Comments on: Secret history of the Kleinhardt Gambit

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 05 May 2008 22:37:32 +0000

Hey Madrugada, big Steve King does it all the time! Case in point, check out Lisey’s Story for some REAL voyages down the byways of the language. Can’t wait to the screen adaptation of that one… “smucking bool!!!”

By: Madrugada Jones

Madrugada Jones — Mon, 05 May 2008 21:15:31 +0000

I’ve written some screenplays in the past and am now working on a (non sci-fi) novel. I’ve been tempted at several points to make up words just because they seemed right. Case in point, the word “ribbled”. This is not a word. But I wrote a scene where an old guy sits reading a novel and his hair is all askew, only I didn’t want to use the word “askew”. For some reason “ribbled” popped into my mind. Do you ever make up words in the expository/scene description parts of your screenplays?

http://spinachflame.wordpress.com/

By: Mike Rinaldi

Mike Rinaldi — Mon, 05 May 2008 06:35:40 +0000

The cosmis Roger Rabbit rip-off known as Jar Jar Binks was annoying, but at least he didn’t ruin the Star Wars mythos. It was those damned midi-chlorians!

By: Kevin Lehane

Kevin Lehane — Mon, 05 May 2008 01:09:14 +0000

Ah, I see. Thanks, John.

By: John August

John August — Sun, 04 May 2008 18:29:51 +0000

@Kevin:

The all-caps was to save space. Those aren't really new scenes, but single shots from things we'd just seen, so keeping them as long sluglines made sense.

By: Blair Shedd

Blair Shedd — Sun, 04 May 2008 18:28:34 +0000

james — Dammit! I forgot select! That actually happened to me a lot back when I was playing it… whoops.

Kevin — Cool. I wondered if they’d touch on that.

By: Kevin Lehane

Kevin Lehane — Sun, 04 May 2008 17:14:15 +0000

By the way, John, may I ask why you choose to write the flashbacks in ALL-CAPS. I’m wondering if this is a stylistic choice or done for technical reasons.

By: Kevin Lehane

Kevin Lehane — Sun, 04 May 2008 17:11:21 +0000

Blair, they explain that in the new JJ Star Trek. It involves Kirk and a Blue Girlfriend.

It's a great script and a funny sequence.

By: james

james — Sun, 04 May 2008 01:24:53 +0000

@ blair

"select, start" ;)

By: Synthian

Synthian — Sat, 03 May 2008 08:49:26 +0000

This is such an awesome string of comments. :)

I think if we could just HARNESS all this geek power, we'd probably have enough collectively to cross the Time Meridian.

By: Blair Shedd

Blair Shedd — Sat, 03 May 2008 07:20:40 +0000

"Whatâ€™s a flux capacitor? How did Kirk prevail in the un-winnable Kobayashi Maru? What are midi-chlorians, and how can we pretend we never heard of them?"

While I can't answer the other two (and midichlorians just make me cry) -- my geek hat says that Kirk "passed" the no-win situation of the Kobayashi Maru by reprogramming the simulator so you could win. Granted, that doesn't state exactly what he did, and technically isn't truly beating it, but the explanation was in "Wrath of Khan".

Now, how did he program it? I imagine it was up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start. He then had thirty lives to do with what he wished.