Indelible Freckles

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‘Ang ‘Bout

I was reading 100 Bullets – Hang Up on the Hang Low recently when, a dozen or so pages in, I realised that the sense of familiarity I was experiencing was not just from the ‘old friends getting together and torturing each other’ noir vibe but that I’d actually read it all before. Twice, according to my reading diary.

I can understand The Goddess getting halfway into a book before realising she’d read it before – she devours hundreds of books a year (and not one of them will have a speech- or thought-balloon). My reading diary has me averaging 115 comics, scripts and books a year for the period 2006-2009.

What’s my excuse?

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Who Killed Bambi?

Roger Ebert posted recently about his experience of writing a script for the Sex Pistols – or was it for the late Malcolm McLaren? Or Russ Meyer? Gold, it is.

Last weekend, Mr Ebert very generously posted the script from that moment in time. Oh, what coulda bin.

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Resonance

That word has been bouncing ’round my head lately. Part of it has been Steve Hickey‘s posts about sticky ideas. Another part has been discussions I’ve had recently about film, television and theatre that have left enduring memories regardless of the passage of time. And there’s been a smidgen of shop talk about making the familiar fresh.

There are doubtless innumerable posts in the ether about what makes a piece of art resonate.

For me, it’s a singular interpretation, execution and vision that transports the viewer.

I have no idea where David Simon and Eric Overmyer are going with Treme but I am so there, man, because I’m hooked. Same goes for the recently concluded 100 Bullets from Messieurs Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso – each trade paperback left me floundering as a reader but I’d still make enough connections between the many, many plotlines and goddamn if it wasn’t a hot little page-turner. And then there’s The West Wing and The Walking Dead. And The Good Wife and Ex Machina. And Mad Men. … I could go on.

With the exception of Treme, all of the above are easily categorized genre pieces.

Each title resonates not just because they’re so different from everything else out there that they’re essential reading/watching – they’re the creators talking directly to us the audience at an individual level. They’re connecting.

That’s resonating.

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Timing

Rom-coms are watched very infrequently at Fortress Mamea. They’re not my cuppa, really.

I don’t know how but The Goddess and I watched one earlier in the year – I can’t remember what – and even though it was a pleasant enough experience as the two leads got into a clinch, the music rose and credits rolled (and I coughed to cover my swallowing my tears and blinked rapidly so as not to give Her the impression I enjoy this genre) my Beloved turned to me —

GODDESS

That was nice.

(beat)

But love does not overcome all odds.

WRITER

It does if you write “FADE OUT” quickly enough.

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Point & Click

Burble.

  • Screenwriter J D Shapiro apologises for Battlefield Earth.

    (Fedora-tip: WGGB Blog.)

  • This. Is. SHATNER!

    (Fedora-tip: Alex Epstein.)

  • Homicide: Life on the Street and The Wire scribe and producer, David Mills died suddenly last week. I didn’t know – I should’ve, really, but I didn’t know – that he was the one who penned the Homicide “Bop Gun” ep (the one with Robin Williams and a teenage Jake Gyllenhaal). This forty-plus minutes of free-to-air television truly opened my eyes to just how much more you could put into a police procedural.

    His and David Simon‘s latest television series Treme opens in a few days. I can’t wait to introduce The Goddess to teevee a la Simon et al.

Peace out.

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Box Watch – Paradox

This five-ep series about Brit plods trying to deal with space-time-continuum anomalies, fate v destiny, the possible existence of wormholes, and… oh god I can’t fake any more objectivity: it’s shows like this where cliches come to… make more cliches.

“[S]adly,… the show’s complete absence of internal logic (or, if you prefer, its overwhelming silliness) meant that it was beyond help.” – Daily Telegraph

“[Although the final ten minutes can be exciting,] the difficulty lay in the fifty minutes of scratchy dialogue, robotic acting and general misery that it took to get there.” – The Times

“[The show’s] Prometheus Innovation Satellite Downlink offers a perfect acronym for the state you’d have to be in to take this kind of thing seriously.” – The Independent

It’s largely negative critical reception in the UK may sum up the show best but will never explain why I persisted with these five hours of ‘entertainment’.

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A Mametian Memo

The Unit creator David Mamet apparently wrote a memo to the writers of the show of things to keep in mind, including things like:

THE JOB OF THE DRAMATIST IS TO MAKE THE AUDIENCE WONDER WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. NOT TO EXPLAIN TO THEM WHAT JUST HAPPENED, OR TO*SUGGEST* TO THEM WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.

Nothing a self-respecting screenwriter won’t already know but nonetheless a recommended and refreshing Mametian reminder.

(Fedora-tip: WGGB Blog.)

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Drip

FADE IN:

INT. FAVOURED LOCAL CAFE – MID-2006

GODDESS

I just read this great story about sentient misanthropic parking meters!

Our Writer tears his eye from a public library copy of “100 Bullets: The Hard Way”.

