E R I K V I D A L

OCCUPY GOTHAM (PIC)

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES now shooting in and around my neighborhood of Tribeca (in downtown Manhattan), look what I found scrawled on the wall just a few blocks away from my place. Potential plot point perhaps? Hmm...

NOTES FROM A HACK: Unorganized, Semi-Coherent Thoughts About DRIVE

I read the script for DRIVE a little while back and loved it, thought it was one of the best reads of the year, had high hopes indeed for the movie, hopes that weren't quite met in the theater but, still, all in all I thought they did a pretty good job considering the extremely limited budget they were obviously saddled with ($10M)... But then, looking back on it, each time I mentally review the movie in my head, I'm finding it gets just a little bit worse, and I'm actually starting to wonder, now, if I didn't give it more credit than it deserves, simply because everything else this year has been so very, very bad...

So to hop on the ever-growing "DRIVE Really Didn't Work For Me--And on a Number of Different Levels" Internet Bandwagon, check out the following ("Unorganized"! "Semi-coherent"!!) review of DRIVE from NOTES FROM A HACK--

I get movies that are slow. Movies without a lot of talking. That's fine. But this was beyond that. This was uncomfortable and not representative of real life. There are long stretches where he is asked a question and just stares without saying a word. That doesn't happen. People don't do that. And people that do do that, are fucking weirdos who don't get Carey Mulligan.

She says "you want some water", and he stares at her for a good minute and a half, and then says "uh, sure".

Love!

He's in love now! She's in love now! That's all it took. They have no connection other than physical, I guess. And even that is questionable. Do they have anything in common? Nope. What do they talk about? Well, water and how refreshing it is. Not even that, just the offer of water and the acceptance of it.

Oh, but one time, she touched his hand.

Love!

Yeah, I find I've really gotta agree with The Hack on this one--watching the interaction between Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan, I was thinking the exact same thing: "A glass of water--and they're in love? Really?"

(Or maybe Gosling just ordered that pheremone cologne off the Internet... Hmm...)

>> To read the full review at NOTES FROM A HACK click here

"You see, the film studio of today is really the palace of the sixteenth century..."

A wonderful quote I was just sent from my dear friend Nesya Blue--

You see, the film studio of today is really the palace of the sixteenth century. There one sees what Shakespeare saw: the absolute power of the tyrant, the courtiers, the flatterers, the jesters, the cunningly ambitious intriguers. There are fantastically beautiful women, there are incompetent favorites. There are great men who are suddenly disgraced. There is the most insane extravagance, and unexpected parsimony over a few pence. There is enormous splendor, which is a sham; and also horrible squalor hidden behind the scenery. There are vast schemes, abandoned because of some caprice. There are secrets which everybody knows and no one speaks of. There are even two or three honest advisors. These are the court fools, who speak the deepest wisdom in puns, lest they should be taken seriously. They grimace, and tear their hair privately, and weep.

-- Christopher Isherwood, Prater Violet, 1945

Drew McWeeny: Why RIDLEY SCOTT returning to BLADE RUNNER really is the beginning of the end

It is easy to get worked up over remakes and prequels and sequels these days, but it's also not terribly productive.  This is the modern Hollywood film industry in the year 2011, and you can either accept that or you can rail against it, but either way, they're going to keep on doing business this way until there is a compelling reason for them to not do business this way.

I wrote about my experience at Comic-Con this summer with the "Prometheus" panel, and certainly I hope that film delivers something special when it is released next year.  I am willing to walk into it open-minded, especially since it's not like the "Alien" franchise is this untouched, pristine thing.  Any time your iconic creation has already been roughed up behind the bleachers by Paul "Show me on the teddy bear where he touched your favorite movie" W.S. Anderson, it's fair game for anyone.  Besides, having Ridley Scott back in the world that he helped create in the original 1979 film is interesting, no doubt about it.

But that "helped create" is important, and something to consider today as the news breaks that once again, Ridley Scott is planning to revisit one of the SF worlds he was part of with a "follow-up" to "Blade Runner" being announced this morning.  And while I'm a big fan of the 1982 film, I think the notion of any sequel or prequel in that world is a terrible one.  Awful.  Catastrophically bad.

The simple truth is that not all films are franchises, and not every narrative can support a sequel or a prequel.  This disturbing idea that has taken hold that we need to wring every drop of creative juice out of any film that has ever attracted any audience of any size is, quite honestly, death.  This is what the death throes of studio filmmaking look like, folks, and the only real or substantial thing that film fans can do is grab a bag of marshmallows to roast as the whole thing goes up in flames.  People love to point at the occasional fluke like "Inception" as proof that the system isn't broken beyond repair, but the only reason that film happened was because Christopher Nolan made a remake, which convinced the studio he was responsible enough for them to trust him with a reboot, and then he made a sequel to his reboot that made a billion dollars.  And for that, finally, they "rewarded" him with the opportunity to make something he wrote.  That ended up making the studio some $800 million, which is great, and which guarantees him more freedom.  So far, he's used that freedom to sign on to direct another sequel while producing, yes, another reboot.  This is the guy film fans love to hold up as an example for how to do it right in Hollywood, but so far, what I see is a very good filmmaker who is still having to navigate the same blood-filled waters as everyone else.  He does it well, certainly, but he's still stuck in the same box that other filmmakers are, and his work hasn't changed the system at all.  If anything, he's given the studios more ammunition to prove that what they are doing is right.  It works.  It's the correct model to follow.

Ridley Scott may never set foot on a set for a "Blade Runner" follow-up.  Signing a deal is one thing, while making the actual film is something totally different.  There's a long way to go before that film is a real and tangible thing.  And in that time, they may end up deciding not to ever roll film, something that's happened with plenty of in-development projects, particularly with things Ridley Scott has been attached to over the years.  After all, I'm not sitting down this summer to a big-screen giant-budget version of "The Forever War," so just because he says he's going to direct something, that doesn't mean it will really get a greenlight.

With "Blade Runner," though, there is a special level of anxiety that the announcement brings.  I've said before that the real problem with filmmakers who go back to continue screwing around with a film after it's been in release is that filmmakers often have no understanding of what it is that an audience loves about a film.  Once you've released it, you have to stop touching it, because further adjustments could well erase the thing that made it important to someone.  You could screw up a character or the timing of a sequence or a thematic point, and the various versions of "Blade Runner" perfectly highlight that problem.  When I first got Internet access in 1994, I was amazed to find people in newsgroups debating ideas like "Was Deckard a replicant in 'Blade Runner'?," especially since I know from firsthand experience in 1982 that general audiences totally rejected the film.  That ambiguity, and the way the film left room for interpretation, was one of the reasons it lingered so well.  When Ridley Scott started playing around with the movie and adding new effects and tinkering with it after the brief release of the Workprint version, all of a sudden that ambiguity started getting a lot less ambiguous, and Scott seemed determined to answer the question for us.  I found it infuriating, but at least I knew I still had the original version of the film to go back to.  If Scott's planning to return to the world of the movie, I'm afraid of him creating something which will not just rob that first movie of any and all ambiguity, but which will make me wonder if what I saw in the original film was ever really there at all.  He can't erase the original from existence, but he can absolutely destroy my interest in the narrative, and I'm afraid that when it comes to "Blade Runner," he's the last person I want to see playing around with that property.

Let's assume, though, that it will be brilliant and awesome and just as good as the first film.  It still worries me deeply that this is the best job we can find for Sir Ridley Scott at this point in his career.  He's created iconic images and characters and movies for 30-plus years, and the best Hollywood can come up with is, "Hey, want to do the exact same thing AGAIN?"  It is a failure on every level.  It would be one thing if some young filmmaker who grew up in love with "Blade Runner" managed to get into a position where he had a shot at adding something to that property, something substantial, and took it out of a genuine creative drive to play with this thing that inspired him.  If Duncan Jones was the name attached this morning, my interest level would be higher because I know that Jones holds the first movie sacred and that he's had years to let it rattle around inside of him.  I'm willing to bet that anything he made in that universe would feel organic and motivated by a genuine desire to tell a new story.  The piece that ran on the LA Times today about how Ridley Scott ended up in the director's chair again pays lip service to the idea of Ridley as a storyteller, but the word that is the real subtext here is "BRANDING."  And it doesn't even matter if "Blade Runner" was a box-office disaster in 1982, which it was.  After all, there's a prequel to "The Thing" coming out this year, and last Christmas saw a sequel to "TRON" on the bigscreen, so obviously box-office failures in one decade are catnip to studio executives in another, all because of the legwork that real fans did in the decades in-between.

Maybe that's the real reason this rubs me so wrong.  "Blade Runner" failed by every standard of business measurement.  It was beaten senseless by critics at the time.  But I was twelve years old, and I didn't care what critics said.  I knew when I sat in that theater and saw that film that I loved it, and for years afterwards, any time it came up in conversation, I would find myself defending it to people who only knew it as a failure.  The film's long ancillary life was driven by genuine love, by fans who passed it along, by people who refused to have their opinion determined by opening weekend numbers or by toy sales.  And now, because of that love, because we kept the film alive long after even its own studio gave up on it, it has become this asset, a valuable widget, and Hollywood wants to make some money with it.  And they are counting on those of us who love the original to carry the word.  They hired Ridley Scott because they figure that makes them bulletproof.  "You can't get upset! We got Ridley Scott back!"

