"Mack the Knife:" Who's Who and How They Got There

Unlike most of its characters, the song "Mack the Knife" remains very much alive. In 1928, Composer Kurt Weill and lyricist Bertolt Brecht were set to debut Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera) in Berlin, and the lead wanted a stronger introduction for Mackie. Weill and Brecht threw together "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer" – "The Ballad of Mack the Knife"--but didn't give it to their lead. They made it a prologue sung by a man-on-the-street balladeer.

Since then, of course, the song has become a popular music standard of standards. Louis Armstrong jumped on Mark Blitzstein's catchy translation in 1955. Bobby Darin's 1959 swinger hit number one on the charts. Your author's favorite take is the jazzy Frank Sinatra/Quincy Jones rework in 1984.

The song throws around a lot of characters– on purpose. The device shows Mack as a stone-cold, refined killer and offers him the special celebrity bestowed on the successful outlaw. Still, it's a litany of names. Here is a who's who, listed in the order in Blitzstein's translation.

Macheath (aka Mack the Knife aka Mackie)

The titular character and master criminal. Mack evades culpability for his many crimes thanks to equal parts fear and idolization. His misdeeds are catching up to him, more or less.

Jack Sheppard, est 1724

Macheath was Brecht's modernization of the roguish highwayman from John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728), in turn allegedly inspired by the 18th-century famed thief Jack Sheppard. Like Gay, Brecht intended his production as satirical commentary, so Brecht lifted Macheath and other main characters 150 years forward into a post-Industrial Revolution context. The American translation remade him as a noir antihero and next into a jazzy cat.

Body Laying on the Sidewalk Sunday Morning

An unknown dude and first of the body count. The poor guy sets the stage that Mack means business. The corresponding dead guy in Brecht's version is somebody found along the Thames. 

Body in Cement Bag Dropped Off Tugboat

Mack strikes again. Brecht's darker version implies more generically that several murders are occurring near the river--"people drop down."

Louie Miller

Disappeared, babe, and now Mackie is flush with cash and living large. In Brecht's version, the victim is a Schmul Meier, a rich man gone missing.

Suky Tawdry

The first of four women mentioned in quick succession, also the first of Mack's associates who are still breathing. The sequence highlights Mackie's charisma and success with the ladies– but also that perhaps he'd better watch his back.

In the stage version, Mack hides out at Suky's place after being sprung from jail. Suky is listed as a "woman of the town" in Gay's earlier opera.

Jenny Diver

The second woman in Mack's life (Bobby Darin flips her to first). In The Threepenny Opera, Jenny is a prostitute and Mack's ex-lover. She accepts a payoff and turns Mack in to the cops. The character was a pickpocket in Gay's source opera, an homage to the real-life Irish thief.

Lotte Lenya

Wait. Lotte Lenya played Jenny Diver in that first Berlin production but also landed in Louis Armstrong's version. The real Lenya was married to Weill, and Jenny was Lenya's breakout role. Lenya left Germany ahead of the Nazi rise and enjoyed a long career, notably as the villainous Rosa Klebb in From Russia With Love. She was invited to the studio for Armstrong's recording, and he tossed her a shout-out.

Some versions of "Mack the Knife" correct the fourth wall break by adding…

Polly Peachum

Early in the stage version, Polly marries Mack on a whim, much to her wealthy parents' dismay. Her new involvement in Mack's world and the family's quest to destroy the marriage are the plot's central conflicts. Polly and her family were all adapted from Gay's source work.

Lucy Brown

The fourth and final character in "line" for Mack. Lucy is the daughter of Tiger Brown, London's Chief of Police and Mack's key protector. Lucy claims to be Mack's wife and is willing to fight for him. She springs Mack from jail. In Gay's opera, the Browns were named the Lockits.

Dropped from the Translation:

Brecht wrote a longer and darker character piece than could work in a 1950s standalone number. Blitzstein shortened and sanitized the lyrics for his intended audience. Among other despicable acts Blitzstein removed, the following victims meet their maker in the German original only:

• Jenny Towler. Found with a knife in her chest.
• Alfons Glite. A cab driver who also vanished.
• Seven children and an old man. Killed by arson.

Like I said, you're not supposed to canonize Mack. But to Brecht's thinking, Mack and his crew weren't 
worse criminals than the capitalist barons gaming Weimar Germany's corrupt system. Mack's fight was harder. It was rigged. In that light, maybe you can root for Mack a little. 

That's the trick behind Mack's longevity. Mack is definitely a killer, definitely clever, and definitely charismatic. The performer gets to decide how to play it. We get to decide how we feel about it.

Studying Great Sentences: Hammett's Red Harvest

I came to face a hard truth when I first tried writing fiction. I mean, people always told me they liked my stuff, and I enjoyed writing that stuff. But actually writing well is a whole other proposition. I failed--a lot--before spinning around in my writing chair and seeking deeper knowledge. 

As part of that, I re-read favorite authors and acknowledged masters, studying how they strung together plot, chapters, moments, and even sentences. I flagged any passage that wowed me in some way, even if I didn't know why. After finishing a book, I went to my computer and typed out each flagged section. Each one, as if I let their shape and function roll around in my brain. 

One novel I self-studied was Dashiell Hammett's The Red Harvest (1929). No pressure, just pulling at one of the finest novels in the English language. You know, a literal prototype of the hardboiled genre. I wanted to understand Hammett's dead-on prose. 

Here are five passages I flagged that have a lot to teach.

#1: Clinical Description

She had a broad-shouldered, full-breasted, round-hipped body and big muscular legs.  The hand she gave me was soft, warm, strong.  Her face was the face of a girl of twenty-five already showing signs of wear.  Little lines crossed the corners of her big ripe mouth.  Fainter lines were beginning to make nests around her thick-lashed eyes.  They were large eyes, blue and a bit blood-shot.   Her coarse hair- brown- needed trimming and was parted crookedly.  One side of her upper lip had been rouged higher than the other.  Her dress was of a particularly unbecoming wine color, and it gaped here and there down one side, where she had neglected to snap the fasteners or they had popped open.   There was a run down the front of her left stocking. 

In 2025, many an editor would reach for the delete key if someone handed them a 130-word character description. Not so back in Hammett's day. He had more wiggle room and laced extended descriptions through the novel, all for intended effect. 

This is an epic description, and for good reason. This broad-shouldered woman is Dinah Brand, Poisonville's scuffed-up version of a femme fatale. Hammett takes his time to show Dinah--and show how the Op sees her. He assesses her methodically, directly, a parade of subject-plus-verb sentences, nothing inverted or introductory, nothing vague. He adds discerning grace notes after his eye lingers. Once he takes Dinah in as a whole, he moves downward from eye contact and lands on the run in her stockings. Nobody's perfect in Poisonville. In the spaces between his descriptors, we come to see her as a physical presence, a young woman neither beautiful nor plain but wearing down fast. 

