At some point last year, I sang the praises ofGreenCine Dailybecause they offered the best coverage on films on the web bar none.
Well, the driving force behind all of that film link love at GreenCine Daily was a man named David Hudson who, on occasion, showered some link love for articles on my blog. Well, he has been tapped by the Independent Film Channelto do for them what he did for GreenCine. His new column is called The Daily, and I don’t know anyone else who is as obsessed about film links as David Hudson. You may view him as the greatest resource to film on the web or an evil bastard who finds incredible ways to rob you of your time.
Well, I love him, and I’m grateful he’s around.
Question - why would a screenwriting blog give a shout-out to a column at a film website? Shouldn’t your articles be about, you know, screenwriting? I’ve said before that one major problem I’ve noticed in some aspiring screenwriters I’ve encountered over the years is that they limit their vision by ONLY hanging out with other screenwriters and by ONLY reading screenwriting books and screenwriting magazines. You hurt yourself and your creativity by limiting the information you get about films. Most discussions about films are usually, by extension, discussions about screenwriting and storytelling, too.
When it comes to films, I need to be intellectually fed every day. David does that for me. He will really open your eyes to films in ways you won’t expect, and my hat goes off to him.
God, I’m so predictable. I can always (and so easily) get sucked into the vortex of seemingly unsolvable Gordian Knot-type stories, and – oh, look – in Chapter III, page 3, first panel, there’s a guy from the Gordian Knot Lock Company. How visually apropos.
During my mysterious blog interruption last month (and while traveling quite a bit), I read the graphic novel in two sittings. And yes, I read every word of the book inserts and files at the end of each chapter. It’s a habit of mine to try to digest and analyze a work as a whole first and then make decisions on what should be cut or changed.
Structurally speaking, the whole thing reminded me of the Lost TV show in that you have a group of people in the middle of a mystery in a strange world with many visual motifs while every episode reveals a different character’s backstory. I can’t help but wonder how much the Watchmen style of storytelling influenced the Lost writers.
An interesting conversation I suspect screenwriters will be having in a month or so will be about how successful Zack Snyder & company was in adapting WM and what you would’ve done differently. Personally, my early impression is that when it comes to adapting Watchmen, the novel lends itself more to a mini-series than a film. And you could probably condense the book to 5 or 6 hour-and-a-half HBO episodes.
For a film, I think you’d have to limit the backstories, keep the first generation superheroes in the far background, and pay close attention to themes and visual motifs. I would’ve cut the Black Freighter, sped up the love affair plotline, and yes, I would’ve changed the ending. What the hell am I supposed to think about that damn squid?
So I’m in the midst of studying analysis of the novel and thought I’d share a few interesting links.
I’m listening to the Watchmen podcasts by the Legion of Dudes. These guys provide for free a roundtable conversation on the novel and they go through each issue panel-by-panel discussing all the details and symbols and all things Watchmen. They’re about an hour and a half each. So settle in. I’m up to Chapter IV.
An Analysis of Watchmen: Symmetry and the Tragic Flaw Erika Szabo gives us an essay on the use of symmetry in certain panel layouts (like above) within several chapters of the graphic novel. It was interesting. She wrote:
Initially, one may not even think of wondering why Adrian Veidt the hero Ozymandias, formed the central panel – pages 14-15. However, after multiple reads through Watchmen, different interpretations of his appearance can be made. Perhaps even the end of the graphic novel will come to mind. Why is this? My theory is that because Adrian Veidt was the one man who could unify the world – even if only temporarily – his ‘unification’ of the central panel was appropriate for a man capable of such. This is merely a speculation, but the theory does have merit.
I believe that if Chapter V can invoke such high speculations, so should the entire graphic novel. I will not go into complete detail over any other Chapter because, honestly, I don’t think I have enough room to. Instead I will focus on adjacent ideas, symbolism and the like. One such idea that I would like to talk about is the involvement of symmetry and how it effects Watchmen as a whole.
In this paper I argue that the grammar of Watchmen is a spatial grammar, a place of constituent elements transformed into practised space. Watchmen provokes a modernist strategy of estrangement in its representation and problematisation of the postmodern by employing the rational grid of the orderly mode of modernity, and disabling its instinct towards compartmentalisation and containment.
I was never fully persuaded by the love story, the most important element of the entire film.
I take that back. That’s too polite. Not only did we never really know if Latika loved Jamal, I’m inclined to believe she was a gold-digging little bitch, never once worthy of Jamal’s lifelong pursuit.
