London 14B: Day 10 - Dinner Party

So I climb the stairs down to the cinema, still not knowing where my class is tomorrow morning and wondering if I can stay awake (after 4 hours of sleep) for two movies made by people who have taken classes I taught. The more I think about it, the more I worry that if I stay for DEADLINE I won’t be able to jog over to the Raindance Café Bombshelter and find the staff member who knows where my class is. So, I decide to skip DEADLINE - sorry! Maybe I’ll catch the movie at a festival in the USA.


MOVIE: THE DINNER PARTY - Australia - Based on a true story about a group of 20 somethings who attend a dinner party in Australia... which ends in murder. While I was writing up this entry the writer-director (Scott Murden) e-mailed me to say that he was enjoying the blog entries about Raindance and looking forward to reading what I had to say about his film... and to be honest. Though I didn’t say this in my reply - I am usually too damned honest. Has he read any of the stories or reviews of films made by friends of mine? So, Scott, fasten your seat belt. What I’ve decided to do, is not just to say what I liked and disliked about DINNER PARTY, but to try to find some writing lessons in there while I’m at it.

I know from the post film Q&A that it was a true indie film - made on a low budget. Not a Hollywood low budget - a real live we-have-no-money low budget. That is one of the great things about the Raindance festival - they actually focus on independent films, not some movie star multi-million pet project from a studio indie label. Also, I know that the financing fell out at one point... and they made the movie anyway. So it’s an accomplishment that this film exists - the 35mm mumblecore films and that feature length Obsession commercial had money for things like lights and lenses, this film probably had to be creative just to get images on tape (or card or hard drive or whatever).

The story concept was a smart move for an indie film - most of the story takes place in a single house, but instead of some crazed maniac chopping off teenager’s heads, the film is about an unstable young woman who plans on inviting all of her friends over for a dinner party, with a murder-suicide as desert. Only problem is - her boyfriend isn’t in on it. He’s going to be murdered and doesn’t know it. Great dramatic premise for a central location story.

The movie opens with police arresting or interrogating dinner party guests and the hostess, Angela (Laura Cox). Though this has nothing to do with writing - I remember some ragged cinematography and shot choice and editing in the beginning of the film (and there may have been some later, as well) - one thing to remember if you are making your own movie with very little movie is that you can’t do too much planning. You can always change things if you need to, but having shot lists and story boards and a real idea of what the shots and look of your film is going to help when you find yourself needing to shoot a page and a half in an hour because you are losing light or something. You can plan your shots at your leisure before filming or when you have a whole cast and crew waiting on you and the equipment is due back in a few hours. Knowing what the shot is, why you are using this lens and this angle and this camera move (and what this shot will make the audience feel) is critical - especially for the opening scenes. There was some really good camera work later in the film - especially the Angela-Joel in the trees stuff - but that was at the end of the movie. Just as the first ten pages of your script need to be as smooth and professional and typo-free as possible, the first ten minutes of your film need to impress the heck out of the audience (which includes film buyers and film distribs). First impressions. If the first ten minutes looks like it cost millions, we’ll cut you all kinds of slack later on.

After the police, we flash back to the events leading up to the dinner party and the dinner party itself. Somewhere a decision was made to remove “audience superiority”, and I think that was a mistake. All of the characters go to the dinner party knowing that Angela is going to kill her boyfriend and then herself. Audience superiority is when the audience knows something that the characters do not, and it’s a great suspense building tool. If we see a character put poison in a glass on wine, and then set the glass in front of our hero, the audience will be screaming at the screen every time the hero picks up the glass to take a sip - the audience knows something the character does not. Here we have a mix of dinner party guests, and all of them know what’s going to happen next. It might have been better if only one of them had known and the others slowly discover what’s about to happen - because it gives the characters something to accomplish and creates some suspense... will they figure it out in time and put a stop to it? Always be thinking about the viewer’s emotions in your script - not only what are they supposed to be feeling in this scene, but how is this scene *creating* those emotions in the viewer? We don’t want the audience to just watch the film, we want them to *experience* the film.

