Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Screenwriting News! Links! Shout-Outs!



Hey, let's get trippy!

Because if you're going to show a video of Edie Sedgwick, you might as well post Ciao! Manhattan.

Of this film, Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader wrote, "More genuinely ghoulish than the entire oeuvre of George Romero... but the spectacle of Sedgwick's burnout combined with her pathetic eagerness to let herself be exploited adds up to a morbidly fascinating document on the degeneration of a certain 60s mentality. You'll hate yourself in the morning, but you'll sit through it."

(Sadly, this 6-minute video is better than Factory Girl, which breaks my heart, because an Edie Sedgwick movie could've been classic.)

Why do I post such a thing? Two reasons. The New York Times ran
an article recently about The Museum of the Movie Image (in New York) now presenting a weeklong series titled The Real Edie Sedgwick that “further burnishes her legend and her importance as a muse.”

I loved what Manohla Dargis wrote:
“Ms. Sedgwick’s beauty, fame, bad habits, bed partners, early death and continuing postmortem notoriety have helped turn her into the representative face of Warhol’s film work, his ultimate superstar. But what often gets left out of the discussion about her proverbial 15 minutes is that she was, quite simply, a dazzling film presence. One of the pleasures of this series is that it allows you to look, really look, at the Edie that Warhol fell for, to watch that astonishingly animated face, pale as milk, flutter and fluctuate with seemingly millions of micro-movements. She is at once Jean Harlow and Jean Seberg, as beautiful and nervous as a hummingbird, and just as alive.”

Sedgwick was in a number of Andy Warhol films including Poor Little Rich Girl, Vinyl, Space, Restaurant, and Warhol’s western parody, Horse. And this leads me to my second point: the guy who wrote the scripts for most of those Warhol films is Ronald Tavel and his scripts are available on his website. You never know when you might need a good reference to really trippy sixties dialogue. And yeah, man, I'm tellin' you, baby, sixties dialogue doesn't get much more fun than this. The blurb below is from Vinyl. Victor is talking to Scum. They're very bad boys. They had just robbed and assaulted a man.

Victor: “Like I think badness is being yourself, it is being me, just me, Victor, The Victor, like God in Heaven made me for his shrieking happiness. But goodness is following the cops because the cops cannot permit the just me, this city cannot permit Victor. So ain’t I really good because I am against the cops who are against what God in His Heaven made me? Maybe I do not know what I am talking about. But I know I do what I like because I like it.”

Scum farts.

The Rock ‘n Roll disc starts to play. Victor goes into his dance. It is innocent, frenzied, savage, etc.

Scum farts again.

Victor: “What did you fart for, Scum?”

Scum: “I farted for the music, baby.”

Hehehe...

Another line I enjoyed: “Oh, I don't mind being strangled. It's just that you'll ruin my Man-Tan application.”

I'll let you discover where that one's located.

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In the News

For once, WE were in the news.
GreenCine Daily showcased our humble Blog-a-Thon last Friday and a clicking frenzy ensued.

Many, many, many thanks to every single contributor:
Edward Copeland, Joe, Billy Mernit, Pat, Juliane Cartaino, Joshua James, Miriam Paschal, the Screenwriterguy, Emma, Todd Gordon, the Suburban Screenwriter, Bob G, James Henry, Guillermo, J.D. Judge, Emily Blake, and Michael Patrick Sullivan. I had such a great time and loved every article. Thanks so much.

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New Scripts

The Queen

A Last Kiss

I Think I Love My Wife

Warm Springs

The Program

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Around Scribosphere

Our friend, Piers Beckley, had two very interesting posts on straight-to-the-web high def entertainment in the form of a show called Sanctuary
here and here. Let the online revolution begin.

Author, 96, proves it's never too late
Oh, good, there’s still time.

Girish talks about Quebecois film history
"I'm amazed by the obscurity, in America, of even the greatest figures of Quebecois film history: Michel Brault, Claude Jutra, Pierre Perrault, Gilles Groulx, etc," he writes.

Another sampling:
Chris Gehman: “Brault’s documentary style is at once an affirmation of and a rebuke to theorists of cinéma vérité: While his approach to the documentary is anti-literary and emphasizes the unscripted gathering of film and sound images, to be given their finished form in the editing process, his shooting style opposes the notion of the documentary as a form of surreptitious surveillance put forward by theorists such as Dziga Vertov, who emphasized the importance of “life caught unawares.” For Brault, this approach, perhaps voyeuristic and indicative of veiled aggression, is characterized by the use of the telephoto lens, which allows a camera operator to photograph a subject from a distance and without the subject’s knowledge. Brault’s documentary camerawork, in contrast, is a distinctly “wide-angle” style, putting the camera operator in close proximity to his subjects, not separate from but within the action, and it is this style, derived from a strongly-held ethical position, that makes his contribution so distinctive.”

