The Meal Meeting Diet (part one - Chinese Food)

I lost 20 pounds on the Meal Meeting Diet - and you can too!

I have been busy as heck for the past three weeks... and have had some very important meetings over meals. It all began late last year, just before the strike, when I had a meeting with a well known producer... over lunch. This producer is a legend - he made a bunch of hit films in the 1970s and 1980s. Every film he made in those decades was a hit. You’ve seen them... or the sequels. Though he’s still making films, nothing compares to those two decades.

So I was kind of nervous at lunch, and didn’t want to just be shoveling food into my mouth, so I picked at my food and listened. Since I have no agent and no manager and no really good connections, producers usually find me from reading something of mine passed to them by someone they *do* know. Someone I know reads one of my scripts, and it gets passed around town, until it ends up with some producer I don’t know. So now I’m eating Chinese food with this legendary producer - except I’m not really eating much Chinese food... which is a shame, because it’s *expensive* Chinese food and really good. But I don’t want to look hungry (by any definition) so I have *one* honey walnut prawn while we talk about this project of his.

You may have noticed that they are remaking a lot of movies... including films from the 1970s and 1980s. This producer managed to hold onto remake rights and sequel rights to all of his films, and now he’s setting a few of his hits up as remakes at various studios - mostly the studio where these films were originally made. But what he’s talking to me about is a different kind of remake - a foreign language film that was never released in the USA, but has one hell of a story... although it completely falls apart at the end. He would like me to watch the film, figure out how to Americanize it and fix the end. He’s read my stuff and thinks I’m the perfect match for the material. This is kind of daunting, because his film in production was written by a writer I really like. Was that guy busy?

Anyway, I pick at the Chinese food as we talk, and he gives me a no region DVD of the film so that I can watch it. When I’ve watched the film and come up with my “take” I’m supposed to call him and set up another meeting. Cool. The meeting is over and the busboy takes away a half dozen honey walnut prawns and the rest of the delicious food.

A couple of days later... the strike. The DVD, unwatched, goes on the pile in back. I decide to go home for the holidays early - basically spend Thanksgiving to New Years hanging out with old friends, and forget the DVD... even though I figured watching a movie that’s the kind of movie I normally watch would probably be okay. When I return from the holidays, the strike ends... but I have completely forgotten about that DVD. I never watch it. *Months* later, I’m looking for some movie, find that DVD... and realize I’ve screwed up. The strike has been over for months and I haven’t called the producer... in fact, I haven’t watched the DVD. (To this day, I have not watched it.)

So, when I get a call from the producer about a month ago, I kind of panic. I apologize for not getting back to him and... He tells me that’s not what it’s about. Can I meet him at his office? We set up an appointment - no meal involved. A morning meeting. I don’t do mornings well. I’m usually asleep while you are going to work. Sorry. Well, the days before the meeting I’m excited and nervous and wondering what this is going to be about... and I’m also working on the Hawaii script rewrite and knocking out an article for Script and seeing some movies and... well, not sleeping very well. By the day of the meeting I’m run down and wondering if I’m coming down with something. But I can’t miss the meeting! I ride my bike, hoping to get the blood flowing.

At the meeting he tells me that there is some interest in remaking one of his old 80s hits, and I’m just the guy to write the script. Cool! We discuss the project. He wants me to put together a “take” and pitch it to him in 2 weeks. Sounds great. I don’t have a copy of the film on DVD, but I know its available. I’ve seen it in stores. I leave the meeting...

And the next morning I have a killer cold. My nose will not stop running, and my *brain* is full of snot. While I’m dragging myself around, the phone rings. It’s a company that supplies movies of the week for the last cable net that focuses on movies instead of series... oh, hell - it’s the only cable net owned by a greeting card company. So, they make and show something like 48 made for TV movies a year. That’s a lot. They have six crews working at the same time - three in pre-production while three are in production. It’s a factory. They had a script fall out, and someone in their office had worked in some other office and had read some of my stuff in the past... and recommended me. I think they even had a copy of my ALTITUDE script, swiped from that past office job. Anyway, the head of production would like to meet with me at the end of the week - Thursday or Friday - at their studio in Simi Valley. Hey, they’ve got a couple of films going - why don’t I come out for the dinner break? We can have our meeting on the set at the movie star table. Cool. Hopefully I’ll be over this cold by then.

But my nose keeps running...
And I keep coughing up chunky style...
And My head feels like someone has stuffed dirty sweat socks where my brain is supposed to be...

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Creating your own characters and PULP FICTION.
Yesterday’s Dinner: Tomato Beef at City Wok.