But we can.  And we are.  And we don't want it.  I am fatigued from all of this, and like everyone else, I've gotten to the point where I almost don't notice it.  This past week, I had a meeting at a studio, and they brought up a film that they want to remake, a film I (A) love and (B) acknowledge isn't as good as I wish it was, and right away, I started thinking about what a great opportunity it is and how much fun it would be to get my hands on it and pull it apart and rebuild it the way I always wanted to see it done.  And I acknowledge that having that meeting and writing this article in the same week makes me a rotten, rotten hypocrite.  I'll chase that job, too.  I want that job.  And if I get it, I'm sure there will be many editorials about what a sell-out piece of crap I am for doing so.  And you'll be right.  It is blatantly hypocritical, and I know it.  And even so, I still say I don't want Ridley Scott to return to "Blade Runner" for a prequel or a sequel or a requel or a reboot or a remagining or, frankly, anything.  I just don't want him to do it.  I don't want to see it. I don't want to cover it.  I don't want to know it's out there.

I don't blame Alcon Entertainment for buying the rights.  I'm sure they were able to produce numbers on a spreadsheet that justify the purchase.  But this craven age is burning down my love of movies in general, and it is starting to get terrifying.  I don't want to spend the next decade of my life feeling this way, but I don't get a vote.  All I can do is spend my money to support the things that are genuinely fresh or new or motivated by more than market share, and that's all you can do, as well.

With that in mind, are you for or against this one?  Would you or would you not happily hand over your ticket price?

Answer wisely, because Hollywood is listening, and they are more than happy to ruin any property you can name.

via www.hitfix.com

ROGER EBERT: I Was Born Inside the Movie of My Life

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The opening pages of Roger Ebert's memoir, to be published September 13, 2011:

I was born inside the movie of my life. The visuals were before me, the audio surrounded me, the plot unfolded inevitably but not necessarily. I don't remember how I got into the movie, but it continues to entertain me. At first the frames flicker without connection, as they do in Bergman's Persona after the film breaks and begins again. I am flat on my stomach on the front sidewalk, my eyes an inch from a procession of ants. What these are I do not know. It is the only sidewalk in my life, in front of the only house. I have seen grasshoppers and ladybugs. My uncle Bob extends the business end of a fly swatter toward me, and I grasp it and try to walk toward him.

Hal Holmes has a red tricycle and I cry because I want it for my own. My parents curiously set tubes afire and blow smoke from their mouths. I don't want to eat, and my aunt Martha puts me on her lap and says she'll pinch me if I don't open my mouth. Gary Wikoff is sitting next to me in the kitchen. He asks me how old I am today, and I hold up three fingers. At Tot's Play School, I try to ride on the back of Mrs. Meadrow's dog, and it bites me on the cheek. I am taken to Mercy Hospital to be stitched up. Everyone there is shouting because the Panama Limited went off the rails north of town. People crowd around. Aunt Martha brings in Doctor Collins, her boss, who is a dentist. He tells my mother, Annabel, it's the same thing to put a few stitches on the outside of a cheek as on the inside. I start crying. Why is the thought of stitches outside my cheek more terrifying than stitches anywhere else?

The movie settles down. I live at 410 East Washington Street in Urbana, Illinois. My telephone number is 72611. I am never to forget those things. I run the length of the hallway from the living room to my bedroom, leaping into the air and landing on my bed. Daddy tells me to stop that or I'll break the bed boards. The basement smells like green onions. The light beside my bed is like a water pump, and the handle turns it on and off. I wear flannel shirts. My gloves are attached to a string through the sleeves because I am always losing them. My mother says today my father is going to teach me to tie my shoes for myself. "It can't be explained in words," he tells me. "Just follow my fingers." I still do. It cannot be explained in words.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I returned to 410 East Washington with my wife, Chaz, in 1990, I saw that the hallway was only a few yards long. I got the feeling I sometimes have when reality realigns itself. It's a tingling sensation moving like a wave through my body. I know the feeling precisely. I doubt I've experienced it ten times in my life. I felt it at Smith Drugs when I was seven or eight and opened a nudist magazine and discovered that all women had breasts. I felt it when my father told me he had cancer. I felt it when I proposed marriage. Yes, and I felt it in the old Palais des Festivals at Cannes, when the Ride of the Valkyries played during the helicopter attack in Apocalypse Now.

I was an only child. I heard that over and over again. "Roger is an only boy." My best friends, Hal and Gary, were only children, too. We were born at the beginning of World War II, four or five years earlier than the baby boomers, which would be an advantage all of our lives. The war was the great mystery of those years. I knew we were at war against Germany and Japan. I knew Uncle Bill had gone away to fight. I was told, your father is too old so they won't take him. He put bicycle clips on his work pants and cycled to work every morning. There was rationing. If Harry Rusk the grocer had a chicken, we had chicken on Sunday. Many nights we had oatmeal. There was no butter. Oleo came in a plastic bag, and you squeezed the orange dye and kneaded it to make it look like butter. "It's against the law to sell it already looking like butter," my parents explained. Daddy and Uncle Johnny ordered cartons of cigarettes through the mail from Kentucky. Everybody smoked. My mother, my father, my uncles and aunts, the neighbors, everybody. When we gathered at my grandmother's for a big dinner, that meant nine or ten people sitting around the table smoking. They did it over and over, hour after hour, as if it were an assignment.

After the war, you could buy cars again. The cars were long, wide, and deep, and I was barely tall enough to see out the window. Three could sit across in the front seat, and three and a child in the back. You filled up at Norman Early's Shell station. He pumped the gas by hand into a transparent glass cylinder. He gave you Green Stamps. The great danger was having a blowout. We drove on the Danville Hard Road. It was a one- lane slab. When another car approached, you slowed down and put two wheels over on the side. That was when you had to be afraid of a blowout.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the rewards of growing old is that you can truthfully say you lived in the past. I remember the day my father sat down next to me and said he had something he wanted to tell me. We had dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese and that might mean the war was over. I asked him what an atomic bomb was. He said it was a bomb as big as a hundred other bombs. I said I hoped we dropped a hundred of them. My father said, "Don't even say that, Roger. It's a terrible thing." My mother came in from the kitchen. "What's terrible?" My father told her. "Oh, yes, honey," she told me. "All those poor people burned up alive."

How can I tell you what they said? I remember them saying it. In these years after my illness, when I can no longer speak and am set aside from the daily flow, I live more in my memory and discover that a great many things are safely stored away. It all seems still to be in there somewhere. At our fiftieth high school reunion, Pegeen Linn remembered how self- conscious she was when she acted in a high school play and had to kiss a boy on the stage in front of the whole school. She smiled at me. "And that boy was you. You had this monologue and then I had to walk on and kiss you, with everybody watching." I discovered that the monologue was still there in my memory, untouched. Do you ever have that happen? You find a moment from your past, undisturbed ever since, still vivid, surprising you. In high school I fell under the spell of Thomas Wolfe: "A stone, a leaf, an unfound door; of a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces." Now I feel all the faces returning to memory.

The British satirist Auberon Waugh once wrote a letter to the editor of the Daily Telegraph asking readers to supply information about his life between birth and the present, explaining that he was writing his memoirs and had no memories from those years. I find myself in the opposite position. I remember everything. All my life I've been visited by unexpected flashes of memory unrelated to anything taking place at the moment. These retrieved moments I consider and replace on the shelf. When I began writing this book, memories came flooding to the surface, not because of any conscious effort but simply in the stream of writing. I started in a direction and the memories were waiting there, sometimes of things I hadn't consciously thought about since. Hypnosis is said to enable us to retrieve past memories. When I write, I fall into the zone many writers, painters, musicians, athletes, and craftsmen of all sorts seem to share: In doing something I enjoy and am expert at, deliberate thought falls aside and it is all just there. I think of the next word no more than the composer thinks of the next note.

I lived in a world of words long before I was aware of it. As an only child I turned to books as soon as I could read. There was a persistent need not only to write, but to publish. In grade school I had an essay published in the mimeographed paper, and that led me directly to a hectograph, a primitive publishing toy with a tray of jelly. You wrote in a special purple ink, the jelly absorbed it, and you could impress it on perhaps a dozen sheets of paper before it grew too faint. With this I wrote and published the Washington Street News , which I solemnly delivered to some neighbors as if it existed independently of me. I must have been a curious child. In high school and college I flowed naturally toward newspapers. In the early days I also did some radio. I'll return to these adventures later in the book.

