Screenwriting Meditations

[Excerpts from 3 books I’ve been reading.]

First, I’ve been looking for a way to work this quote into an article. No luck, so here it is. This can be found in the introduction to The Story of Film by Mark Cousins:

“The measure of an artist’s originality, put in its simplest terms, is the extent to which his selective emphasis deviates from the conventional norm and establishes new standards of relevance. All great innovations which inaugurate a new era, movement or school, consist in sudden shifts of a previously neglected aspect of experience, some blacked out range of the existential spectrum. The decisive turning points in the history of every art form… uncover what has already been there; they are ‘revolutionary’, that is destructive and constructive, they compel us to revalue our values and impose new sets of rules on the eternal game.” – Arthur Koestler


This wonderful paragraph derives from David Bordwell’s latest book, Poetics of Cinema, and it’s a great reminder to consider seriously how and when we filter information to the audience:

“Two characters are talking to one another on the telephone. The filmmaker faces a number of choices for rendering this event. First, we can see both characters exchanging dialogue, perhaps via crosscutting, split screen, or some other technique. As a result, following the turn taking of the dialogue, we hear the entire conversation. Alternatively the filmmaker can, throughout the conversation, show us just one of the pair. But that offers a further choice: Shall we hear what the offscreen speaker says, or not? If we hear the speaker but see only the listener, we can observe the reaction to the lines. Instead, the filmmaker might eliminate the sound of the speaker’s dialogue, so that we don’t get access to what’s coming through the earpiece. In this case we see the speaker’s reaction, but we have to imagine what’s being said that provokes it. In sum, each choice narrates the phone call in a different way, doling out different information for different purposes. In a comedy, we might want to see both characters speak their lines and react to each other. In a mystery, it might serve the scene’s purpose to omit one side of the conversation, so we don’t know who the speaker is, or whether the speaker is sincere, or why the listener reacts as she or he does. All of the presentational tactics I’ve mentioned – crosscutting, split screen, eliminating a sound stream, presenting the sound coming into the receiver – are stylistic choices, but they’re inevitably narrational choices as well. They shape what information we get and how we get it.”


And finally, this comes from the book Defining Moments in Movies. (1000 defining moments, in fact. Great book.)

Key Scene – The invitation to and release from temptation
Chloe in the Afternoon

“Very early in Chloe in the Afternoon, we know that Frédéric (Verley), a personable if at times quietly anxious married man, can be seduced into buying a shirt by an attractive female sales clerk. Can he also be seduced into something more serious, like an extra-marital affair with the provocative, unattached Chloé (Zouzou)? In that question lies the suspense, which recalls Alfred Hitchcock, of the last of Rohmer’s “Six Moral Tales.” The dénouement of this highly sophisticated, always absorbing drama finds Chloé asking Frédéric to towel off her naked body, which he does in a tasteful, yet highly erotic shot in which we see his face from behind her. Ready to capitulate to his desire, he begins to pull his turtleneck over his head but sees his face in the mirror, in a reminder of a moment with his family – wife (Francoise Verley), daughter, and newborn son – and resists temptation, leaving to run down a winding flight of stairs in a masterly overhead shot, the clattering sound of his footsteps expressing both his panic and release from it, in the only truly great homage to Vertigo (1958). It is the moment that affirms that cinematic suspense has less to do with genres and situations than with how the style and form of a film are approached, and with tension and release – the release here returning Frédéric to his wife and a single-take final scene in which Rohmer’s trademark irony is suffused with a profound melancholy.” - Blake Lucas

MM’s “Love” Script

Well, I’m proud to announce that there’s a new screenplay on TriggerStreet, the result of a collaborative effort of 20 writers!

I thought it might be fun to try a screenplay experiment that would be a series of shorts along the lines of Paris, Je T’aime. I’d give writers 6 pages each to write anything they’d want to write about love. They’d send the pages to me, and I’d put it all together into one screenplay. To my great surprise 20 writers volunteered! Actually, there were more than that, but I had to cut it off at 20 to keep the page count down. I don’t believe so many writers have ever come together for one screenplay.

After about a week and a half of intense labor, we got it done! You can find it here and download it for free (membership to TriggerStreet is required, but it's free). It’s titled simply – Love. In it, you’ll find a great short by Miriam Paschal, who has done all those movie breakdowns, and also Pat who’s participated in all of the studies we’ve done here. There’s a superb short by fellow blogger Joshua James, as well as Ger, who placed second in the latest Final Draft contest. He wrote a hilarious short called “Dude, Wherefore Art Thou?” Mickey Lee’s in it, who I’ve written about before. David Muhlfelder, who you may recall gave us a review for the Senator’s Wife, wrote a hilarious short called “Colonoscopy: A Love Story.” Bob Thielke, who wrote the completely visual screenplay, put together a beautiful, almost wordless short called “Joedy Girl.” There’s also “Digging Greta Garbo,” by Ted Frothingham. And there’s a short by me, titled, “Love Inc.”

This isn’t for sale, just a writing exercise for fun. There was actually so much excitement about this project, that 20 different writers will be doing another script just like this in a couple of weeks, except the topic will be about “hate.” That should be really interesting.

Anyway, check it out. It’s a lot of fun.

-MM

Screenwriting News & Links! 1/27/08

Above is a new episode of Dana Brunetti’s TriggerStreet TV, which covers industry news, trends, and topics. They’re very informative, particularly this episode about the 300 writers going “financial core.” Dana Brunetti, as many of you know, is the founder of TriggerStreet and producer of four films coming out this year, including 21 with Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, and Jim Sturgess.

(Away From Her should’ve been nominated instead of Juno.)

Thanks, guys. Great to meet you, Ian.

Plus, in case you guys missed it, we recently had a bruising no-holds-barred slugfest-royale over “we see” in screenplays right here.

-MM

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New Screenplays:

Pink Floyd The Wall - May 8th, 1981 unspecified draft script by Roger Waters. And this is just as unusual as you would expect in a Pink Floyd screenplay. It’s part screenplay, part storyboard…

Conspiracy Theory - September 12, 1996 unspecified draft script by Brian Helgeland.

(Thanks so SimplyScripts.)

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Epstein’s Important Post about Revised First Drafts
“You turn in your draft. The producer gives you notes. You turn in a revised draft. From time to time, a producer will assert that the second draft you turned in is a ‘revised first draft,’ not a second draft. Your producer may truly believe himself. But his belief, not inconsequentially, means he doesn't owe you a second draft payment.”

Billy Mernit & The Obligatory Movie
“The Obligatory Movie announces itself on the script-reading frontlines when you start seeing a whole lot of specs that are more or less variations on the same concept and story -- a phenomenon that occurs more often than you might think, in the belly of the industry beast. In this case, over a period of two or three years, as studio story analyst and screenwriting instructor, I read half a dozen screenplays that had the same title: Always a Bridesmaid. No plagiarism or imitation involved -- each of the six was simply a disparate writer's take on That Movie.”

Unk’s 7 Vids of Screenwriters Talking about the Craft

Mike Le’s hilarious Truth in Cinema.


TriggerStreet for Comics?
Have you guys heard about Zuda Comics? It’s a new website created by DC Comics where people can submit their own comics and others can read 'em and vote on 'em. (Thanks to my close friend and brilliant writer Wired Puppy for the link!)

Bill Martel on Symbols
“…In RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK we have that headpiece on the staff with directions on where to place the staff on the map and how long the staff should be... but on the opposite side of the headpiece are more directions that *change* the length of the staff - and that only changes everything. Things like that make the story seem alive and unpredictable. When we come to a fork in the story road and the character makes a choice - if it's the wrong choice, that makes the story seem unpredictable... it also makes the story seem exciting, because the hero now must scramble to get back on course. But there is only one direction in NATIONAL TREASURE 2 - only one way the story can go. That makes it seem prectable and dull.”

Laura Deerfield on Movie Character Careers
“I've noticed that there are certain professions or callings that are over-represented in film. For example - there are far more architects in the movies, as a percentage, than there are in real life…”

Director Zack Snyder has posted the two storyboards viewed below for his 2009 tent pole, Watchmen, on the film’s official website.

Elver: Violent movies decrease crime, football increases crime

Mark Achtenberg on Carol Reed
“Reed's next film was 1949's blockbuster 'The Third Man'. Starring Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten, 'The Third Man' was based on an original screenplay by Graham Greene (not an adaptation). Like the previous film, 'The Third Man' was a mystery, this time set in the rubble of post war Vienna. The plot involves Holly Martins (Cotten) arriving in Vienna to visit his old friend Harry Lime (Welles) only to be informed that Lime had been killed after being struck by a car. Frustrated by the police's lack of interest in the mysterious circumstances of his friends death, Holly resolves to find the killer(s) and get justice for Harry. Again, the location photography by Krasker is sublime (won the Academy award that year for b&w cinematography). The film is driven by the unforgettable score by Anton Karas, the characters and performances are outstanding and the story is poignant and surprising. The visual style is dynamic and employs canted angles and superior compositions. Over the years many have suggested that Welles played a large role in the direction of the film but if you look at 'Odd Man Out' and 'The Fallen Idol' you realize that this is simply nonsense. Reed was a fully developed artist and while Welles' contribution to the film is great, it was in his performance and not his direction that you can feel his effect (Greene did note that Welles' famous cuckoo clock speech was written by Welles).”

Thanks to Tim for sharing A Softer World
“Check out A Softer World for short little works of art that are also short stories. Very interesting. And also good to study in terms of packing a story AND a character into a minute space.” 1 examples below...


Interview with Chuck Palahniuk
“You know, I like the way it works. At first I was nervous because I thought it would be too much like Fight Club. Because Fight Club had a lot of voice over establishing things in the first act. But in a way you are moving from the abstract of language to the very litteralness of movement. Because language is what books do very well and movement is what movies does very well. So in a way having voice over in the begining almost works as a missing link between books and movies, and helps become what it is in the end - a movie. I think it works better that way. Actually, I kind of cringe in the third act of Fight Club when the voice over comes back, and I wish it hadn’t done that.”


The Ultimate Book On Screenwriting…From 1916?
And yes, such a book does exist and was written by a certain Capt. Leslie T. Peacocke.

Persepolis writer puts her life on the screen
“Marjane Satrapi is sick of herself. With four graphic novels in her popular Persepolis series, she's thrown open the gate to her life story. Those stories informed the new feature film Persepolis, one of the most imaginative movies, animated or otherwise, released in years. And with the movie earning an Academy Award nomination and opening wider — including in Houston — today, she's having to talk almost continuously about Persepolis' protagonist: Marjane Satrapi.”

Blarneyman rants about the new Bond title
“Or Quantum of Solace as its been officially announced. What a shitty, silly title. By that token I'd much prefer any one of these alternates…”

8 Minutes of Diablo Cody on Letterman

David Bordwell on Cloverfield
“Next, overall structure. The Cloverfield tape conforms to the overarching principles that Kristin outlines in Storytelling in the New Hollywood and that I restated in The Way Hollywood Tells It. (Another example can be found here.) A 72-minute film won’t have four large-scale parts, most likely two or three. As a first approximation, I think that Cloverfield breaks into…”


Zach Campbell on Still Life
“If I open glibly, snarkily, it's only because Still Life is the kind of film whose brilliance may need a bit of polemical cynicism in order to counterbalance what is surely a temptation for some (1) to read the film in purely impressionistic-melodramatic terms. Because as a story about people searching (for...) it is a fairly affecting film. But it is only when the human interest is understood within its wider contexts specifically--not as the dramatic heart of a social message but as micro-developments within a macro-narrative--that I think Still Life emerges as one of the very richest and most important "festival films" of recent years that I've had the fortune of seeing.”

How I Set the Butterfly Free
“When I first read The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the idea that it could be adapted to the screen never crossed my mind. Recently, at a question-and-answer session in Hollywood, the audience were, I thought, rather shocked to learn that I didn’t read books to see whether or not they could be turned into films. When I added that I read books simply for pleasure, the response was a murmur of bewilderment. I may be doing them an injustice but I think not. In Hollywood, I suspect in much of the United States, many people read only to discover if the subjects will make movies.”

"Various critics I respect wandered out into the near-zero cold after the Eccles Center premiere of The Merry Gentleman complaining about [Michael] Keaton's technical limitations as a filmmaker, so I can only presume they exist," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "But I felt tremendously grateful for the stillness and quietness of Keaton's picture, its ominous, anonymous American atmospherics and its reticent refusal to open its characters and story to us beyond a certain point, especially considering it's a movie about - wait for it - a suicidal hit man!"

A Chat with 'Untraceable' Screenwriter Allison Burnett
“They had written a script that was around for a long time, called Streaming Evil. It had many big names attached, but it never took off. And then Lakeshore came to me. At first I was supposed to work on Marsh's character [Jennifer Marsh, played by Diane Lane], do some character work and some dialogue work. Then I pitched them some ideas, and they began writing and I pitched them some more stuff. In their version, the killer really had no reason to kill people on the internet, and there was a randomness to it. It was a hideous carnival atmosphere. What I brought to it was, the more who watched, the faster the person dies. There was an MO to the killer: why he does it. We were going to go into arbitration over screen credits, but in the end we decided to be friends. I felt very good about that.”

Star projects underwhelm Sundance

“The third round of the Book Review's Reading Room series is up and percolating," announces the New York Times' Dwight Garner. For the next two weeks, the Book Review's Steve Coates will lead a panel discussing Walker Percy's odd, winsome 1962 novel The Moviegoer. "I personally would propose these three words, which are certainly at the driving heart of my own practice: richness, intensity and gesture." Adrian Martin in a terrific interview that originally ran in the Slovenian magazine Ekran nearly a year ago and appearing in English now, thanks to the interviewer, interviewee and Girish. (Thanks to GreenCine Daily.)

Garth Brooks – Screenwriter?
“Garth tells the Los Angeles Times that he'll return to screenwriting in the next few months, and hints that a movie based on Garth's alter-ego, Chris Gaines, is not out of the question.”

Screenwriters talk Giallo and L.A. Gothic
““We never dreamed that Dario Argento would read our script, let alone like it enough to want to direct it,” Keller continues. “It still hasn’t completely sunk in. Dario Argento likes us! How cool is that? And the cast so far is awesome. The fact that it is moving so fast has our heads spinning. And as if working with one of our idols isn’t enough, we have another genre master attached to direct our screenplay L.A. GOTHIC: the one and only Dr. John Carpenter! We managed to sign a deal with producers Josh Kesselman and Danny Sherman of Principal Entertainment on Halloween Day—just hours before the WGA strike.” The L.A. GOTHIC synopsis passed along by Keller describes the project as “five interwoven stories of high-octane horror centering on a vengeful ex-priest’s efforts to protect his teenage daughter from the supernatural evils of LA’s dark side.””

“Noir City 6 has the usual spread of special guests, rare titles, and newly struck prints across ten nights of double-features,” writes Max Goldberg at SF360. “Plenty of notable tidbits for the hardcore, in other words, and for everyone else a chance at the kind of immersion long underlying noir appreciation.” Michael Guillen launches his coverage with an interview with Alan K Rode, a frequent contributor to Film Monthly and The Big Chat who can also be heard in more than a few DVD commentaries. Rode's new book is Charles McGraw: Biography of a Film Noir Tough Guy, a book that James Ellroy as "A spellbinding account of the great noir heavy … and a must-have addition to all film-noir libraries. Deft biography and overall wild tale."

Interview with "A Mighty Heart" Screenwriter John Orloff
“…And that script eventually got you your big break with Tom Hanks -- pretty decent guy to start out with, no?
JO: Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, yes! The most important thing that happened out of the Shakespeare script was that Tom's company was among the readers. They liked it, and I met with Tom about another project, but every time I sat down with him I would ask if he had hired writers on Band of Brothers. I'm a huge World War II buff, and I think I eventually just wore him down. He finally asked me to write a script, and I wrote one episode. He was very happy with it and asked me to write another. So, that was my first paying gig.”

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On the Contest Circuit:

Gimme Credit Announces Cycle VI Short Script Winners

CinemaSpoke seeks screenplays
Cinema St. Louis is accepting submissions for its CinemaSpoke Screenwriting Competition, a chance for aspiring writer to get their work read by professional judges. The five best scripts get a staged recitation by local actors, and the winning entry is submitted to a Hollywood agent. Deadline for submissions is Feb. 29. The five finalists will be announced April 3. The contest is free and open to the public, as are the once-monthly recitations, which will be held at the Centene Center for the Arts, 3547 Olive Street, from April through September. For more information, contact Cinema St. Louis at 314-289-4150 or visit its website at cinemastlouis.org.

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Strike-Related:

URGENT! Talks Status Report: Optimism

Lionsgate signs as WGA talks go on
Indie producer, Marvel make interim deals

That Shitty DGA Deal Is At Least A Start...

WGA drops reality demands

Marvel makes a deal with the WGA

WGA STRIKE UPDATE: WGA Starts Fund to Help Idled Crews

John Wells On The DGA Deal
Good God - distributor's gross? Are you kidding me? Ugh… Down with the distribs!

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And finally…


Here you can watch the entire 29-minute, BAFTA Film Award nominated, British model animation Peter and The Wolf written and directed by Suzie Templeton. I loved every second of it.

