A Day in the Life of a Megalomaniacal Producer/Director | ||||
Robert Rossen's "Hustler" adviceIn the movie, "The Hustler" Fast Eddie Felson says, "Boy, it's a great feeling when you're right, and you know you're right."
At the pinnicle of my mathematics abilities I found myself in the cafeteria of St. Maria Goretti High School. It was April, 1987. I was thirteen years old and the indentured member of a seventh grade math team. Having finished the team and individual rounds of problems we waited for the results and more importantly, the trophies.
By no exaggeration when that lady at the front of the room announced, "The boy with the highest individual score...", I pushed my metal folding chair back so to get up easier, "...is Robert T...(she mispronounced my last name too)" It was me, and I knew it.
I haven't felt that sensation in nineteen years, and five months. The other night when I pitched my next two story ideas to a friend while consoling my wailing four-month-old son I felt it again.
Oh, what dreams may come... InvincibleSaw it yesterday. Ehh. A competent movie. Granted, I'm an Eagles fan (difficult, I know), and a Philadelphian (down right hard); but for the most part it's your standard rags-to-rich flick, stomping through the footsteps of "Rocky" sometimes literally. Ericson Cole, the director and DP really captures the older parts of Philly. Acting is competent; but in this Mtv, microve, ADD society of ours just about every scene lasts as long as a Mentos commercial. I long for the days of longer scenes.
In other news, I'm not as lost in my writing prowess as recently blogged. On the same Triggerstreet website I was given a very generous review of my script. I did pull it however and plan a touch up rewrite. Think of it as airbrushing the script's tits to look boobalishous.
Stay tuned for what dreams may come. I don't know what I'm doingAs it turns out my screenplay was poorly received at triggerstreet.com. They lambasted me on my formatting, syntax (twice), and grammer. One guy, I'm suspicious, only read the first and last pages of the script. When I converted it from Final Draft (ver 5) to adobe acrobat it got mutilated in terms of capitalizations, spacing, etc. So, anyone out here who can tell me how to download Final Draft (ver 6 or higher) w/o spending three hundred dollars would be helping out.
All these posts I've been leaving and all this screenwriting advice I've been vomiting on my page is suspect. I'm embarrassed and pissed off. I know I understand the theory. It seems I can't as of yet execute the craft. Very f#cking frustrating. Pressure makes pleasureI'm finished! Today I worte the last scene of my fifth draft of a script I've been writing for four years. No kidding. With the Screenwriting Expo 5 script contest deadline extended to today I rallied (with the help of my wife) and blazed through the last 30-some pages.
It feels good. I'm happy with the unproof read product...so far. Made my deadline, and can now bask in the hope and peace of conclusion.
Hey, I haven't been around here in a while. What's been going on?
PS If anyone wants to read my anus/opus, I'll have it posted on www.triggerstreet.com very soon. The title is, "The Crooked Old Man". meglomaniacI think meglomaniac is at a stage in his career that we all wished we could be at about twenty years ago. The sky is the limit, the industry lays at his feet, and he even understands that WILL have to go hungry to make it.
My response is that Joe Walsh had to live in his volkswagon for months before he made it, and even Michael J Fox will tell stories of living off of macaroni and cheese.
My screenplay progresses even on the days I don't post. I'm thinking about it a lot. I'm looking forward to another post at the end of the week....It's easy to do this, since it was pretty much real life. The challenge is to tell the story, and cram it into two hours, and make it believable.... The Blog is Afoot.We use the expression, "keep one foot on the ground". We use it a lot. "I got one foot on the...and the other on the ..." Nice. Implies inner conflict. A straddling if you will. Well, I've invited that very simple, popular, foot-in-mouth situation on myself.
One of my regulars at the bar (I'm a bartender by occupation) asked if I was on the web. I said yes. She's a good woman. She chooses to take an interest in people's lives, and remember the minutes of their stores when she's not around. She asked me if there was an online forum I belonged to so she could get samples of my writing, of which I'm endlessly prattleing on about. I gave her this site.
Even as I write this I feel like I'm philandering. I feel under scrutiny and obliged to impress. I've maintained one life (foot) in my occupational world and done well enough to afford another life (foot) firmly planted in a dream. A dream I'm quick to talk about, but slow to share. And now one of my beloved (because that's how I eat) regulars could very well become a reader of this trite site. The blog is really afoot.