I realize that most of the turning points in my career were brought about by others. My life has largely happened to me without any conscious plan. I was an indifferent student except at subjects that interested me, and those I followed beyond the classroom, stealing time from others I should have been studying. I was no good at math beyond algebra. I flunked French four times in college. I had no patience for memorization, but I could easily remember words I responded to. In college a chart of my grades resembled a mountain range. My first real newspaper job came when my best friend's father hired me to cover high school sports for the local daily. In college a friend told me I must join him in publishing an alternative weekly and then left it in my hands. That led to the Daily Illini , and that in turn led to the Chicago Sun- Times , where I have worked ever since 1966. I became the movie critic six months later through no premeditation, when the job was offered to me out of a clear blue sky.

I first did a regular TV show when Dave Wilson, a producer for the Chicago PBS station, read my reviews of some Ingmar Bergman films and asked me to host screenings of a package of twenty of his films. I was very bad on television. In person I could talk endlessly, but before the cameras I froze and my mind became a blank. One day Dave asked me to speak while walking toward the camera. To walk and talk at the same time? I broke out in a cold sweat. Later talking on TV became second nature, but that was after some anguish on my part and astonishing patience on the part of others. I found that if I did it long enough, it stopped being hard. In the early days of doing shows with Gene Siskel, part of our so-called chemistry resulted because, having successfully made my argument and feeling some relief, I felt personally under assault if Siskel disagreed. This led to tension that, oddly, helped the show.

Gene and I did the show because a woman named Thea Flaum cast us for it. She will also appear again later. The point for now is: I had no conception of such a show and no desire to work with Siskel. The three stages of my early career (writing and editing a newspaper, becoming a film critic, beginning a television show) were initiated by others. Between college and 2006, my life continued more or less on that track. I was a movie critic and I had a TV show. It could all have been lost through alcoholism (I believe I came closer than many people realized), but in 1979 I stopped drinking and the later chapters became possible. Had it not been for cancer, I believe that today I would be living much as I did before: reviewing movies, doing a weekly television program, going to many fi lm festivals, speaking cheerfully, traveling a great deal, happily married to my wife, Chaz.

Marriage redefined everything. Although proposing to Chaz was indeed something I did freely, there is a point in a romance when you find your decision has been made for you. I wasn't looking for a wife. I didn't feel I "had" to be married. I didn't think of myself as a bachelor but as a soloist. Yet when I proposed marriage it seemed as inevitable as going into newspaper work. I hope you understand the spirit in which I say that. I am speaking about what seems ordained. I deceived myself that I had good luck with my health. I had my appendix taken out when I was in the fourth grade and was never in a hospital again except for two days in 1988 when I had a tumor removed from my salivary gland, the same tumor that would return almost twenty years later with such effect. Yes, I was fat for many years, but (as fat people so often say) "my numbers were good." Then I moved to a more vegetarian diet and for several years faithfully followed the ten thousand steps a day regime, lost one hundred pounds, and was in good shape for my age when everything fell apart.

The next stage of my life also came about for reasons outside my control. I was diagnosed with cancers of the thyroid and jaw, I had difficult surgeries, I lost the ability to speak, eat, or drink, and two failed attempts to rebuild my jaw led to shoulder damage that makes it difficult to walk easily and painful to stand. It is that person who is writing this book.

One day in the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, still in a wheelchair, I got a visit from Cyrus Friedheim, who had come to Chicago from Philadelphia to publish (rescue) my paper after it was bankrupted by crooks. My reviews had appeared online for several years, but now he advised me to start blogging, tweeting, and facebooking. At the time I wanted nothing to do with the social media. I feared, correctly, that they would consume alarming amounts of time. In late 2007 I had my third unsuccessful surgery, at MD Anderson in Houston, and had returned to Chicago to learn to walk again. After all three surgeries, I was not to move so the transplants would not be disturbed. Being bedridden caused my muscles to atrophy, and three times I had gone through rehabilitation. From summer 2006 to spring 2007 I'd essentially been in the hospital, but now I was walking again. Chaz took me down to the Pritikin Longevity Center in Aventura, Florida, for exercise and nutrition; they'd liquefy their healthy diet for my G-tube. She marched me in the sunlight and lectured me on how my skin was manufacturing vitamin D. On the second or third day there, I stood up to get a channel- changer, my foot caught on a rug, and I fell and fractured my hip. We came back to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, and after enduring the exquisite pain of putting weight on that hip two days after a rod was inserted, I returned to the Rehabilitation Institute to start learning to walk all over again for the fourth time.

That was in April 2008, when I'd been planning to attend the tenth annual Ebertfest, my annual film festival at the University of Illinois. I was plenty pissed off at myself for having broken my hip instead. Then and there, I wrote my first blog entry and began this current, probably final, stage of my life.

My blog became my voice, my outlet, my "social media" in a way I couldn't have dreamed of. Into it I poured my regrets, desires, and memories. Some days I became possessed. The comments were a form of feedback I'd never had before, and I gained a better and deeper understanding of my readers. I made "online friends," a concept I'd scoffed at. Most people choose to write a blog. I needed to. I didn't intend for it to drift into autobiography, but in blogging there is a tidal drift that pushes you that way. Getting such quick feedback may be one reason; the Internet encourages first- person writing, and I've always written that way. How can a movie review be written in the third person, as if it were an account of facts? If it isn't subjective, there's something false about it.

The blog let loose the flood of memories. Told sometimes that I should write my memoirs, I failed to see how I possibly could. I had memories, I had lived a good life in an interesting time, but I was at a loss to see how I could organize the accumulation of a lifetime. It was the blog that taught me how. It pushed me into first- person confession, it insisted on the personal, it seemed to organize itself in manageable fragments. Some of these words, since rewritten and expanded, first appeared in blog forms. Most are here for the first time. They came pouring forth in a flood of relief.

via blogs.suntimes.com

Netflix Has Problems

Lazy Sunday morning: Jene, budding movie star extraordinaire, learns the lines for her first feature (PICS)

Raymond Chandler: Writers in Hollywood (Brilliant Essay in THE ATLANTIC from 1945)

To the writing of his detective stories RAYMOND CHANDLER brings the experience and the skepticism of a newspaper reporter, the narrative gifts of a born storyteller, and a mastery of pungent American dialogue. His leading character, Philip Marlowe, is a professional detective who has held the spotlight thus far in four novels, all of which have been purchased by the movies. One of them, The Big Sleep, in which Lauren Bacall plays the lead, is soon to be released. In his screenplays as in his books, Mr. Chandler has scored a personal success, but he has done so without losing sight of the difficulties encountered by the creative writer in the studios. For this is the anomaly: the producers pay their authors large fees apparently for the purpose of disregarding their advice and their text. 

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HOLLYWOOD is easy to hate, easy to sneer at, easy to lampoon. Some of the best lampooning has been done by people who have never been through a studio gate, some of the best sneering by egocentric geniuses who departed huffily - not forgetting to collect their last pay check – leaving behind them nothing but the exquisite aroma of their personalities and a botched job for the tired hacks to clean up.

Even as far away as New York, where Hollywood assumes all really intelligent people live (since they obviously do not live in Hollywood), the disease of exaggeration can be caught. The motion picture critic of one of the less dazzled intellectual weeklies, commenting recently on a certain screenplay, remarked that it showed "how dull a couple of run-of-the-mill $3000-a-week writers can be." I hope this critic will not be startled to learn that 50 per cent of the screenwriters of Hollywood made less than $10,000 last year, and that he could count on his fingers the number that made a steady income anywhere near the figure he so contemptuously mentioned. I don't know whether they could be called run-of-the-mill writers or not. To me the phrase suggests something a little easier to get hold of.

I hold no brief for Hollywood. I have worked there a little over two years, which is far from enough to make me an authority, but more than enough to make me feel pretty thoroughly bored. That should not be so. An industry with such vast resources and such magic techniques should not become dull so soon. An art which is capable of making all but the very best plays look trivial and contrived, all but the very best novels verbose and imitative, should not so quickly become wearisome to those who attempt to practice it with something else in mind than the cash drawer. The making of a picture ought surely to be a rather fascinating adventure. It is not; it is an endless contention of tawdry egos, some of them powerful, almost all of them vociferous, and almost none of them capable of anything much more creative than credit-stealing and self-promotion.

Hollywood is a showman's paradise. But showmen make nothing; they exploit what someone else has made. The publisher and the play producer are showmen too; but they exploit what is already made. The showmen of Hollywood control the making – and thereby degrade it. For the basic art of motion pictures is the screenplay; it is fundamental, without it there is nothing. Everything derives from the screenplay, and most of that which derives is an applied skill which, however adept, is artistically not in the same class with the creation of a screenplay. But in Hollywood the screenplay in written by a salaried writer under the supervision of a producer - that is to say, by an employee without power or decision over the uses of his own craft, without ownership of it, and, however extravagantly paid, almost without honor for it.

I am aware that there are colorable economic reasons for the Hollywood system of "getting out the script." But I am not much interested in them. Pictures cost a great deal of money—true. The studio spends the money; all the writer spends is his time (and incidentally his life, his hopes, and all the varied experiences, most of them painful, which finally made him into a writer) - this also is true. The producer is charged with the salability and soundness of the project - true. The director can survive few failures; the writer can stink for ten years and still make his thousand a week - true also. But entirely beside the point.