Let’s talk about love, shall we? Consider this. We boys can be kind of dumb when it comes to women. When we fall for a girl, we have the tendency to project our own feelings onto that woman and we too often just assume that (just because we have huge feelings) that she loves us (or will come around to loving us) in return. At some point, you have to stand back, observe the girl’s actions, and ask yourself, “do these actions prove that she has a strong interest in me?” Women don’t lie with their actions. It’s just, too often, men don’t listen. When their actions tell you they don’t give a shit, you politely walk away.
Just because Jamal was obsessed with Latika, just because he chased her throughout his life and never let her go, we just assume she loves him. But what did Latika ever do to show Jamal she actually loved him?
When Jamal and Latika meet again later in life while she’s with that ugly mobster, they hug in the kitchen. Jamal asks her to run away with him. She walks around the kitchen and says incredibly coldly, “What will we live off of?” “Love” is Jamal’s answer. Maybe it’s the harsh way that Freido Pinto, who played Latika, posed the question that ruined that moment for me. If she really loved him, why would she be so cold to him? He’s not dressed like a slum-dweller. It’s not like he was begging on the streets. He was working at the time. So that wasn’t enough money for her? Is it me or did that come across as totally selfish on her part? It's not that she didn't ask a valid question because she did. What she failed to do was show love toward Jamal when she spoke to him. I don't recall much evidence in the acting or story that Latika felt anything for Jamal or at least enough to persuade me that she was worth all this trouble Jamal has gone through.
But, wait, MM. Latika showed up at the train station, didn’t she? Yes. Now let me ask you a question: did she really want to be with him or did she merely want to escape another bad situation she was in? How do we know that she had any interest at all in HIM?
But, of course, when he’s on TV and he’s about to win millions of rupees, she’s running through the streets like a mad woman.
It's funny. In classic literature, there is always one true love that spans a lifetime. In fact, Slumdog Millionaire reminded me of Pip and Estella in Great Expectations. (Pip could’ve done better, too.) Dickens rewrote his ending and I was always relieved they were “friends apart.” Get over her, will you, Pip? You could do better!
Another aspect of this love affair is Jamal’s lifetime obsession over Latika. On the one hand, that’s romantic. (And good for her because he rescued her more than once.) On the other hand, obsessing about a girl for most of one’s life is a bit unhealthy, don’t you think? Today, that’s what we call a STALKER, is it not? And poor Jamal had obsessed about Latika for so long that he lost all sense of objectivity about whether she loved him in return. Jamal’s time with her as an adult was so infrequent that his love was never rooted in a reality of who she really was. Latika became in his mind this great idea of love that put her up on a pedestal so high in the heavens with expectations impossible to fulfill. If you ask me, the idea of Jamal and Latika living happily ever after with mountains of money is a recipe for disaster. I give them about two weeks before they break-up.
In the end, Jamal said, “It is destined,” which range false to me. I would’ve preferred something more personal from the hearts of the characters. That something is “destined” and things happen as foretold to characters is a self-defeating narrative gimmick. What do the characters want? Does Latika really want this? Instead of Jamal saying, “It is destined,” I would’ve preferred a nice personal sentiment of affection from the dead, shallow, gold-digging heart of Latika.
Earlier this morning, I finally finished watching HBO’s 7-part miniseries on that irascibleJohns Adams guy. I loved it, as I love history.
Mr. Adams sparked a small debate in my little clique about unsympathetic protagonists, which also happens to be the topic of my next article in Script Magazine. Adams had many sides to his character and many of them deeply flawed, perhaps the most flawed personality in all of our founding fathers. So why watch him?
Because if he was perfect, the series would be boring.
Because some characters are more fascinating by their flaws than they are with cheap sympathy designed to drum up emotional support.
Because the series was, in part, a tragedy. On the one hand, Adams had a great side to his character – brilliant mind, brilliant passionate debater, moral integrity, and inspiring speaker. He loved his wife, and he would’ve never been the success he was without her. (The clip above beautifully illustrates her influence.) On the other hand, so many of the sad events at the end of his life in politics as well as his own family were the direct result of his character flaws - his lack of mercy, generosity, and compassion, the grudges he would hold against others (in some cases so extreme that at one point in his Presidency, he willingly trampled on the liberties they fought for such as free speech because he was so angered by the things that were being said about him), also the way he would isolate colleagues until he was ultimately alone as President at the end of his term, the inability to acknowledge his own faults and mistakes until it was too late, the vanity, the ambition, and the brutal harshness in some of his dealings with people, all of which led to a very regrettable end.
