“Clash of the Titans,” Part II!

“Perseus roams, half-purposefully.”

Friends, let’s get right to it.

Travis Beacham’s January 25, 2007, draft of Clash of the Titans evoked so many thoughts and feelings, I’m not sure I can contain it all in one little script review. The heart of the matter is this – If Mr. Beacham has any aspirations of having a career as a screenwriter, of having HIS scripts filmed and not passed off for others to rewrite, he must address the fundamental flaws in his thinking as a screenwriter.

On the one hand, Beacham is certainly intelligent and imaginative. On the other hand, the necessary strengths of every screenwriter – character, dialogue, story – are Beacham’s weakest elements. Plus, this is yet another example confirming my suspicion that we are in a screenwriting state of emergency with such a lack of tension and suspense. (Can you imagine a Clash of the Titans that lacks tension?)

Where are the great screenwriters of today? Where are the leaders of the next generation who will bring on a new golden age of cinema, of true cinema in all its heart and drama and visual storytelling?



So let me go through my list of complaints.

First, we established in the last article that Beverley Cross, the author of the original Clash of the Titans, gave us 3 solid scenes within the first 10 minutes. (If you cut the opening credit sequence with the white bird flying to Olympus, this could’ve been about only 7 or 8 pages.) Briefly, here are the scenes, which we all know so well:

1) In the opening scene, we learn important exposition through emotional high drama the scandalous origin of Perseus. We observe the King of Argos angrily denouncing his own daughter, Danae, for giving birth to a son out of wedlock and sealing her (and child) inside a coffin and throwing them out into the crashing waves to die.

2) This was followed by a scene with Zeus in Olympus that established a) all of the gods, b) the fact that Zeus himself took advantage of Danae, and c) we learn that the gods are powerful but so very flawed in their personalities and can be terribly unjust and unfair to the humans. And thus, Zeus opts to destroy the King of Argos and all of his people despite their zealous, faithful loyalty to him and despite the King’s lack of knowledge about the child’s true father.

3) Thus, he brought on the Kraken.

1, 2, 3. Economical storytelling. These are scenes that get your attention. As soon as the film begins, something’s wrong. Lives are at stake. And you’re drawn in. That’s how good drama works. We’re given exposition through high emotional conflict, which is always effective. It also appears deceptively easy (although it never is – only for perhaps the most schooled playwright), and it's under-appreciated.


So what does Travis do? He gives us nearly 5 pages filled with voice overs to explain two things: 1) the origin of Perseus and 2) lots of backstory about a current war that’s waging between the gods and mankind. Pages FILLED with voice overs! The gods need mankind to worship them, as worship is their source of power, but man has turned their backs on the gods in pursuit of art, invention, self-determination, etc. So the gods have chosen to wage war in order to keep mankind in awe and fear so they will continue to worship them. We’re given so many images of massive war scenes and of minotaurs colliding with human armies that are operating clockwork soldiers (?):

The bronze automata ratchet their arms, raising battle-axes. The storming beast armies crash into the charging humans. The spring-loaded arms of the clockwork soldiers SNAP down in a wave that rolls along the front...

Now, I must point out that the first thing one notices in Kasdan’s revision is that he got rid of all of that insipid, amateurish voice over. He establishes all of these same plot elements in only 3 pages with almost no dialogue. Yes, really. A dog runs through fields of dead soldiers, sneaks into the Palace of Acrisius (and past Acrisius himself who’s arguing about how to achieve victory), and then into the bedchamber of Danae, who in this version is the wife of Acrisius, not the daughter. The dog transforms into a man who looks just like Acrisius and takes advantage of her. Later, the dog leaves and is nearly killed by Acrisius who hates dogs. Cut to a wordless scene where they throw a weeping Danae (and son) into a coffin and toss the coffin out to sea. Then, Acrisius wakes in his bed from a nightmare. An earthquake begins. He’s condemned verbally by Zeus. The foundations of the palace break. The earth opens up and swallows Acrisius.

Kasdan’s opening is, as Hitchcock always called it, pure cinema. I’ll gladly take Kasdan’s opening over the versions by both Travis Beacham and Beverley Cross, although what Kasdan wrote probably wasn’t achievable in Cross’s day. Yet, Cross accomplished similar goals via good, quality craftsmanship that should be admired.


How Beacham fails in his opening sequence is in the way that he was too high-level about this system that exists between gods and man, about a war (and providing many expensive images of that war) and later, an overly-intellectualized debate on Olympus about peace. All of it is cold, uninviting, and hollow to us. None of this moves us emotionally because we have yet to find an entry point into this story through characters, which won’t arrive until at least page 10. That’s where Cross and Kasdan succeeded. Instead of having the birth of Perseus EXPLAINED to us, we EXPERIENCE his origin story THROUGH SCENES, which makes us feel the emotions the characters are feeling IN THAT MOMENT. You cannot glide over it. You cannot be high-level about it. You have to present a story in the trenches through the eyes of the characters. The scripts of Kasdan and Cross are built upon characters we can feel and whose actions push the story forward.

I’m not even done bitching about characters. My biggest complaint has to be the fact that Perseus, the hero destined to bring peace to mankind, is a weak, passive protagonist. The story design makes him weak, which is less satisfying, because you can’t root for a hero that’s un-motivated and not pushing this adventure forward. An example - the king of Joppa agrees to marry his daughter off to a demigod (Perseus) to appease the gods and bring peace to the war. Thus, Perseus is plucked from his home, taken to Joppa, and told he has to marry Andromeda before even meeting her. He does not fall in love with her. And after her mother misspoke in the temple about her beauty just as in the original film, Perseus agrees to save Andromeda simply because he was the chosen one and the hero destined to bring peace. That’s it. He never goes to save Andromeda because HE wanted to save her, because HE was in love with her, or because HE had a personal stake at all in what happened to her or in Joppa.

There is a line in the script that perfectly encapsulates everything that’s wrong with Perseus as a protagonist. When he’s taken to the King of Joppa, they discover that Andromeda had snuck out and they ask Perseus to go find her and bring her back. Beacham writes:

EXT. STREETS OF JOPPA – NIGHT

Perseus roams, half purposefully.

SCREENWRITING 101 – YOU CANNOT HAVE AN UNDER-MOTIVATED HERO PROTAGONIST. Beverley Cross gave Perseus every reason under the sun to go on this adventure, the highest reasons a writer can give a hero protagonist – TRUE LOVE, PEACE, and a little SEX. Hehehe… Who can’t sympathize with that? Who wouldn’t root for that? He was called to be a hero. He accepted the calling. He obtained supernatural aid. He rose to the challenge. He crossed the threshold, and he succeeded. That’s a hero’s journey. What happens in this script? He does what he is “destined” to do. Pre-destination is a terrible narrative, because it lacks motivation and robs the story of tension. Let me add that essential to a hero’s journey is the threat of death. Here, Perseus is invulnerable as his wounds quickly heal because he’s a demigod, and all this does is rob the story of more tension.


Not only that, Beacham gave us horribly weak antagonists. And there is no careful, loving devotion to suspense whatsoever. Do you recall in the original Clash film that we saw the Kraken in action in Act One so that we would fear his return in the end? Of course, that does not happen here, and Beacham had to resort to SO much dialogue in order to try to instill fear about what he called “the Leviathan.” Cross had it right. Show the Kraken in the beginning so that it requires no explanation and use dialogue to instill fear about Medusa.

The worst scene had to be the encounter with Medusa, which was only a pale shadow of the original film. Remember what we said in the last article about all the ways they made that Medusa scene great? None of those points are evident here. He has Perseus and another soldier enter the temple wearing blindfolds. Medusa just shows up. No great introduction. She does not have her famous bow and arrow. Nor does she have acid for blood. She simply sneaks up behind the soldiers and unties their blindfolds in order to get them to look at her. Are you kidding me? If you’re going to do a remake, you have to make a scene like this one BIGGER and BETTER and MORE TENSE, not less.

Now, other soldiers are fighting some centaurs outside on the island as Perseus takes on Medusa inside. Some soldiers survive. Because those soldiers are still alive on the island, when Perseus exits the temple with Medusa’s head, we are robbed of the iconic image known around the world of Perseus holding up Medusa’s head.

He walks out with her head in a bag. He couldn’t hold her head up because it would kill his fellow soldiers.

Speaking of Medusa, an ironic thing happens on the way to the meeting with the three witches (and one glass eye). One night by the camp fire, Perseus simply asks Cheops, the singing poet / storyteller, to tell the story of Medusa. OH SO COINCIDENTALLY. In the original film, it wasn’t until after they visit the witches that Ammon, the playwright (Burgess Meredith), told the story of Medusa, which is the way it should be. It’s not until after we learn that Perseus has to defeat Medusa that we’ll want to know her story. Because we’re asking ourselves, “Who is this monster?” “What’s she like?”

Speaking of the witches, there was ZERO tension in that scene. Perseus asks another soldier: “Will they give us any trouble?” The reply: “No, they owe me,” and he then goes on to explain why. Then the soldier speaks to the witches on behalf of Perseus!

The scenes with Pegasus also lacked tension. They just so happen to come upon a bunch of Pegassi and just so happen to try to mount one for fun (despite the fact the clock is ticking on Andromeda’s life, but Perseus has no real motivation anyway, so who cares, right?). Well, Perseus fails with the horse. Later, for reasons I’m not going to explain, Perseus simply summons with his mind a Pegasus who comes to his rescue and then he flies to Joppa to save the day. In the original film, the moment with Pegasus was far more important and meaningful because Perseus desperately needed Pegasus’ help and they bonded. Here, there’s no emotional connection between them at all.


There is also another problem, which is quite common in amateur scripts. There is an over-emphasis on prosy, novel-like action lines. Beacham gets so caught up in the descriptions of the setting and this world he’s imagining and how everything works, that he loses sight of his scenes. You do not sell your scenes by your action lines. You sell your scenes by what happens in that scene, how it plays out. That’s what’s important, never how well you write the action lines. Only the most minimal words should be used to describe setting and action.

Remember the ferry that took Perseus and a few soldiers to see Medusa? Here’s Beacham’s ferry:

EXT. THE TETHYS SEA - DAY

The prow of the trireme cuts the ice sheets. Rows of oars slice the ice with a mechanical rhythm like the legs of a millipede, pulling the boat thru at an arrow's pace.

INT. BELOW DECK - CONTINUOUS

Sweltering, dark, and loud. SHUDDERING pipes. HISSING steam. RUMBLING gears and pinions.

CHARON, a grizzled old explorer who never went home, shovels coal into the furnace and slams the hatch.

He walks past rows of benches and his "crew"- mechanical oarsmen of tarnished brass, clockwork automata powered by the boiler. Rowing, tireless.

Charon dons heavy furs before climbing out onto the-

EXT. UPPER DECK - CONTINUOUS

Caked in an icy slick. The men huddle around meager coal stoves in a gray mist, slashed by flecks of snow.

No one speaks. Just the STACCATO RHYTHM of the oars, the GROANING of the hull, and the deep SNAPPING of the ice.

INT. HOLD - DAY

Cluttered with barrels and bundles of rope...

How do any of these details matter – the fact that Charon shovels coal into a furnace in order to operate rows of mechanical oarsmen that will play no part in the story or that he’s donning heavy furs? The point of this scene is Perseus - his preparations, his emotions, and you have to concentrate on HIS story, not all these extraneous, inconsequential details. Remember the Dark Knight script? They had no time for details, sightseeing, explanations of processes, etc.

Another example from pg 29: “Gooseflesh prickles the nape of her neck.” Do we really see this? Is this a close-up of her neck? Does he even know the principles about writing the shots?


I’m going to stop here. Without giving away the story, and believe me, I avoided so very much, I have to say one thing. I mentioned in the last article how this is the kind of story where the filmmakers must have the courage of their convictions. That is, they must know what the story is and tell it. It’s that simple. Clash of the Titans has always been a romantic adventure with Perseus fighting for the love of his life. Either have the courage to tell that story or don’t tell it all.

Next, the script review of Kasdan's revision.

-MM

Screenwriting News & Links! 10/26/08

Hey guys,

Coming Tuesday, a review of Travis Beacham’s Clash of the Titans script followed by a review of Larry Kasdan’s revision.

Hope you’re well,

-MM

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Free Online Film Books!

- Jonathan Rosenbaum - Moving Places: A Life at the Movies

- Andrew Horton and Stuart Y. McDougal (eds) - Play It Again, Sam: Retakes on Remakes

- John M. Frame - Theology at the Movies

- William C. Wees - Light Moving in Time: Studies in the Visual Aesthetics of Avant-Garde Film

- David Bordwell - Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema

- Barton Byg - Landscapes of Resistance: The German Films of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub

- Charles Musser - Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company

- Thomas J. Saunders - Hollywood in Berlin: American Cinema and Weimar Germany

- Gene Youngblood - Expanded Cinema

- Jennifer E. Langdon - Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood

- Robert Philip Kolker - The Altering Eye

- Donald Richie - Japanese Cinema

- Nöel Burch - To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema

(Hat-tip to Catherine Grant & Film Studies for Free. Thank you!)

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Bono to write for the NYT whose profits have dropped 82%.

Hollywood Movies Still Thrive During Tough Times
"When the going gets tough, consumers go to the movies," said Derek Baine, senior analyst at SNL Kagan. "Historically, theaters have been fairly recession proof, and this year looks to be no exception."

The art of avoiding writer's block
…Nor should you get hung up on perfectionism. Don't assume you are writing anything more than a draft, and always leave yourself enough time to revise it once you've finished the last sentence. Delay putting pen to paper and you may be forced to complete an assignment by an unachievable deadline, which would be even more daunting. Instead, set yourself easy targets, and once you get going you may find yourself reaching way beyond them. It isn't helpful to have the sneaking suspicion you could be the next Ernest Hemingway, either. You'll find it inhibiting, and anyway you're not. Even if you are, no one will find out unless you write something. Treat it as a job that has to be done, rather than a rare chance to share your genius.

Del Toro on writing The Hobbit:
Can you talk a little bit about the process of working as one of four writers, and maybe it’s a navigation that’s still being borne out, but what is the process literally?
Well the strange thing - as we got to the most - I mean I work in collaboration a lot. I normally write alone in the Spanish Language films, or I - I have even written Hellboys as a screenplay writer alone, but I’m used to collaboration. Sometimes with one, or sometimes with two writers, like in Devils Backbone. I mean it’s not as a cumbersome project as one might think, because in reality Peter, Fran and Philippa are a single person. You know they really are like born out of Catholic dogma - its Father Son and Holy Spirit, [Anthony quietly laughs] - you cannot distinguish them. I mean I can tell you where each of them brings something different to the process - Philippa is kind of the Oracle of the Law - and she knows. But so is Fran! She doesn’t think that she is - she claims “well I don’t remember much but” that preface is always followed by a scholarly citation about the Dwarves mining or whatever subject you want. And Peter, Peter and I come to it always from the intuitive film making audience engaging and so forth. The more I read of Tolkien, analogue Tolkien, and so forth, the more I feel that the task is going to be perfectly balanced because basically what you do is a ping pong. One of the groups finishes one part of the task and then bounces it off the other part of the group. And in this case it’s not four groups, it’s one - its two groups, and eventually it will be completely fused. I mean, that’s happened to me with the other writers...


Bag Lady Turned Screenwriter
But 27-year-old former Sydneysider Kathryn Eismann, who launches her new book What Does Your Bag Say About You with appearances on Good Morning America next week said she's to busy to settle on one man at the moment. "I'm enjoying meeting new people but I don't have a serious handbag at the moment, only a few clutches," she told Confidential from New York. After a stint back in Sydney, Eismann returned to the Big Apple six months ago, a place where she initially tasted success with her first book How To Tell A Man By His Shoes at 21. She has now turned her hand to screenwriting, working on a screenplay of her first book.

Ripley's New Director
The long-gestating Ripley's Believe It or Not! has found a new lease on life at Paramount Pictures. Harry Potter and Home Alone director Chris Columbus is in talks to direct the project, according to Variety. Tim Burton dropped out of the project in 2007. Jim Carrey remains attached to star as Robert Ripley, the titular explorer.

Screenwriter: Movie Racists Meant to be Tar Heels
Recall the dust-up over The Express, the new biopic on the life of Ernie Davis, the first black Heisman Trophy winner. The film portrays a Davis visit to play the West Virginia Mountaineers as an ugly near-riot of racist antics and incitement from the stands. Trouble is, it never happened. This little oversight predictably sent the folks of West Virginia into orbit. The upset reached the halls of state government, including the governor. In an evident attempt to quell the uproar screenwriter Charles Leavitt wrote to Gov. Joe Manchin this week. Don’t blame me for the WVa thing Leavitt wrote, as the AP reports: “But screenwriter Charles Leavitt told Gov. Joe Manchin this week that the scene was supposed to depict a 1958 game at Tar Heels Stadium in North Carolina — a choice that also displayed artistic license. ‘When I saw the film for the first time, I was as surprised as you were to see West Virginia inserted in place of North Carolina,’ Leavitt wrote Manchin in an Oct. 20 letter. Leavitt, who also sent the governor a copy of his script, told Manchin he apologized for the depiction while noting it was ‘something I had no hand in.’”


On John Lasseter’s Success
Heart. Inventiveness. Inspiration. These are Lasseter's own hallmarks, visible in everything from the free education available to Pixar employees to the imaginative way he works with Pixar's "Brain Trust," a group of directors who play a pivotal role on each film. The Brain Trust is critical to Pixar's success. It gets together regularly to look at work done by other directors and comment candidly.


Here’s a blast from the past. In March, 2007, I wrote an article about Disney’s Rapunzel. We talked about all of the promises Glen Keane, master animator, made to the media about how this would be the most gorgeously rendered animated film ever produced. But then an article on Jim Hill Media pointed out that the story was in trouble, that John Lasseter gave Keane a deadline to fix it or he’s off the project. So we looked at the original story, which is quite awful on so many levels, and people STILL leave comments on that old Rapunzel article with ideas about how to fix the story. Well, we know now from Ain’t It Cool that Glen Keane is no longer the co-director of Rapunzel not only because of story problems but also health reasons, too. The reins have been handed over to Byron Howard & Nathan Greno, who were the co-directors and heads of story on the new Bolt film. Plus, a NEW article on Jim Hill Media tells us that “while Rapunzel's story reels have gotten noticeably stronger over the past 18 months... In the end, Glen & Dean were never able to solve this project's main story problem. Which is that -- once Rapunzel gets trapped in her tower -- this fairy tale goes stale. This is why John Lasseter & Ed Catmull were forced to do what they did on both American Dog and Rapunzel. As the new heads of WDAS, they have a responsibility to deliver commercially viable animated features that will then go to entertain a mass audience.” And now Byron and Nathan have to wade through six years of development and find a workable storyline for Disney's holiday 2010 release.


Bourne Writer Confirmed for Army of Two Flick
We mentioned in passing this morning that Electronic Arts was going to be working on a movie of Army of Two. Well, the company has now confirmed that not only is the project green-lighted (green-lit?) with Universal Studios but that a writer has been appointed. The scribe in question is Scott Z. Burns who is responsible for the not better than James Bond (oh, it is) Bourne Ultimatum. According to IMDB he was also the producer on Al Gore's eco-scary An Inconvenient Truth, so we might get more than usual video game as terrible movie outing. (Here's how the screenwriter described his take on the flick on Variety's game blog: “The ambiguity of these private military corporations lends weight to an intelligent thriller with relevance to what's going on in the world right now. You have contractors with their own agendas, and two guys whose friendship supersedes all the politics. I told EA right off the bat I wasn't a gamer, and that appealed to them because they didn't want to simply replicate the game.”)

The Five Paths for Australian Screenwriters

Here’s an interview with a new, unknown screenwriter and contest winner David Ebeltoft - Part One and Part Two:
Can you tell the readers a little about You Were Once Called Queen City? How long did it take you to complete?
The script is about Danny Mesersmits, a past-obsessed teenager, who is trying to decide whether to follow in the wrestling footsteps of his deceased father, a local legend. It’s set in a sweet, mid-western town and contains a quirky collection of small-town idiots dusting up situations that sometimes help and other times hinder Danny’s decision. When an unexpected tragedy occurs Danny has to come to terms with his past so he can deal with the present and face his future. It took about two years to obtain the draft I submitted for contest consideration… (Note to Danny: Don’t ever call your own characters “idiots.” That doesn’t help sell your story. -MM)

MSU film grad says perseverance is key to career in Hollywood

Who knew?

Coming Soon: a Das Kapital adaptation:
What with the humbling of some of the world's grandest banks, and the improbable success of John Sergeant as a hoofer in Strictly Come Dancing, the world has been moving in mysterious ways. But few as mysterious as the current climb up Germany's bestseller lists of Karl Marx's Das Kapital - a book which, like Finnegans Wake, A Brief History Of Time and À la recherche du temps perdu, tends to be more bought than read. The philosopher whose aim was to “reveal the law of motion of modern society” has become as fashionable as this season's colour on the catwalk. Marx's German publisher says sales have been soaring since the summer. Some people must be reading Marx's fifth step of the ten essential steps to communism - “centralisation of credit in the hands of the state” - and smacking their foreheads in recognition, as if something they read in their newspaper horoscope that day actually has just come to pass. Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, has been photographed reading Das Kapital. Germany's Finance Minister, Peer Steinbrück, recently said: “Certain parts of Marx's thinking are really not so bad”. Pope Benedict XVI has praised Marx's “great analytical skill”. So far this year 40,000 tourists have visited Marx's birthplace in Trier. And - are you ready? - director Alexander Kluge is making a movie out of Das Kapital.

