice between selfishness--getting his gas and fleeing--and altruism--helping the survivors break through the Humungous' encircling gang and escape to a better life elsewhere.

Max strikes a bargain to bring a tanker capable of hauling the gas out of the compound, in exchange for his own share of the fuel. The leader of the survivors, Papagallo, accepts, but later forces Max to confront his past and his very reason for existence. He challenges Max when the latter spurns companionship and chooses to leave with his car and his gas after fulfilling the bargain, rather than joining the band heading for the coast and a fresh start. "You think you're the only one that's suffered? We've all been through it in here. But we haven't given up," Papagallo says. "We're still human beings. But you--you're out there with the garbage. You're nothing."

This element to me is what makes the Mad Max series of films so great--the character arc along which Max evolves over the course of the trilogy. From fresh-faced, youthful innocence at the start of Mad Max, Max is tempted by the high-speed dance with death on the roadways and begins to develop a calloused, world-weary exterior. Personal tragedy at the end of that film results in soul-shattering grief and the loss of his humanity. He responds with animal rage, and after exacting revenge flees into the wasteland where leads a self-centered, indifferent life.

But events in The Road Warrior lead him to an epiphany about his place in the world, knowledge that there are still good things worth fighting for, and rekindle his desire to help restore order and peace. Max, bloodied and broken in body but not spirit after surviving a failed solo escape attempt, returns to drive the tanker out of the depot, helping save the survivors and spring them to freedom.

I'd also be grossly remiss not to mention the action sequences in The Road Warrior. These are tremendous, perhaps unparalleled in all of cinema. Where Mad Max had raw, high-speed collisions and chases, The Road Warrior "turns it up to eleven." The cars here truly look like pieced together vehicles from an apocalyptic world, modified with roll cages and turret-mounted crossbows. Humungus and his gang look and act far more savage and cruel than the bikers of Mad Max. Many wear shoulder pads, leather, and chains, and sport face paint and mohawks.

The end of the film offers an epic road battle that involves an armed tractor-trailer against a swarm of cars, motorcycles, and trucks, and a nasty head-on collision that trumps even the death of the Toecutter in Mad Max. Although he remains a loner at films' end, unwilling (and perhaps unable) to fully rejoin society, Max has taken the first step on a long road back from the brink.

One wild ride: Mad Max is postapocalypic fun, with a message

Part 7 of a 10-part series in which I examine my favorite films, and the reasons why I love them so.

I am the Night Rider--I'm a fuel-injected suicide machine. I am a rocker, I am a roller, I am an out-of-controller.

The raving, lunatic speech of the Night Rider which punctuates Mad Max's manic introductory car chase gives us only a glimpse of the savage violence and carnage to come in this underrated action classic.

Despite its cult status, Mad Max is a film that seems to garner little attention these days, even among sci-fi/action aficionados. Maybe it's its age (1979) or its low-tech effects, or it could simply be that it's been overshadowed by its sequel, the brilliant The Road Warrior, which most consider a superior film.

While that may be true, Mad Max has always had a soft spot in my heart for a number of reasons. These include:

The unexplained wasteland. We're left to our own devices to figure out what has brought about the collapse of society in Mad Max (although this is revealed in a later film). As I've said in other movie reviews, I'm fond of fims that don't spoon-feed every detail. The human mind has a wonderful ability to speculate and fill in the gaps, and by not explaining the wasteland or the rise of the savage, roving gangs which threaten to overwhelm the last vestiges of society, director George Miller forces us to think of why--and how--it all occurred.

The decay of order. Miller placed several smart, deliberate shots in Mad Max and its sequels, which convey not only atmosphere but meaning. The rusting, weed-grown Hall of Justice is one example, as it presents an overt symbol of the decay of law and order in this apocalyptic land. A stop sign conspicuously placed in the center of the shot could mean that justice stops here at its gate.

The sergeant, a giant, bald, moustached man curiously named Fifi, is one of the few bastions of order and the rule of law, but it's obvious he's fighting a losing battle, and his rallying cry ("We're going to give them back their heroes!") rings hollow.

The morality of the road, and the allure of violence. Even before the murder of his wife and child and the vigilantism it inspires, Max (played by Mel Gibson) is already feeling uneasy. Why? It's not police work or the pursuit of justice that motivates Max, it's the allure of the road, the high-speed chases, and the everyday dance with death: "It's that rat circus out there, I'm beginning to enjoy it. Any longer out on that road and I'm one of them, a terminal crazy," Max says to Fifi. "Only I've got a bronze badge to say I'm one of the good guys."

By the end of the film the facade of law and order is completely stripped away. It's noteworthy that, while pursuing Johnny the Boy in his last act of vigilantism in the film, Max passes right by a sign declaring "Stop--Prohibited Area." This act symbolizes his final casting off of civilized behavior and a passage into barbarity.

Car porn. While I don't know a damned thing about how cars operate, even I get excited by the talk of "the last of the V-8s," nitrous, and screaming, supercharged engines with blowers.

Jim Goose. I don't know whether actor Steve Bisley ever did anything before or after Mad Max, but I thought his portrayal of the cocksure and stylish but dedicated officer Jim Goose was perfect.

Bubba Zanetti. Another memorable bit role from Mad Max, Zanetti almost defies description with his need to perform every act with an exaggerated sense of style, all the way down to his intense, measured speech. Memorable Zanetti line: When a kid asks him what happened to the car that he and his gang members demolished, he answers cryptically, "Perhaps it was a result of anxiety." I'm not sure what this means exactly, but it's pretty cool.

Electrifying car chases and crashes. Miller's car pursuits and crashes are filmed with a high style that captures the speed of the cars and motorcycles and the violence of their collisions. The head-on collison between the Toecutter and a semi is a thing of beauty. And watch closely for the names of the roads on the white sign at the beginning of the film ("Anarchy" and "Bedlam"), which capture the spirit of what goes on in the two-lane highways of Mad Max. These effects of course all done without CGI, and despite the advances in effects-driven technology I still prefer low-tech effects. Done right, as is the case in Mad Max and The Road Warrior, they are more believable than CGI.

Cool imagery. Although Mad Max was filmed on a very low budget ($300,000 in Australian currency, according to Wikipedia), it's helped considerably by the sparse Australian landscape in which it was shot. Combined with Miller's use of the driver's eye and the wheels's eye view of the roads, Mad Max is a memorable visual experience.

Characterization/humanization of the evil biker gang: While it would be easy to cast the biker gang as a group of mindless thugs, Miller offers in their portrayal a few glimpses of lost humanity (twisted though it may be). For example, Nightrider's line after he loses a game of high-speed "chicken" with Max: "There will be nothing left--it's all gone"--could simply mean the loss of his nerve. But it carries deeper undertones, as if he were weeping for the collapse of society and the loss of civilization.

Likewise, the Toecutter, the cycle gang's murdering leader, displays a surprising depth of emotion when he demands to be left alone to mourn with the Nightrider's coffin. And his insistence on indoctrinating the maddening and pretentious Johnny the Boy into the ways of the gang displays at some level his need for organization and family, institutions which are hopelessly fractured and in danger of total collapse in the dystopic future of Mad Max.