I probably have a half dozen very different script tips that call screenwriting a Balancing Act - and for everything we take away, we must add something... and vice versa. The great thing about the concept is that the story can mostly take place in the house at the dinner party - but that means we have taken away all of those locations and cut out of that house... we are stuck there. Which means the things we have in the house have to be stronger to keep the balance. When I was writing VICTIM OF DIRECTOR (which was called IMPLICATED back then), I knew that keeping most of the story in the murder victim’s house meant I had to ramp up everything else: there needed to be more plot twists and more suspense and more big character moments and in the case of that story - more nekkid scenes - than in some story where excitement and variety could come from changing locations at the end of every scene. Having DINNER PARTY mostly take place in one house... and in the dining room of that house... puts all kinds of pressure on the other elements in the story.

The six main characters (with one exception) may have enough character for a story where all kinds of exciting things are happening, but when much of the film is just people sitting around a table having a dinner conversation, they needed to be more clearly defined and more distinct. Each really needed a very different point of view, and different vocabularies and attitudes and even looks. The stand out character is Freddy (Kai Harris), who gets all of the great lines and has an active role in the story - he knows what is going on and makes some effort to confront Angela and stop her from killing Joel. But even this character could have used a little work. If *all* of the characters had been at his level, the film would have worked better.

One of the reasons why his character stands out is because he gets some good dramatic scenes with Angela about the murder-suicide plan. Even though the rest of the dinner party guests know about the murder-suicide, they barely discuss it. No one seems to have any strong opinions about it except Freddy. That’s a problem - if a movie is *about* a murder-suicide plan, it needs to be *about* the murder-suicide plan. Much of the dinner conversation was normal, kind of boring, dinner table conversation. As if they all accepted that the night would end with two of the dinner party dead - no big deal. If you told me that the film was mostly improvised, that would make sense - it had that small talk feel of an improvised film. Instead, this should have been a debate about murder-suicide... and a *veiled* debate because the killer and victim are sitting at the table. That would have given the film more drama and more conflict and really made it *about* murder-suicides. Each character should have been given a character-specific opinion and have them hash it out as they eat. Argue. Get in each other’s faces. With only a handful of characters, each could have had a different and very strong opinion on the subject. “Do you have the right to kill someone just because you want to die?” “Hey, when my aunt died, she had her dog buried with her... they had to put the dog to sleep first.” “None of this is any of our business - people control their own lives and we shouldn’t interfere.” “Suicide is a sin - only God should decide when we die.” “So that drunk on the road is God doing his work?” “What if someone is in extreme pain?” “Like in the hospital? You could pull the plug on someone you love?” “What if it’s not physical pain, what if it’s emotional pain?” “All broken hearts heal eventually.” “Not all.” And about a million other things that can turn into big dramatic discussions on the subject of murder-suicide.

Another aspect of this is the characters relationships with each other. If you are inviting people to your suicide, you aren’t inviting a bunch of total stranger or casual acquaintances - these people are your closest friends... Yet, we didn’t get the feeling that they were close friends. Though Freddy brings his roommate Matt (Sam Lyndon), these guys seem more like people who live together because one of them answered an ad on Craigs List. And Freddy is so antagonistic to Angela you wonder why she allowed him to be invited. I wanted more exploration of the relationships and how that connected to the murder-suicide desert.

And what about the guest’s responsibility? Though Matt goes to the party to try to stop the murder, once he gets there he talks and eats. Only Freddy, who starts out thinking he’ll just watch two people die, ends up thinking he has any responsibility for what happens (though other characters later discuss it when the party is over). That’s another subject that could have been hashed out in nice dramatic scenes around the table. Really hashed out, not just brought up and abandoned. Though some of this is in the film, it isn’t strong enough for the single location scenario. It needed to be big enough to balance out being unable to cut to another location. The film’s great scenes take place in the bathroom, where Freddy confronts Angela about some hot shots of heroin designed to cause an OD, and the later discovery of the needles by another character. The rest of the film needed to be at that level... that was great stuff!

There’s another great scene near the refrigerator - also a conflict scene. I think when it comes down to it, without the ability to cut away to some other location or character, the story needed more juicy conflict to keep it going.

The film this most reminded me of was RIVER’S EDGE, also based on a true story, about a group of high school kids who discover their friend murdered his girlfriend and do nothing about it. But that film really focused on whether they *should* do something about it, and some kids were just apathetic while others were afraid of the authorities and some didn’t want to rat out a friend... and the relationships of the kids disintegrates... until one realizes that he must turn his friend in. Oddly, there’s a character named “Sky” in DINNER PARTY and Ione Skye played the female lead in RIVER’S EDGE (unless you count the blow up doll).

