Like a dandelion up through the pavement, I persist

The Producers

Edit: The thought belatedly occurs that people might not be familiar with the movie, so I have written a quick summary below. Spoilers ahoy, and content warning for references to Nazis.

I saw the 2005 remake of the 1967 original back in the mid-00s and I liked it a lot at the time, but once I got my hands on the original I absolutely never looked back. With all apologies to Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, accept no substitutes: it's Mostel and Wilder or bust for me.

I am incredibly fond of a lot of Mel Brooks' movies, but this one is especially dear to me. I often joke on Tumblr that I have to be sparing with rewatching it, because once I've flipped that switch I am very liable to just watch it every day for weeks and it'll become my entire personality for at minimum a month.

I'm Leo Bloom, I'm an accountant, I'm from Whitehall & Marks, I was sent here to do your books, and I'm terribly sorry I caught you with the old lady.

The main reason that I love this movie so much is Gene Wilder's portrayal of Leo Bloom, which, from the moment I first saw it, seemed like it was ripped from the headlines of my real life. He does such a wonderful job of turning on a dime from being mild-mannered and professional, talking to Max about his accounts, to completely losing it and melting down when he gets overwhelmed and... it's a joke, I know it's a joke, but it's just something that I'd never seen before, and rarely have since, which felt so much like my experience of the world and even though it was supposed to be a joke, and not a flattering one, it has always felt deeply validating to me. Some of us are very good at playing the part of a polite, professional, normal person right up until we get too anxious or overstimulated and then absolutely all the wheels fall off the wagon and we can't do it anymore and it becomes obvious how strange and not the persona we adopt to cope in the world we are, and honestly it means a lot to see that, even in a comedic context, when the character is not just a joke.

And, in this movie, Leo's arc is about letting go of his inhibitions and experiencing joy for what may be the first time in his life.

Bialystock: Having a good time?
Bloom: I don't know. I feel so strange.
Bialystock: Maybe you're happy.
Bloom: That's it, I'm happy. *starts to laugh* Well what do you know about that? I'm happy!

The dream! Is he being manipulated into white collar crime by a scoundrel who, at first, only saw him as a means to make a fortune and exploited his loneliness and the ways he's been alienated by his oddness to do so, by being, perhaps, the first person who's ever been nice to him?

Bialystock, walking through the park arm-in-arm with Bloom: Call me Max. You know I don't let everyone call me Max. Just those people I like.
Bloom: And you can call me Leo.
Bialystock: I already did!
Bloom: Oh! *lifts his hand to touch his forehead in embarrassed delight*
Bialystock: Where would you like to eat?
Bloom: Well, Max. I don’t know, Max. What do you think, Max?

I mean, yeah, sure, but that doesn't mean it's not vicariously liberating to watch him stand on a fountain and shout, "I want everything I've ever seen in the movies! I'm Leo Bloom. I'm me! I can do whatever I want! I'm Leo Bloom!"

And it also doesn't mean that Bialy's fondness for him remains a lie, because very swiftly they are both incredibly fond of each other and not shy about being demonstrative about it.

 

ID: two screencaps where Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom embrace, posted to Tumblr by cherry-flavored-sigh on February 15, 2015.

There is a scene at the end of the movie where they get caught for embezzling and Leo speaks on Bialy's behalf, which goes like this:

I would like to say something your honor, not on my behalf, but in reference to my partner, Mr. Bialystock. Your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Max Bialystock is the most selfish man I ever met in my life. Not only is he liar, and a cheat and a scoundrel, and a crook, who has taken money from little old ladies, he has also talked people into doing things, especially me, that they would never in a thousand years had dreamed of doing.

But, your honor, as I understand it the law was created to protect people from being wronged. Your honor, whom has Max Bialystock wronged? I mean, whom has he really hurt? Not me. Not me.

I was... this man... No one ever called me 'Leo' before! I mean, I know it's not a big legal point, but even in kindergarten they used to call me 'Bloom!' I never sang a song before! I mean with someone else, I never sang a song with someone else before. This man, this man, this is a wonderful man. He made me what I am today... he did.

And what of the dear ladies? What would their lives have been without Max Bialystock? Max Bialystock, who made them feel young, and attractive, and wanted again. That's all I have to say.

I cry on at least a monthly basis when the words "I never sang a song before! I mean with someone else, I never sang a song with someone else before" and, again, maybe it's a joke but "Nobody ever called me 'Leo' before (...) even in kindgarten they used to call me 'Bloom!'" will never fail to produce at least a little mistiness, including now as I write this. It is also kind of the basis for my trans headcanon of Leo Bloom, but that is besides the point. Anyway...

