“A beautiful work of art”…wish fulfillment much, TomBat? Obviously we’re about to get a crash course in Hollywood scumbaggery courtesy of Clay Wallace, who will gently explain how Hollywood needs to take his work of utter genius and pack it full of dick, boob and fart jokes so the unwashed sweaty slobbering masses on either side of the country can digest it properly. Because that’s what these Hollywood scumbags do for a living, at least according to a certain gazebo-loving mid-central Ohioian who prefers his simple small town ways to the sleazy glitz and tawdry glamor of the Big City, which is probably why no one’s ever optioned FW (or that other strip he does) for a film deal. What other reason could there be, eh?
Check out the smug look on his puss in panel three. The Delicate Genius doing what he does best, basking in praise. What a dick. And why is the cat still following him around? This must be quite confusing to newer (ha) readers unfamiliar with this particular rehashed gimmick. Hell, I’m confused myself and I read this crap every day, you know?
“A beautiful work of art”…oh man, that’s just hilarious. It’s just the cancer book in screenplay form, how fundamentally different could it possibly be? It’s just so funny how the fictional cancer book is a revelatory work of literary brilliance but the real cancer book is just a colllection of depressing cartoons. The whole author/avatar Les/Tom thing is always irritating but especially so during these stupid cancer book arcs, it’s just so obnoxious.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Clay: “It wasn’t a compliment. What you’ve written is totally unsuitable for us, and we’ve decided to hire another writer.”
Les: “Wh-wha? Then why did you fly me out here?”
Clay: “Glad you asked. We need a stunt double to be set on fire and thrown off a building.” [claps hands together twice] “Lobo! Take Mr. Moore to the set!”
In a way, I think Batiuk is a victim of his own hype when it comes to “Lisa’s Story”…the original arc got so much attention, he’s convinced that it was a work of genius. What he doesn’t seem to realize is that the reason “Lisa’s Story” got so much attention wasn’t the story itself, but because of its medium…dealing with cancer in a newspaper comic strip was a novelty, and thus an attention-grabber regardless of how it was executed. But in prose, film, and television, stories about cancer and/or the loss of a loved one have been done hundreds of times before. If Batiuk had written “Lisa’s Story” in prose, he would have gotten rejection letters instead of puff-piece interviews.
Erich: nailed it. It was unique only because it was a weird choice of subject matter for a comic strip. Story-wise it was like watching paint dry.
Right, because “Hollywood” NEVER deals in “works of art.” Except for adaptations of Shakespeare and other literary classics, films like Amadeus, The Godfather, Schindler’s List, Life is Beautiful, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Gone With the Wind, The King’s Speech, The English Patient, The Color Purple, Wizard of Oz…
And “Hollywood” certainly never, ever deals with love and loss. Except for Ordinary People, The Notebook, Terms of Endearment, Kramer vs. Kramer, Steel Magnolias, Dead Poets Society, Love Story, Old Yeller, Brian’s Song…
If Les’ script is a “work of art,” it must be the kind of art that involves putting crucifixes in jars of urine and painting the Virgin Mary in elephant feces.
THIS IS HOW HOLLYWOOD WORKS. Didn’t you know?
ALSO…. no. I refuse to believe that it is a “work of art”. “The Fault in Our Stars” is a pretty decent YA story about cancer survivors and I would be *shocked* if this story came anywhere near that even. Grrrrggh.
New rule to my drinking game, every time we are told that something is good instead of shown that it is good, take a drink.
And remember that Hallucinatory Cat is supposed to come from Les being scared and depressed. So what the hell is it doing there when he’s feeling confident and happy?
Gyre: Your drinking game will kill us all! The human liver cannot withstand such a heavy toll!!!!
@Gyre. “And remember that Hallucinatory Cat is supposed to come from Les being scared and depressed. So what the hell is it doing there when he’s feeling confident and happy?”
Because the cat like us and more importantly the author no longer care or have a clue as to what is going on.
