Category: Film

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Point & Click

Ah, winter. That time of year when staying inside with as many DVDs as your video library memberships will allow would be So Right…

Ah well.

(Courtesy of Mr Tripuraneni, The Goddess and I have been ripping through his copy of Battlestar Galactica Season 3. Such focus might be at the expense of the excellent Mad Men but that’s what VCRs are for.)

(And riffing on things television, I’m looking forward to tonight’s premiere of The Jacquie Brown Diaries, from those freakishly talented BunkerMedia boys.)

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The Circle of Life

Ever been at the mercy – or so you think – of someone who can see the Big Picture? You think you can see the Big Picture but you can’t because you’re so close, so intimate, with the material. But you don’t realise this until after you’ve fought whatever battles with that someone – firmly but politely, of course – and you look back and you think, Damn, they were patient with me.

The jandal, as they say, is now on the other foot. From the email-boxes at dfmamea.com:

Yo -- Here is the one-page you demanded I write. And I’ve started on the outline. Satisfied?

dear acolyte

thanks for the one-pager. unfortunately, the story does not work for me.

your one-pager should answer the following questions:

– in one sentence, what is “She-Warrior” about?

– how does the film – not the story – open?

– how does the film – not the story – end?

– what film/s do you want your film to be like? this isn’t a question about your remaking a film you like; it’s about where you see your film heading – is it a Hamburger Hill or a Thin Red Line?

your protagonist’s motivation needs to be more convincing – so she wants to be a soldier: why? why does she want it so bad that she’s willing to risk abandoning her petting zoo, monosyllabic husband and illicit lesbian lover?

Yeah man -- I only wrote that one-pager stuff at, like, two in the morning. It’s only an idea.

what do you mean it’s only an idea? do you mean you have other ideas?

Like, yo, chill, dog – The story in that one-pager you were on my ass about is THE STORY.

oh. right.

now how’s that outline coming along?

I know I’m supposed to be working on that outline but I’ve had a brain-surge! --

I’ve got a theme: “You don’t mess with a bitch’s destiny”. -- What do you think?!

okay.

now how does it apply SPECIFICALLY to “She Warrior”?

Scratch that last email – I’ve just had another brain-surge!! -- Instead of her wanting to join the army, how about if she joins the stand-up comedy circuit!! -- WHAT DO YOU THINK??!!

YOU’RE GETTING OTHER IDEAS!

YOU SAID THE ONE-PAGE STORY WAS THE STORY!

now. a film about a stand-up comedienne could be much easier on the production because there’s no need to get military props, gear, location, etc. more than anything, once the story is set – no matter how familiar it might be at first glance – it becomes a matter of execution.

write what you want to put your heart into, whether it’s soldiers or comediennes or metal-workers-by-day-and-dancers-by-night.

what’s essential right now is that you pin down the story that YOU want to tell. once you commit to filming that story, you will have to see that story right to the end. that means writing it, workshopping it, answering all the questions the actors and crew are going to ask you about it, scouting for it, negotiating for it, prepping for it, paying for it, shooting it, cutting it AND THEN promoting the shit out of it. you’re gonna live that motherfucking story so it better be worth it. you better be prepared to tell it over and over and over AND BELIEVE IN IT each and every goddamned time.

now stop dicking around.

where’s that outline?

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Point & Click

I wish the past fortnight’s radio silence has been because of something exciting like negotiating a development deal or meeting multiple deadlines but alas, no: on top of a raft of Real World commitments, I’ve been sick. I’ve got some bloggy goodness lined up for you (that I have to, like, finish writing first) so until then –

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How the Heck

The Goddess and I watched Almodovar‘s Volver this weekend.

How does he do it? How does he take material that would be passe even for daytime soap and make it utterly compelling drama?

Some research is in order.

(Volver was courtesy of the D-Man who, with Ex-Pat Stephen, introduced us to Sarah Blasko (whose What The Sea Wants, The Sea Will Have has been on the stereo almost exclusively this weekend).)

