Hitchcock: Content vs. Technique

Here's another bit of advice from Hitchcock while I get some rest and drink plenty of fluids...



- Bill

Click here for more info!

HITCHCOCK DID IT FIRST!

We all know that Alfred Hitchcock was the Master Of Suspense, but did you know he was the most *experimental* filmmaker in history?

Contained Thrillers like “Buried”? Serial Protagonists like “Place Beyond The Pines”? Multiple Connecting Stories like “Pulp Fiction”? Same Story Multiple Times like “Run, Lola, Run”? This book focuses on 18 of Hitchcock’s 53 films with wild cinema and story experiments which paved the way for modern films. Almost one hundred different experiments that you may think are recent cinema or story inventions... but some date back to Hitchcock’s *silent* films! We’ll examine these experiments and how they work. Great for film makers, screenwriters, film fans, producers and directors.

Films Examined: “Rear Window”, “Psycho”, “Family Plot”, “Topaz”, “Rope”, “The Wrong Man”, “Easy Virtue”, “Lifeboat”, “Bon Voyage”, “Aventure Malgache”, “Elstree Calling”, “Dial M for Murder”, “Stage Fright”, “Champagne”, “Spellbound”, “I Confess”, and “The Trouble with Harry”, with glances at “Vertigo” and several others.

Professional screenwriter William C. Martell takes you into the world of The Master Of Suspense and shows you the daring experiments that changed cinema. Over 77,000 words.

Thriller Thursday: MARK OF THE HAND

Mark Of The Hand

The spider web fills the screen, it's Boris Karloff's THRILLER!

Season: 1, Episode: 4.
Airdate: 10-04-1960


Director: Paul Henreid (“Casablanca”).
Writer: Eric Peters based on a novel by Charlotte Armstrong (“The Unsuspected”).
Cast: Mona Freeman, Jessie Royce Landis, Shepperd Strudwick, Rachel Ames, Judson Pratt.
Music: Pete Rugolo.
Cinematography: John L. Russell (“Psycho” and Hitchcock Presents).

Boris Karloff’s Introduction: “An instrument of murder is hardly a proper toy for an eight year old, as sure as my name is Boris Karloff. And this instrument casts an evil shadow even beyond the death of this corpse. And upon it is the mark of the hand. That’s the name of our story. It’s from a novel by the celebrated Charlotte Armstrong. Let me assure you my friends, this is a thriller.”

Synopsis: A woman screams. Paul Mowry (Berry Kroeger) races out of his house, across the yards, and into the luxurious home next door where he finds his brother Charlie dead on the floor of the library... shot in the back! Hottie Sylvia Walsh (Mona Freeman) stands over him, screaming. No gun in her hand. Paul looks at the third person in the room... calmly sitting in a chair holding the murder gun in her hand... 8 year old Tessa Kilburn (Terry Burnham). Sugar and spice and everything nice... a cold blooded killer!

Others rush into the room: Tessa’s father Douglas (Shepperd Strudwick), nanny Betty (Rachel Ames) and wheelchair bound Grandmother Kilburn (Jessie Royce Landis). All are shocked that the cute little 8 year old murdered the man who lives next door.

Detective Gordon (Judson Pratt) arrives and begins his investigation. Sylvia is the fiancé of Douglas Kilburn, they are soon to be married. She says that Paul often came over for coffee on Sundays, and they were having a pleasant conversation when she noticed that Tessa had opened the gun case and was playing with a pistol. When they told her to please put the pistol back in the gun case, Tessa *fired* the gun! First hitting the chandelier, then hitting Charlie in the back! Sylvia scuffled with Tessa and got the gun out of her hands, but by that time it was too late... Charlie was dead. She screamed, and Charlie’s brother Paul ran over from next door entering through the glass doors. Detective Gordon questions everyone else, ending with Tessa... who is in bed. Tessa tells him she will never speak again... and says nothing else.

Detective Gordon is frustrated, says if Tessa doesn’t talk he will have to put her in a psychiatric hospital under observation. He doesn’t want to do that. He asks Grandmother Kilburn if Tessa has ever been under psychiatric care... and she says of course not.

Meanwhile, Tessa stands at her bedroom window staring across the way at Paul in the house next door. Creepy! Is she crazy?

Detective Gordon continues his investigation, uncovering that Tessa *was* under psychiatric care at one point. Goes back to question the family and Douglas admits that Tessa began acting out when he began dating Sylvia... and caused some problems. But never did anything violent. Again he tries to get Tessa to talk, but she remains silent. Oh, and her fingerprints were on the murder gun (which is where the episode title comes from: the mark of her hand is on the gun). If Tessa would tell what happened, it might just be an accident and the case could be closed without sending an 8 year old to the gas chamber... but she remains silent (and creepy).

Detective Gordon gets information that one of the people involved has a criminal record (but we aren’t told who at this point). We *suspect* that it might be Douglas. Does crime run in the family? Detective Gordon eventually reveals that the *victim* had a criminal history: forgery and blackmail and all sorts of nasty things... and that Sylvia *knew* the victim years ago, before she met Douglas! Twist! Sylvia tells Douglas that she *did* know dead Charlie, was even engaged to him at one point... but after they broke up he was obsessed with her and stalked her and rented the house next door with his brother Paul... and she was doing *everything* to keep Charlie from doing something to ruin the upcoming marriage.