#1a: Dinah Again

Her big ripe mouth was rouged evenly this evening, but her brown hair still needed trimming, was parted haphazardly, and there were spots down the front of her orange silk dress.

This is later on. Dinah and the Op have become acquainted, as they say, so no further epic portrait is required. The Op needs to see what is different tonight. In this case, maybe Dinah is putting more effort into her appearance. In context of the novel, this is an important shift and set-up for what is to come. Poisonville doesn't do happy endings.

The construction here geeks out a sentence nerd. Gone is the clinical march of sentences. This is a continuous and considered observation of Dinah as a whole. The sentence nerd fulcrum is the classic "but." The first conjunction pair allows her the lipstick...but. Returning to the hair regrounds her, and the spots on her dress are pure Dinah. But maybe this is Dinah really trying, or maybe she only tries so hard.

#2: Marvelous Understatement

One of the blond boys drove.  He knew what speed was.

This one is glorious, even funny if you want to read it that way. Hammett's occasional hardboiled understatement--and sometimes overstatement--spices up the narrative voice without making the Op verbose.

#3: Action Sequence

The chief's car got away first, off with a jump that hammered our teeth together.  We missed the garage door by half an inch, chased a couple of pedestrians diagonally across the sidewalk, bounced off the curb into the roadway, missed a truck as narrowly as we had missed the door, and dashed out King Street with our siren wide open.

Chaos. Hardboiled chaos. And again, the secret is that long second sentence, a 46-word marathon. The standard advice for action is to go choppy. Choppy, though, would kill the effect. They're in one hell of a hurry, such a hurry that they're veering all over the place. This mayhem is one single action ending in, finally, a beat of control.

#4: Drinkin'

When I came back she was mixing gin, vermouth and orange bitters in a quart shaker, not leaving a lot of space for them to move around in.

I'll leave the exercise in the perfect noir way. Drinkin'. The Op is back at Dinah's place, and in no uncertain terms and clever voice, we know what comes next. 

Bottoms up, y'all. And write strong in the new year!

Your Icelandic Yule Gauntlet Has Already Begun

It's already too late. It's started, and you can't stop it. That strange shuffling near the sheep tonight? That's no rattle of wind, friends. Those disembodied grunts? Stay in the light if you venture outside. A creaking of ancient bones from the gloom? You have a full-on Yule Lad situation.

Only one creature lurks each December 12th near the sheep pens. Stekkjastaur, the peg-legged troll-kin of the mountain caves, and he has larceny in his heart. He wants ewes' milk. Your ewes' milk. It's his whole reason for lurking. Your saving grace: Age and bulk have made him clumsy. If you're careful, or if you're brave enough to guard that pen, you can keep him at bay all night--and the night is twenty-one hours long. 

Be warned, though. He isn't going far. He'll seize any chance for undefended milk until Christmas Day. 

If that sounds bad, well, things are just getting started.

Stekkjastaur--Sheepcote Clod--is the eldest of Iceland's thirteen Yule Lads. His mother is, well, interesting, and she lets the lads loose one by one, starting on December 12th. As eldest, Stekkjastaur is the first to set out for thieving. That was yesterday, everybody. 

Today, Giljagaur sneaks down from the mountains. Sneaking is a tricky thing when you're a giant, so Giljagaur conceals himself in any gully or cavern he can find. If you glimpse an enormous head ducking from sight, that'll be him. He wants any cow's milk left unwatched.

Eleven more brothers will follow, one rogue troll-kin each day until the full bunch is creeping around everywhere. They'll snatch, hook, or lick any unminded food down to the last crumbs. The Lads will go for unwashed pans, dirty spoons, sausages aging in the rafters, and even swipe tallow candles for an easy meal. By Christmas, it's chaos.

One must be prepared to fend them off. In that spirit, here's your: 

Luckily, the Lads may be thieving trolls, but that doesn't make them unreasonable. A bribe of cheese or sausage goes a long way, is what I'm saying. They will leave you alone and maybe leave a few gifts themselves. After all, they're not cold-blooded killers.

No, that would be their cat. 

It's Christmas night. Everyone has battled the windswept elements and sun deprivation and troll-amplified holiday stress all day. If you were hoping for some needed sleep, think again. On Christmas night, you may well be marked for death. 

And you would know it was coming--because no one had given you clothes for Christmas. And those poor souls get eaten alive.

And yet. No new clothes. So you're laying there hoping that you had the legend wrong. Surely, there is no such thing as Jólakötturinn--the Yule Cat. The odds that a demon cat taller than any church steeple exists must be something like zero. And okay, suppose such a cat monster does stalk the night. It's not after you, right? It's probably busy eating people who actually did something wrong. It's no crime, not getting new duds. I mean, you've gotten plenty of books. You're not unloved. Or are you? Did your family and friends set you up? 

Getting eaten by a demon at Christmas. It's all so damned unfair. 

You wouldn't hear Jólakötturinn approach any more than you would hear a whisper of snow. But if you peered out the door, if you stared long enough, hard enough, you could maybe see it coming, a cat black as coal and so large it blocked the stars, fire-ember eyes fixed on you. 

Blame it all on Grýla. Iceland's ogress-in-chief is mother to the Yule Lads and the keeper of Jólakötturinn. Worse, she roams around all year--and she straight-up wants to eat your children. You'll know it's her even with all these trolls and monsters around. She has signature long ears, a tail, nasty-black teeth. She'll hit you up for charity and expect to be paid. In children, preferably, to stuff them in her sack and carry them off for the boiling pot.

Hey, Iceland is a spooky place. Ghostly spirits--draugur--haunt the wide basalt plains. Deep lakes and crevices hide monsters waiting for the unwary. Craggy rocks might be trolls that come alive at night. Or those rocks might be an elf's home--and elves don't like to be disturbed. It's why Icelandic roads and paths often veer around otherwise removable boulders. Nobody is taking chances. 

And nobody should. Iceland is a dangerous place. Isolated, desolate. Long, deep nights, glacier-carved crevices, slick rocks, slicing winds, geothermal vents, toxic pools, lava ooze. There's not enough to eat for wolves or bears to survive. If you wanted to last the winter in Iceland, you had to be ready. You worked together, sweated every detail, wasted nothing. You sure as hell didn't go wandering off alone.