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Point & Click

Okay, the short didn’t make it into the local festival but – half a kilo of Whittakers‘ finest later – life. Goes. On.

Mm. This week, for your infotainment:

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Box Watch Update – “The Sarah Connor Chronicles”

Encouraged by Mr Reid‘s remarks, The Goddess and I watched the second and third episodes of The Sarah Connor Chronicles the other week. The promising story threads – like the possibility of Summer Glau’s cyborg growing a heart a la T2, and the ticking clock of Sarah Connor’s terminal cancer – were a little undone by small details regarding the ‘mystery’ terminator: if it’s putting itself together Iron Giant-style, how the hell does it ‘see’ to find its missing head? and what happened to the “only living flesh can be temporally displaced” rule, hm?

After the second ep:

ME: That was better than the pilot.
GODDESS: I’ll try another episode.

After the third ep:

ME: Okay, it slid back a bit –
GODDESS: You’re on your own.

Now, with the fourth and fifth eps under my belt, I have these to say about the series:

    • Those annoying little details are accumulating. When you’re about to pull back from recce-ing your enemy’s lair, having a loud argument over what to do next instead of getting the hell out of there is Asking For Trouble. As for Master Connor, after leaving the house in ep two, wanting to save the suicidal teen in ep four, and getting locked in a bomb shelter with a terminator in ep five, is he really our only hope? Not a quick learner, our John.
    • But the storylines have me hooked: how will the black FBI agent put the clues together? who’s got the Turk CPU? how many more resistance fighters and terminators are out there? how much more sentient will Cameron become? how will Sarah get cancer? how’s it going to work with her lover From Before and Kyle Reese’s brother? how many time-travel conundrums can you squeeze into a television series?

It’s not appointment television but I’ll hang in there. Maybe my expectations of a television spin-off of a (two-thirds) great film franchise are a bit high. But if John goes off the reservation one more time, the Connors are on their own.

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It’s a Kind of Magic

Courtesy of a surprise visit by Stevo and his Queen concert DVDs a few weeks back, I’ve been listening to them quite a bit lately. Even The Goddess – an ardent Queen fan from way back – is beginning to tire of Freddie and friends on the stereo.

It’s just…

I’m remembering being plunged into the cockpit of an F16 with Jason Gedrick the moment he hits ‘Play’ on his discman and One Vision fills his headphones in Iron Eagle.

I’m flashing on Christopher Lambert and Mr Mercury crossing katana-and-mic-stand as a Queen chorus announces “Here we are” in the music-video/trailer for Highlander.

I’m not so much being inspired as remembering why I do this. It feels good.

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Big Finales

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.

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Blinkers

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:

    • I’m reminded of Ed Wood where Johnny Depp is on the phone following the release of his first film:
      ED WOOD
      (into phone)
      Really? Worst film you ever saw.
      Well, my next one will be better.
      Hello. Hello.

  • And I flash on a Sandman preview where a dreamer has nightmares about falling – analogous with the situation they’re in at the time – and learns by story’s end that:
    Sometimes you wake up.
    Sometimes the fall kills you.
    And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.
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Box Watch – “The Sarah Connor Chronicles”

The Sarah Connor Chronicles premiere on New Zild televisions tonight. No pressure or anything, Mr Friedman but those long gaps between posts had better be worth it.(I’ll have to record it as I’ll be explaining to Mr Tripuraneni the cultural subleties of using paper-scissors-rock to make critical editing decisions.)

(Failing that, thanks to my Writer’s Toolkit (which I’ll post about at some point), I’ll be strapped.)

UPDATE: with many, many apologies to Mr Reid, this Box Watch post is a week premature. (According to the wiki, the television series side-steps Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, with Mr Friedman referring to its events happening in an alternate timeline. Whatevs, dude: that last film just sucked ass.)

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