Five questions with Beau Thorne, Max Payne screenwriter
Not among the questions: "What the hell were you thinking?"

Final Draft Honors Stephen J. Cannell at Annual Event
(I share this because this was the first event in which they actually put “Mystery Man” on the VIP list, thanks to my dear friend & editor in chief of Script Mag. I didn’t go. I was tempted. Hehehe…)


Cruising: The Sound of Violence
In a famous essay of the early 1980s titled "The Incoherent Text," the British critic Robin Wood drew special attention to William Fredikin's Cruising (1980) - a film which had been vilified by many gay critics - as "extremely audacious" because "its surface is deliberately fractured, the progress of the narrative obscured." But Wood added that, despite or perhaps because of its formal experimentation, the film was "not necessarily artistically successful." In his analysis, Wood compared Cruising to Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) and Richard Brooks's Looking for Mr Goodbar (1977), and this corpus was founded on a gnawing ambiguity: was the incoherence of these texts, their dynamic contradictions, voluntary or involuntary, crafted or merely symptomatic?

The cinema of William Friedkin presents, in fact, a richly ambiguous borderline case within contemporary American cinema. Rather than evoking Scorsese and Brooks, one might place Friedkin's work within a certain cinema of hysteria that includes auteurs like Oliver Stone, Mike Figgis, Adrian Lyne, Tony Scott, and Zalman King - or, further back, Ken Russell. The cinema of hysteria is a mode of filmmaking that actively cultivates incoherence: structured upon moment-to-moment spectacular effect, it aims for the sudden gasp, the revelatory dramatic frisson, the split-second turn-around of meaning or mood, the disorientating gear-change into high comedy or gross tragedy. Many Friedkin films, from The Exorcist (1973) to Rampage (1992), artfully evoke an intense atmosphere of hysteria - within both the fiction, and its spectators. Yet, at the same time, his films also display a level of control that acknowledges a large debt to the classical cinema of Ford, Hawks or Lang. And so it is within the highly coherent incoherence of Cruising that we can locate its substantial artistic success, and evaluate it as one Friedkin's finest works.



Tomas Alfredson, director of Let the Right One In, which is currently at 97% on the Critic’s TomatoMeter (red band trailer above), says in an L.A. Times interview that he found his inspiration in paintings:
FOR SWEDISH director Tomas Alfredson, the eyes have it -- that scary quality just right for horror. So when Alfredson set out to make the eerie film Let the Right One In, about the friendship that develops between two adolescents -- one of whom happens to be a vampire -- he didn't watch any horror movies for inspiration. Instead, he studied paintings to see how they used "eye-to-eye contact," he says. "I studied Renaissance painters; one, called Hans Holbein, has a very strange way of dealing with eyes." Alfredson was especially taken with Holbein's 1538 painting "Edward VI as a Child." The prince, Alfredson says, "is looking outside the frame and under it. It's very strange and very scary." (See also the GreenCine round-up of articles.)

A few Hans Holbein images:


Q&A with Jonathan Demme
"I think this is the best work that I've ever done," declares director Jonathan Demme of his new film, Rachel Getting Married, and as Demme has done such work as The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, Stop Making Sense and Something Wild, among many others...

U.S. writers to go on tour de France
Gallic film commission Film France has teamed up with the WGA to launch France Unlimited Access, a program that takes 10 Hollywood scribes on an eight-day tour of Gallic landmarks to encourage them to develop story ideas set in that country. John August (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), Michael Brandt (Wanted), Michael Dougherty (Superman Returns), Derek Haas (3:10 to Yuma), Edward Neumeier (Starship Troopers), Duncan Tucker (Transamerica) and Rita Hsiao (Toy Story 2) have signed up for the tour, set to take place in Paris and the South of France from Nov. 6-13.


Times Are Changing for J. Michael Straczynski
With the release of Changeling, Straczynski’s first feature screenwriting credit and the latest directorial effort for Clint Eastwood, starring Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich, Straczynski has turned into a wanted man in Hollywood. His list of upcoming collaborators reads like the guest list at a Steven Spielberg dinner party: Tom Hanks, Ron Howard, Paul Greengrass, Tom Cruise, the Wachowski brothers. In between working on numerous scripts for these (now-fellow) A-listers, Straczynski took a break to speak with [us] about his transformation into an in-demand Hollywood scribe and the challenges of trying to make the truly unbelievable real-life story of Christine Collins and her lost son seem believable. (Plus, here’s a Time Magazine interview.)

Shock: Straczynski’s Changeling a splat on the Critic’s TomatoMeter. The consensus: “Beautifully shot and well-acted, Changeling is a compelling story that unfortunately gives in to convention too often.” This begs the question: “was the writing all that great?” A.O. Scott wrote: “The truth about the case of Christine Collins is so shocking and dramatic that embellishment must have seemed pointless, but in sticking so close to the historical record, Mr. Straczynski and Mr. Eastwood have produced a distended, awkward narrative whose strongest themes are lost in the murky pomp of period detail.”

Malkovich Directs Zach Helm’s Play in Mexico City
Actor, producer and director John Malkovich, who directed a French version of Zach Helm's THE GOOD CANARY in Paris last year, will now direct a new production of the play in Spanish. EL BUEN CANARIO will be open on November 26 at Teatro de Los Insurgentes in Mexico City for a ten-week run…. The Paris production, which was the play's world premiere, received more Moliere nominations than any in 2007 -- six -- and also garnered the French Crystal Globe Award for Best Play. Helm's debut screenplay, STRANGER THAN FICTION, received the PEN USA Award for Best Screenplay...



A round-up here on I’ve Loved You So Long (Now sitting at 91% on the Critic’s TomatoMeter. Trailer above. I’m SO there! Hehehe...)

Bardem signs up for Iñárritu's Biutiful See also Variety’s article:
Pic is about a man embroiled in shady dealings who is confronted by a childhood friend, now a policeman. (This follows Iñárritu's well-publicized falling out with writing collaborator Guillermo Arriaga over the credit on Babel.)

McG to direct 'Dead Spy Running'
Warner Bros. has acquired "Dead Spy Running," an upcoming spy novel by British author Jon Stock for McG to direct that would serve as a launch of a franchise character. While story details are under wraps, the book, the first of a trilogy, aims to reinvent the spy genre. It tells the origin story of newly trained spy in a tone that mixes The Bourne Identity with the works of John Le Carre. "Running" sold to a HarperCollins imprint in a bidding war and will be published in 2009. (McG also has a blog on the Terminator Salvation production.)


Seth Green told Moviehole that he’s going to direct a big screen adaptation of Freshmen, the comic book series he co-created with friend Hugh Sterbakov. Green says they’re “writing the feature, and we’re gonna make it when it’s ready”. They are currently looking for a studio to finance, which will likely require a $35 million budget.

Sherlock Holmes Script Review
We just finished the Mike-Johnson-written script of Sherlock Holmes that's currently being shot by Guy Ritchie in London. At best it's fun, harmless romp through the Holmes mythos, revitalized for audiences assimilated with the Bourne-style, action, smarts and authenticity vibe. At worst its Pirates of the Caribbean set in Scotland yard - mindless, escapist entertainment that's trite and hokey. But the Bourne-angle is how they draw you in. 'Sherlock 2000' (what we like to sardonically call it) is no more realistic than say Indiana Jones 3 (its not quite as ridic as Indy 4) and from we get from the script, we shouldn't expect anything much more than a fun PG-13-ish summer popcorn flick with a smidgen of edge unless Ritchie can really dig into this thing, but there's not a ton of depth to mine.

Apparently, there’s a controversy over The Watchmen ending.


Early reviews of Quantum of Solace are mixed.

Marc Forster won’t be back to direct the next Bond
"They offered me the next one, but at this point the pressure is so intense — it's a year of not having a life. And I don't know if I want to do that again. It's literally not having a life, and I mean that, it's not exaggerated. I feel like life is short, you have to find a balance."

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On Synecdoche, New York:

In light of the fact that there is so much noise in the media right now about Kaufman’s new film, I have re-posted below my script review, which I wrote in May, 2007. Plus, I’ve added new pictures. It was the most agonizingly difficult review because it’s so strange.

I still recall vividly my feelings at the time. Reading that script was a deeply unsettling and exhaustively depressing experience. I felt somehow damaged by it. A feeling of melancholy settled over me. I wrote, “Why put an audience through so much sadness? Is the world so happy right now that we have to pay to be reminded of all this gloom? Is it really admirable and praiseworthy for an artist to do nothing more than to be a bit creative about shit and death? It’s not even the fact that it’s sad that bothers me but that it’s just repetitiously chronicled without any redeeming emotional lift in the end.” In fact, this brings to mind an article on Fatal Flaws in Screenwriting where I quoted Ebert who talked about Chaos, the most nihilistic film ever made. He said, “As the Greeks understood tragedy, it exists not to bury us in death and dismay, but to help us to deal with it, to accept it as a part of life, to learn about our own humanity from it. That is why the Greek tragedies were poems: The language ennobled the material… What I object to most of all in Chaos is not the sadism, the brutality, the torture, the nihilism, but the absence of any alternative to them. If the world has indeed become as evil as you think, then we need the redemptive power of artists, poets, philosophers and theologians more than ever. Your answer, that the world is evil and therefore it is your responsibility to reflect it, is no answer at all, but a surrender.”

That, to me, is how Kaufman failed in his own unique way.

But I could be wrong.

So far, it has a higher rating on the Tomatometer than Straczynski’s Changeling, if you can imagine that.

Of course, there is ZERO audience for this film and Synecdoche, New York will tank if/when it gets a wide release. But here’s my question: is it a good story that’s worth telling?

I turned to my most trusted critic, James Berardinelli, and what he wrote eerily mirrored my own thoughts:

Synecdoche, New York is relentlessly bleak. That in and of itself is not a problem but it eliminates any joy that might result in unraveling Kaufman's mind-benders. The director doesn't want viewers to enjoy themselves watching this movie. It is meant to be uncomfortable and challenging and, assuming those to be his objectives, he succeeds. Kaufman's previous films ventured along the razor's edge separating ponderous from insightful, but always had a strong enough narrative to anchor them. Here, any pretense of a coherent plot is jettisoned midway through the proceedings. We're left with a movie that becomes so bloated and self-important that it's tough to sit through. The final 30 minutes in particular are difficult because, by then, we've lost the connection to Caden. Synecdoche, New York is less a movie than a series of disjointed meditations on art, death, and the connection between the two. Viewers who love to ascribe meaning to the cryptic will have a field day. To me, it seems more like weirdness for weirdness' sake…

…I walked out of Synecdoche, New York feeling frustrated and a little cheated. If I look hard enough, I'm sure I could find something meaningful in the wreckage, but I don't feel compelled to dig through the detritus. Kaufman is inviting meaning-seekers to enjoy his masturbatory ride. He has sacrificed plot, character, and logic on the altar of self-aggrandizement. Yes, parts of the film work. Individual scenes are funny, or poignant, or thought-provoking. But the picture as a whole is a mess. Some will call this art. I'll content myself with thinking of it as an ambitious misstep by a creative individual who failed to realize what he was trying to represent.

But yet, Manohla Dargis loved it: To say that Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York is one of the best films of the year or even one closest to my heart is such a pathetic response to its soaring ambition that I might as well pack it in right now.

So here’s a round-up of critical thoughts:

Jonathan Rosenbaum: It seems more like an illustration of his script than a full-fledged movie, proving how much he needs a Spike Jonze or a Michel Gondry to realize his surrealistic conceits.

Michael Joshua Rowin: There is little precedent, cinematic or otherwise, for Synecdoche, New York… Sure, early on in his directorial debut, maestro screenwriter Charlie Kaufman namechecks Kafka to prepare us for the increasingly claustrophobic surrealism that engulfs author-surrogate Caden Cotard (a phenomenal Philip Seymour Hoffman), while the character's psychotic, Borgesian obsession with artistic fidelity to real life is approached with the same matter-of-fact bemusement as Buñuel - this isn't entirely unfamiliar territory, at least to begin with. But as it becomes more and more frustrated in its attempt to reconcile personal entropy with creative perfection, Synecdoche proves that even from the ingenious, hilarious and, clearly, tortured mind of the man who might be this country's greatest current contributor to the art of storytelling, it is like nothing else we've quite seen…

Fernando F Croce: The artistic psyche has never been more joylessly explored… Synecdoche is a reminder of what a dead-end brilliant screenwriting conceits can be when left by themselves on the screen.... Freed from the influence of collaborators, Kaufman wallows in his thematic fixations like a dieting matron lunging at a box of bonbons.

Elbert Ventura: A whimper against creeping mortality, Synecdoche, New York can border on the insufferable. Caden flagellates himself with such single-mindedness that you can’t help but want to escape his whiny company. Endless though this hall of mirrors may seem at times, it is also frequently brilliant. Kaufman’s script is a wonder of lapidary craft (only the Coens write screenplays as precise and poetic). Synecdoches and stand-ins, echoes and doubles, projections of a mind desperate for renewal, are seen everywhere. Bird flu in turkey? No—Turkey. A skin disease called sycocis—not psychosis. At one point Caden comes up with a title for his play: “Simulacrum.”

Rex Reed: Charlie Kaufman. Oy vay. I have hated every incomprehensible bucket of pretentious, idiot swill ever written by this cinematic drawbridge troll. But nothing that has belched forth from his word processor so far—not the abominable Being John Malkovich, the asinine Adaptation (Meryl Streep even worse than in Mamma Mia!), the artery-clogging Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (Chuck Barris from “The Gong Show” a secret operative for the C.I.A.?), not even the jabberwocky of Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind—prepared me for a bottom feeder like Synecdoche, New York. It is extremely doubtful that you will sit through all two-hours-plus of this obnoxious drivel—in fact, the fool producers who actually put up the money to finance it owe you a prize if you do—but even if Hollywood bought the myth of Charlie Kaufman, the latest Hollywood example of “the emperor’s new clothes,” as a writer … whatever did he do to convince sane people he could be a director, too?

David Edelstein: This epic dream play with its leaps through time and space, its characters and shadow characters, poses a momentous question: Uh... well... I'm not sure what question the movie is posing. The answer, though, is definitely 'Death…'" The best thing to do with one's spatial-temporal bewilderment is get over it and go with the free-associational flow: Synecdoche cannot be diagrammed.

Mark Haslam: No doubt, it's got some great ideas about space and time which seem natural to film; but they're not put together in any cohesive way. Things are jumbled, uneven. Leaving the theater, I couldn't escape the thought of what would've been if Kaufman had given things more time, allowed the form to unfold itself, gradually over time, so that we feel time slipping away from us as it slips away from Caden, so that the approach of the film's end really is that gradual approach of Death.

Karina Longworth: The film "is impeccably acted, inventively designed, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, and often devastatingly sad... It was also still such a mystery to me after two viewings that I found it hard to trust my own vocabulary to describe what the experience of watching it is actually like. But [in The Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert] Burton, rambling on 400 years before the fact, seems to nail it, or at least part of it: a life where the madness of creativity and the madness of love/lust are constantly exchanged for one another, to the point where [pleasure] from either is unattainable. But it's also about the fear of death, the impossibility of romance in the absence of longing, the instinct to project our desires on to others and to seek answers about ourselves in mirror images. In other words, as theater director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) says of his own life's work, 'It's about everything.'"

Jürgen Fauth: ...an overambitious meta-narrative about a director producing an overambitious meta-narrative. From the punny title to the bitter end, Synecdoche, New York is driven by its creator and main character's desperate attempts to address the grand themes - art, love, life, and death. The one self-referential twist that Kaufman didn't intend: both the play-within-the-movie and the movie itself are disastrous failures.

Richard Corliss: The obvious inspiration is Federico Fellini's 8½, in which Guido, a moviemaker with director's block, is beset by memories and fantasies as he dodges all the women in his life, from mother to wife to whore to mistress to muse… Kaufman has constructed a most devious puzzle, a labyrinth of an endangered mind. Yet it's one that - thanks in large part to a superb cast, led by Hoffman's unsparing, sympathetic, towering performance - should delight viewers who both work the movie out and surrender to its spell.

Dana Stevens: Synecdoche, New York is a very sad movie for two reasons. First off, the story, about a theater director who's sucked into the vortex of his own impossible artistic ambitions, is unremittingly bleak, making for one of the most depressing nondocumentary films you're likely to see, well, ever. But secondly - and in the long run, more movingly - Synecdoche is sad because it's a constant reminder, a ghostly double, of the great movie it could have been.

Scott Foundas: ...Synecdoche is a partly confessional, partly satirical investigation into the creative process - and the notion (or the absurdity thereof) that art can lead to understanding.

And now the interviews:

"Oh, God almighty," said Hope Davis when asked to describe the film. Michael Ordoña meets her for the Los Angeles Times.

From the Kaufman interview at /Film:
Do you typically write your films hoping that audience will require multiple viewings?
Yes. Well, I think it makes it more interesting for an audience to have some complexity in the material, and also, I’ve got this sort of thing where I’m trying to make it feel like it’s a living piece of theater, as opposed to a set, sort of a pre-recorded thing. And it’s sort of a tricky thing to try to make film feel alive because it isn’t. So this way, it can change when you watch it again at a different point in your life, or just seeing it for the second time, you’re going to see things you couldn’t possibly see the first time because you didn’t know something until the end. But, also, you get to look at details. You can watch things that are happening in the background of scenes that are informative that you probably don’t see the first time through when you’re just trying to get the thing. So that’s why.

indieWIRE’s interview with Kaufman:
Can you say something about your mental process when you are writing?
I often have a theme in mind when I'm starting. I know that I want everytihing to be in a world of, say, evolution, or guilt. But also I do a lot of things intuitively. I'm not often consciously aware of what I'm doing. It's like in a dream: There's something going on that's powerful but you don't know exactly why. As I'm writing, though, I start to see connections, and themes I didn't see, and that sparks other things. So then I go back and rewrite things or alter them. It's a combination of intuition and a lot of finessing. It becomes a combination of the rational and the irrational. I always go in circles. I have OCD to a certain extent, so I tend to do a lot of circular thinking. I think I do have OCD a bit.

More interviews with GreenCine, FilmCatcher, Fresh Air, Michael Guillén, Liz Ohanesian, Brent Simon, Steve Dollar, Jesse Hassenger, Ted Zee, and Andrew O'Hehir.

Official website. And here’s the press kit.

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On the Contest Circuit:

Movie Script Contest Announces Finalists

Spec Scriptacular Finalists Chosen

People's Pilot Finalists Chosen

netfilm.com Announces 2008 Split-Screenplay Contest Winners

Slamdance Announces 2008 Contest Winners and Finalists

Austin Fest Announces Contest Winners

CWA Announces Final Contest Results

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And Finally…

Something happy! “Directed by John Hughes” by one of my favorite YouTubers, Mr. Barringer82. Be sure to watch it to the very end.

Script Review - Synecdoche, New York

Hey guys,

I thought I’d add to all the noise in the media this weekend about Kaufman’s new film, Synecdoche, New York, by sharing my script review, which was originally posted on May 2, 2007.

-MM

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MM’s soul-searching metaphysical Synecdoche, NY, experience:

[MAJOR SPOILERS]

You can do this review, man. There is no script too difficult, right? You can and WILL find a way to get at the heart and soul and TRUTH of this outrageous epic of Charlie Kaufman. You love Charlie Kaufman. You can figure this out. You can find the truth through the process of writing a review. Okay, just relax. Look at it again.

It’s 152 pages. That’s incredibly long. What does that mean? Is this a burning piece of profound inspiration from a great writer? Or is this a first draft from a guy who’s just putting all of his thoughts down on paper? Or is this a matter of unchecked vanity? Has his fame caught up with him like M. Night Shyamalan’s who thinks his shit doesn’t stink when, in fact, his scripts still have to go through the normal process of rewrites until it’s molded to perfection?

Page 1. He forgot to write FADE IN, which is my favorite part of a script. But that’s okay. That’s not a bad sign. You’ll still find a way to love this. You'll get to the truth of it all. It’s Charlie Kaufman, ya know.

The opening kitchen scene is mundane to the point of being almost boring, which is surprising, disappointing, and yet confidence-building, because you know that there is a master design behind it all. I think this might be just a normal point of entry for everyone into what will be a very crazy story. There’s dual dialogue, which you don’t see often from pro writers. A radio talks about a luncheon in downtown Schnectady that I don’t think we ever see. There’s a subtle undercurrent of standard fare marital unhappiness between Caden and Adele. She talks to some woman on the phone. We see Adele wipe the bottom of their 4-year-old daughter, Olive. There are green smears on the toilet paper. Do we really see that? Ew. Caden isn’t feeling well. He seems distant from his family, lost in his own world. He cares more about his own illnesses, his career, the news he discovers about people dying than he does about the lives of the people right in front of him.