Top Ten Format Mistakes

Hey guys,

I should clarify that this is from one of my recent TriggerStreet script reviews, and thus, it's the top ten mistakes one specific writer made in his unproduced spec. (And this is not to embarrass him, either. He's a good writer with a promising future.) But my biggest pet peeve in the world is a sloppy spec. For God's sake, a writer should know how to write and a screenplay ought to look like a damn screenplay. You may not have anything good to say in the story, but at least have the decency to make your script look polished.

Anyway, hope you enjoy it.

-MM
(aka - "Format Nazi")

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10) "WE SEE" & "WE HEAR"
This is one of the biggest amateur mistakes anyone can make, that is, to write endlessly in the action lines "we see" or "we hear" or "we look." Obviously, "we see," "we hear," and "we look" - IT'S A MOVIE. You might say, "well, I've seen this done by the pros." That doesn't make it right. That doesn't justify your doing it, and that doesn't mean we can all rationalize a lowering of standards in screenwriting. Even as Mystery Man, I interact heavily with a few pro readers from the U.K. and the U.S., as well as two college professors in screenwriting - DON'T DO THIS. Everyone groans and quietly talks trash about the author when the writing is this sloppy. We have to surpass the pros on every level with our screenplays in order to break in. And that process begins with spotless specs with perfect format & grammar.

9) FADE IN OVER BLACK?
PAGE ONE: How does one "FADE IN:" "OVER BLACK"? When would we know the FADE IN: has occurred if all we're looking at is blackness? You should start with "ON BLACK," then "SUPER:" (not "SUPER IN/OUT:") and after the super'd words, which should be in quotations, then write "FADE IN:" which should be flushed to the left.

8) CONFUSING CHARACTER INTRODUCTIONS
You do realize that when you first introduce a character, the name should be in caps, right? There are a few cases where you didn't do that, like Onesto's Mother or the Man in the White Suit (both on page 17) or the two reporters on page 41 (who they have lines of dialogue). And then there were other cases where you repeatedly put the same character names in caps, like Leland on page 81 and 86 after you've already introduced him on page 3 or Amelia Granger whom you put in caps again on page 30 after you already introduced her on page 14. And then there was the bit with the "Scandinavian Woman" and "Son" that started on the bottom of page 3. I'm still not sure how many characters were in that scene. You have Scandinavian Woman and Son next to a car at the Botanical Gardens with a clamp over the wheel. Okay, fine. The woman addresses an "August" in her dialogue, a bag hits the ground, a "stranger, dressed from head to toe in black, opens the bag and takes out bolt cutters," the mother "nods her approval," and then you introduce MAC MEAD, who picks up the bag and winks at the mother; she smiles back, blushing." I had to read it ten times before I decided that there were only 3 people in this scene, the mother, the son, and Mac, although what Mac was doing and why he did it and how it's essential to the story didn't seem important. But don't write "stranger" before a proper character introduction, because that'll make people think there are more characters in a scene than there really are. Introduce Mac Mead in the "stranger" paragraph.

7) IGOR, IGOR, IGOR
It annoys me when, in the action lines, a character's name begins every single sentence. "Igor does this." "Igor does that." "Igor goes here." It's amateurish writing. It means you don't have enough confidence in the reader to understand that you're still talking about Igor if you just write "he." Believe me, we'll get it. Just say "Igor" once and then write "he" thereafter.

6) SUBTITLES
Briefly, the handling of foreign languages and subtitles was, well, disastrous. I'm not even going to explain the variety of ways you can handle foreign languages in screenplays. Unfortunately, none of those techniques were on display here. I'll suggest this - parentheticals are probably best for this story.

5) CAMERA DIRECTIONS
The following we do not do: "THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE IN ONE FLUID, CONTINOUS MOTION -". That, my friend, is called a camera direction, and we don't write them - not in the U.K., not in the U.S., not in Tibet, China, or BFE. Get rid of all your transitions, too. Some transitions are okay if they are truly essential, but I never saw any reason for any of the ones you used. You also had a lot of swooping and flying, such as, "We are skimming the surface of the Tigris River. As we swoop up we fly towards a bridge." Just describe the location and imply camera directions. In other words, describe the river, the bridge, etc, and imply that we're skimming and flying but don't say it. Also, don't mention "pulling back" or "the frame."

4) HEADINGS THAT MAKE YOU CRINGE
Here were a couple of my favorites: "EXT./INT. HIGHWAY/THE VAN/THE TRUCK - DAY" and "INT. EXT. BAGHDAD STREETS/VEHICLES/FACES". Don't do that. Here's another one: "INT/EXT. BUILDING, SECOND FLOOR" How can you have INT./EXT. for a BUILDING? Did you notice that you have "EXT./INT." for the highway, "INT. EXT." for the Baghdad Streets, and "INT/EXT." for the building? Look, "INT./EXT." needs to have two periods and a slash and that kind of heading is usually reserved for automobiles. Headings need to be simple: "INT. LOCATION - DAY". No commas, no slashes, no "faces," just ONE LOCATION. If you're doing a chase sequence, all you need is one heading and a bunch of secondary headings. You might want to look at Mickey Lee's "Operation: Atomic Blitz" as a reference. You also do not write "EARLY MORNING" or "LATE AFTERNOON" in your headings. Scenes are shot for "DAY" or for "NIGHT". Period. Although you can also write "SAME" or "LATER" or "CONTINUOUS" or "FLASHBACK" or some variation. You had many headings without time switches at the end, too. I'd suggest you always have time switches at the end of every heading to avoid any possible confusion. While it was great to see that you knew to use the Secondary Headings, you were inconsistent with them. Make sure you're consistent with when, where, and how you use them.

3) NOT-SO-GREAT EDITING
No one has ever really written about this (and I'm not sure how well I can articulate it), but this script is full of what I'd call "bad editing." It's where a set of scenes feels jarring, confusing, disjointed, and erratic, because there wasn't a lot of care into leading the mind's eye of the readers to ensure that we are all following a specific train of thought in order to reach certain payoffs. I've resisted saying this for years because it sounds so cliched but I believe this to be true - there is a musical quality to screenwriting. You either hear the music or you don't. Because you have to be able to follow along in the story just as you can following along to a tune and there are many forms of music, but you cannot have a bunch of jarring, confusing, disjointed, and erratic chords in your songs. And thus, we have bad editing. At one point, like in one short sequence from page 9-10, we had these quick, jarring cuts that suddenly took us from Paris to some guy standing over an abyss in Alaska and jumping to a sudden cut in New York. Each sequence of events must have a beginning, middle, and end before cutting back to another sequence, UNLESS one sequence directly AFFECTS another sequence. Otherwise, it's too confusing. Robert McKee went so far as to say that each scene must have a beginning, middle, and end. I don't necessarily agree, because scenes can be part of a sequence that has a beginning, middle, and end.

2) UNFILMMABLES
My notes below are filled with complaints about unfilmmables, which were EVERYWHERE. Here are some favorites: "Where the Buddha, which was taller than the Statue of Liberty, had once stood, there is now only a blasted heap of stone." How is that filmmable? You have to write in the action lines ONLY what we see on the screen. "He didn't back down in Afghanistan and he's sure not gonna back down now." "Double sixes were the only way Mac could win." You cannot write explanations like these in the action lines. These things should be obvious to the story, and if it wouldn't be obvious to the reader, it's not going to be obvious to the audience, and you'll have to re-work this scene so you wouldn't HAVE to write an explanation in the action lines. Here's another one, page 53: if we're just looking at missiles, how are we supposed to know that it has an "internal gyroroscope-based guidance systems?" Let me say again - You have to write in the action lines ONLY what we see on the screen. Also avoid incidental actions, author's intrusions, and questions to the reader.

1) SO FUNNY, I HAVE TO SHARE IT
This comes to us from page 27:

Leland spins around and sorts through mail on the counter. He picks up a postcard.

POSTCARD
Get the whiskey ready. Bad smelling
offer too tempting to pass up came
my way. Use some floss if you don’t
hear from me in two weeks.

Leland turns over the postcard...

Ladies and Gentlemen, it's the world's first TALKING POSTCARD! YEAH, BABY! Let's give it up for our friend who wrote a character line and dialogue to create the talking postcard.

Hehehe...

That's called an INSERT.

Dude, if I was in a professional reading position, I would've put the script down on page 27. You're not impressing anyone with your lack of knowledge about the craft. I'd suggest you buy Dave Trottier's Screenwriter's Bible and study it as if your life depended on it. This book represents industry standards. Everyone in the biz follows it, and it's recommended by the WGA. They may not be able to handle contract negotiations very well, but they recommend good books.

Heath Ledger, 1979 - 2008

Terribly heartbreaking news about Heath, wasn’t it? I liked what Emerson wrote: “Not only did he bring iconic life and nuance to the existential loneliness of Ennis Del Mar, a taciturn but complex (and conflicted) character, but for such mature work to spring from the teen-idol star of 10 Things I Hate About You and A Knight's Tale was... well, revelatory itself -- the astonishing revelation of a suddenly, fully developed actor who, in the superficial juvenile parts he'd played previously, had given little indication he was capable of such impressive depth and clarity. Ledger emerged as if from a cocoon, gleaming with promise and flexing his wings.” (Same could be said of many writers we know.)

His friends said, “We saw it coming.” The Daily Mail, which isn’t exactly a bastion of integrity, wrote, “Heath was shattered by his split from Michelle… He became a recluse. He barely slept he was dealing with terrible mood swings.” Sometimes the best of actors and, indeed, the best of writers can also be the most troubled people you’ll ever know. And I’ve known quite a few. On one level, writing and acting is a reflection of the artists involved, and on another level, the writing and acting doesn’t even remotely reflect them in any real, honest way. You just never know. What happens in front of the camera and what you see in the media is hardly ever a reflection of reality.

I’m more knowledged about troubled writers than I am actors. We know that the poets, Robert Lowell, Delmore Schwartz, Randall Jarrell and Theodore Roethke were all diagnosed as manic-depressive. John Berryman, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton committed suicide. Sylvia Plath, in particular, breaks my heart to this day. Of the famous writers, Philip K. Dick comes to mind, of course. Anne Rice suffered from severe depression due to a long-term illness and the death of her husband. And there’s Hemingway and Fitzgerald, naturally. In a letter to Fitzgerald, Hemingway wrote, “Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to hurt like hell before you can write seriously.” Do you really have to be in pain to write well? I don’t know. There’s an interesting article here about creativity and the troubled mind. Personally, I think we have to at least keep in check the usual elements that can lead to or worsen an already existing depression - isolation, introspection, lack of physical exercise, irregular hours, less than perfect diet, and lack of exposure to sunlight (sounds strange but it’s true). For me, I have problems with being overly-obsessed about writing and the craft and research on any project I may be working on. The research on my last script nearly killed me, although it wasn't on the scale of Kubrick and Napoleon, but I know I could go that far if I’m not careful. How about you?

Heath’s death can still be a force of good to many other artists who need a wake-up call and that includes writers. I had a friend tell me recently, “I’m glad you’re doing this project because I’ve been down lately.” I told him, “I started this because I've been down a bit, too. And if there’s anything you want to talk about, I’m always here for you.” That’s what we have to do, isn’t it? As a screenwriting community? We’re not competitors. We’re fellow-travelers, people of like-minded faiths, and we have to watch each other's backs, right?

-MM

Screenwriting News & Links! 1/21/08

Well, it took a bit of tinkering, but we’ve got a system now! I will be posting within these Screenwriting News articles episodes of Dana Brunetti’s TriggerStreet TV, which covers industry news, trends, and topics. Dana, as many of you know, is the founder of TriggerStreet and producer of four films coming out this year, including 21 with Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, and Jim Sturgess.

We’ve been having a lot of fun here. We had Miriam’s big article on the Shower Scenes of Brian De Palma, a scene analysis from There Will Be Blood, and a big blog talk with the Unknown Screenwriter about 2007 and the screenwriting community (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4).

Thanks again, Unk. So great to talk to you.

-MM

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New Screenplays:

Panther - 1995 unspecified draft script by Melvin Van Peebles.

Below - November 6, 2000 blue revised script by Darren Aronofsky & Lucas Sussman with revisions by David Twohy.

Cliffhanger - March 30, 1992 First Draft, 2nd Revision script by Michael France, revision by Terry Hayes

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Our hearts are with you, Roger, and those involved in this sad tragedy. Here’s an eye-witness’s account. Terribly, terribly sad.

On the flipside, here’s an article about hope. An Iranian News website has an article about screenwriting: Aristotle's Seven Golden Rules Of Story Telling. It’s contributing author is Jan Janroy, who I think lives in New York, and who is also the writer & director of a film called David & Layla. Jan wrote, “‘The most essential thing for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar.’ Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway said he re-wrote the ending of his 'For Whom The Bell Tolls' thirty-eight times until he was content. Within its genre, are the characters and their stories credible? Is the ending believable? Is the ending satisfying?” She also has another article called Why Write? Ya know, this is a great example of what Unk and I were discussing in our Blog Talk. We live in an age where people should no longer have to pay to learn about screenwriting. Take the knowledge and the art into places that can’t afford Robert McKee seminars and help them create art for themselves to better their lives.


Congrats to my friend Dennis Cozzalio…
…whose blog, SERGIO LEONE AND THE INFIELD FLY RULE, has been nominated as “Best Entertainment Blog” for the 2008 Blogger's Choice Awards! Yeah, baby! In an e-mail, he wrote, “While I would NEVER advocate indiscriminate ballot stuffing, I will encourage to you to visit their website at www.bloggerschoiceawards.com and vote for SLIFR if you enjoy the blog and the work that I do there. When you visit the site, click on "Best Entertainment Blog," go down to the bottom of the page and click on the [number 2. That's where you'll find SLIFR as of Sunday evening at 8:00 p.m. -MM]”

David Bordwell on Scene Transitions in Classical Cinema
Just sensational. A must read. “As a storytelling device, the hook affects both narrative design and stylistic patterning. Studying it helps us grasp some basic mechanics of classical storytelling. Just as important, these devices display tacit knowledge and decisions on the part of filmmakers, who adapt traditions to the needs at hand. And filmmakers’ tacit knowledge corresponds to that of audiences, the skills you and I exercise unawares. We can follow the corrugations of sound/ image organization because we know about the world outside cinema, we know how conventions reshape that world, and we’re alert for narrative and audiovisual organization. Analyzing how movies are put together helps us understand how we experience them.”

“Stuttering John” wrote a screenplay
“Most people know John Melendez from his voice, either as “Stuttering John” on Howard Stern’s show or the announcer for Jay Leno. Now Melendez is going to have his time in the sun: National Lampoon will distribute his film One, Two, Many, according to Variety. Melendez wrote, produced and stars in One, Two, Many, about a man on a quest to find the girl of his dreams. The movie is set to open in theatres on April 10, even when many of National Lampoon’s projects go straight to video these days.”

I loved what Ebert wrote about the Honeydripper characters
“John Sayles has made 19 films, and none of them are two-character studies. As the writer of his own work, he instinctively embraces the communities in which they take place. He's never met a man who was an island. Everyone connects, and when that includes black and white, rich and poor, young and old, there are lessons to be learned, and his generosity to his characters overflows into affection… As for the sheriff's role: As I suggested, lots of Alabama sheriffs were more racist than he is, which is not a character recommendation, but means that he isn't evil just to pass the time and would rather avoid trouble than work up a sweat. At that time, in that place, he was about the best you could hope for. Within a few more years, the Bull Connors would be run out of town, one man would have one vote, and the music of the African-American South would rule the world. That all had to start somewhere. It didn't start on Saturday night at the Honeydripper, but it didn't stop there, either.”

Loved what Manohla said about Cloverfield characters
“And, so, much like a character from a crummy movie, Rob hears from an estranged lover, Beth (Odette Yustman), who, after the attack, begs for help on her miraculously working cellphone. Against the odds and a crush of fleeing humanity, he tries to rescue her (unbelievably, ludicrously, the others tag along), which is meant to show what a good guy he is. But heroism without a fully realized hero proves as much a dead end as subjective camerawork that’s executed without a discernible subjectivity. Like too many big-studio productions, “Cloverfield” works as a showcase for impressively realistic-looking special effects, a realism that fails to extend to the scurrying humans whose fates are meant to invoke pity and fear but instead inspire yawns and contempt.”


Tim Claque, JJ Abrams, & Mystery
Tim shares a vid in which J.J. Abrams talks about how he looks at his own work - and why he works in the way that he does.

Emerson on the Juno backlash
I loved the reader-submitted question halfway into Jim’s article: “Q: I have been following the debate about the clever dialogue in "Juno" and there are two things I don't understand: (1) Why do people continue to expect every film they see to be a flawless reflection of reality when no film, not even a documentary, could ever accomplish such a feat? Isn’t one of the pleasures of going to the movies in seeing things we don’t usually see in the real world? (2) Why aren't more people refreshed that a film has gone against the grain by creating characters more intelligent than real people, as opposed to the Hollywood norm of creating characters who are considerably dumber and more shallow than real people?” Exactly. Let me just say that the backlash has more to do with Diablo Cody’s over-exposure in the media than it does any lack of talent, a good lesson for many of you guys out there.