Movies: PINEAPPLE EXPRESS - The Judd Apatow Movie Factory needs to hire someone for Quality Control. Making movies is different than making TV shows. On a TV show there are a bunch of writers in the Writer’s Room and they might throw around ideas and jokes and come up with funny lines before the script is written, plus they might punch it up after it is written - adding more jokes and fine tuning the script, not to mention the show runner/producer who probably does a pass on the script, pulling it all together sometimes, and there are table reads where some things they thought were funny may not work and get cut, while other things that really work are expanded... and sometimes new material just happens. When it’s two guys writing a feature script in a room, there aren’t the checks and balances in place - which is why those two guys really have to deliver.

Third biggest problem with PINEAPPLE - just not enough of the funny stuff.

Second problem with PINEAPPLE - tone issues. I mean, this movie is all over the place. Is it a parody of action movies? Is it a comedy? Is it a farce? Is it a violent action film? From moment to moment the tone changes - and you keep losing your footing. Nothing is consistent. It’s almost as if they farmed out every page of the script to a radically different screenwriter - and they ended up with 110 pages: each telling the story in a completely different way. So we get a page from Cheech & Chong, a page from Peckinpah, a page from Woody Allen, a page from AIRPLANE, then a page from BAD BOYS. You never know what the film is from minute to minute.

Seth Rogen compared the film to MIDNIGHT RUN... friends, I’ve seen MIDNIGHT RUN, and PINEAPPLE EXPRESS is no MIDNIGHT RUN.

MIDNIGHT RUN has a completely consistent tone. So does 48 HOURS. So does BEVERLY HILLS COP. All of those are action films with real characters who are funny. They are reality based. There are no idiot hit men. When someone gets shot, they are really hurt.

I think it’s time for Rogen and Goldberg to get a room. You know, Gay Marriage is legal in California, they should make it legal. Buy rings, set a date, send out invitations. When "Bromance" becomes more like romance, it's just strange.

And stop writing while they are stoned. This script is sloppy and too long and seems like a bad rough draft... the homework assignment you did on the way to class. Rogen is supposed to be a process server, but they seemed to do zero research on that job. There’s a cool book by Elmore Leonard, UNKNOWN MAN #89, about a process server - and Leonard takes you into that world and shows you how process servers and skip tracers work. It’s a fascinating world... and we don’t see any of it in PINEAPPLE. It’s like they needed an excuse for Rogen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. They make a big thing put of all of the disguises he has in the back of his car... but then don’t use it! None of this stuff comes together - I guess they got the munchies and forgot.

On a message board someone recently asked if a comedy scene needed to have anything to do with the story or even the characters - couldn’t it just be funny? Well, you’d think the answer would be that comedy trumps everything. And I would have loved to have a whole bunch more really funny scenes in PINEAPPLE, and may not have cared much if they had anything to do with the story... except that would have been more of the same - because this film has all kinds of comedy stuff that has nothing to do with the story... and the problem is, much of it isn’t funny. And when the pointless pasted on comedy scene isn’t funny? Well, it’s *really* pointless. But if a story scene isn’t funny? It’s still a story scene. It’s got a purpose. What you want are comedy scenes that are part of the story - not pasted on. Because if they *don’t* work - they still work!

First biggest problem with PINEAPPLE - There are some funny scenes and funny gags in PINEAPPLES EXPRESS, just not enough for the running time... and the story doesn’t work... and the action scenes don’t work, because these guys don’t know how to write action. Probably an okay rental... but complete junk compared to TROPIC THUNDER - an action comedy that gets it right.

- Bill

End Of An Era

A couple of days ago when I went online, all of my movie posters had vanished from my Script Secrets website. Stolen? How can someone steal gifs & jpgs? (Though - there’s probably and interesting MATRIX-like movie in that.) Actually, a couple were still there - but it was difficult to see which ones because that page is set to bounce you to the tip of the day after a few seconds. Eventually I figured it out... The missing pictures were on the old Compuserve site - still linked from there. And, I guess, the Compuserve site is finally gone - those servers have now gone dark.

When I first put up my Script Secrets website in 1997 the internet was a different place. I had started out on Compuserve years earlier - when the internet was black and green and you had to type some basic code to do anything. Compuserve was *the* place for people in the film business, or people who loved film. A bunch of pro screenwriters and directors and actors were there, along with Roger Ebert. In fact, Ebert mentions those good old days in a recent post in his blog. After a couple of years of green and black, AOL offered a world in color, and I jumped ship to the Follywood Forum. After posting there for a while, they actually offered me a moderator position (no pay, but they’d pick up my monthly fees). I turned that down - too much responsibility - and discovered that the other guy they went to was Terry Rossio - and that was the beginning of the Wordplay website. Terry began writing articles for the AOL site, and answering questions, and eventually jumped ship to his own site (with his writing partner Ted Elliott) - which is the best place on the web for screenwriters. Go there!

