Point & Click
Been saving these up, oh yes I have.
- 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:
Un-effing-believable
Back in the day when floppy disks abounded, 40MB hard-drives were tha bomb, and WordPerfect was the wordprocessor du jour, I bet I looked down with poorly masked derision at the old-timers who insisted on printing off hardcopies of everything they generated for peace of mind.
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.
New Directions
A few mornings back, The Dog and I had barely started our run when a neighbour’s dog – a mastiff bitch called Charlie – came up to say hello. We stopped – we’re polite social animals, the Dog and I, and sniffs were exchanged – I merely proffered my hand, of course – then we resumed our run. A second set of nails clicked on the asphalt behind us, overtook us, and Charlie joined our run.
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.
Monkey See
Let’s say you’re writing a thriller where your heroes are forced to take one of their own to a hospital, and for whatever reason the authorities MUST NOT KNOW whatever the hell they’ve been up to.
How d’you wanna play the hospital trip – straight or strange?
Straight:
INT. HOSPITAL – DAY
A REGISTRAR and a COUPLE OF NURSES push a gurney into the EMERGENCY ROOM, away from --
-- PATER FAMILIAS – yes, the rather bullish father of the victim in the E.R. – and his colleague, a scantily clad SEXPOT.
SEXPOT
(off Pater)
He’s in good hands –
The RECEPTIONIST approaches with a SHEAF OF FORMS.
PATER
(re. Receptionist)
Oh shit. What do we say?
Sexpot grabs his arm:
SEXPOT
(flustered)
I don’t know.
INT. ROOM – THE NEXT DAY
Dozing in a VISITOR’S CHAIR, Pater starts at the sound of --
-- his INJURED SON gaining consciousness with a groan.
PATER
It’s okay, son, I’m right here –
Injured Son sees his surroundings, eyes widening, and grabs his father’s arm:
INJURED SON
(remembering his injury)
What did you tell the doctors?
— or Strange:
INT. HOSPITAL – DAY
REGISTRAR and NURSES run a gurney into the EMERGENCY ROOM, away from PATER FAMILIAS and SEXPOT.
SEXPOT
(off Pater)
He’s in good hands –
The RECEPTIONIST approaches them with a SHEAF OF FORMS.
PATER
(re. Receptionist)
Oh shit. What do we -?
Sexpot squeezes his arm, silencing him as she smiles brightly at the Receptionist:
SEXPOT
Are those for us?
RECEPTIONIST
(startled)
Y-yes. Those were quite the injuries –
SEXPOT
Oh, young boys these days – juggling chainsaws. While bus-surfing. And mooning a van of nuns. I mean, REALLY.
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?
Back Up
Let’s say your task is to write a one-page description of your project and, coming out of your ‘creative fugue’, you find yourself with three pages almost black with text.
You ask yourself:
- What is my story about?
- What is my story in one paragraph of three to six sentences?
- What is my story in one sentence?
It’s about finding the absolute core of your story: A fearful lass takes aikido lessons and learns about life – and sometimes finding a theme en route: Aikido teaches you to wait until you can see the whites of your enemies’ eyes.
But back to me and my screeds of story and character and plot notes, and my drowning dreams, and my hands that are tired and hurting from constantly being bunched into fists… and the realisation that I just have to walk away just far enough to say:
- What the heck am I writing?
From a certain distance – and without my spectacles – you’d be surprised.
I Don’t Know
The other day, I tried to google lyrics that had hardest words to say or similar but got distracted. (I spotted Chicago among the results and, having a sudden and intense urge to play their best-of CD – thanks, Stevo! – did so, sang along with Peter Cetera to 25 or 6 to 4, came back humming Happy Man, and on returning to my desk, couldn’t remember for the life of me why I’d googled hardest words to say.)
So I’ll just come out with it: there are three words that worry my manager – I don’t know.
Y’know, I don’t know as in —
WRITER bursts into MANAGER’s office:
WRITER
I got a writing gig!
Writer starts victory moonwalking back and forth before Manager’s desk.
MANAGER
Excellent work! What are they paying you?
Writer’s moonwalking stops as he looks at his Manager --
WRITER
(whisper)
... I don’t know.
Or like when your reader, having softened you up with nice noises about your latest draft, says they’ve got a few teeny questions, and you can answer the first few easy-peasy, but then the questions get more and more specific until your very limited dissembling skills quickly run out and you’re forced to confess —
WRITER
... I don’t know.
READER
You don’t know why your villain doesn’t kill the hero even though they have the absolute drop on him.
Writer screws up his face:
WRITER
To allow me a couple of extra pages so that the page count is ninety rather than eighty-eight?
(off Reader)
No. I don’t know.
The writer’s job is to answer as many of their readers’ (and audiences’) (and manager’s) questions up front.
It’s not enough to write something like —
His eyes narrow for a beat.
— on page 13 just for some variety between the explosions and manly roars of exertion.
There has to be a reason for the eyes narrowing. Does the Eye Narrower know something the audience will discover to their horror – yes, their HORROR – on page 78? Is it merely dust in their eyes at that moment? Were they channeling Clint Eastwood for kicks?
If your Eye Narrower knows things, and you reveal them in an organic and well-paced fashion through pages 15-92, then your reader will reach your final FADE OUT and smile to themselves. They know now that the Eye Narrower needed some good strong reading glasses which, if they’d just swallowed their pride and bought them on page 2, the mistaken identity on page 13 would have been completely averted, and the script would have continued its Jane Austen meets “Sex in the City” course rather than the Nouvelle Vague Simpson & Bruckheimer reboot they have in their hands.
It’s not enough to know the script by heart. You have to know the story through and through.
The less questions your reader – and your eventual audience – ask of the script, the better the writer you are. Because YOU. KNOW. EVERYTHING.