I am not interested in why the Hollywood system exists or persists, nor in learning out of what bitter struggles for prestige it arose, nor in how much money it succeeds in making out of bad pictures. I am interested only in the fact that as a result of it there is no such thing as an art of the screenplay, and there never will be as long as the system lasts, for it is the essence of this system that it seeks to exploit a talent without permitting it the right to be a talent. It cannot be done; you can only destroy the talent, which is exactly what happens - when there is any to destroy.

Granted that there isn't much. Some chatty publisher (probably Bennett Cerf) remarked once that there are writers in Hollywood making two thousand dollars a week who haven't had an idea in ten years. He exaggerated—backwards: there are writers in Hollywood making two thousand a week who never had an idea in their lives, who have never written a photographable scene, who could not make two cents a word in the pulp market if their lives depended on it. Hollywood is full of such writers, although there are few at such high salaries. They are, to put it bluntly, a pretty dreary lot of hacks, and most of them know it, and they take their kicks and their salaries and try to be reasonably grateful to an industry which permits them to live much more opulently than they could live anywhere else.

And I have no doubt that most of them, also, would like to be much better writers than they are, would like to have force and integrity and imagination enough of these to earn a decent living at some art of literature that has the dignity of a free profession. It will not happen to them, and there is not much reason why it should. If it ever could have happened, it will not happen now. For even the best of them (with a few rare exceptions) devote their entire time to work which has no more possibility of distinction than a Pekinese has of becoming a Great Dane: to asinine musicals about technicolor legs and the yowling of night-club singers; to "psychological" dramas with wooden plots, stock characters, and that persistent note of fuzzy earnestness which suggests the conversation of schoolgirls in puberty; to sprightly and sophisticated comedies (we hope) in which the gags are as stale as the attitudes, in which there is always a drink in every hand, a butler in every doorway, and a telephone on the edge of every bathtub; to historical epics in which the male actors look like female impersonators, and the lovely feminine star looks just a little too starry-eyed for a babe who has spent half her life swapping husbands; and last but not least, to those pictures of deep social import in which everybody is thoughtful and grown-up and sincere and the more difficult problems of life are wordily resolved into a unanimous vote of confidence in the inviolability of the Constitution, the sanctity of the home, and the paramount importance of the streamlined kitchen.

And these, dear readers, are the million-dollar babies—the cream of the crop. Most of the boys and girls who write for the screen never get anywhere near this far. They devote their sparkling lines and their structural finesse to horse operas, cheap gun-in-the-kidney melodramas, horror items about mad scientists and cliffhangers concerned with screaming blondes and circular saws. The writers of this tripe are licked before they start. Even in a purely technical sense their work is doomed for lack of the time to do it properly. The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement. Such a technique requires experiment and elimination. The cheap pictures simply cannot afford it.

2

LET me not imply that there are no writers of authentic ability in Hollywood. There are not many, but there are not many anywhere. The creative gift is a scarce commodity, and patience and imitation have always done most of its work. There is no reason to expect from the anonymous toilers of the screen a quality which we are very obviously not getting from the publicized litterateurs of the best-seller list, from the compilers of fourth-rate historical novels which sell half a million copies, from the Broadway candy butchers known as playwrights, or from the sulky maestri of the little magazines.

To me the interesting point about Hollywood's writers of talent is not how few or how many they are, but how little of worth their talent is allowed to achieve. Interesting - but hardly unexpected, once you accept the premise that writers are employed to write screenplays on the theory that, being writers, they have a particular gift and training for the job, and are then prevented from doing it with any independence or finality whatsoever, on the theory that, being merely writers, they know nothing about making pictures, and of course if they don't know how to make pictures, they couldn't possibly know how to write them. It takes a producer to tell them that.

I do not wish to become unduly vitriolic on the subject of producers. My own experience does not justify it, and after all, producers too are slaves of the system. Also, the term "producer" is of very vague definition. Some producers are powerful in their own right, and some are little more than legmen for the front office; some - few, I trust - receive less money than some of the writers who work for them. It is even said that in one large Hollywood studio there are producers who are lower than writers; not merely in earning power, but in prestige, importance, and aesthetic ability. It is, of course, a very large studio where all sorts of unexplained things could happen and hardly be noticed. 

For my thesis the personal qualities of a producer are rather beside the point. Some are able and humane men and some are low-grade individuals with the morals of a goat, the artistic integrity of a slot machine, and the manners of a floorwalker with delusions of grandeur. In so far as the writing of the screenplay is concerned, however, the producer is the boss; the writer either gets along with him and his ideas (if he has any) or gets out. This means both personal and artistic subordination, and no writer of quality will long accept either without surrendering that which made him a writer of quality, without dulling the fine edge of his mind, without becoming little by little a conniver rather than a creator, a supple and facile journeyman rather than a craftsman of original thought.

It makes very little difference how a writer feels towards his producer as a man; the fact that the producer can change and destroy and disregard his work can only operate to diminish that work in its conception and to make it mechanical and indifferent in execution. The impulse to perfection cannot exist where the definition of perfection is the arbitrary decision of authority. That which is born in loneliness and from the heart cannot be defended against the judgment of a committee of sycophants. The volatile essences which make literature cannot survive the clichés of a long series of story conferences. There is little magic of word or emotion or situation which can remain alive after the incessant bone-scraping revisions imposed on the Hollywood writer by the process of rule by decree. That these magics do somehow, here and there, by another and even rarer magic, survive and reach the screen more or less intact is the infrequent miracle which keeps Hollywood's handful of fine writers from cutting their throats.

Hollywood has no right to expect such miracles, and it does not deserve the men who bring them to pass.  Its conception of what makes a good picture is still as juvenile as its treatment of writing talent is insulting and degrading. Its idea of "production value" is spending a million dollars dressing up a story that any good writer would throw away. Its vision of the rewarding movie is a vehicle for some glamorpuss with two expressions and eighteen changes of costume, or for some male idol of the muddled millions with a permanent hangover, six worn-out acting tricks, the build of a lifeguard, and the mentality of a chicken-strangler. Pictures for such purposes as these, Hollywood lovingly and carefully makes. The good ones smack it in the rear when it isn't looking.

3

For all this too there are colorable economic reasons. The motion picture is a great industry as well as a defeated art. Its technicians are now in their third generation, its investments are world-wide, its demand for material is insatiable. Five hundred pictures a year must be made or the theaters will be dark, countless people will be thrown out of work, financial organizations will totter, and bankers will start jumping out of their office windows again. Hollywood does not possess enough real talent to make one tenth of five hundred pictures, even if it could find stories to base them on. But the rest must be made somehow, and they are made—with great effort and bitter struggle, with the hardening of many arteries and the graying of many hairs, and with the slow deadening of such real ability as could have been saved by happier tasks.

And the men who turn out this essentially dreary product are well paid by the standards of other industries. This reward is not, of course, due to any big-heartedness on the part of the financial big shots who control the working capital. The men with the money and the ultimate power can do anything they like with Hollywood - as long as they don't mind losing their investment. They can destroy any studio executive overnight, contract or no contract; any star, any producer, any director—as an individual. What they cannot destroy is the Hollywood system. It may be wasteful, absurd, even dishonest, but it is all there is, and no cold-blooded board of directors can replace it. It has been tried, but the showmen always win. They always win against mere money. What in the long run - the very long run - they can never defeat is talent, even writing talent.

It is, I am afraid, a very long run indeed. There is no present indication whatever that the Hollywood writer is on the point of acquiring any real control over his work, any right to choose what that work shall be (other than refusing jobs, which he can only do within narrow limits), or even any right to decide how the values in the producer-chosen work shall be brought out.  There is no present guarantee that his best lines, best ideas, best scenes will not be changed or omitted on the set by the director or dropped on the floor during the later process of cutting - for the simple but essential reason that the best things in any picture, artistically speaking, are invariably the easiest to leave out, mechanically speaking.

There is no attempt in Hollywood to exploit the writer as an artist of meaning to the picture-buying public; there is every attempt to keep the public uninformed about his vital contribution to whatever art the movie contains. On the billboards, in the newspaper advertisements, his name will be smaller than that of the most insignificant bit-player who achieves what is known as billing; it will be the first to disappear as the size of the ad is out down toward the middle of the week; it will be the last and least to be mentioned in any word-of-mouth or radio promotion.

The first picture I worked on was nominated for an Academy award (if that means anything), but I was not even invited to the press review held right in the studio. An extremely successful picture made by another studio from a story I wrote used verbatim lines out of the story in its promotional campaign, but my name was never mentioned once in any radio, magazine, billboard, or newspaper advertising that I saw or heard - and I saw and heard a great deal. This neglect is of no consequence to me personally; to any writer of books a Hollywood by-line is trivial. To those whose whole work is in Hollywood it is not trivial, because it is part of a deliberate and successful plan to reduce the professional screenwriter to the status of an assistant picture-maker, superficially deferred to (while he is in the room), essentially ignored, and even in his most brilliant achievements carefully pushed out of the way of any possible accolade which might otherwise fall to the star, the producer, the director.

