A light rain is falling on Pittsburgh right now. That’s okay. As long as it stays a light rain I can still take my daily walk to the Carnegie Library to exchange my movie tapes for new ones. One of the tapes I watched over the Memorial Day weekend was the movie Wall Street. It sent chills up my back because it was about the insane greed on Wall Street that doesn’t create but destroys.
This is the little review that was on the back of the tape box: “In this riveting behind-the-scenes look at big business in the 1980s, an ambitious young broker (Charlie Sheen) is lured into the illegal, lucrative world of corporate espionage when he is seduced by the power, status and financial wizardry of Wall Street legend Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas). But he soon discovers that the pursuit of overnight riches comes at a price that’s too high to pay. Daryl Hannah and Martin Sheen co-star in Oliver Stone’s gripping morality tale about the American dream gone wrong.” Man, did it ever. And this film made in the 80s explains perfectly how the fat cats in banking and on Wall Street care about nothing (not the nation-not their stockholders-nothing) but money. Michael Douglas won the Best Actor Oscar for his role and he deserved it. Good films are great entertainment and provide public education.
The movie predicted how Wall Street recently nearly destroyed the economy of the world. And we’re not out of this recession yet…
Money is a wonderful thing. We all need money. We make life decisions based on money. We have to. In Money and the American Writer a young woman must make a decision about her life.
Life In 500 Words Or Less
May 26, 2009 — pittsburghflashfictiongazetteIf you’re a writer don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t put life on the page in 500 words or less. Flash fiction, micro-fiction, sudden fiction, nano-fiction, post-card fiction and the very short story do it all the time.
The trick is not to try to show (show don’t tell) the entire life story of a character but just to show only a small part of a character’s life story. Writing flash fiction allows the writer to hint at what has happened before the story began and to project forward what might happen after the story ends.
Flash fiction is now an important part of American popular culture and entertainment because like poetry it can capture a moment in time.
The Death of Karaoke, Girls Gone Wild and Young Love all capture a moment in time.