d f mamea

20 January 2011

Stage Watch: Raising the Titanics

Went to a play last year: Albert Belz‘s Raising the Titanics. It’s an homage to the Maori showbands of the 1960s. The Herald summed it up as an enjoyable if slight frolic. Pfft.

For me, from the moment the cast opened with song, my right eye teared up. It wept steadily through the remaining hour and a half of the play – and copiously in the closing ten minutes.

I can’t figure out my reaction to the play. I’d read the first act the year before and had a pretty good idea of where it was going to go.

Was it the songs? They sounded familiar but I didn’t know any of them. I grew up with The Sound of Music and Easter Parade (and Jesus Christ Superstar). According to my sister-in-law, being Samoan, I’m genetically/naturally disposed to singing well, in tune, and harmoniously – so maybe the brown people singing and laughing and crying on stage touched some genetic/native chord within.

Whatever it was, it touched me, I loved it, and when it tours and touches down in your neighbourhood, I recommend you go see it.

Disclosure: playwright Albert Belz is a generous supporter of the Banana Boat writing group, honouring it with a reading of the play’s first act, in first draft form, in June 2009.

13 January 2011

Comic Watch: Zot

Dear Mr McCloud

I just finished reading your Zot – The Complete B&W Collection 1987-1991, and I wanted to say thank you.

Yes, I’ve read – why, I proudly own a copy of – your excellent Understanding Comics. And yes, I’m a proud product of the years I read and collected and treasured Moore, Gaiman and early Miller, while the last five years of Ellis, Vaughan, Bendis and Jason inspire me no end.

I thought your collection would be a “product of its time” but I couldn’t be more wrong. I completely fell into Zot and Jenny’s world for those 576 pages, and when I found myself back in the real world, I was humbled and invigorated. For me, Zot captured a youth that is long gone – but that it’s not something to yearn for, or to put behind, but to accept as part of my history, my life. My story.

Again, thank you for showing me what’s what.

Yours sincerely

d f mamea

10 January 2011

2010 in Pictures, Text and Theatre

Comics

The Arrival

Ball Peen Hammer

Berlin Volume 2

The Education of Hopey Glass

Ex Machina: Dirty Tricks; Ring Out the Old

I Kill Giants

I Killed Adolf Hitler

Low Moon

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier

Omega the Unknown

Planetary: Spacetime Archaeology

Powers: The Sellouts; Forever; 25 Greatest Dead Superheroes of All Time

Scalped: The Gravel in Your Gut

Stitches: A Memoir

Usagi Yojimbo: Tomoe’s Story

The Walking Dead

The Complete Zot!

A bit sad to see the end of Planetary and Ex Machina but The Walking Dead and Scalped carry the torch onward.

Books

Blood Meridian

The Constant Gardener

The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-city Neighbourhood

Crafty TV Writing

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets

Notes from a Small Island

The Road

I suspect Blood Meridian has ruined all other western fiction for me.

Scripts

30 Rock

The 40 Year Old Virgin

The American

The Blind Side

The Book of Eli

Green Zone

Michael Clayton

Out of Sight

Scrubs

Starting Out in the Evening

The Shield: Circles

Three Kings

Valkyrie

I’m pretty sure Out of Sight and Three Kings are re-reads, but I just can’t remember for sure. And if they were, they were just as enjoyable this time ’round.

Theatre

His Mother’s Son

Leilani Unasa

Le Tauvaga

Louise Tu’u

Raising the Titanics

Albert Belz

Two Old Women

Velma Wallis

I suspect I may be cheating here by having just one actual production – Belz’s Titanics – surrounded by three readings but… these were the ones I marked as having made an impact.

5 January 2011

2010 in Film and Television

Television

Better Off Ted

Breaking Bad

Defying Gravity

Greys Anatomy

The Good Wife

Glee

Justified

Little Dorrit

The Big A

Modern Family

Nurse Jackie

The Unusuals

MC Ash

The Walking Dead

A toast to Better Off Ted, Defying Gravity and The Unusuals, all cancelled, and all sorely missed.

Breakout television for 2010? Zombies, natch.

Film

The American
Boy
District 9
Green Zone
I Love You Phillip Morris
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

Kenny

Let the Right One In
The Men Who Stare at Goats
Once Upon a Time in the West
The Road
Sherlock Holmes

A Single Man
Star Trek

Film of the year? Boy. God damn your eyes, Waititi.