Detective Gordon goes next door to question Paul, but before he can discover anything interesting, Sylvia screams again! The two men rush next door where Sylvia says that cute (creepy) little Tessa tried to stab her with a knife! They run into Tessa’s bedroom, where the kid stands holding a kitchen knife in her hand. Tessa hands Gordon the knife, but doesn’t say a word. Creepy creepy creepy!

Detective Gordon questions Sylvia about this new incident... and Sylvia admits that she lied before. She made Tessa shooting Charlie sound like an accident, when in truth Tessa shot the man in cold blood. She’s an evil child who *kills* people she doesn’t like. She’s crazy, and needs to be institutionalized... or arrested for murder. Gordon doesn’t want to arrest an 8 year old kid, but it’s looking more and more like he has no choice. If he doesn’t put the little girl behind bars, she’s going to murder someone else.

Douglas goes upstairs and has a heart to heart with Tessa, apologizes for not being a good father, apologizes for seeming to care more about Sylvia than his own daughter. Tells her that he doesn’t believe she shot Charlie or tried to stab Sylvia or any of the other things she’s been accused of. He loves her, and will always love her. Big hug time.

Meanwhile, downstairs, nanny Betty has realized that something is wrong: Gordon said they found Paul’s fingerprints on the table, but he rushed into the room through the glass doors and went straight to his brother’s body... never touched the table. And the table had been cleaned after dinner last night... so how did his fingerprints get there?

Paul and Sylvia have a whispered discussion where they spill the beans: they have been in cahoots the whole time, setting up Douglas. Getting rid of little Tessa so that after the marriage Sylvia is the only heir. But when Charlie got cold feet, they shot him... and used his death to frame Tessa. They hear a noise and realize that Grandmother Kilburn has been listening. Sylvia opens the gun case, grabs a pistol, and goes upstairs to murder the wheelchair bound old woman!

Grandmother Kilburn gets Sylvia to confess to everything one more time, then Sylvia points the gun at her and... Detective Gordon and Douglas and Betty rush into the room and overpower her, take the gun away and Gordon slaps the cuffs on Sylvia. It was a trap all along.

Review: Though better than the first two episodes, a bit of a slide back from our last episode. Though some real suspense is generated at the end when Sylvia goes up to murder Grandmother, much of the episode is more of a cozy murder mystery with some soapy elements.

There is kind of a Hitchcock reunion feel to the episode with Landis from NORTH BY NORTHWEST and TO CATCH A THIEF in the cast and John Russell behind the camera. Paul Henreid, Victor Laszlo from CASABLANCA, directs... and gives the episode some nice moving shots.

One of the problems might be the kid seems to be a “bad seed” in the story, but is shown to be more cute than threatening. When she stares out her window at Paul, she’s just not creepy enough. I’m sure part of this was probably network censors wanting them to tone it way down, but with Tessa portrayed more as a kid than a crazy psycho, the episodes loses a lot of impact. Though still a bit of a stumble from last week’s episode, we’re still on the right track. This one is much closer to a thriller than the other episode about a kid with a gun, and the story is tight and focused and easy to understand. All of the performances are pretty good, with the actor playing Paul exuding a weaselly menace even when he’s playing the brother of the victim. Landis is great as always, playing older than her age. Mona Freeman looks like trouble from the opening scene, and that might be a bit of a give away. She’s an obvious femme fatal in the role of faithful fiancé... and we know she’s probably the guilty one from the first scene. Strudwick, who gets a shout out in some Elmore Leonard novel, was an over the hill pretty boy at this point in his career, but is handsome and dignified and really brings tears to your eyes in that father/daughter scene. That scene elevates the whole episode.

FADE OUT.

Bill

5 The Hard Way!

From 2010...

There are five ways your writing can end up on screen...

There is this fellow on the Done Deal message boards whose question is: “When looking for an Agent or Manager, should I tell them I write purely for artistic expression and am completely disinterested in making money from my work.”

Aside from there being a major contradiction in that sentence which leads me to believe it may be, um, disingenuous... it opened up the usual discussion of art vs. commerce that dogs all screenwriting message boards. But let’s ignore the art and commerce debate and just look at getting your words on screen. I believe there are 5 ways your words can end up on screen (and now that I have said that, someone will come up with a couple more that I have not thought of - post them in the comments section). So here are the five (not easy) ways to get your screenwriting on the actual screen...

1) Sell A Screenplay. This is the most common way and the most common method that screenwriters think of. You sell your screenplay to a producer who will then make it into a film. The producer buys the screenplay as an *investment* - they hope to turn that script into a movie that makes money, which allows them to continue buying screenplays and making them into movies. The producer is a professional. They make movies for a living. Because of this, they are looking for movies with some commercial appeal. Now, that commercial appeal is *usually* mainstream stories because there is a better chance of a film in a popular genre making enough money to pay for itself... and keep the producer’s bank accounts full so that he or she can keep buying screenplays. It just makes sense to try to make a movie that the majority of ticket buyers will want to see - you sell more tickets that way. But there are some *unusual* commercial films - there are a couple of companies that make Gay and Lesbian films... in popular genres. Lots of horror and sci-fi and disaster movies and action films. There are also ethnic films that feature minority characters in mainstream genres. These producers and production companies are still professionals who invest in screenplays to turn them into movies that will make a profit. I have worked with producers who see movies as “product” and don’t give a damn if they are any good or not... and I have heard of producers who actually want to make great films (that also make money so that they can continue to make great films). Just because a script is in a popular genre does not mean it is bad. Pretty much every movie made before 1970 was made for commercial reasons... and many of them are classics and great films. For me, the target is the smart commercial screenplay. Something that audiences will want to see, but is also a good movie that they will want to see again and again... and decades from now people will see the film for the first time and love it. A film with shelf life.