Craig on Fringe Characters
“…but it got me thinking about the difference between movies with an inclusive point of view and movies with what one could call an exclusivist perspective. The distinction is tricky, of course: I'm not necessarily talking about a 'populist' sensibility like Spielberg's or James L. Brooks's as opposed to the more divisive appeal of a worldview like that of Kubrick or the Coens. What I mean is a sense that in a world of a particular film there is an acknowledgement, however tacit, that all the characters have lives beyond what we see in the frame. This, too, can be difficult to evaluate. Spielberg, of course, received a heaping of criticism for his depiction of Arabs in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and while a lot of it was probably accurate, I must confess that I still laugh when Indy shoots the swordsman in the marketplace. (My only defense, immaturity aside, is that I think I'm laughing at the undermining of audience expectations of a big action movie fight scene, not at who the character is or what he represents…)”

Mike Le’s “Two in the Pink, One in the…”

Emily Blake talks about Teaching Thursdays
“I got this email just now: ‘Gate 2 at Warner Bros. has come up with a stellar idea: "Teaching Thursdays," where writers of various genres would join us on Thursdays, making themselves available to discuss story, structure and everything in between to aspirings if the aspirings would be willing to come out and pick up a sign…’”

Laura Deerfield on the Death of Science Fiction
“How about something completely original? Take a look at Paprika, a great piece of anime. If you want interesting and unique ideas about the future, anime is a good place to look. Then there's Jathia’s Wager, a fascinating concept that seems to be a sort of choose your own adventure fr the digital age. I am sure there are also original ideas being made cheaply and shown online for free, as fans of SF tend to be drawn to new technologies.”

No Character Arc for the Joker
“Chris Nolan briefly chatted about his villains to the LA Times: ‘Harvey Dent is a tragic figure, and his story is the backbone of this film. The Joker, he sort of cuts through the film -- he's got no story arc, he's just a force of nature tearing through. Heath has given an amazing performance in the role, it's really extraordinary.’”

'Peter Pan' drawing inspired 'The Orphanage' screenwriter
“But screenwriter Sergio G. Sanchez is the one who grew up in Asturias, on the northwestern Atlantic coast of Spain, the location that gives the movie its seaside setting and its gray foreboding. He is the one who imagined a tale of a mother, a former orphan, living in an old orphanage, trying to find her own child who has disappeared amid mysterious goings-on in the place. ‘The spark that ignited everything was a drawing on a 'Peter Pan' book that I read when I was a child,’ Sanchez says. ‘It's that image of a mother, waiting by the window, for her children to come back from Neverland. It's my favorite book, and the final chapter of that is probably the saddest thing I've ever read. So what I wanted to do was tell the story of 'Peter Pan' from the point of view of the mother. That would give us a chance to go into darkest corners that story has to offer.’”

Would you take screenwriting tips from a man with bad Glamour Shots?
"I came across a link today that left me speechless. The link was referencing a free online screenwriting class. I eagerly clicked on the link thinking how it would be a great resource for this site. This is what I saw…"


Bill Martell Interview
"There's two different ways you can find a story. One is through character. When I'm writing a script for myself usually what I'll do is start with a character and then I'll figure out what's the very worst thing that can happen to that person and then my story is that thing happening to them. The other way to do it is when I start with a concept. Usually if I'm going in to pitch to a producer they will want some sort of an interesting idea."

John Carpenter Returning to Theaters with L.A. Gothic
His next film, L.A. Gothic, is scheduled to start shooting in March, with a script by Jim Agnew and Sean Keller, who scribed the new Dario Argento movie, Giallo, mentioned yesterday. Here’s the log line via STYD: ‘Five interwoven stories of high-octane horror centering on a vengeful ex-priest’s efforts to protect his teenage daughter from the supernatural evils of L.A.’s dark side.’”

The League Is Disbanded
Due to the strike and a script in need of a rewrite, Warner Bros. has pulled the plug on its planned 2009 superhero flick Justice League.

Brittany Murphy -- Lowered Expectations
“TMZ caught up with the actress at the Sundance Film Festival, as she gushed about just celebrating her 10-month wedding anniversary to screenwriter Simon Monjack. In Hollywood, after 10 months one celebrates an enduring marriage.”

They've Always Loved Films with Chaos
Martin Scorsese and Harvey Keitel have signed on to produce Daphna Kastner's New York drama Chaos.

Mickey Wins Again
Patrick Goldstein grades each studio on their 2007, which is good news if you work at Disney. United Artists? Not so much…

Film Tax Credit Program a Boon to Film Productions
“Governor Edward G. Rendell announced today the film tax credit program is attracting film productions to communities across the commonwealth, including $8.2 million in investments outside of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. ‘Due to the film tax credit program, we have been able to attract productions even to some of the most rural areas of the commonwealth,’ Governor Rendell said. ‘When is the last time McKean County was the location of a $4 million film production? This is an incredible experience and economic opportunity for our communities.’”

For Sundance Invitees, Real Work Is Just Starting
“Glanz, a Greenwich Village resident who was born in Hartford, raised in Westport, and whose family still has a home in Litchfield County, says he has ‘been around the block.’ A previous feature screenplay was on the cusp of being produced before the deal fell apart. ‘I was naive and overly ambitious,’ he says, adding that he lightened up and scaled down his latest project to sell.”

Bone Season Horror Movie Screenplay Script Sale Not WGA - eBay
Now you can buy movie scripts on Ebay. For a cool 500k that is.


Keith Uhlich’s Top Movie Monsters
“Hence this collection of the top 11 such hellions that, in one way or another, continue to haunt this writer's dreams, though don't expect too many obvious choices (no King Kong or Godzilla on this roll call, and even such "well, of courses" as Frankenstein and Count Dracula are herein represented by movies slightly off the beaten path). Scary as the things are that tower over us, crashing through building and brush with sheer, unstoppable girth (several examples of these below), there are also the subdued monsters, those all-too-human creatures who co-exist within our self-same existential space, lulling us into complacency before they strike like venomous cobras. And speaking of venomous cobras...”

The Guardian Questions the Ethics of Collecting Scripts
"Of course, that still leaves the big question - why? Doesn't it ruin the film if you've read the script? Apparently not. 'The attraction is knowing something other people don't,' says Don Boose, webmaster at simplyscripts.com. 'Personally, I enjoy reading scripts as a kind of literature. In many cases, I will actually go out and see the film because the script intrigues me, or I want to see how it's translated on to the big screen. Stepmom was one of those...'"

Screenwriter Ugo Pirro dead at 87
Italian screenwriter Ugo Pirro, who earned an Oscar nom for penning Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, died in Rome at 87.


Shot at stardom
Newspaper interviews Scriptapalooza semifinalist.

Interview with “Fanboys” Screenwriter, Ernie Cline
“SB: As a writer, you have a huge following in, for lack of a better term, the geek community. Or do you prefer nerd? In any case, where did that start and how do you feel about living in that role?
EC: I’m equally comfortable with being called a geek or a nerd. I’m definitely a bit of both. And that comes across in pretty much everything I write. I can’t hide it.”

Forty-Seven Drafts Later
“By signing on the dotted line the day before the beginning of the current writers strike, a pair of novice screenwriters and an AFI Directing Program graduate are about to get their shot.”

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On the Contest Circuit:

Gimme Credit Announces Cycle VI Super Short Winners

All Access Announces Quarterfinalists

Kairos Announces Contest Semifinalists

ASA Announces Nominees for 2007 Discover Award

BlueCat Announces Short Screenplay Lab Semfinalists

Slamdance Horror Announces Semifinalists

Praxis Announces Fall 2007 Winners

Filmmakers.com Announces Contest Winners

Screenwriter Showcase Announces Contest Winner

TWP Announces Contest Winners

MoviePoet.com Announces November Winners

Script Savvy Announces Contest Winner

International Gay Screenplay Contest - 10th Anniversary
The submission deadline for 2008 ONE IN TEN SCREENPLAY CONTEST is September 1, 2008. Entry forms are available online through the contest website: www.OneInTenScreenplayContest.com.

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Strike-Related:

Deal or No Deal
The Directors Guild has agreed on a new, three-year contract with the AMPTP after only six days of negotiations, and now all sides are speculating on what this means for the ongoing WGA strike.

Don't Follow the Leader
The New York Times reports that several WGA members are confused and angered by their leaders' negotiating tactics.

Playing Rough
The L.A. Times reports on the surprising move that four major studios made where they canceled dozens of writer contracts for the current TV season.

Joss Whedon on The WGA Strike

AMPTP AND DGA AGREE TO BEGIN FORMAL CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS; Apted Says "Within Shouting Distance"

NBC vs Dick Clark Prods Blame Game: Lawyers To Untangle Golden Globes Mess

Pride, prejudice should not get in the way of WGA deal

Studios Accord With Directors May Help Resolve Strike (Update3)

Bill Maher on the WGA Writers Strike

Drew Carey Shells Out For WGA Burgers

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And finally:

New Indy IV & Star Trek photos:

Blog Talk 2 - Unk's Last Response

Check out the final article of our blog talk by Unk right here.

"As for the 'screenwriting revolution,' I hope it’s in full swing, I really do. I was just talking to a pretty big name in the business this morning and he happened to say to me, 'times sure have changed…' To which I replied, 'Shit, times have changed? I don’t even think we live in a time anymore.' He laughed and thought about it… Then he said he thought I nailed it. We’re ripping movies off left and right. The 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s spawned some great films. Movies were special. Somewhere along the line, we lost our way. Certainly we have had a smattering of films that managed to become iconic in their own right since the 80s but we’ve also dumbed everything down..."

Exactly. Loved your article, Unk. Thanks so much.

-MM

Blog Talk 2: MM Responds to Unk

Okay, Unk, first thing’s first. I need you to tell me if I’m crazy. When I posted our first Blog Talk article, I made a joke about a month-old scandal involving a screenwriter who spoke ill of the way British women dress. I wrote, “Screenwriter Who Will Never Get Laid Ever Again: Tad Safran.” That was THE most clicked link in the article.

I posted that midnight, Tuesday. Well, I get all kinds of news alerts, and about 13 hours later, ABC News ran this story: “Meet the Man Who May Be Britain's Sexist of the Year: Screenwriter Claimed British Beauty Was in a State of Crisis.” This scandal was a month old! And in what (to me) felt like their rush to get the story out, they actually got his name wrong. (ABC News, if you’re reading this, it’s TAD Safran, not TED Safran. Do your bloody homework!)

Am I crazy? Did I cause this or is this just a fluke?

I mean, I can just imagine an ABC staffer (who's also an aspiring screenwriter) come into the newsroom, check my blog, see the link about Tad, and think, "This could make for some great copy!" Then the staffer runs into the editor's office. The story gets approved, and by noon the story is up. And now, Tad's career in the U.S. is down for the count. Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but this kind of stuff happens to me all the time. I really feel guilty as hell about Tad.

Sigh...


Second, I gotta say, I loved your article. It occurred to me as I was reading your thoughts about screenwriting blogs and community that this really isn’t our first blog talk. We actually had another one over a year ago when I posted my screenwriting revolution article. Remember those happy times? Here’s part of what I wrote:

“Who gives a flying flip if you – OH MY GOD - reveal the things you’ve learned about the craft? Or what you love about movies? Or the script-to-screen studies you did six years ago? Or the insights you have about film technique, formatting, characters, dialogue, style, structure, or anything else you love about screenwriting? How else are you going to grow if you don’t talk to others about the craft and ask questions and get the kind of feedback that takes you to a new level…? The truth is, revealing what you know means very little. It means you know stuff. How well you APPLY what you know to your own stories is a vastly different matter altogether. You won’t actually know how well you’re doing until like-minded students of the craft give you feedback. Besides, how do you know that what you know is actually correct?”

And then there was your great response, I think, therefore I blog:

“I’ve even tried the forum thing a few times… I’ve read a lot of screenplays and except for maybe three… COUNT ‘EM, THREE screenwriters, nobody ever takes the effort or the knowledge seriously. So you bang your head against the wall trying to help because you get asked for help but hey… Does anybody even really want it? Hence the reason I blog. I blog to help but I also blog to vent (like this) and even more important, I take my ideas about screenwriting and write them down so they make even more sense to ME and hopefully a few others out there in cyberspace. I love the craft so much I can’t fucking sleep at night…”

Exactly. That’s it exactly. Only those who have been through it, who feel that same passion, can really know what you’re talking about.

And then Billy Mernit chimed in:

“Amen to all of that, I say, but what it brought up for me is an ever-present issue in teaching screenwriting and storytelling. Sometimes -- an uncomfortable truth that must be told -- I find that I'm trying to teach finer points of craft to writers who have yet to grasp fundamentals. So what's the point? If a writer doesn't even know how to construct a working story, isn't talking to them about ‘painting with light’ like rearranging window seats on the Hindenburg?”

And he’s right. Blogging about the craft does not necessarily make you or your readers better writers. If they don’t get it, they don't get it, and all the screenwriting blogs in the world isn’t going to fix them. A writer must have talent. A writer must have an eye for characters and an ear for storytelling. And a writer must have, I think, what Hemingway called “a built-in shock-proof shit-detector.” (Watching bad films doesn't improve your shit-detector, either. You have to read a lot of amateur screen-shit. You have to recognize shit when you see it on the page. And you have to be able to point out the hard-to-find shit, too, the little dingleberries that can ruin a scene.) A writer also needs regular feedback on his or her work, and I don’t think enough can be said about how much Dana Brunetti has changed the face of screenwriting and perhaps the future of films by creating TriggerStreet. Or Francis Ford Coppola with Zoetrope. At the same time, I think screenwriting is a little unique in that it’s a very specialized, technical form of writing, which makes knowledge important, which makes insights about the craft important, because it is the blueprint to a film. And so, blogging about the craft can take raw talent to new levels. It can help enable that talent to become more knowledged about the craft, which in turn, is essential to becoming a better screenwriter.

Furthermore, writers shouldn’t have to pay for screenwriting insight, because more often than not, the advice you get is wrong. The “insiders” are never consistent with what they tell you even when it comes to feedback on your script. It’s maddening. I’ve long come to the conclusion that everything in this business boils down to the individual sitting across from you and how smart or dumb that individual may be. (And on the flip-side, it also boils down to me and how well I handle that conversation with that smart/dumb individual.) You need a community to come together in order to sift through the shit and the gold. So let us hope that we may once and for all lay to rest the era of the screenwriting guru!

I want to say, too, that blogging intensely about the craft creates opportunities you never expected. It brings together people with like-minded passions and obsessions and you can’t put a price tag on something that valuable. I was given unique opportunities to read scripts of fellow bloggers, and yeah, the talent’s impressive. I read the plays of Joshua James and an erotica novel by Ann Wesley Hardin. I read scripts by Todd, Christian, and Christina. Loved ‘em all. Christina, in particular, is someone to watch for. The best script by a screenwriting blogger was without a doubt Billy's The Trouble with My Sister. He writes the shots and it’s damn effective. (By the way, this list doesn’t even include the many scripts I read on TriggerStreet and there were so many great ones, I couldn’t possibly list them all. One of the highlights, though, would have to be Bob Thielke’s Completely Visual Screenplay. No one’s ever done that before.)

Let me give more examples. I've written articles about books and then received e-mails from the authors and had the chance to pick their brains, like Jennifer van Sijll. I once wrote that I loved the writer, Anita Liberty, and her hilarious book, How To Heal the Hurt By Hating. Next thing I know, we’re e-mailing each other, and I was given the chance to give feedback on her “How To Heal the Hurt By Hating” screenplay. She was so wonderful to talk to, so genuine. The script was just as good as the book. Of course, I had suggestions, as I always do with every script, but she did a great job. I couldn’t believe she actually avoided the temptation to use voice overs, which novelists never do if they write adaptations of their own books. Her script was a whole lot better for it. I’d love to see that film get made. I genuinely treasure the time I had with her. I wish her a lot of success.

I once mentioned in the comments section of one of my Hitman articles that my favorite computer games were the ones with Tex Murphy - Under a Killing Moon, Pandora Directive, Overseer, etc. They're very funny. To my great surprise, I got an e-mail from Aaron Conners, the story creator for those games. He was just grateful his classic games weren’t forgotten. I got him to tell me about the actors they worked with, because those games were big productions at the time. I also got him to tell me about his Tex Murphy screenplay and the film that almost was. Oh, baby… The title was “A Black Sun Ascending.” Aaron was awesome. The e-mails we exchanged really made my day. I wish him well, I really do.

I hope you know that I say these things not to brag but to show that if you intensely devote yourself to studying the craft and blogging about what you learn, the community will respond to you and you’ll be surprised by your own unique journey.

I give it back to you, Unk, for one last article. I treasure the experiences I’ve had so far, and if you had not been there, I wouldn’t be here. I really have you to thank for all of this. I genuinely appreciate you and all you’ve done for the blogging community.

Perhaps 2008 will be the Year of the Screenwriting Blogs?

Warm regards,

-MM

Blog Talk - Unk's Response

Hey guys,

Unk recently posted his response.

"I am highly aware that there are a couple of handfuls of Pro screenwriters out there trying to push the limits of their screenwriting but more than that? I'm not too sure. The proof is definitely not in the pudding which is one of the reasons I think screenwriting blogs are becoming more popular. When you read through a lot of the books and articles — by and large, there’s not a lot extra being taught. Purchase several of the best books on screenwriting and you pretty much have read most of what’s out there to learn."

It's great! Check it out.

My response will be forthcoming in a day or two.