4

IF ALL this is true, why then should any writer of genuine ability continue to work in Hollywood at all? The obvious reason is not enough; few screenwriters possess homes in Bel-Air, illuminated swimming pools, wives in full-length mink coats, three servants, and that air of tired genius gone a little sour. Money buys pathetically little in Hollywood beyond the pleasure of living in an unreal world, associating with a narrow group of people who think, talk, and drink nothing but pictures, most of them bad, and the doubtful pleasure of watching famous actors and actresses guzzle in some of the rudest restaurants in the world.

I do not mean that Hollywood society is any duller or more dissipated than moneyed society anywhere: God knows it couldn't be. But it is a pretty thin reward for a lifetime devoted to the essential craft of what might be a great art. I suppose the truth is that the veterans of the Hollywood scene do not realize how little they are getting, how many dull egotists they have to smile at, how many shoddy people they have to treat as friends, how little real accomplishment is possible, how much gaudy trash their life contains. The superficial friendliness of Hollywood is pleasant - until you find out that nearly every sleeve conceals a knife. The companionship during working hours with men and women who take the business of fiction seriously gives a pale heat to the writer's lonely soul. It is so easy to forget that there is a world in which men buy their own groceries and, if they choose, think their own thoughts. In Hollywood you don't even write your own checks - and what you think is what you hope some producer or studio executive will like.

Beyond this I suppose there is hope; there are several hopes. The cold dynasty will not last forever, the dictatorial producer is already a little unsure, the top-heavy director has long since become a joke in his own studio; after a while even technicolor will not save him. There is hope that a decayed and makeshift system will pass, that somehow the flatulent moguls will learn that only writers can write screenplays and only proud and independent writers can write good screenplays, and that present methods of dealing with such men are destructive of the very force by which pictures must live.

And there is the intense and beautiful hope that the Hollywood writers themselves - such of them as are capable of it - will recognize that writing for the screen is no job for amateurs and half-writers whose problems are always solved by somebody else. It is the writers' own weakness as craftsmen that permits the superior egos to bleed them white of initiative, imagination, and integrity. If even a quarter of the highly paid screenwriters in Hollywood could produce a completely integrated and photographable screenplay under their own power, with only the amount of interference and discussion necessary to protect the studio's investment in actors and ensure a reasonable freedom from libel and censorship troubles, then the producer would assume his proper function of coordinating and conciliating the various crafts which combine to make a picture; and the director - heaven help his strutting soul -would be reduced to the ignominious task of making pictures as they are conceived and written - and not as the director would try to write them, if only he knew how to write.

Certainly there are producers and directors - although how pitifully few - who are sincere enough to want such a change, and talented enough to have no fear of its effect on their own position. Yet it is only a little over three years since the major (and only this very year the minor) studios were forced, after prolonged and bitter struggle, to agree to treat the writers according to some reasonable standard of business ethics. In this struggle the writers were not really fighting the motion picture industry at all; they were only fighting certain powerful elements in it - employees like themselves - who had hitherto glommed off all the glory and prestige and most of the money, and could only continue to do so by selling themselves to the world as the true makers of pictures.

This struggle is still going on; in a sense it will always go on, in a sense it always should go on. But so far the cards are stacked against the writer. If there is no art of the screenplay, the reason is at least partly that there exists no available body of technical theory and practice by which it can be learned. There is no available library of screenplay literature, because the screenplays belong to the studios, and they will only show them within their guarded walls. There is no body of critical opinion, because there are no critics of the screenplay; there are only critics of motion pictures as entertainment, and most of these critics know nothing whatever of the means whereby the motion picture is created and put on celluloid. There is no teaching, because there is no one to teach. If you do not know how pictures are made, you cannot speak with any authority on how they should be constructed; if you do, you are busy enough trying to do it.

There is no correlation of crafts within the studio itself; the average—and far better than average—screenwriter knows hardly anything of the technical problems of the director, and nothing at all of the superlative skill of the trained cutter. He spends his effort in writing shots that cannot be made, or which if made would be thrown away; in writing dialogue that cannot be spoken, sound effects that cannot be heard, and nuances of mood and emotion which the camera cannot reproduce. His idea of an effective scene is something that has to be shot down a stairwell or out of a gopher hole; or a conversation so static that the director, in order to impart a sense of motion to it, is compelled to photograph it from nine different angles.

In fact, no part of the vast body of technical knowledge which Hollywood contains is systematically and as a matter of course made available to the new writer in a studio. They tell him to look at pictures – which is to learn architecture by staring at a house. And then they send him back to his rabbit hutch to write little scenes which his producer, in between telephone calls to his blondes and his booze-companions, will tell him ought to have been written quite differently. The producer is probably correct; the scene ought to have been written differently. It ought to have been written right. But first it had to be written. The producer didn't do that. He wouldn't know how. Anyway he's too busy. And he's making too much money. And the atmosphere of intellectual squalor in which the salaried writer operates would offend his dignity.

I have kept the best hope of all for the last. In spite of all I have said, the writers of Hollywood are winning their battle for prestige. More and more of them are becoming showmen in their own right, producers and directors of their own screenplays. Let us be glad for their additional importance and power, and not examine the artistic result too critically. The boys make good (and some of them might even make good pictures). Let us rejoice together, for the tendency to become showmen is well in the acceptable tradition of the literary art as practiced among the cameras.

For the very nicest thing Hollywood can possibly think of to say to a writer is that he is too good to be only a writer.

via www.theatlantic.com

The Bitter Script Reader: Is mediocre the New "Good"?

Go Into The Story's Scott Myers and I exchanged a few tweets Friday night, which was motivated by my assessment of Green Lantern, which was "Not as good as I hoped, but not nearly as bad as I feared."

Scott replied: "Rinse, repeat for all comic book movies / sequels? Mediocrity = The New Good?"

I have to admit, I'm wondering if that's the case. I've seen a lot of movies this year that have been "just okay." Almost six months in, I can't think of a single release that's blown me away. I've been entertained, certainly, by movies like Thor, Paul, X-Men: First Class, and Super 8 among others, but I've yet to come across a film that really made me saw "WOW! Why can't I make that?"

In other words, it seems like Hollywood is doing a good job of getting on base even hitting a few triples, but no one's hit a home run yet - let alone a grand slam. Yet every now and then it seems that film fans try so hard to praise a particular film as not just good, but as the second coming of film. I'm not naming names, but there's been a recent release or two that seems to have gotten more credit than they're due.

For instance, something that's an original idea in a sea of remakes seems to get an A grade just by virtue of the fact that it's not a rehash. Yet if the film were held to a more objective standard. It might be more of a B.

So is this how we rate movies now? "A for effort?" All flaws are forgiven so long as the filmmakers had pure motives?

Which brings me to a couple tweets from screenwriter Justin Marks (Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li.)

First he said, "Go find me a bad Hollywood movie, then find me the director who says he wasn't trying to do something special with it. Doesn't exist."

This remark clearly ruffled some feathers and I saw one reply Justin wrote, saying to a person arguing with him, "I refuse to accept your premise that there are people who intentionally set out to spend 2 yrs making a bad movie!"

No, of course no one sets out to make a bad movie, but that doesn't mean there aren't cynical reasons for making a movie - reasons that perhaps lead creators to cut corners creatively. There's also the fact that these movies are a product with a release date, and sometimes, creators have to make sacrifices to meet their deadline.

Let's put it this way - when you were in school and had a 20 page paper due, I'm sure you didn't set out to get a D grade. However, the circumstances under which you approached completing that assignment might not have been the most conducive to an A grade. You don't necessarily have to be lazy to be incapable of putting the best effort possible. Maybe the material was beyond your grasp, maybe you completely misunderstood the assignment, maybe you completely lost sight of the goal.

Whatever the reason, when the teacher handed you back your work, explained all the ways in which you failed the assignment, I'm willing to be you didn't offer a defensive "I tried!" and expect that to wipe the slate clean.

Filmmakers made bad decisions for reasons other than laziness - and just saying "Well, they tried" isn't good enough. That doesn't mean that an utter failure like G.I. Joe or Wolverine gets a walk. True, perhaps some criticisms of those films step too far into personal attacks, and I suspect that's what Mr. Marks is reacting to.

But when we start arguing that motive and effort are on an equal par with quality - that's what leads to what Scott was talking about - the day that medicore is the new good.

via thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com

The Many Faces of EMMA WATSON, And Then There's KRISTEN STEWART... (PIC)

Blake Snyder: “The Caterpillar and the Butterfly”

Every story is “The Caterpillar and the Butterfly".

We start with a caterpillar living among the tall branches, eating green leaves, waxing “Hi!” to his caterpillar pals, little knowing that his is a profound deficiency. And then one day, an odd feeling comes over him that’s so scary, it’s like a freefall. Something strange is happening. And that something...is death. That’s what the cocoon stage is. As caterpillar becomes chrysalis, he dies. He, and everything he knows, is no more. Can you imagine? But when it seems like this purgatory will never end, when things look blackest, there’s another stirring: our hero sees light, and now he breaks through a weak spot in his prison, to sunlight and freedom. And what emerges is something he never dreamed of when this all began, something...amazing!