2) Use The Script To Land A Writing Assignment. Those same commercial oriented producers read your screenplay and invest in *you the writer* to script a story in another medium: novel, comic book, true story, video game, Hasbro toy. In this scenario, you are telling someone else’s story - hired to write a screenplay based on your writing skills. Now, I can not make a blanket statement, but from looking at who lands these assignments, if your screenplays are all Elizabethan dramas you will probably not land the job scripting the AIRWOLF movie or the film version of the CRASHMOBILE car toy. Hey, they tried an experiment with Ang Lee and THE HULK, and it didn’t work out so well. Usually they try to match the writer’s skills from their spec scripts to the material - so I have no idea how that Elizabethan drama writer is going to land a gig like this. Again, these producers are *investing* in the writing, and hope to make a movie that makes enough money so that they can continue making movies for a living.

3) The Indie Route - DIY. Instead of selling the screenplay, you find the money and make the film yourself. With cameras and equipment becoming less expensive and online outlets and DVD becoming easier to access, many people are doing that indie thing. No one can tell you “no”. You can make whatever you want to make without stupid studio notes... because *you* are the boss. An indie film is made *outside* the system. There are a couple of ways an indie film can be made - the most common method for first films is self-produced. From Robert Townsend putting it on his Visa Card to Ed Burns spending $24k of his own money and borrowing equipment from his day job to Spike Lee borrowing equipment from NYU to Kevin Smith selling his comic book collection to Robert Rodriguez selling his body to medical experiments - you find the money to make it yourself. The other indie finance method is someone else’s money - you find investors who put up their money. You make the film yourself, outside the system... as an *Independent*. There are three ways an indie film can go - you can sell your finished film to a distributor (in the distributor believes investing in the film will return a profit), you can play your film in festivals (maybe it sells to a ditrib, maybe it does not - but you get some exposure and an audience), or you can self distribute (sell DVDs online or some form of streaming). Selling an indie film is not easy - the Los Angeles Times says about 2% of the films made find any form of distribution (including DVD), but you can always self distribute.

4) Government Arts Funding. If you live in any country *except* the United States, odds are there is an arts program that funds films. Some of these come from a ticket tax, others are straight taxes, and some are from a Lottery fund. The government funds films as part of a cultural program. Usually these films must have cultural story elements. Almost always the script must be written by a citizen of the country funding the film (or a partner country). The United States doesn’t really have anything like this - we’re all about commerce, here. The closest we might get is some art film grant from the NEA to make a short or documentary... and you know how well loved the NEA is! Every year the cut even more funding, so most of the grants tend to go to established theater companies or galleries. But outside the USA - you have a chance!

5) Sell To An Indie Producer. This one is last because it is becoming less common. There was a time when an indie distrib like Miramax not only bought completed films from festivals (etc), they also made their own films - and some of those films were not commercial driven, but art house or awards driven.. And there were a handful of other companies like Miramax, plus all of the studios had “indie” divisions that made non-mainstream movies for art houses and Your Oscar Consideration. Around these big companies were smaller companies who may have deals or connections with the big guys, and bought and made art house films and more interesting and unusual films. They would take chances on something that had a niche audience or was for more intelligent viewers... like an Elizabethan drama. But the indie bubble burst a few years ago, and now Miramax is gone... along with all of the studio “indie” labels. Because there are no big distribs for art house and indie material anymore, most of the smaller companies have also disappeared. There are still a few scrappy ones left, but there are *many* more scripts than there could ever be slots to make them... and many of those slots go to some producer or star who has a pet project. Yes, there's still a chance for *your* screenplay at one of the survivors, but you need to take into consideration that smaller indie market means smaller budgets. An epic Elizabethan drama is going to be a hard sell, but a Sundance style script has a chance. Though this was never an easy route, it is now even more difficult. But a writer's gotta do what a writer's gotta do.

So, those are the five ways your screenwriting can end up on screen. Yes, there are combinations of these 5 ways that sometimes work - like an international co-production of an indie film, or a film made independently that is bought to be remade, or some other “combine two of the five” method. But for the most part your script will either sell to someone who sees it as an investment that will become a profitable (commercial) film, or you will make the film yourself. The exception being if you live in some other country than the USA, and then you have an arts program possibility. The problem with not caring whether your script makes money or not is that the average USA studio film costs $106.7 million by the time it reaches the screen, and the studio would kind of like to make that money back if they can. Even the indie guys would like to keep making indie movies - and that means making a film at a reasonable budget that will interest a large enough audience to make a profit. No matter how much focus they have on art, they still need to pay back the investors...

So the people who *buy* your screenplay (or hire you to write) care about the money. That doesn’t mean they *only* care about the money, but it is part of their equation so it needs to be part of *your* equation as well.