Small wonder, then, that Icelanders started inventing stories to scare the snot out of their kids. Playing too near the rocks? That's a troll there. Set off on a foolhardy hike? Grýla will get you. Not doing your part to gather wool before winter? No clothes for you, then. You're going to get awfully cold. Watch the sheep, finish your meal, clean the dishes. Domestic lessons could be life-or-death in the thin margins of December.

So, in the old Icelandic spirit, come together this holiday season. Come together, stick together, grit it out. Give generously--clothes, not children. And me, I'm not saying that noise outside is a troll-kin. But I'm not saying it's not. It's a weird, wild world out there, and now we know to play it safe.

 

An Unsolicited Analysis of the Louvre Heist

In the late Sixteenth Century, King Henry IV wanted space at the Louvre to flaunt his sweet art collection. Got it, his builders said, and they added a long second-story hall atop the Petite Galerie wing. In 1661, a fire destroyed that gallery, as some fires do. By then, Louis XIV was in charge. Louis had the hall rebuilt to hype his Sun King persona. The lavish hall, dubbed the Galerie d'Apollon, included a grand balcony overlooking the Seine so that royal-type things could happen out there. It was below this balcony where, on Sunday, October 19^th, 2025, at 0930 local time, four guys parked a basket lift.

Seven minutes later, the guys made off with an estimated €88 million chunk of the French Crown Jewels. It could've been more, but mistakes were made.

THE SET-UP

A few days earlier, a few guys arrived at an equipment rental company north of Paris. Their construction gig required a basket lift, or so they said. Très bien, the rental company said, but this being France, the guys had to come by for training and paperwork. The crew jacked the lift right off the lot.

Only two guys rode up that lift and went inside the Louvre. By all reports, they knew what they were after, and they carried what was required. No guns were spotted throughout the crime. Rifles would've slowed them down, and there wasn't going to be a gunfight.

It bears repeating that this was the Louvre. That Louvre, the one that 8.7 million people visited in 2024, more than any other museum. On October 19^th, the Louvre opened at its standard 09h00. Thousands of people streamed inside. Outside, thousands more gawked and wandered. Cars and tour buses rumbled past. Down on the Seine, cruising bateaux would have phone cameras trained on the palace. Being this famous– this observed– lent the Louvre a sense of untouchability.

Which proved a vulnerability. 

THE BUDGET

The Louvre isn't just the most visited museum on Earth. It's also the world's largest museum. The Denon Wing, which includes the Galerie d'Apollon, runs along the river for over a half-kilometre. In all, the Louvre has hundreds of rooms with thousands of entry points to secure.

And the Louvre was already old when Henry IV sought his art collection flex. Today, repairs and refurbishments are never-ending. The Denon Wing façade, for example. Its slow restoration inured any onlookers to what was definitely not two construction guys rising toward that Galerie d'Apollon balcony.

The Louvre was on notice. Forget 1911's theft of the Mona Lisa. In September 2025 alone, robberies hit the Adrien Dubouche Museum in Limoges and Paris' National History Museum. The thing is, security upgrades aren't simple installations when the palace itself is part of the display. The rooms must be retrofitted, and upgrades can't impede visitor flow or buzzkill the palatial vibe. 

Audits showed that the Louvre's security had fallen behind and estimated the price tag to catch up at €800 million. You know, public audits. The shortfalls extended to operating budgets. The Louvre had trimmed security staff to balance the books. Rightly, those guards raised a stink about fewer staff watching mounting crowds. You know, a public stink.

A museum's risk calculus hinges on the bad guy's reality: Art theft doesn't pay. This kind of job costs seed money. If it comes off, and if the manhunt can be eluded, and if the pieces aren't ruined in the process, no viable market exists for one-of-a-kind paintings or sculptures. The only options are to offload the haul for a pittance--with deep, survival-based reasons to suspect any potential buyers--or ransom back the haul. 

The calculus flaw: The Louvre has more than art on display. 

THE LOOT

If you've been an imperial player nation long enough, you've banked coin on trade and accumulated your share of plunder. You've dug up prehistoric artifacts and developed ceremonial accoutrements. Such is France. Housed in the Galerie d'Apollon are Charlemagne's sword, blinged-out crowns, and some of the world's most famous mega-diamonds.

Now, you can't sell a 56-karat renowned diamond any easier than you could the Venus de Milo. But diamonds can be cut. Gold is quickly melted. The result is fast, untraceable currency.

THE STRATEGY

Sunday morning. Traffic is lighter. The world moves a little slower. Less of a museum crowd to complain, probably less security. The timing's brilliance is its understanding, thirty minutes after opening, where that crowd would be. The Louvre is sprawling. It takes a while to check a bag, to ooh and aah, to decide where to start. At 0930, the crowd is still clustered near the entrance. Security clusters accordingly. 

At 0934, the two guys used a disc cutter to defeat the Galerie window glass. An alarm sounded. Security on duty radioed in about the intrusion. Security retreated, correctly, when the guys flashed power tools. Museum security's priority is crowd safety, and this job started out looking like a terrorist attack. While the Louvre moved into evacuation mode, the guys had a free shot. 

THE MISTAKES

Early accounts of the heist were clouded in shock value. These guys had outdone a movie plot, so they must've been a real-life Ocean's Eleven. Brash opportunists, yes. Brilliant in their boldness, yes. Consummate professionals? Consider what went wrong.

Mistake 1: Thinking narrowly.

The guys weren't looking for large objects, so in the interest of speed, they cut small holes in the display glass, so small that they struggled to reach in and grab their targets. They scraped up Empress Eugénie's crown while wriggling it through the tight opening. The crown, it should be mentioned, contains a reputed 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds.

Again, this was the Louvre and the French Crown Jewels. There wouldn't be just a little heat after this job. You can't just lie low. Every asset the French had or any favor they could call in would be deployed out of national pride. Out of political imperative. In retrospect, big thinking by one lens is myopic by another.

Mistake 2: Taking too long. 

Seven minutes. Three inside the Galerie. In jewel heist terms, this is an eternity's eternity. The guys must've understood they had a longer time window with the Louvre's scale. The guys put those extra minutes to use. 

This failed to account for other moving parts. Security knew exactly where the guys entered. While the guys were cutting display cases, guards outside rallied toward the basket lift.

Mistake 3: Dropping stuff. 

Eugénie's crown hadn't suffered its last indignity. By when the guys rode back down, a situation was already developing on Quai du Louvre. In their haste to clean up and bug out, the crown fell onto the street, bedazzled jewelry and all. It lay damaged and abandoned for hours.

Mistake 4: Failing to torch the basket lift. 

What the hell to do with a stolen basket lift was always going to be troublesome. The guys couldn't hightail out anywhere in that thing. By then, this was the most recognizable truck in France. The solution? The guys poured accelerant on the truck and tried to torch it along with their discarded equipment.

