Matt's Mix Tape, Vol. 155

Matt Tillotson

Aug 5, 2022

Hi, I’m Matt Tillotson, and this is Matt’s Mix Tape. My life is a new mix these days. And so is this newsletter.

This week’s Mix:

What I was up to this week
Writing lessons from the “Iron Man” team
This week’s (not) Florida photo

What I was up to this week

We’re sixty-some days from launching Write of Passage Cohort 9. It feels like I have a year’s worth of work to do and one hour left to do it. But that’s fear and anxiety talking. We have time, a great and growing team, and Cohort 9 is going to be our best ever.
I’m recruiting Mentors for the cohort. Soon, Editors will follow and maybe a few other roles.
We’re getting together as a team to ramp up our prep. Like, actually, physically in the same room. I’ll be meeting more co-workers for the first time, even though I’ve worked with some of them off and on for two years. That’s the world of work in 2022.
We work remote but not alone. Several teammates this week energized me, rerouted me, and helped me do better work than I could solo. No cubicle farm required.

Writing lessons from the “Iron Man” team

Last night my family hung out at the beautiful, allegedly haunted, and 95-year-old Tampa Theatre, where we watched “Iron Man” followed by a discussion by former Marvel writer/illustrator Bob Layton and Iron Man screenwriter Hawk Ostby.

Marvel was about to cancel the Iron Man comic when Layton took it over in 1978. He reshaped the book around Tony Stark, turning him into the swashbuckling and conflicted mess Robert Downey, Jr. made world-famous.

Layton said the key to reviving the character was to focus on the man, not the suit. He made Stark complex and sometimes aspirational for readers: a mix of brilliance and bad decisions, heroism and hedonism.

His stories of Stark confronting his alcoholism were ground-breaking for comics at that time.

As writers, we can’t go wrong by putting the humanity first.

A few other takeaways:

New stories draw on old ones

Layton:

I always imagined Tony Stark being a modern day King Arthur, you know that Arthurian legends was a portrait of a King who had Knights of the Round Table like The Avengers, who had an empire that protected people, and people benefited from what that empire created … the technology and beneficial things that came from that. So I always appreciate them that way the tortured cage of modern day Camelot.

Everything is a remix.

Smaller stories can have the biggest emotional impact

Ostby observed that Iron Man was unique in the Marvel Universe: it’s central conflict wasn’t against a faceless and massive space enemy, but rather just Tony Stark vs. his former business mentor Obadiah State—the Iron Monger.

The climatic scene wasn’t Avengers vs. aliens but rather man vs. man. And yet the emotional stakes feel just as high. Probably higher, because it was personal and we’re up close with them both to see and feel it all.

Collaboration makes creative work better

Ostby also said the original intention for the movie was to follow The Dark Knight superhero blueprint—to make a gritty and brooding film.

But when Downey tried out for the part, that all changed. Downey was the human embodiment of the Layton comics version of Tony Stark. They shifted gears, riding Downey’s energy, his heart, and his sense of humor into a cinematic universe worth billions and billions of dollars.

Creative collaboration leads to unpredictable detours you can’t traverse alone.

This weeks’ Florida photo

In August it’s not uncommon for it to be rainy and sunny at the same time. So it’s rainbow season.

Thank you for reading!

Whatever you’re working on or working through: keep showing up.

If you liked this edition, would you mind giving the heart a click? Thank you.