If you really do not care about the money and are just writing for self expression, may I suggest a blog? Trust me when I say, there is no money in it.

- Bill

Click here for more info!

HITCHCOCK DID IT FIRST!

We all know that Alfred Hitchcock was the Master Of Suspense, but did you know he was the most *experimental* filmmaker in history?

Contained Thrillers like “Buried”? Serial Protagonists like “Place Beyond The Pines”? Multiple Connecting Stories like “Pulp Fiction”? Same Story Multiple Times like “Run, Lola, Run”? This book focuses on 18 of Hitchcock’s 53 films with wild cinema and story experiments which paved the way for modern films. Almost one hundred different experiments that you may think are recent cinema or story inventions... but some date back to Hitchcock’s *silent* films! We’ll examine these experiments and how they work. Great for film makers, screenwriters, film fans, producers and directors.

Films Examined: “Rear Window”, “Psycho”, “Family Plot”, “Topaz”, “Rope”, “The Wrong Man”, “Easy Virtue”, “Lifeboat”, “Bon Voyage”, “Aventure Malgache”, “Elstree Calling”, “Dial M for Murder”, “Stage Fright”, “Champagne”, “Spellbound”, “I Confess”, and “The Trouble with Harry”, with glances at “Vertigo” and several others.

Professional screenwriter William C. Martell takes you into the world of The Master Of Suspense and shows you the daring experiments that changed cinema. Over 77,000 words.

Trailer Tuesday: NIGHT MOVES

A few days ago on some form of social media, I mentioned how much I liked the Amazon pilot for BOSCH, based on the series of novels by Michael Connolly (I’ve read them all and am a big fan), and my friend Harry Connolly (no relation) said he’d liked the pilot, too... but he likes “mopey detectives”. Hmm, I didn’t even know that was a subgenre! But one of my favorite films from the 70s, NIGHT MOVES, is a Mopey Detective Story... so I thought we’d look at it today. Meanwhile, the BOSCH pilot is still *free* on Amazon, and if you’re a fan of the Mopey Detective genre, it’s swell. Dark, brooding, and has an ending that makes me want to see more. Amazon is interesting in that *we* (the audience) are the executives who decide what pilot goes to series. We vote on the pilots and they make the ones that seem to have a big enough audience to make it worthwhile. So, see BOSCH and vote!



Now, to that other Mopey Detective movie NIGHT MOVES (1975) starring Gene Hackman as mopey private detective Harry Moseby, who is mopey because he thinks his wife (Susan Clark) is cheating on him... follows her... sees her with another guy (the always great Harris Yulin)... confronts her... and she gets mad at him for following her. The other guy is some damned cripple with a cane, can’t really kick his ass without looking like an jerk. And his wife says he’s emotionally distant and doesn’t trust anyone (which is true). So his marriage is on the rocks... when he gets his case.

Runaway daughter Delly Grastner (a teenaged and perpetually topless Melanie Griffith) has a washed up ex movie star for a mother and an ex stuntman as absent father. Each lives on an opposite coast: mother in Los Angeles and father in Florida. Harry has to hunt down Delly in the back alleys of Hollywood and the run down coastal area of Florida. Along the way he meets all kinds of fringe people, from Delly’s druggie ex boyfriend Quentin (an unbelievably young James Woods) to her father’s hippy girlfriend Paula (Jennifer Warren)... and Harry and Paula hook up when Delly’s dad Tom Iverson (John Crawford) isn’t looking. But, true to the genre, nothing is as it seems and soon some people die and Harry finds himself in the middle of a much bigger mystery involving film set accidents that may not be so accidental and scuba diving for sunken treasure (which may be drugs, drugs *are* a treasure, right?). Because this is the 70s, the film has an ending more like CHINATOWN than a traditional detective flick... and it isn’t so much solved as abandoned after too many people die to make solving it sensible. It’s dark and twisted, baby!

The film was written by Alan Sharp, who would later write ROB ROY. It’s a brilliant script that is more about character than crime (though there’s plenty of crime), and has a bleak and ugly world view. Dialogue is great, characters are amazing, and this is one of those films like that other Hackman Harry film where you realize just how great Hackman is as an actor. He is a quiet actor who manages to convey meaty emotions without seeming to be emotional. Alan Sharp wrote action flicks and westerns and the TV movies about the USS Indianapolis and those sharks that Quint talks about in JAWS. He also wrote the *awful* adaptation of DAMNATION ALLEY (one of my favorite novels). He died about a year ago at 79 years old, his last credit was in 2010.

The film was directed by Arthur Penn, who worked with Hackman on a little film called BONNIE AND CLYDE. Penn also directed THE MIRACLE WORKER and LITTLE BIG MAN and was one of those great directors of the 60s and 70s, who didn’t really fit in to the Hollywood of the 80s and 90s. He went from interesting stuff like MISSOURI BREAKS to flops like PENN & TELLER GET KILLED and directing episodes of Canadian TV series. Penn gives the film that glossy grit that 70s films had. Not the ragged and often incompetent look of some of today’s indies, but the professional look of a studio film... just with deep pools of shadow and a realistic look and feel. He makes NIGHT MOVES into a nightmare, with poetic shots and a real feeling of foreboding. All of the actors play it real, and you forget that they are actors playing characters at times. Penn makes you feel that the more Harry does to make things right, the more things will go spiraling out of control and just go wrong. And that tricky tone is maintained expertly throughout.