You walk away from the series thinking in many ways “I don’t ever want to make the same mistakes John Adams made.” And that’s a good thing. That’s the value of watching the downfall of a flawed (perhaps unsympathetic) protagonist. More important than “sympathy with a goal,” the kind of thinking that can delineate a protag, we should think more in terms of character depth– showing multiple sides to a character, the good AND the bad. To some, sympathy means all good, which in reality is a flat character about as thin as spider web’s silk. Forget about sympathy. You need depth, both good AND bad. Regular people do not articulate these ideas in HW study groups, but they WILL be fascinated by a character with depth and deep flaws. They wonder, “Why is this character this way?” “Will he change for the better?” “What will happen?” “Will he suffer from these flaws?”
A character with deep flaws will either transform for the better or suffer as result and both approaches are good. The moral is still the same – learn from this character. Do not be like this character.
I noticed an article in The Washington Post titled, Sorry, HBO. John Adams Wasn’t That Much of a Hero.They never said he was. They never shied away from his mistakes and flaws. But his flaws made him one of the most fascinating of the founding fathers and a really rich source for a lot of compelling drama.
I would not want to be John Adams, but I definitely felt enriched by the miniseries and I’m grateful they made it.
Below is a special feature from the DVD that I loved, the making of:
SO sorry for the interruption! Will be blogging almost daily now.
Hope you’re well,
-MM
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New Screenplay
Twilight- February 11, 2008, shooting draft by Melissa Rosenberg. Spielberg going to Disney? DreamWorks SKG, Mr. Spielberg’s boutique production company, is in advanced talks on a deal to distribute its movies through Disney, according to four people with knowledge of the talks but who asked for anonymity because negotiations are not complete. A deal with Disney, which could come as soon as Friday, would replace one Mr. Spielberg arranged with Universal Picturesjust four months ago after an acrimonious divorce from Paramount Pictures.
Why HW Needs a New Model for Storytelling Brothers and sisters, we are gathered here today to mourn the death of Story. As you may have heard, it's kaput—or, at the very least, terminally ill, wracked by videogames, wikis, recaps, talkbacks, YouTube, ADD, and the rise of a multiplatform, multipolar, mashup-media culture. Hollywood, vendor of Story in its most denatured form, is most at risk: The film industry is slowly but steadily being forced to part with quaint artifacts like the "hero's journey," Joseph Campbell's so-called Monomyth. (Which is just so ... well ... mono.) Beginnings, middles, and ends are headed for the attic, next to the box marked VCR Rewinders/Beastmaster Franchise. And Tinseltown can kick this chestnut to the curb.
37-minute interview with Andrew Stanton Stephen King vs. Stephanie Meyer Bestselling novelist and pop-culture writer Stephen King isn’t a fan of Twilight author Stephanie Meyer. King tells USA Weekend that while both Rowling and Meyer are “speaking directly to young people, The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good.”
Dark Knight Screenwriter Responds To Oscar Snubbing The Dark Knight screenwriter, Jonathan Nolan (brother to director Christopher Nolan), also found the news disappointing, but tried to put a positive spin on things in a message to fans at Dark Camapign.com, a site that was devoted to a grassroots campaign supporting the Batman sequel for Oscar nominations. Nolan points out that, while the news is disappointing for those who had higher expectations, any nominations for a movie like The Dark Knight is a “thing of beauty,” and that the recognition the movie did get is thrilling. He also sounds pretty glum about the film’s chances at winning if it had been nominated, commenting that he’s been to the Oscars before and now knows to bring cash so he can buy a drink at the bar after he lost.
Italian Writer Claims Story Rights To Benjamin Button A funny random comment on Button The screenplay had at least one head-banging moment where the daughter goes, "Mom! You never told me you were a dancer!" And that's fine, until we learn later that Mom ran a dance studio for a living. At which point I immediately thought, "Christ, kid. Your Mom spent her whole life teaching others to dance in the town she grew up in, she has a huge scar on her knee that pains her, and not once did you ask her about her career or overhear anyone else say, 'It's truly awesome to be taught by the world-famous dancer Daisy Nolastname'? God, you're a self-centered idiot."
Fanboys screenwriter gets bitter taste of Hollywood's dark side It goes like this: "I was in this whole insane development hell for years, then, wow, my movie's going to get made, then it gets made, then it gets taken away from the people who made it, then there's a fan boycott of the studio, then the studio gives it back and lets us finish it, then it ends up in theaters."
Mall Cop script stolen from local screenwriter? Paul Blart: Mall Cop is currently the top grossing film of 2009. It’s about to break $100 million at the box office. And allegations have surfaced that a local man wrote the original script without receiving credit.
How much money is worth admitting that you wrote Mall Cop?