But I jumped back to Compuserve, which was in living color by that time, and used the names of forum members in a script - BLACK THUNDER. Don, who will be reading this, is one of a handful of people I’m still in contact with online. His character in BLACK THUNDER was a fighter pilot... and then in the remake they did last year. When Compuserve offered free web pages (at a time when your webpage was probably on tripod or aol or some other service) I signed up. I put some articles up, and eventually an advert and sample chapters for my book. Someplace along the way, it turned into an actual website with all kinds of articles and the Script Tip Of The Day. And box or poster art for all of my movies.

When I ran out of space on Compuserve, I bought ScriptSecrets.Com and transferred everything over. I got this deal with a webhost - they would pay ICAN for the domain name I signed up for 2 years of hosting with them. Deal...

But they somehow “lost” my domain name to some consulting company - and that consulting company offered to sell it to me for $2k. As they told me, that was only $1 per daily hit - cheap! As I told them, go eff yourself. I bought .net and paid for 5 years, I think. No chance of losing it again. And within a year, I had all of my hits back. And that consulting firm continued to try and sell me .com for $2k. Eventually they stopped - I believe it is *still* a dead page (actually, and advert for the consulting company with links to the company’s pages). And I’ve been on .net with a Script Tip every day for several years, now... and every year I write new tips and rewrite old ones. And the Script Tips are still 100% free. The website *costs me money* to operate.

But most of the gifs and jpgs were still housed on the decade old Compuserve homepage... even though I haven’t had a Compuserve account for about 3-4 years. The site was just floating out there on the web - in limbo. Then something happened - and the site no longer exists... and my gifs and jpgs on ScriptSecrets.Net vanished overnight. Had to scramble to fix all of the links so that the images would appear again. But the strange thing is, they didn’t get all of it - http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/wcmartell still takes you to a 2001 version of the website’s main page - with a bunch of dead links. That’s all that’s left of the first version of Script Secrets. Now, like Mad Max, it exists only in memory...

PS: Friday's VERTIGO article... is coming this Friday.

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Sci-Fi Research and THE ISLAND.
Yesterday’s Dinner: So, I was tired (did a class for Script Mag/Final Draft) and decided to just grab a sandwich. Pastrami. Was going to go to Togo's because it's close, but ended up at Subway. Where I got about a third of the meat I'd get at Togos... and the roll was smaller (maybe to make it look like there was more meat). Instead, small roll, less meat - made me think I was getting less food (which I was). Bigger roll, more veggie stuff would have made me think I was getting as much food (just not as much meat, which may be better for me). And, they always screw you at the drive thru!

Is It Because I Have A Penis?

The new season of TV is about to begin... and my penis may be getting in the way!

I have never been a regular TV viewer, but I have gotten hooked on some shows for a while. So there was a time when I was home every Thursday night to watch the NBC lineup - SEINFELD to ER, including whatever half hour show they were trying to make work in that leftover slot (NEWS RADIO, whatever). But the shows fade, or run their 10 years, and I move on. Every so often some new show looks great, I watch it for a while... and then it just screws up. I watched 4 seasons of 24, hoping that they would figure out how to make the show work - but the cougar attacks and madmen of the week kept on coming. There were always episodes that seemed like fillers, and things that were *really important* in episode 5 that were forgotten in every episode after that. So I quit watching. I came in late on LOST - and it seemed like a house of cards show that could never add up to anything... maybe I needed to start from the beginning on that one.

There are two shows on TNT that get a lot of critical attention and Emmy notice, CLOSER and SAVING GRACE, so I thought I’d try them out. TNT does new episodes during summer, which is a great idea - they probably make fewer new shows, but they air while everyone else is doing reruns or crap reality shows.

CLOSER is a typical cop show built around a female detective name Brenda (Kyra Sedgewick) who can get a confession out of anyone. She’s an interesting, human, character and her personal problems are B story or runner in every episode. But the main story is crime-clues-confession. Some good twists, you don’t know who the killer is until the end. And the supporting characters are interesting and fun. The show has some wiggle room, and uses it - last week’s episode was dead serious, about one of the guys on the homicide team’s brother being shot on the street, and how difficult it was for him to just go home and let his fellow detectives handle it. He wanted to *do something*. It was very emotional, and had one of those great 1st season LAW & ORDER reveals - the reason the brother was shot was because he was wearing a baseball cap that looked like it belonged to a rival gang... and it was the brother cop who gave it to him as a gift. A couple of episodes before this they did a comedy with Jennifer Coolidge (Stiffler’s mom) as a trophy wife who hires a hitman to kill her husband. The hitman was one of the detectives, GW Baily, undercover. They have the whole thing on videotape, all of the evidence in the back of the Baily’s car... and the car gets stolen! Now they have to get the evidence back before anyone knows it’s missing... and hijinks ensue. Same show, and same confession device - in this episode, GW Baily - who is Brenda’s mentor - has to prove himself by getting Jennifer’s confession... as Brenda, in another room, gets a confession from the killer. Both episodes worked as cop show and character shows - which is why all of the Emmy nominations.