So, like our beloved Jimmy Durante, good night Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are. Slow (e)motionHaving made yet another epiphany in my craft I've slowed down the telling of my story in ACT II so to create more of an emotional connection to my reader. It's working so well I'm in the enjoyable dilemma of now having too much story to tell. I can sit back and choose which scenes (already articulated) I want in this draft. What's the new epiphany? How am I trying to create that emotioinal connection, I ask (rhetorically...to myself)?
Just by slowing down the telling. It's one thing to tell that, "Victor and Ingrid board the train." It's another thing entirely to tell you 'how' they board that train, "Victor tightens his grip on the cane handle. Risks taking that first big step onto the train step, but his leg gives out.
Not knowing whether he'll accept her help or push her away, Ingrid runs under him and holds him around his waist, wincing the whole time.
INGRID "We'll get on together."
Reluctant to put his weight on the 10 yr old girl, and choking back tears of guilt Victor looks at her without his usual scowl for the first time.
VICTOR "Alright."
They fill the threshold of the train and seem to help each other into the car. END SCENE.
Something like that, as just an example.
I don't know if that's better writing or not, but I'm excited writing that way; especially after the three scripts I read recently. One of them made me laugh out loud. My writing never evoked such responses. But that's going to change.
PS Welcome new bloggers to Scriptologist. It is what you make it here. Thoughts near midnight in the summerMy nine-year should really be asleep right now. I want to work on my screenplay, but every time I start to concentrate he has something to say. And what are you gonnna do?He's getting pretty sharp. I hope he's learning it from me. In fact both of my boys are pretty funny. I'm not just saying that. They really are. They have great senses of humor... Here's the rub, the ol' lady's a stay-at-home-mom,; at least for another year. I want that magical memory for my children, of real summers, when as soon as school was out you slept til whenever. My mom was a teacher, so I lived that, and I want my boys to live it, too. Meanwhile, I get my best thinking done at night and I've lost the night to my nine-year old. I know, I know, in about another year or two he'll be staying up and begging me to go to bed so he can be alone. I'll soon be checking under his mattress for you know what. That's all part of it. But not now. Every age has its blessings and its curses. Right now, the blesssings are that I can throw a baseball as hard as I want at him and he can catch it; and hit it, so when he plays with his peers he's a stud. And he can pick up after himself, and he actually WILL pick up after himself. And I could go on for an hour or more about the blessings.... The curses - he's smarter than I am. No, he's not as educated as me, but he's smarter. And so is my five year old. They haven't suffered any debilitating blows yet - to the head OR to the psyche. They haven't been stood up, or had their ass kicked, or blown a job interview. They are bullet-proof. The believe in themselves, and I have to prolong that for as long as I can. My curse is their blessing... I'm the only fairy that can help them, and I'm straight. So the nine-year old is asking me what the difference between Elvis Presley and Jessie Canostpalis (sp?) on FULL HOUSE is. What are you gonne do? I'll sign of now. I'm gonna have to have a long talk with that boy..... synopsis paragraph oneVan Mosley is a small time, small-town banker in Orange, Texas, who has a comfortable, but going-nowhere life. He serves on several local charitable boards, including the Orange Chapter of the American Red Cross. The office of the Red Cross is located across the street from his home. For 3 weeks this the chapter has been the site of a full-sclae recovery/refugee operation as thousands of refugees of Hurricane katrina pur over the Louisiana border into this border town. Now, inder beauitiful blue skies, Van and Martin Robertson, the Red Cross President, discuss what looms just days beyond the horizon. Another hurricane, this one potentially stronger than Katrina, and headed directly for them. Katrina, a curse to Louisianans, will becomes somewhat of a blessing to southeast Texans. Historically unheeded warnings from officials to leave when hurricanes threaten are taken seriously after the citizens of Orange realize that theses deadly storms are forces with which to be reckoned. Van does not want to leave, nor does his wife, but they have childeren to consider, and make an early decision to evacuate. All that is left is the preparation and the wait. After talking to his brother on the phone, it is agreed that Van should bring his father along with him. Knowing that the extra person will require a second vehicle, he then decides to ask his stepfather to join them in the evacuation. Somewhat devilishly, he arragnes for the two older men to ride together alone in a truck. The two men were once married to Van's mother, who has died just four months earlier. They have rarely talked, and have never liked each other. As they begin their evacuation from Orange to San Antonio, they fell as if an adventure has just begun. Shortly after they set off, they are entangled in a traffic jam of historical proportions. The next tweny hours will be hell on wheels. It will be frightening for Van ans his wife, and worse for the two fathers as they realize this will not be a quick trip......Childhood Lost.Yesterday it was presented to me that from a certain point of view I had no childhood; rather an ephemeral crisis management role in my own and only household.
