Category: Scriptwriting

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The Bourne Ultimatum

The Bourne Ultimatum is here. I’ve prepped by watching its predescessor and enjoying it the second – or third? – time around. I’m particularly looking forward to seeing what John Rogers means by nested sequels.

Roger Ebert enjoyed it – and has received a flood of complaints about its visual style.

I was a bit concerned about the ‘herky-jerky hand-held’ camerawork until I remembered The Blair Witch Project. I remember complaints about it inducing nausea and vomiting. It didn’t stop me from being scared out of my wits. As I’ve told anyone who’s asked me whether to watch Blair Witch: if you can get over the shaky-cam, and the contrivance that the characters obsessively shot everything, it’ll scare the bejesus out of you.

I think (and hope) that what’ll save my brain and stomach from Bourne‘s visual jazz will be the story. If I’m pulled into it sufficiently, I shouldn’t notice the two-second average shot length. I’ll be too busy sitting on the edge of my seat going, Oh my g-, what th-, wait – don’t -, which’ll be just what I want.

(Fedora-tip to Amit for the heads-up.)

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Pots on the Boil

Okay, it’s been all fine and dandy to be as opinionated as Ianthe of Timaru about various media, but what about what I do?

Good question.

  • Five is in the excellent hands of Amit – sliced, diced and packaged for a premiere. I should stop counting that as a pot on the boil now.
  • Earlier in the year I finally finished a first draft of a semi-biographical feature script. The producer/director I did it for is currently having a whack at the next draft. It’s been interesting to work through the inevitable tension in the creative process where the producer/director wants authenticity while I’m trying to argue for dramatic impact.
  • My long awaited 2007 spec script has really only had its outline tweaked – it even had a one-page pitch done – but I haven’t started writing it yet. I’d like to blame the non-start on some of the following projects – but I’d be lying.
  • I was asked to write a low budget thriller a while back. After duly speccing an outline, I mentioned the word “contract” and scared the producer away. Ah well. Still, there’s something about the outline that’s really hooked me: I approached the project from an oblique angle to try and be ‘fresh’ as well as make it interesting to write. I’ve made it my 2007 spec* – and, yes, I’ll give the producer first dibs on it when it’s finished.
  • I met with another producer recently about some development work on an half-hour series. I did some work for him last year that was great fun – not only did I get paid, I was writing cool shit. I’ll give with some details.
  • The T.V. concept got cleaned up and sent out… and has so far flatlined. Oh well. At least it’s a good reminder to not pin so much hope on just one project. I can’t help it, but.
  • The T.V. speccing got me going a bit – well, it was avoiding work on one of the above scripts – so I’ve got a couple of ideas to inflict on interested parties. I’m well aware of the odds against but at the very least I’ll be making some noise.

So that’s… wow. Seven. It sounds so… productive.

I think I might make this – like my sometimes-monthly Point & Click fillers posts – a sometimes-quarterly update on what’s cookin’. Because I know you’re just busting to read it here first – and I know your need because I’m psychotic canny.

 

*    And what will this mean for my other ‘long-awaited’ 2007 spec? Good question.

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Asking For It

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.

Pic courtesy Howie B

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.

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It’s That Time of Year

Ah – the last of week of July: when cash-strapped independent filmmakers squeeze into their best clothes and, resumes and letters of introduction clutched tightly in their fists, launch themselves at the Screen Innovation Production Fund selection panel in the hope of getting something – anything (preferably money) – to help make their dreams come true.

I’m one of them. Paying gigs aside, I’ve got ideas of my own, you know. I used to want to just concentrate on feature-length writing but I was just limiting myself. ‘S not the end all and be all. Also:

Breaking into the film business is not a problem that resolves itself through a single answer or path. It’s a problem that succumbs only to a process, a series of efforts taken over time. And the bitch of it is, you never know which is the right strategy until it pays off. So you do everything. Whether the odds are with you or not. You do everything.

– Terry Rossio (Deja Vu, the Pirates of the Caribbean and Zorro series).

