Got some catching up to do.

Back soon.

And yet….

As if.

The second season of Fringe fell by the wayside earlier in the late last year but we can catch up with Dunham and co at our leisure now. Unless we’re already belatedly catching up with Dexter (about to start season three) and Burn Notice (couple of eps from the second season finale). Or (re)watching the first seasons of Scrubs and Green Wing.

It should only be for June and a bit of July: the fifth season of The Closer and the fourth season of Mad Men open next month.

Meantime The Goddess has Radar’s Patch to chuckle over while I have Treme all to myself.

We’ll get by.

There is some common ground. Queen, Maisey Rika and Phoenix Foundation. Better Off Ted, Modern Family, Breaking Bad, The Good Wife and Mad Men. (Yes, these last coupla years have been big box-watching years.)

She likes relationship stories while I like kill-my-dog-and-I-shall-lay-waste-upon-the-land-until-vengeance-is-mine stories. Her viewing threshold is a lot lower than mine – q.v. The Cult – but my excuse is that all viewing is a learning experience.

So we like different things. So what.

Were it not for Her, I would not have had the pleasure of Grand Designs, the River Cottage series, Pieces of April, and King of Kong. And were it not for me, She would not have had the pleasure of Mad Men, The Good Wife, Lars and the Real Girl, and In Bruges.

I suppose it evens out in the end. And because I do like to quote the good doctor,

  It is important to always try new things.

As always his post is a much more polite and tactful explanation than mine:

The universe may have recognised my small contribution: John August has posted about the Bechdel Test.

  In your script:

  1.  Are there two or more female characters with names?

  2.  Do they talk to each other?

  3.  If they talk to each other, do they talk about something other than a man?

Amongst the comments on that post was this from American multihyphenate Kevin Arbouet:

  1.  How many scripts out there have two or more black characters with names?

  2.  Do they talk about something other than how white people put them down/The Black Experience?

  3.  Are they a judge?

All my scripts – television in particular – satisfy the first question of both the Bechdel and Arbouet tests (extending the latter test to all non-European* ethnicities).

Not so many of the feature scripts pass questions 2 and 3 of the Bechdel. I’d like to say in my defence that in relation to question 3, my female characters may be discussing a man but it’s never in any romantic context.

As for questions 2 and 3 of the Arbouet, none of my ethnic characters talk about their struggle in this White Man’s World, nor are any of them in a powerful and/or well-respected positions, but they’re representative of the New Zealand I see both firsthand and in the news.

And that’s all one can ask of a script’s cast of characters: that they be appropriate, realistic and representative of whatever world you’re offering your audience.

*  ‘Non-European’ – that’s ‘non-white’ to American readers.

It makes for good drama.

There’s a parallel with life in Fortress Mamea. We’re a reasonable distance from civilisation so, after a good few years’ living here, we know almost to the minute the travel time between us and most of Auckland at any given time of the day.

Some observations:

Don’t Even Be a Minute Late

If we miss our official departure time by just a minute, what invariably happens after we leave the drawbridge behind us is that we almost immediately find ourselves behind a Slow Driver. Not a Townie Driver who doesn’t belong in our neck of the woods and is understandably unfamiliar with the roads. A Slow Driver: who taps/floors their brake for corners, distant hazards and imaginary noises, all the while travelling at ten kilometres below the official speed limit.

The fun doesn’t stop there. There is no point in getting angry or frustrated behind a Slow Driver because –

There Will Always Be an Even Slower Driver

Think the Hyundai Getz driven by someone with the eyesight of a mole is already excruciatingly slow? Give it time and even they will catch up to a Mazda MX5 driven by its One Very Careful Owner.

Which reminds me – what is it with –

Sports Cars Driven by Slow Drivers

What were they thinking when they bought their vehicle? Or if it was a gift, what in the gods’ names was the giver thinking? Why isn’t there some kind of reflex and/or psychological profile test salespeople can give prospective owners to determine ability and mental fitness?

Next time you’re writing a chase scene and your hero has already negotiated a reversing truck, a very bad run of traffic lights, numerous henchmen and their attendant vehicles, and randomly tossed-in-panicked-hysteria infants – and you stop to wonder if a gaggle of nuns might be a bit much… think about the world that we share.

And write what you know to be true.

In the first couple of years of blogging, I actually had a one- to two-month buffer of material. For the last couple of years I’ve been able to crank through ideas, writing each one out until I a). ran out of steam, b). realised I was going nowhere, or c). I somehow and/or eventually finished one.