Too late. Security was already engaged. Guards stopped the fire while the guys sped off with the eight pieces they hadn't dropped.

This is 2025. Closed-circuit TV is everywhere. Smartphone clips, traffic cameras. Recreating the approach and escape routes would be simple enough. And there is always trace evidence. French authorities found beaucoup at the scene for their forensics gurus, over 150 samples and even more in physical evidence, headgear, cutting tools, the works.

The French have been canny about how much they knew and how quickly. But they knew a lot quickly, enough to arrest suspects as they tried to flee the country.

THE CRIME OF THE CENTURIES

The stolen jewels haven't been recovered. It's a fair wager that the cutting started quickly. If the French do recover anything, that feels almost accidental at this point, another mistake in a crime born and unraveled from mistakes. 

No matter how this ends, a few things will remain clear. Fortune favors the bold, but history tends to even the score.

Irwin Allen's Second Act: The Master of Disaster

Bob's note: Last month, Part 1 covered Irwin Allen becoming a producer/director of high-concept, plot-holed films and TV shows. His highest highs and lowest lows were still to come…

By the late 1960s, Irwin Allen had done it all in Hollywood. He'd worked his way up from gossip columnist and quiz show host to become a big-name producer. He'd scored hits– and misses– and a reputation for ambitious premises and showbiz spectacle. He'd spent most of the 60s running network series like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964-1968) and Lost in Space (1966-1968). But he wanted back into filmmaking, and his timing couldn't have been better.

Hollywood was upping the action in films. Because they could, with better special effects, and because the studios had no choice. This television-acclimated audience expected faster storytelling and a rapid succession of crises. Hollywood needed producers who understood fast plotting and fast-paced action.

Allen's next act had arrived.

THE MASTERSTROKE

Universal had tempered hopes for Airport (1970). Star-studded cast or not, the "this flight is in trouble" thing had been done before. But Airport was a blockbuster hit, grossing $128 million worldwide ($1.1 billion in 2025 terms), a huge sum before modern mega-franchises. Critics were left scratching their heads at what had just happened. They coined a new term, the "disaster movie," and braced for more.

Allen had seen the trend coming. While Airport was still in production, he'd already lined up The Poseidon Adventure, a Paul Gallico novel not even published yet. Allen bought the rights for $225,000 after binge-reading an advance copy. An ocean liner capsizes at sea, and if the characters survive the unfolding wreckage, they have a narrow time window to climb to the ship's bottom and get out somehow. "Hell upside down," Allen called it.

Allen's first decision might've been his best. Sure, he could direct a boat turning upside down, but the audience needed to feel it when the cast died off one-by-one. Emotional resonance wasn't in his wheelhouse. Allen sought out director Ronald Neame based on his reputation for complex shoots and character nuance. Allen sold Neame that this wouldn't be just a disaster flick. This would be the best disaster flick they could pull off.

Next, Allen moved to package his all-star cast. Burt Lancaster--the Airport lead--and George C. Scott turned down the main role of Reverend Scott. Down the list was Gene Hackman, who was cementing his image as an engaging tough guy and terrific actor. Allen arranged for an advance screening of Hackman's The French Connection (1971). Impressed, Allen secured Hackman quickly, also a great decision. Hackman won his second Oscar for the movie, giving Allen a buzzy lead actor.

In all, five Oscar winners signed on to the ensemble: Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Shelley Winters, and Jack Albertson. This was the acting chops Neame demanded. Neame wanted the disaster shown on a human level, a gut level, with monologues and arguments and anguished close-ups. If the performances chewed the scenery now and then, well, this was an upside-down ship.

Allen had packaged a grand vision that no studio would touch. The $5 million projected cost scared off Paramount, Universal, Warner Brothers, everyone. Even Allen's initial backer, Avco Embassy, bailed when the price tag soared. Allen forged ahead on his own dime. By 1969, he was in $600,000 deep on The Poseidon Adventure.

MASTERING DISASTER

Look, Allen told Twentieth Century Fox, clearly he believed in his capsized ship thing or he wouldn't have financed it this far. He proposed to keep financing it. A partnership, he said. Allen would front the first $2.4 million to get the shooting underway. Fox would finance $2.4 million thereafter to finish and distribute the picture, and Fox would have final approval on big decisions. Any risk was Allen's.

It was an easy yes, a project on-trend and with Hackman, the script, the prep, and the director all wrapped up and ready to go. Especially the director. Look, Fox told Allen, you can be, like, way over the top. Fox stipulated that Neame must stay as director. Allen could– and did– help direct the mayhem sequences.

Allen had to console himself with a producer's fee paid from Fox's half and 10% of the backend participation. And a cut of the merch sales. And on the soundtrack, which produced Maureen McGovern's Oscar-winning "The Morning After."

EVERYTHING UPSIDE DOWN

Allen had been right about the whole project. The Poseidon Adventure raked in $125 million ($1 billion in 2025 dollars). The movie finished second in that year's box office gross, after The Godfather, and leaped among Fox's best-ever performers.

Needless to say, Fox was listening when Allen pitched his next project. True to form, Allen was thinking big, real big, but now so was Fox. Every studio was scrambling to get disaster epics into production. Universal was rushing out not one but two Charlton Heston films, a sequel to Airport and the standalone Earthquake. The field was so crowded that Fox was outbid for the rights to Allen's target novel, Richard Martin Stern's The Tower.

Plan B dropped in Allen's lap two months later. Fox was sent another skyscraper disaster novel, The Glass Inferno, with a near plug-and-play story for Allen's screenplay. Fox snatched up the rights. The problem was that two studios were making essentially the same tower fire movie on essentially the same release schedule.

Look, Allen told Fox and Warner Brothers, we can either team up on one major idea, or we can both flop separately. He was making sense. Multi-million-dollar sense. Fox and Warner Brothers partnered for their first-ever joint production, Allen's The Towering Inferno. As part of the deal, Allen again had to keep out of the director's chair.

The Towering Inferno's production budget was three times that of The Poseidon Adventure, much of it invested in star power. Steve McQueen and Paul Newman co-headlined at $1 million salaries. William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire, Jennifer Jones, Richard Chamberlain, and Robert Wagner also didn't come cheap.

The bet paid off. The Towering Inferno grossed over $200 million worldwide (over $1 billion in 2025 dollars).

SHARK IN THE WATER

Fox had a man on a hot streak. Hey, they said to Allen, you should think about creative cross-promotion, and they had just the project. Fox was sitting on the underperforming Marineland of the Pacific outside Los Angeles. Allen was to rebuild it as Fox World, a theme park based around his disaster films and TV shows. If that sounds like Disneyland but short on magic, you're not alone. The park flopped and was sold off to SeaWorld.