That’s every story.

-- Blake Snyder, Save the Cat! Strikes Back, 2009

via screenwritingfromiowa.wordpress.com

Go Into The Story: There Are Three Groups of People in Hollywood...

There are three groups of people in Hollywood:

Group 1: People who know nothing or next to nothing about story.

Group 2: People who can tell you what's wrong with a story, but don't know how to solve its problems.

Group 3: People who not only can determine what's wrong with a story, they can fix it.

Guess which group a writer wants to be in.

A few caveats:

* Virtually no one in the acquisition, development, production or marketing side of the movie business would ever admit to being a member of Group 1. But they're there. A tip to figure their identity: If you ask someone, "What's the story about," and they respond by actually telling you the story beat for beat, there's an awfully good chance they don't have a very good grasp of the concept of story.

* Most people in Hollywood fall into Group 2. They know enough about story to be dangerous. That is they can tell you at least some of the things that are wrong with a script, but often their solutions are way wide of the mark. The worst is when they suggest something that would force you to radically reinvent the story, but they can't see how or why that doesn't make the problems worse. "I know it's called 'Nuns With Guns,' but why does it have to be nuns?"

* If you're a writer, you hope you qualify for Group 3. A studio exec may be involved in shepherding a dozen projects or more through the development process, so they are looking at writers to be problem-solvers. Your ability to identify a story's underlying issues and suggest solid, tangible ways to resolve those concerns will serve you in good stead in Hollywood.

However if you are a member of Group 3, you can not speak to people who are in Group 2 and certainly not Group 1 as if they understand story the way you do. You have to be able to break down your analysis and ideas into a series of graspable talking points. If you try to impress them with your deep understanding of the nuances of story theory, you will not only likely lose them, they will probably feel a great deal of discomfort sitting in a room with you.

Instead you must try to meet them on their level and shape your suggestions into digestible, bite-sized talking points. This is not to demean them in any way. You may know story, but you probably don't know squat about business or the subtleties of networking. You have your talent. They have theirs.

And by the way, this is not only about Group 3 trying to communicate with Group 2 or Group 1 people, it's also understanding the fact that studio executives have insanely busy lives, so being concise and on point is at a premium when dealing with them.

Bottom line: They don't really need to know the ins-and-outs of story theory. All they want is for you to fix the damn script!

[Note: Are there producers and studio execs who are members of Group 3? Absolutely. And that can be both a blessing and a curse, the former because you benefit from their great ideas, the latter because they will want to explore every conceivable plot possibility, hopefully a beneficial process, but an exhausting one].

Now I can hear you asking this question: How do I go about becoming a member of Group 3? Apart from those of you who are preternaturally wise about story, movies, and screenwriting, there is really only one answer to that question: Immerse yourself in cinema. 

Not just screenwriting, but the entirety of movies.

See every film.
Read every book.
Analyze every script.
Study the business.
Think like a writer.
Think like a director
Think like a producer.

You should envelope yourself in everything related to filmmaking and the movie business. In other words, you have to love cinema and follow that passion into the world of cinema.

That is until some pharmaceutical company comes out with a little blue pill called MovieAgra: The one pill to take to magically arouse your cinematic sensibilities!

Otherwise if you want to join Group 3, see every movie, read every book, analyze every script...

via www.gointothestory.com

MORGAN SPURLOCK: The Greatest TED Talk Ever Sold

TOY STORY 4: Red Dead Mass Effect Story

Cracked: Who Actually Goes to Comic-Con

via www.cracked.com

ScriptShadow: Five and a Half Screenplays You Don't Want to Write

This may sound like a shocking statement, but I believe anybody can be a screenwriter. Everybody in the world has at least one interesting story in them. Life is too crazy not to have an awesome story in the vault. But the reality is, it takes a shitload of time to learn how to *tell* that story in the bastardized format that is a “screenplay.” How long it takes generally depends on how talented you are. For some people it only takes a couple of years. For others, it may take two decades to figure out. So a lot of screenwriting comes down to perseverance and a willingness to learn.

I bring this up because every screenplay is kinda like a final exam. It’s a test of everything you’ve learned *up to that point.* So while you may ace that particular exam, it doesn’t mean you know everything about the subject. I guess an analogy would be, passing the bar proves you know a hell of a lot about the law, but it doesn’t mean you’re ready to try your case in the Supreme Court.

So what I thought I’d do is help you avoid some of the more common misguided screenplay attempts I see amateurs make. I wouldn’t say these scripts are easily avoidable because if they were, I’d see a lot less of them. But at least this way you can ask the question. “Am I about to write this script?” Or “Did I just write this script?” As long as you’re asking the question, you have a chance of salvaging the material. So below are five and a half types of bad amateur screenplays I keep running into.

 

THE TECHNICALLY PERFECT BUT ULTIMATELY BORING SCRIPT
This is a toughie. Even professional writers make this mistake and that’s because the line between technical and natural isn’t always easy to identify. However, these scripts usually come from writers who take the screenwriting books a little too literally and who outline every single beat of their story down to the commas. The main character has a clear goal. The act breaks come at the right time. The character motivations are strong. Twists and turns happen at just the right moments. And yet…and yet there’s something extremely boring about it all. Even if we don’t know what’s going to happen, nothing that happens is ever surprising to us. There’s no heart, no soul, no life in the screenplay. “A+” from Robert McKee and Blake Snyder. “F” from the reader.

How to avoid it: There are two main reasons these kinds of scripts happen. First, like I mentioned above, it happens when writers follow the rulebook too literally. If the reader can feel the beats of the story, if they can see the first act turn coming a mile away, if the midpoint is accompanied by a billboard, you’re not doing your job. Great writers learn that in addition to following the rules, it’s their job to MASK the rules, to cover them up so it all flows naturally. This is usually achieved by rewriting – going back into your story and smoothing out all those obvious technical beats. Second, you still have to make interesting choices. Giving your protagonist a goal is one of the most basic elements of storytelling there is. But that doesn’t mean any goal will work. In fact, 100 writers might come up with 100 different character goals. Your job is to beat out the other 99 writers and come up with the most interesting one. Take a movie like Back To The Future for instance. Imagine if once Marty got back to 1955, he didn’t have to get his mom and dad back together, but instead had to win a rock and roll contest at the high school. That choice would’ve made the movie way worse, right? So don’t just make choices, make bold and interesting choices. 

THE FAUX MASTERPIECE
I’m going to give credit for this one to Jim Mercurio. When he spoke of the “faux masterpiece,” he described it like this: “That’s when you try to tackle something huge like a critical piece of history – the Holocaust, slavery, World War II – or try to set an expensive politically-charged love story against that sort of backdrop. You might be a deep thinker and have an unparalleled understanding of the subject, but as a beginning writer, your craft is not going to be able to do the story justice.” I’d expand this definition to include huge Lord of The Rings like fantasy epics, or overlong sci-fi epics like Avatar. These “masterpieces” require so much skill it’s terrifying. They need to be historically accurate on everything from the dialect to the activities people do. It’s hard enough to build a couple of interesting characters into a script. These scripts require dozens of characters, all of whom are usually thin and boring. With these extra characters come extra subplots. Weaving these subplots in and out of the central plot requires a tremendous amount of know-how for even a 100 page screenplay. There may be 10 screenwriters on the planet who know how to do it for a script that’s 150 pages. These scripts also tend to require an inordinately massive goal to keep the story interesting for such a long period of time (i.e. William Wallace’s pursuit of freedom for an entire country in Braveheart; The Marines trying to destroy the Na’vi homeland in Avatar) which amateur writers almost never include. It’s basically everything that’s hard about screenwriting times a thousand. That’s why taking on an epic masterpiece is…well…an epic mistake.

How to avoid it: I honestly wouldn’t touch an epic unless you’ve written at least seven scripts or a few novels. 

THE ACCIDENTAL HOMAGE SCRIPT
Oh man, every writer is guilty of this one. The Accidental Homage script is a script where a writer goes out and sees a movie they love, then writes a script on a similar subject matter which ends up being THE EXACT SAME MOVIE. Young writers are the most susceptible to this because they haven’t yet trained themselves to recognize when they’re inadvertently copying material. The ideas flow through their fingertips as naturally as the breeze and they bang out 50 pages in 3 days, citing divine inspiration. They don’t realize that the reason it was so easy was because they were essentially writing a movie they’d already seen. This can happen with your favorite movies as well, although writers tend to be a little more aware when they’re copying those. Here’s the thing: Inspiration – true inspiration – is the best thing a writer can experience. It’s writer crack. But you have to keep an eye on it. You have to be aware of when the inspiration is coming from inside of you, or coming from the euphoric influence of that great movie you just saw.

How to avoid it: My suggestion would be to not write anything that sounds similar to a recent movie you loved. So if you saw District 9, don’t go home and write an alien invasion movie. It’s just too hard to be objective about the subject matter and you’ll inevitably use too much from the film, destroying any chance of your story being original. 

