Author: d f mamea

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Point & Click

I’ve done my shopping. I can do whatever I like now.

Ladies and germs – happy holiday reading, viewing and relaxing.

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Apple-Shift-S

I don’t have a writing diary like The Daily Screenwriter.

I kinda/sorta used to. In the early days – a holdover from my old nine-to-five life – I used to have various spreadsheets that tracked the hours per day I was pouring into whichever projects. I don’t do it so much now.

What I still do – and it’s another holdover – is save each and every iteration of a script. Having been burnt in my formative wordprocessing years by M$ Word crashing and losing hours of work, every time I open a document, I immediately SaveAs and rename the file. No, I don’t rename it whatever strikes me at the time – I have a system. Here’s a typical filename:

081219  Bangers  script 2.1.odt

From the above, I can see that:

  • it was generated or amended (as it was in this case) on 19 December 2008 (“081219  Bangers  script 2.1.odt”);
  • it’s for my project, Bangers, a feature script about a socially inept butcher’s foray into adult entertainment (“081219  Bangers  script 2.1.odt”);
  • it’s the script document (sometimes it can be the pitch or treatment or general notes) (“081219  Bangers  script 2.1.odt”);
  • it’s version 2.1 meaning it’s on its first revision of the second draft (“081219  Bangers  script 2.1.odt”);
  • and I’m using open source, baby! (“081219  Bangers  script 2.1.odt“)

A directory listing of this file and its friends would look something like this:

081207  Bangers  script 1.9.odt
081210  Bangers  script 1.9.1.odt
081210  Bangers  script 1.9.1.pdf
081216  Bangers  notes 1.9.1.odt
081215  Bangers  script 2.0.odt
081218  Bangers  script 2.0.odt
081219  Bangers  script 2.1.odt

Yes, a directory listing for any project I’m working on can run into the hundreds of files.

Yes, it’s anal.

But it’s comforting. It’s more a paper trail than a writing diary, but it’s proof that I’m progressing, one document at a time.

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A Running Allegory

(Or should it be A Writing Allegory? It’s Friday afternoon and it’s all a bit much.)

INT. HOME – EARLY MORNING

I stumble through the FRONT DOOR, chest heaving and soaked through with sweat. THE DOG trots in after me.

Mindful of my appearance, I gingerly give THE GODDESS a hug --

THE GODDESS

How was your run?

ME

Two poos, three wees, one dog and one false alarm.

She then crouches down beside The Dog and asks --

THE GODDESS

And how was it for YOU?

Next time you’re banging your head on a concept or synopsis or treatment, keep in mind that for all the hours and energy and eye-for-detail you’ll pour into your finished product, sometimes your reader just won’t care. And it’s nothing personal: Yes, your pitch was spot-on – but there’s a change of director, and they’ve got some specific visual and script ideas.

Take heart. It’s not you, it’s them: your product is as good as everything that you’ve put into it. You’ll have learned something from describing – planning, even – a project rather than just writing it. The experience will inform you as a writer. Learning and experience make you a better writer.

Now do it again.

And again.

And again….

INT. HOME – CONTINUOUS

I put my hands on my hips --

ME

Oh ha ha.

-- and The Goddess, never one to tell me to calm down or shut up or get over things, gives me a hug anyway and says --

THE GODDESS

Can I make you a cup of coffee?

-- and I hold her and think: I am one lucky sumbitch.

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‘Tis the Season

I find this time of year pretty hard. The world winds itself up for Christmas and the retail hell that that entails. Exercise that I’d promised to have started months ago has finally, belatedly, lurched into action. (What’s that? Eat less? Eject the person who said that this instant.) And projects that I’d hoped to have finished already recline in various corners of the cave, sighing heavily, and I try to attend to them when and where I can, very, very aware of the remaining days hours of 2008 flicking by with alarming speed.

But when I step outside the house, and The Dog’s on her bestest behaviour because we’re either a). going for a run or b). I’m about to play fetch with her, the warm perfume of jasmine envelopes me and I can’t help but inhale, and smile. For thirty minutes, I need only worry about a). moving one foot in front of the other or b). keeping The Dog from hoovering up chicken poo.

Afterwards, when I return to the house, I have more immediate concerns like chest- and leg-pains, or a canine who collapses in places where I’ll trip over her. I remember that if I don’t leave the cave, I won’t be caught up in the season’s rioting. I’ve assuaged my exercise guilt. And the projects lean forward, body language quietly screaming Pick me!, and things don’t look so bad after all.