Oh, and you gotta love Unk’s hate mail.

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MovieBytes:

WriteMovies Contest Winners Head for Release

MoviePoet Announces February Contest Winners

Tribeca/Sloan Announces Screenplaty Development Selection

Script Savvy Finalist Options Screenplay

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Storyscribe

Film Group Seeks Creative Scripts
White River Indie Films wants your screenplay. The nonprofit educational organization is holding what is anticipated to be the first annual WRIF Screenwriting Contest… Details on submission guidelines and format, as well as Phillips' seminar, can be found at the organization's Web site, WRIF.org.

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Hollywood Reporter

Inside man
“Although he has made his living as a screenwriter for more than 60 years, Melville Shavelson can't even read his own writing.”

World Welcomes Pirates Trailer
“The theatrical trailer for Walt Disney Pictures/Jerry Bruckheimer Films' hotly anticipated Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End captured more than 375 million viewers worldwide in its first week before its theatrical release, according to Buena Vista.” Pfft. Whatever. My blog-a-thon got more hits. Hehehe

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Slash Film

Bad Ideas: Disney’s Further Adventures in Babysitting

Scott Frank plans Western and Mid-Life Crisis

Interview with Hotel 2 director Eli Roth

Jim Carrey Needs Me Time

Inglorious Bastards up NEXT for Quentin Tarantino

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Variety

Paulsen to write 'Babysitting'

Wahlberg to star in Shyamalan film

Freeman script wins Sloan

Gil votes for 'Pedro'

Deja vu for writer, Disney

Aronofsky in talks to direct 'Fighter'

'Mr. Bones' sequel is on Horizon

Scorsese, DiCaprio cry 'Wolf'

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CS Daily

Frank Found What He's Looking For
Coming Soon talks to Scott Frank about why, after years of working in the industry, he had to make The Lookout his directorial debut.

What the Frak?!
Battlestar Galactica executive producer Ron Moore discusses last week's thrilling season finale, and what he has in store for the rumored final year of the show.

Let the Sunshine In
Sunshine's Danny Boyle talks about his acclaimed career, and about what he's sacrificed to get to where he is.

Fergus' Trip to Mars Stalls
First Snow's Mark Fergus talks about his beloved indie thriller while also discussing his and writing partner Hawk Ostby's aborted adaptation of John Carter of Mars, which ultimately led to Iron Man.

Lipkin's Get-Rich-Quick Scheme
Playwright Dmitry Lipkin on how he went from Russia to writing white-trash Americans on FX's The Riches.

Another One Bites the Dust?
Slate's Troy Patterson has found a great new sitcom on TV -- Andy Barker, P.I., and he thinks you should watch it before its inevitable cancellation.

The Godfather Speaks Out
Herschell Gordon Lewis has written more books and articles on direct marketing and advertising than anyone in history. But, he has another side of him -- the side where he's known as "The Godfather of Gore" and had a huge hand in the exploitive films of the '60s. GreenCine has the dirt.

Mmmm…Funny Intros
Anyone who thinks The Simpsons forgot how to be funny clearly missed last week's episode, which featured an inspired couch gag. See it here.

5 comments:

Mim said...

I studied Andy Warhol in college, so I'm familiar with his layering technique. It was interesting how he used her final words throughout the short to foreshadow the final story.

Edie was so high on something when she made the tape for the soundtrack to this. They were all high back then, though.

Ravages indeed.

Mystery Man said...

I must apologize.

I didn't give credit here. The film was put together by John Palmer and David Weisman in 1972. The footage was from the remains of an unfinished 60s underground film that was shot shortly before her death, and with her "ciao manhattan tapes" it was all meant to fill out the holes in her story.

Thanks for that, Mim.

-MM

Mim said...

That's interesting. They edited the footage very much in Warhol's style.

Carl S said...

You blogs have eally become spectacular productions. They can entertain me for a whole day and an apple.

Mystery Man said...

We've reached a new phase with the blog. The volume of people reading now is... a little intimidating, so I keep pretending that only you and Mim are reading me.

Hehehe...

-MM