He visits dentists and doctors and they all give him worrying news that he isn’t well, although no one knows exactly what the problem is and they all tell him to keep coming back for more tests. There's a freak accident in a bathroom. A trip to an emergency room. Caden notices people screaming. The doctor’s concerned that there’s a deeper problem in him and asks about his bowel movements. You get the sense that this could be the beginning of the end for Caden. He visits an Opthamologist. He endures an MRI. He’s constantly checking his stools, and we, too, are forced to view the many strange incarnations of Caden's feces. Once, it’s “dark and loose,” later it’s “black” and even “grey.” He pees in a sink. His urine is “amber.” Is there value in showing amber urine and grey poop in film? What can it mean? Is it to get a laugh? Or is it about trying to show us physical manifestations of Caden’s inner turmoil? Or is it about showing poop on film?

He's a director of plays and there’s a girl in the box office who wants to have an affair with him. Her name is Hazel. Later, she sees a run-over dog on the road. She actually goes to look at it more closely. It’s a bloody, gory mess. Yet, it’s barely alive. The head moves. She bends down to pet it and says “You’re not going to make it, baby.” I think perhaps, it's an overt reference to Caden himself. It’s a grotesque moment, is it not? It’s horribly ugly, but it has meaning, doesn't it? Should we condemn Charlie for many other moments like this one in the film where we are forced to view stomach-churning ugliness that has meaning? She takes it in. We later see it sleeping in a box in the corner of her apartment.


Caden takes the phrase “passive protag” to new heights. He does nothing but be so self absorbed about his problems and his illnesses and his play-directing that he neglects everyone around him. He fails to fight for the child that Adele takes away from him. He never makes decisions - he only caves in to pressure. He’ll agree to sleep with certain girls only after they practically throw themselves at him for days on end without a care in the world about the fact that he’s married and trying to be faithful. But he caves in anyway, and when the sex is over, he cries like a baby and ruins the affair. In fact, he does this on more than one occasion. Doesn’t this kind of behavior turn off audiences? Why should they care about this man who is so weak? But this pattern continues – after crying and ruining affairs, he flips emotionally and suddenly commits to the girl of the moment and begs her like a child to take him back, which they won’t do. He’s always fighting for the wrong girl and never once fights for his own daughter. By constructing a character that goes against everything every screenwriting book ever told you to do, has Kaufman done something right? Is it always necessary to love the person you’re watching in a movie? By seeing someone make all the wrong choices and lose those things that are most precious to him, do we not benefit so that we will hopefully make the right choices?



But that is only one aspect of Caden’s arc. We see him plummet into an obsession about his death, about death itself, and we also see him become enveloped by his own fears and paranoia about his health and his feces and the end of his life. The world around him slowly transforms from reality to a world of the absurd where you see people living in burning houses and other strange occurrences like that moment when the Salvation Army Santa spastically clawed at his beard and revealed a tortured blue face and then he gasped for air and died. And as the world transforms into the bizarre like a slow-moving wave, all of the imagery points to only one thing, that Caden finds himself surrounded by death and decay everywhere he turns – people are dying or committing suicide or friends of friends pass away or his own parents pass away and we see many funerals. And like a slow-moving wave, I find myself deeply saddened by it all. Why put an audience through so much sadness? Is the world so happy right now that we have to pay to be reminded of all this gloom? Is it really admirable and praiseworthy for an artist to do nothing more than to be a bit creative about shit and death? It’s not even the fact that it’s sad that bothers me but that it’s just repetitiously chronicled without any redeeming emotional lift in the end. It is like watching a man fall to his death and there’s no hope for any new development except that he continues to fall, and no ending except that he dies. Pre-destination may be useful in theology, but as a narrative strategy, it’s a bit self-defeating, isn’t it?

Yes, Caden reacts to this and does something about it. We find that he’s a theatre director who had put on a strange play that became a megahit. He’s given a genius grant and he decides that he should write one final play that’s big and true and tough. And he puts his own screwed up life into the story and tries to find truth through that process and put that truth into his art. He has an actor play him and other actors play the women he screwed and there is some whimsical confusion about art imitating life imitating art imitating life.


And none of it satisfies me because it comes across as not redeeming (in the sense of the redemptive power of film art) but as self-absorbed, self-congratulatory, self-promoting, and I really hate to say it, but vain in an even more perverse way than when he literally put himself into in the movie Adaptation. Didn’t he already cover the “creative process” in Adaptation? Why do we have to go through this again? And is this really the best approach to Caden’s story? Instead of him channeling all of his anguish and self absorbed problems into a play, shouldn’t he be actively trying to fix the problems in his life? Isn’t that where we find truth about life in films? When the Greeks put on tragedies, was it always their solution to escape into art and put on more plays? I mean, come on, Charlie. I love you, but tell me - is this really about story and characters and themes or is this about Charlie Kaufman showing the world how brilliant Charlie Kaufman can be? Or is this simply about Charlie Kaufman struggling to be inventive and original and so he finds himself forced to go to peculiar extremes to outdo Charlie Kaufman?

God, ya know, I feel like I’m almost there. I think I’m getting closer to the truth. Yet, I still can’t put my finger on it. I don’t know how to convey this core truth in the review. I just have to keep writing. Let me ask this question - how is it that this story went from real to the bizarre? At some point, in the 120s or 130s, the novelty of the concept wore off and I was just waiting for the ending and the answer to what was really going on, which I never got. I think I have an idea. I think, perhaps, in Kaufman’s mind, Caden is a man already dead, a man living in a half-world between stasis and anti-stasis and he’s just trying to make sense of his life, which saddens me all the more, because Caden's view is on the one hand entirely selfish and on the other, when he finally looks outside of himself, he ONLY sees a world that's full of death and ugliness and his solution is to crawl into his artwork.

But you know, even that answer doesn’t fully satisfy me. I have to get to the core truth of this story…

Oh my God...

I see it now.

I know what to write. It’s

“Clash of the Titans,” Part 1

I’m in a Clash of the Titans state of mind. And I’d like to write reviews of the new scripts, the one by Travis Beacham, and the revision by Larry Kasdan. (All you studio boys, don’t fret. I won’t give away important plot points. Not that the world isn’t already familiar with the story, but here we’ll focus mainly on the craft of screenwriting.)

Now we cannot leap into remake territory without first discussing the original film. For you Netflix members, Clash can be seen instantly on your PC. (SO much fun!) I’m going to skip the overall plot of the film, as I’m sure most of my readers are already familiar with the story. It’s also available here. Plus, Mike Martinez wrote a blow-by-blow commentary of the film, which was quite a bit of fun. The script was written by Mr. Beverley Cross who was also known for writing Jason and the Argonauts, The Long Ships, Genghis Khan, and some uncredited work on Lawrence of Arabia. I don’t believe the Clash script is available online. But you’ll love this - Beverley was married to the always fabulous Maggie Smith for over 20 years from 1975 until his death in 1998. She’s also in the film, if you recall, playing the role of Thetis, mother of the deformed, devil-looking Calibos.

You remember Calibos, right?


This is what he actually looked like:


He was played by Neil McCarthy from Dr. Who. He died only four years after Clash’s release. Unfortunate, really. He was great.

Of course, the big star of the film was not Lawrence Olivier nor Maggie Smith nor Harry Hamlin, but rather, Ray Harryhausen, the grand-daddy of stop motion technology. Clash ultimately represented the last stand of his glorious, yet dying art form. There’s a new collection of Harryhausen classics on Blu Ray, and Ray himself (who is still very much alive and recently turned 88) was interviewed earlier this month.

They asked him, “Do you feel that even with special effects technology as advanced as it is today that stop motion can have a quality to it that has kept it alive, like your work, and the original Kong as I previously mentioned?” Ray replied, “Nothing has changed in the last 70 years except the sophistication of the technology. The real question one must always ask is: Does the film work as entertainment or not? If it doesn't work, all the expensive technology in the world won't make any difference.” Amen, brother! Preach it! Hehehe…


For those out there who love Clash of the Titans, I have a question for you. What is it that makes that film (and story) work for you?

I’ll offer three of my own:

1) You have the hero’s arc in Perseus, which was, frankly, a cheating shortcut version of a hero’s arc. How could he fail? He had Zeus watching his back! As if Zeus is going to let anything bad happen to his own son! Plus, Zeus gives him a helmet, a sword, and a shield, right? Perseus lost his helmet in the swamp fighting Calibos; he lost his shield in his battle with Medusa; and then he just clumsily left his sword in the carcass of Calibos when he killed him after dealing with those really big scorpions. What kind of irresponsible oaf is this? Hehehe…

2) It’s also a romantic adventure story, which still has its charms even today. You have the hero going to any lengths to fight for his true love. You have a heroine under a curse, wanting to be with her true love; her life is at stake and time is running out. A classic formula. Stakes don’t get much higher for a protagonist. You have obstacles to these goals in the form of cool, yet scary, Greek mythological creatures.

3) This is the kind of story that Ebert would say “has the courage of its convictions.” It can be scary to make a film like this because it can so easily dip into camp and before you know it, you have a bad film on your hands. But, thanks to Beverley Cross’ sure hand with the screenplay, this film knows what it is, has the courage to be true to itself, and to play it straight in order to make the audience really believe in it and go along with the story. The dialogue is smart enough so that audiences can sense that the filmmakers weren't completely thoughtless about the plot just so they could show a bunch of monsters. The words are carefully constructed, payoffs are given their proper setups, and thus, audiences are persuaded to buy into this story. The actors are emotionally committed to even the most preposterous of situations. And it’s not presented with an air of self-importance, either. It’s a perfectly innocent tale presented competently and economically and entertainingly and it’s content to do so and be nothing more. It takes courage to do that with this kind of material.

I watched Clash again last weekend, and I was impressed by the economical way Cross told this story. He doesn’t take 16 steps to get from Point A to Point B when you only need to 2 steps. The opening scene is filled with drama and explains the birth of Perseus. You have soldiers marching a coffin to a beach. A man by the name of Acrisius, who is the King of Argos, angrily denounces his own daughter for giving birth to a son out of wedlock and has her (complete with crying infant) sealed up in a coffin and bitterly thrown out into the crashing waves. Exposition has been fed to us through drama.


A white bird watches the proceedings and flies up to the court of Olympus where we learn that Zeus is the boy’s father and that Acrisius, despite his undying loyalty to Zeus, is going to get his ass kicked for what he’s done. Not only that, all of Argos will go down with him. More exposition through drama. Thus, the Kraken (actually stolen from Norse mythology) is released and wrecks havoc on a large scale to the thrill of audiences, because this is what they paid to see. But it also serves a purpose. The Kraken is unforgettably established, because he will be the big beastie Perseus must face in Act Three. This is screenwriting 101: the setup and payoff. You have to show us the Kraken in action early in the story so that we may fear him when he returns in the Third Act. Plus, this is great economical storytelling. All of this information – the origin of Perseus, the establishment of all the gods and Zeus and his judgment upon Argos, as well as the fearful destructive power of the Kraken, was all accomplished in 10 minutes.

That’s 10 pages of your script, because, generally speaking, one page of your screenplay should equal one minute of screen time.

Compare that to Travis Beacham’s script who began his story with at least 5 pages FILLED WITH VOICE OVER TO EXPLAIN THE BIRTH OF PERSEUS. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? HAVE YOUR LOST BLOODY MIND? FUCKING VOICE OVERS? ARE YOU THAT INEPT A STORYTELLER? IN CLASH, IT TOOK LESS THAN A MINUTE TO ESTABLISH HIS BIRTH.

Sorry, sorry... I’ll talk about Beacham’s script in my next article.


On the subject of economical storytelling, a very dear friend who shall remain anonymous is reading scripts for a notable contest, and I asked her, “what are common mistakes in all these scripts you're reading?”

She wrote:

I have to "read" a minimum 250 scripts. That sounds like a lot, but I'd say 60-70% of what I've looked at it is so far off the mark that I read the first 10 pages, last 5 pages and reject them. Like 20 misspellings on page one, dialogue that lasts 1-2 pages (!!), grammar so poor it hurts to read... Of the other 30-40%, written by writers who actually took the time to learn screenplay format somewhat and have control of basic English, I'm seeing a lot of the following:

-- Good dialogue, good pacing in the action description, but no story or uninteresting story
-- Great story/premise, but dialogue so wooden it hurts
-- Just plain bizarre

Very few have an interesting premise AND strong dialogue skills AND a grip on pacing. If the writer has a coherent story and can write dialogue, then it's pacing that makes or breaks the script. I've never been so conscious of the rate at which information is revealed before. I think it's an area I'm weak in, so it's a good lesson for me. I watched Tootsie again last week and am amazed how the first act works so economically. In one frame, Michael Dorsey is saying to his agent, "You're saying no one will work with me?" And then in the next frame, he's dressed as Tootsie on a NYC street. The audience didn't need to see him shop for clothes, find a wig, get dressed, etc. We see him walking down the street dressed as a matronly woman and do the math. (We know from the opening scenes that he's good with props and costumes, we know there's an opening on a soap opera for a woman, etc.) My tendency as a writer would be to show all of the in between steps. So now I'm thinking about my own scripts in this light.

See what I mean? Economical storytelling. Pacing. Great dialogue. Plus, a writer ought to know how to write, and a screenplay ought to look like a damn screenplay. Okay-okay, back to Clash.


All right, I have to point this out. Once Argos is wiped off the fictional planet, we return to Olympus where Poseidon explains to Zeus that the woman’s coffin washed ashore in Seriphos, and the woman, Danae and Perseus, have been greeted by the Seriphosian locals and assimilated into their culture. Zeus is pleased. He looks over to his cabinet, and thus begins the most bizarre transition in cinema history.

Can someone explain this to me? We’re first shown the little statuette of Danae breast-feeding her infant:


Then we’re given the real woman:


Then we see them walking together naked on a beach:


And then we cut to a grown Perseus falling back onto a boulder as if he just had an orgasm. What the hell is that about? Was there some kind of incestuous thing going on that I don’t know?


According to Wikipedia, “Mother and child washed ashore on the island of Seriphos, where they were taken in by the fisherman Dictys, who raised the boy to manhood. The brother of Dictys was Polydectes, the king of the island. After some time, Polydectes fell in love with Danaë and desired to remove Perseus from the island…”

I’m still surprised this was handed a PG rating. Because we’re also shown a nude Andromeda before she’s sacrificed to the Kraken:


Can you believe that?

So let’s get down to business with Medusa. Let’s watch the sequence in which he kills her and consider if or how this scene works:



Everything is on the line with this scene. He must get her head or his true love will become fishbait for the Kraken. Tension is heightened by handicapping Perseus in a way that makes the audience wonder how he will make it through this scene and that is, they can't look at Medusa. Tension is also heightened by all the talk about her before we get into this room. We’re told repeatedly how dangerous she is, about the head of snakes, about the eyes that turn men to stone, and about the acid for blood. (I think it was a surprise to learn that she’s also damn good with a bow and arrow, which is great.) Remember what George Bernard Shaw said about great characters? “You must be very careful how you introduce your characters. The star plan is to talk about them before they appear so as to make the audience curious to see them, and sufficiently informed about them to save them the trouble of explaining their circumstance.” Exactly!

When the men enter and we’re given a view of the room, it seems that there’s only one way out, so you get the feeling that they’re kind of trapped. That claustrophobia adds to the tension. If we can see an easy out from this room, you won’t feel much tension, right? Tension is heightened again by showing the stone men who have tried and failed to conquer Medusa in this room. Of course, you have to also cut to the looks of fear on the faces of Perseus and his soldiers.

And then you bring on Medusa.

But you don’t simply reveal her. You make us hear her first and give us her shadow first and show us the tail first and you kill off a soldier first before revealing the whole monster. You have to savor the opportunity for a great introduction. It’s simply good foreplay.

Then you kill off the last soldier and bring on the action.

And you heighten the tension as much as you can and drag out this moment of suspense for as long as possible before the climax. (Then, relax and have a cigarette afterwards. Hehehe…)

Consider that this scene is not really about showing Medusa. This one little sequence, which took 8 minutes and would translate into roughly 8 pages of your script, was devoted entirely to the art of tension and suspense. That’s what this scene’s all about. Since the filmmakers treated the suspense competently here, Ray’s creation is that much more exciting and bigger than life and beloved. This is what’s really missing today, the careful loving devotion to suspense.

What are your thoughts?

Around Blogosphere – 10/21/08

I have to also include a few more interesting news links:

Republicans in Biz Feel Stifled & Bullied
It's no secret that the entertainment industry is overwhelmingly liberal -- political donations this presidential cycle from the movie, TV and music industries recently were running about 86% Democrat versus 14% Republican. But being outnumbered is one thing, but being bullied by your liberal co-workers into keeping your opinions to yourself is quite another. Is that what's going on? Yes, say many of the industry's conservatives. That's why secret organizations with such names as "SpeakEasy" and "The Sunday Night Club" spring up every so often. They're not conservative per se, they just let it be known that attendees of their gatherings may freely discuss politics without being chastised for not toeing the liberal line.

Hollywood’s A-List Losing Star Power: Film Industry Forced to Change Business Model
Hollywood's problem is that once costly stars climb aboard a project, studios tend to ratchet up the scale with stunts and effects. They wind up trying to turn every movie into a tentpole. Sure, the studios have pots of money to play with. But just like the world economy, the film industry has burgeoned out of control. It's inflated and overblown. It needs to let some air out of the bubble and return to a more reasonable size and scale. For starters, Hollywood ought to throw everyone out of the $20 million club.

Unk on The Hero vs. The Anti-Hero Protagonist
The anti-hero is definitely a more complex character to write… He or she doesn’t have to be likable. They have a lot more layers than meets the eye. I suspect that generally speaking, they are a lot more like the people we all know hence, we are faster to get on their character train for the ride. I know for me personally, they’re a hell of a lot more fun to write and while I’ll not tell you to write a movie with an anti-hero as your protagonist, I will tell you that in my humble opinion, using an anti-hero ups your chances of success just a bit more than the traditional hero.

Alex on Writers Getting Typecast
I don't think writers get pigeonholed the way actors do. You could sell 5 comedy scripts and then come out with a drama. If it's a good drama, it will sell. A comedy actor may have trouble convincing people he can play drama. But a comedy writer can simply write a drama, and there's your proof that he's capable of it. The proof is in the writing. If you have a rep as a one flavor of writer, you might have a little trouble getting commissioned to write something out of your perceived drama, but all that means is you'll have to spec something in the other genre first.

Mike Le’s great Terms of Endearment

Screenwriter's League asks To Copyright or Register?
Clearly, a WGA registration is not enough to ensure full rights to a character. So what does a writer do? Is it possible in this day and age to actually own the full rights to characters you've created, especially if they're not originally presented in a comic book? As I understand it, a U.S. Copyright will provide more character protection than a script registration does, but is it enough? I love screenwriting and plan to pursue it as long as I can. Sometimes, though, these and other legal considerations are obvious reminders of how much of a business what we're embarking upon is. The love of writing is one thing (and hopefully the most important thing), but the business side is very much a presence, too.

Mark Achtenberg on Wall Street
Wall Street is both flawed and terrific. It features some great performances, great dialogue and strong characters. The major flaws come from a fairly contrived and earnest ending. I personally dislike the Stuart Copeland electronic score. Like most synthesizer scores of the 80's, I find the soundtrack rather empty and insipid. Daryl Hannah is an exception to the performances as many of her dialogue scenes were very obviously overdubbed (adr) and sound forced.


Fabulous: Building a Better Bomb: The Alternatives to Suspense
Like Carrie, Halloween had its feet firmly planted in classic suspense, but it had more up its sleeve. While De Palma saved the best for last, John Carpenter was in a generous mood and perforated his narrative with “popcorn flyers” from beginning to end. He multiplied Hitchcock’s bomb under the table and changed it into a minefield, where every step you take can be your last. The trick payed off. Whereas Hitchcock mainly concentrated on the period leading up to the bang, Carpenter exploited the aftermath of the explosion. In the book John Carpenter: Prince of Darkness, he explained his method as such:

"I always thought that you could also have another effect on the audience if you blow the table up suddenly. If you do it suddenly, everything after that is changed a little bit. You won't trust the movie anymore, and you will have doubts about what you think it will do. So you have a different level of suspense."

Hitchcock Goodies for Cinephiles

From Images, a section devoted to The Cinema of Alfred Hitchcock:

The Art of Murder
Before the "shower scene" in Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock had directed only three other sustained murder sequences. The vast majority of murders in Hitchcock's movies occur either off-screen, or they are as brief as the flash of a gun. The three prolonged sequences prior to Psycho include the stabbing of Crewe in Blackmail, the stabbing of Swann in Dial M for Murder, and the strangling of Miriam in Strangers on a Train.