You know who I used to be? Max Bialystock! King of Broadway! Six shows running at once! Lunch at Delmonico's. $200 suits. You see this? This once held a pearl as big as your eye! Look at me now. LOOK AT ME NOW! I'm wearing a cardboard belt!

So, having spoken at great length about Leo Bloom, you might get the impression that I'm not that pushed about Max Bialystock. And, oh, how wrong you would be.

I have, for years, made jokes on Tumblr about The Type, alluding to my penchant for sleazy, dapper (but often slovenly and/or shabby) crooks with poorly concealed hearts of gold and soft spots for certain people. Your Bernard Blacks, your Grunkle Stans, your Quarks, your Norman Stanley Fletchers, and, very, very much in keeping with that, your Max Bialystocks.

He just is... this man. This is a wonderful man.

Also, while a movie with Mr. "Don't touch my blue blanket!" in it was always going to have me identifying more with Leo Bloom, Bialy himself is not exactly... um, unrelatable. I mean:

Bloom, look at me. Look at me, Bloom. Bloom, I'm drowning. Other men sail through life. Bialystock has struck a reef. Bloom, I'm going under. I'm being sunk by a society that demands success when all I can offer is failure.

I just... when will a dishonest man come and manipulate me into commiting white collar crime for him? When will an earnest and profoundly weird little man come and change my life by merely posing a little accounting theory and falling in love with me?

Because, in a move that could not be more on-brand for me, I do very much ship this. How could you not, honestly?

GIF posted by giantmonster to Tumblr here on April 7, 2017

The movie is also, when it's not being the beautiful love story of an unscrupulous down-on-his-luck producer and a lonely autistic accountant, an irreverant anti-fascist satire (i.e. a satire that is anti-fascist, not a satire of anti-fascism) that was highly controversial when it was released, and has been, to varying degrees, ever since.

pod_together

semperfiona

This still isn't amazing compared with my fic output,^* and that is also in large part because I have also had tech issues that have held me back with podfic. My microphone is, by all accounts I've seen online from audiophiles, Very Good and an exceptional XLR condenser mic at its price point, and I haven't read any horror stories about the audio interface or XLR cables I use, but consistently it has recorded incredibly quietly for me, even with the gain on the audio interface set as high as it will go. I have kind of improved that as of this evening, because apparently some versions of Windows set the input audio levels very low by default and you have to manually change them in settings, so that was a big part of the issue, but I still have to set my gain up higher than I'd like to get the audio to a place where I don't have to drastically change the volume when I normalise it to between 19 and 16 LUFS, because I lose a lot of the audio quality with huge changes from very quiet to very loud, but if I set the gain as high as I think is appropriate then I get a hiss that I have to take out with two rounds of noise reduction that, to my ear, takes a lot of the warmth out of the tone of my voice and makes me sound a little tinny.

I have gotten some feedback on this, though, and someone else said that they felt one round of noise reduction made the hiss inaudible unless they turned the volume up uncomfortably loud, so they at least would not notice it if that was what the final edited version of audio sounded like. I do think I will ask for an inline preamp for my mic for my birthday, just so I can set the gain as low as it will go. I have heard good things about the FetHead Phantom (I need to get one that allows phantom power to flow, since my mic needs 48V phantom power) and at €75 plus fifteen quid delivery, I would not feel outrageous asking my siblings and parents to chip in on it for my birthday present.

However! I have also recorded the last two pods I've done (plus the footnotes of the one I guest-voiced on) on my phone, which is like... definitely more than adequate! It's 1000% not a hobby that requires top of the line microphones and I would never recommend someone starting out get a mic before they've recorded a few pods on their phone or their laptop's in-built mic, or whatever they already have, and edited on an open source DAW like Audacity to see if they enjoy the hobby.

I did not, I hasten to add, run out and buy expensive equipment on a whim to try podfic. I ran out and bought expensive equipment on a whim, because at one point I had plans to do a Star Trek podcast with my friend that we kind of lost momentum on when we were Going Through It. So, basically, all the advice I had come across, when I was researching what to buy to start a podcast was aimed at people who were trying to make podcasting or other kinds of Content Creation™ a side-hustle. And, in that specific context, the getting highest quality audio you can afford out the gate is good advice,^** because good audio is a solid investment for someone who makes their living creating audio(/audio-visual) stuff online. If you buy something that isn't going to give you the kind of audio that people have come to expect from Content Creators™©® it's often just a false economy that will slow the growth of your career and you will have to replace it much sooner than if you'd even gone one tier up from the absolutely ground level of the budget options on the market.

