Indelible Freckles

Some people say that as long as you have a wham-bang-thank-you-ma’am finish, the dreck that preceded it will be forgiven. I say that if people give up watching your film because of the preceding dreck, no-one’ll appreciate the time and care and effort you put into that big finish.

If you asked me twenty years ago for a What’s Hot and What’s Not list, amongst the big hair, stove-pipe pants, and cellphones literally the size and weight of actual bricks would be:

In those blessedly naive days, I thought filmmakers of the latter kind of film had run out of money and had to cobble together some sort of ending. Or they’d climaxed too early. Or that the film just sucked. As I got older matured, I began to appreciate endings in which the antagonist didn’t get a multiple injection of hot lead. Instead of shrieking, Shoot the yellow-bellied cocksocker! at film’s end, I found myself nodding sagely by proxy - Let him live with his/her misdeed.

It was okay because it felt appropriate. It resonated.

The best stories - and storytelling - will do that. It’s where all the elements screenwriters juggle with - plotting versus characterisation versus pacing - come together and become an experience.

Jeopardy doesn’t have to be a firefight every ten minutes. Increasing stakes doesn’t mean a progression from saving a city to saving the world. I want the protagonist to work for my hard-earned entertainment dollar. I want them to suffer. And then, once eighty or so minutes have elapsed - as with Life If Only It Was Fair - then the protagonist can prevail, whether by mushroom cloud or bare knuckle fight.

*  Which were, come to think of it, really thrillers.

If I knew five-plus years ago how hard it would be to be a professional screenwriter, I might have tried a little harder to understand the Star Trek-like technobabble that was part of the editing classes at film school. At the very least I would have been employed much more contiguously in these post-film school years.

I doubt that I’d be as happy and content as I am now, though. When I look back, I can exclaim - just like those Hallmark cards or chain-email-angels insist - I’ve come a long way, baby!

My trick to surviving, I think, is my ability to be wilfully short-sighted. Take the short film, for example. I thought I had a pretty straight-forward project: five talking heads, no gun-fights, no car-chases, a half-dozen locations, and a nine to ten-minute running time. The devil is in the details.

• Inside or out? We had just one interior. Everything else was either on the street or in the car. As the shoot approached, I realised how vulnerable we were to weather. I worried a lot. And slept little beforehand. (But it worked out.)
• Location variables. So you think you’ve picked a reasonably quiet street, right? It was quiet when you recce’ed it earlier, it’s away from busy roads - and it’s a cul de sac, for pete’s sake. All those things doesn’t stop someone within microphone range from blasting away with their weedeater. Or a truck pulling up across the road from you and unloading a mini-dozer and heap of wood. (The dialogue’s gonna be re-recorded, and the truck/dozer-driver was a sweetie and we worked around each other.)
• It’s just some people talking in a car. Did I mention that the car’s travelling at the time - like, the car is moving - it’s on the road - while the actors are delivering lines and the camera is rolling. When the budget doesn’t stretch to a low-loader (a really low trailer towed by a truck) ablaze with lights and possies for a camera and attendent crew, you make do. (And I’m really happy with what we got - no make-do’s about it.)

I obviously like to kvetch.

In the end, in the heat of of any stressful moment, I’m always struck by two thoughts: