Maureen schools Shadon, Andy, Samson and Leki

The Producer and Director have names, too: Jenni Heka and Chris Molloy, respectively – I salute you both. Their bios are here.

And the cast, of course. Shadon Meredith, who was one of the voice actors in O le Samaria. The young ‘n’ hungry Samson Chan-Boon. And Andy Sani and Leki Jackson Bourke, both hot off The Brave. Cast bios are here.

As for the rehearsals… what can I say? They’ve started. Four weeks to go.

One of the nice things about a closed read-through is that the atmosphere is collegial: it’s okay to say, This dialogue sucks because it’s understood that the speaker will then say why it sucks, and maybe even suggest how it can be made to suck less, all in a thick fug of We’re here about the work.

A public reading – well, that’s a different kettle of hedgehogs. There’s the possibility – no matter how remote in these ever-so-polite South Pacific isles – that someone in the crowd will say, That sucks! and hide in the mass of unfamiliar faces. And I suspect that stalking up and down the stage eye-fucking every suspicious-looking audience member and yelling WHO SAID THAT? is not really the look I want to promote.

Saturday’s public reading had no such impromptu drama – all the drama was scripted, there was polite applause, and at the end of each reading, there were questions and comments that forced the writers to think and consider.

Ah, humanity: how I love thee at times.

With just over four weeks to go (30 days, to be precise), the production exudes a quiet confidence while the writer goes through 250 grams of cocoa product a day and worries at the script, desperately trying not to think that any day now, he will have to let go of it and trust in the director and actors.

Some link-love for the masochists amongst you –

– and in downloadable format:

    Ogg Vorbis       mp3

I believe the links self-destruct a fortnight from today so, y’know, no rush or anything.

In the meantime, I’m wondering if this other story I’m working on might make for good radio drama….

In December 2010 I went down to my oul’ home toon to sit in on the recording of a radio drama I wrote. I bragged about it, of course. Now it’s about to hit the airwaves.

SKYBLUE will be broadcast on SUNDAY 13 MAY 2012 at 3:05pm (New Zealand time) on National Radio.

Getting stuff out is a collaborative effort so even though I wrote it, other people made it a reality. Big ups to –

– the actors: Tess Jamieson, Jamie McCaskill, Nigel Collins, Mick Rose, Nick Dunbar, Asalemo Tofete, Amy Tarlton, Phil Grieve, Tina Cook, Rob Lloyd, Duncan Smith, and Prue Langbein;

– engineer Phil Benge; and

– producer Jason Te Kare.

I know, I know: twelve bleedin’ speaking parts (Jason was very, very tactful in pointing this out to me).

And thanks also to the reality-checkers: Dr Christina Birkin and Dr Melanie Woodfield for reading various drafts, and helping shape sensationally-dramatic-but-irresponsibly-unethical-and-inaccurate scenes into equally-grippingly-dramatic-but-more-butt-clenchingly-realistic ones.

A script doesn’t get better on itself, but.

So. I took the notes I was given from the read-through, some more from the director hisself, and some of my own, and tried to integrate those that were most applicable (ie., felt right) into the next iteration of the draft.

If nothing else, it’s making more sense. It’s jumped from 33 pages to 37 pages but that’s okay. The director is not afraid to cut lines and stuff whether I’m in the room sobbing or not.

I used to wonder what a “revised first draft” meant. I used to think it was virtually identical to the first draft – it just had all the typos ironed out. As far as feature scripts were concerned, the definition could vary, depending on the producer.

But with this project, my wearing the writer and co-producer hats means that a revised first draft is whatever I damned well say it is.

So, yesterday was the read-through and…. Read-through’s are always an heady, anxious, butterflies-in-the-bowels kind of experience. You’ve just emerged into the light with a draft that you think/hope/pray hits the mark. You anticipate the joy of hearing your dialogue sing and await the inevitable praise to be heaped upon you from your readers.

This read-through was no different.

The actors reading their lines sounded nothing like the voices I’d heard when writing the script. (Disclosure: this was a cold read.) Holes that I thought I’d papered over sufficiently stuck out like… holes don’t stick out, really, do they? The dialogue did not sing. Arcs I thought I’d artfully sketched turned out to be just sketches waiting some proper writing to define them.