Worse, there was blood in the movie waters. Jaws (1975) exploded onto the scene and ushered in a new way big-budget movies would be made and marketed. Jaws was a summer release, a season Allen scrupulously avoided as dead. Jaws had a smaller cast, a smaller idea, and a tighter focus on character depth. Allen's package formula, his 40-year synthesis of learning Hollywood's spectacle machine inside and out, was suddenly passé.

Fox saw it. They watched late-to-trend disaster films cannibalize each other while different takes like Star Wars (1977) grabbed the cultural reins. Fox canceled the remainder of Allen's production deal.

Allen pressed on. The Master of Disaster still had no shortage of ideas. Warner Brothers hired him on, banking that his instincts were still right. The proof they'd gone wrong came quickly: The Swarm (1978). Allen's usual package of script and Oscar winners tanked. More had changed than the times. Allen hadn't packaged a director this time. He took the chair himself, and as Fox had guarded against, the movie indulged Allen's love of cheese. Beyond The Poseidon Adventure (1979) and When Time When Ran Out (1980) did no better financially or critically.

The disaster era was done.

IT'S A WRAP

For another decade, Allen continued to craft small-budget films and television projects until health forced him into retirement. He'd had the run of runs, a player who'd cut big deals and worked with the finest actors of his time. When Allen's stuff was good, it was good. Even when he wasn’t, everything turned out okay. His work never lacked zeal, a rare talent that earned him both an Oscar and a Golden Raspberry Worst Career Achievement Award.

More importantly, Allen did what he set out to do. He'd put on one hell of a show.

Give 'Em the Rock and Roll: Irwin Allen, Part 1

Back in the Network Era of television, directors used a particular camera shot to simulate an almighty kinetic shock or battle damage. The camera tilted one way while on cue the actors threw themselves in the opposite direction. Back and forth they went, the actors seeming to tumble--though nary a chair moved or a piece of paper ruffled. Hey, this was the 1960s. No CGI, no virtual artists, just production ingenuity and choreographed camp. 

There is an industry name for that stumble-about shot: the Irwin Allen Rock-and-Roll.

Fifty years after his height of heights, Allen is a surprisingly quiet figure in Hollywood history. Here was a writer-director-producer and film biz insider for decades. The Rock-and-Roll was Allen. If you've ever uttered the phrases "Danger, Will Robinson!" or "Crush, kill, destroy," that was Allen, too. He would come to style himself the "profit of doom," and he wasn't wrong. 

A PROFIT IS BORN

Allen--Irwin Cohen, by birth--grew up in Great Depression New York City. His Plan A was a career in journalism or advertising, but his family couldn't swing the college tuition past one year at Columbia. In 1938, he packed up and moved to Los Angeles, where an industrious young man might had a better shot --and Allen was born a self-promoter extraordinaire. He had brains, charisma, and pure sales guile. 

Allen caught on quickly as a magazine editor and studio publicist. Soon, he'd build a major L.A. literary agency--P.G. Wodehouse was a client--and was matching authors with studios. Allen's punchy gossip column, The Hollywood Merry-Go-Round, dished movie industry dirt in 73 newspapers on Wednesdays and Saturdays. In 1941, he leveraged his contact list to launch a radio quiz show version of his column. It only ran in L.A. and targeted that insider audience--and it was a hit. 

In 1949, he expanded the show to television, in a celebrity panel format. Here, and wisely, Allen sensed his limits. Print and radio were one thing, but television demanded a more versatile and lightning-witted host. He turned to rising talent Steve Allen (no relation) to front the show while Irwin stayed behind the camera to produce.  

This was 1950. Allen was 32. He had presence, instinct, a massive platform, well-placed friends, and all the insider skinny. He'd spent a decade hobnobbing with studio bosses--and watching the bosses lose power to independent producers. In this new game, the independent producer bought rights, commissioned a script, convinced a director and lead actors to sign on, and pitched the package deal to the highest bidder. 

And now Allen had production experience.

ACADEMY AWARDS AND MONITOR LIZARDS

Allen's first packaged sales were a catch-all, a noir picture with Robert Mitchum and comedies with Groucho Marx and Frank Sinatra. With a few projects under his belt, Allen took a shot at directing. A documentary, of all things, but the departure was smart. He wouldn't be directing actors so much as controlling the visuals, and as was his gift, he was on trend. 

The post-WWII years marked a leap forward in ocean exploration. Ships were more capable. Submarines braved deeper depths. This was the Jacques Cousteau heyday, and conservationist Rachel Carlson had written the best-selling and award-winning The Sea Around Us (1953) that captured these new oceanographic insights. Allen bought the rights and put it on the big screen.  His version played up the gore and toned down the poetics, which infuriated Carlson but scored at the box office. 

Independent producers self-financed, and sending film crews out to sea cost a small fortune. Instead, Allen contacted marine organizations and scholars worldwide for their ocean film. In all, he assembled 1.6 million feet of stock footage and edited the contributions down to a 62-minute narrative without ever getting wet. The Sea Around Us won an Oscar. 

Warner Brothers took note. Allen sold them not one but three packages. He delved deep into their stock footage vaults to stitch together The Animal World (1956) and its scenes of grazing herds and hungry lions. For his dinosaur segment, Allen had to be talked out of stationary plastic models and actually animate a dino fight. For his high-concept The Story of Mankind (1957), Allen hired Grade A-actors like Hedy Lamarr, the Marx Brothers, Vincent Price, and Peter Lorre--for one day's work each. Everyone breezed through a key historical figure spliced in around stock footage. The movie revels in thin excess and reached that near-reverent status of delightfully bad cinema.

But it was a spectacle, and Allen was the happy sidewalk barker. 20th Century Fox was looking for spectacles to spice up their summer sci-fi adventure. These were the drive-in years, when the blockbusters got held for winter. Allen sold Fox a three-package deal. First up would be another run at Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World (1960). 

The 1925 film version is remembered for its innovations in stop-motion. Fox even brought in that same stop-motion team to create a modernized dino battle royale. Allen, though, had been upsold on dino action before. Too expensive, too much production schedule lost. Instead, he insisted the crew dress up young monitor lizards and alligators as dinosaurs. His lost jungle was stock-footage Brazil, his plot not much more than a premise. The drive-in crowd loved it; critics and city theatres, not so much.

For his part, Allen was playing to the crowd. More importantly, he'd introduced what would become his most winning formula: complicated disaster scenario, large cast getting bumped off one by one, a show for the show's sake.

