Thursday, April 29, 2010

Lancelot Link Thursday

Lancelot Link Thursday! For those of you who want to get Clyde from those Clint Eastwood monkey movies a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame, here are some articles about screenwriting and the biz that may be of interest to you. Brought to you by that suave and sophisticated secret agent...




1) Help me spread the word! Click Here and add ScriptSecrets.Net or this blog!

2) America's favorite DVD is... This Film.

3) Great FX, but what about the *story*?

4) Worst Movie Trailers Ever!

5) One man's Treasure is another man's Trash.

6) The 3D Screenplay - what the heck is it?

7) Today's Car Chase:


- Bill

IMPORTANT UPDATE:

TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Subtle Screenwriting? - is that even possible?
Dinner: Strange Whole Foods Tofu Stroganoff & rice.
Bicycle: Nope.
Movies: TALES FROM THE SCRIPT - a great doc on screenwriters! Funny and frightening. Check it out!

Monday, April 26, 2010

Even More Zombies!

Because some people thought the previous blog entry ZOMBIE PROJECTS! was misleading, here is a new film with actual zombies that you may not have heard of. (You may not have heard of the movie, not: you may not have heard of these zombies... because you may recognize some of them as your friends... before they turned.)



- Bill

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Lancelot Link Thursday

Lancelot Link Thursday! For those of you who go to the cinema for the cuisine (popcorn is a vegetable, right?), here are some articles about screenwriting and the biz that may be of interest to you. Brought to you by that suave and sophisticated secret agent...



1) South Park Fatwa - Matt & Trey on Muslim hit list!

2) Hitler parodies removed from YouTube... and this is what Hitler had to say about it...


3) James Cameron: "I have a deal with the studio and it goes like this: Any movie I make that makes over a billion dollars goes out without a bunch of crap trailers for your other movies." The whole Cameron interview.

4) 94 year-old actor Eli Wallach still loves going to work every day.

5) Canadian Writers Guild Awards.

6) Writers vs. Writers - the most clever critics!

7) Will Smith returns in MEN IN BLACK 3?

8) Will Smith returns in ID4 2 and ID4 3?

10) Ninja Slugs! Finally, the perfect role for pudgy ex-action stars!

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:

TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: The Best Idea Wins! - you don't want your story idea upstaged by some throw away idea in some scene.
Dinner: City Wok - cashew chicken and brown rice.
Bicycle: Rode between the raindrops! Was lucky - rode to a NoHo Starbucks under cloudly skies and got a drop or two on me, rode back to Vent/Vine when the skies were clear, rode home when it began sprinkling again... and when I was safely home... it rained.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Lancelot Link Thursday

Lancelot Link Thursday! For those of you who buy Playboy for the articles, here are some articles about screenwriting and the biz that may be of interest to you. Brought to you by that suave and sophisticated secret agent...




1) Development Hell - How an Adam Sandler movie becomes a Tom Cruise movie.

2) Famous Fellini film in public domain?

3) Will they send Dog The Bounty Hunter after Randy Quaid?

4) Got any lost 1913 classic films in your storage shed?

5) Some Summer Movies to get excited about.

6) And once again I invade the UK's Movies For Men Channel: 4/17 14:30 - Black Thunder - When the world's most powerful stealth jet fighter falls into enemy hands, only one man can get it back. Starring Michael Dudikoff.

I am sorry!

- Bill

IMPORTANT UPDATE:

TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Put A Face On It! - How to deal with tricky forces of antagonism.
Dinner: BBQ Pork Fried Rice at the strip mall restaurant across from the New Beverly Cinema.
Bicycle: Did a subway/bike combo to the New Beverly Cinema - and it was easy! I'm going to make it a regular thing - and write in the trendy Melrose cafes then see a movie afterwards.
Movies: THE WIND AND THE LION and THE DEVIL'S 8 - two from Milius' typewriter.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Movies Opening Today In France

This movie opens today in France...


I hope it also plays here.

*** TWEET DEALS - ENDS TODAY! ***

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:

TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Realistic Reactions - your characters need to behave like real people.
Dinner: Home made ham sandwich.
Bike: No - but I'm doing a bike-subway combo to get to the New Beverly Cinema today... and will have to take the homeless bus over the pass when the movie lets out. Yech!