It's a hell of a thing to be told what you thought was your childhood, flawed and full of wonder, was more like survival training. I'm not eager to go into detail about it yet; as I'm sure mine was less different, but more similar to most everyone's awkward experiences. Rites of passage, change, identity, discovery, choice, and the wonder of who I ever wanted to be seem points of heated contention in my thoughts. I feel...cheated. I'm swirling in the machinations of what could have been if...if this , if he, if I. A person could 'what if' themselves to death. So what's left? Looking back brings sadness and changes nothing. So I look forward.
Better clarity of myself might offer better understanding of what really motivates my story characters. Like in dreams I believe all the characters we write are facets of us, the writers. That every manifestation on the page, every good guy and bad, every guardian, sidekick, and under-five is a piece of the complex follow through of childhood's, "what I could have been."
When I look at my recent revelation in this light I'm filled with hope. I'm aware of what I never had, what I never had to take for granted. What I think would have been awesome. And not having had it I respect exploring it all the more. As Bogey lays it out to his men in Sahara as they decide to stay and sacrifice themselves to an outnumbering German army:
"And I know what I'm asking. I know all of you have wives, sweathearts, and family back home. Not having any of my own maybe I know all the more."
And who knows, like Bogey my efforts might yield a timely, well placed serendipitous bomb in the dried up water hole of my youth that unleashes a wellspring of healing. Chaplin is Dead.Previously I mentioned how my Act II muse was Charlie Chaplin. Well, after three days and only bits of scenes I delved back into (picture Humphrey Bogard towing the African Queen back into the swamp that accosted him and Kate Hepburn) Dramatica Pro screenwriting software to guide me through the beats of Act II.
It feels like procrastination; much like typing those, this and all other sentences to follow on this blog. But. If I get my scenes then it's worth it, right? I said, am I right? I don't know.
I've been dropping in on John August's blog. Thanks, er...one of you faithful. I've tried harder to comment in this forum. I like it. And it's a real balm for me to write for others and not so I can comb over my ever lengthening be-loggggggg, bitches. Mark Garrison and I are tackling the structure aspect of his story. He was kind enough to thrust me and my efforts onto center stage of his blog. Turnabout is not only fair play, it's appropriate. Being one of the newer members of this site Mark dove in with both feet. I respect his efforts. You know, "God loves the working stiff!"
That'll do for now because I believe shorter blogs are better blogs, and little people have no humor at all. Think I'll go download some itunes on my ipod with no one else in mind but I. getting help from friendWhenlightningstrikes has agreed to take me under his wing. This is especially encouraging, although some of his comments may appear to indicate that he doesn't have much confidence in my story, I don't buy it. We've swapped a few e-amils, and he is right, the story needs to be "sexed up" with bigger disasters and more interesting characters.But here's what encourages me. Lightning is responding. I would think that if he really didn't give it any hope he wouldn't be responding to my e-mails. Maybe he's just bored, but I doubt it. I think he likes the idea, and knows that the title of this blog is very true... I need help. Thanks lightning... I hope you get something out of this, because if nothing else, when you ask me for information I feel obligated to provide it... I know this is a long shot, but my kids are too young to golf, and too old to take to the zoo every weekend. If nothing else this is a great hobby...... Charlie Chaplin and the Line Item EventComing out of the Act I conclusion trap and into the first half of Act II it seems my muse is a Hollywood icon - Charlie Chaplin. Because I don't have the events of this reel plotted I have to invent them using, ready for this blackberry whackberries, a sheet of loose leaf and a pen.
How does the tramp fit into plotting the events of a psychological thriller using technology, by today's standards, is no different than stick in dirt? Simple. Charlie used to plot his story events on a single page, simple descriptive sentences with active verbs in present tense, about fourteen of them. I'm not saying it was easy to do; and I'm not saying he did it on a single sheet. No. I imagine old Charlie sitting desk side in his beloved tramp costume, chin in hand staring into the heavens searching for a funnier way to cook a leather shoe in an isolated, log cabin in the Yukon; crumpled single page drafts littered about a holey socked foot.
But one page. About twelve to fourteen events. Heightening the drama, rasing the stakes, building momentum to a climax. That's where I'm at tonight. Feels good.