-MM

Blog Talk with Unk - A Look Back on 2007

Hey guys,

Inspired by Slate’s Movie Club, I thought it’d be fun to try an experiment and periodically have talks with other bloggers. So I invited the Unknown Screenwriter, the man who inspired me to start a blog in the first place, to have a little blog talk with me. Woo hoo! So here’s what we’ll do. I’ll write a few general thoughts, and then Unk will respond with whatever he feels inspired to write about, and we’ll go back and forth for a total of two articles each.

(Unk, take your time with the response. There’s no rush. And, guys, please feel free to comment on anything we’ve said.)

-MM

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My first question to you, Unk, is how did you feel about 2007 in terms of screenwriting in general and the movies that were released?

Have you seen this vid of the Best Films of ’07? It’s great!



I still haven’t seen all the big films, but I’d say the year was above average. To me, it was interesting in all the ways that the “quality” films broke widely held screenwriting rules. I really fell in love with The Lives of Others, which starts with an unsympathetic – no, diabolical – protagonist who completely changes over the course of Act Two, and in the end, he sacrifices everything to protect an innocent man he was spying on. There Will Be Blood has another diabolical protag, a man named Daniel Plainview whose downfall begs for a comparison to Citizen Kane. And the actor who embodied Plainview will probably win an Oscar. I do love me a bad boy protag... And love it or hate it, No Country For Old Men will surely be nominated for Best Film, and these guys killed off the protag in a scene that took place off screen.

I don’t even think you can give a name to the structure of Atonement, a big story divided into two halves. And you can’t blame Christopher Hampton for taking that approach, either. He was told to take the four-part structure of the book (i.e. three parts story and one part big-ass epilogue) and do it all without voice over. It was interesting what Christopher Hampton said in a Creative Screenwriting interview (Nov/Dec issue), that he viewed it as “a two act affair, with the second half subdivided into three acts.” Now that’s a cool idea for a structure. He said, “I’m a great opponent of all those conventions because I think you feel them in your bones. So often in movies, you think, ‘Oh, I see, this is page 33 where…’ One of the most important things you have to do is strive for originality. Break the rules and try to experiment because the possibilities are infinite. They can’t be restricted to ‘Write a screenplay just like Casablanca.’ Casablanca is wonderful, but who wants to see 3000 Casablancas?” Exactly. I love you, Christopher Hampton.


I loved all the pregnancy films last year, particularly Knocked Up and Juno. A friend of mine wrote something funny in an e-mail to me: “I think it's interesting that in 2007 we were treated to 3 ‘she's having a baby’ movies - movies that all start with a pregnancy test. Waitress, Knocked Up and Juno. And each movie ends up in a different configuration. Waitress: keep baby, ditch guy; Juno: ditch baby, keep guy; Knocked Up: keep baby, keep guy. Each movie was great, way better than most movies in this genre… I should have written the one that was ditch baby, ditch guy. Call it, ‘Free at Last.’ Just kidding.”

Hehehe…

Do you think Diablo Cody is worthy of all this attention she’s getting? I think so. I loved what Mickey Lee said in one of the comments sections: “she’s not a stripper who turned into a writer, she’s a writer who stripped.” While Juno was certainly a highlight of the year, it’s not worthy of any Oscars. It was good but not that good. Her dialogue was GREAT fun, but at times the hipster lingo felt a tad over-cooked and forced. Some of the plotting felt a little under-developed, too. When Pauly Bleeker talked about how she dumped him and broke his heart, I didn’t recall seeing that scene and kinda wished we had because it would have shown a different side to Juno that could’ve given her some more depth. Also, her script, as it was written, could’ve been more cleaned up and professional, too. But all in all, I really loved Juno.

Following Ingmar Bergman’s death, I re-watched all of his films, and it really impressed upon me how much depth his characters have. They all manipulate, put on airs, and yet, there are always secrets and different sides to them, which I love to see. I think my favorite Bergman film has changed from Cries & Whispers to The Virgin Spring. Really powerful stuff.

Away from Her was just the observance of a disease with little in the way of plot but it was incredibly effective and beautifully shot.

Zodiac was interesting but it was so exposition-heavy that I don’t think the pay-off in the end was worth all the time and intense focus needed to stay on top of all that exposition.

Michael Clayton was overrated with a ridiculous flashback structure.


Most Hilarious Break-Out Performance: Bono as “Dr. Robert” in Across the Universe.

Sweetest Movie with the Most Minimal Dialogue: Once.

New 2007 Screenwriting Phrase: Narrative Interruptus. From Ebert’s review of Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. “Here [Sidney Lumet] takes a story that is, after all, pretty straightforward, and tells it in an ingenious style we might call narrative interruptus. The brilliant debut screenplay by Kelly Masterson takes us up to a certain point, then flashes back to before that point, then catches us up again, then doubles back, so that it meticulously reconstructs how spectacularly and inevitably this perfect crime went wrong.”

Most Overrated Screenwriter That’s a Threat To My Happiness in 127 Days and Counting: David Koepp. This man cannot stop whining about how he hopes to God he didn’t screw up or how he’s going to get his ass handed to him for writing Indy IV. Ya know, I understand that the world’s a rough place and someone somewhere will rip you apart for what you’ve written. But, when you’ve been given a big paycheck (and giant residuals) from what may be the biggest film of 2008, as well as the chance to work again with Spielberg, you need to take the hits like a man. Grow a bloody spine, will ya?

A Screenwriter Who's Already Convinced He Would've Done a Better Job Than David Koepp: Mystery Man.

Screenwriter Least Likely to Drive Mystery Man Home After a Party: Roger Avery.

A Screenwriter Who Used the Ol' "Marry Me So I Don't Get Deported" Ploy: Simon Monjak.

Sucker for the Ol' "Marry Me So I Don't Get Deported" Ploy: Brittany Murphy.

Screenwriter Who Will Never Get Laid Ever Again: Tad Safran.

Best New Drink of 2007: Striking Writer Martini.

Favorite 2007 Screenwriting Article: 4 Tips that Annoy Me

Worst Screenwriting Article: How to Write a Screenplay in Two Weeks! “So you want to write a screenplay. It's not as daunting as it may appear. Follow these simple steps and you'll churn out a masterpiece in just two weeks... Difficulty: Moderate”

Year’s Worst Film that I Can’t Wait to See: Youth Without Youth.

Most Bizarre Script of 2007: White Jazz by Matthew Michael Carnahan & Joe Carnahan based on the novel by James Ellroy. All the action lines are written in FIRST PERSON. What does that mean?

A Bad Film I’m Glad They Made Because It Drove Unk Crazy: Smokin’ Aces.

Movies from 2007 I Will NEVER EVER See: Hostel Part II, Good Luck Chuck, I Know Who Killed Me, Norbit, Epic Movie, The Number 23, and Who’s Your Caddy?

Completely False: Lindsay Lohan Dating Mystery Man

No Comment: Jennifer Aniston and Mystery Man Stay Locked in Cottage

Blog Highlight: after criticizing a Creative Screenwriting article, the new Publisher, Bill Donovan, sent me an email titled “You feisty” and asked if I wanted to write for them. We talked about it. He said, “I have to ask our new editor, Amy Dawes, whom I just hired and whose turf I stepped on in writing to you, if and how she thinks this would work. I would also want to have a writing agreement. We (our lawyer, probably Amy, and me, but no one else) would have to know who you are --and be contractually sworn to secrecy, of course.” I guess they decided against it. But I know what my first article would’ve been – a passionate case against character arcs. Yeah, baby! Hehehe… That would’ve gotten people talking!

And finally, a personal note: my 2007 was spent obsessing about a screenplay I wrote (that I do not wish to name because I’m going to send it off to some pro-readers who read the blog). When I obsess about a story, it’s 24/7 until it’s done. You, Unk, know what script I’m talking about. It’s a story everyone knows, a name recognizable around the world, and it took a really unique approach to make it work and hopefully exciting for those who are also likewise obsessed about this particular subject. I posted it on TriggerStreet for one month only so friends could give me some feedback. It was downloaded 200 times and received a “Recommend” and “excellent” ratings in all categories (although toward the end, the ratings shifted to “Consider” and “good”). I fear that when this gets sold, people will finally learn my name and my days as Mystery Man are numbered. This may be my last year as Mystery Man, although sometimes sales can take a couple of years, and God knows what the chaos will be like once the strike is over. So maybe I’ll get one or two more years of blogging. However, when it sells, I’ll announce the “Mystery Man Revelation Tour,” and as I’ve always promised, I’m going to visit friends in their cities with a stop in Arizona, I think. Isn’t that where you live, Unk?

So, my last question to you is how much do you enjoy your anonymity? Is it a warm, protective blanket or a lonely, prison cell? How would your life change if your anonymity got stripped from you? Ya know, everything changes when people know who you are…

-MM

Script-to-Screen: There Will Be Blood

Not long ago, I read the screenplay for There Will Be Blood, which was great fun. (You can listen to part of the fabulous score for free at its website (click “score”), which was composed by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead.) What’s available is a shooting script, not a spec, but for me, the camera directions were most welcome. It was interesting to observe all the ways that Paul Thomas Anderson was thinking visually and telling his story visually, and I’d frequently wonder how I would write those scenes myself. The first 6 ½ pages had not one line of dialogue, which was expanded into 15-20 wordless opening minutes in the film. There were complaints about the ending, but to me, it made more sense than the ending for No Country. It was inevitable and the story was clearly headed in that direction. There was also a wonderful visual motif throughout the script involving falling objects, a metaphor, I think, for its main character, Daniel Plainview.

Let it be said that Plainview has more depth than any character in No Country for Old Men who were all defined by singular characteristics. What we have in Daniel, on the one hand, is a man who admittedly hates most people while on the other hand, he deeply craves companionship, which was illustrated not only by the scene with the loose woman but also by how quickly he opened himself up to a man who claimed to be his brother despite the lack of evidence. He says he’s a family man, but he’s not. He parades in front of the landowners a small boy, H.W., whom he took in after his partner died. That boy was just a prop to get sales. Yet, he loved H.W. very deeply. When H.W. lost his hearing in a derrick explosion, Plainview would’ve spent a fortune to get a teacher, build a school, and relocate the families of other hearing-impaired children into that dusty wasteland just for H.W. Yet, later, he abandons him for a time. He says he’s spiritual when he’s not and his behavior was quite often blasphemous. He tries to become spiritual, which – at least Eli Sunday’s version of spirituality (he’s a teen who pastors a local “healing church”) – does not help Daniel heal his wounds or change his ways. (Eli was an unsettling reflection of Daniel.) He behaves unjustly toward people. Yet, he’s courteous, and he has a strong sense of right and wrong, particularly when it came to the abuse toward Eli's sister, Mary Sunday. He’s insatiably greedy. Yet, he turns down a million dollar offer from Union Oil, which is more than any man would ever need in 1898. Perhaps he did it out of madness. Perhaps he didn’t like that subtle imposition of values about how Plainview should be living his life. Perhaps he wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he stopped working. Perhaps the only satisfaction he got was outsmarting everyone else. Or perhaps it's all those things.


I could go on. In any case, I thought it might be cool if I shared a scene from the script and then we'd watch a clip from the finished film and talk about how the scene was improved. Let me set this up. Daniel and his boy, H.W., have gone snooping around a bit of land in search for evidence of oil. They meet the Sunday family who are the landowners and have a ranch on the land. They tell the Sundays they’re just hunting for quail. The family allows them to set up a tent on their ranch and invites them to dinner...


INT. SUNDAY RANCH/NIGHT – LATER

DANIEL and HW and ABEL SUNDAY sit close to the fire. Just back a bit, on stones, sits the rest of the FAMILY and ELI. Abel directs the girls to clear and wash their dishes – they collect the dishes, and then:

ABEL SUNDAY
Brother, may I ask you a personal question?

DANIEL
Yes.

ABEL SUNDAY
Are you saved?

DANIEL
…yes…

ABEL SUNDAY
And you’ve been washed in the blood?

DANIEL
Yes, brother. We’ve been washed.

ABEL SUNDAY
What is your church?

DANIEL
Our church is called the Church of the World.

ABEL SUNDAY
I don’t know that Church. I don’t know
what their message is –

DANIEL
Yes.

ABEL SUNDAY
Can you tell me about the message of the
Church of the World?

DANIEL
Well, Brother Abel, we are told in the Book
not to discuss our faith with strangers.
Even if they’re so nice and helpful.

ABEL SUNDAY
We’re told in our book, “The Lord
has called us to preach the Gospel
unto them.”

DANIEL
Yes, that’s right. “And the Gospel must
first be published among all nations.”

ABEL SUNDAY
That’s right!

DANIEL
But according to our faith, we believe
that we get to know a man through friendship –
and business – and we talk about faith later.

Eli speaks up;

ELI
May I ask a question?

DANIEL
Yes, Eli?

ELI
What does your Church teach about earthquakes?

DANIEL
About the earthquakes? Like the
earthquake you had up here?
(beat)
We are taught that it is God’s mighty power.

ABEL SUNDAY
My son is a healer and a vessel
for the Holy Spirit. He has a church…

ELI
Our earthquakes mean that the Holy
Spirit has grown weary of drunkenness and
lying in the world.
(beat)
Have you been doing any of these things?

H.W.
No, we haven’t.

DANIEL (to Eli)
No, son. We haven’t.

ELI
Thank you.

No one seems to know what to say next, so they stand and say good night and head to their house. Daniel, H.W. get inside their tent.

EXT. SUNDAY RANCH – DAWN

DANIEL and HW put out their morning fire, collect their HUNTING GEAR and head off -

EXT. HILLS NEARBY/CANYON – MORNING

CAMERA leads/follows them as they move… H.W. and DANIEL carrying their shotguns… while they HUNT QUAIL.

DANIEL fires first. We follow H.W. -- watch him SHOOT…

Here’s the finished scene:



Did you notice all of the extraneous details that were cut? Mrs. Sunday and the daughters were cut. They stripped this scene to its core meaning, what that scene was really about - Father & Son vs. Father & Son. (Revisions of scenes always start with that same question, “What is this scene about? Who is this scene really about?”) They also trimmed the dialogue from 25 lines down to 20. They cut the quotations from Scripture and lines from Daniel that explained in more detail his “Church of the World” and how they “talk about faith later.” This is wise, I think, because he’d be repeating himself. He already said, “we are told in the Book not to discuss our faith with strangers.” Hitting the highlights serves its purpose and extra details aren’t necessary.

The point here, of course, is the subtext of Paul and Eli’s intention to convert Daniel and H.W., and there is the subtext of Daniel refusing to join them while at the same time not insulting them either and making them believe he’s one of them so he can buy their land dirt cheap. I love the shift in values in this scene, too – the seemingly innocent (yet intentional) inquiries from the Sundays about Daniel's faith contrasted by the deceptions of Daniel, small lies at first, but as the inquiries get more detailed, it ends with a whopper of a lie, because he’s quite the drinker and liar. The voluntary response of H.W. was big because he had been instructed not to speak when Daniel’s dealing with landowners, but he helped make the final lie more believable.

Despite the fact that Anderson had written “INT. SUNDAY RANCH” the action lines lead me to believe that he really meant “EXT.” Exterior is, of course, the wiser decision because it makes visible all around the characters what’s really at stake – the land.

I also thought that the way they changed the transition from the campfire scene to the quail hunting was interesting. At the end of the campfire scene in the script, I get the impression that Anderson wasn’t entirely sure what he wanted to do, so he wrote about them saying their goodbyes (MOS) and then going into their tent followed by a scene in the morning packing up and going off to hunt quails. Yet, the final version gives this campfire scene a more traditional structure.

Many scenes that stand-alone (that are not part of a sequence) usually have framing devices in the form of actions. For example, a scene may start with a hand switching on lights and ends with that hand switching off the same lights. Or for example, there was that scene in Pulp Fiction where the camera was inside the trunk. The trunk door opens, Vincent and Jules talk about how they should’ve brought shotguns, about how many men could be inside, another comment about how they should’ve brought shotguns, and then they shut the trunk door. Or you could have a scene that opens with the threat of being shot by a gun and then the scene ends with the gun going off.

Well, here we had general descriptions in the script about setting and the cleaning up of dishes and ending with goodbyes and going to bed. They eventually enhanced the final version into a scene that’s book-ended with framing devices that are more character-driven and conflict-centered. The scene opens and closes with awkward silence. He gets rid of this extraneous morning scene at the camp where they pack up and also the time spent watching Daniel and H.W. walking before they shoot. He goes straight from whopper-lie to awkward silence to the shooting of the shotguns, which carries that feeling of tension into the next scene and makes you question Daniel Plainview's nature. And perhaps for a brief second, you wonder, “Is he killing someone?”

The Shower Scenes of Brian De Palma

By Miriam Paschal

Soaps, suds, running water, wet boobs, and… murder! Who doesn’t love a good shower scene? Did you know that for many years, Brian De Palma included a shower scene in his movies as an homage to Alfred Hitchcock? In an October 1984 interview, De Palma was asked, “What's the attraction of the shower scene?” He replied, “Hitchcock discovered that people feel safe in the bathroom with the door shut… It's a place that when someone comes in, you really feel violated. To me it's almost a genre convention at this point… I don't particularly want to chop up women but it seems to work.”

