Lancelot Link: Where Are The Nudists In The Academy?

Lancelot Link Monday! Have you ever seen a Nudist Actor presenting an award on the Oscars show? Have you ever seen a movie with a Nudist character? I'm not talking about a character in a nude scene, I'm talking about let's say a scene at the Police Department in an action film where one of the two rival cops is a Nudist? Or a Western with a Nudist Cowboy? Or ever a romantic comedy where the Best Friend is a Nudist? Okay - the last SHERLOCK HOLMES movie had Mycroft as a Nudist... but the least represented people in movies are Nudists. That's the real problem that everyone is ignoring. While you're thinking about that, 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 a dozen links plus this week's car chase...


1) Weekend Box Office Estimates:
1 Revenant........................ $16,000,000
2 Star Wars TFA................... $14,257,000
3 Ride Along 2.................... $12,960,000
4 Dirty Grandpa................... $11,525,000
5 The Boy......................... $11,260,000
6 5th Wave........................ $10,700,000
7 13 Hours......................... $9,750,000
8 Daddy's Home..................... $5,270,000
9 Norm............................. $4,100,000
10 Big Shorts....................... $3,500,000


Slow snow weekend.

2) The Academy Ansrews Diversity Questions.

3) China Invades Universal Pictures With Half A Billion Bucks!

4) BIG SHORT Writer Charles Randolph Interview.

5) Who Needs Screenwriters?

6) 50 Hot Screenwriters!

7) 70 Awesome Frames From Movies. (I don't know if these were collected from One Perfect Shot on twitter, but if you don't follow him, DO IT NOW! @OnePerfectShot

8) Indie Maven James Schamus Interview Part 1. Indie Maven James Schamus Interview Part 2.

9) Films Which *May* Be Hot At Sundance This Year.

10) NOT Hot At Sundance This Year! (note: in the past many Sundance film have not been picked up for any sort of distribution, including DVD and prisons. The reason why there is a Sundance Channel and Sundance video label is due to *winning* films often not being picked up. That helps explain the remark about not being enough commercial films this year.

11) The Making Of REVENANT.

12) And The BEST PICTURE Award Goes To...

And the Car Chase Of The Week:



Yes - a NUDE car chase! From one of my favorite PINK PANTHER movies A SHOT IN THE DARK (which takes place in a nudist colony)/

Bill



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Spielberg's LINCOLN

THRILLER Thursday is returning in February! Until then, a couple of rerun blog entries.

From December of 2012...

SIGHT & SOUND Interview With Spielberg On His LINCOLN Movie.

Spielberg: Tony Kushner's screenplay was kind of slow and meticulous, and when we came to the ending I sensed a problem. It wasn't just a complete downer, the hero was also ultra passive. He just sits there in a chair watching a play and gets killed. Not the way a story like this should end.

Sight And Sound: But that's what actually happened.

Speilberg: If the rest of the screenplay had been more exciting and engaging, that ending would have maybe worked. But I felt we needed something more exciting and entertaining, so I brought in David Koepp for a punch up.

Sight And Sound: He wrote "War Of The Worlds" for you?

Spielberg: And "Crystal Skull" and "Jurassic Park" and I've brought him in to punch up other scripts, too. So, I told Dave what I wanted and he wrote the new ending.

Sight And Sound: How extensive was his rewrite?

Spielberg: After Booth shoots, Lincoln draws a gun and returns fire... while Mary Todd looks on from her seat in terror. There's a huge shoot out in the theatre between the two, Lincoln and Booth having to reload several times, and then we have a great roof-top chase sequence where Lincoln chases Booth from Ford's Theatre across the roofs of Washington, ending with a final confrontation between the two which ends with Lincoln using this great catchphrase I came up with for "Crystal Skull" that George vetoed, always wanted to use that line, and then shooting Booth dead.

Sight And Sound: That's unbelievable.