But for podfic? Literally do not spent a fucking penny if you have anything at home already that can record audio, which you almost certainly do if you are in online fandom. Plenty of very prolific podficcers record on their phones (or on headset mics, or laptop mics, or whatever they had when they started out) for their entire tenure in the podfic fandom. And that's not only literally fine, it is a lot more typical than having a set-up comparable to someone whose job involves recording and editing audio just for podfic. And actually? Mics on smartphones have great audio quality that can sound better than a higher quality mic that someone who doesn't really know what they are doing (*raises hand*) is recording on, because they can be extremely sensitive to the point of picking up a pin dropping in the next room, while phones are literally designed to exclude outside sound. Because they're phones.

And like, I think I kinda know what to do with my set-up now, but it has taken a lot of trial and error and Google/YouTube/Reddit/Discord have turned up a lot of dead ends or told me to do things I've already done/not to do things I am not doing. If I hadn't already owned a mic and had just started out on my phone instead, I might have already recorded and posted a lot more podfics and I likely would never have felt the need to get a microphone. And, you know, it's very nice to know that I have the option of just using my phone when I don't feel like taking out all my equipment and setting up my mic stand and all that shite and it will be Fine. I'm not unhappy that I have such a nice mic and I do want to make it work as well as it can for me, given that I did buy it for that podcast that never happened, but I am glad that I don't feel like it is the only option available to me that is up to my own standards for audio quality (which aren't even my own standards really, but those of some dads with YouTube channels, and I have been known to be very forgiving of pretty questionable audio quality when I've been listening to music or whatever in the past). And even if I get good enough at wrangling my mic that the quality is unequivocally and objectively Much Better than what I can achieve on a phone, I feel like I'm finally starting to escape from the prison of perfectionism and I'll be able to say and actually believe that doing something imperfectly is better than not doing it at all, because I don't feel up do doing it The Best That I (hypothetically) Could. I am feeling this in other parts of my life too, which has been great, but it is a very welcome change here.

But anyway, obviously I want to be empowered in non-fandom parts of my life by this, but I also am kind of excited to get more vids/books/etc. done because I'm gonna stop waiting to be able to whole-ass things that I can absolutely get done to a Good Enough standard with 45% of my ass. Like, I mean, I went from having recorded A podfic in January this year, and seven in the span of eight months, to having (at least contributed to) three in one month and honestly I think [podfic] Death with Dignity by Thebiwife is maybe my best work to date.^***

I think that I have this very warped idea of what I Should be able to do, because I am very, very productive and can perform to very high standards... sometimes. And over short periods of time through small bursts of effort that are not sustainable to do All The Time. I can't reasonably expect the same level of "productivity" and "quality" non-stop. It's like saying that Usain Bolt would be the fastest marathon runner in the world if he'd only stop giving up after 200 metres. And also... sometimes, it is Bad, Actually, when I am working that fast and that much and to such a high standard, because it means either I have put myself under too much pressure by overcommitting and/or procrastinating, or that I'm Doing A Hypomania, or all of the above, and then I crash hard and can hardly function on much more basic and essential level for however long it takes me to recover. Which is not good!

On the other hand, I do very much hesitate to say something like "I should just be Steady and Consistent and Never do things over short, intense sprints" here, because I don't really think that's realistic given how many times I have tried really hard to do that and it doesn't seem to be how my brain works, but also it's not always bad that I get bursts of energy where I do Lots of things to a very high standard. I don't think that I should expect it of myself as a default, and I don't think I should ignore when it can be a red flag or the result of a bad decision, but I don't think it's a bad and pathological thing that I need to ruthlessly stamp out. I remember when I was writing reams of Cobra Kai fic while incredibly depressed (or, I guess, having a mixed episode) and not being able to do various basic self care things that are pretty much non-negotiables like showering, but I don't think that I would have suddenly been able to do those things if I had cut myself off from my sole source of happiness because I wasn't allowed to have fun until I could Be Healthy.