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Monsterpalooza 2

Over the weekend I went to Monsterpalooza 2 at the Burbank Marriot. Last year the event was great, and here's my report: Monsterpalooza #1 - and this year the event was *packed*. I arrived at 1pm... and there was still a line to get in! A big around-the-building line! Obviously word of mouth about how cool the event was last year created a huge crowd this year - and the place was SRO. You were crammed into the hallway and had to go in the direction everyone else went!

It was too crowded for me to take pictures with my danged phone of some of the cool exhibits - they all end up blurry because people were bumping into me constantly. At the very end of the day when most people had left I took a photo of one exhibit:


After going to Fango Weekend Of Horrors every year and seeing it slowly decline into crap (My Fango Report From Last Year) - Monsterpalooza was a pleasant surprise - it was what Fango *used to be* - about monsters and make up and cool horror and sci-fi stuff.

Monsterpalooza has this great museum of real monster make up stuff (suits) plus lots of exhibits created by make up and effects people - last year there was this amazing *lifesize* diorama of Boris Karloff sipping tea while they put on his Frankenstein make up - it was room sized! Completely amazing - it looked like real people. My pictures are blurry and bad and do not capture the realism of these pieces of art. This year there was Hannibal Lecter in his cage, Blackula, Linda Blair with her head turned back, and all kinds of amazingly realistic pieces of art. Here are some blurry pictures...






This was a whole hotel ballroom filled with exhibits that were part of the event. No extra charge to take the tour and you could do it as many times as you wanted (though - there was always a line, and it was packed).

The other ballroom was the dealer's room, and unlike Fango's room filled with people selling horror junk and faded stars signing autographs, the focus at Monsterpalooza is on monster making supplies and special effects people showing their work. That non-blurry photo was from the *dealer's room* - that was a display of the work from some special effects house. My friend Todd works for one of the special effects houses (you've seen his work in all kinds of movies) and he had a mummy on display. Made just for the show as a sample of his work. He wasn't selling a bunch of ratty bootleg DVDs of movies he ripped that he doesn't own copyright to (Fango is full of those), he's selling his skills as a special effects artist. Want him for your next movie?



Sure, there were guys selling posters and some old stars signing autographs - but the old stars were not the usual folks trying to make a buck... there was Burt I Gordon, director of THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN and Steve Niles was there to autograph copies of 30 DAYS OF NIGHT. Not the usual people you see signing at things like this.

And the dealers were also interesting - not only were there people selling DVDs of how to do monster make up and folks with original masks and busts (the totally cool Lucifer bust was selling for $666), there were artists selling amazing books of storyboards and production art for movies they had worked on and other cool one-of-a-kind things. A couple of poster sales places, but not the grage sale atmosphere of Fango.

Another cool thing about the dealer's room was all of the sculptures used as decorations. This King Kong was about 20 feet high!


Plus all kinds of dioramas that couldn't fit in the museum, like this Leatherface...


And the displays showing some effects company's work was amazing...




Here's Lon Chaney jr's Larry Talbot before and after - if the picture wasn't so danged blurry, you'd be amazed...

Don't hire me as your DP.

On stage they had some great guests and shows. I sat through an amazing *color* slide show of behind the scenes shots of late 50s and 60s low budget monster maker Paul Blaisdell's work on films for Burt I Gordon and Roger Corman. What do you do when you have a movie called BEAST WITH 1,000 EYES and there's no money in the budget for a full-sized beast? Some amazing photos and some funny pictures as well - the giant hypodermic from AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN being use to give a crew member a shot in the butt, Paul and friends eating a monster with ketchup and forks and knives... great stuff!

I also saw a mega-panel for RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD - over a dozen cast and key crew members including Clu Gulager. The panel was funny, told great stories about how they managed to get 2 weeks of rehearsal because the producer Ken Fox (who almost bought a script from me a couple decades ago) didn't know that low budget films never have rehearsal time, some stories about writer-director Dan O'Bannon and his bullet proof home, and some great no-names-used stories about the special effects team that was fired a couple of days into production - leaving the new hires to create complicated effects work on the spot! Great stuff.