Spielberg: Isn't it great? But it doesn't end there. Lincoln realizes that if he's dead, he's a martyr... so he and Secretary Of State Seward, played by the excelled David Strathairn, cook up a plot to fake his death. There's a really touching scene where Lincoln says goodbye to Mary Todd and Tadpole (his son, played by Gulliver McGrath), I'm sure the audience will cry like the end of my "E.T.", and then Lincoln goes to live the rest of his life in Bolivia.

Sight And Sound: Did Bolivia exist as a country in 1865?

Spielberg: That doesn't really matter, does it? It's one hell of an ending, and a great ending for a hero. Heartbreaking and emotional. I guarantee people will be talking about it when the film comes out on November 16th.

- Bill

Participation & Performance

I'm re-running this blog entry from a several years back, for two very good reasons: It's still an important message, and I screwed up and don't have a blog entry for today.

When I was a kid in school, Gym Class was graded by participation and performance - whether you attended class every day and gave it your best shot, and what was accomplished with that best shot. If you were a fat uncoordinated kid like me, the best grade you could probably get out of Gym was a C, which was passing. I was there every day and I always did my best - which was not very good. Now, if I really wanted to I probably could have focused on one or two events or sports and really worked my butt off (figuratively *and* literally) and ended up with a B... or maybe even an A if I proved to be good at whatever I had selected. But I really didn’t care about Gym - just showing up and doing my best was about as much Gym as I could take. Which meant I would always be a C Gym student.

I often run into new screenwriters who think they should be graded only on participation... yet in the real world no one cares about participation - they only care about performance.

First, let me say that just finishing a script is a major human accomplishment. Finishing *anything* is an accomplishment. I always advise people who have just written Fade Out to treat themselves to something - like ice cream. Or go out to dinner someplace nice. Or do *something* to reward yourself. A dog gets a treat for “sitting pretty”, a screenwriter ought to get something for slaving over a script for a few months until you reach Fade Out. That's a big thing!

And every time you finish another script, treat yourself. I will tell you, there are many people who talk about writing a script and do nothing, many who get halfway and quit, and even many who write one screenplay... But fewer who write two, and the more scripts you write the fewer other writers out there who have done the same. So maybe with each new script you ought to treat yourself to something bigger and bigger - the Michael Bay Explosion Theory Of Screenwriting Treats.

Even though I will tip my hat to you for writing ten screenplays - that’s absolutely amazing - the industry doesn’t give a damn about participation. They are all about performance. And if you write ten stinker scripts, those are still ten stinker scripts. If you write ten okay scripts, that is still not good enough. You need to have a script that cuts through all of the rest - a script that people read and talk about. You need a script that *performs*.

I always use the Basketball Analogy. Right now there are probably tens of millions of kids playing basketball on some school ground or in the driveway after dad spent a full day trying to figure out how to install the hoop and backboard to the garage roof. Out of all of those kids, a fraction will play basketball good enough to make the High School Varsity Team. Out of all of the High School players, a fraction will play at the level that gets them on a college team. Now, even on a college team there are those who play at a level that gets them on a *good* college team and those who just play on teams that only play local teams. Now let’s look at those players on the good college teams - the ones you watch on ESPN. Only a fraction of those basketball players will make it to the pros. And even those who make it to the pros may be pro bench warmers - on the second string that only plays if a bomb wipes out the rest of the team. Now we have this small, finite group of professional basketball players... and even then, we have players who are stars like Kobe and players you have never heard of (but are pros and play in most of theor team’s games). Here’s the thing - as screenwriters, we have to be in that small percentage of pro players... and most of us will not be a Kobe or a Shane Black. Most of us will be those guys whose names you do not know and who do not get endorsement deals or date supermodels.

Here’s where things get rough for many new writers - they finish a screenplay, eat their amazing colossal ice cream sundae, and then nobody in the industry gives a damn about their script and they become angry because they worked so hard and got *bad coverage* in return. Bad coverage! Their reward from the industry? A slap in the face! Ef Hollywood! Ef them all!