About Last Year
(Yeah, okay: eight days since my last post is more than a few days – more than several days – more, even, thana week. Sorry.)
It’s been so long since we’ve rolled into 2010 I won’t bore you with -0
This is my blog – and in the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Hooah.
2009 was really a year for the goggle box —
Television
Better Off Ted – Season 1
Generation Kill
Go Girls – Season 1
Mad Men – Season 3
Nurse Jackie – Season 1
State of Play
Generation Kill
Go Girls – Season 1
Mad Men – Season 3
Nurse Jackie – Season 1
State of Play
— but cinema had some new – and old – pleasures —
Film
Avatar
Dan in Real Life
No Country for Old Men
Rambo (2007)
Stephanie Daley
The Lives of Others
Up
Dan in Real Life
No Country for Old Men
Rambo (2007)
Stephanie Daley
The Lives of Others
Up
— and when not glooed to a flickering screen, there was always —
Print
American Born Chinese – Gene Yang
Global Frequency – Warren Ellis and various artists
Iron Man: Extremis – Warren Ellis and Adi Granov
Lenore: Cooties – Roman Dirge
Parker: The Hunted – Darwyn Cooke, based on the book by Donald E Westlake
Scalped: Casino Boogie – Jason Aaron & R M Guera
The Walking Dead: The Heart’s Desire – Robert Kirkman & Charlie Adlard
Global Frequency – Warren Ellis and various artists
Iron Man: Extremis – Warren Ellis and Adi Granov
Lenore: Cooties – Roman Dirge
Parker: The Hunted – Darwyn Cooke, based on the book by Donald E Westlake
Scalped: Casino Boogie – Jason Aaron & R M Guera
The Walking Dead: The Heart’s Desire – Robert Kirkman & Charlie Adlard
Oryx & Crake – Margaret Atwood
The Turnaround – George Pelecanos
… Aaaand – okay, books without pictures were a bit of a rarity last year (again) – but these scripts made an impression:
Action: Pilot – Chris Thompson
Burn Notice: Pilot – Matt Nix
NYPD Blue: Pilot – David Milch
Six Feet Under: Pilot – Alan Ball
The Philanthropist: Pilot – Tom Fontana
Burn Notice: Pilot – Matt Nix
NYPD Blue: Pilot – David Milch
Six Feet Under: Pilot – Alan Ball
The Philanthropist: Pilot – Tom Fontana
Miami Vice (2004) – Michael Mann
Precious – Geoffrey Fletcher
Red Rock West – John Dahl and Rick Dahl
The Incredibles – Brad Bird
The Hurt Locker – Mark Boal
The Road – Joe Penhall
Zombieland – Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick
I won’t be disclosing stats because they’re pitiful and I have no excuse. But if you break my run of comment spam (three figures and rising this past month) and ask nicely, I’ll consider it.
2009 was an okay year for watching and reading – a better year for writing – and 2010 awaits my conquest domination attention.
Overall rating: Satisfactory – but must try harder.
Focus
I should know better.
But no, I go and brag about Things I Have Done and how a sweet idea just fell in my lap – and now I find myself standing in a growing pile of recycled A4 sheets peppered with handwriting. These aren’t notes on just that one project but (counts titles) – holy moley:
- an opening for a one-act theatre monologue that’s all atmosphere and not a single word of dialogue;
- an opening scene and some random character- and concept-notes for a TV drama;
- pages of bullet points listing wants and not-wants for a feature;
- a concept document and anaemic scriptment for a play;
- and – oh yeah – pages and pages on that ‘sweet’ project.
And that’s not all. There’s more where those came from. I’m serious.
‘S nothing like the early-early-early days of development where the promise of the concept seems within easy reach and all those querulous voices in the back of your head are easily silenced with, She’ll be right.
I know.
I know.
I’ll choose one – the ‘sweet’ proj’, natch – to actually write. With another project as a fallback. And another to develop in between times.
Own It
INT. THEATRE – NIGHT
People mill about as stagehands begin cleaning up the theatre.
A FELLOW CREATIVE chats with a couple of straggling AUDIENCE MEMBERS – we overhear “It was... interesting” – before Fellow Creative joins our WRITER.
WRITER
(shakes hands with Fellow Creative)
Well done on your opening night.
FELLOW CREATIVE
Thank you.
WRITER
It was a good turn out.
FELLOW CREATIVE
Yes it was.
Beat. The Writer scans the posters on the stage. Fellow Creative looks at Writer.
FELLOW CREATIVE
... What did you think of the play?
WRITER
What did YOU think?
FELLOW CREATIVE
This –
(indicates the stage)
– this was just a trifle ’cause what I REALLY care about is –
Writer holds up his hand:
WRITER
Whoa there. Sorry to cut you off but --
(counts off a finger)
-- did you write it?
FELLOW CREATIVE
Yes.
WRITER
(counts off another finger)
Did you direct it?
FELLOW CREATIVE
... Yes.
ON FELLOW CREATIVE as their expression shows a swathe of emotions.
WRITER
(gentle)
Not everyone could’ve done what you’ve achieved tonight.
FELLOW CREATIVE
Nah, anyone could’ve –
WRITER
I don’t see anyone here but you, bucko.
(again with the finger-counting)
You had a dream – a vision. You wrote it up. You got some people involved because they were fired up by your vision and your passion. You directed it. You produced it. You put it out there. It may not have turned out the way you first dreamed it but you made it REAL.
(puts a hand on Fellow Creative’s shoulder)
This is your night. Enjoy it.
Then some background music SWELLED —
— and CREDITS floated upwards into the sky as —
— I headed for the exit – the DOOR opened by unseen hands as I approached it and —
— FADE OUT.