31 December 2010

2010 Bonsoir

If you’re still visiting this blog after six months of ‘flashbacks’, you’re very kind, and I apologise for the belated and placeholding posts.

A significant birthday happened mid-year and a whole lot of rest and recovery and retreat and navel-gazing took place in the days and weeks and months subsequent, and it’s only recently that I’ve been able to even contemplate writing new things… writing anything, to be honest.

So here I am.

Back. Quite ~~shy~~ ~~bashful~~ chagrined but here I bloody well I am.

Happy new year.

30 December 2010

FLASHBACK: Big Finales

From May 2008:

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:

Hot: action films that were literally punctuated by gun-fights/car-chases/explosions culminating in a climactic car-chase-leading-to-a-gun-fight-leading-to-a-BIG-ASS-EXPLOSION.

Not: action films that ended with a – yawn – mano-a-mano fight*.

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.

15 December 2010

FLASHBACK: Where Themes Come From

From February 2008:

November 2007

IN-LAW: Wow, you got funding, you must be so pleased.
ME: Yes, I –
IN-LAW: Tell me – what’s your film about?
ME: Uhm. It’s about a brother and sister, and they talk in a car the whole film.
IN-LAW: Oh.

December

ACQUAINTANCE: I hear you’re making a short film.
ME: (stunned look that word would actually be spread)
ACQUAINTANCE: What’s it about?
ME: It’s about a couple of siblings trying to deal with their older brother’s death.
ACQUAINTANCE: What else you working on?

January 2008

FELLOW WEDDING GUEST: What’s your movie about?
ME: It’s a film about loss and love. And life.

30 November 2010

FLASHBACK: After the First Draft

From December 2007:

INT. STUDY – NOW

YOU pull a FILE from your FILING CABINET and open it on your DESK.

ANGLE ON a BOUND SCREENPLAY with the words “First Draft” underneath your name.

You pick it up and feel its weight, a smile playing on your lips.

CUT TO:

FLASHBACK – INT. STUDY – A FORTNIGHT AGO

You type “FADE OUT” on the POWERBOOK SCREEN and lean back in your CHAIR. You press a couple of keys and the PRINTER whines to life.

TIMECUT as you savour each page as it comes out of the printer.

TIMECUT as you THREE-HOLE-PUNCH all the pages, smiling as you re-read the scenes that wrote themselves.

TIMECUT as you bind the pages with 3/4-INCH BRADS, feeling elated and all-round chuffed that this first draft will require only the most minor tweaks on its way to Oscar platinum.

CUT BACK TO:

INT. STUDY – NOW

You shuffle your buttocks to get comfortable in your chair. You turn to the first page.

The little smile you’re wearing falters, then flips itself over. The favourite scenes that wrote themselves a fortnight ago are now cliches riddled with logic errors. The remembered elation and all-round chuffedness is replaced by the realisation that set-ups and/or pay-offs you meant to include are tragically missing.

You look up, blinking rapidly. You can do this. You turn another page.

INT. STUDY – ONE HOUR LATER

You slump in your chair, the ninety pages in your hands heavy with disappointment and promise. You take a breath. And slowly release it.

Yes, that was dreadful. But you can see the idea driving it all. And despite the typos and cliches and holes and leaps, you recognise the enthusiasm that produced it. You sort of like it – the execution sucks in places – but you still like it.

You get out a PENCIL. And you get back to work.

15 November 2010

FLASHBACK: Roughing It

From November 2007:

Let’s say I have to write a scene with corporate suits speaking corporate-speak. I want it to be fluid – a language that’s appropriate to the characters but still accessible to the audience. Minutes and minutes of talking heads yakking at each other – but interesting. Touchstones are Oliver Stone‘s JFK, the ‘law’ halves of Law & Order episodes, and any episode in Aaron Sorkin‘s West Wing.

My first instinct is to just write the scene and get it over with. This can be difficult if I’ve little or no idea how suits talk to each other. In the past it’s become a war of attrition: the objective of narrative-propelling talking heads can be forgotten in a distressing and dispiriting fug of expository dialogue, with an end-result of dropping the scene completely, followed by a period of self-loathing whimpering in The Goddess’ compassionate and patient arms.