So, yeah, it's a pretty multifaceted thing, I guess. I think it would be healthy for me to let myself off the hook for not running the marathon in 01:07:28, and not basing my plans for the future around being able to do that, or thinking that it's something I Could do but am just being too lazy to apply myself to achieve because I'm a bad person who hates hard work, but I also have to allow myself to be happy when I can run 200 metres in 19.19 seconds and it's not hurting me in other areas. And I shouldn't hate myself for being a bad marathon runner no matter how fast or slow I can sprint right then. I can work on my marathon end time without being self-loathing about how I've Frivolously decided to be good at sprinting instead, because it must mean I'm a show off and have no stamina. I don't know if this metaphor is still working, but you basically get the idea.

^*Which is like, to be clear, not a problem. You don't need to focus completely equally on all the different things you do in fandom and it's not really surprising that a skill I've been working on almost ceaselessly since childhood that involves absolutely no technical skills involving hardware or software that are unfamiliar to me anymore, and only requires a machine (not saying computer here for a reason—I wrote a lot of fic on my phone that I posted to AO3 when my laptop was not cooperating for literally months) that has a word processor and an internet connection to create that kind of fanwork, and that I started doing in fandom years before I tried making other kinds of fanworks, is something that I generally do more of compared with my other fannish hobbies.
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^**Honestly, given that I did not want to monetise this podcast, I don't know what my excuse is. I think I got rather carried away and went mad, because I am extremely susceptible to dogmatic didacticism from people on the internet telling me the Best way to do things that Everyone should do and how Only A Fool would do the much more accessible and inexpensive thing. Don't let me near salespeople, basically.
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^***Which I say not because it was the first one I used effects on, but the one where I flubbed the fewest number of lines while recording it. I usually end up with raw audio that is ten times as long as the finished run time will be after editing, but I got this one out pretty fluently. And I think what made the difference there was that I used a (free) teleprompter desktop app when I was recording and tweaked my script a bit ahead of time instead of making decisions on the fly about whether I was going to add dialogue tags to make it less ambiguous who was speaking or to leave it as written. Literally a game changer and I strongly recommend it to anyone who records podfic hasn't tried one. I used to have the fic open on my phone and I'd be squinting at a tiny screen and trying to juggle a thousand bits of hardware at once and it was Rather Hard. I much prefer just reading off my laptop screen as it scrolls down a teleprompter with multiple font sizes that I can pause, speed up, slow down, and page up and down the playback of while I read into my phone. Fucking luxury compared to how I was living before, lol.

And, speaking of making small changes to the text like adding dialogue tags, I also started to be a bit more judicious about replacing descriptions of sounds (laughing, snorting, etc.) with just... doing that sound myself and changing the dialogue tag to "[they] said" and so on.

But, I mean, while I very much would still think this was my best work if I'd done any sound effects or not, I am also very proud of the soundscaping I did in that pod—in particular the section I did where Deanna's empathy overwhelms her in a crowd, which I tried to make a Stressful Listening Experience that evoked sensory overload in a way that would, hopefully, not just tip over into being too stressful to listen to for 100% of listeners (although I did make a version without sound effects and added warnings and timestamps, so that it was a completely opt-in experience). I got a lot of lovely feedback about that from people over last weekend during pod_together's listening jam where a bunch of us listened to and read stuff in this years collection and commented on it, keeping track of our comments and amount of time we spent listening over the weekend.

Collectively, I think we got to a very impressive 70+ hours and 150-ish comments. I was in the top five listeners and top five commenters, which I'm very pleased about, because historically I have had an awful habit of just... not looking through collections of events that I particate in very extensively, because I get overwhelmed and put it off. And then forget. Having a weekend long group thing, which included some communal listening hours hosted on the Discord as well as us doing our own thing, really helped me make it a priority.

Also, by the end of the weekend there was nothing left in the collection that didn't have any comments! This was a first for the exchange, as they've often had years go by before a particular years collection had comments on every work and this year we got to everyone within a week of the end of the event. Obviously people (and especially podficcers) aren't just creating their art to get praised, but it can be a bit of a bummer to work on something for an event and then not hear any feedback at all about it, and I think with podfic (which doesn't get a lot of love directed towards the creator at the best of times) it's disspiriting because it can feel like "Oh wow, even when I'm making something for a podfic-centric event, there are not going to be a lot of people who like or care about what I do, and the few who do don't tell me about it." In my case, I went from having no (0) comments on Death with Dignity (which, as I mentioned, I think is my best podfic to date) to having six very generous and thoughtful ones in a few days, and I'm very glad that I got to pay that kindness forward to other participants.
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