Cinematography is by Bruce Surtees, who was Eastwood’s DP on many films like PLAY MISTY FOR ME and HONKYTONK MAN, and Eastwood “inherited” him from one of my favorite directors Don Siegel (DIRTY HARRY, and I met Surtees on ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ when I crashed the set... on Alcatraz) and Surtees was DP on RISKY BUSINESS *and* BIG WEDNESDAY (one of my other favorites) and CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. One of those great DPs who could shoot films in any genre and make them look great.

Music is by Michael Small, and if you don’t know who that is you haven’t seen many 70s movies. Small did soundtracks for KLUTE, PARALLAX VIEW, MARATHON MAN, THE DRIVER, the remake of POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE with Jack Nicholson, and many others. He has a distinctive sound, and when I watch some movie like STAR CHAMBER I know he scored it without reading the credits. Smalll was *the guy* for movies like this.

NIGHT MOVES is one of those “lost films”. No one seems to remember it these days. But it’s a great film, and a fantastic example of the Mopey Detective genre. If you liked CHINATOWN, put this in your Netflix queue and check it out. Oh, it’s contemporary, takes place in 1975.

Bill

BOSCH PILOT (free)

Lancelot Link: Oscar Edition

Lancelot Link Monday! The Oscars were yesterday... but this is being written *before* the winners have been announced, so at this point you know more than I do. So here are some links, plus the Spirit Award Winners... how many will win *twice*? Here are this week's links to some great screenwriting and film articles, plus some fun stuff that may be of interest to you. Brought to you by that suave and sophisticated secret agent...




Here are eight links plus this week's car chase...


1) Weekend Box Office Estimates:
1 Non Stop............. $30,019,000
2 Son Of God........... $26,500,000
3 The LEGO Movie....... $21,015,000
4 Monuments Men......... $5,000,000
5 3 Days To Kill........ $4,900,000
6 Robocop............... $4,500,000
7 Pompeii............... $4,300,000
8 Frozen................ $3,611,000
9 About Last Night...... $3,400,000
10 Ride Along............ $3,065,000


2) The Independent Spirit Awards Winners!
Best Feature: 12 Years a Slave
Best Director: Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave
Best Screenplay: John Ridley, 12 Years a Slave
Best First Feature: Fruitvale Station
Best First Screenplay: Bob Nelson, Nebraska
John Cassavetes Award (For best feature made under $500,000): This is Martin Bonner (Monterey Media inc)
Best Supporting Female: Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years a Slave
Best Supporting Male: Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers
Best Female Lead: Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
Best Male Lead: Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club
Robert Altman Award: Mud
Best Cinematography: Sean Bobbitt, 12 Years a Slave
Best Editing: Nat Sanders, Short Term 12
Best International Film: Blue is the Warmest Color
Best Documentary: 20 Feet From Stardom


3) Inside An Oscar Voter.

4) The Twisted History Of Oscar.

2) New Development Model For Writers?

2) Indie Publishing Con Schedule (online!)

7) Lego Movie: Should The Figures Kiss Onscreen?

8) First Sentences From Famous Novels Diagrammed.

Car Chase Of The Week:



An Oscar winner!

Bill

Patricia Hitchcock on STRANGERS ON A TRAIN

Hitchcock's daughter, Pat, was *in* STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, and these are her thoughts on the film...


And, in the event you missed them, here are my thoughts:
STRANGERS ON A TRAIN

And if you click on the label "hitchcock" you will get all of the past Fridays With Hitchcock (I think).

- Bill

Fixing Oscar (from 2008)

From March 8, 2008...

Okay, Gary has now been all over TV apologizing for his bad behavior on Oscar night, and claiming that he has a “excitable boy” personality that comes out at events like this.

Now that Gary has apologized, all that is left is for the Oscars to apologize to all of us for such an awful show. That was the lowest rated Oscar show in it’s 55 year history on television - nobody watched it. Nobody. All of those people who were nervous about making speeches in front of millions and millions of people? They shouldn't have worried so much.

This is the “Super Bowl of Movies” - and nobody tuned in to see who won! There were a bunch of theories flying around right after the show, some people suggested the writer’s strike may have had something to do with it... but it would make more sense if the end of the strike *boosted* ratings - people would be happy that their shows were going to come back on... and there was nothing else to watch on TV! We were in the middle of a TV drought, so the strike should have turned the Oscars into a huge ratings hit!

When they began looking at other Oscar flop broadcasts they found the common denominator (because I’ve been neglecting you wonderful people for a week and a half, this is all old news - Nikki Finke even wrote a column on much of this stuff in the LA Weekly last Thursday) - it seems that nobody watches the Oscars when they focus on films that very few people have seen. When the Oscars feature those big blockbuster films like LORD OF THE RINGS, it’s a ratings hit... but when they feature indie flicks, nobody cares enough to watch. If you don’t have a team in the game, you are less likely to watch... and when you’ve never even heard of any of the teams playing, who cares? It’s just like writing a script - we have to care about the characters! In this case, the characters are the movies in the running.

And this year - nobody cared about any of the movies. Very few people saw any of the movies. And many people who did see them, hated their endings.

For people to care about the Oscars, we need movies in the contest that people care about.