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Point & Click

These haven’t been as regular as they should used to be. Let’s not get overexcited and think it’s been because I’ve had more to say of late.

Warning: some old news in here (I’ve been hoarding).

  • Why aren’t I all a-jingle with news of Bad Lieutenant being remade with Werner Herzog helming and Nicolas Cage in the title role? Maybe Abel Ferrara, who directed the 1992 original, says it best with “It’s lame” and “[Herzog] can die in hell“. But then I can’t help but be swept up by Mr Herzog’s response to hearing that: “That’s beautiful!” and then, with regard to Mr Ferrara himself, “I’ve never seen a film by him. I have no idea who he is. … Maybe I could invite him to act in the movie!” (Fedora-tip: Eyes Wide Open.)

  • In similar vein to Lotto’s What would you do? campaign, here’s some straight-up advice on what to do when you’re burning to make a film… and a lot of money falls into your lap. (Fedora-tip: a Headstrong Forum denizen.)

  • Check out fellow Pitch Engine contributor Gordon White‘s blog, smallscreens.com, in which he’s charting his progress as a screenwriter in the UK. (Fedora-tip: Dara McNaught.)

  • Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane is expanding his empire – o yea! (Fedora-tip: Gordon White.)

  • And finally, James Henry wonders what it might be like to do police work but with a screenwriter’s work ethic. My favourite: 4. Getting bored with writing up crime reports, so ending them with ‘and then a load of zombies arrived’.

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Fan Mail

From the mailboxes at dfmamea.com:

Hello,
My name is Michael and I have just viewed your film “Five”. I must say i’ve seen many movies in my day and yours was by far the worst I have ever seen. You have robbed me of 90 minutes of my life that I would have happily spent watching paint dry instead of watching this crap. You have failed as a person and a writer may god have mercy on your soul.
Thanks Michael Ibbotson.

 

hello Michael
thank you for watching Five and for taking the time to email me your thoughts.
regards
d f mamea

I look at Mr Ibbotson’s email and I smile. I’m not sure why.

Is it the novelty of his being the first email of its kind?

Is it that its grammar and spelling are a hop-skip-and-jump ahead of most of the emails I get from people I don’t know?

Is it that on his MySpace profile, his favoured films include ‘Shooting and killing movies, funny movies, and surfing movies’, and under books he lists ‘Motor Mag, Tracks Mag [and] Surfing Life Mag‘?

Or is it that he took the time to share his thoughts and put his name to it in these days of internet anonymity?

Whichever the reason, ‘Ibbo’ has given me cause to smile today, and I thank him for that, too.

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Tick Tock

You know those black-and-white films where –

INT. NEWSROOM – NIGHT

Several strata of cigarette smoke span this large room. A handful of reporters sit at their desks, hands and fingers stabbing and massaging their typewriters.

An OFFICE DOOR opens to reveal THE EDITOR, cigar in a corner of his mouth –

EDITOR

I want five hundred words on string theory using words of three syllables or less! Which one of you bums feeling lucky?

One dozing JOURNO pushes his fedora up from his eyes and sticks a well-chewed pencil stub into his mouth:

JOURNO

Give me ten minutes, chief – five if Miss Stanton brings me a cup of joe.

How do they do that?

(Okay-okay-okay: it’s a movie.)

I was flashing on those kinds of scenes when I took up a 24-hour theatre challenge last weekend. Twelve hours to write a ten-minute script (to be followed by another twelve hours where the director and actors would make the script a reality). I’d spent the first two hours thus: 30 minutes to find out the actors’ strengths and weaknesses (the director couldn’t make the meet-and-greet so I’d have to wing the content and style); 15 minutes to drive home; 45 minutes of quality time with The Goddess; and 30 minutes of, among other things, making coffee, adjusting my seat, realigning the rubbish on my workspace for optimum feng shui, scheduling my chocolate intake, and surfing the net.

… Maybe the quality time was more 30 minutes (and no less) and the fart-arsing writing prep/warm-up was 45 minutes.

So. There I was, in my cave, mentally juggling the following elements:

  • three actors – one male and two females – to play with;
  • two props – a length of rope and a violin case – to work into the story;
  • and less than ten hours before I had to hand in a script.

The first opening riffed on Waiting for Godot. Maybe too self-referencing. I stopped after the second line of dialogue.

