New stories that look old and other tragic tales
An edition about rights and meeting again with old (fictional) friends.
HELLO AND WELCOME TO THE FIRST 2024 EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER!
A new year full of promises begins! Let’s see what happens! After the Hollywood writers and actor’s strike, this can be the year of the filming of the Polar sequel, The Black Kaiser, initially scheduled for September of 2023. Let’s cross our fingers!
Plus, I recently signed an agreement about some of my IPS (I hate the word a little but it’s the concept producers manage and are obsessed with) with Mediatoon company. They represent the rights for audiovisual adaptations of famous icons of the French-Belgian BDs and are behind the development of productions based on comics like Valerian, The Smurfs, Largo Winch and others. From now they will represent the rights of my creations Until my Knuckles Bleed, Against Hope, Los Reyes Elfos (The Elf Kings) and Rashomon: a commissioner Heigo Kobayashi case.
The case of Against Hope is interesting because Dark Horse Entertainment tried to develop a movie adaptation time ago but it didn’t work, basically because that time was not the correct one. But the proposal was really cool, they did a wonderful job and I was in contact with a director, a writer and an actress for the role, and I even created new concept art never seen before. I'll show you soon in this newsletter. But things went cold and I finally recovered the rights, and now with Mediatoon I have high expectations that Hope Walker will have her own project in the future.
MEETING OLD FRIENDS AND DISCOVERING WEIRD THINGS
Maybe this topic is becoming overused lately, but I don’t think it is bad to reflect on it, if you place every element in its context and keep your pitchforks and torches in the tool room. I recently read Walter Mosley’s noir novel Faith Blonde. It belongs to the Easy Rawlings series, which began with Devil in a Blue Dress, published in 1990 (you surely know the wonderful 1995 movie adaptation starring Denzel Washington). Ezequiel “Easy” Rawlins is the protagonist of 15 novels and you can see how years pass and the character grows and evolves. I had read the first ones, set on the latest 40s, with a young Easy returned from WWII. He is a ladies man, a tough but seductive handsome guy, the archetypical private eye, but with the difference of the racial discrimination subject because he’s black man in a time and place where steering too much time to a white woman could cost your life. Like I said, I recently read Faith Blonde (the 11th of the series), published in 2009 and set in 1967, where we discover that -sadly- racism problems have not changed too much. Easy is now an “old man” of almost 50 and spends a big part of the novel moaning about his breakup with his true love Bonnie… while he is banging (or trying hard) every 20 year old girl who crosses his path.
It reminded me when you meet again with some friend from high school and you have a beer and catch up, and he begins to talk about how slutty young women are now and politics and you think “When this guy I liked become a douchebag?”. Please don’t misunderstand me: I love Mosley’s novels and his lovely prose… but suddenly I found myself loathing the character due to some of his attitudes.
I don’t want to be a judge because no creator is free of guilt. I can read again my Polar books and scowl watching Black Kaiser banging his best friend’s twenty-something daughter (I must say this part was a joke/tribute to Trevanian’s character super-spy and sex machine Nicholai Hel and I joked about it in the last book of the saga, The Kaiser Falls, where BK is almost a mummy and his first attempt to seduce a young mommy is stopped abruptly). But what is done, it’s done.
What I’m trying to explain is that sometimes we assume some attitudes and situations as normal, and other people, and ourselves thanks to a positive influence, discover years later than we are not comfortable with it anymore.
I remember this scene from Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight movie where Jack Foley and Karen Sisco are trapped inside a car trunk, it felt like a sexy moment… but they were George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez, it's impossible not to be sexy! But when I re-read Elmore Leonard’s original novel some years ago, I only found a creepy old man whispering dirty insinuations to a young US marshal trapped there against her will.
Watching the first episodes of the show Chuck recently, I had a similar impression. The first season is from 2007 but it feels really, really old. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was released ten years before Chuck, and it looks fresher. The jokes about the nerd guys, the constant objectivation of Yvonne Strahovski (you know, reading CIA files with sexy lingerie is the usual Company procedure), the creepy protagonist’s bro stalking Chuck’s sister in what I use to call “Steve Urkel’s method” (the Ellie’s character discomfort of Joshua’s attempts to touch her is a recurring gag) feel now belonging to a far past time.
You can revisit the wonderful Columbo series and see how many marriages of old geezers with barely-legal women appear during the show… But well, at that time this was better than marrying with your 14-years old niece like in a XIX century story.
What I see embarrassing is watching the sexual tension in recent movies The Protégé (2021) between Maggie Q (who is 44 and looks 30) and Michael Keaton (who is 72 and looks 80), or this uncomfortable flirting between an aged Denzel Washington and Gaia Scodellaro, 30 years younger, in The Equalizer 3 (it seems than Antoine Fuqua cut all their love scenes but not for the correct reasons).
Ok, don’t think I have become some kind of puritan reborn! I still enjoy the shameless macho prose of Mike Spillane’s Mike Hammer, but the sex situations there are so over-the-top that they make me smile with almost tendress.
So should we ban these stories, especially the modern ones, because we dislike these attitudes? Of course not!! They belong to part of the process of the evolution of fiction. And even if a creator wants to use them now, surprise, I think it’s fine… Except that if a creator tries to convince me that this is the way stories should be forever. I can use this kind of stories to evoke a past time or genre, but I will not complain if part of the audience/readers (especially new generations) think they look old or creepy. Do it that way if you enjoy it but please not complain about “We are not allowed to do things like we want”. Fiction is a living creature and tastes change, and I’m sure all of us will be surpassed by new ideas (if this fact hasn’t happened yet!).
Wow, this was a long speech! I hope you found it interesting. I’m not trying to impose my criterion, but to explain (mainly to myself) that our perspective and experience changes as we grow and live and meet other people outside our circle. My experience talking and working with women, people from other races/countries or non-binary persons is completely different now than when I was a teenager in a city with almost zero migrant population (and barely a decade of democracy after a 40-year dictatorship), and the possible homosexuality of your neighbours was a gossip. And I’m talking of the 80s!
Of course, if you have some opinion/aspect/experience to share (always with respect) my comments section is open.
See you in a next edition of my newsletter!
Best.
Victor
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