So, I’ve seen every episode of CLOSER I’ve recorded, but only made it through one episode of SAVING GRACE... abandoning the others after the first commercial break. GRACE pretends to be a cop show, and stars Holly Hunter and Laura San Giacomo - two actresses I really like. I like them more than Kyra Sedgewick. But I don’t like the show, and I suspect it may be because I have a penis.

Where CLOSER is a typical cop show with a crime that is solved, GRACE is something else. The cop show part takes up about 15 minutes of the hour long show, and the rest is all about the characters. The crime is a subplot. The show is looser and more realistic and seems more natural... because most of the show is “plotless”. The main story seems to be about Grace, her Guardian Angel who sometimes only she can see and hear and other times gets involved in bar fights with people - I don’t understand the rules of this angel, and the other cops who work with Grace: one is dealing with the death of his brother, one is in deep cover and misses his wife and kids, one seems to have a sex addiction problem, and all of the others have problems and relationship issues and spend the episodes drinking and dealing with problems and arguing with each other... and maybe they solve a crime in their spare time. And it comes off as a soap opera to me.

Now, maybe I needed to get in from the beginning, like with LOST. Maybe if I knew these characters and their issues it would seem less soapy. But I came in late to NYPD BLUE and never had a problem with that show. NYPD was in syndication, playing late night on weekends in LA, and being an insomniac, it was the only thing on that wasn’t showing me how to use this portable appliance to completely cook a frozen turkey in less than ten minutes. So I began watching it in the middle of season 3... and had no problem understanding all of the relationships on the show. That was probably because there were usually 2 crimes per episode, then a couple of minutes of TV safe nudity involving the off duty relationships. Andy (Dennis Franz) was an amazing flawed character, but most of his character came out during the search for the criminal portion of the show.

I have a theory that any halfway decent writer can write a *great* stand alone scene. In fact, any halfway decent writer can write two dozen *great* stand alone scenes. The problem is making all of those scenes connect to each other and add up to something. When a scene is on its own, it’s free to do whatever it wants - it can begin where it wants and end where it wants and what happens can be unusual and interesting and take characters right up to the edge of a cliff... But when a scene has to be part of something larger - a story - it has to start (more or less) where the last scene ended, and the characters must do and say things that are story related, and it needs to advance the story - so it has to service the story, and it can’t end at the edge of a cliff (metaphorically) because there’s a scene after it - so it must end in a way that leads us to the next scene. Once your scenes have to be part of something larger - the story - they have many more responsibilities... and are no longer free. They *serve* the story. And those scenes are much much much more difficult to write.

On GRACE, we get character without crime. Just scenes of one of the characters dealing with their alcohol problems, or sleeping with some other cop’s wife, or... Well, they are stand alone scenes that don’t service the plot, because the plots tend to be ultra-simple things that can be resolved in 15 minutes of TV time (probably 11 minutes). There is a crime, there is a suspect, they capture the suspect, the end. No complications, no false trails, no twists. Those things are on CLOSER - and that’s why the scenes on CLOSER can’t go off on some wild tangent that leads nowhere... and why CLOSER needs to show character as it relates to story, not in some separate scene. GRACE is all over the place with a dozen character subplots... and to me these dramatic scenes that are peripheral to the cop part seem like a big soap opera. Tune in next week to find out if Bobby gets caught sleeping with Darlene! Though NYPD BLUE had a continuing character story as well, it wasn’t the *focus* of the show. They had those 2 crimes to solve. On GRACE, so much of the show is continuing character that it turns into EDGE OF NIGHT - a soap opera about cops. Hey, it’s a high quality soap with great actors, but still a soap.

Which got me thinking about shows that have no genre to guide them and focus on the problems of their characters almost exclusively - we’re getting a new version of 90210... that was a high school soap opera. DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES is basically a soap. Isn’t it about time for a reboot of DALLAS, which was a “primetime soap”. When you take a dramatic TV show out of the cop shop or the hospital or the court room you end up with all of the big character scenes without the anchor of a genre - and it gets soapy. And I started thinking about *films* that skip the whole genre thing and end up straight dramas about people dealing with their problems - some of these films work, but others really do get soapy at times. The character’s personal problems get kicked up a dramatic notch in order to fill the screen, and we get soap.

But maybe the only reason why I care about that is because I have a penis.