So here is my study of the shower scenes of Brian De Palma. Let's start with the one that inspired them all by The Man himself, Alfred Hitchcock...

--------------------------------------------

Psycho
(length 3:18)


Every single shot in this scene is done from a stationary camera. There are a couple of shots that go tighter or wider within the shot and a few more with pans or tilts, but no tracking shots or other kinds of shots where the camera would have to move from one position to another.

Except for the last one, but I'll get to that.

1. Marion closes the door and takes off her robe.
2. Her feet as she drops the robe, steps into the tub, and draws the curtain.
3. Her silhouette behind the curtain from outside the shower.
4. Head and shoulders facing the camera. POV would be the shower wall under the shower head. She unwraps the soap and turns on the water.
5. The famous shot of the shower head as the water falls around the camera.
6. Same as #4. She lathers up.
7. Side view from inside shower POV curtain. She washes her arm.
8. The same shot as #7, but slightly closer, and it's a cut to this shot from the last one, not a zoom in. She washes her neck.
9. A shot of the shower head from the side.
10. Same shot as #8, except it's a full 180 degrees different POV. We can see the curtain on her left side.
11. Same kind of cut as from #7 to #8, except this shot is wider than #10. Outside the curtain we see the shadow of the door opening. She's in the bottom right corner of the screen. Now the lens moves for the first time. It zooms in on the figure behind the curtain as it pulls it back.
12. POV the figure. Marion screams. Water falls across her face.
13. The classic Hitchcock close-up. Marion's open mouth as she screams.
14. This shot is POV of about the water taps. It's the figure in silhouette with the knife raised above its head. We can see the bun in the hair, but that's about it. It holds the knife in its right hand and the shot is on its left side looking up, so the knife is somewhat hidden by the figure.
15. POV the figure. A medium shot of Marion back against the wall, thrashing her head from side to side.
16. Marion's POV, so we're looking straight at the figure. It's still in silhouette. The knife comes towards the camera.
17. Her arm comes up.
18. Shot over the curtain rod. If I had to guess, I'd say the cameraman is standing on the toilet for this one. Marion's left hand grabs the figure's right wrist. The knife is NOT in the frame.
19. Close up of her screaming: just her face.
20. Same as #18, only closer. The knife is in this shot, but it's coming back.
21. Same as #19.
22. Same as #20. The knife darts halfway forward and then comes back. It's not even close to her.
23. Same as #16.
24. Same as #15, but closer: kind of between #15 and #19.
25. Same as #16.
26. Same as #19, but lower down, on her neck.
27. Same as #16.
28. Same as #19.
29. Same as #16.
30. Same as #19.
31. Same as #16.

One sound here is the music, which we all know and love, by Bernard Herrmann. The strings hitting the same note over and over, what De Palma called the stabbing violins. The other sound is the knife hitting flesh. The rhythm of the knife matches the rhythm of the music.

32. The tip of the knife moving in front of her belly button. There has been no blood so far and no actual stabbing in any of the visuals.
33. Same as #19.
34. Same as #14, but this time the knife comes forward.
35. This is from below her right side. Part of her right breast is clearly visible, as is part of the figure's dress. This is an example of how quick these shots are. Most of them have to be less than 24 frames. I never knew Hitchcock got a shot of Janet Leigh's breast in the scene until I went through the DVD with my pause button.
36. Same as #19.
37. Shot of her feet moving with blood spilling into the water. This is the first we see the blood and we never see any wounds on her body.
38. Same as #19.
39. Same as #15. She turns around with her arms up.
40. Same as #37, but from slightly higher up as she turns around. There is more blood in the water.
41. Shadow on the tile of her hand waving.
42. Same as #19, but she's turned around, so now it's the back of her head we see.
43. Back of the female figure with the bun leaving through the open door. This is shot from way back in the shower because we can see the water falling from right to left across the front of the screen.
44. Close on Marion's hand sliding down as she tries to clutch the slick tile.
45. Starts off same as #15, but she's facing the wall and sliding down. Then she turns around and her wet hair sticks to the tile as she slides further down. As she reaches with her right hand to grab the curtain, the shot widens a bit so we see the edge of the curtain come into frame.
46. Close up of her hand as it clutches the curtain.
47. Shot from the ceiling looking down. She's crouched in the tub holding the curtain and she leans forward.
48. Shot of the hooks on the curtain rod as the curtain comes off them one by one.
49. She falls forward out of the tub with the curtain crumpled beside her.
50. The second shot straight up into the shower head with the water falling around the camera. Same as #5.
51. Another famous shot and one in which the camera moves. It starts with her feet in the tub and blood running from underneath her shins. The camera tilts to follow the blood to the drain and then zooms in on the drain as the water swirls down. It zooms until the drain fills the screen. We all know what comes next.
52. Fade from the drain to her staring eye. The camera rotates as it pulls back so that the bottom of the screen is parallel with the floor. He face is smushed into the tiles.
53. Shot of the shower head from the side. Same as #9.
54. This is the moving camera shot. It starts on her face, then widens as it pans across the floor. It zooms in on the table across the room and might actually move forward a bit at the same time. It lingers on the newspaper on the table, then pans to the window beside the table. Outside the window is the Bates house sitting up on the hill. Norman runs out.

Here is where it ends. Some could argue that it actually ends when Norman rushes in and cries, "Mother, what have you done?" For the purposes of this study, the scene is over here.

Hitchcock created terror not with a lot of gore and violence, but through psychological terror. Professors at film schools are quick to point out the fact that the knife never touches her body, let alone enters it. Yet thousands of people, men and women alike, professed their terror of getting into the shower for months after they saw Psycho. It was a seminal moment in a seminal movie: a moment in which the demons in the dark were clearly visible for three minutes and eighteen seconds.

Here is how that one scene influenced the work of Brian De Palma over the years. We'll study them in chronological order.

--------------------------------------------

Phantom of the Paradise
(length 1:15)












De Palma started his film-making career making satirical comedies. His favorite leading man during this early part of his career was William Finley, whom he cast as the Phantom. Phantom of the Paradise is a satire, but it has the seeds of horror that would mark some of his more famous films. This is the only shower scene with a man in danger, instead of a woman. But this man is gay, and this movie is part spoof. It's obviously an homage to Hitchcock, so the fact that he's gay must be part of the spoof.

On to the scene: Beef has been trying to pop pills and snort cocaine to calm his nerves because he's sure the Paradise is possessed. Philbin has sent him to take a shower and cool down. The scene starts as he comes into the bathroom with his cocaine. He's distracted by fear, but there's a camera above the door and, when he sees it, he smiles in a relaxed pose, like the professional performer he is. As he closes the door, he allows the smile to drop off his face. He tosses aside the coke and his towel and enters the shower through the plastic curtain. The wall is cut away so the camera can track him into the shower. It ends up where the taps should be, their POV for a medium front shot of Beef as he soaps his chest and pits. He tries to forget his fear by practicing his big number, "Life at Last." He flips the soap over his shoulder and catches it behind him.

Cut to a shot of Beef through the curtain, POV the bathroom door. The camera moves around the cut away wall to end up where the previous shot was, POV the non-existent taps, then continues to move inside the shower to look out through the curtain to the door, ending one hundred and eighty degrees from where it started. Now we can see the Phantom coming through the door with his arm raised over his head.

These shots are almost exact duplicates of the original shots in Psycho through the shower curtain from both sides. But De Palma's camera moves all over the set so that the movement is fluid. This scene is both a campy parody and a sinister homage to the original scene. The Phantom creeps to the curtain and slices through it with a huge knife. As he raises the knife, it reflects both the light and the angle of the original knife in Psycho.

Beef finally turns and sees the Phantom and his knife. Or maybe he just sees the knife. He shrieks, but the Phantom is ready and darts his other arm forward to cover Beef's mouth with a toilet plunger, pinning him to the wall. Beef stares at him, horrorstruck, over the plunger. The Phantom delivers his ominous warning not to sing his music, now or ever. His music is only for Phoenix. Anyone else who tries, dies.

Warning delivered, he pops the plunger off of Beef's face. With a squeak of fear, Beef slides down the slick tiles and out of frame, much like Janet Leigh in Psycho, only the scene ends here. He doesn't pull the curtain off the rings.

--------------------------------------------

Carrie
(length 5:34)











Carrie was De Palma's break-out movie. It has elements of the absurd, but it evokes the same kind of seminal terror that characterizes Hitchcock's films.

The shower scene is a longer scene that incorporates a shower section. Pino Donaggio, who also worked with De Palma on Body Double and Dressed to Kill, composed the soundtrack. De Palma had wanted to get Bernard Herrmann, who was the genius behind many of Hitchcock's classic films (including Psycho), but Mr. Herrmann had recently died after completing the music for Taxi Driver. Pino Donaggio was a fan of Herrmann's work and used some of his themes in the various soundtracks he did for De Palma. In Carrie, he used what De Palma called the "stabbing violins" from the shower scene in Psycho.

It starts in the girls' locker room. The air is full of steam and the girls are getting dressed after their shower. De Palma used a camera technique in this film that split the screen in half within the lens so that both the background on one side and the foreground on the other side could be in focus. In this scene the girls at the ends of the rows are as much in focus as the girls in front. A lot of them are naked. This scene was famous for having lots of full-frontal female nudity.

The music is lilting, haunting. The action is slo-mo. There is no natural sound. Amy Irving, interviewed 25 years later for the anniversary edition DVD, said it was amazing "…to be in a horror film with such eroticism and beauty and grace…"

The first scene established that Carrie is the outsider, and not well liked. In the opening sequence to this scene, we see the girls laughing together and playing with each other as they get dressed. The camera travels through the locker room and the final two girls pass to reveal Carrie alone in the shower. She's stick-thin with hardly any hips: not like the other girls. The music continues. This is Carrie's time. She enjoys the water, and being alone. There is one shot of the shower head from the side, just like shot #9 from the Psycho shower scene, except this shower head is the classic high school shower head, and it looks phallic.

Carrie soaps up and caresses herself, then the soap falls to the tiles and the blood runs down her leg. In De Palma's world, influenced so much by Hitchcock, there can never be running water in a shower without blood to swirl around in it. Carrie stares at the blood in her hand and the music stops.

Suddenly, we hear the girls in the locker room as well as see them: nothing but natural sound now. They have all finished dressing, so Carrie's naked wet body is a stark contrast to them. She staggers out with her bloody hand held out, and there is something primal in her body language that is disturbing. The girls shriek and scatter back. Then Chris (Nancy Allen) realizes what's wrong and dangles a tampon at her. In the next instant, the girls have become a mob. Even Sue Snell's normally sweet disposition is overtaken by the mob mentality. Nancy Allen, interviewed for the anniversary DVD, said that playing that scene was disturbing. Their behavior is also primal. The scene has gone from erotic and beautiful to rabid and animalistic.

Carrie stumbles back into the shower and clutches the slick tiles as horror and fear mingle on her face. There is one second where her look is just gripping. She's like a trapped animal. Then she slides into the corner under a hail of feminine hygiene products and underwear.

Miss Collins comes to break it up and has to slap Carrie to get her under control. At this point Pino Donaggio's score comes back in with the "stabbing (Psycho) violins" and the light above them shatters. As the glass breaks, so does their mood, and they suddenly see that Carrie is naked and sobbing on the bottom of the shower, with blood on her hand.

--------------------------------------------

Dressed to Kill
(length 2:42)















Pino Donaggio's haunting, ethereal, music starts over the opening titles. The scene starts as the final title (written and directed by Brian De Palma) fades. The camera tracks through a bedroom and into a bathroom. Whoever owns this house is fairly wealthy. The shower is revealed as the cameras tracks around and through the doorway. In the foreground, a man shaves with a straight razor. In the background, Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson) is clearly visible through the glass shower door.

The camera tracks closer and zooms in on her face, through the door. She watches the shaving man, who concentrates on his reflection. He wears only a low-slung towel around his waist and she eyes his handsome face and muscular body. But he is oblivious to her lust.

The steam from the hot water rises around her. She soaps her breasts – caresses them – and drops her hand below her waits. The camera takes in her naturally blonde pubic hair as her hand plays between her legs. She watches the man and caresses her body with the soap.

The camera looks through the glass door from inside the shower, her POV. The big mirror he faces is lined with theatrical lights, and we can see both him and his reflection. De Palma is playing with mirrors again.

Kate is lost in lust, but the man on the other side of the door doesn't notice. A shadow moves behind her and another man, this one bigger and more muscular, grabs her from behind. He clamps his hand over her mouth. The soap drops to the floor. One of her hands is still between her legs. He covers it with his other hand and lifts her off her feet.

She kicks and struggles and claws at the hand over her mouth. The shaving man seems farther away, as if the bathroom has gotten bigger. The steam rises up, obscuring her vision of him. Just before he disappears into the steam, he looks around.

Kate manages to claw the one hand away from her mouth and screams. But the steam is rising around her and the sound fades away even as she fades away behind it.

For anybody who isn't familiar with this movie, this scene turns out to be a powerful and recurring dream that haunts Kate Miller.

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Blow Out
(length 2:56)





This is a cheesy movie within a better movie, just like Body Double. The studio logo fades to the opening scene. It's a moving camera shot that's obviously the POV of the KILLER. He creeps up to some college building, either a dorm or a sorority, and passes the door to go around to the windows.

Disco music blasts out of a window in time to a pulsing red light and the KILLER sees two girls inside, dancing in their tiny nighties. The girl next door pounds on the wall and we can see her too in a double shot of both rooms. She stalks out of her room and the dancing girls open their door to her. She threatens to "get Sue."

The KILLER moves to the next window, where a couple is having sex on the floor. The girl is on top and the KILLER gets too close. The girl spots him and jumps off her boyfriend. "There's somebody out there." The camera (KILLER) moves away from the window.

Cut to inside and a shot of a long hallway with many doors on either side. Now there are more people and fewer places to hide. The KILLER peeks around corners and sneaks behind people's backs as they move away from him.

He passes the communal bathroom and then a room where a girl masturbates and moans on her bed. He returns to the bathroom.

All this time there has been only one cut: from outside to inside. Everything else is the fluid moving camera, which gives us the KILLER'S POV.

Through the steam on the mirrors we get a glimpse of the KILLER, who is just a man. Then we (HE) see(s) a girl in the shower. He pulls the plastic curtain aside and raises his knife, which dominates the screen. She cringes back and screams. At least I think it's a scream.

This is the scream that John Travolta has to find a replacement for during the movie. His quest leads him to uncover a murder that was supposed to look like an accident.

In just under three minutes, De Palma has given us all the major themes of his "female" movies: sex, conflict, more sex, moving camera, tricks with mirrors, and a girl in a shower menaced by a big knife. He has also done it as a movie within a movie.

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Body Double
(length 3:44)
















It's the last scene of the movie. The hero has saved the day and come to a deeper understanding of himself. Now he's even gotten his old job back playing a vampire in a cheesy B-horror movie. As they shoot the scene and worry about lighting and where his hand should be, a few bits of relevant dialogue tie a neat bow on the story. The content of the scene they're shooting is that the vampire attacks a beautiful girl in the shower and bites her neck so the audience can see blood running over her breasts. Since De Palma just finished showing us a really well-structured story that had both blood and breasts, he seems to be saying that some people think they can substitute blood and breasts for story, but the most important thing is story, not the blood and breasts.

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Other Shower Scenes

De Palma can't include a shower scene in every one of his movies. It wouldn't fit in some of them. When the main character is a man, or men dominate the story, it doesn't make much sense to place a man in danger in the shower. The knife menacing the naked woman is obviously symbolic of rape, so when you have a story about men, a shower scene would be very out of place.

But there is a water theme that runs throughout his movies, including such male-dominated stories as Carlito's Way, The Untouchables, and Casualties of War. In these movies, there is a scene set in the rain, which shows the main character at an emotionally vulnerable moment, and possibly in physical danger.

I didn't time these scenes. They are easy to find, but they're more like a shadow of the shower scenes. The only common factors are rain and the character being in emotional and/or physical crisis.








In Carlito's Way, Carlito stands outside in the rain with a trashcan lid over his head while he watches Gail dance inside and longs for the way things were.

In The Untouchables Jim Malone (Sean Connery) fights his boss, Police Chief Mike Dorsett in an alley in the pouring rain. It's a violent scene, but it's a pivotal emotional point for Jim, who is declaring his allegiance with Elliott Ness, not his fellow cops.

In Bonfire of the Vanities, Sherman McCoy arrives at the Bronx courthouse for his arrest and arraignment during a rainstorm. Because of the media frenzy, the detectives in charge cuff him to show that he is no better than the black criminals. It's a hard fall for Sherman.



In Casualties of War, PFC Eriksson (Michael J. Fox) is ordered to guard the hooch while the other four men rape the Vietnamese farm girl. During the long day and evening, it starts to rain. Sgt Tony Meserve (Sean Penn) comes out to make more verbal threats and to try and shame Eriksson into raping the girl. Eriksson's biggest regret at this point is that he isn't brave enough to actually prevent the gang rape by killing his fellow soldiers.

Interestingly enough, there's an actual shower scene in Casualties of War which takes place during a moment of emotional crisis for the whole unit. Corporal Brown (who ended up becoming Sgt Doakes on Dexter) has just been killed, literally in their arms, and they have only a few hours before their next mission. They go to take a shower and just stand under the water, staring off into space. It underscores the point that, for De Palma, falling water symbolizes emotional crisis and loss for men, and danger for women.