Not this week.

The draft posts have either petered out or were ideas I couldn’t carry through.

Some projects can be like that. They make it through the conceptual stage and you whip up a document that tells any random but preferably connected reader that not only is what they’re holding a Damned Hot Property, it is Compleat.

Only it’s not. ‘Compleat’, that is. You know this because a). having had some sleep after your Ebullient Moment of Completion, the document you read the morning after is not the one you remembered from the night before, or b). one of your Trusted Readers has told you that your project is Tragically Flawed.

So you work it. Make notes about it. Play with it. Bulldoze it. Ignore it. Discuss it. Dream about it. Write bits of it. Share it. Lose sleep over it. And when nothing you do seems to have made it any better, you leave it –

– for another project. Where you go through the same shenanigans – likely in very different circumstances – but it can feel like you’re carrying some kind of figurative writers’ albatross, stalling/starving/killing each new or different project you turn to.

What do you do when the old quotes that once kept you pepped no longer ring true?

You keep writing. What else can you do? Whether it’s a project or a letter or a report or a blog – even if it’s about the process – it’s the act that’s important. You’re a writer.

Write.

It was spellchecked – a rarity for ads calling for writers.

Then I saw another ad for the same project:

I did a double-take – and lo:

… Meh.

The same goes for whenever I rewatch films like The Constant Gardener or television shows like The Shield where the endings are not happy.

Why do I subject myself to this torture?

It’s the execution. It’s the characters. It’s being taken by the hand for a half-hour or hour or ninety-plus minutes or days and returning to the real world short of breath, my heart thundering in my chest and a lump in my throat.

This is not a new discovery. Romeo and Juliet will never grow old. Rick will always have Paris. Rachel and Deckard will never have certainty.

And I think to myself:

  Someone wrote that shit.

  I lapped that shit up and begged for more.

  I want to write like that.

I can understand The Goddess getting halfway into a book before realising she’d read it before – she devours hundreds of books a year (and not one of them will have a speech- or thought-balloon). My reading diary has me averaging 115 comics, scripts and books a year for the period 2006-2009.

What’s my excuse?

Last weekend, Mr Ebert very generously posted the script from that moment in time. Oh, what coulda bin.

There are doubtless innumerable posts in the ether about what makes a piece of art resonate.

For me, it’s a singular interpretation, execution and vision that transports the viewer.

I have no idea where David Simon and Eric Overmyer are going with Treme but I am so there, man, because I’m hooked. Same goes for the recently concluded 100 Bullets from Messieurs Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso – each trade paperback left me floundering as a reader but I’d still make enough connections between the many, many plotlines and goddamn if it wasn’t a hot little page-turner. And then there’s The West Wing and The Walking Dead. And The Good Wife and Ex Machina. And Mad Men. … I could go on.

With the exception of Treme, all of the above are easily categorized genre pieces.

Each title resonates not just because they’re so different from everything else out there that they’re essential reading/watching – they’re the creators talking directly to us the audience at an individual level. They’re connecting.

That’s resonating.

I don’t know how but The Goddess and I watched one earlier in the year – I can’t remember what – and even though it was a pleasant enough experience as the two leads got into a clinch, the music rose and credits rolled (and I coughed to cover my swallowing my tears and blinked rapidly so as not to give Her the impression I enjoy this genre) my Beloved turned to me –

It’s largely negative critical reception in the UK may sum up the show best but will never explain why I persisted with these five hours of ‘entertainment’.

Nothing a self-respecting screenwriter won’t already know but nonetheless a recommended and refreshing Mametian reminder.

(Fedora-tip: WGGB Blog.)

FADE IN:

INT. FAVOURED LOCAL CAFE – MID-2006

GODDESS

I just read this great story about sentient misanthropic parking meters!

Our Writer tears his eye from a public library copy of “100 Bullets: The Hard Way”.

WRITER

That’s nice, Dear.

GODDESS

It’d make a great T.V. series.

But Her mortal is already back in the Land of Azzarello & Risso.

CUT TO:

INT. FORTRESS MAMEA – CHRISTMAS 2007

Our Writer pulls from his CHRISTMAS STOCKING... a BOOK on sentient parking meters with anger issues and histories of substance abuse.

WRITER

Oh. A book on -

GODDESS

I know! You should read it!

CUT TO:

EXT. BATTLEMENT, FORTRESS MAMEA – LATE 2008

Our Writer stifles a smile as he turns the last page of his Christmas 2007 gift. He looks at his Goddess surrounded by well-thumbed books, magazines and clippings on renovation, gardening and animal husbandry.