Though this *wasn’t* a ratings element, if you watched the Independent Spirit Awards over on that cable channel on Saturday night, the Oscars seemed like a repeat! The same movies were nominated (more or less)! The same people showed up to collect their awards. It was just like the Oscars, only less cheesy. The Oscars were just a duplicate of the Spirit Awards - and why have two awards shows that are alike on the same weekend?

FLASHBACK

While I was watching the 95th clip show on the Oscars, the one that showed all of the Best Picture Winners from the past, I noticed something interesting. Up until fairly recently the past Oscar Winners for Best Picture had all been mainstream studio films - movies that were popular with the mass audience. Sure, there were some more serious mainstreams films here and there - but the majority were crowd pleasers. And even after the invention of the art house indie film, most of the winners were mainstream movies with mass appeal. So let’s look at the past Oscar winners and see how they relate to the five films in the running a couple of weeks ago.... Would it surprise you if I said that 11 of the 80 films were musicals? That’s right - musicals. We need only look back a couple of years to find CHICAGO, and our second Best Picture went to BROADWAY MELODY OF 1929 - one in a series of backstage musicals. More musicals have won Best Picture than any other genre! Were any of the nominees this year musicals? The first Oscar went to WINGS, an action flick about two pilots in love with the same gal - famous for it’s dogfight scenes. You know, the first big Oscar sweep movie was IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT - a romantic comedy. They say comedies never get nominated, but that’s only recently - YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU to ANNIE HALL... 10% of Oscar winners have been comedies. And *popular* comedies - YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU is a zany comedy. Somewhere in there was CIMARRON - a western. Westerns have won a few times, too. The key to winning Best Picture in the past seems to have been the epic genre film - from AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS to TITANIC to the LORD OF THE RINGS films - if you take a crowd pleasing genre and do the huge ship-breaks-in-half version, you have a hit film that wins an Oscar. GONE WITH THE WIND and GRAND HOTEL and several other winners are just big soap operas. Oh, and GONE WITH THE WIND is still the #1 film off al time adjusted for inflation - the most popular film ever made! And Best Picture!

Of course, you have to look at all of the non-epics, too. REBECCA is a Hitchcock thriller... and was Best Picture Winner in 1940. And FRENCH CONNECTION - the greatest car chase ever - won Best Picture. Other cop movies have won - IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT won Best Picture... it was a big hit film that combined the detective genre with race issues, and spawned a couple of cop movie sequels. THE STING is a comedy caper film - a massive hit *and* Best Picture Winner in 1973. It was sandwiched in between the two good GODFATHER movies, both based on a huge best selling novel that was part soap opera, part gangster flick. Oh, and both of those films were stand-in-line-for-four-hours hits. Funny that people blame JAWS for being the first blockbuster, when the lines for THE GODFATHER were just as long... and the lines for GONE WITH THE WIND were probably longer! Oscar Winners used to *also* be the big hit film of the year - the movies that *everybody* saw. And, I don’t know about you, but I didn’t see SILENCE OF THE LAMBS because it was art... I saw it because it was scary! Oh, and it later won Best Picture. They talk about the “Oscar bump” these days - the increase in box office just after a film wins Best Picture - but in the past, the Oscar Winners were already huge successes. The “bump” back then was people seeing the film for a third or fourth time. Oscar Winners used to be big hits!

For those of you running down the list of Oscar Winners - yes, there were serious dramas in there. They seem to be bunched around the wars - LOST WEEKEND and BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES and GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT right after World war 2, and THE DEER HUNTER after Viet Nam. There was also a period of social unrest during Viet Nam which turned popular movies upside down - a movie like MIDNIGHT COWBOY was a mainstream hit film (even though it seems like an art house film today). But these were still *popular* mainstream films - just in an era where what was popular was different than what is popular now. Times change, interest rates fluctuate.

The Best Picture Oscar used to go to a film that was both a mainstream hit *and* a great movie... but our last Oscars gave us 5 films that were not mainstream successes (JUNO - a foul mouthed teen comedy - has done well despite being sold as an indie film), So how do we make the Oscars relevant again? We can’t force the audience to watch NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN - and even when they do watch it, they just hate the ending and tell their friends it’s not that good. We can’t change the audience... So maybe we need to change the Oscars? Turn them back into what they were before...

OSCAR REVAMP

So, my plan to make the Oscars relevant is to make *only* major release films from studios eligible. Lat’s say they have to show on 1,500 screens. See, we already have the Spirit Awards for all of those non-mainstream indie films, and part of my plan is for the Spirit Awards to be just as important as the Oscars. Maybe have the Oscars partner with them - and if you want to broadcast the Oscars, you also have to take the Spirit Awards. So you end up with *two big nights of movie awards*! And, ratings-wise, Saturday is kind of a slow night, so having an Indie Awards Show on Saturday could be a really good thing. People who care would stay home to watch, and people who are already home would have something better than whatever ratings-challenged show they’ve moved to Saturday night before cancelling. Think of the Spirits as a “pre-game show” - to get the audience hyped up for Sunday’s Oscars. This helps *both* awards shows.

But when you remove the non-mainstream films from the Oscar competition, it does two things - it makes all of the nominees movies that a large segment of the population has seen or at least heard of (boosting ratings) and it *forces studios to make good films*.

