Ask the Author: Chris Dee
Answered Questions (8)
Chris Dee
Probably just party at Gatsby's.
Chris Dee
Summer is generally light reading, but in past years, it hasn’t worked out that way for me. (Last summer I was taking a class that had me revisiting Aristotle’s Poetics with an attention I’d never paid in college, and a research binge on Robert Wittman/stolen art treasures.) This year, I thought I’d control the skid with William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade and follow it up with Which Lie did I Tell? Or Four Screenplays with Essays.
Research will probably be my old pal Stephen Birmingham’s Life at the Dakota. (Birmingham was a tremendous resource when I was working on the Wayne Family History.) If there’s any summer left, Free for All, Joe Pap, the Public and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told has been on the bottom of the tsundoku for far too long.
Research will probably be my old pal Stephen Birmingham’s Life at the Dakota. (Birmingham was a tremendous resource when I was working on the Wayne Family History.) If there’s any summer left, Free for All, Joe Pap, the Public and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told has been on the bottom of the tsundoku for far too long.
Chris Dee
As the creator and author of Cat-Tales, you all know my favorite couple is Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle and to spend a paragraph on why would be redundant and a trifle absurd. I point you to the Tales: from Normal to Identity Element, Casefile 001 to The Gotham Rogues, Cattitude to Polishing Silver to Riddle Me-Tropolis to Wayne Rises. If that doesn’t make the case for not merely ‘Bruce and Selina� but this Bruce and Selina, then no additional words here going to sway you.
Instead I’ll offer a quote from the screenplay for 1990’s Reversal of Fortune that sums up, not simply Bruce and Selina but all fictional couples and our obsession with them: It’s easier to love someone than to live with them. Love is fantasy, living is work.
Love stories are the perfect fusion of that. The lovers have to overcome obstacles. They have to dig in and do the work, and both the challenges and the rewards are both tied up with their love for one another. And the more their love and their challenges are a natural extension of who they are as individuals, the more dynamic and engrossing the stories will be for the reader. That’s why you have couples like Bruce and Selina who are brought together over and over again, in all media, in all incarnations of the characters, over decades. Because it’s right, because the characters react on one another in a way that works. There’s nothing sillier than when you hear writers say of a pairing: “Oh that’s been done already.� You know why you eat grilled steak, fried chicken, and pizza so often? They’re really good. The flavors and textures work well together. I’ve written over 70 Cat-Tales, these characters and these pairings do not wear out.
Instead I’ll offer a quote from the screenplay for 1990’s Reversal of Fortune that sums up, not simply Bruce and Selina but all fictional couples and our obsession with them: It’s easier to love someone than to live with them. Love is fantasy, living is work.
Love stories are the perfect fusion of that. The lovers have to overcome obstacles. They have to dig in and do the work, and both the challenges and the rewards are both tied up with their love for one another. And the more their love and their challenges are a natural extension of who they are as individuals, the more dynamic and engrossing the stories will be for the reader. That’s why you have couples like Bruce and Selina who are brought together over and over again, in all media, in all incarnations of the characters, over decades. Because it’s right, because the characters react on one another in a way that works. There’s nothing sillier than when you hear writers say of a pairing: “Oh that’s been done already.� You know why you eat grilled steak, fried chicken, and pizza so often? They’re really good. The flavors and textures work well together. I’ve written over 70 Cat-Tales, these characters and these pairings do not wear out.
Chris Dee
Unless you're James Patterson, well-meaning friends or family will periodically offer suggestions about what you should write. "You know what's really popular... You should do something like that." It's not a fan fiction issue. If you're a professional playwright, you will get those same prods to find a more lucrative medium. Novelist? You should be doing screenplays. Got a screenplay? Maybe a Netflix series would be better, those are big now. Smile, thank them for their interest, and remember that even if the advice is presumptuous, patronizing or just annoying, they mean well. Money is nice, you can buy things with it, and they're wishing you the freedom to walk the beach in Waikiki whenever you like and treat yourself to a good dinner after.
Chris Dee
I'm working on a Matches Malone story. Matches is Batman's underworld cover and Catwoman appears as Gina O'Malley, originally Georgina Barnes, an identity Selina had used to infiltrate Wall Street a couple of times, which Bruce appropriated and repurposed to be a cover for grifter Gina. While the story is superficially about his going undercover with the Irish Mob in Hell's Kitchen, it's also about updating this character who's something of a dusty throwback. So I started with a heavy film noir tone, and there's a lot of gentrification in the neighborhood that mirrors the changes in Malone himself. In my head, I imagine this tale beginning with an aching sax from a John Barry score and progressing to Bosshouse's We All Go Down As One by the end.
Chris Dee
I'll start an on-page improv. Put a couple of characters together, or a character and a setting, and just start writing. Like theatrical improv, the only goal is to return the serve, so you don't worry about style, subtext or foreshadowing. Nobody but you will ever read it, so there are no consequences. You don't care if you're making promises you'd have to keep later, or referencing something that casual readers may not remember (or something they never knew about.) It doesn't matter if you're repeating a word too often, or even if someone drifts out of character for no reason. You keep the volley going, or you break the scene and follow one of those characters somewhere else.
Chris Dee
Read a lot. Good books, lots of them. "You are what you eat" applies to your imagination as much as your body, so watch what you put in there. A little junk food does no harm now and then, but you can't expect to be a professional athlete on a steady diet of chips and diet soda.
Care about your craft. Bypass the sites obsessing on 'tropes' and learn about real literary techniques, structure and pacing.
And live a lot. You don't have to climb a mountain in Tibet, you do have to be actively aware what's going on in your own life and in your own head. The difference between watching a movie and kinda/sorta following the show on television on the background.
Care about your craft. Bypass the sites obsessing on 'tropes' and learn about real literary techniques, structure and pacing.
And live a lot. You don't have to climb a mountain in Tibet, you do have to be actively aware what's going on in your own life and in your own head. The difference between watching a movie and kinda/sorta following the show on television on the background.
Chris Dee
The impetus to try a horror tale came from an unlikely source: all the retrospectives leading up to the Doctor Who fiftieth. The Waters of Mars particularly stood out; when that show pulls out a scary one, they do it so very well. I thought how it was time for a change of pace in Cat-Tales and the journey Poison Ivy had been on since The Gotham Rogues was ready to take a turn. It seemed a natural, and that was the impetus for the current story Spontaneous Generation. It's not what I would call a full out horror tale but more of a drama with horror elements.
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