What Batiuk forgets is that the Industry is in business to make money. In the real world, Wallace’s deal would be to turn an unfilmable, unwatchable story of loss that can never be made right into a generic ‘disease of the week’ film that people won’t be alienated by. In the Batiukverse, he’s going to give Les an excuse to tear up his contract because he wants to dumb things down for the sort of people who want to laugh all the time because their tiny brains can’t handle reality.
@Slager: In the real world, “Lisa’s Story” would be seen as an inept rip-off of The Fault In Our Stars. Here, it’s a work of art to be butchered so that dumb people don’t have to deal with reality.
I have to say this about Le Chat Non-Bleu, A visual metaphor works best when it occurs subtly and infrequently. It looses all effectiveness when you put it in every goddamn panel!! It also doesn’t work when it’s blatantly a symbol of less insecurity. They would be less subtle if they put a giant thunder cloud around Les’ head.
It’s entirely possible that TB doesn’t believe “beautiful work of art” to be a compliment because it has never been used to describe anything he has produced.
The entire Les vs. Hollywood thing simply reeks of the working out of a personal grudge against someone. Maybe someone who shot down an adaptation of Lisa’s Story as a film /maybe even an animated film –
Imagined dialog as follows:
Studio: We’re sorry but we really don’t think this material would work translated into a film
Batuik : But it tells an important truth – People die! From Cancer!
Studio: Tom, there’s a tagline from Braveheart that fits here – “everybody dies but not everybody lives”. This story involves a group of self pitying misery soaked lifeless bores one of whom dies – slowly – due to an absurd melodramatic touch dealing with misfiled x-rays. Nobody learns a damn thing, nobody grows nobody changes. There aren’t enough anti-depressants in the world to make someone watch 90 minutes of this.
Batuik : what about
Studio: The Cranky old guy that drives the bus ? Not a chance.
The only surprise here is that TB called his book “Lisa’s Story” and not “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.”
What gets me is that Clay Wallace calls it a “beautiful work of art”, but does not consider calling it that a compliment. To him, there’s something wrong with “beautiful works of art”. Rather than flattering Les and then telling him that it’s not what he’s looking for, Clay decides to be a huge dick about it, blatantly revealing how little he values what he should, in fact, value. It’s not a matter of “it’s beautiful but not what we were looking for”, it’s “it’s beautiful and since it’s beautiful, it can’t be what we’re looking for.” The amount of contempt that Batiuk has for his critics is incredible. Of course his cancer story is beautiful, challenging, ground-breaking, etc. etc. etc., so if you don’t like it, you obviously, consciously, do not like works of genius. There can be no other explanation.
And to get back what I and others wrote way back when this stupid storyline was just getting started, when Les signed that contract giving him the right to write the script (I guess the contract gave him all rights, rather than simply the first draft, seeing as how he’s being consulted on every single step), this is why they would have demanded that he submit a treatment of the story he intended to tell. They’ve spent two years or so waiting for this stupid script, and it’s not what they wanted. Everyone could have saved a lot of time and money if Clay Wallace and Les had had this conversation back at the beginning of this dumb arc. That way, Les wouldn’t have written this beautiful work of art that Clay didn’t want because it was a beautiful work of art and instead would have written the boorish and infantile script that every single awful person in Hollywood wants.
Les is obviously too good for this vulgar, depraved world. Batiuk should punctuate this by having Les set himself on fire right there in that den of sin and iniquity.
Back in 2011 (I think) Les went through all sorts of doubt and angst when the movie-option was first brought up. He was unsure if he wanted to get involved with “Hollywood” at all, in fact he had a bunch of very vivid scenarios he imagined where they wanted to alter and/or make a mockery of his sacred tome. So pretending to be shocked or surprised about it NOW is rather ridiculous, as this is EXACTLY what he imagined would happen.
Now if he had even a shred of actual imagination, he might have had Les arrive in Hollywood and be greeted by a bunch of cheerful, helpful folks who insisted on granting him creative control during the filming of his masterpiece. Then he could have done a whole bit about LES being the difficult one who was gunking up the process, which would be in character and a whole lot more believable…and possibly even almost humorous too. But nope, typical TB instead…”me and my cancer book versus the world” and “oh the woe of the great artiste”, themes he’s already bludgeoned to death endlessly in the past.