Right now, why would a studio want to make a version of any blockbuster that is actually good? They have no reason. Not to say that some aren't good - but even the greatest summer blockbuster just isn't going to be nominated for an Oscar. I think the BOURNE movies are all really good - both popular hits *and* really well made movies that even make you think. Were any of them nominated for Best Picture? You know, we often have some pretty good mainstream films - though ENCHANTED was nominated for Best Original Song three times and lost, it should have been nominated for Best Picture. It was really fun, and also damned good. Oh, and as a musical - it fits right in with past Oscar Winners. Every year there are *at least* 5 really good mainstream films - usually many more. None of these films have a chance of being nominated when there are these art house indies that have already won at a dozen film festivals. What we have are apples and oranges - and the idea that they can even be in the same competition doesn’t really make much sense. So why not have one competition for the apples and one for the oranges?

When I mentioned this one some message board, the reply was: So, you want TRANSFORMERS to win Best Picture? No. It’s still not about box office, it’s about quality of the picture. But we are going to look at the mainstream studio films - mass release films - and select which was the best of those films on Sunday night. The other films get Saturday night. Right now, a movie like BOURNE SUPREMACY has no real incentive to be “good”, except the people who make those films are intelligent enough to realize that people will want to buy their films on DVD and watch them again and again... and that making good films is what it’s really all about. But what if there was an added incentive? What if a studio could make a mainstream film that might win an Oscar and get that Best Picture bump at the box office, too? What if the folks who made VANTAGE POINT realized that the film didn’t just have to be a gimmick, but could also be in the running for Best Picture? What if, just by adding “quality components” they might end up with a film that not only makes money, but might also be in the running for Best Picture? Yeah, I know, easier said than done - but do you think the guys making TRANSFORMERS ever thought - “We might win an Oscar for this”? Of course not! They were thinking - we can make a crap load of money. There’s no way a mainstream film is going to be nominated. There’s no way a *popular genre* film is going to be nominated. Yet, one of the elements of a summer blockbuster is *scope* - large scale epic films are what summer is all about. And large scale epic films win Oscars. So why not do the *smart* version of TRANSFORMERS and be in the running for an Oscar?

Now, some of you are wondering what the smart version of TRANSFORMERS might be... and if that’s even possible. But when we look back over that list of Best Picture Winners form the past, all of those musicals and comedies and westerns and other genre films - they were good *and* popular. They were *about something* and had *great scenes* and *great characters*. Those things *could* be found in any film. Look at 28 DAYS LATER - a zombie film. Sure, like this year’s Oscar Nominees, it fell apart at the end... But it had great scenes about real human relationships. The scene where he risks his life to visit his home to see what happened to his parents. And that scene at home. Sure, it’s a zombie movie, but it’s also about larger issues. And deals with big character decisions - you have 20 seconds to kill that person who used to be your best friend once they have become infected. This is meaty, dramatic stuff... in a zombie movie. Any movie can be a good movie.

So, if you imagine a version of TRANSFORMERS made by Peter Jackson, could that have been Best Picture material? It would have been an entirely different movie. A better movie.

What if that July 4th movie would have other July 4th movies against it for the Best Picture Oscar. And, before they made the movie, they knew this. They knew that the competition wasn't oranges, but other apples. Right now, nobody cares if TRANSFORMERS wins an Oscar or not, because it has no chance... so it's all about the money. But what if the makers of TRANSFORMERS knew they were up against BOURNE SUPREMACY and PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN and IRONMAN and all of the other mainstream films? What if it wasn’t *only* about making money, what if it was also about being good? Now, wouldn't they start *thinking* about that Oscar? Wouldn't some studio guy realize that the Oscar bump on a big mainstream film may be another $100 million domestic? So there is a financial incentive, along with the old incentive of just being the best and rubbing the other studio chief's nose in it. "Our summer blockbuster was also *art*, and yours was not!" They would begin to think: “Hey, if we make better movies, we can make more money. We could get all of that free publicity from before the Oscar nominations, when they are talking about how good TRANSFORMER was, then the free publicity from the nomination... and all of the extra box office money while it’s one of the films nominated... then, if it wins? Mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money! And it costs us *nothing* to make TRANSFORMERS a better film - we just have to think about those art things, like good characters and good character scenes and making it about something. Instead of hiring a bunch of soul-less commercial people to make it, let’s find some people who can make it Oscar Worthy!” I think if every major studio release had a shot at an Oscar Nomination... and the free publicity and extra money that would bring in... studios would factor that into mainstream movies. They would take a movie like TRANSFORMERS and try to add in “quality factors” because there would be a reason to do that. A money reason.

And we’d end up with some really good commercial films - and that’s what I like. I think that’s what we all like. We want to see a good movie that we love. We want to see something that entertains us now and we think about later. Something that is art and commerce - not just one or the other.

I think that's what happened in those pre-indie days. No one was going to make a box office flop that won an Oscar - that would be stupid. Hollywood was a business even back then - and it was all about making movies that appealed to the mass audience and made a lot of money. But some guy like David O. Selznik was all about making big commercial movies that were *artistic*, too. A film that would not only make a bunch of money, but add a little prestige to his company. One of the things about the Golden Age of Hollywood was that all of those movie moguls were social outcasts. They were poor glove makers who moved west and made movies and made millions... but got no respect. So making a great movie would get them a little respect. Making a popular film that was “good” or even “great” made them into artists as well as businessmen. Today, money *is* respect, and studio heads are businessmen. Studios are owned by companies that make washing machines and television sets. They are all about business - and quality doesn’t matter because a crappy version of TRANSFORMERS makes as much money as a good version. So we need to appeal to the money side - to find a way to connect quality to money - and the Oscar Bump just might be that connection.