WRITER

That was fun.

GODDESS

(off Writer’s book cover)

I knew you’d like it.

WRITER

It’d be expensive -

GODDESS

But it’s got everything: actuary tables, scene examinations, car chases, gun fights, love scenes -

WRITER

Love scenes?

GODDESS

Just checking if you’re listening.

Writer smirks and thumbs through the book. Just in case.

CUT TO:

INT. HOME THEATRE, FORTRESS MAMEA – MID-2009

ON TELEVISION as credits roll and a ‘mute’ symbol appears in the corner of the screen. We hear a SIGH O.S. as --

-- our Writer sits on the couch, a glazed look on his face, and heaves another sigh. His Goddess looks up from Her innumerable colour charts, chips and samples.

GODDESS

At least everyone involved got paid?

(beat)

You’ll never get that hour back?

(beat)

But it was character building, yes?

She puts down a colour card with with names like satin road, sulu, deep blush and royal heath.

GODDESS

Say something.

WRITER

(slowly and painfully)

A monkey with both hands super-glued to his genitals, blind from antifreeze addiction and with incipient Parkinsons could have banged out a better script on an Underwood missing half its keys.

GODDESS

And what are you going to do about it?

The Writer pulls out his POWERBOOK and opens it up.

INSERT POWERBOOK SCREEN

as the following is typed in: “THE PARKING METER – When broken yellow lines are ignored and P5/P30/P60 signs are used as trophyware, who you gonna call?”

FADE OUT.

• This is spot-on:

  

  It seems to be cool at the moment to bag Avatar – something akin to the derision that accompanies Titanic, perhaps? – but I enjoyed it. Not only was I familiar with the original scriptment from way back but it transported me to a different reality for a couple of hours. That takes real story-telling and filmmaking, regardless of the tools and bells and whistles at the filmmakers’ disposal.

  (Fedora-tip: Alex Epstein.)

• Some other backlash: on the BBC Writersroom blog, Dominic Mitchell lays into writers holding forth about writing at the Guardian website:
  Get lucky. Stay lucky. – Ian Rankin

  Stop reading fiction – it’s all lies anyway, and it doesn’t have anything to tell you that you don’t know already (assuming, that is, you’ve read a great deal of fiction in the past; if you haven’t you have no business whatsoever being a writer of fiction). – Will Self

  When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else. – Zadie Smith

  Yeah, some of them are a bit pointy-headed and a lot of them prescriptive but everyone’s different – particularly writers – and writers should remember can always cherrypick advice at their leisure.

  (Fedora-tip: WGGB Blog.)

• Heartened by an October 2005 revised draft of Terminator: Salvation, I watched the finished film recently.

  I should have taken the hint:

  CHRISTIAN grabs a HELICOPTER, which results in a CRASH that somehow leaves him unscathed. A CRIPPLED TERMINATOR chases him, but it is killed by BULLETS. Plain old, regular BULLETS. The kind that couldn’t kill TERMINATORS in the other movies.

I rilly rilly enjoyed the Star Trek reboot recently so: Go forth and prosper.

(The poster neglects to show the shotgun and rocket launcher/pod that are part of his kit. Maybe the PR elves thought it all a little overkill or something.)

When it comes to writing, I haven’t been picky with my kit. All of my handwritten notes are consistent in their random ink colours – and occasional pencil – because I don’t care for my writing implement (and because I lose pens on a regular basis). As for the electronic records, they include Word, text-only, rich-text and Open Document formats – although that last one has been the standard since 2007.

A couple of years ago, I started playing around with Celtx and, well, nothing has been the same ever since. I use Final Draft now. I understand now the zeal of the convert: FD makes (screen)writing so much easier. But it’s only a tool.

Commando will always have a special place in my heart but it’s been a quarter-century already, and in this post-Bourne world where a rolled-up magazine is as handy in a fight as a Rambo knife, it’s no longer about suiting up for every possible situation. Save the montage for a flashback or Michael Bay homage.

Use whatever you have to hand to put words on the page or screen.

Here’s a placeholder I stumbled across in my archives. I wish I could remember what medication I was on when I drafted it.

… Maybe you had to be there.