I know what I want. I can almost taste the scene. The problem is writing the scene that I want even though I very probably have no idea what happens in it.

The solution is awfully simple: take tiny steps. Write what I know. Then write it again. Repeat until well done.

I’ve noticed a pattern to how some of these scenes take shape. Below are the stages of development that a scene can undergo:

– the nugget,
– the description,
– as good a start as any, and
– a work draft.

The nugget

INT. CORPORATE BLOCK – DAY

TWO SUITS cook up a plan.

The description

INT. MONOLITHIC CORPORATE BLOCK – AFTERNOON

BOUFFANT and COIFFURE walk and talk about BALDY’s imminent death.

As good a start as any

INT. ROTHERAY & TEMPLAR OFFICES – AFTERNOON

JAMESON RODERICK and TREVOR ALMOND prowl the open-plan offices and corridors.

RODERICK
[PLACE HOLDER: confident growls
of world domination]

ALMOND
[PLACE-HOLDER: squeaky noises of
dissension]

RODERICK
[PLACE HOLDER: growly grunts of
alpha-maleness]

A work draft

INT. OPEN-PLAN OFFICES, ROTHERAY & TEMPLAR BUILDING – EVENING

RODERICK JAMESON and TREVOR ALMOND walk and talk as paralegals, interns and secretaries work into the night.

ALMOND
Did -. Did you –

His more athletic companion glares at him as a BEAVER-LIKE INTERN cuts in:

BEAVER
Sorry to interrupt, Mr Jameson,
but Sir Templar asked me to
give you this.

Roderick relieves him of an UNMARKED ENVELOPE and, after a microbeat, the intern takes the hint and disappears.

ALMOND
(off envelope)
Is -. Is that –

Roderick steers his cream-doughnut-loving toady towards –

INT. CONFERENCE ROOM – CONTINUOUS

– where Almond slips out of his grip and takes a trembling breath:

ALMOND (CONT’D)
I -, I’ve changed my mind.

They stare at each other for a long beat. Almond, of course, looks away first.

RODERICK
It’s too late.
(off Almond)
It is done.

OUT ON Almond: there’s no turning back now.

As you can see, each draft gains more depth and colour and tone – I’m building on what’s gone before and with each tiny step I’m that much closer to what I want. What I wanted in the first place and what I end up writing may be two very different things but that’s for another post. What matters is that I’ve now got something to really work with.

Another seventy-or-so more scenes to go.

30 October 20106 September 2012

FLASHBACK: Asking For It

From July 2007:

Four years ago, it seemed like a brilliant idea: it would help my motivation, it would be great for the family as a whole, and our overall security would be taken care of.

Quite a job description for a mere mongrel.

Four years on, we can leave the house in her paws, safe in the knowledge that if she doesn’t leave teeth-marks in uninvited visitors, the neighbours will investigate any ruckus she makes. The honeymoon period of family outings for/with the dog are long over – come to think of it, it lasted as long as she looked and gambolled like a puppy.

Which leaves my motivation. I need to run regularly. The Dog needs to be exercised regularly. Hey hey: a running buddy.

The thing is, I hate running. Always have. Always will. But there’s no other form of exercise where a good pair of running shoes is all you need. Biking means bike maintenance. Walking’s too slow. Swimming means a half-hour drive (and costs). One could say it’s a low-maintenance high-intensity kind of exercise. I still say the hell with that – I hate it.

It has some pluses though. It’s supposed to be good for me. It clears my head, though this shouldn’t be surprising considering the din of my desperate wheezing, a drumrolling heartbeat, and a thought-process as primal as just to the next corner… okay, just a little bit more to the next telephone pole… ihatethisshit… now just to that red car…. On occasion, it feels good when I’m huffing about out there and I think, I’m-a goin’ places, yessirree… oh yeah, feel the flow, baby… but these are rare moments, fleeting enough that I seek them like some narcotic high.

Writing’s like that sometimes. I’d be sprawled across some project and, despite the writing pains, a liitle voice whispers how about… just one more set-piece/subplot/pay-off, hm? like, how hard could it be? Rare flashes of creative joy as words are thrown up on-screen in search of a story.

By the end of it all, whether I’m running or writing, I’m glad to (still) be alive, there’s the satisfaction of having done it and, if I’m not careful, thinking that wasn’t so bad – let’s go again.

Postscript: The Dog is seven now. And we’re still running.