Praise was not inevitable. Warm supportive noises were welcomed. Carefully phrased criticism was taken on board. No tears were shed. No pride was swallowed.

With an open reading less than a fortnight away, it’s about tightening and bridging and articulating and… writing.

Development continues apace.

INT. PRODUCER’S OFFICE – DAY

TIGHT ON WRITER, lower lip trembling.

WRITER

You’re what?

PRODUCER

Oh don’t be a sookie -

WRITER

You’re swanning off to who-knows-where so I have to deal directly with the director -

PRODUCER

Shut up and have a Chupachup.

The Writer crosses his arms. Looks meaningfully at a corner of the Producer’s desk.

The Producer follows the Writer’s eyes.

Beat lengthens.

PRODUCER

If I have to reach into that drawer, you better drop the tears and trembly lips.

The Writer’s lips tighten, then tremble again. They tighten.

The Producer opens the DRAWER – we see only a faint glow from its contents – as --

PRODUCER

(as if to a dog)

Who’s a good boy?

OUT ON WRITER.

Friday, I must say, for all its excitement and marathon-like/-lite duration, was a little frustrating.

Oh, and then I was reminded that:
 -  Saturday we were expecting seldom-seen relatives.

Forcing condensing three potential writing days into five hours can be an exhilarating experience.  I love it.  After the fact.

Experiencing it is another matter as the knot in the stomach gnaws and gnaws, your fingers won’t type fast enough – and they keep inserting typos! – and a headache tries to distract you with variations of “How you like me now?”-type pain.

But it’s not all bad.  Honest.  There’s the actual exhilaration – the fevered and/or inspired connection and transformation of notes-to-self into a story, the page count in the bottom corner of the screen clicking over and reinforcing the sense of hard work in progress, and the process of writing, throwing shit down, cursing as you delete, mentally high-five-ing as it just flows.  Five minutes to the contracted deadline, and you’re done.

One thinks, Gaw, that weren’t so bad!

Oh how quickly one forgets.

(Final page count:  33 pages.)

In this case, I only had to wait three days.

   From:  Producer
  To:  Writer
  Subject:  Goodbye My Feleni – first draft
  Message:  Where’s the second act?

Ah yes.

The second act.

So yeah: I hit 23 pages five minutes before deadline, held my breath and clicked on Send.

The Producer can’t ditch me now.

A measly three pages since yesterday.

But I did spend an hour negotiating a formal agreement that reasonably I’m happy with. There were moments that gave me some ‘Nam-style flashbacks but everyone’s still alive and still talking.

It’s late afternoon now and we’re entertaining in the banquet hall so there’ll be no more writing today.

Three pages is always better than no pages.

INT. KEEP, FORTRESS MAMEA – NIGHT

Our WRITER hunches over his desk, fingers flying over his KEYBOARD, head bopping to Charlie Parker. A particularly intense buzz of typing and he squints at his MONITOR --

ON MONITOR where a page count shows “12″.

WRITER

Yeah, baby!

His CELLPHONE vibrates.

ON CELLPHONE which shows “New txt from Producer”.

He snatches up his cell.

ON CELLPHONE – “You have a Director.”

Our Writer’s brow furrows as --

CUT TO:

FLASHBACK – INT. PRODUCER’S OFFICE – DAY

-- our Writer squirms on his KINDERGARTEN STOOL, eyes barely clearing the top of the PRODUCER’S DESK.

PRODUCER

Do you want to direct?

WRITER

Hell, no.

PRODUCER

Shut -, uh. Good.

ON WRITER as he stares at the Producer, a bead of sweat tracking down his forehead as we --

CUT BACK TO:

INT. KEEP, FORTRESS MAMEA – NIGHT

-- and the Writer’s thumb hovers over the ‘Send’ button --

ON CELLPHONE – “Wow. Without a script, too.”

-- then he thumbs the ‘Cancel’ button, before trying another answer --

ON CELLPHONE – “You are so O for AWESOME.”

-- then he cancels that reply – a DROP OF SWEAT splashes the cellphone and he blinks and remembers to breathe – then types in --

ON CELLPHONE – “Thank you.”

