A short time ago I picked up this journo gig to write about Ernest Cline while he was in town working the Comic-con circuit. I knew his name from way back, matter of fact I knew him before I even knew his name, because he was the guy winning all the poetry slams in Austin with nerd topical work that the guys at the game studio over there would send over. They knew him because he worked the ground floor tech industry as a day job, while writing his stuff at night.
I learned his screen style from Fanboys, and his posts outlining all of the work a screen writer goes through just to get anything finished, and then all of the sacrifices they go through to just to get it on film, and then all the sadness they go through looking back and forth at what made it from the page to the film. And then I ran into his sequel to The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension floating around the inter-webs, and then I had a pretty good idea of who he was before I even met him.
The editor told me my best chance to corner him would be at a reading he was doing at a local landmark bookstore over in Clairemont. He said I wouldn't be able to miss his entrance, because he would be driving a Delorean. Then he winked at me, and went "Yeah, a Delorian, this guy is right up your alley!" Then he jabbed me in the arm like we were in on some secret code.
I didn't have the heart to tell him I died a little inside every time someone talked about nerd life like it wasn't everywhere all the time, like it was special. Sometimes I wished he would have gone the other route and only gave me music and "culture" gigs like everybody else. There is still a certain old-timey comfort in that brand of branding.
Anyway, Ernest Cline came in and did his thing, reading from a book he had out about gaming in the future but more about a famous dev from the past who created games like adventure where there was a key for every door but they were hard to find. And he died and left a will in the form of a game with keys so hard to find that nobody could do it and everybody gave up except this one kid who had nothing else to do but look for keys, because it was all he had left to look forward to.
After his reading I hung out in the back while he chatted up the audience, and when almost everyone else had left I walked up to him and asked if he had time for a quick interview. He said it had been a long day but he would be in town a few more, so I pulled a familiarity gambit and suggested we check out a local game shop called Luna that I was sure he would enjoy, right up his alley as it were. He said sure, but was probably just saying that to be nice.
The Protoculture Mixtape v.86 Issue : Games : DMC-12