THE COMEDY WITHOUT A STORY SCRIPT
Okay, I talk about this one a lot so pardon me if you’re tired of hearing it. This is the script I probably see the most of because the majority of people coming into the spec world start with comedies. It makes sense. Everyone thinks they’re funny. Everyone outside of Hollywood thinks they can write a better movie than the one they saw in the theater. You put those two together and you have a lot of writers crashing Hollywood with comedy specs. Roughly all of these attempts make the same mistake. There’s no story. OR, if there is a story, it’s so neutered as to be nonexistent. Instead, the writers come up with an idea that’s just use an excuse to string a bunch of funny scenes together. Little do they know that the second they decided to do that, any chance of writing a good script died. Why? Well, let’s say you have 10 good-to-great laughs in your script, which is a lot. That means we have to slog through 9 and a half minutes of pointless nothingness to get to that one laugh. Does that sound fun? That’s why I always say: Story first, comedy second. If you have a story, something where we’re actually interested, then those other 9 and a half pages are actually entertaining. They’re something to look forward to.

How to avoid it: When you’re writing your comedy, always put your story (and your characters) before the laughs. The irony is that the script will be funnier for it. 

THE NEVER STUDIED STORYTELLING ON ANY LEVEL SCRIPT
Okay, this makes the “Comedy without a story” script look like Shakespeare. It invariably comes from a first timer and someone bold enough to believe they can write a good screenplay without any previous storytelling experience whatsoever. Signs of a NSSOALS? There is no overarching plot/character goal to speak of. The script reads as if the writer is making everything up as he/she goes along (because they are). The script often jumps back and forth between genres. Because the writer hasn’t learned how to build characters yet, the characters contradict themselves constantly (i.e. An introvert will try and get his friends to go out to a party). The writer often makes the mistake of infusing “real life” into the script, and is surprised when the randomness and lengthy dialogue scenes reminiscent of real life are categorized as boring by the reader. Instead of using screenplay real estate to develop already introduced characters, new characters are brought in as if they’re coming out of a clown car, even though they have no real connection to the story and we’ll never see them again. Seemingly important subplots will end lazily or disappear altogether. Characters tend to spend most of the story talking about their situations as opposed to being actively involved in situations. Since there’s no central goal for the main character, the writer rarely knows what to do with the ending (if there’s nothing being pursued, then there’s nothing to conclude). In short, the setup is confusing, the middle has no conflict, and the resolution is unsatisfying.

How to avoid it: Here’s the good news. These scripts are actually okay to write, as long as you don’t show them to anyone else! Your first few scripts should be for you and you only (or maybe a couple of close friends). I’m warning you, you don’t want to burn a potential great contact on one of your first three scripts. Make sure you know what you’re doing first. And hey, before you write anything, there’s nothing wrong with studying the basics of storytelling. There is an art to it that’s been around for hundreds of years. It wouldn’t hurt to study that art. Also read a ton of screenplays, both good and bad. The more you read, the more you’ll be able to spot all those negatives I listed above. 

THE SURREALIST TRIBUTE SCRIPT
Finally, here’s a writer friend of mine who’s read twice as many scripts as I have. I told him what I was doing and asked if he wanted to submit any “script types to avoid.” His e-mail was cryptic and I’m still not entirely sure if he was sober, but this was his submission: The "oh-so-clever quasi-surrealist tribute to Bunuel and Fellini with a little Greenaway and a lot of Lynch thrown in amidst reams of dialogue that is nothing more than misquoted monologues taken from whatever novels the author happened to have on his bookshelf in order to impress female guests on Friday nights... and heaven forbid he should take the time to correct typos, grammatical blunders and unclear/incomplete visuals since all three are, of course, part of the 'art' of writing one of these brilliant opuses" script.

How to avoid it: I think I know what he’s talking about. These are those purposefully random scripts that are supposed to, like, have higher meaning ‘n stuff. Basically, the scripts are more about the writer proving how smart he is than they are about the story. These scripts invariably bring about a lot of eye-rolling. As always, ask yourself if you’re putting the story first. If not, stop writing.

via scriptshadow.blogspot.com

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My TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL Screening Schedule (11 Must See Movies)

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brilliantlove
[BRILL] Discovery
Feature Narrative, 2010, 97 min
Directed by: Ashley Horner
Interests: Art/Literature,  Drama,  Romance,  Sex
Love and lust entangle over a sweltering summer as a novice photographer, Manchester, documents his sweaty affair with his taxidermist girlfriend, Noon. But when a wealthy art-world pornography collector "discovers" Manchester as a genius, the trappings of the art world are unleashed upon the unsuspecting couple, shattering Noon's trust and heart. Director Ashley Horner captures the yearning and desire that can simultaneously strengthen and burn romance. For mature audiences.

Cairo Time
[CAIRO] Spotlight
Feature Narrative, 2009, 88 min
Directed by: Ruba Nadda
Interests: Adventure,  Drama,  Female Director(s),  Middle Eastern,  Romance
In this graceful cross-cultural love story, a happily married woman (Patricia Clarkson) is separated from her husband in the overwhelming city of Cairo. While waiting for his return, she experiences the unique beauty of Egypt with his friend (Alexander Siddig). As their tender friendship blossoms, a series of small yet profound moments changes both of their worlds forever.

The Chameleon
[CHAME] Encounters
Feature Narrative, 2010, 106 min
Directed by: Jean-Paul Salomé
Interests: Based on a True Story,  Family Issues,  Identity,  Mystery,  Thriller
When teenager Nicholas Barclay (Marc-André Grondin, C.R.A.Z.Y.) mysteriously resurfaces after he went missing three years ago, his sister (Emilie De Ravin, Lost) and mother (Ellen Barkin) welcome him back with open arms, but a no-nonsense FBI agent (Famke Janssen) is out to prove he's an imposter. Working from a true story, director Jean-Paul Salomé (Female Agents) delivers an unsettling psychological thriller—featuring an unforgettable performance by Barkin—that will keep you guessing.

Every Day
[EVERY] Encounters
Feature Narrative, 2009, 90 min
Directed by: Richard Levine
Interests: *NYcomp*,  Drama,  Family Issues,  LGBT
Meet Ned. His live-in father-in-law is putting serious strains on Ned's marriage. He's having a hard time adjusting to raising an independent teenager. His job as a TV writer is unfulfilling, and late nights with a sexy coworker are only complicating matters…. Liev Schreiber, Helen Hunt, Brian Dennehy, Carla Gugino, Eddie Izzard, and Ezra Miller star in this eloquent and honest look at an everyday family dealing with life's little curveballs.

Gainsbourg, Je t'Aime... Moi Non Plus
[GAINS] World Narrative Feature Competition
Feature Narrative, 2009, 136 min
Directed by: Joann Sfar
Interests: Aging,  Art/Literature,  Biography,  Drama,  Identity,  Jewish,  Music
From a young man in Nazi-occupied Paris to the sultry crooner who bedded Brigitte Bardot and married Jane Birkin to the vulnerable poet hidden behind a shroud of provocation—Serge Gainsbourg's is a life large enough for grand treatment on film. One of France's greatest mavericks is brought back to life (uncannily, by Eric Elmosnino) in this imaginative and visually flamboyant film debut from one of France's greatest cartoonists.

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Meskada
[MESKA] Discovery
Feature Narrative, 2010, 89 min
Directed by: Josh Sternfeld
Interests: *NYcomp*,  Returning Filmmaker,  Thriller
In this meticulously crafted murder mystery, a police detective (Nick Stahl, In the Bedroom) charged with investigating a juvenile homicide in an affluent suburb finds he must return to his struggling hometown of Caswell to find the killers. As his investigation picks up intensity, the grieving mother begins a battle of will and vengeance with citizens of Caswell, igniting a class war between two vastly different towns in rural America.

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Metropia
[METRO] Showcase
Feature Narrative, 2009, 86 min
Directed by: Tarik Saleh
Interests: Animation,  Drama,  Mystery
In the year 2024, all of Europe is united by a vast web of underground railways, populated by an army of downtrodden worker bees. When one such cog starts hearing voices and encounters a femme fatale shampoo model who seems to hold some answers, he finds himself unearthing a vast Orwellian conspiracy in this visually arresting animated noir. With the voices of Vincent Gallo, Juliette Lewis, Udo Kier, Stellan Skarsgård, and Alexander Skarsgård.

Monogamy
[MONOG] Encounters
Feature Narrative, 2010, 94 min
Directed by: Dana Adam Shapiro
Interests: *NYcomp*,  Drama,  NY Director,  New York,  Returning Filmmaker,  Romance,  Sex,  Thriller
Exhibitionism, voyeurism, jealousy, lust. Brooklyn wedding photographer Theo's (Chris Messina) side business shooting surveillance-style photos of clients on the sly takes an unexpected turn—and creates a rift with his fiancée (Rashida Jones)—when he's hired by a provocative mystery woman (Meital Dohan). The first narrative feature from Oscar®-nominated director Dana Adam Shapiro (Murderball), Monogamy effectively fuses an absorbing mystery-thriller and a taut relationship drama.