The Feminine Gaze in Notorious and The Paradine Case
Though the privileging of the male spectator and gaze may exist in Vertigo and Rear Window, Hitchcock's use of the gaze is generally more complicated. Though a male gaze perspective may be present, the controlling gaze in several films is actually female. In these films, Hitchcock's female gaze may be as objectifying and controlling of the man as a male gaze is to a woman, while in other cases it exists as a knowing, patient and protective gaze. To examine Hitchcock's use of a secondary, non-male gaze, I will discuss two films from his Selznick period (1940-49): Notorious (1946) and The Paradine Case (1947). Hitchcock's use of the feminine gaze gives his female characters power, agency and depth--despite Hitchcock's self--cultivated reputation as a misogynist.

Alfred Hitchcock's WWII French Films and the Limits of Propaganda
At the peak of his career, Alfred Hitchcock, renown for his British and Hollywood-made suspense cinema, diverged from his usual formula to make two French language adventure movies designed as World War II propaganda films. Made in 1944, Aventure malgache (which translates as "Madagascan Adventure") and Bon Voyage remained virtually unseen until a 50th anniversary re-release and subsequent video distribution. These two short films may well be the most challenging films to assess in the entire Hitchcock filmography, for their overt goal of propaganda establishes a set of expectations alien to Hitchcock's suspense films, thus creating conflicts for the filmmaker and the critics alike.

Vertigo: Love, Desire, the Image, and the Grave
Vertigo is devoted to the dream of reanimating the dead. This desire is fed through the supernatural possibility of reincarnation of Carlotta through the possession of Madeleine, but this is later exposed as merely a conceit of an elaborate murder plan. One manner of preservation that is never discredited, however, is the power of dreams, words, stories, and images to preserve--even bring to life--the beloved dead. Madeleine/Judy, for example, studies Carlotta's portrait in order to bring Carlotta to life.

The Parlor Scene from Psycho: Images of Duality
Though tame by today's standards, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho has done more to advance the horror genre (slasher films in particular) than any other film of its time; however, the brilliance of Psycho does not lie in its abhorrent concept, but rather in the way that Hitchcock melds the obvious and the mysterious. Indeed, in one of the most revealing scenes, just one third of the way through the film, Hitchcock is outrageously obvious in his intentions; yet his artistry in lighting, camera angle, and mise-en-scene make it possible to hide in plain sight and create a world that is rife with duality.

Also:

The Glory of Cary Grant and Other Girlish Delights.
Includes a discussion of Hitchcock's use of Cary Grant in Suspicion.

Some Thoughts on Alfred Hitchcock and Vladimir Nabokov.

10 Shades of Noir: Shadow of a Doubt.

Screenwriting News & Links! 10/19/08

Hey guys,

More script sales mentioned here. I feel like writing some Clash of the Titans script reviews this week (including Kasdan’s draft).

Hope you guys are doing well!

-MM

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New Screenplay

Superman Returns – 1/12/05 draft.

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Epstein’s How to Write a Pitch
If you're writing a pitch, do not tell me visual details. Do not tell me any details that aren't story elements. Don't tell me what the extras are doing. Just tell me the story.

A secret industry shortlist of the UK's best unproduced scripts
Ever heard of Matt Greenhalgh? How about Adrian Hodges? No? Yet the films they have written have had audiences flocking to them and their latest work has made a secret industry shortlist of the UK's best unproduced scripts. The Brit List comprises the most recommended screenplays by UK and Irish writers that are yet to be put into production. It is a showcase for new and established talent, and it has executives buzzing on both sides of the Atlantic...


Art Linson’s Golden Rules for surviving Hollywood
1. Learn to cup your hands and bow like a Croatian maitre d’.
This is a good plan when you are first trying to get started because moviemaking is a team sport. You’re going to need help from lots of talented people, untalented people and particularly people who have checkbooks. Of course, once you have a big hit, you can always resort to being an outrageous prick, if that’s what pleases you. The only caution here is that a hit, at most, buys you 36 months. So if you cannot back it up with another hit right away, you better not lose the art of bowing and genuflecting.

I also loved number 4…

4. “F*#k me, but this time I really mean it.”
There is a language in the movie business filled with nuance and deception. Learning to read between the lines is an essential part of the survival kit, because rarely does anyone, friend or adversary, say what he or she really means—especially as it relates to the work. A director friend of mine, walking out of his shaky film preview, was told by the studio executive, “It’s good.” “Good is good!” the director gleefully replied. The exec smiled, “Good is always good.” The following week, the studio promptly shelved the movie. Months later, when given an accidental second-chance screening in Cannes, the same movie garnered rave reviews. Immediately, the same executive called the director and shrieked, “It’s good, but this time I really mean it!” Follow the numbers; follow the money. The noise cannot be trusted. And if you ever hear, “You know I’m rooting for you,” cross that person off your guest list.

Queen Of Sky Plans on Feature Film
Hiltz Squared Media Group this week optioned the rights to former flight attendant Ellen Simonetti's semi-autobiographical novel, "Diary of a Dysfunctional Flight Attendant: The Queen of Sky Blog." Hiltz Squaredhas commissioned Simonetti to write a screenplay based on the book. Simonetti, in turn, has launched an interactive blog about the writing of the screenplay, complete with scene snippets, plot outlines, and polls.

On the death of Lethal Weapon 5, the history of Richard Donner’s Career, and Future Direction for the Man of Steel
"I do think you could probably take Superman into some other areas today. I think maybe it's ready to break the mold slightly and bring a little greater sense of reality into it. Not contemporizing it to like today. Just making the heavies -- and the situation that is the tension piece -- a little more broken away from the comic-book character. It would take some tricky writing, some good acting and some good directing." (Goonies sequel is dead, too.)

"Gomorra" author to flee Italy after mafia death threats
The author of the best-selling book "Gomorra" about the mafia in Naples, which has been made into a hit movie, wants to leave Italy to try to have a more normal life after reports that the mob wants him dead by Christmas. After reports that the "Camorra", as the Naples mafia is known, has added urgency in its threat to kill Roberto Saviano, the 29-year-old who has been in hiding for two years said he was tired of being a "prisoner" of his book's success.

Watch History Channel’s Batman Unmasked, a psychological look at Batman, over at Always Watching: “Not only does it delve into the mindset of the caped crusader, but it also offers some incredible parallels between him and Theodore Roosevelt and shows how religious iconography had a lot to do with the creation of 'the Batman.' Additionally, it provides brief insight into the driving force that propells other characters like The Joker and Catwoman.”


Empire Magazine offers a first look at Brad Pitt in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. Here’s another one from Tarantino archives:


Elton John is writing a musical for Ben Stiller.

Free Screenwriting Workshop in NYC

Video clips of The Wrestler.

Iron Man Writers Want Hulk To Be The Avengers Villain

British scriptwriter of Slumdog Millionaire Loves India
British writer Simon Beaufoy, who spent considerable time here to pen the script of Slumdog Millionaire, says the experience has changed his life.”It was incredibly rewarding for me. I’ve been writing for 12 years. I’ve been brought up on a British tradition of screenwriting. In India, I found that to be a completely inappropriate way of writing. Now after writing Slumdog Millionaire, I can’t go back to writing the way I used to,” Beaufoy told IANS.

Cameron Crowe’s Tropical Rom Com Details Revealed


Star Trek photos here, here, and here. Interview and plot details here. During a recent online chat with The Guardian, JJ Abrams was asked why he got involved in the film: “It didn’t feel like a classic reboot or prequel. It is a brand new thing inspired by characters that are poised to make a big comeback.” Abrams also insists that the film’s running time won’t be much longer than 120 minutes, ranting to MTV that he’s “sick of these two hours and forty-five minute movies.” Trek Movie is reporting that the first trailer will hit theaters in November, possibly attached to Sony's Quantum of Solace.

BTW - Paramount has reduced their yearly film output to 20 movies.

Screenwriting zone?
“An agent recently asked me what ‘zone’ I write in. What does that mean?!” (A response: “Tell him you write in the ‘danger zone’.”)

Bourne born again in original screenplay
Universal studios announced yesterday that it has hired writer George Nolfi to pen an original screenplay for its fourth film in the series. What's that you say? Wasn't last year's The Bourne Ultimatum supposed to be the final movie? Well yes indeed, but that was before it made £254m at the worldwide box office, becoming one of the studio's highest-grossing films of all time in the process.

EXCLUSIVE: Tyler Perry And WGA Settle

Sleeper has a writer
Warner Bros. has tapped Brad Ingelsby to write Sleeper, an adaptation of the DC Comics/Wildstorm comic being produced by Sam Raimi with Star Road Entertainment partner Josh Donen. The comic, written by Ed Brubaker, centers on an operative whose fusion with an alien artifact makes him impervious to pain and allows him to pass the ability on to others through skin contact. (Which is strange because a couple months ago it was announced that Tom Cruise would star in an adaptation of the Wildstorm comic book Sleeper for producer Sam Raimi. Apparently, it’s not that firm if they picked a newbie writer.)


Alan Moore Talks Watchmen Movie-- In 1987
Ever wonder what made Alan Moore such a cranky, Hollywood-hating kook in the first place? Turns out it didn't come from too many viewings of The Fantastic Four or various other bastardizations of comic books. Long before Moore swore off all involvement with any movie adaptations of his work -- including the upcoming Watchmen -- he put his creation in the hands of a screenwriter, and got burned so badly he never dared do it again.


The Universe According to Kaufman
“Synecdoche” (sih-NECK-doh-key) is not exactly a starter movie, reflecting the awkward work of a first-timer feeling his way. After seeing it at this year’s Cannes film festival A. O. Scott wrote in The New York Times that Mr. Kaufman managed to create “a seamless and complicated alternate reality.” From a cinematic perspective it is a ferociously realized piece of work that will have people talking for years. Among the things that they will be chattering over? “What was that about?”


When Greed Became Good on Wall Street
"It was just a fluke," says Weiser. Oliver Stone had asked him to write a movie about the quiz show scandals of the 1950s. But then he started noticing all the interesting stories in the business section of the newspaper. "There were a lot of insider trading scandals that had come to light," says Weiser, "and he knew that was the more important issue — he told me to go off and work on that instead." At that point, Weiser knew little about the financial world. So he went to Wall Street and spent time with brokers and read up on all the big players. Out of his research, he created the character of Gordon Gekko, a ruthless and incredibly wealthy corporate raider.

And they’re moving forward on a Wall Street sequel
Reports from Hollywood said on Monday that the movie studio is moving full steam ahead with the followup to the seminal 1980s film about the suspender-strapping world of high finance from that decade. Allan Loeb, the screenwriter who penned the film 21, is set to write the movie. Mr. Loeb has some financial cred: he’s a former trader who worked at the Chicago Board of Trade, according to Variety. (I heard it’s a page-one rewrite of a rumored bad draft by Stephen Schiff.)


O, Prince! How Clear You Are on Blu-ray
Those colors practically soar off the screen in the new Blu-ray version of Sleeping Beauty that Disney released last week, making it the first of this studio’s perennials to appear in that new, high-definition format. It’s an appropriate choice, given that Sleeping Beauty was itself a product of a high-definition technology of its time, shot in a process, Super Technirama, that yielded 70-millimeter prints with an aspect ratio almost as wide as that of Cinerama. Equipped with six-channel stereo sound (remixed to DTS 7.1 for the Blu-ray release, though the original tracks are also included), Sleeping Beauty thundered forth on Jan. 29, 1959, an imposing embodiment of American technology at its grandest and most self-confident.

Catholic tongues are wagging about Eszterhas’ conversion
CLEVELAND (CNS) -- The Gospel of Luke's prodigal son has nothing on Joe Eszterhas. A self-described "Hollywood animal," Eszterhas is best known for writing such adult-themed thrillers as Basic Instinct and Jagged Edge. He is a guy who seemed to live his earlier life as if the seven deadly sins were a personal to-do list. But then Eszterhas found God. Or as Eszterhas writes in his latest memoir, "Crossbearer," God found him. Today, the man who once was the center of attention at exclusive Hollywood restaurants, enjoys the easygoing community spirit of sharing a meal with his wife, Naomi, and the couple's four sons at a Lenten fish fry at Holy Angels Parish, in suburban Bainbridge, where he often carries the cross at Mass. A screenwriter who describes his younger self as arrogant and full of hubris now reads the works of Trappist Father Thomas Merton and Dutch-born Father Henri Nouwen for spiritual guidance. Days that once started and ended with cigarettes and gin, now are filled with prayer and quiet walks in nature.


Analysis of Pulp Fiction dialogue

Screenwriter talks about pesky Green Lantern Rumors
Guggenheim also slams down the speculation that Lantern may be affected by the Warner Bros. "revamp". "I don't even know, from what I've observed, if I would characterize it as a revamp," he says. "I know a lot's been made in newspapers and magazines about a revamping of DC's approach. That hasn't been my sense." "Maybe a focusing; maybe a ratcheting up of pace and energy. Whatever it's been, it really hasn't affected this project in the least. All the drafts have come in on schedule. All the notes have been the same kind of notes that we would have gotten in the absence of any 'revamping.'"

So who’ll get a screenwriting nom for an Oscar?
Of all the major Oscar categories, perhaps none are more accommodating to dark horses than the screenplay. As the category that once crowned Billy Bob Thornton a better writer than Arthur Miller, it's hard to write anyone off. Perhaps the most likely dark horse this year is, appropriately, The Dark Knight, which was not only the year's most popular movie, but also one of its most critically successful. The Academy may previously have been loath to bestow top honors on a comic book movie, but... Nolan's weighty script all but reinvents the genre and has a sporting chance to be among the final five.


London fest unveils industry program
LONDON -- Filmmaker Atom Egoyan, novelist and screenwriter David Nicholls and storyboard artist Temple Clark are just three of the names signed up to support the Think-Shoot-Distribute industry program running alongside the Times BFI London Film Festival next week. The five-day industry event, backed by Skillset and Film London, aims to unite 28 emerging producers, screenwriters, directors and writer-directors with international industryites for a series of workshops and master classes that will explore the creative, technical and business aspects of the international feature film industry.

Ridley Scott Takes on “Forever War”
Fox 2000 has acquired rights to Joe Haldeman’s 1974 novel "The Forever War," and Ridley Scott is planning to make it into his first science fiction film since he delivered back-to-back classics with Blade Runner and Alien. Scott intended to follow those films with "The Forever War," but rights complications delayed his plans for more than two decades.

Dreamworks’ Deal with Universal
DreamWorks has nailed down its seven-year distribution pact with Universal — as expected — but there are several aspects of the deal that stand out. In the end, there was no bidding war for DreamWorks pics. Universal will commit $150 million to the new venture and will collect an 8% distribution fee. Par will still be distributing many films before and after the new U deal takes effect. Disney supposedly had engaged in casual talks with DreamWorks principals Steven Spielberg and Stacey Snider, but the Universal deal had been expected given U’s longstanding ties with the pair.

On Getting a Headshot
Warner Bros. has acquired screen rights to "Headshot," a three-book graphic novel series by Alexis Nolent that was published in France by Casterman. Alessandro Camon has been set to write the script… In "Headshot," an unlikely alliance between a cop and a hitman takes place after each watches his partner die. The new partners seek revenge and discover they have a shared enemy and much in common despite being on opposite sides of the law.


Tim Burton talks about Alice in Wonderland
"It's a funny project. The story is obviously a classic with iconic images and ideas and thoughts. But with all the movie versions, well, I've just never seen one that really had any impact to me. It's always just a series of weird events. Every character is strange and she's just kind of wandering through all of the encounters as just a sort of observer. The goal is to try to make it an engaging movie where you get some of the psychology and kind of bring a freshness but also keep the classic nature of 'Alice.' And, you know, getting to do it in 3-D fits the material quite well. So I'm excited about making it a new version but also have the elements that people expect when they think of the material."

Jenny Lumet shares Creative Journey

Interview with Twilight Screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg
When did the voiceover come into play?
You know, it was Catherine that suggested I use voiceover. Because, you know, for screenwriters, they always say voiceover is a big no-no, although we do use a lot of voiceover on "Dexter." But voiceover, anywhere, is really hard to write. But it was Catherine who said, "I think you should use it." So we started using it very sparingly, because in the movie you really need to know what is going on inside her head and bring the audience along with her.

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Quantum of Solace Round-Up:

Geoffrey McNab notes that Quantum of Solace director Marc Forster has "talked about Bond as if the secret agent was a latter day Hamlet - a character who beneath his hard shell is vulnerable and repressed. The way he explores the tortured psyche of cinema's favorite spy isn't through lengthy dialogue sequences - it's through action. There is something desperate about Bond. [Daniel] Craig plays him with a gimlet-eyed intensity that makes his first turn in the role in Casino Royale seem lightweight. David Arnold's rousing score seems to be driving him on.... Quantum of Solace doesn't seem like a major entry in the Bond canon. Well under two hours long, it's shorter and more frenetic than most of its predecessors, and an often-jolting experience to watch. Loose ends about. What it does have, though, above all, is vigor. The franchise hasn't run out of juice quite yet."

Also in the Independent, Macnab offers a "brief history of the Bond villain," while James Mottram profiles the new Bond girl, Gemma Arterton, Charlotte Cripps chats with Roger Moore, and Alicia Keys looks back on the good time she had making Another Way to Die, this film's theme tune.

"What makes Marc Forster's film such an intriguing watch is that this is the first of the 22 Bond movies where the plot flows organically from the last instalment, and Quantum of Solace looks a far stronger picture for this rare continuity," writes James Christopher.

Also in the London Times, which has opened up a special section devoted to the movie:

- Joanna Lumley looks back "40 years, to my own dalliance with Bond, being brainwashed by Blofeld, and two months of luxurious captivity a hilltop hideaway in Switzerland. It was 1968, I was 22, George Lazenby had been picked to play James Bond for the first (and last) time, and I was about to become a Bond Girl."

- Kevin Maher talks with "new Bond baddie," Simon Kassianides.

- Nigel Kendall cringes at some of the worst moments in the history of the franchise.

"I've got to admit that this didn't excite me as much as Casino Royale and the villain is especially underpowered," writes the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. "But Craig personally has the chops, as they say in Hollywood. He's made the part his own, every inch the coolly ruthless agent-cum-killer, nursing a broken heart and coldly suppressed rage."

"Craig's second outing as the famous so-called "spy" - actually, when you think about it, an assassin - turns out to be a tale of revenge." Mark Monahan notes that opening of Quantum, like many of its best scenes "owes much to the quick-fire editing of the Bourne thrillers. Also in the Telegraph: a James Bond "homepage."

"[W]hat this film does differently is to focus closely on an emotionally battered Bond, his mission and his motivation," writes Lizo Mzimba for the BBC. "As ever the end credits promise that James Bond will return, and thanks to Quantum of Solace, the sense of anticipation for this should be particularly high. Not to see what super villain Bond will be battling, but to discover what the next stage will be in a character that Daniel Craig has managed to reinvent and develop movie by movie."

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On the Contest Circuit

FirstGlance Announces Semifinalists

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And Finally…

15 Minutes with James Cameron:

Recent Script Reviews

Hey guys,

A writer has to keep reading, writing, and reviewing stories to maintain an edge, right? I do mine on TriggerStreet, although I’m sure Zoetrope is fabulous, too. So here are some highlights.

Hope you enjoy it.

-MM

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Well, one complaint would have to be that your themes were all over the place, and I can tell you (from experience) that anyone doing coverage will nail you for having multiple themes. I think it'd be best if you just pinpointed one theme you want to work on and stay within that context and make that theme the through-line that will carry your narrative over the course of three acts. With some aspiring writers I've encountered on TS, I've gotten the impression of great reluctance to keep it down to one theme because it somehow feels too simple and they want to show off. But you have to stay focused on one theme. Otherwise, this is the kind of thing critics would call "a film in search of a story." They'd say things like, "The plot had all these different (and sometimes amusing) ideas, but it didn't know what it wanted to be. Is this about an artist wrestling with abandonment? Is this about discovering one's sexuality, as in the case with Claudette? Or is this about exploding frogs?" Films have certainly been made that contain more than one theme, but here, it's too eclectic and too confusing…

Robert said in his Production Notes that he'd be happy to explain his ending. So I sent him an email and here's what he said:

"My original intent was to let people come to their own conclusions about the ending, but judging from the feedback I think I left it a little too ambiguous. Anyway, the key is -- everything after Loofe passed out (after crashing into the warehouse and being swarmed by angry frogs) is a hallucination. I tried to drop hints throughout - the quips about Tahiti, the comment about only US landmarks being destroyed (except for the Statue of Liberty), Loofe's previous book regarding a boy who didn't know his true identity, Loofe's obsession with cleanliness and order, the sci-fi references, etc."

There's no question that great care went into trying to set up the ending. Here's the thing. Whether you were aiming for a clear case of hallucination or something ambiguous so audiences can reach their own conclusion, it all still boils down to the same problem - the third act represents a near-total avoidance of bringing any resolution to almost all of the plots and themes within the script. Granted, this would, of course, be extraordinarily difficult because you have too many themes. How could you write a good ending? But what he have is the equivalent of a good writer saying "I wrote myself into a corner. I don't know how to end it, so here's something out in left field that answers nothing but has a lot of cool explosions." Listen. The problem begins with, NOT how you approached the ending but, the fact that a good ending was so out of reach because you have too many themes. Narrow all the themes to ONE and keep the story within that context. As it is, the third act came across as a case of just totally avoiding the issues and completely abandoning the story, which I think would be frustrating to average readers and unimpressive to pro readers. It's like you're being too clever by half. It's a cop-out disguised as cleverness. Even if you disagree with me, you must agree it's problematic in terms of sheer craftsmanship because it's so out there, you're left with no alternative but to write page after page of verbal exposition, particularly from Papa Loofe, which never works in a Third Act. It's like you're trying to over-sell it. Third Acts should be anything but lengthy bits of verbal exposition.