Soap operas appeal to women viewers more than men. And I think shows like DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES and SAVING GRACE probably appeal to women more than men. And I think those drama films like LORENZO’S OIL appeal to women more than men. Men have that mechanical thing - we want to see all of the pieces come together... and become a 1968 Ford Mustang or something. We’re frustrated when the assembly process gets slowed down... or doesn’t seem to exist. Women seem to be all about the feelings, the scene, the emotions... and it may not matter if it ever adds up. Yes, these are generalizations. I’m just trying to figure out why a critically acclaimed show like SAVING GRACE makes my head explode like that guy in SCANNERS. Why I can’t make it through an episode. After 15 minutes of characters dealing with their drug issues and sex addiction issues and betrayed friendship issues and all of these little character issues, I turn it off... Yet, last week’s episode of CLOSER which was all about cop Raymond Cruz dealing with the death of his brother... while he was ordered to go home and not do the job he was trained to do: find the killer... was amazing, emotional TV. And, I think deeper than anything on that one episode of GRACE I made it through. Maybe it didn’t seem as “natural” because it was tied to plot, but that end where he reveals he bought the baseball cap and then completely breaks down was a *moment* - and worthy of an Emmy nom for Cruz.

So... do we need plot and story? Or is that just my penis - and we can have a bunch of character scenes that have nothing to do with each other? What do you think?

- Bill

CLASSES ON CD - ON SALE NOW!

Flash Mob Assignment: See IRON MAN Again!

You want to mess with The Man in Hollywood?

This coming weekend the only action flick we have is the DEATH RACE remake. I'll probably see it, but I suspect it's junk. The reason why I loved the original is because it's all about hitting pedestrians - something that causes you to lose points in a driving game... but in the film you *got points* for running over people. It's a sick film. The remake seems sanitized - prisoners against prisoners.

So, DEATH RACE isn't a must see for me. I was thinking about what film I really liked and would like to see again... and instead of seeing DARK KNIGHT one more time, I thought it might be cool to see IRON MAN. And it's still playing at some far off cinema in Los Angeles. Hey, why not?

So, here's the deal - if you like IRON MAN, and it's still playing somewhere near you, and you want to have fun with the big chart in Variety - see it again this weekend. And spread the word. I think it would be fun if suddenly IRON MAN jumped up the Variety list a few steps so late in its run. Over the weekend it was #22 on the list, playing on 315 screens in the USA.

If we can get enough people to see it again that it jumps back into the top 20, someone in Hollywood's gonna wonder what the heck happened... and become confused.

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Take My Name Off It!
Yesterday’s Dinner: Fish Tacos at Islands.
Pages: Working on an article for Script... and the rewrite.
Bicycle: Rode yesterday and today... and that's the plan until I'm 30 pounds lighter. Just keep riding.
DVD: BUG - Missed it in the cinema, $3.99 on DVD. Trailer had bugs crawling under people's skin... none of that in the movie. Minute 41 was the first bug. Except, there are no bugs. Based on a stage play. and it shows... even down to the sloppy plotting and lack of an end. Has some creepy stuff, just not enough... and it's mostly talk (hey, it was a play). It's not a bad movie, just not a good one. Judd and Harry Connick are great (Connick is her abusive jailbird hubby - and he's freakin' evil! Total image change for him - and he's more scary than anything else in the film.) Problem is male lead - he's from the stage version. The role is a guy in his early 20s, but this guy is *obviously* late 30s. Maybe even early 40s. On stage, he can probably pass - on screen, he's just too old for the role. And he's one of those obviously intense actors, when this needed someone who could start as an innocent and build the intensity. Worst part of the film - no bugs. It's a talk-drama... and could have been better if *we saw* the delusions. Instead, the set becomes more extreme (like it would in a stage play) to reflect the mood... and it's overkill. Eventually they have covered every square inch of their apartment with aluminium foil and use black lights and wear white clothes. Completely artificial & stagey. The trailer had bugs under the skin... and they *talk* about that. But why not show it? The thing is, the story has nowhere to go - it also doesn't seem to have much point. Judd is so good as this character continues to deteriorate mentally, that you want to see her in more movies.

- Bill

Good Tire

This was a link on the Top 5 list... and it made me laugh...



- Bill

Hitchcock On Hiatus This Week

This has been a hell week... and one thing that didn’t get done was the Hitchcock entry. Funny thing is - this week was to be NORTH BY NORTHWEST, one of my favorite movies, and I thought it would be easy to knock it out. Then some other stuff happened.

The Hawaii film has been postponed for a month... or maybe more. You know, they still haven’t settled the SAG situation, so there may be a strike any day... or not. The actors have been working without a contract since June. You know how any task expands to fill the time allotted ? Well, now I have a major what-if-this-were-different rewrite to do on the Hawaii script. But, you know, fast... just in case the SAG thing settles tomorrow.

And, out of the blue several things have happened that I have not shared because there are no contracts... but may soon be. One of these is a potentially big deal - a remake of a theatrical semi-hit film from the1980s. I’ve had two meetings on this, formulated a few different ways to bring the story into the new millennium, and now I’m fleshing out one of those story ideas to pitch it to the studio. This could crash and burn at any time - so I’m kind of keeping details secret.