One of the issues with characters that are a little sketchy is that it opens the door for some one-note performances, and Angela is a complete bitch 24/7. Aside from an over-all character problem, this creates an interesting story problem: why the hell did Joel hook up with her in the first place? Though there’s some footage at the end of the two in love, and some footage up front of them meeting, there is nothing here that would make me believe Joel would want to move in with this bitch... and that makes me question the reality of the story, and also think that Joel is an idiot who maybe deserves to be killed. I’m not sure that was what they had in mind. The Angela character needs to be *attractive* and interesting and someone you would want to move in with... someone you would want to die with. That’s not a bitch, that’s a seductive and manipulative person. Someone who is dangerous because they can lure you into doing things you don’t want to do. The meeting scene is in a bar where the two dance - but there isn’t much in the way of conversation between the two. Nothing that would show us why these two are meant for each other (or, at least, why Joel would think she’s the one to hook up with in a bar filled with women to dance with). I wanted to see (and hear) the attractive side of Angela - and have that be a part of her character throughout the film.

An important thing with any script in any genre is that the characters be well rounded. You should know why your protagonist is *wrong* and why your antagonist is *right*. Here, we only see why Angela is wrong - completely wrong - and that makes us question why Joel hooked up with her in the first place. We really need to see how wonderful Angela is, and how she can charm anyone into doing anything. That would allow Joel to fall in love with her, her friend to help her buy the hot shots of heroin, and her to be the perfect hostess even when everyone knows her plan is to murder Joel and then maybe kill herself. Funny how these murder suicide pacts usually end with the murder and never get around to the suicide.

As the party winds down, and Joel slumps over in his chair and needs to be helped upstairs, the guests leave to their apartments to discuss what they could have done and should have done... while one character calls the police. Like in RIVER’S EDGE, one of the characters realizes they can’t just be bystanders to a murder, they must do something. And that leads us back to the opening arrests and that flashback of Angela and Joel in happier times. THE DINNER PARTY has a great idea and some great scenes with Freddy, but I wish the other characters had been as fleshed out as Freddy’s character and that there was more debate about the murder-suicide. As a first film made for very little money, it shows promise, and it *was* selected as one of the five films in the Best First Feature category. I hope this leads to some more films from Scott with bigger budgets.

AFTER THE FILM: I am dead tired and worried about finding my class the next morning, and walk out of the cinema like a zombie. I say goodnight to Janet and walk to the Raindance Café Bombshelter, where I find the staff member who knows where my class is! As she’s about to leave! She draws me a map, and it’s near Charring Cross Station, which is a longish walk. I thank her and head back to my hotel to try to get 8 hours of sleep before the class... but remember I have to burn CDs for the class. Hell, I’ll skip movies and do that tomorrow night. I need the sleep!

- Bill

London 14: Day 10 - Where Am I Going?

There is not enough coffee in the world for today.

My big two day class starts tomorrow, and I have had no sleep and too much beer and am a complete mess... and still don’t know exactly where the class is being held. All of the students know, but not me. No one has told me. Every time I ask, I get one of those general answers: “Somewhere off Charring Cross Road” - which is like saying it’s somewhere off Wilshire Blvd - covers a lot of ground. Though I can walk to Charring Cross Road from my hotel, and have grabbed a coffee in the Starbucks on the north end of Charring Cross Road, well, there’s a lot more of that road where the class might be, and no one has given me an address, let alone directions.

Because trudging up and down the hotel stairs is a pain in the ass, I get some room service coffee and sit at the nice big desk looking over my class materials. I am not Robert McKee or John Truby or any of those other guru types - I don’t teach classes for a living. The last time I taught the class was three years ago... and I’ve come up with this crazy new “Thematic” idea and haven’t really incorporated it into the class. The one thing I *have* done is watched GHOST a half dozen times and taken all kinds of notes. The original plan was to turn those notes into the Thematic part of the class on the plane, but that didn’t happen... then to do it in my spare time before the weekend class, but with 5 (FIVE!) Free classes I didn’t really have any spare time. So here I am, day before the class, no sleep and probably still drunk, transferring my notes on GHOST onto the pages that will make up the new addition to the class. And it’s all coming together despite having limited brain power.

