Better Late Than Never

Hailing Frequencies #4, 4.14.24

Hail and well-met, fellow travelers.

You may (or may not!) have noticed I neglected to post an update last week. I have little excuse, other than I was busy toiling away in the word mines — and raising a small child — and it completely slipped my mind. Mea culpa!

Allow me to make up for it by… writing something as I usually would, I suppose. Avante!

PROJECT ROUNDUP

These last two weeks have generally been a study in steady progress. My primary focus has been getting a solid draft on paper for the pilot of PROJECT COVE. I’m hoping to have something of a first pass by next week, but random meetings which have a habit of manifesting on my calendar sometimes throw off my estimates of these things. It’s good to have goals, though!

I’ve also begun breaking PROJECT FIRMAMENT in earnest. It’s a very fun hour-long pilot, and the producers I’m working with have given quite a bit of latitude for us to tell it the way we’d like. The process of adapting a franchise that doesn’t yet exist in film and television, but has massive popularity in other venues, has been interesting. Thankfully it also leaves plenty of room for invention, so we’re having a ball.

Had a couple of great meetings with the producer and author for PROJECT GLITTERING to discuss the adaptation of the books to series, and how to stay faithful to it while being additive. A lovely team, and hoping for the best.

PROJECT HAMLET, although in a great place to pitch, is currently in a sort of ‘suspended animation’ until market conditions improve for a project like this, which is admittedly a narrow target. It happens sometimes — thankfully, the take is fairly evergreen, so we can patiently wait for sunnier days on the horizon.

As you can see, it’s a lot of spinning plates. Thankfully, I used to be trained in that exact art — thank you, clown college! — so it’s nothing I can’t handle.

A LITTLE Q&A

Donuteater111 asks,

Are there any big franchises you’d love to write for, like you are with Star Trek now?

Absolutely. Like many of my colleagues, I am a child of the 80s and 90s — so my storytelling sensibilities have been forever warped and defined by the films, books, and shows from that era. Anything with Amblin or Orion Pictures before the opening credits will get my heart pumping. Back to the Future and Indiana Jones have both been at the top of my list for sometime, as has anything Marvel or DC. Really, such possibilities come down to luck gracing opportunity — but until then, my soul is ready.

Antinbath asks,

Is there any advice that you’ve been given or deduced for yourself, whether professionally or personally, that you hold and take with you as a guide in life?

The best advice I’ve always tried to follow myself, which was both gleaned from others wiser than I, and from the toughest teacher of them all, experience. Boiled down, it’s something like this — make cool stuff with cool people. Sometimes, you will have jobs or opportunities that come your way that don’t work out. You aren’t hired, or they pass. It’s easy to beat yourself up, assuming if you’d only said one thing a certain way, or presented yourself more to their liking, it may have worked out.

Honestly, I’ve learned that often those things were never meant to be anyway. The best collaborations I’ve ever been a party to were — shocking, I know! — with people who shared my sensibilities and wanted to work with me. Until chances like that cut your way, the best you can do is make things yourself. Shoot sketches with your iPhone. Write plays or screenplays or stories. Make something worthwhile. Inevitably, that becomes a magnet for other likeminded folks to find you. And when that happens, it’s wonderful — and creates potential, as if by magic.

ONE COOL THING

If you are an antiquarian or collector of intriguing apocrypha like I am, you are probably familiar with a traditional Italian melody structure and folk dance called a tarantella.

Recently, I learned the dance was named for Taranto, a village near Puglia, where a variety of wolf spider originated the word we have for “tarantula”. The spider’s bite was so venomous, it was said to cause sluggishness, melancholia and “tarantism” — which barbers believed could only be cured with vigorous dancing. The prescribed movements, you guessed it, evolved into The Tarantella.

I learned this from a striking interview with Rhiannon Giddens, who has done considerable work in her own right rejuvenating American folk music, particularly the banjo, and its roots in the Black experience. Here is a performance from her collaboration with Francesco Turessi, in which she plays her own take on a tarantella.

Enjoy!