The second opening came straight out of Casablanca. I stopped the moment I typed (V.O.).

I had beginnings but no ends. With the nine-hour mark rapidly approaching, I tried to tackle it more from a production point of view instead of my usual story-is-king position.

I had my props, both meat and inanimate. I had a running time. I was one of six writers, and my position in the playing schedule was four – after an intermission. Assuming the first three plays were trend- and bar-setters, I needed to get right into the action. I needed to stake a claim on the audience’s attention, and keep it.

A filthy smile formed on my lips: What if we returned from intermission to some good ol’ bondage?

I laughed out loud.

The stage is BLACK as --

HAYLEY

(unseen)

Aow! ... Yes. ... Agh! ... Yes!

LIGHTS UP on --

And in that beginning was the ending, too.

Sometimes, I’m just too cool for school.

POSTSCRIPT: As it played out on stage, all I could see were the bits of dialogue I could have trimmed, all the action I could have written, as well as an act that is one long fridge moment. But it has a beginning, middle and end. It has a set-up, exposition and pay-off. And it got some laughs, none of them cheaply, and moved. Thank the gods for actors – and the director, of course.

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Aktors

When making small talk at gatherings, once all the parties’ occupations have had their two questions, an inevitable question thrown in my direction is What’s it like to work with actors? My usual answer is that they’re a necessary evil – a cross to be borne in order for us writers to tell our stories.

It gets a laugh – obviously I don’t give this answer when in the company of actor/s – but just between you and me, I’m a little afraid of actors.

Being a working screenwriter might be all about getting paid and buying things on TradeMe but it don’t count for a slab of Whittakers’ finest if you don’t get produced. And to get produced, amidst the small army of collaborators who will trample your ego, mince your work, and sully your vision are… actors.

Unless you take up puppeteering, anime or cartooning, you’re going to have to accept the fact that someone – not a clone of you, not some doppelganger of you – is going to take your words and –

– and what? At worst, expose you to be the hack you’ve been all along.

At best – and this happens more often than you think – bring your characters to life in ways you never imagined.

Of course what you see in readings/rehearsal/shooting/editing it’s not what you had in mind. Those uppity actors are asking a million questions about motivation, moulding your characters this way and that, challenging the backstory you created. They’re taking over… and as they put a face and tic and walk to your characters, they’re irrevocably changing them.

Change is good.

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Being There

Theatre director (and good neighbour) Duncan was over for a beer the other day and we talked a bit about technology making things like sets and locations and actors redundant. (I’m exaggerating.) He looked forward to the future promised by Sin City and 300. I struck back with Stars Wars Episodes I-III, and misremembered/misquoted Roger Ebert‘s essay on Werner Herzog which mentioned the rapturous truth of being on location.

Even though we were only talking about hypotheticals, the discussion camped out in a corner of my head. Surely there was more to my response than cynical pop references?

As always, the universe provides: last week, Stevo patiently guided The Boy and I through an afternoon and evening of a pool game of the FIFA U-17 Women’s Football World Cup*. At first, all I could think about was the physical discomfit of the cold plastic seats, exposure to the elements (a cold wind, passing showers), and the stench of fried food and stale beer. But somehow this was overcome by the immediacy of the game playing out right in front of me, the roar of the sizable crowd, the chanting and singing of blocs of fans supporting the teams. I got caught up in the spirit of the game. I started watching.

I’m not a sports fan to the dismay of my longtime male friends but I’ve been exposed to enough televised sport that I know when a player’s off-side, where the gully and slip are, what a zone defence entails, and the joke that is ‘non-contact’. For all that, I don’t care for it, really. When it’s on the box, I’ll just as readily watch Banzai! as world cup rugby. But take me to a live game –

– where I’m a short physical distance away from the action with little to no possibility of instant replays –

– and there’s a polite controlled mob hysteria that I’m happy to be swept up in –

– where else could I be as exhausted and aghast with each and every close call that happens on the field? Where else could I not care for the shrieking from the woman in the seats behind me?

I can’t speak for actors but the wannabe filmmaker within me believes that the let’s pretend approach can only take you so far. The environment and your senses inform what you’re doing. Whether you’re fighting frostbite at a rugby game or racing against the light on location, nothing beats being there.

*  When Bern asked, What were you guys doing at a women’s football game?, I flashed on my niece’s look of Yeah, riiight when I tried to explain to her that I watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer for its brilliant and daring storytelling.

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