Ouch! Pirates took a wicked 63% tumble on the second weekend which means that my top ten picks on the summer are all but fucked. This, however, is the last time I'm going to benchmark my picks in situ, because the die is cast and there's little point talking about it now. I'll follow up in September.

Meanwhile, here's Mamo #85, in which we look at the future of theatrical distribution. Large and in charge.

There's a great(ish) interview with Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio up at Box Office Mojo, two men damned to be forever considered less than their actual worth. But I love 'em: they get it. They know what their shit is about, and if you look at it from their point of view, they're right about pretty much everything. And they do, indeed, have the single best reason for making Pirates 4 - so that the film critics of the world will shamelessly retcon their Pirates 3 opinions re: comprehensibility, just like they did with Pirates 1 and 2.

They also said something about Elizabeth that falls so specifically in line with a project I've been working on for a good long while that it earns full quotage:

"But it really comes down to the fact that there are not that many female protagonists that have done that whole [Joseph] Campbell hero's journey - and when they do, it's [usually] a complete imitation of the journey that a male character would take. We tried to find a way to create moments that were specific to her being a female but were no less dramatic and complete as they would be for a male character." - Ted Elliott

Charting a course for a female heroic protagonist where the choices she makes in the monomythic cycle are specifically routed in her character rather than an approximation of male choices past is, to me, the major boon of the next generation of heroic writing. To be continued.