Ondine
[ONDIN] Spotlight
Feature Narrative, 2009, 103 min
Directed by: Neil Jordan
Interests: Drama
Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Neil Jordan (The Crying Game) weaves a visually arresting tale of a lone fisherman (Colin Farrell) who pulls in the sweetest catch of his life—a mermaid-like beauty. But as their passion grows, their dark pasts come to light, and the real world begins to threaten their fairy tale romance. This stunning film will challenge your senses and imagination as fantasy and reality clash on the big screen.

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Please Give
[PLEAS] Spotlight
Feature Narrative, 2010, 90 min
Directed by: Nicole Holofcener
Interests: About Family,  Drama,  New York
Death, materialism, liberal guilt, adultery, midlife malaise… writer/director Nicole Holofcener (Friends with Money, Lovely & Amazing) makes such topics sing with earnest emotion and devastating humor. Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt star as well-to-do Manhattanites waiting out the death of their crotchety neighbor so they can take over her apartment. Things get messy when they try to make nice with the old lady and her granddaughters (Amanda Peet and Rebecca Hall).

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The Trotsky
[TROTS] Discovery
Feature Narrative, 2009, 114 min
Directed by: Jacob Tierney
Interests: Comedy,  Social Issues,  Teens,  Tribeca Film
Like most high schoolers, Leon Bronstein (Jay Baruchel, Tropic Thunder) is having an identity crisis. What differentiates Leon, however, is that he believes he is the reincarnation of Soviet thinker Leon Trotksy and predestined to follow the same path as his namesake. Tackling issues from students' rights to semi-formal dances, this "revolutionary" comedy will have you united in laughter.

The Guardian: SHANE BLACK'S Master Class in HOW TO WRITE AN ACTION SCRIPT

A man, a mission, a fiendishly clever bad guy, some guns and a few explosions. It's the classic recipe for a good action movie. Back in the 1980s, Shane Black became Hollywood's go-to screenwriter for that sort of stuff. He wrote Lethal Weapon when he was just 23 and went on to write scripts for Last Action Hero, The Last Boy Scout and The Long Kiss Goodnight. As the forthcoming 12 Rounds bucks the recent summer blockbuster trend for self-indulgent CGI, aliens, superheroes and implausibly large-scale battles - to transport us back to a time when heroes would conquer villains with nothing more than courage, a revolver and a stock of sardonic one-liners - this is his masterclass of moves no action movie should be without.

1. An action-driven plot

That sounds obvious but I see a lot of movies these days that have a bunch of scenes that concern the plot and a bunch of separate scenes that feature the action. But you could lift all the action scenes out wholesale and it would make no difference to the meaning of the film. The action should always go hand in hand with the story so it's all invisibly interconnected. Take the original Star Wars movies: every action sequence is perfectly timed and is designed not just to excite the audience on a visceral level but also to reveal crucial elements of the plot and characters.

2. Highs and lows

An action movie should, like any other, follow the narrative traditions of literature. That means there should be subtlety, a slow build and a gradual bringing together of all the separate threads of the plot. To see all of it coming together slowly is very rewarding for the audience. But if you make everything go at 100 miles per hour from the outset, it loses any impact or meaning. I mean, if a flying truck lands on the bonnet of your car, it should be shocking and scary. But if stuff like that is happening constantly throughout the film, it becomes mundane. An action film can have too much action; picture an equaliser on a stereo, with all the knobs pegged at 10. It becomes a cacophony and is, ultimately, quite boring. Now picture the high-low variations in a film such as Jaws. The lulls, the high points: it's essentially a well-choreographed dance with the viewer.

3. Sudden impact

I have a friend who is a paramedic. Recently he told me about finding a guy who had fallen off a ledge over a freeway and died instantly. The guy had been skipping along with a friend, telling her about a party he was going to, hopped on to a ledge and a second later he was gone. That's how moments of drama unfold in real life. Quickly, spontaneously and with no warning. That's how they should be in action films, too. Violence and action should suddenly punctuate perfectly normal circumstances. Take the moment when the house explodes in Lethal Weapon: these two guys, who we've already established are a pair of plodding cops, wander up to the building and suddenly, boom! The explosion was immense but it was the only thing of that scale in the entire movie. It was supposed to be shocking and wild and sudden. You could see the protagonists were scared by it. Often, those moments are just stretched out for too long, like in Die Another Day: Bond is driving around on this ice sheet and his car flips on its roof. He pops the ejector seat to make the car flip back on to its wheels and the audience gasp. Now, if he'd quickly fired his rockets and nailed the bad guy it would have been the perfect end to the sequence and the audience would have applauded. But instead they stretched the sequence out for another 10 minutes and it just got dull.

4. Throwaway gags

I always have humour in my action movies. I think characters that make jokes under fire are more real. It somehow helps put you in their shoes. But only if the jokes are conversational and not stupid. I think in recent times people have gone overboard with a certain type of Jerry Lewis style. But I used to love older movies where the jokes were more throwaway: that effortless riffing that Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy did so well in 48 Hrs - remember when they're trailing a suspect and Eddie says: "For a cop you're pretty stupid, man. You're driving too close." And Nick says: "Yeah, well, most cops are pretty stupid, but seeing as you landed in jail what does that make you?" Real people in real situations don't stop and wait for their gags to be registered and applauded. They just chuck them out as they go along.

5. Subjective action

I try to make all the action in my movies subjective; to give a sense of what it would feel like to actually be a part of it. You might see a person disappear in the shadows and then a shot come out of nowhere. A great example of this style is the shootout scene in No Country For Old Men. You're in the protagonist's shoes. What surprises him surprises you. Another example, probably the best ever, is the shootout in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. You don't remember specific beats - just the crash of guns, the headlong suicide run, the crescendo and out. It builds perfectly and really creates a harrowing atmosphere.

6. Awkwardness

Amid moments of violence there are often moments of awkwardness. I try to take advantage of the humour and the horror that come from this. In The Hitcher there is a scene where the protagonist wakes up to find that everyone in the police station is dead and the police dog is eating the throat of a corpse. Touches like that lend an uncomfortable realism, like one of those scenes where two men are struggling for a gun, it goes off and they realise they have accidentally shot an innocent bystander. It's good to show the absurd things that actually happen during chaotic moments of violence. Another great example is in Pulp Fiction, when they're driving along and John Travolta accidentally shoots the kid in the back seat.

7. Conventions stood on their head

Say you have a character who walks into a haunted house. They realise there's a ghost there and they decide to investigate further. But if I was writing the movie, I would have that character run out of the house the moment he realises it's haunted - and not stop running for 10 miles. It's not what the audience is expecting - but it's exactly what would happen in real life. In Kiss Kiss Bang Bang I had a character playing Russian roulette. He put a single bullet in a gun and spun the chamber. The tension built - and then he blew his own brains out. Which isn't what you usually expect to happen when you see a Russian roulette scene. You have to keep surprising your audience.

8. Set-ups and pay-offs

There's a great example of this in Face/Off. Near the start of the film John Travolta explains to his daughter how to defend herself with a knife: he says she should stab a guy in the leg and twist the knife once it's in there. By the end of the film, the audience has half-forgotten the scene. But when the daughter has a bad guy holding a gun to her head and pulls out a knife, everybody remembers. When she stabs him in the leg, they cheer. And when she twists it, they cheer louder. Audiences love those moments when something from much earlier in the film comes back and makes them slap their foreheads and say to themselves, "Of course!" Sometimes I write a scene and I think to myself: "That would be even better if I'd somehow set it up earlier in the film." So I turn back to page 15, insert a set-up and wind up looking like a genius who had planned it like that all along.

9. Reversals

There was a great gag in the TV show Hee Haw that sums up the idea of reversals. A guy is telling a story about a man who fell out of a plane. His friend says: "Oh no, he fell out of a plane? That's bad!" And the first guy says: "Well, he had a parachute." So the second guy says: "Oh, that's good." But then the first guy says: "Yeah, but the parachute didn't open." And so it goes on: the guy had a second parachute, but that one had a rip in it, but it was OK because there was a haystack below him but then it turned out the haystack had a pitchfork sticking out of it. And so on. Action sequences need this constant reversal of fortune. Like where the hero kills a snake but in the process opens a cupboard that's filled with a hundred more snakes. For this kind of rapid back and forth, check out the Luke/Vader duel at the end of Empire Strikes Back.

10. Quality of edge

If someone fires a gun in a movie, it should always be a big deal. I don't like movies where someone shoots at someone else but they just run away and manage to dodge the bullet. Or people are all firing at each other continuously for 10 minutes. You need shock and impact and a genuine sense of peril whenever violence takes place. It can't just be a crazy circus with no jeopardy. For a good example of violence with a real edge, look at Three Kings, where there's an aside solely about getting shot and a detailed explanation of developing sepsis. Later in the film, there's one gunfight and when a guy gets shot, you instantly remember that explanation. Boom. You feel like the world's ending. You realise that the character needs help, now!

via www.guardian.co.uk

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