Meanwhile, for some reason, all kinds of other people are suddenly reading and meeting... yesterday I had to cancel one meeting to take my studio remake meeting. Today (Friday) I had a meeting on an indie project that is never going to happen... and the producer asked if he could take this big action script that he read as a sample to a connection he has at a studio... and a moment ago I got an e-mail from somebody else about taking a script to a cable net. None of those - or some of the other hovering projects - may happen. None are “real” yet. They are still talk... but just because a plate may fall is no reason to stop spinning it.

As you all know, I have this blog... and a website with a different Script Tip every day... and a couple more websites that are mostly dead... and a newsletter that I never get around to sending out that was supposed to be a magazine this year... and classes I teach every once in a while... and some classes on CD and some booklets and a column in Script Magazine and one in Moviescope... and none of that is my real job - I write screenplays for a living. I feel like that guy who used to be on the Ed Sullivan Show who had to keep a few dozen plates spinning on the tips of pool cues - and most of you have no idea who Ed Sullivan even is! “Doesn’t he have something to do with Dave Letterman?”

So usually what happens is that while I’m off spinning one plate, some other plate is neglected and about to fall over.

Over the past two months I’ve been writing *new* Script Tips - and run 12 of them in those 2 months. And I have a couple that haven’t run, yet. That’s about 6 new tips per month - and if you add in the rewritten tips that’s almost 2 new tips every week...

Or two fewer blog entries.

Or 10 fewer pages on the new spec.

Or some rewrite work on that Hawaii script.

One of the reasons why I started talking about the movies I’ve seen here is that it helps me get my thoughts down so that I can use that information in a Script Tip later. When I first began listing my movies here, I was basically just using the blog as my calendar - I used to list ever movie I saw on my wall calendar and then add them up at the end of the year. The problem with the blog is that I’m a screw up - you know how many movies I’ve seen that I never blogged about? Probably a hundred! The thing is, I want the blog entry to be detailed enough that I can later “harvest” it for a script tip - yet I don’t want to just jot down half thought through notes. I don’t want to look like any more of an idiot in print than I already do. So I have a folder full of half written film reviews. It’s not just the new Batman movie I haven’t posted about, it’s a whole bunch of films.

When I do blog about a film, I try to find the main problem with it and enough notes on anything else that I can expand it into a Script Tip later. So the “21" blog entry was a few hundred words, the Script Tip ended up being 2,600 words.

Though the Hitchcock movie thing began as a way to force myself into having at least one new blog entry every week, now I’m looking at those entries differently - I’m focusing on the story and the writing and trying to find a screenwriting lesson or two in every film. You may have noticed that in THE BIRDS and PSYCHO entries. I’ll probably even go back and rewrite the others to find a screenwriting lesson in them - heck, even TOPAZ has that experimental 4 stories thing going on. So next year when I finish all 53 movies, I’ll have 53 screenwriting lessons based on material from Hitchcock movies... and that’s a book!

Because I have nothing better to do with my time (more and more behind on the spec and rewrite!) (You’ll never find out what I thought of THE DARK KNIGHT!) I’m also considering spending Thursdays with Boris Karloff’s THRILLER TV show - one of my favorite shows as a kid which is not available on DVD, yet - but I have recording of all of the episodes from TV. These episodes were often based on Woolrich short stories and often directed by Ida Lupino (a kick ass female action & thriller director from the 50s). She was an actress, and like Clint Eastwood, learned how to direct on the job in Don Siegel films. I think it’d be fun to look at all of those old episodes again and write about them...

And it’s content for the blog. I must generate content! For the blog, for Script Tips, for the other websites, for Script Magazine, for Movie Scope, for all of the other places.

But most of this stuff will never end up in Script Tips - making it a lot of work that only services the blog. Nice to force myself to write new blog entries every week, better if that stuff has some further use on down the road. If the blog can help the website and the website can help newsletter and the newsletter and the newsletter can... Well, I can get all kinds of stuff done when I really should be working on my spec.

Hey, over the past 2 months I’ve written 12 new tips! Which is kind of ironic, since my To Do List for July was “write new Script Tips” - I just didn’t get anything else on the To Do List todone, and the new script tips were written to avoid doing all of the other stuff.

Should I spend more time working on the Script Tips.... or on a new blog entry?

Or maybe get back to work on the rewrite?

Or work on that remake pitch?

Or sleep?

So, this week I just never got around to writing the Hitchcock blog entry... sorry. Next week, NORTH BY NORTHWEST.
>
- Bill

PS: The majority of this blog entry was previously written and was supposed to run on Wednesday... but I never got around to posting it. So I just added some of the new plates and posted it.


IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: One Script - One Conflict and STREET KINGS.
Yesterday’s Dinner: Tired, busy, almost forgot to eat... Sandwich.
Pages: Zero - meeting, later jotted notes on the project.
Bicycle: *Did* ride to my meeting yesterday - and I'm at that point where it's more fun than work. Helpful tips: Bell "Gel Seats" - waste of money. The gel part breaks and comes off - leaving you with a big gooey mess stuck to your ass. Looks comfortable, and without the gel part is okay.
Movies: Well, DARK KNIGHT review *is* coming, plus TROPIC THUNDER and MAN ON WIRE and some others.

Wanna Buy Some Great Rock & Roll Stuff?

One of the blog links over on the right - EVERYBODY I SHOT IS DEAD - is a friend of mine who was a hot rock & roll photographer in the 70s and took pictures of just about every single big name you can think of. She has a great book of photos (available on Amazon, and probably on her blog). Great photos of rock stars, many lived wild-but-shot lives. Most of the time her blog is dishing on some big name rock star... but her latest blog entry is personal... and she could use some prayers right now. But she could also use some cash, and she's selling some amazing rock & roll memorabilia - signed photos of Zappa! Click on her blog entry for more details:

EVERYBODY I SHOT IS DEAD

I hope everything works out for her and her daughter.

- Bill

Hollywood Shake Ups!

Last week we had a little earthquake (5.4) here - well, actually out in the hinterlands east of us. Some shaking, minor damage, but nobody hurt. Of course, our local TV channels started 24 hour coverage - mostly helicopter shots of suburban Chino Hills where you can’t see any damage. Eventually they found a broken water main somewhere to endlessly show while local anchors talked about the quake. The day after they had liquor store security camera stuff of bottles falling off shelves plus some houses with cracks in the stucco. The biggest part of the disaster seems to be cell phone overload caused every single cell service to crash for a couple of hours - nice to know your cell phone will be worthless in a real emergency.

The last time we had a quake that got this much TV coverage was the Northridge quake 14 years ago. That was a 6.7 - with the highest ground acceleration ever recorded, and killed 72 people and injured about 12,000, plus it destroyed freeways and buildings and leveled shopping malls - $12.5 *billion* in damages. Back then I was still living in Northwest Van Nuys - pretty darned close to Northridge. I used to go to the movies at this dollar house in Northridge - riding my bike to get there - down the street that would later be the epicenter where apartment buildings pancaked. The Van Nuys apartment was my first place in Los Angeles - this second storey place used as a crash pad by all my Bay Area friends when we filmed the Dead Beat Videozine episodes. When I moved in, the neighborhood was okay... but it was heading south. Once I drove home late at night only to find the street closed and police everywhere. I asked a policeman what was going on, he said “They’re shooting”. I asked what the movie was... he answered, “No - they’re shooting people. Some gang bangers.” Sweet! I needed to move to a safer neighborhood, but to do that I needed to sell a script.

The building didn’t have assigned parking, but everybody always parked in the same spaces. I always parked right across from the stairs leading up to the balcony walkway that lead to my apartment. When I came home from grocery shopping, some idiot was parked in my spot, and I had to park way in the back of the lot near another stairway that was a lot farther from my apartment. So I had to lug groceries farther than expected. Swell.

The earthquake hit at about 4:30am. I was asleep. It hit *hard*. Directly across the street from my building a man was killed when a bookshelf crushed him while he slept. I was just about knocked out of bed. I own a lot of bookshelves - they all went down, spilling hundreds of books... but none of the shelves hit me. Lots of things broke. My refrigerator door opened and everything came crashing out. The funniest thing was a jar of spaghetti sauce in my kitchen cupboard ended up shattered on the wall of the living room - I still have no idea how that could have happened. Other jars of spaghetti sauce just ended up piled up on the kitchen floor.

I grabbed some pants, put on some shoes (skipping the socks), grabbed a shirt and tried turning on the lights... nothing happened. Power was out all over the valley. 4:30 am is *dark*... and the aftershocks just kept coming! The ground would stop shaking for a minute or two... then start again. I have to get out of this building! I stumble to the front door, get out to the balcony walkway and start to the stairway to where my car’s parked... then remember I’m parked way out in back! I change directions, run to the back of the building - and I’m not along, mind you - *everyone* in the building is running around in thrown on clothes or sweats. I get to the stairs, jog across the parking lot to my car, and drive to... I don’t know where I’m going to go. The ground is shaking everywhere. But I’m not the only one driving around - many people are driving around in a panic. I head to a big park out on Parthenia... figuring there are no buildings to fall on top of me there. Other people had the same idea. We’re all scared to death.