Still waiting on feedback or status in the Nichols Fellowship, The Austin, The 20/20, and A Feeding Frenzy script contests. If my script cuts the mustard in 20/20 I'll have a real deadline to submit the rest of my (yet unfinished) final draft. Here's hoping. quick pitchAs the second hurricane to hit the gulf coast looms south of Louisiana and Texas, the protagonist prepares his family for an evacuation he does not think he will make. Eventually as the storm becomes the third strongest in the Gulf's history; he, his wife, their two children, his father, and his stepfather hit the road and head for San Antonio.The legendary problems of that hurricane's evecaution are experienced first hand by the family as they endure hours on the highway moving at an average speed of 1 mile per hour in most places. The group stops for shelter at a small church where the preacher passes his time getting drunk and playing rock and roll music. The family helps and is helped by a hispanic family, whose 9 year old daughter is the only one in the family who speaks English. Other evacuees include a family with a child afflicted by a pretty serious case of ADHD, and a threesome who have kicked their heroine habit, but are now strung out on methadone. After surviving the hurricane, they make it to their destination, a friends house. Within hours, the video from ground zero reveals that their town was hit hard by the storm. Their house is standing, but a lot of damage has been inflicted. Many problems hit the group, some minimal, like flat tires and maxed out credit cards; and then the ultimate tragedy - the death of the protagonist's father of kidney failure. Through all of this, the couple stays as positive as possible, they grow closer together than they've been in years. They decide to relocate to the San Antonio area, not expecting a perfect life, just a better one... The father manages to mend some fences with everyone befores he dies, he had amost refused to goon the trip, but relented, as if he knew his time was short. Unfortunately, the stepfather (his wife, the protagonist's mother had died barely 4 months before) is unable to recover from his loss and the stress, and goes back to his lonely apartment, with no power, content in his misery... That's the pitch. The main character finally understands that he has to grow up, even though he thought he was already grown. He and his wife finally stop hoping and searching for the perfect life and accept that in all of the bad, there is so much good, so many things of which to be thankful. A recurring theme when there is a problem, is "Well, so we had a flat, at least it didn't happen in the middle of the hurricane," or "So the alternator went out, at least it waited until we made it to San Antonio." At one point when the father is in the hospital; cognisant, but unable to speak because of his stroke; the main character sighs and looks at his Dad, not realizing at the time that he has only days to live. "Well, Dad, at least we haven't been shot at." The father struggles but manages to raise his fingers to his lips in the "shhh." position. Through it all, they never lost their sense of humor. After his funeral, the couple stop at a bank to renew a loan. When they are in the bank, it is robbed at gunpoint, the main character almost gets shot (maybe he should get shot in the screenplay). This is all true. Everything here really happened, and then some. I think it would make a good story and would be fairly easy to write.... What do you think? Life right off the pageHaven't been writing lately. The 4th, family, act I conclusion trap, lazy, and popular misconception that a break from writing is useful.
I'll say this. Not giving in to guilty feelings from not writing is refreshing. Pretending I could just work my stupid, asshole job, pay my bills, and live off the page was fun for a little while. But then I watched Crash. And then the knowledge of my own incomplete, imperfect story came bolting back faster than fireworks. Here I am once again.
I know I haven't been commenting. I'll try to get to you that had the gumption to write. Running from Rita
Death of a StraightmanLast night after work my coworkers and I sat over the boss' beer and the stink of stale cigarettes discussing, among various dead air filling topics, the death of the comic straight man. No more succinctly embodied in the embalming of Ted Knight years ago.
Who could deny his poker faced antics in Caddyshack brought the performances of his fellow actors to legendary heights? His deliberate stutter, the tight-assed walk no black comic could mimic, the reined in rage going eyeball to Adam's apple with Chevy (where'd my career go) Chase. Ted Knight had it all; and sadly he took it all with him when he went. Seems the last pie in the face was on comedy itself.
Since the eighties I can't really remember a movie funnier than Caddyshack or it's contemporaries: Animal House, Meatballs; just to name two. And those two had very good, can't wait to see what they do to them next, straight guys. Respectively Dean Wormer, and Morty (both actor's names I don't know. And isn't it always the way with the set-up guy. Thus making Ted Knight's star shine that much further.) A very far second, that's how it was said last night, is the droning, monotoned office manager in Office Space (insert actor's name here.) His selfless performance to set up, titilate, and eventually pay off with his own embarrassing showdown loss is nothing short of watching Errol Flynn slay Basil Rathebone in one of those old, men in tights, swashbuckers of the thirties. (A more than just movie pop-up factoid: Basil Rathebone was a superior swordsman than Flynn ever was.)