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So I get the impression you had a LOT of ideas and thoughts about a story that you had to put down on paper, which is great. But then you have to go back and make sure it all comes together as a cohesive whole, and I don't think enough thought went into the details. The plot was filled with stops and starts, like a car that couldn't get into gear. My biggest complaint has to be that you answered almost NO questions in the story. Now I don't believe every story has to have all of its loose ends tied neatly in a bow for the audience, but to have this many unanswered questions is frustrating even for the most independent-film-loving-reader. Most will assume, and I would agree, that this is just a case of weak screenwriting. I don't even think this writer is thinking in terms of setups and payoffs.

Here are a few:

* You have on page 5, Katie asking Alyssa where she gets her marijuana. Alyssa won't answer. Great! This is a setup that begs for a payoff later in the story. The audience is going to be waiting to get the answer to this question. In most movies, this kind of setup means that the answer will be revealed to the audience in the form of a surprise later, and we'll probably learn that the person we least expect has been supplying Alyssa with drugs. It might even be funny. Yet, you never answered this question, which makes wonder why we even needed that dialogue in the first place.

* This brings me to Frank's story. What was the point of any of those cases? If you had Frank defending the dealer that was supplying Alyssa with drugs, you might've had a story. And you might've had a good reason to show Frank's story from his perspective. As it is, his story is too disconnected from everything else beyond the fact that he was having an affair, which was affecting his relationship with his wife and family. Nothing else in Frank's story, not the Pearson case, not the high-level, long-winded conversation he had with the Judge about the justice system, and certainly not the scene with the long monologue by Victor about a matter completely unrelated to anything else, fit into this script. If Victor had some kind of connection to Jake or Alyssa, we might care. We don't have to listen to Victor in order to comprehend Frank's unfulfilled needs, do we? All of this business about the justice system was thematically inconsistent with the rest of this story, which was about interpersonal relationships.

* What's the point of the teacher, Mr. Powell, in the story? We had at least two scenes that I recall in which he totally berated Alyssa. Why? I assumed Alyssa would've A) been getting her marijuana from Powell or B) she would do him just to get a better grade, which marked a new low even for her. Or something. If the whole point of those scenes with Powell berating her in class was to show that she's not her genius brother, then cut them, because we figured that out for ourselves when she was smoking in the bathroom…

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Let's talk mass suicides, shall we? I always get to explore such interesting topics in script reviews. Here's the thing. You created this vast world that you understandably want to explore, but the end result is a story filled with too many subjects and themes and a protagonist weighed down with too many goals. You need one, solid, emotional through-line to carry your story. Here, you have so many that it's emotionally confusing when you get into it. And this is a problem I had when I first started writing. I learned that stories in scripts are usually more simple than we, as writers, want them to be. We want that intellectual / emotional satisfaction of thoroughly exploring these vast worlds we've created, which is great, but at the end of the day, we need to deliver a simple story that an audience can access and follow along. For example, you first set up a love affair with Jayme that I thought was going to carry this entire script, that is, two characters finding true love but cannot consummate that love because it's considered illegal by Big Brother. That's great stuff! But then you cut off that storyline with Jayme in order to explore mass suicides, celebrity cult status, media manipulation, and another case of what could be true love (with Eve) that's under the control of Big Brother (err, Big Sister?) and the media. It's all too much.

Here's what I suggest:

* Forget about everything and stick with true love that's illegal by Big Brother. That's the most emotionally compelling aspect of your script. If you don't agree, then ask yourself "what is the one thing this story is about?" and stick with that ONE THEME.

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You established so very well this love affair between Albert and Marta. I think this comes out through Marta's wonderfully sweet behavior. She is the heartbeat of that relationship. And then you have the tension about this wall, about the possibility of separation, which we know is coming. But once the border is closed and the wall separates our lovers, the script is completely deflated of all tension. You have, of course, the longing of our two lovers to be together, but there's not much tension in that. What are they going to do? You need TENSION to keep Act Two interesting. Even romance stories have tension. So how you do that? By creating inner conflicts.

So here's a list of ideas on tension in Act Two:

* You had on pg 22 the medic trying to sell Albert a pill or something so that he may put his mother out of HIS misery. Albert, the decent human being, refuses. What's the point of introducing this idea if you're not going to let it play out in the narrative? No, I'm not suggesting that Albert kill his mother. I'm suggesting that the Medic, first and foremost, makes a really persuasive argument about killing his mother, about putting her out of HER misery, about being free to pursue his love, etc. You could've had two pages of high drama through dialogue over this one issue that could've been really enthralling, because now it's only introduced and quickly discarded. You should play with this, and play with Albert's mind on this issue. So then, perhaps as an act of generosity (or perhaps Albert owed him money, the Medic didn't have change, and instead gives him this pill), the Medic places the pill on Albert's desk and leaves. Albert gets up and sweeps the pill into a drawer. Later, when times get tough with his mother, Albert looks over to his desk, and seriously considers using the pill. TENSION. But then, as a twist, he almost uses it on himself, and then his mother saves HIM before he dies. This introduces the idea that all of Albert's efforts to save his mother had a pay off because she later saves him. Do you see what I mean? This kind of tension would keep Act Two from dragging.

* I think it was a mistake to have Marta give birth to a child, and I'll tell you why. While this certainly increased Albert's desire to see Marta and now their child, it ultimately undercuts your tension, because now they're permanently linked together by this child. Because they're linked, you know that they will eventually meet each other sometime down the road. If you want to keep Act Two interesting, you should unlink the couple via this child and really put the relationship at risk. Once the border's closed, Albert talks to his mother about how he has to find a way to see her, how he knows that his days are numbered, how no normal woman will wait forever like this, and he has to find a way to be with her. This will give us an unseen ticking clock. Perhaps Marta will leave notes for him in her window. First, she loves him and will wait forever. Later, she's sharing her overwhelming sadness about being apart. And thus, you introduce a plot involving another man. He constantly stops by and tries to woo her. And he will not give up. On the flipside, you could introduce a woman that wants to be with Albert. This gives both Albert and Marta inner conflicts. And then the man proposes to Marta, and she leaves a note in her window asking Albert for a sign. What should she do? And THAT is when we come to Albert in the Ministry of Labor feeling so small and moving to the foreground with this new opportunity. His flying over the wall is her sign to be with him...

Screenwriting News & Links! 10/13/08

Hollywood: What Financial Crisis?
Studios are more nervous about the financial exposure they face if SAG does go on strike. But the prospect of gaping holes in their distribution slates for 2010 and 2011 is a worse scenario for the majors, and so they are willing to risk the consequences of moving ahead despite the SAG uncertainty.

Unruly WGA Mob Protest 'Project Runway' Rodeo Drive Shoot

Q&A with Ridley Scott
You’re used to dealing with prima donnas, though. I mean, you handle Hollywood stars ...
Look, actors are all different. They’re not all volatile. Some are sweet, some are volatile, but what is fundamentally in there is something that has to be paid attention to, in that they are, I would say, needy. Maybe that’s what Hitchcock meant when he said, "Actors are children." But I don’t think stars are children at all. They’re usually the most intelligent, no question—all the stars I know are really, really bright. But yeah, every director devises their own methodology. By the time I got to do my first feature, in ’77, The Duellists, which was with a certain tough guy called Harvey Keitel ... He was what they call Actors Studio and all that—Method acting and that kind of thing. Method? I told him I have a method too. I had absolutely no idea what the fuck he was talking about, and I think he had no idea what the fuck I was talking about. What I’ve devised over the years is being honest with actors and if I don’t know, saying "I don’t know. Let’s talk about it. You tell me."

Q&A with Jenny Lumet
Kym is an interesting character because, funny as it sounds, she has this neo-Western hero thing going on...
Because she comes swaggering into town and blows shit up...
She blows shit up, and is she good? Is she bad? Has she done bad things or is she misunderstood and wounded? What was your intention with her as a character?
I love everything you just said so much. I wish I had freakin’ known that, the whole neo-Western thing, because then I could have said it. Can I steal that?
Sure, but it might be the most idiotic thing...
No, no, no, she’s like this completely unstable, mysterious gunslinger who comes into town and does crazy shit.

Jenny Lumet extorted her dad to get script to Demme
I understand your dad gave your screenplay to Jonathan Demme, who ultimately directed "Rachel Getting Married."
I essentially extorted my dad. I was like: You will never see your grandson again unless you get this script to Jonathan Demme. And eventually it paid off.
Were you hesitant to ask him to do that?
I live on [West] 95th Street. And there are probably 15 screenwriters on my block who are freaking geniuses, right? And they can't get the right person to read their screenplay because it's so freaking hard. So I'm not dumb. You have to have a connection and you have to use it.

Bwaah ha ha! I love her.



Okay, you’ll love this. Above is the trailer for 0804 The Uprising, a straight-to-DVD affair that was written by our good friend Joshua James. WARNING: the sound is NOT mixed. CONGRATS, JOSH!

Plus, here are a few pics from the film:


Guillermo del Toro & The Hobbit
"I find you have to discipline yourself to write in the morning, and then watch and read in the afternoons stuff that seems relevant, even in a tangential way. For example, reading or watching World War I documentaries or books that I think inform The Hobbit, strangely enough, because I believe it is a book born out of Tolkien's generation's experience with World War I and the disappointment of being in that field and seeing all those values kind of collapse. I think it's a turning point that you need to familiarize yourself with. I'm starting. Peter Jackson is such a fan of that historical moment and obsessive collector of World War I memorabilia, and he owns several genuine, life-size working reproductions of planes, tanks, cannons, ships! He has the perfect obsessive reproductions of uniforms of that time for armies of about 120 soldiers... each. I asked him which books he recommended… because I wouldn't be watching Krull or The Dark Crystal, I need to find my OWN way into the story. That's the same way I did Pan's Labyrinth or Devil's Backbone, by watching stuff you wouldn't think about.

WGA up in arms over The Osbournes' new show
According to BBC, the WGA has warned its members that they could be subject to a fine if they accept work on the planned variety series.

Goldman’s “Nobody Knows Anything” now applies to bankers.


Angie Harmon can’t wait to start screenwriting
Like other intelligent performers, Angie looks beyond her acting career. “Because of my pregnancy, everything is on hold,” she said. “But I can’t wait to start screenwriting, directing, and producing.”

This 47 year old screenwriter in Miami would like a nice friend

Screenwriter In Blockbuster Battle With Disney
Screenwriter Cyrus Nowrasteh has taken his battle with Disney and ABC to the video store, where his documentary, Blocking the Path to 9/11, is being released Tuesday. Nowrasteh's ABC miniseries, The Path to 9/11, which received high ratings when it aired in 2006, contended that missteps by the Clinton administration led to the successful attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It was subsequently denounced by Clinton officials and the Democratic Party. The Path to 9/11 was never repeated or released on DVD. In the documentary, Nowrasteh argues, according to the Hollywood Reporter, that ABC bowed to pressure from Clinton and other Democrats, and he shows scenes purportedly removed from the miniseries at their request.


Australia Movie Screenwriter Inspired by Actual Australia
In a recent interview with National Geographic Adventure magazine (not online), screenwriter Richard Flanagan talked about his childhood in Tasmania and the northern outback region that inspired him to pen the script. The Hobart native is an accomplished canoeist and river expert, and worked for several years as a guide on the Franklin River, a job that provided the inspiration for his first book, Death of a River Guide. He didn't always exercise the best judgment, though. As Flanagan admits in the interview, he and a friend set off on kayaks one morning for a friend's wedding in Sydney, only to be rescued from a force 9 gale at dusk. They had never been sea kayaking before, and were severely under-equipped for the long journey.

Movie Magic Streamlines the Writing Process
…Luckily, the people at Write Brothers Inc. have the solution to [cheating the overwritten script by manipulating margins]: Streamline for Movie Magic Screenwriter, a software program that analyzes a screenplay, finds small changes that can be made to trim its excess material and, in the process, lower its page count. With Streamline, the analysis and deletion of everything from words and trailing lines to paragraphs and transitions marks an end to script cheating, making an honest, quick and easy process out of what was once a major pain for screenwriter’s editing their own scripts.

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On the Contest Circuit:

CWA Announces Contest Semfinalists

BlueCat Announces Contest Winner

Screamfest Announces Finalists

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And finally…

ScriptGirl (from 10/10/08)

Advice on Characters

Hey guys,

Here are some quotes about characters from a book I love: Advice to Writers: A Compendium of Quotes, Anecdotes, and Writerly Wisdom from a Dazzling Array of Literary Lights, compiled by Jon Winokur.

Hope you enjoy them.

-MM

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When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people, not characters. A character is a caricature.
- Ernest Hemingway

Begin with an individual and you find that you have created a type; begin with a type and you find that you have created – nothing.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald

You can never know enough about your characters.
- W. Somerset Maugham

I always pulp my acquaintances before serving them up. You would never recognize a pig in a sausage.
- Frances Trollope

You must be very careful how you introduce your characters. The star plan is to talk about them before they appear so as to make the audience curious to see them, and sufficiently informed about them to save them the trouble of explaining their circumstance. But as some of the characters must open the play and cannot be prepared in this way, you must either fall back on the Parisian well-made play formula and begin with a conversation between the butler and housemaid or else start the characters with a strongly assertive scene, like Richard III.
- George Bernard Shaw

The bad novelist constructs his characters; he directs them and makes them speak. The true novelist listens to them and watches them act; he hears their voices even before he knows them.
- André Gide

A character is never a whole person, but just those parts of him that fit the story or the piece of writing. So the act of selection is the writer’s first step in delineating character. From what does he select? From a whole mass of what Bernard De Voto used to call, somewhat clinically, “placental material.” He must know an enormous amount more about each of his characters than he will ever use directly – childhood, family background, religion, schooling, health, wealth, sexuality, reading, tastes, hobbies – an endless questionnaire for the writer to fill out. For example, the writer knows that people speak, and therefore his characters will describe themselves indirectly when they talk. Clothing is a means of characterization. In short, each character has a style of his own in everything he does. These need not all be listed, but the writer should have a sure grasp of them. If he has, his characters will, within the book, read like people.
- William Sloane

A novelist’s characters must be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them.
- Anthony Trollope

Front-rank characters should have some defect, some conflicting inner polarity, some real or imagined inadequacy.
- Barnaby Conrad

I would never write about someone who is not at the end of his rope.
- Stanley Elkin

The protagonist of a play cannot be a perfect person. If he were, he could not improve, and he must come out at the end of the play a more admirable human being than he went in.
- Maxwell Anderson

The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.
- Raymond Chandler

A character, to be acceptable as more than a chess piece, has to be ignorant of the future, unsure about the past, and not at all sure of what he’s supposed to be doing.
- Anthony Burgess

When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away – even if it’s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.
- Kurt Vonnegut

The characters have their own lives and their own logic, and you have to act accordingly.
- Isaac Bashevis Singer

A character has his own logic. He goes his way, one goes with him; he has some perceptions, one perceives them with him. You do him justice; you don’t grind your own axe.
- Saul Bellow

Tolstoy said a great thing [about characterization]: You can tell that a marriage is on the rocks when they speak to each other rationally.
- David Mamet

“Character is Fate,” said Heraclitus in 500 B.C. or thereabouts. But “Our characters are the result of our conduct,” added Aristotle a hundred years or so later. We will find character and action even more inseparably entwined in fiction than they appear to be in life.
- Rust Hills

Naming your characters Aristotle and Plato is not going to make their relationship interesting unless you make it so on the page.
- Annie Dillard

Names are terribly important. I spend forever coming up with names. Sometimes a character doesn’t work until I change his name. In Bandits, Frank Matusi didn’t work. I changed him to Jack Delaney and suddenly he opened up.
- Elmore Leonard

If you’re silent for a long time, people just arrive in your mind.
- Alice Walker

You put a character out there and you’re in their power. You’re in trouble if they’re in yours.
- Ann Beattie

That trite little whimsy about characters getting out of hand; it is as old as the quills. My characters are galley slaves.
- Vladimir Nabokov

The moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn’t thought about. At that moment he’s alive and you leave it to him.
- Graham Green

By the end, you should be inside your character, actually operating from within somebody else, and knowing him pretty well, as that person knows himself or herself. You’re sort of a predator, an invader of people.
- William Trevor

If you want to know your characters better, ask yourself: “How would they behave in a quarrel?”
- Barnaby Conrad

My characters are quite as real to me as so-called real people; which is one reason why I’m not subject to what is known as loneliness. I have plenty of company.
- William S. Burroughs

Goodies for Cinephiles

I’m just going to highlight some cinema goodness from the links on my “Goodies for Cinephiles” sidebar, which don’t get enough love.

Because right now, the best things in life are free, are they not?

Check out this great poster for The Shining:


You can purchase the poster here.

According to the description on the website, “The Alamo Drafthouse has commissioned Billy Perkins and Jeff Kleinsmith to re-create their sold-out poster 'duel' over the The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly from earlier this year...this time with The Shining! This Halloween, The Alamo in conjunction with Nike is throwing a special Shining Event up in Oregon. This truly haunting The Shining poster by Jeff Kleinsmith depicts Jack in the center of his maze of madness. Poster measures 24x34, 5 colors, is signed and numbered by the artist...” Very nice!

Kleinsmith also did a cool one for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly:


Here’s a pair of fun recommendations from Richard Harland Smith: "Frankensteinia is always a good time and host Pierre Fournier is a gracious and affable host in possession of an encyclopedia-like brain (which is to say it's very heavy and dry) about all things related to Mary Shelley's undying Creature." Plus, "Every day is Halloween for the minds behind Kindertrauma, where you can find confessions of childhood nightmares spawned by mindless entertainment, a sausage surprise recipe you won't soon forget and some traum-mercials that will scar your soul (no, I really mean that) and what has to be the scariest album cover ever." I gotta share the pic of sausage surprise:


Hehehe…

GreenCine has a round-up of articles on the newly released 50th anniversary release of Welles’ brilliant noir film, Touch of Evil. There’ a controversy involving the aspect ratio:

"The solution here, to make everyone happy, would be to include two presentation versions on the same release," writes Craig Keller in an open letter to producer Rick Schmidlin (who also oversaw the 1998 re-edit), "which would appease any functionaries who seek any excuse to release the thing in 'widescreen', and one version in open-matte 1.33 (not the current 1.85:1 image cropped further down to 1.33), which would make the compositions consistent with the core aesthetics of Welles's oeuvre (yes, I am aware of his in-certain-instances deliberate framing of particular films at 1.66), and consistent with the director's reflections on the aesthetics of framing as discussed in his (Welles's own) essay 'Ribbon of Dreams,' reproduced here."

Dave Kehr comments: "There's clearly no cut and dried answer here, in the absence of any documentary evidence, but my eye tells me that [the 1.85 aspect ratio is] too tight."

They also have a round-up of New York Film Festival articles on The Wrestler, and I LOVE this quote: "Here as in Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain, Aronofsky remains fascinated by humanity's capacity for self-mutilation in the pursuit of a cherished dream," writes Nick Schager in Slant. "His close-proximity immersion into Randy's in-ring violence and backstage recovery sessions - such as when medical treatment of his gruesome injuries instigates cross-cutting flashbacks to the brutal acts that produced them - results in gritty panoramas of corporeality damaged in the service of attaining stardom or, at least, base financial sustenance.... Eventually hampered by a traitorous ticker that relegates him to humble supermarket deli counter duty, Randy ultimately refuses to betray himself, and it's there, in Randy's resigned understanding and acceptance that a life predicated on self-destruction can only end one way, that The Wrestler ultimately locates its measure of graceful nobility."


“The printed word has the weight of absolute truth. And this weight of truth endures longer than one could ever imagine.”
—Catherine Deneuve, Interview with Pascal Bonitzer

Offscreen’s current issue is all about French Cinema:

The Goddess, French Cinema: Catherine Deneuve’s film diaries, Close Up and Personal by Daniel Garrett

Honor, Humanism, Humor: Notes on Jean Renoir’s film The Rules of the Game and the book Jean Renoir: Interviews by Daniel Garrett

A l’intérieur: a Rebirth of French Horror by Donato Totaro

The Eye of the Beholder: Marital Discord and Film Making in Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mepris by Jason Mark Scott

It’s Gradiva Calling: A Personal Homage to Alain Robbe-Grillet by Simon Laperrière

Oh, what the heck. Here are a few more Catherine Deneuve images. She was quite the icon.


From Senses of Cinema:

Sydney Pollack: A Personal Recollection by Scott Murray
The death of Sydney Pollack earlier this year affords the occasion for Senses of Cinema’s co-Editor to reflect on the man and his films.

