A Monday Shout-Out
First, let the Revolution continue! Our dear friend, Ross Mahler, is starting a study on Plot Twists. And he is looking for your favorite twists and theories behind what makes twists work.
Second, MaryAn Batchellor is looking for suggestions for her Death of a Protagonist study.
Third, reviewers on TriggerStreet almost never celebrate another writer’s attempt at a great movie monologue. More often than not, that poor writer will be criticized for writing dialogue that’s “too long.” But one of my favorite film bloggers on the web, Edward Copeland, offered his Top 5 Movie Monologues over at the House Next Door. Bless you, Copeland, for that beautiful piece. Number 1, of course, was President Merkin Muffley’s phone call to Dmitri Kissoff. A sensational choice.
Also, don’t miss Colin’s Movie Monologue Page in which you can read all of those brilliant monologues. (Then try to imagine how much space those monologues would take up on the page.)
If you have not experienced the world of Girish Shambu, you’re robbing yourself of an awe-inspiring education that you will treasure the rest of your life. As much as I hate to send away any of my readers, I dare you to study his entire blog from September 2004 all the way to the present and tell me that your life and your view of cinema hasn’t been FOREVER CHANGED for the better. His latest post, Archiveology: Five Hungry Men, is “an homage to five voracious cinephiles whose curiosity, open-mindedness, energy, intelligence and appetite I find truly inspirational. Reading them is like catching a bug that galvanizes me: to watch more, read more, think more, write more.” I love you, Girish. I really do.
Is it even possible to stop loving Billy Mernit? In his two pieces, The Listening Writer and Playtime, Billy writes more beautifully about music than music writers.
I’ve got to give it up to Unk yet again for his great posts on script analysts here and here.
Please allow me to introduce you to Christina Ferguson’s blog, Development Hell. I loved her recent post on Death of a Pet Project.
I loved That Little Round-Headed Boy’s 40 Reasons why I love “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”.
And finally (I have to quit), you cannot miss the interview of Christiane Kubrick, widow of Stanley, who set the record straight once and for all. My favorite quote: “He abandoned many projects — sometimes after one or two years — because he suddenly ran out of excitement. He hated himself for doing so but, like a poker player, you can’t play a bad hand simply because other people are winning.”
9 comments:
Donald Sutherland has a great speach in "JFK". I don't know if it's so much the dialog or Sutherland's great voice and delivery but on the page, it must run at least two pages.
And of course there's scribosphere.org, the best and newest of all script-blogs (almost) ;)
And very interesting is Artful Writer's "Ask a Pro" in their forum.
I liked that long speech in the middle of Bridget Jones that Mark gives on the stairs. And I like the opening V.O. monologue in The Opposite of Sex.
I don't mind long speeches as long as they move the story forward and don't contain repetitive information. I recently reviewed one on TS that had a really good opening V.O. monologue, but it ALSO had a lot of dialogue sections over four lines long. It was just dialogue heavy. But the writer got that first one right.
The thing is, a lot of these monologues don't appear as long as they seem on the page. Most of the length comes from the actor's delivery and what parts they choose to emphasize, where they choose to take a breath, etc.
Your average TS monologue does not take that into account. And though the text may only take up the majority of a page, it would actually take several minutes to deliver it as written.
My favorite movie monologue, the opening of "Patton", is a perfect example of this. The dialogue itself would fit on one written page -- however, the scene is several minutes long.
It's all in the delivery, baby
Carl - That is a great monologue. I'm not sure which one I would pick. I'd have to think about it.
Scribosphere - I'll mention you guys on my next Shout-Out.
Mickey - Patton's a great choice.
Billy - That's why I thought I'd post these on Mondays. Gives a person a week to catch up. What can I say? There are a lot of great things to discovery out in the world.
Mystery Man, if you could see me now, you would witness a brown-skinned man turning all red....You're so kind. Thank you.
I like Barbossa's insanely long explanation of the curse in Pirates of the Caribbean.
Oh, and thanks for the shout out -- the deed is done. Well, sort of.
Oh curse you, Mystery Man! I finally got a moment to click on the link of Colin's Movie Monologues and scanned the A-B section. Like Billy says, there's a treasure trove here, but oh how many hours could I spend here?
I have writing projects to do.
My two favorites just from this quick scan are Christina Ricci's Thanksgiving speech from Addams Family Values and Christopher Walken's monologue from Annie Hall. I can hardly wait to get home to where my sound-card and speakers are!
Somewhat disappointing. It's just text. Wouldn't it be cool to have sound bytes of some of those speeches? Imagine your ring-tone being, "I'm going to scalp you all and burn your village to the ground."
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