This whole Thematic thing began with someone’s typo on a message board. They meant to write “theme” but their fingers just kept going and typed “thematic”. My fingers do that often - it’s the curse of too much typing, your fingers finish a word even if that wasn’t the word you were trying to type. I’ll bet there are over a hundred places on this blog where I typed “and” when all I wanted to type was “an”. Anyway - their sentence made no sense at all with the word “thematic”, but I began thinking about that word... and thinking about theme in screenplays, and how I believe that theme influences everything in a script from characters to dialogue.... and I wondered if you could make a brainstorming tool based around theme that could help you flesh out a story idea. If you’ve read my Zombie Article it explores that idea. So I came up with form/chart thingie that started with character or concept and then found the theme and then used that theme to come up with many of the other things you need to develop your screenplay. Characters, scenes, dialogue, actions, etc - all from the theme. Kind of a cool idea, and basically the way I work (consciously now, subconsciously when I first began writing).

Though this is a really cool tool, it also *sounds cool*, and one of the things that all of those guru guys have is some sort of gimmick that makes their screenwriting method sound cool and maybe even easy. Gotta tell you - screenwriting is *not* easy. But one of the big issues I have at Raindance when they are making up brochures (when they do that - not this year) is that my class has no “hook”. It’s just a bunch of tools and techniques that I use that work. Boring. So once I came up with this, I thought it was the answer to my “hook problem” - it’s still just a technique, but it sounds cool. Thematic! Because I’m really good at shooting myself in the foot and kind of hate the whole guru thing, I came up with this semi-parody of a guru sales pitch for the Thematic - not a machine! - and put it in my class description.

But now, here I am trying to take these notes on GHOST and reverse-engineering the film so that I can use it as an example for the class tomorrow... and it fits perfectly. I go over the rest of the class, look at the *menu* of my clip reel again (but don’t have time to watch the clips) and once everything is organized, I put it in my Script Secrets messenger bag, and put the bag by the front door so that I’ll know where it is when that alarm rings tomorrow morning.

The coffee is gone, but I’m awake enough to greet the world, so I gather up my stuff and leave...

One of the things I pack in my backpack are the originals for the class workbook. Usually when I do the class I give everyone a 120 page workbook, but the problem this time around is that I have the smallest class I have ever taught in my life, and I’m afraid if I give Elliot the workbook to make copies, he may find someway to charge me extra for it. The more expense stuff I give them, the more they'll cut off my split, and with so few students I have to be careful. The only thing I want him to be able to charge off on the class is the room. Look, if I come away from these two weeks with a trip to London and an all access pass to the film festival, that's great - I'll be happy. But the weekend class is a lot of hard work, and it would be nice to get paid for it. I'm afraid once the expenses are added up there will be nothing left, and that means I need to control as many of those expenses as possible. So I’ve decided to just print the syllabus, the thematic pages, and the “home work assignments” and give them the rest of the stuff as pdfs on a disk. I have brought a bunch of blank disks in paper sleeves with the web address on them just in case - and had planned to put some script pdfs on them for the class. Now it’s close to 500 script pdfs *and* the class materials in pdf form. But I still have to burn these.

I grab a coffee at the British Museum Starbucks, joke with the German guy, and look for a copy place. I find one not far away, and make 15 copies of the syllabus and thematic and homework stuff - pay for it out of pocket. It’s 30 pages, and easily fills a paper box. The paper box goes in my backpack...

Oh, I should mention that I also have two bottles of wine in my backpack. When I was on the pitching panel they gave all of us a Raindance messenger bag with some goodies inside - including 2 bottles of wine. Though, unlike Dracula, I *do* drink wine, I had no idea how I was going to get it home with me. It would have to be carry on, and that just seemed like a hassle. So I asked Janet if she wanted two bottles of wine, and now my backpack is filled with 450 sheets of paper (stapled) and 2 bottles of wine, plus the laptop and all of the other crap I lug around with me every day (notes on some script I’m in the middle of - did I really think I’d have time to work on it in London?). I walk cross town to the cinema - stopping at the Café first to see if anyone knows where my class is tomorrow... nobody knows. Swell! I stop at the office and ask, and get the Charring Cross Road answer... but they tell me which staff member actually knows all of the details. All I have to do is find her. So, I go to the cinema to unload the wine on Janet and see some movies.