In Black Dahlia, there are two rain scenes. Since the story is set in Los Angeles, the scenes in the rain are anomalies. The first occurs when Bucky realizes that he has allowed his partner's obsession with the Black Dahlia to distract him from their primary assignment, and innocents have died as a result. In this scene, Bucky runs from his car to the store, and not much of the rain falls on him.

In the second scene, Bucky stands out in the rain after his partner's death and watches the mansion where his crazy girlfriend lives with her crazy family. The rain is his penance. It washes over him like rancid jealousy.

In Mission Impossible Ethan runs through the rain from the safe house to the terminal where he calls Kittridge. He has just learned that his mother and uncle have been arrested for drug trafficking, a charge trumped up by Kittridge to smoke Ethan into the open. Ethan's mother and uncle are his one emotional weakness and Kittridge has capitalized on it.

I have not included every De Palma film in this study, but I think these films make it clear that not only has he used the shower scene as an homage to Hitchcock, he has extrapolated the fear evoked by falling water and nakedness to study how water can be a powerful symbol in film. Women feel vulnerable when they are physically naked, and men feel vulnerable when they are emotionally naked.

Click here for more of Miriam's Movie Breakdowns.

Screenwriting News & Links! 1/8/08

Here’s the Batman vs. Superman script review: Part One and Part Two.

I posted the above pic because the Superman III treatment by Ilya Salkind is now available thanks to Superman Cinema. Oh, What Superman III could have been… Lois goes to Hong Kong because she can’t handle being near Superman. Lana Lang comes to Metropolis as the new star reporter. We learn that Supergirl also survived Krytpon’s explosion, landed on Brainiac’s planet, and got raised by him. She leaves for Earth and meets Superman. They fall in love and fly through the clouds together… Brainiac finds Supergirl and brought Mxyzptlk with him. There were hints at a relationship between Jimmy and Lana. Weird. Ilya writes: “The next big question is… does Superman marry Supergirl in Superman III or Superman IV…”

On Thursday, Miriam’s article on The Shower Scenes of Brian De Palma!

Woo hoo!

-MM

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New Screenplays:

The Other Boleyn Girl - by Peter Morgan (based on the novel by Philippa Gregory) & hosted by Natalie Portman.com.

Cliffhanger - undated first draft script by Michael France.

Rails & Ties - undated draft script by Micky Levy.

Collateral - script by Stuart Beattie, revised by Frank Darabont.

Gods and Monsters - by Bill Condon.

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Photostreams for the Visually-Oriented Writers:

Stuck in Customs

Uncommon

David Giral

Dyrk.Wyst

Szefi

Truus

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Variety’s Screenwriter Oscar Quiz:

CLASH OF THE TITANS

1. Each of these pairs -- one heavyweight of the 20th century literary canon, one Hollywood heavyweight -- vied for Oscars in the year indicated. Which person won the Oscar each time?

(a) George Bernard Shaw vs. Dore Schary ('38)

(b) Noel Coward vs. Norman Krasna ('43)

(c) Charles Chaplin vs. Sidney Sheldon ('47)

(d) Jean-Paul Sartre vs. Dalton Trumbo ('56)

(e) Ingmar Bergman vs. Stanley Shapiro ('59)

(f) William Inge vs. Paul Henning ('61)

(g) Harold Pinter vs. Ernest Thompson ('81)

(h) Arthur Miller vs. Billy Bob Thornton ('96)

(i) Tom Stoppard vs. Warren Beatty ('98)

(j) John Irving vs. Frank Darabont ('99)

[Answer’s in the Comments]

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Calling Filmmakers and Screenwriters!
“The Terror Film Festival is a week long, blood spilling, alien probing international indie film festival founded by filmmakers and screenwriters, for the purpose of offering creative artists more. TFF runs every October in the heart of Philadelphia at the prestigious Ethical Society Building (right across from beautiful Rittenhouse Square), and offers over $10,000 in cash and prizes, ranging from awards to sweet, loveable cash. Plus, their world-class Screenwriting Competition! TFF offers filmmaking awards, screenwriting awards, the Claw Awards, and cash prizes. All hosted by the sexy Princess Horror! And all for our filmmakers and screenwriters!! So, whether you’re an independent, professional, amateur, novice, film fan, Johnny Six-Pack, or Suzy Creativity, it doesn’t matter. Everyone is invited to submit a film or screenplay to TFF.”

Billy’s 3rd Annual Asta Awards
“The Best in Romantic Comedy 2007: This year was a peculiarly shaped one for romantic comedy: crowded at the bottom and dominated by a few solid winners at the top, without a whole lot of interest in the middle. On the downside, there was a preponderance of heavily promoted execrable why-did-they-bother? fare (Good Luck Chuck, License to Wed). The merely mediocre appeared and disappeared with all the substance of a forgettable dream (Music and Lyrics, No Reservations), while well-intentioned misfires (Waitress), bland Masterpiece Theatre (Becoming Jane) and unconvincing self-indulgences (Catch and Release) failed to make a mark. Let's get to the good stuff -- 20 categories…”

Unk’s Screenwriting structure Part 10 your first 10 pages and the hook
“You got that hook right? That something that I can immediately understand and captures my interest… Your hook doesn’t have to be anything other than something that gets me interested in going on with your screenplay or movie. It should be commensurate with your genre and story but it doesn’t necessarily have to be about your story. It could be something that your Protagonist just completed from another adventure. It could be your Antagonist doing something we’ve never seen before. It could be a minor character that exposes themselves to some vague obstacle that you’ll flesh out to us later on. It could be an arrival. Somebody or something comes to town. How about a death? What about your theme? What about your Protagonist’s flaw? Hell, maybe you just want to introduce your Protagonist… It’s all good.”

MaryAn’s Best Film Fade Outs Ever
Animal House (1978): Freeze frame on characters explaining what happened to them. Unique approach in 1978. Everyone does it now.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969): Blaze of glory.
Fargo (1996): My painting of a duck is going to be on a three cent stamp.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986): Rooney on the school bus with the brats he despises.
Kelly's Heroes (1970): "De Gaulle! De Gaulle!"

Lynden tells us why screenwriters should closely study Six Feet Under
“After marvelling at the precision of its construction, zoom in for a closer look. Check the way the characters usually have so little understanding of their own impulses, including they way their actions usually contradict what they say to one another. Note the fine crafting of every single individual scene, in which conflict, whether it be forthright or subtle, almost always results in a totally unexpected outcome. Also notice the way the minority of scenes lacking conflict end by revealing or expanding upon character in some new and significant way. Whether the scenes are constructed around conflict or non-conflict, the result is always the same: a shift in the relationships between the characters that keeps pulling us in, deepening our fascination and wanting to learn more.”

Harry Tuttle’s Contemporean Comtemplative Cinema Blog-a-thon
“Suggested theme of the blogathon: Narrative strategies in plotless films. To look at how C.C.C. films manage to tell a story without the traditional dramatic structure. To see if there is one alternative strategy or various types of contemplative plotlessness in these films to compensate the lack of dialogue and suspense-drive. Contrarians could even prefer to note how we can find traces of classic narration (or an altered form) in C.C.C. films.”

StinkyLulu’s Supporting Actress Blog-a-thon
“As a paranthetical aside, embedded in her recent NYT review of There Will Be Blood, Manohla Dargis offered this quip: "Like most of the finest American directors working now, [Paul Thomas] Anderson makes little on-screen time for women." It's a sorry state of affairs, really. And yet, here at StinkyLulu, we've got an annual tradition to address it, wherein we extoll just how much the greater actresses of 2007 have made from the little on-screen time allotted them.”


Bob’s article on Opening Credits
“No discussion of memorable opening credits would be complete without mentioning the James Bond series. (Not that I’m aiming for anything like completeness.) The first film, Dr. No, doesn’t count, but it’s interesting in the way it doesn’t count: its credits are jazzy and abstract, which might have set the tone for the whole series if it had begun in the late 50’s rather than in the early 60’s. But Camelot and the Playboy era rode up alongside the James Bond series and the tone became somewhat different. The opening credits for the next film, From Russia With Love, created the template for the rest of the films: an imperfectly seen, mostly unclad beauty writhing athletically on screen. Later films, most of them with their title sequences designed by Maurice Binder (who had done the first two too) had variations on this theme: female silhouettes dancing and multiplying across the screen. When handguns appeared, the formula was complete. The pinnacle must have been The Spy Who Loved Me: Roger Moore and some nude women in silhouette, performing gymnastics on the silhouettes of handguns.”

Octopussy screenwriter George MacDonald Fraser dies aged 82
“As well as Octopussy in 1983, MacDonald Fraser wrote other screenplays including The Prince and The Pauper and The Three Musketeers. Fellow author Kingsley Amis called him ‘a marvellous reporter and a first-rate historical novelist.’”

Ian Fleming named 14th greatest postwar writer by The Times
“The Times book section today recorded the 50 greatest British writers since 1945 with James Bond author Ian Fleming coming in at #14.”


Matt Zoller Seitz’s great NYT article on Paul Thomas Anderson
“The films of the writer and director Paul Thomas Anderson are obsessed with the destruction and reinvention of families, particularly the anxiety of influence felt so keenly in the relationship between distant, absent or controlling fathers and their grievously wounded sons. This in itself is not remarkable. What is remarkable, or at least striking, is how vividly the theme manifests itself in the stories that Mr. Anderson tells, and the evolving style with which he tells them.”

Lucy’s Adaptation and "Success": The Golden Compass And Beyond
“So what is that elusive ingredient that works for you in terms of an adaptation "succeeding"? Is it the notion of Steve's Central Question being the same? Or is it down to something else - for me, I like to see adaptations that are "true" to the seed of the story but can go any which way it pleases, including right off the beaten track into beyond. That might sound the same as Steve's Central Question, but I'm not sure it is: for example, American Psycho as a book for me was about an ACTUAL killer, whereas I felt in the movie this was in question as I outline in this post. The seed of both stories for me was homicidal tendencies, but the Central Questions were different: in the book, is Patrick Bateman going to get caught? Versus in the movie: is he really a killer?”

Lucy also had a great list of adaptation links:
Top 50 Adaptations
Top Grossing Comic Book Adaptations
Least Successful Comic Book Adaptations
Keys To A Successful Comic Book Movie Adaptation
21 Books That Should be Great Films

Tim’s Mr. Vista is Coming
“Saturday was the shoot day for the first episodes of Mr Vista. This is a new series of comedy shorts / skits that I'm putting together. They all feature the adventures of a man who sees progress bars wherever he goes. The shorts will be released about one every week through his own blog www.mrvista.net (which will be built shortly) and on Dailymotion.com. This post is to share some of my thoughts about what I hope to achieve from this series.”

Hero Pictures to bring Albert Einstein’s story to Big Screen
“Hero Pictures International has acquired exclusive rights to the biography ‘Private Lives of Albert Einstein,’ written by well-known science journalists Roger Highfield and Paul Carter. The book probes the elusively human side of Einstein, with the authors bringing to life a much more intimate picture of Einstein, from his struggles early on to his rise to fame, continuing to the end of his life. Academy Award-winning writer Ron Bass (RAIN MAN), engaged to write the screenplay back in the summer 2007, has enormous enthusiasm for the project. ‘It's inspiring to be chosen to tell the story of Albert Einstein. This film will bring us closer to his genius, his imagination, his discoveries and to the drama and charm of his human side. I look forward to delivering my script as soon as possible after the WGA strike concludes,’ commented Bass.”

IW’s Still Not Surprising article:
“When I worked at the studio That Will Henceforth Remain Unnamed (TWHRU), I worked on a film that the screenwriter was constantly bitching that the director (who I worked for) was twisting his script to hell in a handbasket. So much so, that he officially took his name off the film and had some fake name on the credits. Let me interject that this dude (black) was a complete and total a-hole, and the film turned out fine, with no coonery, and I haven't heard about that elitist diva since. Sometimes a director can turn out a fine film in spite of the writer with his ‘vision’. On the other end of the spectrum, it was my job to pitch scripts for my (black) production company to these honchos at this major (white) studio, and like I said before, they shot all of the good, positive, black ones down like the Taliban. I say this because I KNOW it is a challenge to even get your script read in Hollywood, much less greenlit. And it is even a bigger challenge to get the dozens of folks involved to stay close to your vision...unless....”

Self-Styled Siren offers misconceptions about the Hays Code.
"The idea that the Code made films 'better' is wrongheaded. It's often argued that censorship made movies more subtle, that it forced more creativity from directors and screenwriters who had to labor under its provisions."

Indie Film Model For Coming 3-D Revolution
“Today's new, polarized, digital 3-D movies promise to fulfill the original dream of cinema: to bring the otherworldly and uncanny so close audiences feel they have entered the action. And, as seen by the recent successes of Robert Zemeckis's Beowulf and the re-release of Tim Burton's A Nightmare Before Christmas, audiences are responding. ‘While the studios are making $100-200 million 3-D blockbusters, 'indie film' methods can be used to create high-quality polarized 3-D features in the $5-$15 million range,’ says Doug Schwartz, chairman of StereoVision Entertainment Inc., an independent, publicly-traded film production company dedicated solely to making low-cost, high-quality 3-D movies. ‘Similar to what Roger Corman accomplished at American International Pictures in the 1960s and 70s, such a low-budget 3-D production facility could serve as a fertile testing ground for new talent pushing the boundaries of this exciting new platform.’”

Antonioni, Bergman...Fincher?"
Slate's movie club returns for its annual go-round.

Script Review: IESB Explores Live Action Jonny Quest!
“This draft is just-barely pre-strike, clocking in at 10/31/2007 and is written by one Dan Mazeau whose only other credit is an in-development screenplay called Land of Lost Things. Now before you even get your spoiler warning, I’m telling you right off the bat: The star of this film isn’t Jonny Quest. Not by a long shot. This film is all about the roughest, toughest action hero to ever hit the TV screen: Race Bannon.”


TOKYO ROSE – Writer Christopher Hampton talks about one of Frank Darabont’s Next Projects
“Anyway, it looks like ‘Tokyo Rose’ will be the project after ‘Fahrenheit’ and the movie is about ‘a Japanese American woman who was arrested in Tokyo right after the War, brought back to San Francisco, put on trial for radio propaganda and sentenced to eight years imprisonment and she was completely innocent. It was all a witch hunt. She was absolutely innocent and eventually – in the 70’s – she was given a Presidential Pardon by President Ford.’ During the interview he talks a lot more about the project.”

Solving the screenplay puzzle
“There's something a little bit mathematical about writing a screenplay. You have a certain number of elements. You probably have about two hours to tell the story; no one's going to make a five-hour movie, or a forty-five-minute movie, for that matter. And it's a little like solving a puzzle: Okay, these people, these events, this outcome. Tell it in two hours. Go. That clock ticks relentlessly throughout every page and line of dialogue. There's no slack, there's no surcease, there's no room to stop and take a breath and provide a little background. It's tremendously structured. It's like doing sprints, as opposed to a marathon.”

On Wallpaper in Some Films
“What first drew me to the back of the frame, to the thin membrane standing between setting and set? I think it must have been Jacques Demy's Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (France, 1964), a film whose title draws our attention to another thin cover standing in the way of our confrontation with reality. Yet Demy's characters do not just hide behind umbrellas; rather, like the peacock's tail or the anglerfish's spine, Demy's monochrome umbrellas pull attention towards the characters' integumental performance and to the sheltering belief we in turn form of these characters. This is a reading reinforced from the outset of the film, where after an iris opens on a ship's horn blow, the camera tilts down and we watch from a bird's-eye perspective umbrellas make their geometric way across the quay. The viewer, momentarily, is the down-looking raincloud (a safe reversal of the mechanics of Hitchcock's famous shower scene), and we are kept there until the camera tilts back skyward and we cut to the garage where auto mechanic Guy Foucher works.”

The Searcher: On Ethan Edwards and John Ford’s Masterpiece
“John Ford's The Searchers (1956) opens with the arrival of Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) at his brother's home in southern Texas, three years after the Civil War has ended. What appears to be a friendly and welcome family visit soon takes on sinister overtones. When Ethan's nephew asks him about the war, the youngster is cut off in mid-speech by his father, as if this matter might bring up other, more unpleasant topics. While the children rally around their uncle, demanding presents and ingratiating themselves with him, the adults among Ethan's family and friends react suspiciously. It is also typical of the character, we soon learn, that he nurtures their suspicions about what he has been doing for the last three years and why he has returned by dropping tantalizing hints about his recent past. His brother Aaron remarks that Ethan had, before the war, wanted to clear out but stayed "beyond any reason" — the latter phrase an early key to the puzzle of his personality. In moments of stress and frustration, the commanding, pulled-together Ethan can become unhinged.”

Entertainment Weekly asks: Is Sci-Fi out of Ideas?
“Sci-fi is in trouble, though it's not the kind of trouble that can be measured at the box office, where it looks as healthy and robust as a T. rex must have seemed five minutes before it realized that there was nothing left to eat. The genre has been around for as long as the movies themselves, and flourished for the last 30 years. The problem is, none of the ideas are getting any newer. Scratch that: The problem is, there are no ideas.”