A FANTASTIC VOYAGE

Allen's follow-up, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961), leaned into public interest in new super-cool subs and the dawning of the Space Age. A synopsis: Admiral Harriman Nelson and his high-tech submarine battle saboteurs, bureaucrats, and a giant squid to save Earth from the Van Allen Belt caught on fire. Importantly, the Van Allen Belt cannot possibly, under any scenario, catch on fire. It's in space. In an Irwin Allen movie, it's best not to examine the holes. Seriously, icebergs sink. This time, though, Allen crafted an A-ish movie. The Lost World had made Fox a small profit. Voyage's $7 million haul tripled its budget.

Allen was going bigger, bolder. His budget asks grew accordingly, but Fox was getting nervous. They hadn't signed him to swing for the fences. His next film, Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962), proved Fox right to worry. The Jules Verne adaptation only recovered half its $2.4 million cost.  

But television was booming. Fox needed bold, weekly adventures, and Allen had been thinking ahead. When the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea production wrapped, he'd put the expensive submarine sets in storage for future use. Voyage the television show didn't just have the glow of a recent winner. It had paid-for, movie-grade staging. 

Season one of Voyage (1964) found a solid audience in its ABC Monday night slot. The light sci-fi, Cold War-esque format earned decent reviews. It made money, too, despite Allen's insistence on movie-like production value to match his sets. It was aboard the Seaview that the Rock-and-Roll came alive.

Network execs were listening when Allen pitched his second series. Imagine, Allen told CBS, the Swiss Family Robinson, but as space colonists hopelessly off-course. Such a family could navigate weekly crises and yet manage to grow closer. 

Great, CBS said, until they saw the pilot. Goose the conflict, CBS said, and add more tech. Allen wrote in an antagonist, Dr. Smith, and a talking robot full of warnings. Toss in more impossible science and a lot of production sharing with Voyage, and Lost in Space was born.

Allen's shows clicked with audiences. Until they didn't.

SOCKED

In 1966, Batman hit television as a craze no one expected. Batman ran opposite Lost in Space and quickly stole Allen's prized young viewership. Allen was forced to fight camp with camp. He turned to catchphrases and wackier plots, but that only stemmed the bleeding. 

Voyage also had lost steam. It'd devolved into creature-of-the-week romps, with Allen recycling costumes between his shows to keep costs down. Meanwhile, Lassie was winning the time slot while definitely not battling sea monsters. Then there was the fact that Allen ran the two priciest television sets in town. Voyage was scrapped. Allen wrapped Lost in Space rather than accept the network's cost-cutting demands.

His third series, The Time Tunnel (ABC, 1966), scored an Emmy but not an audience. The fourth, The Land of the Giants (ABC, 1968) set the production budget back $250,000 per episode despite Allen's penchant for stock footage. The network cuts its losses after two seasons.   

Four shows, all respected for their ambition and entertainment value, all quick to develop a cult following, all too expensive for television. 

What Allen needed was another run at the big screen--and his timing couldn't have been better. Audience tastes were shifting back toward event movies, what he dubbed a movie movie. 

Allen's next act had arrived. It would definitely rock and roll.

Who Almost Got the Part

In life, some doors open and some doors close. Some doors are forced open, and some are walked past with scarcely a nod. And some people expected someone else to walk through those doors. What follows is a look back at hugely popular crime series with hugely popular leads--who weren't Plan A for the part. 

Perry Mason (1957-1966)

Who they wanted: Ephrem Zimbalist, Jr. 

Who got the part: Raymond Burr. Burr read for the D.A. but angled for Mason. He had to lose weight in a hurry, but he wrangled the part.

Interesting Fact: William Hopper also read for Mason but didn't nail it (his mom had prior run-ins with some of the crew). They loved him as Paul Drake.

Columbo (1968, 1971-1977, 1989-2003)

Who they wanted: Bing Crosby. TV work didn't fit with his golf schedule. 

Who got the part: Peter Falk. His enthusiasm for the part won over the producers, who then got everyone onboard despite his being young for the role.

Interesting fact: Burt Freed (1960) and Thomas Mitchell (1962) played early versions of Columbo before Falk took over for the TV movies.

Miami Vice (1984-1990)

Who the network wanted for Crockett: Nick Nolte and Jeff Bridges were the pipe dreams. Larry Wilcox (CHiPS) was a serious option, but it didn't click.

Who got the part: Don Johnson. He would later get into a serious contract dispute and was nearly replaced by Mark Harmon.

Interesting fact: The lead casting issue lingered on for so long that it delayed production twice. 

Murder, She Wrote (1984-1996)

Who the network wanted: Jean Stapleton, a few years clear of All in the Family. 

Who got the part: Angela Lansbury. She read the script and saw a character she could bring to life.

Interesting fact: Lansbury proved her sleuth appeal in the Agatha Christie adaption The Mirror Crack'd (1980). The film wasn't a hit. Otherwise, Lansbury might've instead been forever known as Ms. Marple.

The X-Files (1993-2002, 2016-2017)

Who the network wanted for Scully: Pamela Anderson. Not a typo. Fox considered Anderson an affordable nod to Sharon Stone.

Who got the part: Gillian Anderson. Her cerebral and refined take wowed at auditions, and the showrunners sold her to Fox as the perfect Scully.

Interesting fact: David Duchovny also impressed in his audition. The showrunners thought he was too laconic and asked him act more like an FBI agent.

NCIS (2003-present)

Who the network wanted for Gibbs: Nobody and everybody. Scott Glenn and Andrew McCarthy both passed. Rumor has it that Don Johnson also turned down the role.

Who got the part: Mark Harmon.

Interesting fact: Some would call Harmon's 19 seasons a good run.

Breaking Bad (2008-2013)

Who the network wanted for Walter: John Cusack or Matthew Broderick. Both declined.

Who got the part: Bryan Cranston. He'd been the writer's choice from working with him on The X-Files. AMC kept seeing him on Malcolm in the Middle. 

Interesting fact: Aaron Paul (Jesse) and Dean Norris (Hank) also won their roles in part thanks to The X-Files guest spots.

Sherlock (2010-2017)

Who they wanted for Watson: They had no idea, but it had to click with Benedict Cumberbatch's Holmes. Matt Smith auditioned but was too comic. He took the producer's offer to play Dr. Who instead.

Who got the part: Martin Freeman. He proved the perfect grounding persona for the high-functioning sociopath Holmes. 

Interesting fact: Cumberbatch's real-life parents portray Holmes' parents.

True Detective (Season One, 2014)

Who they wanted for Marty Hart: Matthew McConaughey. He angled for and got the other cop partner, Rust Cohle.

Who got the part: Woody Harrelson. McConaughey pushed successfully to get Harrelson onboard. 