But the business side of this (the part where you get paid and can quit your day job) does not care about how hard you worked on the script - they only care about the results. Is the script playing at that professional level? That’s tough to deal with, but you will have to deal with it.

There are some writers (I’ve met a few) who don’t give it their best shot, who don’t work very hard or don’t spend the time thinking about their stories and characters, and finish a script and expect to be rewarded by the world even though their script just plain sucks. It is *not* the best that they can do. Well, here’s the thing - and it is brutal - nobody cares how hard you worked if you did the work wrong. There is no reward for screwing up. You may have put in the hours, but if you didn’t put in the brain power and put in the heart and put in the actual stretch-yourself effort; you have failed. All of those hours were for nothing. If you “just crap out” a script, it will be crap. There is no reward for crap. If you spend 40 hours a week for 6 months and turn in crap, it is still crap. The results are what counts - the *performance* not the participation.

Nobody cares how hard you worked on the script if it's crap. They care about performance, not participation.

But here’s the thing - for the majority of you reading this, if you push yourself you will get better with every script you write and will reach that level of performance where people in the industry notice you. I am a strong believer that hard work is more important than natural talent. Somewhere there’s a kid on a playground who can close his eyes, throw the ball, and get nothing but net. Some sort of Spidey-sense going on there. But that kid is a freak. The rest of us have to work our tails off to get anywhere. And if we do work hard, and stretch our abilities with every script, and get better, and *care*, we will make the team. We will be playing pro, even though our natural talent may be nowhere near that freak kid’s.

But don’t expect the *industry* to buy you that amazing colossal ice cream sundae until you are playing at that pro level. Until then, you have to treat yourself.

- Bill

FINALLY!

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Only $9.99 - and no postage!

Oscar Nominees

Lancelot Link is taking a three day weekend (Holiday here in the USA), so here is a list of this year's Oscar Nominations...

What and who should win? What and who got snubbed?

BEST PICTURE

The Big Short
Bridge of Spies
Brooklyn
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Room
Spotlight


ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

The Big Short
Brooklyn
Carol
The Martian
Room


ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Bridge of Spies
Ex Machina
Inside Out
Spotlight
Straight Outta Compton


BEST ACTOR

Bryan Cranston, Trumbo
Matt Damon, The Martian
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs
Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl


BEST ACTRESS

Cate Blanchett, Carol
Brie Larson, Room
Jennifer Lawrence, Joy
Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years
Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn


BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Christian Bale, The Big Short
Tom Hardy, The Revenant
Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight
Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies
Sylvester Stallone, Creed


BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight
Rooney Mara, Carol
Rachel McAdams, Spotlight
Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl
Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs


BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Carol
The Hateful Eight
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
Sicario


DIRECTING

Adam McKay - The Big Short
George Miller - Mad Max: Fury Road
Alejandro G. Iñárritu - The Revenant
Lenny Abrahamson - Room
Tom McCarthy - Spotlight


ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

Anomalisa
Boy and the World
Inside Out
Shaun the Sheep Movie
When Marnie Was There


COSTUME DESIGN

Carol
Cinderella
The Danish Girl
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant


DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Amy
Cartel Land
The Look of Silence
What Happened, Miss Simone?
Winter on Fire


DOCUMENTARY SHORT

Body Team
Chau, Beyond the Lines
Claude Lanzmann
A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness
Last Day of Freedom


MAKEUP AND HAIR STYLING

Mad Max: Fury Road
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
The Revenant


ORIGINAL SONG

"Earned It" - Fifty Shades of Grey
"Manta Ray" - Racing Extinction
"Simple Song #3" - Youth
"Til It Happens to You" - The Hunting Ground
"Writing's on the Wall" - Spectre


ANIMATED SHORT

Bear Story
Prologue
Sanjay's Super Team
We Can't Live Without Cosmos
World of Tomorrow