• The last swords-and-sandals epic I saw was Gladiator. Since then, Troy, Alexander, Rome and 300 have come and gone with nary a flicker of interest on my part. But The Incomparable‘s review of Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi‘s Spartacus has sparked a guilty, pulpy, what-the-heck kind of interest:
  …Spartacus won’t win any awards for the originality of its premise. Hunktacular warrior dude loves his superhot wife, but is reluctantly called away to battle for the good of his people. Hunktacular warrior dude is betrayed by sleaze-weasel Roman general and branded a deserter. Hunktacular warrior dude escapes and is reunited with his superhot wife just in time for them to be captured (notably, while in the altogether) by sleaze-weasel Roman general. Sleaze-weasel Roman general sells hunktacular warrior dude into the employ of agreeably amoral gladiator owner. Hunktacular warrior dude must wage a muscly, well-oiled, tiny-pantsed struggle up the ranks of the gladiator circuit to find his beloved wife and gain his whoa that guy just took a giant axe to the face!
• The always excellent xkcd webcomic has this heads-up for those writers out there putting the final touches on their denouement:

  

• And go here – now – for the rest of this brilliant bat-take on Memento:
  
  

When GoogleDocs came out, paving the way for netbooks and the diminishing need to carry your data around with you, I harrumphed and thought that only death would wrest my hard-drive-resident apps and documents from my cold, stiff fingers (and even then there are the hard and soft boobytraps lying in wait). Okay, so maybe I have a bit of an external hard-drive obsession (six and growing). And yeah, maybe my backups of backups onto a RAID 1 set-up is a little nerdy. But I have peace of mind.

And so, today, I’m travelling light – no Powerbook, just my PortableApps and flashdrives – and there’s an urgent request for some scripts that I’m consulting on.

I thought to myself: How hard can it be to access a shared Gmail account, scroll through the emails, compile the attached scripts and miscellaneous docs, and flick them on through ThunderbirdPortable? I’m using Firefox. I’m at a broadband connection. It’s mid-morning so the bandwidth traffic should be reasonable.

A half-hour – fifteen minutes, even – job has extended to well over an hour as the browsing experience is excruciatingly slow. Attachments won’t download – or if they do, they slow to a crawl and then stall at 51 or 76 or 91%. Reboots, resets and restarts of various hard- and software have made no apparent difference.

I am not happy.

And I now have good cause for my separation anxiety when it comes to my Powerbook.

I thought Charlie would stay with us for just a block. We’ve been joined by other neighbourhood dogs in the past but they’ve usually drifted away within minutes, presumably distracted by something more interesting than our run. After the second block, and as we commenced our big loop, Charlie was still with us; she seemed to know what we were about.

It was nice running with two dogs. I felt part of a pack.

Most dogs in our area are well socialised, or their owners at least aware of their dog’s manners. Most times, we stop and I wheeze as athletically as I can as bottoms are sniffed, tails are wagged, and we resume our run. Sometimes, the wagging tails become blurs and the dogs think it’s play time and to heck with the humans. Occasionally, fights break out but both human parties are amicable – hey, they’re just dogs being dogs.

There are the regulars that we pass on our run, among them: Short Leads Guy, a guy who keeps his two dogs – both very friendly – on short leads and is in a constant tussle with them as they drag him along; Eye-Rolling Woman, who rolls her eyes whenever her collie tries to play when it’s obviously just. Walkies. Time. And there’s Bad Boys Woman, who walks two schnauser-terrier crosses on leads and shrieks Bad boy! Behave! Bad boys! whenever they pick fights with other dogs.

We met all of the above on this run. The first two were wary but greetings were exchanged under supervision and in good humour – for all her musculature and leonine eyes, Charlie’s a friendly and well socialised dog. The final party has neither friendly nor well socialised schnauser-terrier crosses.

As we approached, the small dogs barked, Charlie rolled up for a hello, the small dogs went crazy, picked a fight with Charlie, and then the next thing I thought I saw was one of the small dogs with its head in Charlie’s mouth. And in that split second, I thought, Our next dog will be a mastiff.

I body-blocked Charlie away – she really had only taken hold of the small dog’s neck, not the head, but I can dream – shrugged gallically at the woman, and we resumed our run.

And what the hell does this have to do with this blog?

When characters arrive unannounced and unexpected in your story, see where they take you. You always learn something.

How d’you wanna play the hospital trip – straight or strange?

Straight:

– or Strange:

What we have from the ‘straight’ version is a worry-wart father and weak-sister girlie character – understandable but BORing.

But in the ‘strange’ version, who’d've expected a ballsy quick-thinker underneath Sexpot’s push-up brassiere and peroxided bob?