Interesting fact: The roles attracted established movie vets because it was a doable one-season anthology gig, not a multi-year commitment.

The Foot Is What You Need It to Be, and an Ox Gave You the Mile

My bookcase was in the wrong spot somehow, like a feng shui thing. Moving it across the room could open up everything. Maybe, if the spot was wide enough. I didn't have a measuring device handy, but seriously, our ancestors tamed fire and wolves using only their wits. So I measured the bookcase the old-fashioned way. 

I walked it heel-to-toe. 

And as I did, I had a thought: This is a horrible way to measure things. A Bob foot depends on how straight I step, whether I'm wearing shoes and how clunky. But that's exactly how those ancestors built up our world, by body part intervals. It's a weird and wonderful story.

Old School

A finger is a common measure across history. A Sumerian noir detective might splash a few fingers of Mesopotamian hooch. Or a hand's worth, the width of the palm. A span measures extended fingertips from the thumb to the little finger. A fathom is the length of outstretched arms, which helped sailors mark off rope for sounding lines. As a bonus, arm span approximates human height. If water is more than a fathom deep, your feet don't touch the bottom. 

The Babylonians and Sumerians were all about the arm. Specifically, the cubit, or a forearm's length from the elbow to the middle finger's tip. The Egyptians got together on a standard, the Royal Cubit (20.6 modern inches). Approved measuring devices--cubit rods and ropes knotted at cubit intervals--made sure nobody went rogue. The Royal Cubit built the pyramids. 

The cubit was the way to go until Greeks stepped in with an idea. Literally. 

To the Greeks, measuring by arms and elbows had an obvious limitation: The world is a big place. They weren't about to go around planning city-states and sea routes with arms and rope. 

"Check it out," the Greeks said. "We're walking around on measuring devices super ideal for distance." The human foot, or a Greek pous (podes in plural), the length of a foot wearing a shoe or sandal. A pace, or a walking step with each foot falling once, equaled 5 podes.

If pacing seems like a variable standard, it was. Taller Greeks took longer strides. Younger ones strode more briskly. Was the pace-taker in good health? Going uphill or downhill? What were the weather and ground conditions? Ten Greeks taking 120 paces would travel ten different distances. The local pous could be anything from 12.4 to 12.7 modern inches. Over 120 paces, that's a six-foot swing.

Still, the Greeks were stepping out distances. The critical distance was 600 podes (120 paces), or a stadion -- literally, "to stand" or "standard." The total harmonized with the Greek base-60 system for precise measurements--a Babylonian idea still around today for marking time, longitude and latitude, and celestial coordinates. The stadion also became a standard track length for footraces. Over time, those races were so popular that the length name latched onto the events and tracks themselves.

The Roman Standard

Unsurprisingly, the Romans borrowed the Greek system. A pous became a pes, and podes became pedes. But the Romans, thinking in scalable terms, used a base-10 decimal system for big stuff like bulk trading and infrastructure. A Roman surveyor stepping off distances had to keep going to a nice, round 1,000 paces--or in Latin, the mille passus. 

Variability was intolerable if you were set on marching around and expanding your influence, which the Romans were. And the Romans could organize.

In the Empire, all roads really did lead to Rome. Their road network moved soldiers and officials expeditiously along mapped routes to even the farthest outpost. Those Roman surveyors used odometers to measure and map their precise-ish distances. At each standard mile, the Romans placed obelisks or stones--millaria--notionally to mark the distance from the Forum. 

More to the point, everyone knew who was in charge. 

Rome stretched the Greek stadion to 625 paces (pedes), or a one-eighth mille. Sporting-wise, the Romans lengthened and looped their tracks for chariot racing (the circus) and more graphic sports. Like the Greeks, Romans just called the whole entertainment venue the Latinized stadium. 

It was quite a time for distance measurements. Order and function.

Well, Rome fell.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Out on their island, all post-Roman, the Old English Anglo-Saxons were getting bloody attached to land measures not based on body parts. The Anglo-Saxon idea? Oxen.

The idea focused on area. The Anglo-Saxons clustered their farmland near rivers, and crucially, they kept oxen to help out. It's no fun turning an ox team and plow. Both dynamics meant most Old English parcels were long but thin. 

A key distance became the "rod." The word had meant a pole or a perch, from the Roman pertica, a pike-ish stick of varying lengths and used for surveying land. Or, of course, for goading oxen. The Anglo-Saxons gauged a rod at fifteen feet. This was the Germanic long foot, roughly 13.2 modern inches.

The oxen couldn't have cared less about math and ratios, but they were invested in their workload. "Aha," the Anglo-Saxons said, having noted how far an oxen team usually plowed without a rest. The Anglo-Saxons dubbed that a furrow's length--a furhlang, or eventually a furlong. The acre ran one furlong long by four rods wide, or what an oxen team could plow in one day. An oxgang--15 acres--was how much an ox could handle over a whole plowing season. 

As not to give the oxen too much say, the Anglo-Saxons improved their survey tools and huddled up on a standard. Everyone decided a furlong should be 600 feet, comprised of 40 rods or 200 yards. Well done, all.

Then the Normans came along. Being the continental sort, they weren't sold on ox-based distances, not at all, and they set about implementing proper Roman distances. The main obstacle was immediate. Immovable. Everyone's property lines were measured in long-established rods and furlongs and taxed accordingly. Using the shorter 12-inch Norman foot would've recalculated each holding to more acreage, which risked a major tax hike and likely revolt. 

How, then, did the Normans solve for converting oxen steps to human paces?

They didn't. The furlong remained at its Germanic length--but it would be comprised of 660 Norman feet, not 600 Germanic ones. A rod stayed a rod--with a 10% promotion from 15 to 16.5 feet. 

Tax crisis averted. Still, England was a growing power. Having its land, sea, and economic interests measured differently left the Crown at sixes and sevens. Someone needed to sort it out.

Cut to 1593. Elizabethan decision-makers were in whatever royal planning committee, everybody stewing over how the whole realm needed global scale but was anchor-tied to rods and furlongs. Fair play to the oxen, the planners admitted. "Oy," Duke Someone said, "what about the Romans and their stadium one-eighth mile business? That was what, 600-something feet? Couldn't we just go with that?" 

They did precisely that. Elizabeth I proclaimed eight Germanic furlongs to be an English mile comprised of 5,280 Norman feet. In 1959, that distance was codified as the international mile, which was greeted with a shrug in Rome. They'd long since moved to the kilometer.

Meanwhile, in my Basement

There I was, measuring a bookcase by stepping it off heel-to-toe. In Skechers, size 8.5. The bookshelf was pretty much five Bob feet wide--too wide by half a Bob foot. For the record, a Bob foot is essentially the length they used back in Rome. 