“1963-1968. Paris: The Godard Years” by Antoine Bourseiller
A chapter from Bourseiller’s memoir Sans relâche: Histoires d’une vie which offers a rich and moving account of his friendship with Godard.

For those who love my series on Visual Storytelling, check out Strictly Film School’s Imagery section.


From the always provocative Bright Lights Film Journal:

Blood, Sweat, and Canvas: How Barton Fink Can Set You Free — "All the world's a hell ten feet square"

To Slap a Dame: Sexual Violence in the Age of Reason — "He's the only one that enacts incest with one hand and bats away communists like flies from a dung pile with the other."


The 1,000 Greatest Films

Plus, the List of Bests:
* 1,000 Greatest Films Checklist.
* 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films Checklist.
* And 250 Quintessential Noir Films Checklist.



I’ve read recently quite a few interesting thoughts about Waltz with Bashir, which was written and direct by Ari Folman. There’s a round-up in GreenCine Daily here. See the trailer above. It’s about the protagonist’s memory of the nightmarish Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and the Sabra and Shatila massacres that were committed by Phalangist militias against the Palestinians. Animation is certainly a great venue to explore stories about the mind. Whether there’s an audience for such an endeavor on the other hand…

Here are some interesting thoughts from Michael Koresky in the always thoughtful site, Reverse Shot:

Folman isn’t gussying up a difficult chapter of history in accessible pop extravagance; rather he’s using a new form to investigate the terrible persistence, not to mention unreliability, of memory and perception, and how personal and political deceptions often go hand in hand…

…The structure of the film—that Ari is searching for the “truth” about what happened over 25 years ago at the refugee camps by interviewing his fellow soldiers, and none of them can quite remember or agree—is not simply a plot device; Folman directly investigates, through form and narrative, the act of willful forgetting. As Folman meets with one comrade after another, many of whom he hasn’t seen in decades and all of whose experiences paint different portraits of the incident and other events that occurred in Lebanon surrounding the massacre, we see a pattern of rueful self-awareness but also of intentional distancing. War is recalled as though a dream, not just because of the soldiers’ vague recollections but because reality is too much to face. Folman designs not an alternate history but a drastic conceptualization of subjective truth. The anything-goes freedom that comes with this sort of creative approach is only powerful by virtue of its limitations, and though Folman sometimes indulges in some wildly expressionistic flights of fancy (in one sequence a man recalls/dreams about a lifeboat in the shape of a huge naked woman, and he goes sailing off to safety on her supple, enormous body, the screen brightening from a drab gray to a surreal orange), most of his lovely vignettes stay grounded in a terrifying reality.


Here’s Nick Schager in Slant Magazine:

Folman nullifies engagement with his on-screen proxy protagonist by segueing back and forth between others' recollections. Such diversions, however, make strategic sense in light of the fact that Folman's own story is predictably telegraphed from the outset, with it tediously clear that what he's suppressed is involvement (of a sort) in the massacres of Muslims at Sabra and Shatila perpetrated by Israeli-supported Christian Lebanese militants shortly after the assassination of president-elect Bashir Gemayel. The way the human psyche denies, mutates and embellishes as a means of coping with extremity—and guilt, even of merely abetting—is a topic the director intimately understands, but Waltz with Bashir makes its point early on and then restates repeatedly and, when the action shifts to back-and-forth chats between Folman and pals, quite drearily. While sights such as Folman and two other soldiers rising from the water at night as flares fall around them have a trancelike loveliness, their ability to convey Folman's detachment from wartime horrors is ultimately too successful, creating a sense of remoteness that's both enervating and schematic, as is the film's structurally logical but graceless, Lars von Trier-ian final cut to live-action footage of the massacre's aftermath.


From Film-Philosophy:

When Robots would really be Human Simulacra: Love and the Ethical in Spielberg’s AI and Proyas’s I, Robot

A Cyborg’s Testimonial: Mourning Blade Runner’s Cryptic Images

Memory and Morals in Memento: Hume at the Movies

Towards a Theory of Film Worlds

Who has time for television?

-MM

Susannah Grant is Fabulous, too

Rediscovering "The Godfather"

Watch the trailer above.

Let me say that I have watched these restored films and fallen in love with Coppola’s Godfather masterpieces all over again. If ever you need a reason to switch to Blue-Ray, this is it. Do yourself a favor, make yourself an offer you can’t refuse, and buy the newly restored Godfather films on DVD or Blue-Ray. Worth every single penny.

Even in the midst of a potential economic downturn.

I have been so used to watching faded, flawed, washed copies of The Godfather and I have the films so thoroughly memorized that I can watch them without really watching them. You know? But this time with a perfect, flawless picture, and sumptuous colors, like drinking the perfect red wine, I actually EXPERIENCED The Godfather again.

Here’s a pair of screengrabs to illustrate the difference:


Isn’t that amazing? Notice the lady on the left with black hair. In the old version, she’s almost a shadowy silhouette. In the new, she’s a real human being. You can also make out the dark wooden shelves behind Pacino in his office at the end of Part I, which were too dark to see.

Do you remember the famous scene in Part I with Michael in Loui’s Restaurant and he shoots Sollozzo and McCluskey? I was completely floored, because for the first time, I saw the ENTIRE range of emotions on Pacino’s face - the quivering lips, the watering eyes, the little ticks in his cheek just before he pulls out that gun. Before, the film was always so washed you couldn’t see just how much Pacino did with his face. That has got to be one of the greatest acting moments in the history of cinema. It left me breathless! I had to watch it again!


It took them four months to restore that one scene. Fred Kaplan at Slate talked about the restoration process. “First, they repaired the original negative to the point where it could be put through a digital scanner without breaking. Then the machine digitally scanned the negative at a "4K" sampling rate—that is, at a rate of 4,096 pixels per line, much more than even a high-def image. The significance of this is that 4K scanning (which is still rarely employed in restoration work, in part because it's so expensive) is a high enough sampling rate to capture everything that's on a frame of 35 mm film. In other words, Harris and his team started with a digital replica of the film—not some compressed approximation, as is the case with most digital transfers.”

Here’s a great clip from a DVD extra about the restoration:



This was a seven figure project, a year and a half in the making, and over 1,000 man hours just to remove dirt off of the first film! This was handled by, of course, Robert Harris of the Film Preserve, the best in the business, the guy who, when he was restoring Hitchcock’s Vertigo asked for a color chip from a similar 1957 Jaguar that Kim Novak drove in the film so he could match the shade of green EXACTLY.

The extras were okay. Interestingly, at one point, Steven Spielberg said, “I was so pulverized by the story and the effect the film had on me. I felt that I should quit, that there was no reason I should continue directing because I would never achieve that level of confidence or the ability to tell a story [as well as Coppola did in The Godfather]. In a way, it shattered my confidence.”


There have been some interesting articles around the web.

Dave Kehr in the NYT wrote:

The “Godfather” films remain the 20th-century answer to Shakespeare's plays of royal succession, with the twist that here Prince Hal grows up, not into Henry V, but Richard III. Al Pacino's performance as Michael Corleone, the introverted youngest son of a wise and ruthless monarch, remains a model of modulation. The shape of his face, the set of his eyes, the weight of his body all seem to evolve imperceptibly (at least until the aggressive intervention of makeup in Part III). A puppyish kid who might have been played by Dustin Hoffman in his “Graduate” period becomes a figure of immense gravity and chilling emotional reserve, a portrait worthy of Walter Huston or Max von Sydow…

And Brando plays it like the master he was, balancing just enough exaggeration (the cotton-stuffed cheeks, the asthmatic voice) with pure behavioral naturalism (the eyes that go blank when he is bored or distracted) to create a figure that both belongs to this world and is too big for it. After that sequence his work is effectively done, and the character can recede into the background of the action (he spends much of the rest of the movie recovering from an assassination attempt) without surrendering his dominant presence.


Stephanie Argy had a great article in American Cinematographer:

In one instance during the digital grade of The Godfather, Yarbrough was able to draw out detail that was previously invisible because of a lab error during the production. The sequence in which Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) murders Sollozzo (Al Lettieri) and Capt. McCluskey (Sterling Hayden) in an Italian restaurant was shot over two nights, with the first night covering the first half of the scene, up to the point when Michael goes to the bathroom to retrieve a hidden gun. The first night’s work came back from the lab looking exactly as Willis intended, but the second night’s work came back too thin: the lab had neglected to push the film. “They simply pushed the wrong button and underdeveloped a day’s work,” says Willis. “When that happens, you don’t lose that much speed, but the fog level drops, and the look of the film changes. We left that lab and continued at Technicolor.”

Here's Jason Davis writing for CS Daily (not available on the web):

Though Coppola and Puzo collaborated on a screenplay based on the latter's book, The Godfather was directed, much like Coppola's subsequent masterpiece, Apocalypse Now, from a heavily annotated copy of the original text. Puzo divided his novel into nine books of successively shorter durations. Book I, which encompasses 34 percent of the story's page count, was virtually filmed in its entirety. Though several brief sequences were deleted from the finished film -- including the death of Vito's original consigliere Genco Abbandando, Michael's hotel stay with his girlfriend Kay Adams (Diane Keaton), and acting boss Sonny Corleone's (James Caan) war council after the attack on his father -- it's clear from the dialogue and mise en scène of the movie and its available deleted scenes that the book was Coppola's bible in executing the first act of the film. Following Michael's murder of the drug lord Virgil Sollozzo (Al Lettieri) and corrupt Police Captain Mark McCluskey (Sterling Hayden), the film veers subtly away from the novel as Coppola restructures the narrative to emphasize Michael's journey toward the Don's infamous leather chair. Therein rests the first distinction between book and film: the former chronicles the fall of Vito, while the latter dramatizes the rise of Michael.


A reading of the novel reveals a number of subplots discarded to tame the 446-page narrative, though many of the excised elements leave vestigial plot points in the finished film that allow Coppola to make several critical points. Sinatra-esque crooner Johnny Fontane (Al Martino), Vito Corleone's godson, was a key character running throughout the book, but only appears briefly at the outset of the film version. On the Don's daughter's wedding day, Fontane asks his Godfather to give his Hollywood career a push by leaning on an uncooperative movie mogul. The film seizes upon this story beat to illustrate Vito Corleone's process of persuasion as outlined by Michael to Kay in an earlier scene. The viewer sees Corleone consigliere Tom Hagen (Robert Duval) attempt to reason with producer Jack Woltz (John Marley). Woltz refuses to come to mutually beneficial terms with the Godfather because his quarrel with Fontane is personal and has nothing to do with business. The mogul receives "an offer he can't refuse" that changes his mind, and Vito's godson gets the role that will make him a movie star. The film has used the outset of Fontane's story to establish the ruthlessness of the world, and now the singer (as well as his future duet partner Nino Valenti, who goes unseen in the movie) can exit the story, despite the fact that Puzo dedicates the entirety of Book II, as well as several chapters later in the novel, to the trauma of Fontane's voice loss, his attempt to get Nino off the booze, and his eventual career as a Corleone-financed movie producer.


Referred to discreetly as "the woman whose private parts are too big" by Coppola, the novel's subplot regarding bridesmaid Lucy Mancini (Jeannie Linero) and her affair with the Corleone heir apparent Sonny is glimpsed several times in the film, but the movie never reveals that a gynecological abnormality is the basis for her attraction to the well-endowed mobster. Puzo devotes a substantial portion of the novel to Lucy's plight, and though the screenplay ignores the storyline altogether, Coppola's direction still alludes to the nuance when we see Sonny's wife Sandra (Julie Gregg) demonstrating her husband's "bedroom prowess" to the giggles of her girlfriends during the wedding at the top of the film. Though Lucy's story -- and its collision with Fontane's story strand -- is digressive in terms of the overall narrative arc, her minimization in the finished film is indicative of an overall trend within the movie. Sandra Corleone is almost entirely absent from the film. Hagen's wife Theresa (Tere Livrano) is seen, but her reunion with her kidnapped husband was cut from the theatrical release. Carmella Corleone (Morgana King) is never even named in the finished film (she's credited as "Mama Corleone" in both this movie and the sequel). The book features several key scenes between the Corleone matron and Michael's eventual wife Kay. Though at least one was scripted, it didn't appear in the finished film, leaving Kay, Michael's first wife Appolonia Vitelli (Simonetta Stefanelli), and his abused sister Connie Corleone Rizzi (Talia Shire) as the only prominent female roles in the movie.


He also talked a little about Kay, which is worth sharing:

The character of Kay is a particular point of comparison between the novel and film. In both versions, she's introduced as Michael's date to Connie's wedding. In each case, she's told about Vito Corleone's business and how Michael has no interest in joining the family firm. As noted earlier, the book offers more snapshots of the couple's evolving relationship, but some of this was excised to streamline the story. After Michael departs for Sicily, Kay comes to the Corleone compound to inquire after him. She's met by Hagen, who explains that Mike will get in touch when he's able. Kay asks to use the phone to call a cab and is ushered inside. Here, the scene ends in the film, but both the book and screenplay carry on with Kay encountering Carmela. In the script, Kay asks the older woman to pass on her letter to Michael and Mrs. Corleone agrees over Hagen's legal objections:

MAMA
You tell me what to do? Even he don't tell me what to do.
(to Kay)
You listen to me, you go home to your family,
and you find a good young man and get married.
Forget about Mikey; he's no good for you, anymore.

The loss of this brief exchange is two-fold: first, it establishes some idea of Vito and Carmella's relationship. Even the all-powerful Godfather doesn't command his wife. Without this beat, we only have Connie's relationship to illustrate male-female dynamics within the Corleone family, and that train wreck tells a very different story than the one to which Mrs. Corleone alludes. Second: we see Carmella warning Kay away from Michael. In the book, Kay ignores this advice and continues, albeit intermittently, to inquire after Michael and eventually discovers that he's been back in America for some months. Mrs. Corleone invites Kay to the house, and there she's reunited with Michael before the story time lapses into their married life. The screenplay originally featured no rapprochement between Michael and Kay. She was merely waiting for him at the airport with their son when he returned home from Las Vegas. A year or so after principal photography, Coppola remedied this narrative oversight with a scene that now finds Michael seeking out Kay in Connecticut upon his descent into the underworld. Already, Michael is the more active character. When she calls him on becoming a mobster, he offers a rationalization based on a passage from page 365 of Puzo's novel:

"My father is a businessman trying to provide for his wife and children… He doesn't accept the rules of the society we live in because those rules would have condemned him to a life not suitable to a man like himself, a man of extraordinary force and character. What you have to understand is that he considers himself the equal of all those great men like Presidents and Prime Ministers and Supreme Court Justices and Governors of the States. He refuses to accept their will over his own. He refuses to live by rules set up by others…"


The dialogue onscreen delivers the point more concisely and, like the text of the novel, ends with a promise of legitimacy within half a decade. What's not apparent in either version of the story until later is that Michael may as well be talking about himself, as Vito has effectively begun the transfer of power to his son. Indeed, the peace Vito guaranteed at a meeting of the entire American underworld a few scenes earlier was promised solely to insure Michael's safe return to America. The movie doesn't concern itself with the complicated logistics of pacifying the Barzinis and Tattaglias, but the novel expends great detail upon the elder Corleone's machinations. Why does Coppola shortchange the audience on these specifics? To service the primacy of Michael Corleone. In the book, Vito plans the entirety of the film's climax. Only a massive coronary prevents him from seeing his son execute (quite literally) his grand design. While the book places much of its thematic weight on Vito's failure to see his plans through -- to topple his enemies and steer his family into legitimate business -- the movie rests its finale on Michael. It is Michael who plans the simultaneous murders of gambling mogul Moe Greene (Alex Rocco), Dons Victor Stracci (Don Costello), Carmine Cuneo (Rudy Bond), Phillip Tattaglia (Victor Rendina), and Emilio Barzini (Richard Conte), and the movie executes these killings while Michael attends his nephew's baptism as an alibi.

By the way, Abe Vigoda is still very much alive, thank you.

Phil Nugent and Sarah Clyne Sundberg debate Part III.

Here’s the Official Godfather Site.


And if all this wasn’t enough, let me share a few of my thoughts about The Godfather when we had the Favorite Screenplays Blog-a-Thon:

* For a time, I used to obsess over the various motifs that ran through the film, particularly the use of oranges, which were symbols of death. Don Vito Corleone tried to buy some oranges just before he was gunned down. He also put an orange in his mouth just before he died. In Part II, I think you could see oranges when Johnny Ola visited Michael near the beginning of the film. Michael also sucked on an orange when he had a serious discussion with Hagen and company about killing Hyman Roth. And of course, Michael was holding an orange when he died in that final scene of Part III. There were quite a few other motifs involving fish, automobiles, wine, water, and thunder. Thanks to The Godfather, it’s a habit of mine to incorporate rich symbolism into my own stories.

* A lot of writers would try fancy schticks to convey the idea that a particular character is powerful, especially through excessive talk or a huge office. But in the opening shot, I am still moved by the simplicity of how easily Coppola conveyed to the world that Don Corleone is a powerful man. He was not in a huge office, and the Don didn’t have to say anything special to prove how powerful he was. We knew it from the way Amerigo Bonasera poured his heart out to the man in front of him and begged for justice and with the way the camera would pan back, and we would look at Bonasera over Brando’s shoulder.

* The dialogue has a poetic quality that elevates it above realism. It’s like they were able to take ethnic dialect and elevate it to this syntax of opera librettos. In other words, the dialogue and mannered phrases operate at a theatrical level and display a kind of operatic loftiness, which no one else has been able to achieve at that level. And that poetry in words is reinforced all the more when they speak Italian.

-MM

Around the Blogosphere 10/9/08

John August has released his Scrippet plugin to the masses.

I loved Unk’s Chasing the Process.
It occurred to me very recently that I’ve got an addiction. An addiction to the PROCESS of screenwriting. (The graph is hilarious.)

Mike Le’s great Divine Intervention.

Danny Stack on Foreshadowing.
Don’t be dull and flat with foreshadowing. It’s easy to give a character a line of dialogue that’s an important bit of set-up but, more often than not, it will sound too obvious or stilted. “Make your exposition ammunition” is a good way of saying dramatise what you want to get across rather than simply tell us. So, basically, if you need to set something up, do it within the context of a scene or as part of someone’s characterisation, or a clever bit of dialogue/an amusing exchange. Try to give the set-up another purpose within the scene rather than just plain exposition.


I still enjoy Bill Martel’s Fridays with Hitchcock and most recently, The Trouble with Harry and Vertigo.

Julie Gray on Origin Stories
So all of this got me to thinking - what is your main character's origin story? Regardless of genre, your main character is on an arc of change, right? What was that moment that defined the hole your main character has been trying to fill ever since? What defined them long before your story began? If there was a moment of origin for your main character, your script is then going to be the second most defining moment of their lives, right? Because your script is in some ways the continuation of a story that already began long ago.

The Anonymous Production Assistant hates directors
I know of directors, not that I’ll name Brett Ratner’s name or anything, who pretty much let the DP run the show, and then, in post, have the editor put the movie together on her own. But I digress. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Above the liners are messed up. Writers are insecure, socially inept misanthropes; directors are raging ego-maniacal sociopaths; actors are just as egotistical, but without having gone to the trouble of accompishing anything to justify their egos; and producers just wish they could be writers, directors, or actors, if only they had the talent.


I loved Bordwell’s article on Reaction Shots
Prototypically, the reaction shot shows a face expressing emotion. The technique trades on our ability to grasp expressions, often very quickly. We’ve perfected this skill since birth, and there’s evidence that newborns are pre-wired to detect and respond to certain expressions, especially from mom. Exposure to actual expressions in their daily lives allows children to refine and tune this proclivity. So one part of the reaction-shot technique is a very well-practiced skill that cinema has exploited.

Can a bad review kill your career? Short version: Yes
There's one time in particular when an author is particularly vulnerable to the effects of a devastating review, and that's when you are a debut author. An editor who takes on a first-time novelist is taking a risk on someone who's untried in the marketplace. The editor hopes, of course, that the debut novel will be wildly successful, or at a minimum, earn back its advance And to increase the chances of its success, this editor will talk up the book to the sales force. As the pub date approaches, she hopes that in-house enthusiasm for the book builds, because that enthusiasm gets transferred to booksellers, who will be convinced to increase their orders. Hefty orders mean more exposure, better displays, and of course better sales. Imagine you are that debut author, and your novel "FIRST TIME OUT" has been bought with a generous advance. Imagine that the publishing house is telling you this is going to be an important book. Imagine that they have decided to give it a big push, with major ads and an author tour.

Alan asks: Hollywood’s promising you more superheroes, more crossovers, bigger films - but will they be any good?
But I’d argue that the success of IM and TDK owe as much to a stronger dedication to story and character as they do for their purely visual and aesthetic treats. And I wonder, as I read about recent trends designed to Make! The Movies! Into Events! Again!!, whether future efforts will simply throw story, character and true narrative movie-making back under the bus again.