WRITER

That’s nice, Dear.

GODDESS

It’d make a great T.V. series.

But Her mortal is already back in the Land of Azzarello & Risso.

CUT TO:

INT. FORTRESS MAMEA – CHRISTMAS 2007

Our Writer pulls from his CHRISTMAS STOCKING... a BOOK on sentient parking meters with anger issues and histories of substance abuse.

WRITER

Oh. A book on –

GODDESS

I know! You should read it!

CUT TO:

EXT. BATTLEMENT, FORTRESS MAMEA – LATE 2008

Our Writer stifles a smile as he turns the last page of his Christmas 2007 gift. He looks at his Goddess surrounded by well-thumbed books, magazines and clippings on renovation, gardening and animal husbandry.

WRITER

That was fun.

GODDESS

(off Writer’s book cover)

I knew you’d like it.

WRITER

It’d be expensive –

GODDESS

But it’s got everything: actuary tables, scene examinations, car chases, gun fights, love scenes –

WRITER

Love scenes?

GODDESS

Just checking if you’re listening.

Writer smirks and thumbs through the book. Just in case.

CUT TO:

INT. HOME THEATRE, FORTRESS MAMEA – MID-2009

ON TELEVISION as credits roll and a ‘mute’ symbol appears in the corner of the screen. We hear a SIGH O.S. as --

-- our Writer sits on the couch, a glazed look on his face, and heaves another sigh. His Goddess looks up from Her innumerable colour charts, chips and samples.

GODDESS

At least everyone involved got paid?

(beat)

You’ll never get that hour back?

(beat)

But it was character building, yes?

She puts down a colour card with with names like satin road, sulu, deep blush and royal heath.

GODDESS

Say something.

WRITER

(slowly and painfully)

A monkey with both hands super-glued to his genitals, blind from antifreeze addiction and with incipient Parkinsons could have banged out a better script on an Underwood missing half its keys.

GODDESS

And what are you going to do about it?

The Writer pulls out his POWERBOOK and opens it up.

INSERT POWERBOOK SCREEN

as the following is typed in: “THE PARKING METER – When broken yellow lines are ignored and P5/P30/P60 signs are used as trophyware, who you gonna call?”

FADE OUT.

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Point & Click

Hurm.

  • This is spot-on:

    It seems to be cool at the moment to bag Avatar – something akin to the derision that accompanies Titanic, perhaps? – but I enjoyed it. Not only was I familiar with the original scriptment from way back but it transported me to a different reality for a couple of hours. That takes real story-telling and filmmaking, regardless of the tools and bells and whistles at the filmmakers’ disposal.

    (Fedora-tip: Alex Epstein.)

  • Some other backlash: on the BBC Writersroom blog, Dominic Mitchell lays into writers holding forth about writing at the Guardian website:
    Get lucky. Stay lucky. – Ian Rankin

    Stop reading fiction – it’s all lies anyway, and it doesn’t have anything to tell you that you don’t know already (assuming, that is, you’ve read a great deal of fiction in the past; if you haven’t you have no business whatsoever being a writer of fiction). – Will Self

    When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else. – Zadie Smith

    Yeah, some of them are a bit pointy-headed and a lot of them prescriptive but everyone’s different – particularly writers – and writers should remember can always cherrypick advice at their leisure.

    (Fedora-tip: WGGB Blog.)

  • Heartened by an October 2005 revised draft of Terminator: Salvation, I watched the finished film recently.

    I should have taken the hint:

    CHRISTIAN grabs a HELICOPTER, which results in a CRASH that somehow leaves him unscathed. A CRIPPLED TERMINATOR chases him, but it is killed by BULLETS. Plain old, regular BULLETS. The kind that couldn’t kill TERMINATORS in the other movies.

I rilly rilly enjoyed the Star Trek reboot recently so: Go forth and prosper.

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Tools of the Trade

There’s a montage in Commando where Arnold Schwarzenegger packs on a few hundred pounds of munitions:

Not-too-common poster for "Commando"

(The poster neglects to show the shotgun and rocket launcher/pod that are part of his kit. Maybe the PR elves thought it all a little overkill or something.)

When it comes to writing, I haven’t been picky with my kit. All of my handwritten notes are consistent in their random ink colours – and occasional pencil – because I don’t care for my writing implement (and because I lose pens on a regular basis). As for the electronic records, they include Word, text-only, rich-text and Open Document formats – although that last one has been the standard since 2007.

A couple of years ago, I started playing around with Celtx and, well, nothing has been the same ever since. I use Final Draft now. I understand now the zeal of the convert: FD makes (screen)writing so much easier. But it’s only a tool.

Commando will always have a special place in my heart but it’s been a quarter-century already, and in this post-Bourne world where a rolled-up magazine is as handy in a fight as a Rambo knife, it’s no longer about suiting up for every possible situation. Save the montage for a flashback or Michael Bay homage.

Use whatever you have to hand to put words on the page or screen.

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