Jim Emerson’s involvement in the stolen script controversy A COUPLE HOURS LATER: Catalfo responds: "I can tell you that I wrote my script Mall Cop in 2000 and that it was a winner and/or finalist in twelve major screenwriting competitions. I was not hired to ghostwrite Paul Blart: Mall Cop and only recently started my Scriptghost service."
David Hudson on The International As for the rest, it's not all Tykwer's fault, though he should have recognized early on that the screenplay was hopeless. Writer Eric Singer may have intended to revive the thrill of 70s-era paranoia but has instead bundled together the most whoppingly obvious clichés and laid them out by the numbers. The idea here is that banks, and one in particular, the International, finance wars, insurgencies and revolutions not for profit but for debt, the real currency of global power. In other words, if a nation does business with a bank and pays its bills, there is no longer a relationship between that nation and the bank. As long as the nation owes the bank, however... Well. Interviewers have also been asking Tykwer if he had any idea how topical his movie would be by the time it was finished (and of course, the answer is "no").
Todd McCarthy wrote:"While prescient, or just lucky, to have made bankers its bad guys, The International is a mostly ho-hum globe-hopping thriller that gives the audience too little investment in its protagonists and central conflict."
Dirty Dancing screenwriter shares idea for film In fact, Dirty Dancing has a few dirty little secrets, according to screenwriter Bergstein, who based the movie on her formative years. “My first movie was ‘It’s My Turn’ and Michael and Jill were in a scene where they go to bed, but before they do, they do this dirty dancing scene,” she said. “I taught Michael and Jill and the crew how to dirty dance and just as they were about to shoot the scene, they decided they didn’t need it. So he just unbuttoned her blouse.” Bergstein was “heartbroken.” But if it had made it into the movie, I would have probably been satisfied and would never have had the need to tell the story of Baby and Johnny. I was like, ‘I am going to do this.’ When one door closes, another opens.”
Brandon Harris asks why there hasn’t been a good biopic of MLK While LeVar Burton (Ali) and Robert Guillaume (Prince Jack) have issued portrayals of the man, playing bit parts in much larger films, most of the significant movies involving King were made for television. The most notable Martin Luther King project remains HBO's 2001 biopic Boycott, which features terrific performances from Jeffrey Wright, Terrence Howard and Erik Dellums, but deals only with King's involvement in the events of 1954, notably, the Montgomery Bus Boycott. While it shows you in great detail how the boycott was planned and carried out, it doesn't leave you with a very full sense of the man himself, a man who, despite his saintly public persona, had all-too-human failings of his own (infidelity among them).
The Auteurslaunch Epilogue '08: Around the World of Cinema in 2008": "We have gathered here a panel of passionate film critics from around the world to feel the pulse of the cinephile life as it unfolded in half a dozen capital cities where cinema is lively and brewing.... The roundtable conversations will be published two-a-day beginning Monday, January 26. Please join our debate with your reactions, questions and comments."
"Reverse Shot's Two Cents, 2008" is a big roundup of comments slotted into categories such as "Most Exhilarating Moments of Pure Cinema," "Most Unwelcome Comeback," "Most Politely Overlooked Awful Scene in an Otherwise Okay Movie" and so on.
"In the Korean film industry, the general mood in 2008 reached a new low," writes Darcy Paquet. "Companies continued to struggle, and there were a lot of bad films that seemed to display the signs of cut corners or a lack of polish. However if you separate out the good films and consider them as a group, it wasn't such a bad year." Topping his list: The Chaser - "for the genius of its execution, rather than its originality. Director Na Hong-jinmay have a long career ahead of him." Also at Koreanfilm.org, Kyu Hyun Kimon Our Town ("a rather decent mystery thriller") and "Hwang Jin-Yi" ("a chore to sit through") and Darcy Paqueton Like a Virgin ("the detailed characterizations and intricate humor of this film help to bolster its originality").
From Annie Leibovitz’s “Something Just Clicked” photo gallery. The Power Behind the Screen "…that the content of a studio's films is determined entirely by the political and economic interests of its parent company; studio CEOs typically have considerable leeway to make the pictures they want to make, without any direct interference. But it is important to understand how and why Hollywood studios are tied into these wider corporate interests. At best, such interests contribute to a culture of conservative filmmaking. At worst, it is certainly not unknown for parent companies to take a conscious and deliberate interest in certain films."
On Defending Copyright Infringement Suits To prevail on a claim of copyright infringement, a plaintiff must establish (1) a valid copyright, (2) unauthorized copying of the copyrighted work, and (3) that the infringing work is substantially similar to the protected work. The first prong of the test is presumptively established by registration with the Copyright Office and the second element is often not challenged. The dispute in copyright infringement cases frequently centers on the third element - whether the infringing work is substantially similar. Substantial similarity has both qualitative and quantitative aspects. Thus, to prove substantial similarity, a plaintiff must show that the copied work was "protected expression" and that the amount copied was "more than de minimis."