Mark Achtenberg on Kieslowski's Dekalog
I highly recommend this series to all but particularly to film writers. Kieslowski's work is firmly planted in strong themes and ideas. I'll leave you with Stanley Kubrick's forward to the published screenplays of 'The Dekalog': I am always reluctant to single out some particular feature of the work of a major filmmaker because it tends inevitably to simplify and reduce the work. But in this book of screenplays by Krzysztof Kieslowski and his co-author, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, it should not be out of place to observe that they have the very rare ability to dramatize their ideas rather than just talking about them. By making their points through the dramatic action of the story they gain the added power of allowing the audience to discover what's really going on rather than being told. They do this with such dazzling skill, you never see the ideas coming and don't realize until much later how profoundly they have reached your heart.

MaryAn Batchellor on Suspension of Disbelief
So, I pose this question - how far is too far? Where is the line? Is the line Stretch Armstrong far for animated films and slashers but only to the edge of your elbow for every other genre?


James Bond Blogathon (10/24-11/16); or, Cinephilias of Anticipation

Tim Claque & The Villain’s Journey
All too often we think of the hero. But what about the villain? Every actor says the villain is more fun to play… Philip Zimbardo is a name you may not know. But he was the professor who ran the now famous experiment where he took a random group of 24 students and made half of them prisoners and half of them prison guards - and watched the abuses unfold within a matter of days. In short his career is about studying the evil within us all.

Girish on the The Filmmaker Overview Essay
There is a genre of film criticism that I find intimidating enough that I've never managed to produce a piece of writing in it. I speak of the filmmaker overview essay. For a film-lover, it's an immensely useful and educational form. I'm always looking out for good examples of it. A couple of terrific ones have appeared online recently.


Controversial: Rescuing Se7en from Nihilism
The difficulty I have with the attachment of this label to Se7en is that Se7en is not nihilistic but a concertedly structured, almost mathematically precise exercise in moral calculus that argues people must abandon apathy as a private solution to the problem of pandemic human suffering. If an incorrect view of a valuable work is perpetuated it tarnishes the reputation of that work and those who created it, and obscures the ability of viewers to engage that work as it is intended to be engaged. Language activates a conceptual understanding, a presupposition. "Nihilistic" is an especially toxic word that suggests far more than merely that a film has a downbeat ending. It suggests a work is immoral, amoral, and that, by imputation, the filmmakers, director and writer have willfully conspired to create art whose intent is to hurt viewers and disparage our collective confidence that our lives are meaningful. Thus, one who believes Se7en is an cynical exercise in torturing an audience may conclude, "Se7en is a nihilistic work; therefore, it doesn't mean anything. It does not exist for any purpose other than to shock and depress people like me." This is unfortunate, because I believe the meaning of Se7en is immutably clear, brilliantly argued and vitally important.

(Thanks, K, for the link!)

Recent Script Sales

Interesting Q&A with Kirk Douglas
THR: Why did you hire Dalton Trumbo to write "Spartacus"?
Douglas: Sen. (Joseph) McCarthy was an awful man who was finding communists all over the country. He blacklisted the writers who wouldn't obey his edict. The heads of the studios were hypocrites who went along with it. My company produced "Spartacus," written by Dalton Trumbo, a blacklisted writer, under the name Sam Jackson. Too many people were using false names back then. I was embarrassed. I was young enough to be impulsive, so, even though I was warned against it, I used his real name on the screen.
THR: What was the reaction from Universal Studios?
Douglas: They were against it, but they were weak at that time and in the process of selling the studio. So I overrode their objection -- and the sky didn't fall.

'The Dark Knight' Screenwriter David Goyer On 'Batman 3' Rumors
"If and when [Chris is] ready to talk - we'll talk," he promised.

Roger Ebert blogs now. A post I enjoyed: "Critic" is a four-letter word

-MM

Jenny Lumet is Fabulous

MM’s SEXY Announcement!

Hey guys,

I’m very proud to announce that I am the new contributor to Script Magazine! Yeah, baby! I will be in the next Nov/Dec issue! Not the one that’s out now (with Spike Lee on the cover), the NEXT one!

And I dared to go where no one else has dared before, the taboo topic of Sex in Screenwriting! It's not who showed what when. It’s all the ways that a sex scene can be crucial to a story. I've always wanted to study this. No one has ever really written about this topic before (at least, to my satisfaction), and I feel like we broke some new ground here. There are SO many ways it can be crucial. It's a two-part series. Part One will be in the magazine and Part Two will be available on (what will be) their newly redesigned website. Frankly, I could've written a Part Three, because it's such a huge topic.

Not that size matters.

There will also be a new “Mystery Photo” of me in every issue on the Contributor's page. You won't see my face but little revelations here and there. All I can say is that for this issue, a few people in the Script Mag office sent me e-mails saying "Nice shoes!" Hehehe...

I do love the people in the editorial office. They’re great fun. Shelly’s a beautiful person. At one point in the article, I mention James Bond, and one of the editors, Maureen, told me how excited she was because they managed to get a "Daniel Craig nipple shot.” Hehehe...

No, they don't know who I am. I don't get paid for the articles. We've made arrangements for the money to go to my FAVORITE charity, Give Kids the World, which grants last wishes for dying children who want to visit Disney World, etc. I love that place for reasons I can't explain.

Anyway, just thought I’d share. Subscribers should get their issue by the end of October and the magazine should hit the stands early November. (And for those of you not living in the United States, if you can’t get the magazine in a local bookstore, the cheapest thing to do would be to sign up for a subscription. It'll be worth the money.)

Woo hoo!

-MM

Screenwriting News & Links! 10/7/08

All right, kids. Now that my schedule’s opened up somewhat, we’re going to get into some hardcore blogging again, beginning with NEWS LINKS! Yeah, baby! Instead of posting this once a week, I’m going to post shorter news link articles every other day or so.

Check out the vid above about Sharky’s Machine. I haven’t seen that film in years! And I love the analysis provided by our good friend and former NYT film critic, Matt Zoller Seitz. (He switched over to the dark side to become a filmmaker!) He was more than generous to me when he was editor of The House Next Door and gave this blog plenty of shout-outs. When I posted The Case AGAINST Character Arcs, Matt wrote, “Thank you, thank you, thank you for validating something I've been harping about incessantly like Grandpa Abe Simpson yammering about the olden days when he wore a belt made out of an onion.”

Hehehe… I love ya, Matt.

In any case, I love the way he explained how Sharky’s Machine shows two characters that haven’t met, that are “geographically dissociated,” and yet “occupying the same space and same state of mind.” This happens when Sharky spends time observing a girl named Domino during a stakeout. Wordless montages, shared at the end of the vid, show us just how comfortable Sharky becomes with her in her daily routines to the point that it influences his own routines. Even though they haven’t met, the film’s compositions and editing “erase the distance between them and make them seem as compatible and comfortable together as a long married, happy couple.”

-MM

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New Screenplays:

Hancock (Tonight He Comes) - undated early draft by Vy Vincent Ngo

Semi Pro - June, 2006, draft script by Scot Armstrong

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - 1941 shooting script by John Lee Mahin

Wanted - December 1, 2005 draft by Michael Brandt & Derek Hass

Hellboy 2 - Undated draft by Guillermo del Toro

The Mummy 3 - August 19, 2005, draft by Alfred Gough & Miles Millar

Pineapple Express - November 28, 2006, unspecified draft by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg

Repo Man - 1982 unspecified draft by Alex Cox

Beetle Juice - June 1, 1985 second draft script by Michael McDowell
Beetle Juice - August 4, 1986 second draft script by Warren Skaaren
Beetle Juice - February 3, 1987 second draft script by Warren Skaaren

The Producers - undated draft by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan

Lake Placid - May 6, 1998, full pink draft by David E. Kelley

Lord of War - undated draft script from Andrew Niccol

(Hat-tip to SimplyScripts.)

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Joe Eszterhas rediscovers his Catholic faith!
“I was going crazy. I was jittery. I twitched. I trembled. I had no patience for anything. … Every single nerve ending was demanding a drink and a cigarette,” he wrote. He plopped down on a curb and cried. Sobbed, even. And for the first time since he was a child, he prayed: “Please God, help me.” He has a new book out titled Crossbearer: A Memoir of Faith, a new screenplay written about the life of St. Paul, and you can listen to an interview on NPR.

Die Hard Screenwriter Steven E. de Souza
“The franchise can go on and on, because it no longer has to be a ‘Die Hard’ movie,” explained the screenwriter to MTV Movies Blog recently. “Only the first two movies were actually ‘Die Hard’ movies, which I would define as the solitary hero with little or no help, largely alone for long stretches of time, trapped in an enclosed area he cannot escape. The first two pictures held to that model.” Along with fan-favorites Bonnie Bedelia (as Holly) and Reginald VelJohnson (as Twinkie-loving cop Al Powell), de Souza was removed from the series for 1995’s “Die Hard With a Vengeance” and last year’s “Live Free or Die Hard.” “[Now] they go out and they travel,” he said of those films. “They go to Canada and come back, and they go to New Jersey, and they drive around in cars and go all over the Eastern Seaboard in the fourth picture. Those are excellent pictures. They’re well-made movies, but I think it’s interesting that neither one of those - three or four - was originally written as a ‘Die Hard’ movie.”


Interview with the Star Trek Writers
Orci: And it's controversial to even mention Star Wars and Star Trek in the same sentence, but Alex said, "We have to bring more Star Wars into Star Trek."
Kurtzman: (joke-coughing) Original Star Wars.

I Love You, Nancy Nigrosh
Why is it so ingrained in Hollywood that one person alone cannot write a producible screenplay…?

But the real truth is that the actual day –to- day script development process based on writer elimination has created the real strife. Historically this practice has led to the cyclical bloodletting every time the guild’s contract with the buyer /employer gang known as the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers, expires. If something doesn't fundamentally change, there will be more strikes in the future, as each contract expires, creating a negative cycle of meltdown Hollywood and its doting mama, California, can ill afford.

Novelists, playwrights and poets are not rewritten by other writers. Even journalists do the deed pretty much alone. But screenwriters not only routinely and eagerly replace each other, they are tactical in their competitive quest for credit, credit that is not only emotionally gratifying but financially existent. Without credit, future opportunity, immediate and contingent compensation, dissolve. All that hard work to get beyond base camp, undone. Back to square none. Meaning - what do you tell your family, friends, former classmates, neighbors, and people you’ve yet to meet - that you did work on something glamorous for possibly years even, but in the end, your name didn’t scroll by?

Nancy, are you single?


Then again, Jenny Lumet’s kinda hot, too
The film is Lumet's first produced script, though the fifth she's completed. "I started writing during the pregnancy of my first child so that's 13 years ago," she said, "On the first one, you just sort of write and you're learning about stuff. And the ones after that, I thought they were really funny but no one else thought they were really funny. So they tanked miserably. They got optioned and just sort of laid there and didn't do anything." (Jenny’s the screenwriter for Rachel Getting Married, which is currently sitting at 83% on the Tomatometer.)

But, wait, Geri Halliwell wrote a script, too!
Geri Halliwell has written her first screenplay. She says she got tips from industry people about how to come up with a good plot, and then used Final Draft, which is a screenwriting template, on her computer to write it. But she's staying mum on details about the movie. Geri tells The Sun, "It is pretty incredible to finish it. I've got a few friends who are screenwriters, like the whole story of it."


And here’s Halliwell’s Guide to Screenwriting
“..every story has three acts whether it’s a screenplay or not. Well, most of them do. The first act is the problem and by the end of the first act you know what the problem is and how you are going to go about it. The second act is like the highlight and by the end of the second act it has to go wrong. And the third act is the resolution. Normally in the first act you’ve got ten points to make, in the second you’ve got about 15 or 20 and I think it’s about 15 in the third act. It’s really exciting.”

God, I love writers...


Here's The Plot for That Other Halo Movie Screenplay
It sets up a world 500 years in the future and we have colonies, there's the UNSC, there's the secret Spartan training program. And you see this six-year-old kid kidnapped in the middle of the night... The character doesn't start off as Master Chief. He starts off as John, who's the kid that's kidnapped and told he's going to be a soldier. Anyone can connect with a kid kidnapped from his own home. You're along for that journey. The Covenant comes along halfway through that movie. That gives you half the movie to really get to know everyone and care about everyone. And then when the Covenant come along, it's the first time John sees a grunt or a jackal or an elite. The audience is trying to figure out everything at the same time as the characters are. What are these aliens? Why are they killing us? What did we do? And realizing it's all about this Halo ring. And then ending the movie where the first game begins.

In 12 Years What I Have Learned About Screenwriting
4) BE A STUDENT – not in the take classes continually sense (though I do teach online at 4screenwriters.com and taking 1 or 2 can help :). But as you develop your craft you must always be reading, writing, and watching. Improve your craft (art) by always being on the KNOW. Watch movies, read screenplays and books, read those Hollywood insider mags and websites, and always be writing. (ABW).


Interview with "Iron Man" Writer Matt Fraction
DB: Is Tony's love life going to play a role in stories down the line, or will you just focus on him and his suit?
MF: It's very much a story about him and his suit. Although I would love to write a story about Tony Stark's complicated love life. It's an aspect of his character, that's for sure. [It's like] in the movie, when he goes to bed with the angry reporter from Berkeley; you can imagine that same reporter with a similar line of questioning with Captain America, but you can't imagine Captain America seducing her later. But with Tony, you can, so we should absolutely take advantage of it.

NYIFF Eastwood Interview
How was the incident first told to you, and why did you want to make it into a film?
I didn't know much about the incident, and I was surprised I hadn't heard about it, because it was such an unusual event. L.A. historically has had crazy situations, but this one was very unusual. I didn't know anything about it until I read the script. [Screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski] did a very interesting thing. He took the story of the woman rather than take the story of the crime.

John le Carre was a real spy
"I have no nostalgia for the Cold War," says le Carre, who worked for British intelligence in Germany in the 1960s, when tensions with the Soviet Union were at their chilliest. "I think I have nostalgia for the hope that existed during the Cold War that when it ended we would redesign the world. We never did that. We missed the whole trick."

Backstory: The Movie
D.B. Weiss has been hired to write a prequel for Will Smith's hit film I Am Legend, based on a detailed outline from Smith, director Francis Lawrence, and producers Akiva Goldsman and James Lassiter. The story will detail how Smith's character became the last survivor in NY.

Spielberg's A-List
The L.A. Times blogs about some of the films Steven Spielberg has brought with him into the newest incarnation of DreamWorks, which is backed by India's Reliance ADA Group.

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On the Contest Circuit:

Extreme Query Contest Winner Announced

Writers on the Storm Announces Semifinalists

AAA Announces 2008 Quarterfinalists

2008 PAGE Award Winners Announced

Script Savvy Announces August Contest Results

MoviePoet Announces August Contest Winners

Horror Screenplay Contest Announces Winners

Horror Screenplay Finalists Announced

Fade In Announces Award Winners

Samuel Goldwyn Finalists Named

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And finally…

Neil Simon from “Writers on Screenwriting”

Home of the Tension Blog-A-Thon!

Hey guys,

What are some examples of great tension and suspense in cinema history? What made those examples great? What's to be learned by it? What are some bad examples? Because I would really like to know.

Please engage all of the very kind and thoughtful contributors by adding comments to their posts. I'll be updating the table of contents frequently all weekend. Let me know with a link to this post in your article or e-mail me and I'll add your article to the list!

(Hit refresh for updates.)

-MM

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

Table of Contents (updated 10/5/08 at 7:00 pm):

• First, our friend David Alan gives us his thoughts on Ghostbusters and Arachnophobia. "Arachnophobia, like Spielberg’s Jaws, which uses my favorite kind of tension, puts more emphasis on characters and build-up. And so, no matter if it may not be frightening, or that there is little edge, or anything else for that matter, Arachnophobia succeeds in holding that amiable, fun creepiness along the way and through the final scenes where it's just Ross against an army of extremely deadly spiders. Still, that doesn't mean it won’t make you jump in your seat from time to time."
  
  
• Next, another friend, Lisa, aka The Pearl Poet on TriggerStreet gives us examples from Married Life. "The tension and suspense in this film works because of what the audiences knows or doesn't know. In my opinion, the tension is the highest when Henry waits to hear back from the neighbor. We have no idea what has happened to Patty yet, so we feel like we're waiting with him. And when he discovers Kay and Richard together, we understand the panic in his eyes, his panic to get home and try to save his wife, because now more than ever, he needs her."
  
  
• Next, our friend Nigel (aka “Terraling”) gives us his thoughts on The Decalogue. "We start with a scene full of foreboding that primes both the intellect and the heart: something bad will happen. As the story unfolds details accumulate that foreshadow the outcome with ever greater certainty. A small boy, the nearby frozen lake, his curiosity about what happens when you die, and -- crucially in the context of the theme of the story -- his father's dismissal of religion and his faith in science, the boy's discovery of the brand new skates that were to be a Christmas present, the father's certainty that the ice on the lake is sufficiently thick for the boy to go out on it (they calculate it together on a computer)."
  
  
• Your very own Mystery Man, in what will be two articles on tension this weekend, first explores the world of Indiana Jones. "A baddie has to be BAD in order to be feared."
  
  
• Here's Joshua James on The Untouchables: "Here’s what I posit. There’s going to be a lot of people writing about the importance of visuals, beats, etc, when it comes to suspense in the cinema, and those are indeed important, but there’s a few things that I feel often get overlooked, and they are more important, in my small opinion. They are: 1) Context 2) Character [and] 3) Expectations." Love it! Also of note is The Prestige, The Reveal and the Head-Fake: "And when you think about it, that’s the craft part of this job as a writer. Like the magician, we’re only as good as our REVEAL."
  
  
• The always fabulous Emily Blake talks up I Am Legend. "It's that isolation, the quiet, the dark, the loneliness, all that works in conjunction. And these scenarios are well set up. Francis Lawrence, the director, clearly took his time with these shots. It's not all about getting the loudest, fastest bang. It's about showing us the danger so we have time to think about it before he steps in it. We feel what Robert feels and we are really worried because if he's the last man on Earth then his death is the death of us all."
  
  
• Bob Glickstein talks about a variety of films: "But then how to explain the even greater tension in similar scenes in Schindler’s List and Pan’s Labyrinth — scenes in which a sympathetic character is at the mercy of a psychotic military commander pretending at kindness that you know can explode at any second into depraved cruelty? We don’t know what horrible whim is about to be indulged, we just know that it’s gonna be bad, real bad; and there will be no escape for the victim, and no repercussions for the psycho. In these cases the evil is all too credible — the psychopath is recognizably human, not a cartoon; and the victim is someone in whom we’re invested, and with whom we identify. Maybe the secret of movie suspense is simply to depict fully realized, three-dimensional characters in bad situations." Thanks, Bob!
  
  
• Michael Patrick Sullivan talks TV and Battlestar Galactica: "This, right here, is one of my favorite kinds of tension. The kind that doesn't just take you for a ride, but makes you a backseat driver. Something's happening, and the viewer is piecing it together ass, if not just before , it happens. It involves, and it doesn't talk down. That's a tricky one, if there's any measure of predictability, you're shot. But it gets the mind racing and the viewer is taken to the edge of seat as they think they're on the leading edge of figuring something out while all that information, and all those moments build to the reveal of what's going on, right at the instant you've think you've figured it out. Or did you? Maybe you were just strapped in at the front of the ride."
  
  
• Christian Howell writes about No Country For Old Men: "We will root for the mellow guy who just found some money. We want to see his wife take advantage of the money. We HOPE beyond hope, but the viciousness of Chigur raises the UNCERTAINTY. We are cognizant of the stakes and realize that there could very well be a destructive outcome. Destructive for Moss. Destructive for Bell. Destructive for Carla Jean. Destructive for Wells. Like the cougar we find it difficult to root for Chigur but we do admire and fear his ruthlessness and power."
  
  
• And finally Mystery Man goes over various Elements of Suspense: "If, in the first chapter, you say there is a gun hanging on the wall, you should make quite sure that it is going to be used further on in the story. - Anton Chekhov"

Elements of Suspense

“If, in the first chapter, you say there is a gun hanging on the wall, you should make quite sure that it is going to be used further on in the story.”
- Anton Chekhov

Okay, first, let’s talk about AUDIENCE KNOWLEDGE.

There is available online a nice, albeit elemental, thesis on the Elements of Suspense, which focused on Alfred Hitchcock, and we are, of course, given the famous time bomb story. Hitchcock said:

“There is a clear difference between surprise and suspense […]. We are sitting here and having an innocent conversation. Let us assume that there is a bomb under this table between us. […] suddenly there is a loud boom and the bomb goes off. The audience is surprised, but before this surprise they have only seen a very ordinary scene without any significance. Let us instead look at a suspense scene. The bomb is under the table and the audience is aware of this because they have seen the anarchist plant it there. They also know that the bomb will go off at one o’clock, and up on the wall is a clock showing that the time is now quarter to one […]. In the first scene we have given the audience 15 seconds of surprise […] but in the last scene we have given them fifteen minutes of suspense.” (Truffaut 1973, p. 52-53)


I would say there is a variety of elements in this one example alone that are crucial to making this scene work. You have here, first of all, audience knowledge, of knowing facts that the characters do not know, which creates tension because the audience is helpless. In this scenario, the characters are somewhat helpless, too, because they don’t know what’s about to happen. It’s all about how well you handle not only the characters but also basic plot information. A number of elements need to be setup: you have to set up the characters and make the audience care about them and hope they won’t die. You have to establish the anarchists, and the fact that they are out there destroying lives. You have to establish the time factor. And there is also the important element of expectations in order to heighten the tension, which Joshua James wrote about. By this, we mean showing earlier in your story something bad that’s happened and innocent people dying, so that you’ve established the possibility this bomb could, in fact, go off. This brings to mind David Bordwell’s article and what he called “Suspense as Morality, Probability, and Imagination.”