Working backwards from mid-June, I’ll have three weeks of rehearsal, leaving me with five weeks to write a script. But I don’t have five weeks to write a script.

Did I neglect to mention that there’re two readings in the schedule? Part of the fixed-and-unmoveable-deadline package. The first reading is two weekends from today.

I have no actors. I have no director.

My wonderfully supportive Producer has pointed out that without a script, I can’t attract actors. A script also tends to have things like the number of characters, a description of where those characters are, what they’re wearing, and what utensils instruments/tools they are handling.

So.

I flash on Writing fast is really about writing smart which means that for the first five days of my ten day writing schedule, I do a Game of Thrones season one marathon, knock a few outstanding DVDs off my to-watch list, and circle and circle and circle the idea of a script.

With five days remaining, I decided to –

  1.  rework something I had lying around; and

  2.  eschew my current timekeeping programme –

    — for something more goal oriented like a page count.

I’m six pages in and I’ve got four days to go.

Whoa Nellie!

Yep: the almost inevitable American remake, The Killing, from one of the Cold Case writer-producers. We watched the pilot and second ep and were hooked. It was the same, but different. It had brains and paid the audience the compliment of being subtle.

Things began to slip away from the third ep onward, until the credits rolled on the season finale and The Goddess and I looked at each other in silence, unable to quite formulate our thoughts without lapsing into potty words and descriptions/threats of GBH.

Some internet trawling tells me that the perpetrator won’t be revealed until the end of the second season. Closure after twenty six freakin’ eps? Not even Murder One took that long. Suggesting Twin Peaks invites potty words and threats of physical harm.

The New York Times captures my thoughts exactimundo: “What we’ve been watching is actually a 26-hour-long episode of Law & Order, and we’re only halfway through it.”

Thank you, but no.

Why theatre? you ask.

Because I’ve threatened to do it a couple of times in this blog.

And an opportunity arose. … Okay: I rashly – foolishly, even – accepted a fixed and unmoveable deadline.

After all – all together now – How hard could it be?

Partly for an escape or diversion or some writerly time-out, partly to provide you, my ever loyal readers, with some entertainment, and partly to start building some profile, I’ll be blogging about it.

In contrast, tortured (ex-)special forces guys, young idealistic lawyer-types, frustrated creatives – they’re no terrible stretch if one gets into a let’s pretend state of mind.

In my early years of ignorance and naivete, the bar I’d subconsciously set for writing female characters was frightfully low. My female characters would a). never scream unnecessarily, b). never merely stand by as the hero gets a beatdown, and c). react pretty much like I imagined my mother or sister or female-friends would react in whatever extraordinary circumstances they might find themselves in.

This three-step checklist worked well enough until life experience and reluctant maturity coincided with having to write character drama rather than wham-bam actioners or thrillers. Try as I might, just making shit up and tap dancing furiously –

– OR –

– OR –

– no longer worked. There was a Truth to be gotten at in the stories: a truth about characters and ‘where they’re coming from’. And try as I might to avoid or ignore it, the answer to this challenge was simple: backstories had to be written, especially for vexsome characters.

(Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure I’m on record somewhere on this blog as saying that backstories are for sissies. What can I say? I was young and foolish.)

Backstories are helpful wee things. Besides being something with which to brain shut up pesky actors with, they are part of the world building process that stories require. With each backstory, each character belongs that much more to the narrative – you can quickly see whether they are essential or not (and if not, start making them essential) – and when you do it right, there’s an inexorability to character arcs and interactions that do away with things like plot devices.

(Those of you who’ve always done backstories have likely known this all along but it’s nice to (eventually) get to this point at my own pace.)

And so one finishes a many-paged backstory for a female main character but there’s something in it that’s just not ringing true.

That’s when one swallows one’s pride and asks one’s wife or friend or colleague, What do women really want?

Once the initial response is over and done with, whether it’s hearty laughter or stunned silence or an impassioned speech on twenty-first-century feminist politics, one soon finds oneself en route to the Truth.

Just don’t hum I am Woman or (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman as you go about it.

Trust me: it’s not worth it.

In the heat of trying to be concise yet informative, finding the right pic to link, and struggling to remember my mental list of What I’ve learned… (which always seems to vanish when I sit down to blog), I completely forgot the reason why I draft the post in the first place: unintended consequences.