CASABLANCA, REBECCA, GONE WITH THE WIND, IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT - all of these films are still great. And they were commercial films - GONE WITH THE WIND is still All Time #1 BO champ in adjusted dollars. Oscar Winners used to be hit films - before the indies took over the Oscars. Oscar winners used to be both good and popular... before the indies took over the Oscars. So let’s remove the Indies from the Oscars! Let’s have two big nights of movie awards instead of one! Lets take a page from the past, and bring the Oscars back to Hollywood.

So lets turn the Oscars *back* into an awards show for mainstream popular entertainment and turn the Spirit Awards into another big thing. Mainstream, mass release films on Sunday. Niche movies, art house films, and indie films on Saturday. Two big nights for Hollywood!

Oh - and neither show can go longer than 2 hours. Period.

Oh - and like the Super Bowl, the commercials are an attraction, too... we open it up to 60 second spots for the hot new event films. You know, *good* event films. I would have loved to see an “Oscars Exclusive” clip from Indiana Jones. Imagine the ratings boost if the only place you could ever see that trailer was the Oscars? (Currently, rules prohibit movie ads during Oscars - stupid).

Oh, and no endless clips of past movies that just seem like filler material in a show that’s already an hour and half too long.

- Bill

Trailer Tuesday: STRIPES

Harold Ramis passed away yesterday, he was almost 70 years old... and made most of my favorite comedy films from my youth. When you think of all of those great Bill Murray films? He wrote them. ANIMAL HOUSE, MEATBALLS, CADDYSHACK, STRIPES, GHOSTBUSTERS, GROUNDHOG DAY? He wrote those films. He also wrote for Rodney Dangerfield, both stand up and films like BACK TO SCHOOL and ROVER DANGERFIELD. Plus a bunch of other films from CLUB PARADISE to ANALYZE THIS and ANALYZE THAT. Oh, and he directed many of those films. Oh, and he was an actor in many of those, too...

He was a Second City comedy guy from Chicago, who did a bunch of skit work on SCTV... but you'd know his face from GHOST BUSTERS where he played Spengler. He was my favorite Ghostbuster and one of my favorite comedy actors, because he usually played the clever, quiet, shy guy on the sidelines who was often the straightman and voice of reason to someone like Bill Murray, but still fired off zingers right and left.

So today we'll look at the trailer to STRIPES, where he played Bill Murray's sidekick Russell Ziskey, which was his first movie role after a couple of years on SCTV...



I recently watched this film again for a Blue Book (avoid the "Extended Version" which has a bunch of scenes that *deserved* to be cut) and Ramis is great in it. If you haven't seen it, or haven't seen it in a while it still holds up well. Check it out.

He was at Austin Film Festival the year I was on panels (2005) and they showed GHOSTBUSTERS and premiered his new film ICE HARVEST there. I met him briefly, but I think my friend Danny had dinner at his table one night. Austin is a great event, where you mingle with the big names. I always wish I'd spent more time hanging out with some of the other guests, but I was kinda hanging with the great Shane Black, so that was okay.

Harold Ramis will be missed... but his films live on. I end up popping them in the player every once in a while, and will continue doing so. Heck, we all watch GROUNDHOG DAY at least once a year, right?

Bill

Lancelot Link: Ninja Monday

Lancelot Link Monday! Hey, it's the last Monday of the month... that's good for a celebration, isn't it? So, while you are in a good mood (until you realize it's still Monday), here are this week's links to some great screenwriting and film articles, plus some fun stuff that may be of interest to you. Brought to you by that suave and sophisticated secret agent...




Here are eight links plus this week's car chase...


1) Weekend Box Office Estimates:
1 The LEGO Movie....... $31,450,000
2 3 Days To Kill....... $12,300,000
3 Pompeii.............. $10,010,000
4 Robocop............... $9,400,000
5 Monuments Men......... $8,100,000
6 About Last Night...... $7,400,000
7 Ride Along............ $4,667,000
8 Frozen................ $4,357,000
9 Endless Love.......... $4,301,000
10 Winters Tale.......... $2,130,000


2) The Cannes New Generation.

3) HANNIBAL Screenplays, anyone? Free downloads, from the show itself!

4) Where Did They Film That?

5) Conan O'Brien and the Simpson's Writer's Room.

6) The BOSCH pilot (free) at Amazon. Based on the novels by Michael Connolly.

7) Anonymous Production Assistant Blog. Funny!

8) Jack Kerouac On Writing.

And the car Chase Of The Week...



Don't ask...

Bill

Hitchcock: Organic

Jimmy Stewart in REAR WINDOW uses a camera to defend himself... He's a professional photographer, what else would he use?



I have a whole article on this, written for Script Magazine about a decade ago, called Hitchcock's Chocolates that gets into using the character and story to find all of the details of your screenplay. It always goes back to character - any question or problem you are having with your screenplay - think character, theme, story... and you will find the answers.

- Bill