Q&A with Zack Snyder on Watchmen That’s what happens. That’s Hollywood. It’s that old thing of, “Listen, kid, it’s cool, it’s cute, it’s a comic book. But let me tell you what the movie’s going to be like. You need action, you need romance. Dan can’t be impotent, are you crazy!” I think after the first draft, the studio was like, no naked blue guy. These are the three things that I think the movie would have been without in a classic studio system: Comedian’s funeral, not necessary. Just bury him. No flashbacks there. Second: Dr. Manhattan on Mars. Unnecessary. He can go to Mars, but then once we see him – pfft – land on Mars, [snaps fingers] back to the story. And Rorschach’s back story – do we need to know anything about Rorschach’s childhood, or does he need to be interrogated by the psychiatrist at all? He can just be in prison, and then Dan and Laurie bust him out.
Zack Snyder on a 300 sequel After hinting back in October that another installment of 300 wasn’t entirely inconceivable, Snyder’s position on follow-ups to both films are now crystal clear. “The way I would do it is if Frank [Miller] drew a graphic novel, it came out in the marketplace and people said, ‘That’s pretty cool,’” Snyder told the New York Times. “The studio wants it to be, sit with Frank, come up with an idea, write a screenplay, maybe he’ll do a graphic novel based on the screenplay. I’m like, ‘Yeah, I want nothing to do with that.’”
Watchmen skulk to the screen But with those assets, Mr. Snyder said, came a stream of requests from the studio to change small but crucial details: Did the film have to interrupt its story with long asides about the origins of Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan? Was it essential that Dr. Manhattan be naked for so much of the film? And could the movie be any shorter? Mr. Snyder’s answer in each case was to remain faithful to the graphic novel and its creators. “Their ideas do stand the test, as far as I’m concerned,” he said.
Snyder Never Doing Watchmen Sequel He told them: "Listen, they own the rights. If they wanted to go and hire some guy to make them a sequel to Watchmen, I don't know that they would get any of those actors to do it, and I know that I wouldn't have anything to do with it. He said: "But they own it. They can do whatever they want. They can make a movie - I've spoiled it, I think, a little bit. Do you leave that film going, "Man, I wonder what the next chapter is?"
The 10 Biggest Oscar Snubs of 2009 Frances Kavanaugh dies at 93; screenwriter of B-westerns Heads rolled at Paramount for losing Twilight franchise According to one well-positioned executive, when the tracking for Twilight began going through the roof, Paramount instigated an internal “witch hunt” trying to pinpoint who was responsible for letting the project go. Fingers were cast at everyone from co-president of production Brad Weston to Scott Aversano, the former head of MTV Films, to Gail Berman, who stepped down as president of Paramount Pictures in January of 2007. (It was under Berman’s watch that Paramount was unable to make a co-producing deal with Fox on the movie.) Executives at Paramount insist that any Twilight-induced anxiety is over; that the studio has moved on. After all, most of the executives who were involved with Twilight at the studio are no longer there. Furthermore, the Twilight script that was developed at Paramount (written by Mark Lord) is radically different from the script, by Melissa Rosenberg (Step Up), that made it to the screen. Rosenberg, in fact, never read Lord’s screenplay.
“Horror Sells.” Puss in Boots has a writer. From Howard to Hollywood: A Q&A With Screenwriter Kenneth Rance Inspiration for New In Town was taken from a page out of Kenneth’s own life. Sixteen years ago, while in his hometown of Minneapolis, he meets a young lady, who appeared to be out of place in his town--after approaching her; he learned that she decided to take a job in a small town after a failed relationship. After his encounter with the young lady, he knew he had a story to write for the big screen.
John Patrick Shanley to Receive WGA's Lifetime Achievement Award Gladiator Screenwriter William Nicholson to Write 1066 The year 1066 is regarded as one of the most tumultuous years in English history, where control for England's throne was fought over by King Harold and William the Conqueror, culminating in the famous Battle of Hastings. William's victory and the subsequent Norman takeover stands to this day as the last hostile invasion of Great Britain. And to adapt this historical showdown and epic confrontation to the screen is none other than William Nicholson, most renowned for his work co-writing the Gladiatorscreenplay back in 2000. Will he apply the same formula yet again to 1066 that worked so well for Gladiator?
I'm famous yet anonymous, failed yet accomplished, brilliant yet semi-brilliant. I'm a homebody who jetsets around the world. I'm brash and daring yet chilled with a twist. I also write for Script Magazine.