SOUND EDITING

Mad Max: Fury Road
Sicario
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
The Martian
The Revenant


FILM EDITING

The Big Short
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
Spotlight
Star Wars: The Force Awakens


FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

Embrace of the Serpent
Mustang
Son of Saul
Theeb
A War


ORIGINAL SCORE

Bridge of Spies
Carol
The Hateful Eight
Sicario
Star Wars: The Force Awakens


PRODUCTION DESIGN

Bridge of Spies
The Danish Girl
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant


VISUAL EFFECTS

Ex Machina
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Kris Kristofferson as Han Solo?

Dramatic proof that Luke and Leia were brother and sister: Donny & Marie played them on TV...



And the (real) hit disco version of the STAR WARS theme...



I have danced to that in real life! It seemed like *every* movie ended up with a hit disco version in the late 70s. Here's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS...



I never danced to that... never danced to STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE disco version, either...



And, of course, SUPERMAN...



All of these seemed to come from one guy - Meco Monardo - who managed to do a disco version of every movie theme at the time, and when I was searching for these on YouTube, seems to still be around and having fun doing disco versions of PHANTOM MENACE and other flicks. The STAR WARS disco version was a #1 hit and both the single and album went platinum. Before STAR WARS, he was a pretty big musician and producer of disco albums for stars like Gloria Gaynor.

- Bill

Lancelot Link: Let's Bash STAR WARS!

Lancelot Link Monday! You would think that THE FORCE AWAKENS was all about Jar Jar Binks from the backlash against the film. Though I think it has all kinds of problems - most of the same problems that other J.J.Abrams movies have - but is still enjoyable and much better than those three prequels. Which is why I don't understand why there is some movement to get Lucas to direct the next film in the series. I mean, WTF? If you could get the Lucas from STAR WARS and AMERICAN GRAFFITI that would be fine, but unless you have a time machine and some cloroform, we'd just end up with more endless scenes where the Senate discusses taxes like in the prequels. I think the best bet is to switch it up - and let someone else direct (Colin Trevorrow is currently signed). Remember how good EMPIRE STRIKES BACK was *without* Lucas? Though Trevorrow seems to have the same "original film sampling problem" as Abrams... is there anyone in Hollywood who will fight for originality? While you're thinking about that, 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 a baker's dozen links plus this week's car chase...


1) Weekend Box Office Estimates:
1 Star Wars TFA................... $41,630,000
2 Revenant........................ $38,000,000
3 Daddy's Home.................... $15,000,000
4 Forest.......................... $13,088,000
5 Sisters.......................... $7,170,000
6 Hateful 8........................ $6,351,000
7 Big Short........................ $6,300,000
8 Road Chip........................ $5,500,000
9 Joy (Lemon Fresh)................ $4,500,000
10 Concussion....................... $3,050,000




2) THE FORCE AWAKENS & Non-Creativity - JJ's Excuses.

3) THE FORCE AWAKENS - More Backlash.

4) THE FORCE AWAKENS - Plot Holes.

5) Carrie Fisher On THE FORCE AWAKENS.

6) THE FORCE AWAKENS Toys - No Girls Allowed!

7) THE FORCE AWAKENS Box Office Where They Make The Toys.

8) Snoke - Taking a Toke While Skiing Or Darth Vader's Ghost?

9) Quentin Tarantino On FORCE AWAKENS Influence On HATEFUL EIGHT.

10) Kevin Spacey Now Heads Mini-Major Relativity - Wantsd To Be Called "Darth Spacey".

11) What Does Drug Lord El Chapo Think Of THE FORCE AWAKENS?

12) Can The Middle Return To Movies? The Force Of Mid-range Movies Awakens... 13) Complete List Of Golden Globe Winners Includes THE FORCE AWAKENS.

And the Car Chase Of The Week:



Snoke Is Jar Jar!

Bill



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