And not all being as it seems.

Those are two cool things to work into one’s writing, and devilishly hard to do well.

- that would a) be somewhat more resistant to its operating environment/s and b) not joggle out of my ears.

My first discovery about in-ear phones – personal information alert – was that my left and right ear canals require different sized silicone sleeves. My second discovery was the initially disconcerting amount of external sound that they block out.

My journey of discovery didn’t stop there. The following are a few other things I’ve observed with the new ‘phones on my runs:

  1.  the percussion I’m hearing for the very first time on a track might actually be my own laboured breathing through the ‘phones;

  2.  the bass line that’s a little out of sync with a song is probably my heart hammering away; and

  3.  my apologies to startled and bemused pedestrians and runners on my loop – I sometimes forget the effectiveness of the silicone sleeves and am wheeze-singing along to Whitney‘s Queen of the Night rather than lip-syncing.

The days of just firing up the laptop, typing in FADE IN:, and seeing what happens next are long gone. Time is finite. Enthusiasm will carry one only so far.

I’m trying to draw some comfort from John August, et al, about writing faster and smarter. And I shall not forsake the small voice of stubborn and wilful ignorance in my head – How hard can it be to [INSERT TASK/PROJECT]?

Yep.

The Rialto Channel have kindly agreed to show To’ona’i.

I’m chuffed.

Happy new year.

A nice mix of mainstream, European and indy this year.

  Asterios Polyp – David Mazzuchelli
  Britten & Brulightly – Hannah Berry
  Chance in Hell – Gilbert Hernandez
  Doing Time – Hanawa Kazuichi
  Fun Home – Alison Bechdel
  Hellcity: The Whole Damned Thing – Macon Blair and Joe Flood
  The Lagoon – Lilli Carre
  Maybe Later – Dupuy & Berberian
  Powers: Z – Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming
  Shaolin Burning – Ant Sang
  The Third Musketeer – Jason
  Walking Dead: No Way Out – Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard

Scripts

Hm. According to my reading diary, I read the average annual amount of these this year but very few have wowed me like I want to be wowed.

  Billy Elliott – Lee Hall
  The Good Wife: Pilot – Robert King and Michelle King
  Lone Star – John Sayles
  Manhunter – Michael Mann
  The Straight Story – John Roach and Mary Sweeney

Maybe it’s just me.

Books

Some ah, research led me to more non-fiction reading that I would previously readily admit.

  Armageddon – Max Hastings
  Nemesis – Max Hastings
  Striptease – Carl Hiaasen
  True Grit – Charles Portis

I’m tempted to try the Demi Moore vehicle that started out once upon a time as a film adaptation of Striptease but… ‘m afraid I mayn’t survive it.

Features

  13 Assassins
  Animal Kingdom
  Another Year
  Born into Brothels
  Buck
  Chugyeogja
  Contagion
  Frozen River
  Get Low
  Leaves of Grass
  Please Give
  El secreto de sus ojos
  The Social Network
  The Women on the Sixth Floor

Television

  30 Rock: Season 1
  Go Girls: Season 2
  Breaking Bad: Season 4
  Downton Abbey: Season 1-2
  The Good Wife: Season 3
  Justified: Season 2
  Monroe: Season 1

There were some shows that were real… curate’s eggs that I wanted to try and be objective about but then I remembered that Sunday School chestnut about pointing fingers and the other three pointing right back at you. (Yeah, I chickened out.)

The latest Mission: Impossible instalment is around the corner and I’m kinda interested, kinda excited, though not because I’m a fan of either the franchise or Tom Cruise hisself – it’s for the directors who’ve gamely signed on (and the first one doesn’t count because Nobody knew)*:

  –  M:I-2 by a post-Killer, pre-Paycheck John Woo;

  –  M:I:III by the insanely prolific J J Abrams;

  –  and now Ghost Protocol from Iron Giant and Incredibles maestro Brad Bird.

… Yeah, I’m in.

Although somehow, somewhen along the way, whenever I think of the M:I franchise, I always flash on this:

* Disclosure: I’ll watch anything by Brian De Palma. Anything.

(Fedora-tip: Lew by way of Dim-Post.)