The bookcase and its flow situation sit as they were. I'm cool with one thing, though. Even in failure, I'd joined an ancient tradition based on body shapes and imperial whim and even oxen work ethic, a tradition of measuring badly--but accurately.

The official Bob foot, shod

Writing About Writing...About Talking

I haven't written about writing in a while, and this being a writers' blog, I should pitch in. And I'll write about, well, talking. The characters, anyway. Dialogue.

TO GET SOMETHING OUT OF THE WAY

Writers have opinions about things like "dialogue" versus "dialog." Both are acceptable under reputable style guides. I use "dialogue" exclusively unless somebody is interacting with a computer. "Dialog" is more specific to speech, meaning interactions such as "hello" and "pass the salt." "Dialogue" is more expansive, implying a progression or learning tied to the discussion. Writers should write character interchanges that propel events, that lead to something new. Hence, it's "dialogue" for me.

Harrumph. 

I'm less-is-more when it comes to dialogue. It has its purpose, and nothing is better at that purpose. Dialogue freezes time while someone takes that spotlight. Dialogue is the character framer. Dialogue is the big reveal, the perfect riposte, the thing that must be said. But spotlights, like stories, must move. Narrative moves. It's malleable. Narrative plays with ideas and time in ways dialogue often can't. 

When a moment calls for dialogue, I have a general approach, and it goes like so:

1: WHY DOES IT NEED TO BE SAID?

We're writing fiction here. Verisimilitude. It's a crafted world, right down to what people say to each other. Dialogue isn't conversation. 

My early drafts can be guilty of dialogue running long. The characters get in a back-and-forth groove, but the story stops dead in its tracks. 

Let's say Bill and Doug are getting together to watch a game. Real-life discussion might go:

"Hey, man," Bill said. "What's up, brother?"

"Same old," Doug said.

"Grab a beer. Kick-off is in like five minutes."

"Great. Thanks."

"Pizza?" Bill said. "I was thinking pizza."

"Killer. Hey, turn the sound up."

"Sure. What a game this is, right?"

Let me clean that up.

"Hey, man," Bill said. "What's up, brother?"

"Same old," Doug said.

"Grab a beer. Kick-off is in like five minutes."

"Great. Thanks."

"Pizza?" Bill said. "I was thinking we order Giuseppe's."

"Killer. Hey, turn the sound up."

"Sure. What a game this is, right?" Bill cleared his throat. "Man, I am mad in love with your wife."

That's a story. That's what needs to be said. Now, some dialogue ahead of that showing Bill working up to the big reveal could be great. And much argument should follow, but where to sit and where to get pizza? It better be critical to something later.

Novels deserve more latitude. Novels are long. Readers need pauses and key fact reminders to help hold plot and character arcs together. Still, it's one thing to summon everyone into the drawing room to rehash the clues. It's another thing to hold a 10-page chinwag.

2: WOULD ANYONE EVER SAY THAT?

You know where I'm going.

"So, Agent Coolguy," Bigbad said. "Now that you're my prisoner, I suppose it's fitting that I explain my evil plan. At length. Yes, you were right that I've been buying up all the fast-casual restaurants west of the Pecos. What you weren't clever enough to see is yadda yadda yadda."

Yes, the dreaded Monologue. 

Or:

"As we all know," Madge said, "it's quite mild here this time of season. It's when the tourists come, as we also all know, they come for our famous lobster races. One reason they are famous is that the races were illegal for many years until in 1886 Mayor Codfish up and died. From fatty lobster, the legend goes. Well, what were we talking about?"

Call this the Basil Exposition, the Michael York character in Austin Powers who pops up with a recitation of backstory. Then there's Stating The Obvious. You know, characters just speaking explain-y facts and spot-on deductions at each other.  

HARDEDGE: The shooter must have been on the fire escape. High-cal weapon. 45mm, I'd say.

KICKSIDE: That's elite marksmanship. You're not saying the perp was Special Forces like you? 

HARDEDGE: That's exactly what I'm saying.

I get that word count or run-time pressure might require shoehorning in facts, and I'm probably guilty of info-dumps myself. But things people say in fiction should be things people might actually say.

2a: WHO ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE?

I have a corollary pet peeve to Stating The Obvious: Chiming In The Obvious. Let's pick up the chase for that shooter.

HARDEDGE: That's exactly what I'm saying.

KICKSIDE: Then he's highly trained. You know, he could strike again.

SMITTY: He would need access to cleaning solvent.

DR. PROFILER: That checks out. I've been writing about this for years.

McNERD: There's been chatter on social media about scoring solvent.

ROOK: We should head over to the Army base. They have a lot of solvent there.

CHIEF: Army? Good call, kid. This is a really tense moment. I want everyone's A-game, got it?

NOTGONNAMAKEIT: Come on, Rook. Let's hit that base.

I like big ensemble casts. What distracts me is when everyone gets a toss-in line apparently because it's a big cast. Dialogue hits harder when it's person-to-person, not group brainstorming.

3: WOULD THAT CHARACTER SAY THAT?

Nature and nurture make us each our own person. What we say and how we say it is a product of place, culture, education, life experience, and so forth. That singularly created individual is who has the dialogue spotlight. Let them be singular.

Speaking of which, first-person point of view. Of my published stories, first-person perspective tops third-person three-to-one. I write characters, and first-person is pure character. Literally. I write every word of those as if the main character is always speaking, whether narrative or their share of dialogue. It's only the other characters who speak in another voice, their own voice. Even that gets filtered by what the main character must hear -- or is willing to hear.

4: HOW WOULD THAT CHARACTER SAY IT THEN?

A story moving along in a single flow, everything converging as it should. It's time for our characters to have an important verbal exchange. All good. But where are we in the story? What's happening at that very moment?- What's going on around them? Bill and Doug will need very different lines if that love triangle is the inciting incident versus a final showdown.

I keep the characters talking about only the story problem as it exists then and there. Exchanges might be longer or more subtextual while characters grapple with their problem. There might be more misunderstandings and talking around each other. As the problem reaches its resolution, words are more pointed, more revealing.

Going back to human nature, people shift from moment to moment. How we speak and how we phrase it changes based on mood, place, power dynamics, who we're speaking to, whether we're protecting something or we're straight-up lying. Dialogue is a combination of those choices in that moment, and it makes for characterization gold.

I'VE SAID MY PEACE

A truly powerful character choice is when to stop talking. Which I'll do now, leaving this as my take on dialogue. The approach keeps me out of trouble, mostly. And I need it, because it's easier to write about dialogue than to write actual dialogue.