So to all supplicants, the best of luck. And whatever the answer in three months’ time, keep dreaming.

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Point & Click

I managed to get the number of Unread posts down to less than 200 when I add a few new feeds – and phwappp as the Unread posts leap gaily to 315. Fine. I can keep up with my essential daily reading out of the way. If I don’t sleep.

Enjoy.

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Letting Go

I first started drafting this post way back in November 2006:

There’s a point in every writer’s career where they have to let go of their baby.

I got no further than that. I think my now is not the best time to think aloud alarm went off, and it collected virtual dust on the hard-drive.

Not that long ago, the insufferably unstoppable Amit (previously referred to as Mr T but I’ve since regained my manners) asked me to have a look over the locked cut of Five. That DVD sat on my desk. Then it went onto a shelf. Then back onto my desk.

Every day for a month I saw that disc and thought, I must watch that. I must.

But I couldn’t.

Of course, I did watch it. I made some notes and fired off an email that included:

you may have surmised from the extreme delay […] some reluctance on my part to sit down and watch it. i plead guilty. i can intellectualise that the transfer from paper to screen involves a loss of ownership and is How It Is. but the actual experience was quite a lot harder that i expected. but i’m okay now. (i think putting the dvd in the player, handcuffing myself to the couch and tossing the key across the room helped. it was… cathartic.) (having to wait several hours for someone to come home to release me wasn’t so cathartic but that’s the price of personal development.)

of course, if you thought the delay was because i [am a] lazy slackarse, then forget the previous paragraph.

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Die Hard 4.0

Over at Roger Ebert’s, Time reviewer Richard Corliss has a sweet guest-post on the upcoming Live Free or Die Hard.

Jee-zus, has it really been almost twenty years?

I remember when the wham-bam style of films like Raw Deal, Cobra and their ilk were comforting in their predictability of character and story. The good guys were long on jaw-lines and short on dialogue. The bad guys had five-o’clock shadow and wore aviator sunglasses 24-7. The side-kick – pick your minority of spunky woman, jive-ass black guy or Mensa-IQ Asian geek – always died by the second or third reel. And how ’bout them bookends: the hero who’s shown at the beginning to struggle with something (like, say, flying a small plane) will, by the film’s climax, be forced to master that same something BUT ON A MUCH LARGER SCALE (like, say, flying a passenger jet).

What distinguished Die Hard from its predecessors – more so than even Lethal Weapon‘s spec-ops-grade tactics, hardware and action – was the human vulnerability that drove the story, and the attention to detail (like sparing a thought for your stock villain). (This aspect has been covered endlessly and much more intelligently elsewhere so I’ll keep it brief.) In Die Hard, Bruce Willis‘ John McClane isn’t cleaning out the Nakatomi Plaza just because he’s the hero – his wife‘s in there. But even that goal isn’t clearcut: he’s in Los Angeles to save his marriage. And his relationship skills border on, shall we say, the prehistoric.

Let’s not forget the baddies – they were a revelation: trained, armed and motivated, these were no strawmen waiting for the FX supervisor to blow their squibs. Each mano-a-mano clinch McClane goes into, he’s trapped, outgunned and outnumbered: sometimes luck helps but otherwise he has absolutely nothing to lose. Sure the baddies die one by one, but they get some good kickin’ into our hero before their demise. And Alan Rickman‘s urbane, sophisticated and meticulous villain has rarely been equalled since.

Nowadays, film baddies seem to have reverted to the Commando school of baddies where although you can outnumber the hero, you’re just there die in swathes of automatic gunfire. And if you’re the villain, ‘s like all you need is to be able to laugh maniacally or grit your teeth enough to have a vein throb on your forehead.

Meanwhile, the de rigueur hero is like Jack Bauer – always ready to save the world in spite of a rocky marriage, a flighty daughter, extra-marital affairs and/or office politics.

It’s been a long time since I’ve felt as immersed in a character’s situation as McClane’s first escapade. I was there with him, goddammit. I identified. The Die Hard 4.0 reboot mayn’t take me anyplace new or even exciting – but at least I’ll always have the memories.

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