So, comedies of late take heed. The absence of that unfunny, too old to be this week's newest starlet, dedicated guy with teflon for a complexion in today's comedies is what's not funny at all about comedy today. F/X and ellipsesReading an exceprt from, "The Illusionist" by Neil Burger in Script Mag. last night I got the feeling that my pages, even thought closer to proper format than not, still don't read like a movie. I'm being made aware of this the more I read other scripts (usually ones penned by the pros). And it's frustrating the hell out of me. I've been writing four years now, and what about capturing movie events and speech on a page in such-and-such spacing, and such-and-such verb tense am I not getting? I see movies, you see movies, we all see them. We relive favorite scenes like movie moguls in executive suites. We're all critics. "That was a dumb ending. Whatever happened to that character? I saw a plot hole in Terminator. They should have..." It goes on and on. So why after making a study of the craft, practicing, failing, practicing more do my pages not POP with the moment to moment experience?
My writing sucks? Sure, that's a strong possibility. I'm still not getting it? OK. Optimistically, I'm too familiar with my own writing. I like that one. What is it?
BACK TO SCENE
Last night I put Script on the bureau, turned out the light, went two rounds with my pillow and started to slee-- think. My writing. My writing. That scene. This image. The Illusionist. What is Burger doing that I am not? Why do I feel I'm watching a film? Then it comes to me.
One of the writing devices I use in my script (albeit not in the first 20 pages posted) is called, "A SERIES OF QUICK CUTS", and then three or four short, descriptive image sentences to convey the feeling of a quick montage; an F/X; a time lapse; you get the idea. Although not overused, and having a 75% effective rate with contest judges (A Feeding Frenzy had something to say about it), it still didn't really create the effect I wanted. It convey the F/X. It revealed story elements through description and conflict. It was concise, and even the smallest bit clever. But after reading Burger's pages it also wasn't enough.
So in bed, in the dark I kept thinking just about that one bit. Then I came up with the idea of using a thumb nail image, followed by ellipses, and then a widening or panning back from the thumb nail to the rest of the descriptive. Trust me, it makes sense.
Example. A tattooed, scowling biker hunkered over handlebars...slowly strolling a baby carriage on a busy, summer boardwalk at night.
Like that. Did it make sense? Did it work? Writer's boxNaw, I ain't talkin' bout da pleasure piece. I'm talkin' bout writin' yoself into a boxes.
STATIC. Dial-up internet PWING. PWING.
There. That's better. Just watched a Charlie Brown Xmas online with ghetto overdubbing. Eh. A friend emailed it to me. But writer's box.
For three days I've been stuck at the end of act I without that big event. I wrote myself into a corner. I know where the story has to go, but setting up the potential climax and getting my guy into the meat of the story wasn't logical from where I left off. So I thought, and I thought. And I thought and I thought and I thought; and then I asked my wife and she came up with the solution. Take it where you can get it, right?
By the way, what's up with the Asian invasion? ClimaxesI was in my office last night (a crappy one room dive filled with generation "can-you-hear-me-now's") with a buddy when we touched on the subject of climaxes. I made a personal adjustment to my writing technique, as I'm told writers will do. It goes like this.
Think of a climax, a climactic action-action being the key here-that the hero and/or villain go through where it's outcome is so final that the audience (insert lesson from R. McKee's Story here) "cannot imagine another conflict". That kind of action. What is the action? What is it?
Is it blowing up a shark? Jaws. Walking out on your family? Ordinary People. Living through the passing of your only daughter in bedraggled clothes? Terms of Endearment. Goading a trigger happy prison guard to shoot you through a church window? Cool Hand Luke.
Any action.
Now. Come up with your own. Preferably the one you wrote. What is that action? Now ask yourself this. Does it resonate? Will the reader understand that it is a climax? How?
Here's what I've been belaboring. Any action can be climactic IF YOU PLANT IT'S PROBABILITY OF HAPPENING in act I. This may be a no brainer to you, but the scabs just fell off my eyes with this. And I've been writing for four years now. Coming up with a climax is as easy as saying, "what do I want that action to be?" Choosing it. And then attaching a story value to it early on so readers will know this is the ultimate length the hero will/must/must not go to X,Y,Z.
I know, I know. Then why do some climaxes fizzle? Answer: taste. It wasn't important to enough people, but to just the right people to get left in the story. What can I say? No accounting for blah, blah, blah.
Pardon my idiot savant excitement over what seems to be a simple fundamental of the craft; but like I said, it just rang true to me. Now I look forward to my ending and conjure that climax, that final showdown, that action. Define it. The rest of my climax conjuring is to make sure it resonates to my reader. This is the climax because back on page X when he said she might have to BLANK, or else THIS. I don't want to ruin the...well, you know.
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