The Irresistible Urge to Destroy New York on Screen
“To be sure, movies showing New York being destroyed are nothing new — and have a long history in cinema. (New York Magazine’s Vulture blog recently had an item on the Top 10 movie destructions of New York.) But the resilience of the urban-destruction theme seems notable — and, after a brief post-9/11 lull, the theme seems more prevalent than ever. In an insightful 2005 op-ed essay in The Boston Globe, the architectural historian Max Page argued that fantasies of New York’s destruction are actually vital to the city’s success. ‘The best thing for New York might be the sight of King Kong tramping through the streets of Manhattan on his way to a fateful appointment at the top of the Empire State Building,’ Mr. Page wrote. ‘For if there is one thing that symbolizes New York’s pre-eminence, it is that so many still want to imagine the city’s end.’”

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On the Contest Circuit:

AWS Announces Contest Winner

Slamdance Horror Announces Semifinalists

Praxis Announces Fall 2007 Winners

Filmmakers.com Announces Contest Winners

Screenwriter Showcase Announces Contest Winner

TWP Announces Contest Winners

MoviePoet.com Announces November Winners

Script Savvy Announces Contest Winner


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Strike-Related:

UPDATE: NBC And Hollywood Foreign Press Cancel Big Televised Golden Globes Ceremony; Scrapped For Stripped Down "News" Telecasts

Strike support is not on the A-list
“Many actors have manned the picket lines along with their writing brothers and sisters since the Writers Guild of America strike began Nov. 5. But there has been a notable absence of a small group that under any other circumstance would monopolize it: A-list movie stars.”

SHOCKER! WGA To Announce Side Deal With Tom Cruise's United Artists; Now Studio Moguls Mad At MGM's Sloan

In Strike, Separate Deals Draw Ire of Big Producers
A deal between United Artists and the Writers Guild of America West to let the production company sidestep the screenwriters’ strike may have opened the door to a full-blown brawl, as other producers demanded to know why writers have granted some companies a special agreement but not others.

WGA fails in location permit bid
“The WGA has failed in a bid to have the city refuse film-location permits to struck production companies.”

Dick Clark Productions: WGA refused to negotiate on Globes
“Dick Clark Prods., the independent production company that produces the Golden Globes, said late Friday that it has tried for weeks to make an interim deal with the WGA…”

Rumors Upon Rumors Of WGA Side Deals

EXCLUSIVE: DGA Met With Moguls Today

WGA in Talks With Weinstein Co, Encircling Networks

Phil Hellmuth Fills Gap Left by Writer's Strike
“Just when we thought Hollywood’s writers strike was about to make network television officially unbearable to watch, one world-renowned poker pro is coming to the rescue. UltimateBet pro Phil Hellmuth is slated to appear in the third seasons of NBC’s Poker After Dark beginning December 31st, 2007. The 11-time WSOP bracelet winner and recent Poker Hall of Fame inductee will no doubt churn out some impressive one-liners that not even Hollywood’s best screenwriters could conjure up.”

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Did you know there’s a comic strip for screenwriters? Mike Le’s Don’t Forget to Validate Your Parking is worth your I’m-not-doing-anything-because-I’m-on-strike time.

Part 2: Batman vs. Superman

[Here’s Part One.]

First, a summary of the screenplay.

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ACT ONE:

The opening scene – Metropolis. A terrorist attack on the “Freedom Promenade” sends Superman flying into action. The monument tips over, which he catches in mid-air and fixes. By the time he locates the terrorists, their van has gotten into a car accident, the people of the city have dragged them out and started beating them senseless. Superman intervenes and says, “You have a right to your anger, nothing more.” The people scream at him, “Why are you protecting him?” Superman replies, “And what if you kill him? What then? Are you your wife’s husband? Your mother’s son, your children’s father? No. Not anymore.” Since when was Superman so preachy? Well, he promises that justice will be done and flies away with the terrorist. As they soar over a river, the terrorist throws Kryptonite dust into his face, falls into the river, and gets away. Supe’s left with a mask with scribblings on it.

Cut to Wayne Manor and the wedding of Bruce & Elizabeth Wayne. At the reception, Bruce strolls over to an exterior upper balcony and shoots the breeze with Clark Kent. They’re old friends. They know each other’s secrets. We learn that Batman is officially retired. Clark’s already married to Lois but they’re getting divorced. (We won’t see Lois, by the way.) Bruce hints at the weakness of humans to develop a thirst for blood following the loss of a loved one. It’s “a human thing,” he tells him. They talk a little about the terrorist that got away, and Bruce tells him to “be careful.” All in all, 3 ½ pages of dialogue. Bruce glances at the reception tent and suggests a “race.” Clark’s a blur and gone. Bruce smiles and laughs.

Cut to Metropolis. Clark wanders around sadly in his now empty apartment. Cut to Bruce’s honeymoon. Elizabeth is killed by a bumblebee dart that distorts her face into an “impossibly wide Joker-esque smile” of “exposed teeth and tart gums.” He sees a sign similar to what Superman discovered on the mask. Bruce, irate and bent on revenge, heads across his library toward the bookcase that’ll send him to the Batcave, but Clark confronts him. He tells him about the signs and their common enemy. He tries to persuade Bruce from caving into revenge. “Kill,” he says, “and you become the dark thing you’ve spent your whole life fighting. You can’t go back down there. You’ll destroy everything you are, everything you’ve done, and all those deaths, your parents’, Dick’s, even Elizabeth’s will be in vain.” Bruce blames Clark for not letting the mob kill the terrorist, throws a statue at him, and tells him to get out. Ends on page 23.

ACT TWO:

Elizabeth’s funeral. Back at the Daily Planet, Clark asks for some time off over this “thing with Lois.” Superman flies out of Metropolis. Bruce can’t sleep. He goes to the Batcave. Supe arrives in Smallville, returns to the Kent farm, sits in his room, and studies the terrorist’s mask. Batman takes off. Clark has flashbacks from his childhood. Batman takes his rage out on some thieves. News about Batman’s return spreads. Clark meets up with Lana Lang and saves her son, Billy, in a river. Lana takes the lead in the romance and says, “Would it be too much of an imposition if an old friend stopped by for a visit?”

Back in Gotham, inside a warehouse, Batman confronts the Toyman, a guy who has supplied toys to the Joker in the past. He shows him the bumblebee dart. Toyman denies creating it. Since this story is post-Batman & Robin, he also questions him on who is impersonating the Joker. Just as he’s told that the Joker’s still alive, explosions go off in the warehouse. Batman returns to the cave to get his car. Clark chats it up with Lana. She already knows his secrets. She tells how when he revealed his secret to her, she actually thought he was going to propose. They kiss. They make love in Clark’s old bedroom. Batman’s car careens through Gotham. Through Clark’s bedroom window, Lana’s post-sex silhouette figure walks to the bathroom.

Batman digs up Joker’s grave. Clark shows Lana his spaceship in the farm. Batman opens the coffin to discover a giant Joker-in-the-Box. Then, he gets word of a disturbance at Citizen’s Plaza, fights Jeeves One and Jeeves Two and finally discovers the Joker. He says, “Tell me true… did you miss me? I sure missed you. We’re going to have a blast!” and he gets away. Batman chases them in his Batmobile, deals with exploding bouncing balls, and then plays chicken on the road with Joker’s armored car. They barely miss each other and spin around. Joker shoots off missiles and Batman ejects out of his car just as missiles blow it up. Joker says, “HooooHee! It’s not a party till something gets broken!” Batman glides back to Joker’s armored car, punches through the windshield, almost grabs Joker who hits the brakes and Batman flies off. Joker says, “Too bad your friend in the red and blue pajamas didn’t kill me when he had the chance,” and leaps onto Batman and starts beating the life out of him. The two Jeeves’s pull him off, oddly enough. Joker says, “Yes, yes. The boys are right. Now’s not the time. But don’t despair, Brucey-boy…”

Back in Smallville, we learn that Clark is actually using the pod that brought him to earth to help analyze the terrorist’s mask and the kryptonite dust. (He couldn’t do that in the Fortress of Solitude?) Clark does some soul-searching while he’s there, too. He ask Lana questions about why he imposes his own values on others. She gives us a sappy speech: “How long could you leave your answers forgotten on the kitchen table? How many cries for help ignored before you’d start to hate what you’d done? And me for letting you. How could you ever just sit back and let nature take its course, knowing you could save a hundred lives. Knowing you could save just one. You can’t be the man who comes home from a hard day with roses. Because your day never ends. That’s lucky for the world. It’s just unlucky for me. And for you. I love you. Good-bye, Clark Kent.”

Out of depression, Clark mopes in the rain and then takes off as Superman. He saves some people in Smallville from a tornado. And then he gets the data from his pod about the mask, says “No,” and flies away. The dust was residue from a Kryptonite bomb Lex Luthor had detonated in orbit as a test. So, Supe meets Lex in prison who, after a little wheeling and dealing, tells him about a government conspiracy, called Achilles Heel, to create Kryptonite bombs to detonate in orbit just in case Supe ever wanted to take control of the government. In the Batcave, Batman also learns about Achilles Heel. Joker spreads pamphlets throughout Gotham laying down a challenge to Batman, a battle to the death at 4 a.m. on Friday the 13th at the Freedom Monument in Metropolis. Batman’s computer figures out the project’s location and so he sneaks into the factory, which he blows up. He steals the Kryptonite, which he incorporates into his suit. Clark meets him again at Wayne Manor and tries to apologize and tries to make amends, but Bruce will have none of it. He will have his revenge.

We learn in a conversation between Luthor and his lawyer that he had brought Joker back from the dead with “a little grave-digging, DNA extraction, and a billion dollars.” And he gave Joker “a plan to play one hero’s weakness against the other until they were at each other’s throats.” The Joker murders Batman’s wife, Batman vanquishes Superman, and the Joker gets to kill Batman as a reward.


At the Freedom Monument, Batman waits for Joker. Superman arrives, and their conflict comes to a head. Superman’s determined to turn in the Joker unharmed. Batman wants his revenge. He tells him, “I'll say this once and only once. Walk away.” Superman replies, “I can't let you lose yourself to the very dark you've spent your life fighting.” Batman replies, “Don't you get it? I am the darkness. I'm Batman.” And with that, he turns on his Kryptonite-laced suit, Superman’s eyes turn red, and they charge each other. The battle starts on page 92 and goes on for 10 pages. They battle on the ground, in the air, through buildings, trees, up-town, down-town, mid-town, all-around-town, and underwater. On page 95, Superman bleeds. Ultimately, Superman is hit with a Kryptonite-laced arrow below the collar bone. He falls. He’s dying. Batman walks over, breaks the arrow to leave the tip inside, tells him, “I had no choice,” and leaves. Ends on page 102.

ACT THREE:

It’s midnight. On the Freedom Monument’s Observation Deck, Joker looks for Batman. Superman climbs the Freedom Monument and says grimly, “Up, up, and away.” Batman tells Joker he didn’t have to kill his wife. Joker says that was “the easy part. Creating her, now that was much, much harder.” After some dialogue, he says, “Don’t you get it? She was never yours. She was always mine.” Batman falls to his knees, shattered by this news. A slab of concrete hits Joker in the gut, knocking him across the floor. The “emergency exit doors” slam open to reveal Superman. He immediately has to deal with some Jeeves characters and goes down after getting hit in the face with concrete. In no time, the two heros are working together to handle this situation. Everything reaches a point where Batman’s given the chance to kill Joker. Superman stops him and tells him that if he’s going to do it, take off his mask first. “Don’t hide behind it,” Superman says. “Don’t pretend there’s some other part of you doing this. This is your right, as a human being. Your retribution. So do this as the man who’s going to live with it for the rest of his life. Take off the mask.” Batman decides against it.

And that’s when Luthor appears. He’s wearing an exoskeleton suit from the Achilles Heel project. He battles them both. Need I even say how it turns out? In the end, Batman says, “You look like crap, by the way.” Superman replies, “You should see the other guy.” A few moments later, Batman says, “So you want to get a beer?” Superman says, “Maybe a soda or something.” Batman replies, “Oh my God, what is it with you?” Fade out. Ends on page 120.

------------------------------------------

The first thing I want to do is talk about characters. I think Superman is more challenging for writers because, generally, he lacks character depth. He’s never wavering in his goodness whether he’s Superman or Clark Kent. He’s impossible to hurt, much less kill. It’s tough coming up with new villains that are genuine threats to Superman or that’ll put him into scenarios where you’re really scared for him. He only has one weakness, Kryptonite, or two if you count his love for people.

Batman on the other hand, while he’s changed quite a bit over the years, has more sides to his character. He puts on airs to the world at large about being an irresponsible, superficial playboy who lives off his family's personal fortune, although Wayne is also known for his contributions to charity through his foundation. On the other hand, he’s a dark, raging vigilante at night who deliberately cultivates this frightening persona in order to strike fear into the criminals he chases. Those dual sides of his nature gives you more to work with than Superman. He is destructible, too, which makes the action sequences more interesting, because he’s no man of steel. Frank Miller said in Christopher Sharrett’s book, “Batman and the Twilight of the Idols: An Interview with Frank Miller,” that he views the character as “a dionysian figure, a force for anarchy that imposes an individual order.”


Kevin Smith was absolutely correct, as quoted in my previous article, that Batman is about angst while Superman is about hope, which I think is what makes this setup work. The conflict in which Batman, on the one hand, set off by the murder of his new wife, goes too far in his rage and pursuit of vengeance and Superman, on the other hand, stands in his way because this goes against what he stands for, is great. In the end, Batman doesn't really want to harm Superman. He’s just taken all he can take and Superman’s in his way. Superman doesn't really want to harm Batman. He just can’t allow Bruce to do something he knows he’ll regret. It’s a good setup. And it’s a nice contrast with the varying shades of good in two forces of justice – the blackness of Batman's psyche versus the goodness of Superman.

But let’s clear the air about one important thing – Superman would kick Batman’s ass. The most cursory viewing of the website, Batman vs. Superman, in which their strengths and weaknesses are compared, Superman dominates. They’re both over 6’ tall, late twenties, orphaned, and they both have a thing for tights. Whereas Batman is usually proactive when it comes to a fighting style (he seeks out his opponents and he’s usually two-steps ahead), the Caped Wonder is generally reactive and deals with situations as they come. They’ve both had their share of bad beats. Batman had his back broken by Bane, while Superman was killed by Doomsday. But in terms of skills and mobility, Batman is a top drawer athlete, expert in all forms of martial arts. Superman is… invulnerable.

Which is why you have to, as a dramatist, hand the fight over to Batman. You have to kick Mr. Invulnerable down to the ground to make it interesting.

In any case, this script falters in three major areas.


1) THE EVOLVING RELATIONSHIP

They bring Batman and Superman together in Act One, set up the conflict, and then separate them for the length of a Bible until they finally confront each other for the big Act Two fight. That, my friends, is weak screenwriting. It’s too simple, and these guys are just avoiding the hard work of great storytelling. It’s too easy to separate main characters, let them do a bunch of soul-searching apart, and then bring them together for an Act Two climax. I think this is a very important principle about weak screenwriting. It is far more satisfying (and difficult to write), if they had carefully plotted the evolving relationship between those two individuals. This moment in the upper balcony of Wayne Manor during the wedding reception, which was praised in a number online script reviews, was the wrong decision on a number of levels. It’s the dramatic equivalent of giving away the game at the very beginning. We’re shown two guys who are already friends. They already know each other’s secrets. And in one scene, we’re robbed of so many interesting cinematic developments – how they meet, how they learn about each other, how they question each other for the first time, and how they uncover each other’s secrets. In that context, a conflict can grow between them about Batman’s pursuit of vigilante justice, which leads to battles, which makes them try to outmaneuver each other, and it comes to a head in the Act Two climax.

Do you see what I mean? To separate them as they’ve done, to avoid the tough work of showing an evolving relationship, is to wimp-out as screenwriters. It’s too easy, and it’s unsatisfying. Instead of one 10-page battle at the end, which frankly reminded me too much of that endless battle in Superman IV, you could’ve had smaller battles throughout the story that builds up to a shorter, more powerful, more memorable confrontation at the end of Act Two. By the way, this absurd subplot with Lana Lang was nothing short of a Superman III rip-off and we just don’t need to be reminded of either of those films.


2) WORLD OF SUPERMAN

All of the big action was given to Batman throughout Act Two, and I think the writers stayed too close to familiar grounds. They didn’t know what they were doing with Superman and it shows. Guys, an arrow is not going to pierce his suit or his skin. He is not going to fall down after getting hit in the head with a concrete block. And I don’t care how big the action is, he’s just not going to bleed in a battle against Batman. His dialogue never sounded right. He was too preachy. It felt like an inconsistency in his character to tell Batman in the Third Act that it was his right as a human to do retribution to the Joker, which is not what he believes and contradicts all he said up to that point.

Also, to have Superman getting divorced from Lois is upsetting in a number of ways. Their relationship is true love locked in Greek tragedy because they cannot consummate that love. You don’t play around with that in a Batman vs. Superman movie. I think it’s just an ignorance of the mythology to make a decision like that. Plus, to jump ahead to the divorce pulls the rug out from underneath a highly anticipated storyline in a Superman film. Even if they were to go back and film how Lois learned about Clark Kent and how they got married, this undermines those happy feelings because we now know that they’ll eventually get divorced. This is the dramatic equivalent of totally “giving up” on a franchise and just giving away the farm for nothing.