The most influential current theory of suspense in narrative is put forth by Noël Carroll. The original statement of it can be found in “Toward a Theory of Film Suspense” in his book Theorizing the Moving Image. Carroll proposes that suspense depends on our forming tacit questions about the story as it unfolds. Among other things, we ask how plausible certain outcomes are and how morally worthy they are. For Carroll, the reader or viewer feels suspense as a result of estimating, more or less intuitively, that the situation presents a morally undesirable outcome that is strongly probable.

When the plot indicates that an evil character will probably fail to achieve his or her end, there isn’t much suspense. Likewise, when a good character is likely to succeed, there isn’t much suspense. But we do feel suspense when it seems that an evil character is likely to succeed, or that a good character is likely to fail.


THE TICKING CLOCK

Consider all the ways time was used to heighten the suspense throughout that little film called The Dark Knight. Every day Batman fails to reveal himself, people will die. Then, we’d know who was the target and we'd keep watching because we’re curious if or how the Joker will get to that target. “Depending on the time, he might be in one spot… or several.” He had “just minutes left” to save either Rachel or Dent. The way the Joker parceled out crucial information about his new game quickly heightened the tension in that interrogation scene with Batman. Then there was the commercial – tonight at five o’clock, we’ll reveal the identity of Batman. Stay tuned. Or the Joker’s phone call – “If Coleman Reese isn’t killed in sixty minutes, I’m going to blow up a hospital.” Or the ferry situation – If you don’t blow-up the other ferry by midnight, I’ll blow-up both of your ferries. This wasn’t done just for the sake of suspense. The emphasis was still on the characters because the Joker was out to prove a point about humanity.

We also had the ticking clock at the end of Aliens but it wasn’t an arbitrary gimmick. This was also the resolution to Ripley’s personal story and all of those nightmares and fears she was going through. This was her saving her own lost innocence as well as facing her deepest fears and the physical embodiment of those fears when she confronted - the Queen. All of this had to be done in X minutes.

Of course, there doesn’t have to be a clock to make the tension heightened. It’s one thing building upon another thing. It’s multiple setups for one big payoff. It’s the simple knowledge of what’s about to happen and then that thing happens (or not), like when Michael is about to shoot Sollozzo and the Captain in the Italian restaurant in The Godfather. (BTW – the restored version is gorgeous.) And we hold for that one moment as Michael almost fails to go through with it. It’s the time spent to set that up, the talk about how to do it, how many shots, how to walk away, the planning of where to place the gun, in order to maximize the suspense and emotions in that one scene. And I still feel, as when I wrote the Screenwriting State of Emergency, that there’s little devotion to details today to make scenes like this great.


The Elements of Suspense also talked about editing in order to maximize tension, that when emotions are high, Hitchcock resorted to tight shots and close-ups, but when the tension is over, he’ll fall back on medium shots. This is common. And editing is just as important when you write your script. Consider the way Tarantino used editing through his action lines to maximize the tension in the syringe scene in Pulp Fiction. Everything is on the line here, not just the life of Mia but Vincent’s as well. Notice the implied close ups and tight shots in his action lines and the way he dragged out this short moment:


Vincent lifts the needle up above his head in a stabbing motion. He looks down on Mia.

Mia is fading fast. Soon nothing will help her.

Vincent’s eyes narrow, ready to do this.

VINCENT
Count to three.

Lance on his knees right beside Vincent, does not know what to expect.

LANCE
One.

RED DOT on Mia’s body.

Needle poised ready to strike.

LANCE
Two.

Jody’s face is alive in anticipation.

NEEDLE in the air, poised like a rattler ready to strike.

LANCE (OS)
Three!

The needle leaves the frame, THRUSTING down hard.

Vincent brings the needle down hard, STABBING Mia in the chest.

Mia’s head is JOLTED from the impact.

The syringe plunger is pushed down, PUMPING the adrenalin out through the needle.

Mia’s eyes POP WIDE OPEN and lets out a HELLISH cry of the banshee.

She BOLTS UP in a sitting position, needle stuck in her chest---SCREAMING


FRAMING OF THE ACTION

And finally, one of the other elements of suspense discussed in the Hitchcock thesis is the framing of the shots. As I mentioned before, I’m a believer in writing the shots, and there are just some scenes and perspectives that get you no matter how many times you see it. Bordwell wrote, “the sight of Eve Kendall dangling from Mount Rushmore will elicit some degree of suspense no matter how many times you’ve seen North by Northwest, and that feeling will be amplified by the cutting, the close-ups, the music, and so on. Your sensory system can’t help but respond, just as it can’t help seeing equal-length lines in the pictorial illusion. For some part of you, every viewing of a movie is the first viewing.” Consider these images.

First, North by Northwest:


I love this. Here's a shot from Saboteur:


And Vertigo:



Below, the camera famously zooms out (toward wide angle) while tracking in. Note Scotty's (James Stewart) hands on the railing and how the railing changes shape as the focal length changes from the first photo to the second photo. Although you wouldn’t write camera angles, you can certainly write about a character’s changing perspective of his/her environment for whatever reason.



Not long ago, an artist did a practice exercise of storyboarding the opening sequence in Vertigo (below). I wonder if it would be helpful for us to write out our favorite scenes and compare them to the finished scripts? Would we learn that we tend to over-write or under-write?


-MM

Tension – Indiana Jones

Hey guys,

I know I’m covering some familiar territory here, but I cannot have a blog-a-thon about tension without listing the lessons learned from the ridiculous lack of tension in Indy 4. These lessons are just ringing in my ears. Let’s consider again the ways Indy 4 failed in the arena of tension before we look at successes.

SO, EVERYONE WANTS THE SAME DAMN THING?

You may recall how, after having gone over those 3 waterfalls, Indy tells the gang that he has to return the skull. Why? “Because it told me to.” Excuse me, can I ask a question? How can there be any tension leading up to the Third Act when Indy has the McGuffin in his possession and he’s doing what the Russians want him to do (without forcing him to do it) and he’s also doing what the skull wants him to do? Where’s the tension in that? If anything, the Russians should’ve obtained the skull in the chase sequence, captured Indy and the gang, and they all marched up to the chamber together. This, by the way, is exactly what happened in Darabont’s draft. Not only that, before going into the chamber, Darabont gave us a scene filled with tension of the gang tied to lots of TNT and a 3-minute fuse. You also had Oxley growing more terrified as they arrive at the grand plaza of The Great Stone Temple of the Gods. And then Porfi walks down the steps holding the machete and severed head. THAT is how it’s done.

THERE’S NO TENSION WITH A WEAK ANTAGONIST

A baddie has to be BAD in order to be feared. Irina Spalko was the worst and weakest of the villains in the entire Indy franchise. She wasn’t even as ruthless as Julian Glover. Screenwriter David Koepp cock-blocked every opportunity to make her a great villain. First, he should've established early just how BAD she really is. The worst thing she ever did was whip out her sword. I would’ve been happier if, instead of Mac betraying Indy in the warehouse, Spalko kills Mac to prove that she meant business. The fact that Spalko couldn't communicate with the skull was another misstep, in my opinion. Her mental connection to the skull would've raised the stakes and turned her into a more dangerous antagonist. Also, why make Spalko a psychic if A) she can’t even read Indy’s mind and B) nothing else develops from it? Her psychic abilities, I guess, was her motivation to obtain the skull’s power of mind, but she was so weak as a villain that I never felt she deserved what she got in the end. (I get the sense that they made her a soft villain so they wouldn’t offend today’s Russians, but to make her weak would be even more offensive, would it not? Besides, there is nothing worse in an Indy film than an under-motivated protagonist and a soft villain.)

CGI KILLS TENSION

You may say, “well, we don’t write ‘use CGI for this’ in our scripts.” No, but you know damn good and well when you are constructing action scenes that it’s likely they’ll be using CGI for a sequence that’s about, say, “big damn ants.” There’s no other way to film a sequence like that. And there’s a distinction between computerized ants that we all know is fake, and a real stunt involving a real human being that’s really skirting underneath a big truck, as we saw in Raiders. Or a real girl tied to the real hood of a car that’s really speeding down a road, as in Tarantino’s Death Proof. So the choice of what kind of action sequence you’re going to have is important when it comes to creating tension. You'll never feel that same kind of tension with CGI ants.

SANITIZED VIOLENCE KILLS TENSION

Mentioning (briefly) the gore in an action sequence add tension because it reminds the reader how much danger the protag is in. There was NO blood in Indy 4. Anywhere. Just a bit in the Soviet soldier's mouth before he toppled into the ants. That was it. Hardly any bullet holes in the dead Indians and no blood after the soldiers got gunned down in the beginning. This was the most cartoonish, fake, sanitized Indiana Jones film ever made and one that should’ve been PG instead of PG-13. Darabont never sanitized the violence in his script nor did the previous films sanitize the violence to this degree.

SETTING UP THE SCENE

Especially in an Indiana Jones film, you make the whole experience and joy of discovery less special (or not special at all) if it’s a tomb that Indy doesn’t discover for the first time and if it’s an artifact that Indy isn’t the first to find. In Crystal Skull, the tomb in which Indy finds the skull has already been raided, the artifact was found, taken, and put back for Indy to find later. Are you kidding me? The entire key to Indy finding his artifact is that he succeeds where many other archeologists before him have failed. In Darabont’s Indy 4 script, we had the wall of El Presidente’s, which contained photos of all the people who tried to find the City of Gods and never returned. (And I love that moment where Marion looks at the wall and through gritted teeth and a forced smile, she says to El Presidente, “Lovely tradition. Lovely.”) Consider how well Kasdan conveyed how dangerous this new world of Indiana Jones is in the opening scene of Raiders:

* You had the near betrayal against Indy when he put the map together and had to use his whip on the man that pulled out the gun.

* You had the fresh poison darts of the Hovitos.

* You had his entourage not going any further when they reached the stone sculpture of a Chachapoyan demon.

* You had the tarantulas.

* You had the dead competitor in the Chamber of Light.

* You had the pit.

* You had the dart floor in the Foyer of the Sanctuary.

There’s a process involved in carefully pointing out the danger before the big pay off of the giant boulder and Indy rushing back and dodging all of the various booby traps of the Temple on his way out.

-MM

Tension - Dekalog (The Decalogue)

As part of our Tension Blog-A-Thon, our friend Nigel (aka “Terraling”) gives us his thoughts on Kieslowski's The Decalogue.

Thanks so much, Nigel.

-MM

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Dekalog is a series of ten films by Krystof Kieslowski (more famous for his Three Colours trilogy) thematically based upon the Ten Commandments and set in a grim soviet-era Warsaw housing estate. According to IMDB Stanley Kubrick described Dekalog as the only masterpiece he could name in his lifetime.

I wanted to discuss the first film -- the first commandment is 'Thou shalt have no other God but me' -- which deals with the consequences of one man's hubris when he displaces God with science.

It is not a thriller or murder-mystery, there are no Hitchcock-ian devices, no red-herrings or MacGuffins or dramatic irony to manipulate an ebb and flow of tension. It is a morality tale with a very simple but highly effective motor of escalating tension. Kieslowski plays it straight and the tension rises more-or-less linearly over the course of forty-odd minutes, and it is the film's very predictability that is the source of the tension.

How does it work?

Anticipation is pretty much the be-all and end-all of screenwriting. Make us want to know what happens next, want to keep turning the page. The dramatic tools available to create and manipulate anticipation work on two levels: intellectual and emotional. What we think will happen and what we want to happen.

Kieslowski simply takes the two and drives them further and further apart.

We start with a scene full of foreboding that primes both the intellect and the heart: something bad will happen. As the story unfolds details accumulate that foreshadow the outcome with ever greater certainty. A small boy, the nearby frozen lake, his curiosity about what happens when you die, and -- crucially in the context of the theme of the story -- his father's dismissal of religion and his faith in science, the boy's discovery of the brand new skates that were to be a Christmas present, the father's certainty that the ice on the lake is sufficiently thick for the boy to go out on it (they calculate it together on a computer).

Contrast the evolution of what we think will happen -- the foreshadowed incident which goes from possible to probable to almost inevitable -- with the evolution in what we want to happen. The more time we spend in the boy Pavel's company the more we grow to love him, the more we hope against hope that the tragedy befalls someone else, that somehow there is a way out of this against all the odds. This becomes not just any boy, but the boy I want my baby to grow up to be, intelligent, sensitive, curious and loving.

The evolution of our hope is diametrically opposed to the evolution of our expectation. Dead simple, and in Kieslowski's hands, deadly effective.

The film succeeds on many levels, and this wouldn't be a Mystery Man-sponsored post if there weren't a mention of the wonderful visuals, and one scene in particular, where on the fateful day the father is working at his desk on some papers and an ink bottle cracks (the frozen ink has thawed), and the blue ink soaks up through his papers -- looking for all the world like a frozen pond melting.

Tension - "The Poison is in the Butter"

As part of our Tension Blog-A-Thon, our friend Lisa (aka The Pearl Poet on TriggerStreet) gives us her thoughts on Ghostbusters and Arachnophobia.

Thanks so much, Lisa!

-MM

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The film Married Life has its fill of character drama, and with it, comes tension. Our protag Henry (Chris Cooper) doesn't want to hurt anyone but when he falls in love with the beautiful young Kay (Rachel McAdams), he wants to find a way to let his wife, Patty, down easy. What easier way than poisoning her?

Here are the elements of suspense described in the Hitchcock article that arise throughout this story:

1) Make the audience have compassion for the characters on the screen

Henry is trying to murder his wife. This is not an admirable trait. Yet, he's developed in such a way that we feel sorry for him. His reasoning behind trying to kill Patty is that he doesn't want her to suffer. He wants to give her poison that will kill her, painlessly, while she sleeps. He just wants to be happy with Kay, and heck, if that's not relatable, then what is?

2) Always let the audience know more than your characters

Murder Attempt One: Henry makes Patty breakfast. Judging from her surprised reaction, this is a very unusual thing for him to do. He offers her more toast, dosing it with butter, even when she specifically asks him not to. We don't actually see Henry put the poison in the butter, but we know his plan. We saw him buy poison. And he insists she eat more. The audience knows something Patty doesn't.

Murder Attempt Two: Henry puts the poison in Patty's medicine. Henry goes to work, leaving his wife at home, knowing she'll take the medicine before lunch. He's worried at work so he calls the house. No answer. He has a neighbor check on her. The tension and suspense at this moment is at its peak. As he waits on the phone for the neighbor to return, he is looking out of his office window. He watches a man scatter papers all over the sidewalk. We wait with him. He doesn't know if Patty is dead yet, if it worked, and neither does the audience. What is probably no more than a minute, feels like an eternity. And it thickens when the neighbor says there was no answer at the door. The tension in this scene breaks when Patty finally calls…she was in the shower.

Murder Attempt Three: Patty tells Henry she would take her medicine at 11:30 that night, as usual, right before bed. This is where time comes into play. Patty should be dead by 11:30 pm. Henry tells Patty he is working late, but he goes to see Kay. But Kay breaks up with him to be with Richard. Henry, realizing he may have lost everything (like the man with the scattered papers) races the clock to get home and try and save his wife. The tension rises when he's stopped by the cops for a broken tail light. Will he make it in time?

There is also a lot of sexual tension. The story is narrated by Richard (Pierce Brosman), Henry's best friend, and he knows about both Patty and Henry's affairs. He knows they both want to be with someone else, so if he told them, he would "set them free." Richard almost tells Patty about Henry and Kay, but Henry walks up behind him. So he lets it go, pursuing his own selfish desire for Kay.

The tension and suspense in this film works because of what the audiences knows or doesn't know. In my opinion, the tension is the highest when Henry waits to hear back from the neighbor. We have no idea what has happened to Patty yet, so we feel like we're waiting with him. And when he discovers Kay and Richard together, we understand the panic in his eyes, his panic to get home and try to save his wife, because now more than ever, he needs her.

The audience knows about Patty's affair, Henry doesn't, and we know that Richard has the power to end both of their unhappiness. But of course he chooses to put himself first. There is a lot of unsaid things between the characters, moments last a little longer, we're teased. But most of all, I think tension and suspense is brought on by the questions that continually arise.

Tension - Ghostbusters & Arachnophobia

As part of our Tension Blog-A-Thon, our friend David Alan gives us his thoughts on Ghostbusters and Arachnophobia.

Thanks so much, David.

-MM

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A General Note of Caution: the article will ramble and offer no back-story, witty or loaded insightful remarks.

While the list of things-to-worry-about-even-though-there isn’t-a-damn-thing-you-can-do-about-‘em continues to grow and be filed next to their friends from the History, Discovery and Science channels -- you can rest easy knowing this latest brouhaha isn’t one of these things.

But -- this, of course, is not easy to do. Especially for those who learn from, and often times regurgitate, horrible films. Better to learn from the really good stuff, right?

Well, in honor of learning from the really good stuff let's look at the most famous, and perhaps the most effective, tension in film history -- the tension in "Ghostbusters."


Okay, fine!

To be fair, maybe it is, maybe it’s not. I don't know. I’m not an expert. I just know it has a shit-load of tension and the film is actually quite decent, but I’ll leave it for you to decide.

Consider "Fried Eggs and Zuul."

Dana exits a cab, makes her way to her apartment door, and has an encounter with her neighbor, "Louis," who tells her that her television had been left on. Dana then brushes him off and enters her apartment, making her way to the TV, and as she goes to turn off the TV, she notices the "Ghostbusters" commercial. (Could it be foreshadowing? C’mon, who uses that in movies!? Seriously!?)

The commercial ends. Dana turns off the TV set, goes into the kitchen, and pulls out her groceries -- eggs, Stay Puft Marshmallows (more foreshadowing perhaps?), loaf of bread -- and is putting them away (now the ominous feeling is intensified) when the eggs, one by one, erupt out of their shells and fry themselves on the countertop.


Dana turns, sees the eggs frying.

She’s fucking horrified! What’s happening?

Then -- a strange growl sound coming from the fridge.

She pulls the door open and sees another realm.

She’s still aghast and paralyzed.

"ZUUL," the doglike creature says.


And finally, she screams and slams the goddamn refrigerator door.

Just like that -- tension is built-up, paid-off. Now, it may be mild, of course, but without it the scene would’ve been utterly flat.

But really, when it comes down to it, the "We got one!" is the best. Several scenes come close, such as "Get Her!," "Terror Dogs" or "Crossing the Streams," but none quite reaches the level of "We got one!" even after seeing it repeatedly.



It doesn't get better than this, folks. The tension is magnified by the fact that, for the majority of the scene, the audience is uncertain, which creates suspense towards the climax between Slimer and the Ghostbusters.

Now, when I started thinking of tension, I thought, "Okay, I have to talk about the awesomeness that is Arachnophobia."

Just as "Ghostbusters" was hardly a standard-issue horror-comedy, "Arachnophobia" isn’t your atypical genre movie.

Arachnophobia, like Spielberg’s Jaws, which uses my favorite kind of tension, puts more emphasis on characters and build-up. And so, no matter if it may not be frightening, or that there is little edge, or anything else for that matter, Arachnophobia succeeds in holding that amiable, fun creepiness along the way and through the final scenes where it's just Ross against an army of extremely deadly spiders. Still, that doesn't mean it won’t make you jump in your seat from time to time.

But I know what you’re saying, "If you’re going to talk about Arachnophobia, and you're not going to talk about one of the most legendary bathroom scenes in cinema history, then fuck-off."

Not to worry, I’m with you.

To set up the scene -- it starts with an 80’s girl starting the shower and dad needing to use the bathroom, and, of course, she says, "Go away!" Dad walks-off, daughter hops in the shower. But then that some-shit-is-about-to go-down music kicks in. And then a spider appears --



The scene effectively taps into our fear of the unknown, making you squirm in your seat as the spider slides between her breasts towards her -- insert witty comment here -- and then gives you relief with a bit of comedy at the end. Can you think of anything more terrifying? I certainly can't.

So what in the hell does all this mean? To sum it all up: On "Ghostbusters" and "Arachnophobia," Ivan Reitman and Frank Marshall fucking nailed it, from square one -- setting the stakes, structure, pacing, originality, which is hard to come by these days, dialogue, everything. It is the mix of everything combined that makes the tension work. It also makes these movies much more than family-friendly summer movies.

Put simply, tension is one of those components where you can't just get by, you really do need to keep at it until it is there -- and you need to nail it. And ultimately, if done right, the audience will be impressed as hell, and hardly aware of the fact they are being manipulated.

So there you go.

Print this. Cut it out. Laminate it. Put it in your wallet. Don't lose it.

Welcome to the tensionless story jihad.

Okay, so I rambled a little. Two out three ain't bad, right?