Janet has brought along a friend, a cute woman named Suzanne, and we all go see..

MOVIE: THE INVESTIGATOR - from Hungary - So, I’m half asleep... and this film keeps me awake. A really creepy thriller with a dozen big twists, the story opens with a businesswoman going to her office where we see pictures of her family on her desk. As she prepares to leave, she tries closing the window, but part of the shade is in the way. She climbs onto her desk to free the shade... and falls out the window to the street a dozen stories below. The next time we see her she’s on a slab being cut open by the Medical Examiner, Tibi, our protagonist. Tibi sees dead people - every day at work. He’s quiet, reserved... lonely. He goes to the same cafe every night for dinner - a creature of habit. The pretty waitress flirts with him, but that’s her job... except this night, she asks him out to the movies. She’s lonely, too - and knows that Tibi is a good man with an off-putting occupation. Tibi’s mother is dying of cancer, and because of her age the HMO isn’t paying for the available treatment. He’d have to pay out of pocket... but he doesn’t have the money.

Then he gets a phone call from a stranger who calls himself The Cyclops, and quicker than you can say Tom Ripley, Cyclops offers him a chance to make enough money to pay for his mother’s treatment... by murdering a stranger. Tibi is used to dead people, right? Shouldn’t be a problem for him. Tibi takes the job...but killing someone is not the same as cutting them open when they are already dead. The night he’s supposed to kill the guy he has already set up his second date with the waitress, and bought movie tickets in advance. He makes an excuse and goes to kill this stranger... Suspense builds while Tibi follows the victim, working up the nerve to kill him. The day after the murder he goes out with the waitress, same movie, same time, different day... and gives her the ticket stubs for the night of the murder.

He’ll need that alibi, because a pair of detectives come to question him... you see, the stranger he killed was actually his long lost brother. When he was a child he had a brother and sister, but the family was poor and farmed out the kids to relatives... and Tibi’s family moved when he was an infant and he never knew his brother and sister. Now, he has murdered his own brother. Tibi must find out who is behind all of this and why it is happening, as the detectives close in and his new girlfriend wonders what’s happening... but what if the waitress/girlfriend is part of the scheme? Every time you think you know what’s going on, there’s a great twist that changes everything.

One of the great things about this film are the cool “devices” - the brochure for the clinic Tibi wants to take his mother to *comes alive* and the doctors and nurses in the photos tell about the treatments. Instead of having that VO of the person writing a letter while the character is reading it, the letter writer is *there* - standing on a giant letter - walking towards Tibi and talking to him. These devices are interesting and different and turn exposition into something dramatic and visual and magic. The actors are all great, with gentle giant Tibi coming off sympathetic despite being a man of few words who kills his own brother. Lots of twists and suspense, and some swift graphic violence... plus some humor to keep it all from being too dark.


I’ve had pretty good luck with genre films at the festival - this Hungarian film could easily find an audience among thriller and crime film fans in the USA.


LOBBY: Next up is DINNER PARTY, one of two films playing tonight from people who have taken my classes in the past. The other is called DEADLINE and keeps being removed from the Big Board then returning - the showing gets cancelled every day then goes back on the schedule the next day. I have no idea what’s going on with that film, but it may or may not be on after DINNER PARTY. I’m not sure I’ll be awake for DEADLINE, though, as having only 4 hours of sleep is catching up with me and I have a class to teach tomorrow morning - and I still have no idea where that class is.

In the lobby, the writer-director of THE DINNER PARTY is being interviewed by a magazine reporter, and when he sees me, starts telling the reporter about taking my class and now I really do have to see his movie.

When I go upstairs to get my ticket for THE DINNER PARTY I run into some Raindance people and ask where my class is, and get the same Charring Cross answer - which doesn't help me. I hope I find out where it is before the class begins...

The pisser is that DINNER PARTY is *not* marked in my big fat movie program, a film called CRY OF THE OWL is... starring Paddy Considine (who I met at a previous Raindance) and Julia Styles, and based on a Patricia Highsmith novel (she wrote the Tom Ripley novels and STRANGERS ON A TRAIN and is one of those great, creepy thriller novels). This is a great book (about a normal man who becomes the center of several murder investigations) and I really wanted to see it, but instead went downstairs and into the cinema to see THE DINNER PARTY... but we’ll talk about that tomorrow.

- Bill