I was disappointed that I didn't catch Oscar winner Barney Burman's show the next day - the guy is my FaceBook friend - but did spot him at the event on Saturday.

One of the interesting things about an event like this is that it's the only place I see some of my friends! Some people fly in for the event, others are just so busy during the year I seldom see them... but they show up at horror movie events like this. A group of us spent a while swapping stories about an ex-friend who was not there... and how he had screwed us all over to the point that none of us talks with him anymore. Each of us tried to top the other with tales of being screwed over by this guy... then we all wondered how he could stay in the biz. We figured there are always new people for him to screw over.

There were all kinds of folks I know and kind of know there - great to chat with them. Some people I mostly know online, and may "see" online every day but only actually see once or twice a year. Oh, and I finally met (in person) fellow screenwriter Mark Sevi - who I've known online since the internet was black and green. He was standing behind me in that monster line to get in.

I had a great time and I will be going back next year.

Maybe I'll see you there next year?

*** TWEET DEALS - ENDS WEDNESDAY! ***

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:

TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Always Be Prepared - and why you should have some scripts in your trunk along with that spare tire.
Dinner: Chinese Chicken Salad.
Bike: No. Pretty much a day when everything went wrong, so I shoukld have just hopped on the bike and went somewhere. But instead I just wrote this and goofed off.

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Lancelot Link Thursday

Lancelot Link Thursday! For those of you who buy Playboy for the articles, here are some articles about screenwriting and the biz that may be of interest to you. Brought to you by that suave and sophisticated secret agent...




* A Three Part news story on Mexico's Narco Cinema - films *about* drug dealers:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Thanks to my friend Jeff O'Brien for finding this! Jeff is an expert in writing for global cinema - and has written at least one film made in Mexico that I've seen.

* Is 3D The New Movie Star?

* Variety Slang Dictionary.

* Movies Playing In Los Angeles...
* AMERICAN CINEMATHEQUE
* NEW BEVERLY CINEMA
* SILENT MOVIES ON FAIRFAX
* Nuart Theater
The American Cinematheque is showing Noir stuff, by the way!

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:

TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Drama Dissipation - and superhero movies that have no dramatic tension.
Dinner: City Wok - Tomato Beef
Pages: Finished an article that was due days ago!

Oh, and I invade England again...

Movies For Men Channel:
4/10 - 13:30 - Crash Dive - The crew of a nuclear submarine rescues supposed victims of a boat disaster, but the victims turn out to be terrorists intent on capturing nuclear weapons aboard the sub.

4/12 - 18:10 - Steel Sharks - When a United States submarine is seized by terrorists, a rescue attempt by Elite Navy Seals goes awry. The submarine crew wages a silent war beneath the waves in this tense undersea thriller.

I'm sorry again!

Sunday, April 04, 2010

Happy Easter!

The great thing about Chris White's TOP 5 LIST is that you get a bunch of funny for your money. Along with the Top 5 List (which is usually almost 20 entries - Chris can't count very good) there is the best of the Ruminations (from that list) and Headlines From The Daily Probe and Musings With Mitch (that up until a couple of years ago I thought was a real person who may be the dumbest person on Earth) and two more comedy lists - the Runners Up and the Honorable Mentions...

And the Link Of The Day.

I have swiped the Link Of The Day from Friday, and here it is...

EASTER PEEP SHOW! (Barely Safe For Work)

Happy Easter! Forgive those who have tresspassed against you, turn the other cheek, overturn the tables of money changers, and try to be a good person.

- Bil

IMPORTANT UPDATE:


Dinner: Salad and french bread.
Bicycle: Medium sized ride.
Movies: Saw CLASH OF THE TITANS and will report on it later.

PS: yes, I know "very well". It was a joke.

PLUS: UK's MOVIES FOR MEN CHANNEL
4/5 - 15:10 - Steel Sharks - When a United States submarine is seized by terrorists, a rescue attempt by Elite Navy Seals goes awry. The submarine crew wages a silent war beneath the waves in this tense undersea thriller.

I am so sorry!
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