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Post by roverpup on Oct 16, 2022 15:49:18 GMT
I do that with a lot of movies jbc! I think of him everytime I see a past co-star of his. And sometimes I think of how he would have done in a certain roles.
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Post by mllemass on Oct 16, 2022 16:56:10 GMT
I do that with a lot of movies jbc! I think of him everytime I see a past co-star of his. And sometimes I think of how he would have done in a certain roles. Ok, I do that too! I think the technical term for it is “obsession”. Ha!
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Post by queenzod on Oct 19, 2022 15:22:16 GMT
I watched “California Typewriter” on Peacock the other day and it was excellent. It’s an older documentary (2016), extolling the joys of punching out words, correspondence, song lyrics, or stories on a mechanical instrument, and it’s filled with all kinds of geeks and nerds who just love typewriters. It waxes rhapsodically over the unique relationship between the mind, the process of writing, and the particular thunka thunka of the keys. There’s a bit of history, a focus on this one shop that repairs and sells old typewriters, an artist who makes sculptures from unusable ones, and other creatives (including Tom Hanks), who just love them, manual or electric.
It’s well worth a watch if you’re interested in writing, want some nostalgia, or just like seeing people enjoying a wonderful thing.
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Post by mllemass on Oct 19, 2022 16:47:46 GMT
I took typing for two years in high school - not because I wanted to be a secretary one day (like my sister and most of the girls), but because we had been warned that our university professors would expect our assignments to be handed in typed. And yes, I did type all my university assignments. And knowing how to type (although not fast or well) got me two summer jobs. But really, who would have known that ten years later, and beyond, I’d be spending so much of my time at a keyboard?!
We had an older boss at work one time who was always having to apologize for not knowing how to type (or even how to use a computer). It was so surprising to me that someone from her generation never learned how, but I later found out that she was from a prominent family that would never have allowed their daughter to do lowly secretarial stuff like the other girls. She did go on to have a great career, even if she missed out on basics like typing!
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Post by roverpup on Oct 19, 2022 16:54:41 GMT
Dan wrote his first book entirely on a tiny manual portable typewriter. The editing process was... torturous! The actual cutting up of edited copy into strips and then pasting them on pages (and then taking them to the library to photocopy the pages so the pages were smooth! The gallons of "white out" and corrective "white out tape" we used for minor errors! Computers are sooooo much easier!
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Post by queenzod on Oct 19, 2022 17:19:32 GMT
I find writing on a computer much easier, too, if just for the ability to edit so quickly and neatly. I also remember years ago in college typing out the first draft on my portable manual and then getting out the scissors, cutting it into bits, taping it together, writing more by hand on this long, taped together mess of pages, and then typing it all out over again for the final version. It was tortuous!
But I do think the thought process behind gathering your words together is different between a computer and a typewriter, or especially, writing by hand. And there are those who detest the “red line of correction” that appears when you’ve made an error, because you then feel compelled to interrupt your thought process to go back and fix it, mucking with your flow.
One historian said that writing on a computer deprives us of seeing the additive and subtractive value of editing, how speeches, for example, by important people were created and how their minds worked in crafting what they wanted to say. Those who study old speeches are very interested not just in the final product, but in the process of thinking that got the author to the end point. All of that creation is lost on a computer wp program.
They also talked about the difference between making a document you can hold in your hand, something original and unique you just created by thunking out the letters onto a nice, hefty sheet of paper, and the non substantial “thing” you make on a computer which has no actual body to it. How much thought has already been lost because peoples computers crashed and they lost everything? Imagine being a songwriter and you’ve got your entire body of lyrics on a computer only to have it fail? Most likely (hopefully), they’ve printed it out, but then what you’ve got is a sanitized version of what you could have already had if you’d used a typewriter, lol.
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Post by mllemass on Oct 19, 2022 17:39:34 GMT
More on typewriters . . . Years ago, we had these monthly meetings at work where someone had to present an article for discussion. One article we discussed was about mainly about computers, but it looked back to the invention of the typewriter. It explained how when new technology is invented, people at first just use it to replace a previous invention. So the first thing people did with computers was use it as a typewriter. I think they called it “word processor” in those days.
But then they looked back at when the typewriter was invented, and what it replaced. People objected to the typewriter because before that, printing out documents was done manually, and was so difficult that it only took place when it was an important piece of writing. Now, with this typewriter, anything could be easily typed and duplicated - including bad writing. Typewriters were blamed for all the bad literature out there! Ha!
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Post by roverpup on Oct 19, 2022 18:21:58 GMT
Dan likes to print out unrefined versions of his book manuscripts.
He says he catches more errors that way.
He's a meticulous editor! Not surprising coming from a newspaper (both editing and writing professionally). I still remember when he went to TO to meet his publisher for the first time and the fellow introduced him to the book publishing team, saying that Dan's manuscript was one of THE cleanest he had ever seen. The book editors hardly had any work to do!
We went through so many typewriters over the years... starting with the little portable one, then an used IBM Selectric (only lasted a couple of month!), then an used office manual one, then we got a "hybrid" electric typewriter that also was a very rudimentary word processor, then a computer that we could put the manuscripts on floppy disks, the one that used hard disks and then FINALLY ones that saved files!!
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Post by onebluestocking on Oct 19, 2022 18:53:42 GMT
For anyone in the mood for a spooky movie, I enjoyed 'A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night' on the Criterion channel. It's a black and white Iranian-American vampire film.
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Post by MagdaFR on Oct 19, 2022 19:41:16 GMT
I watched when it was released (2014?) and I liked very much.
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