I’ve said this before - a Superman movie is only as good as Lois Lane. You cannot get around that. You have to carefully foster that love and that humor between them. Weak screenwriters never fail to avoid her or cut her out completely.


3) THE ENDING

The ending was too predictable. By the time Lex shows up, you’re tired of all the fighting, and you’re ready for the whole thing to end. The final bits of dialogue was so hokey, it practically harkened back to the cheap one-liners of Batman & Robin. And I hate the way it sets up endless Batman & Superman sequels. It isn’t enough to do what everyone thinks you’re going to do, that is, make them reconcile and work together to fight a common enemy. You have to take it further and end a story like this in some meaningful way that will have a good impact on the two separate franchises. Personally, I would’ve ended it with the establishment of the Justice League and introduced new characters. That would get people excited as they walk out of the theaters.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Let me ask a question - what’s the point of a “VERSUS” movie of any kind? We’ve had Freddy vs. Jason and Alien vs. Predator, which have turned out to be nothing more than cinematic tourist traps, and I’d like to know what’s the inherent value in seeing two signature icons duke it out on film. It seems to me that these types of films do more to lower the stature of those iconic figures than it does to elevate the genre. In music terms, this has to be the equivalent of two washed-up singers going on tour together because their TWO sets are almost worth the price of ONE ticket. Is this not just a desperate act to squeeze the last dollar out of a public that’s grown tired of two icons?

Of course, it’s a little different with Batman and Superman, because people don’t easily tire of their most beloved, iconic superheroes. But you have to be very, very careful with them.

I gotta say, I agreed with Darwin Mayflower who wrote in his review: “Batman Vs. Superman had the right idea in mind. The idea of Batman seeking revenge, blinded by rage, and Superman trying to stop him from self-destructing, is a great premise. But this is the pallid, PG-rated version of that story. It sounds good, but the words don't live up to the promise. Despite the terrific opening, with Bruce and Clark letting us in on a more human level, the writers soon leave the characters behind and instead of exploiting this singular opportunity to bring these guys together for something special, they keep them apart and give up on them for some standard action. Batman Vs. Superman takes its characters for granted. This project is dead and buried, but if they had gone back to Walker's original draft and hired a writer with the ability to imbue some depth and substance into the script, it might have worked out to be something pretty intriguing. But we'll instead get stand-alone films about Supes and Batman. And with all concerns in consideration, it was definitely the right decision.”

Script Review: Batman vs. Superman

[Part 1 of 2]

There was a time in 2002-2003 when we were oh-so-close to seeing on film a great clash of the titans-in-tights, the ultimate caped battle royale, red vs. blue, human vs. alien, natural vs. supernatural, and the good vs. the (sorta) good – Batman vs. Superman. Of course, all that’s available to the public now is the 2002 Akiva Goldsman revision of Andrew Kevin Walker’s script.

But first, some really fun context.

In 1997, the Batman franchise was all but dead - sent to its grave by the shallow, awful, campy screenplay of Akiva Goldsman called Batman & Robin. Some blame could be thrown at Joel Schumacher or the producers for letting (or making) this movie happen, but make no mistake, this film failed primarily because of the screenplay. I wholly agreed with Ebert when he wrote: “like Michael Keaton and Val Kilmer, [George Clooney] brings nothing much to the role because there's nothing much there. Most of the time he seems stuck for conversation… Listening to Schwarzenegger's one-liners (‘The iceman cometh!’), I realized that a funny thing is happening to the series: It's creeping irresistibly toward the tone of the 1960s TV show. The earlier Batman movies, especially the dark Batman Returns (1992), made a break with the camp TV classic and went for moodier tones. But now the puns and punchlines come so fast the action has to stop and wait for them. Although we don't get the POW! and WHAM! cartoon graphics, this fourth movie seems inspired more by the TV series than the Bob Kane comic character.” Exactly. Goldsman should’ve had his Batman writing privileges revoked. In the end, Ebert wrote, “My prescription for the series remains unchanged: scale down. We don't need to see $2 million on the screen every single minute. Give the foreground to the characters, not the special effects. And ask the hard questions about Bruce Wayne.” Amen, brother.

And of course, this is exactly the direction Chris Nolan would take the franchise 8 years later with his Batman Begins film, and of course, Ebert gave it four stars. He wrote, “Batman Begins at last penetrates to the dark and troubled depths of the Batman legend, creating a superhero who, if not plausible, is at least persuasive as a man driven to dress like a bat and become a vigilante. The movie doesn't simply supply Batman's beginnings in the tradition of a comic book origin story, but explores the tortured path that led Bruce Wayne from a parentless childhood to a friendless adult existence. The movie is not realistic, because how could it be, but it acts as if it is.”


The Superman franchise had been dead since the fourth film in 1987, the final sigh of a spiraling series that lost all of its dignity and prestige since its sensational 1978 premiere, which is still the gold standard of cinema superheroes. In the late nineties, there were attempts to revive the series following the enormous success of DC Comics’ 1992-1993 series, Death of Superman. There was a draft by Greg Poirier, which Kevin Smith completely rewrote. He said, “...the thing that bothered me about Greg Poirier’s draft: they were trying to give Superman angst. They had Clark Kent going to a psychiatrist at one point. Superman’s angst is not that he doesn’t want to be Superman. If he has any (angst), it’s that he can’t do it all; he can’t do enough and save everyone... Batman is about angst; Superman is about hope.”

So we had a march ’97 draft from Kevin Smith called Superman Lives that would have brought to the screen the infamous Brainiac who comes to earth on a spaceship in search of a technology called “the Eradicator” to help rebuild his body. He sees Superman fly around and assumes he has an “Eradicator.” So he teams up with Lex Luthor, blocks the power of the sun to weaken Superman and kill him and thus, steal his “Eradicator.” When the Man of Steel confronts Brainiac for the first time, he (out of seemingly nowhere) presents Doomsday, which kills Superman in the streets of Metropolis not much unlike the comic series. As they mourn Superman’s death, Doomsday wakes, and then a great red laser from Brainiac’s ship blows him up. Superman actually had an “Eradicator” inside his Fortress of Solitude which he never knew. Following his death, the “Eradicator” (a robot) comes to life, grabs Superman’s body, and revives him. While only half-recovered, Superman leaves to confront Brainiac, who in a desperate act of self-preservation, forces his consciousness to take over a “Thangarian Snare Beast” that “resembles something of a cross between a squid and a spider, but very bio-mechanical and sleek.” Superman tells him, “You wanna hide in a bug… I’ll crush you like one!” Ugh… Kevin talks about his experiences here, which was actually quite funny. The producer was a tad bonzo in the brains. He was obsessed with spiders, didn’t want to see Superman in his suit or fly anywhere in the film, and demanded to have a “gay, black R2D2” as Brainiac’s side kick. If there was a complaint to be made about the writing itself, I’d have to say that the dialogue was the weakest element, at times so immature, it made me cringe. When Superman wakes and talks to the “Eradicator,” he says, “You’ve been in the Fortress all this time and I didn’t know it?!? Wait, wait, wait… did you ever see Lois and I… while we… Well, why the hell did you never say anything?”

Oy vey…


In September ’98, we know of two other bad scripts. First, there was Alex Ford & J. Ellison’s Superman: The Man of Steel. This script is so retarded that three quarters into the story they have Clark Kent & Lana Lang singing “I’VE GOT YOU, BABE.” Is this thing for real? I can't believe the studio didn't ask for their money back. What the hell was going on in the house of Warner Brothers? A giant script-turd like this one makes me think three things: A) Alex Ford & J. Ellison must’ve been the most expert con artists in the world if they convinced the WB to pay them money to write this rancid shit, or B) the execs at the WB in the mid-90s must’ve been the most gullible assholes in the world (or both), or C) Alex Ford & J. Ellison are the most hopelessly deluded hacks in HW to actually think that they know how to write. It took TWO of them to be THIS DUMB. This also makes me think, as I frequently do, that Hollywood should clean house and allow a new generation of great, passionate writers take over.

But I digress.

Then followed Dan Gilroy’s Superman Lives, a reworking of Kevin Smith’s story, in which Superman again faces Brainiac (who this time was created by Jor-El and fled Krypton when it exploded). When Brainiac arrives on earth, he just so happens to meet Lex Luthor and just so happens to tell him that he is not Superman’s friend, that he came from his home planet, and that “invulnerable is something its inhabitants were not.” Luthor replies, “Pinch me, I’m in a dream!” Then, suddenly, Brainiac “consumes” Lex. Uhh, what was that? Well, Gilroy wrote: “BRAINIAC moves in – envelopes Lex in a stunning display of art department and special effects genius, transmutatively consuming him to the accompaniment of ELECTRIC ARCS as – ‘LEXIAC’ stands before us.” When Supe confronts this villain for the first time, Lexiac presents Doomsday (again out of seemingly nowhere), and after a great battle, Supe is killed. The world mourns his death. In the afterlife, Supe meets his Kryptonian parents and comes back to earth. In the third act standoff, Brainiac removes himself from Luthor, becomes “just a head on a horrific, mechanical body,” and says “Seen Mom and Dad lately?” Supe replies, “As a matter of fact, I have, and I’ve got a message from them -- you’ve been recalled.”

Do you know that famous quote by Cicero about philosophers? “There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.” Well, let me just add that there is nothing so dumb but some screenwriter has written it.

There was talk about Tim Burton directing a Superman Lives film for a July 4, 1998, release with Nicolas Cage in the lead and would also be based on his own screenplay, but because of the box office disappointment of Batman & Robin, the project was shelved. Akiva Goldsman actually killed two franchises with one script. Perhaps we should be grateful. Here’s some concept artwork for Burton’s film:


Let’s jump ahead to the summer of 2002. We know that within the span of one month, Warner Brothers received its Batman vs. Superman revision from Akiva Goldsman (of all people), as well as J.J. Abrams’ Superman. Make no mistake – both scripts would have been disasters of epic proportions.

Abrams completely reboots the Superman franchise. He would rewrite the origins, mythology, and legacy. Krypton does NOT explode. A war with machines led by Ty-Zor, Jor-El’s brother, forces Jor-El to send his son to Earth. We re-watch all over again Superman’s crash landing on earth, his upbringing, his isolation from other kids, and his first encounter with Lois, an uninspired moment in a frat house during their college years. All throughout Superman’s maturation, we cut back to see his parents on Krypton get imprisoned, tortured, and murdered until Ty-Zor learns the hiding location of Kal-El. We see again Superman’s first interview with Lois, which doesn’t even remotely compare to the original in terms of style, fun, and shaping the love between these two characters. With Abrams, the subtext was about control. There is no Fortress of Solitude. Supe doesn’t need the sun for strength. Clark learns about being an alien from Martha Kent. And he learns values from his mother in one exposition-filled paragraph of dialogue. Supe would later die underwater with Kryptonite in order to save Lois. In the afterlife, he would meet Jor-El, get sent back to earth to face Ty-Zor and three other Kryptonians. Of this sequence, I loved what Moriarity wrote, “the way they bring him back has got to be one of the dumbest, dippiest, New Age bullshit scenes in a major franchise picture that I can think of. It’s ri-goddamn-diculous. Jor-El ‘senses’ the death of his son all the way from Krypton, so he slices his own stomach open and goes to Heaven where he explains to Jor-El that he CAN’T die. I halfway expected him to say, ‘Look, son, this is just the first film in the trilogy. You can’t be dead yet.’ His excuse isn’t much better. He explains that The Prophecy says that the Son of Krypton will defeat a great trial on a distant planet before coming home to kick some ass. ‘And since I know you’re going to come save Krypton, you can’t die on Earth.’ Kal-El can’t really argue with such spotless logic, so he returns to his body and digs himself out of the grave where he was put to rest.” In the third act climax, Superman does not outwit his Kryptonian villains as he did in Superman II, but he has the American army join in the battle and shoot Kryptonite-laced artillery at them. In the end, Lex Luthor reveals that he, too, was from Krypton and FLIES. Moriarity wrote, “In the long history of really stupid ideas in bringing superheroes to the big screen, this far surpasses the Amazing Hummingbird Man and Hot Guy from one of the lousy HULK drafts. I honestly think this is worse as an overall idea than Arnold’s Mr. Freeze and a bat credit card.” Out of guilt that his presence here had brought so much violence and destruction, Supe gets into the pod that had brought him to Earth and leaves for Krypton. Fade Out.

Re-doing what’s already been done demands a comparison. Is it really necessary to rewrite and remove all of the previously established mythology? Does this make for a better version? The answer to both questions is “no.” What’s to be gained by this? Nothing. It's an artist behaving selfishly without any respect toward the hundreds of other artists that worked so hard to carefully create an iconic mythology. What Kevin Smith said of “Superman’s angst” in Greg Poirier’s draft could just as easily apply to J.J. Abrams’ story. This script was IN pre-production when word got out and the outcry from fans the world over was so great, they actually shut down production. [A warning to you Star Trek fans – Abrams is quite capable of fucking-up a franchise.]

[Another side note - Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns was probably the best of the bunch with a number of great moments, but make no mistake it was still a failure (see, for example, my Goodbye, Lois article). In fact, they’re looking to completely reboot the franchise again as if Superman Returns was never made, and there's already talk that Singer's off the project.]


And all of this brings us back to Batman vs. Superman.

[To be continued here.]

Indy & Annie

God, I hate to eclipse my previous Indiana Jones post, but the new February 2008 issue of Vanity Fair has a gorgeous collection of Indy photos by Annie Leibovitz that can be viewed throughout the cover story. The article was good, too. Here are two highlights:

“The script, Spielberg says, can provide the blockbuster pace. ‘Part of the speed is the story,’ he says. ‘If you build a fast engine, you don’t need fast cutting, because the story’s being told fluidly, and the pages are just turning very quickly. You first of all need a script that’s written in the express lane, and if it’s not, there’s nothing you can do in the editing room to make it move faster. You need room for character, you need room for relationships, for personal conflict, you need room for comedy, but that all has to happen on a moving sidewalk.’”

“The first building block of any Indiana Jones movie, according to Lucas, is something called the MacGuffin. The term, popularized by Alfred Hitchcock, refers to an object or goal that kicks the story into action and drives it to the third act. Hitchcock held that the less specific the MacGuffin the better. In his 1959 suspense classic, North by Northwest, the men chasing Cary Grant are after microfilm containing ‘government secrets’— that’s all the audience learns about why the film’s villains cause the hero so much trouble—and Hitchcock considered that to be a perfect MacGuffin, because it was so wonderfully vague. While Lucas agrees with his predecessor on the importance of the MacGuffin, his conception of the device differs significantly from Hitchcock’s. Rather than seeing it as a gimmick with the function of getting things rolling, Lucas believes that the MacGuffin should be powerful and that the audience should care about it almost as much as the dueling heroes and villains on-screen.”

Lucas also confirmed that despite all the sordid Indy IV rumors, the MacGuffin had always been the Crystal Skulls. In a web-exclusive interview, Spielberg revealed that Darabont’s script was set in the ‘50s but it had latter-day Nazis going after Indy. There’s also an interview with George Lucas and a video of Annie’s on-the-set photo shoot.

-MM

Narrative Studies on Indiana Jones

On the left is the cover (created by artist Steve Anderson) of an upcoming Dark Horse comic adaptation of Indy IV, which was recently premiered at the Diamond Comics website (thanks to theraider.net). There's a sword?

Additionally, theraider.net is hosting two new articles, one a narrative case study on the Last Crusade by Joaquim Ghirotti who has a master’s in screenwriting.

Here’s a sample:

“A structural resource commonly used in 30s adventure serials, and used in all Indiana Jones films, is to begin the narrative in the middle of another adventure and then take the protagonist to the main story, thus giving the audience an electric rush of adrenalin, making it associate and care for the character, and then presenting us with the main drama. In the first film, Indiana is in a South American Jungle, getting an ancient statue from a cave. After an exciting chase sequence, the proper search for the lost Ark of Covenant begins. In the second film, The Temple of Doom, Indiana begins his adventure in Shanghai, negotiating the sale of an ancient idol in a restaurant and having to deal with evil gangsters. In The Last Crusade the opening adventure has two functions: to prepare the audience for action adventure sequences, establish their mindset and expectations accordingly, and to shed some light on Indiana’s past. The film begins with young Indiana, played by the late River Phoenix, in a trip with his scout team to caves. There, he finds out that a group of men is taking an important object from the site to sell it.”

They also have a 90-page Thesis on Indiana Jones written by Russ Crespolini. This thesis got Russ his master's degree in communication studies in 2002. It wasn’t bad. Here’s a quote:

“One of the key features of father/son stories is the gradual transformation of that relationship. In Rambo, once trained by Trautman, is rescuing him from Soviets in the final film sequence. Similarly, Marty McFly of the Back to the Future Trilogy, initially awed by Doc Brown’s knowledge and at the mercy of his inventions, finally rescues Doc from his own time traveling death in 1885. In Star Wars, Luke is initially tormented by and divided from his then unknown father. By the final movie, Luke has rescued his father from the dark side. And, in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indy is reunited with his long-estranged father who he must save from Nazis jailers.”

Personally, I prefer their articles on Cecil B. DeMille’s and Hitchcock’s influence on Spielberg in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Great stuff, guys.

-MM