When the sun comes up, the aftershocks are still hitting but it seems much less frightening. I drive back - park in my usual spot (the idiot is gone) and I’m happy that my building is still standing.... but the stairs I almost ran down? They aren’t there! That idiot that parked in my space may have saved my life!

In my apartment, I have no power... no water. We’d get back power in about a day, but the water would be out for almost a week. No showers... we stank after a while. For drinking water they had tankers in that park - you had to bring your own container... and many people were there in tents riding out the never-ending aftershocks, afraid to go back to their homes. Tents popped up all over the valley in parks - people afraid to be indoors while the ground was still shaking. The National Guard came out in force - armed to prevent looting at the shopping mall. When the power came back on, I spent a lot of time watching the disaster on TV - the gas main that burst on a quiet suburban Northridge street - spraying *fire* into the sky. The pancaked apartment buildings. The mall that had collapsed. The freeway overpass that was turned to rubble - with cars on it. And the aftershocks just kept coming. You couldn’t sleep because another one would hit and you’d be scrambling for a doorframe to ride it out.

Oh, a piece of plastic tape with the word “Caution” on it stopped people from stepping into the abyss where the stairs once were at my building.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this - when I had been several days without a shower - the phone rang... it was Ashok Amritraj (DEATH SENTENCE, BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE ) (Hyde Park Entertainment) calling to see if a script he had read was still available... and if it was, could I come to his office tomorrow at 3 and meet with him, look over a contract, and probably pick up a check? Sure, no problem! Hollywood works even when there are major national disasters and engineers coming to make sure my building was safe to live in (red tagged and evacuated if not) and armed soldiers guarding the Montgomery Wards from looters. Los Angeles may be shaking, but the rest of the world wants to see movies! That means they have to make movies - even if they’re taking cover under their desks and praying they live out the day. The show must go on.

But I need a shower... I fill dozens of gallon jugs with water from the taker trucks at the park - probably causing a family of four to go without - and before my meeting I take a cold shower one gallon at a time (Navy style) so that I don’t stink when I meet with the producer of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s DOUBLE IMPACT. Clean, cruising on about 6 hours sleep over the past 3 days, I zoom up into the hills to Ashok’s house, where he had an office in his poolhouse. The meeting went well, and I ended up not only making a sale that would get me out of Van Nuys and into Studio City (you know, where Britney Spears lives), but would be the first of several scripts I would write for Ashok and the beginning of my go-go years where I averaged 3 films made per year.

Then I drove back to my shaking apartment building that was *not* red tagged. Eventually they got the water back on, and the aftershocks came less frequently. I could get a full night’s sleep without ducking for a doorway. A few months later I was in a nice 2 bedroom in Studio City in the same building as some TV actors and screenwriters.

So maybe this little shaker last week will bring a jolt to my career?

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Whose Scene? POV and YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY.
Yesterday’s Dinner: Pastrami sandwich at Togos.
Movies: SWING VOTE - The most cynical, nasty film of the summer is here! This film trashes everyone, including the audience - when the film was over I felt like I had been spanked (and not in a good way). This film is dramatic proof that you can have a great idea for a movie and then completely screw it up.

Concept has the Presidential Election so close that it really all comes down to one vote in New Mexico (which has great film incentives) which was never counted because some idiot tripped over the electronic voting machine cord - pulling the plug at the exact perfect moment. The stub for that ballot gets traced back to Bud, played by Kevin Costner. He’s registered as an independent, and won’t tell anyone how he voted - and he has 10 days to cast his vote again. So both Presidential candidates come to his trailer park and pitch to him directly. One man will decide the fate of the free world.

And that man is Joe 6 Pack. His name is even product placement - Bud. The problem is, they make fun of him - the movie ridicules him and turns him into a complete idiot... even though he’s our lead. Our identification character. He’s a complete idiot, he lives in a trailer park, he works in an egg factory (but the movie doesn’t really get into egg processing at all - it’s like nobody did any research) and is constantly drunk. This is what they think of the average American voter... Thanks!

Now, there are things they could do to make Bud likable - but they don’t do any of them. In fact, they seem to go out of their way to do the opposite - to make him even more of an unlikable, impossible to identify with idiot. They could have made him really really funny - kind of the Adam Sandler method (though Sandler isn’t that funny) - but all of the jokes are on Bud - we’re laughing at him, not with him... except we aren’t laughing at him, either. He’s an idiot - you wonder what *Costner* was thinking. They could have had things happen to him that earn our sympathy - but when he loses his job at the egg factory it’s because he was stumble-bum drunk on the job and knocked over a whole pallet of eggs - right in front of the security camera. Nothing sympathetic at all. In my big 2 day class one of the methods I explain that can create sympathy in a difficult character is to give them someone to love - this worked for a *serial killer* in MONSTER. But here they give Bud a daughter, Madeline Carroll, who is “introduced” in this film, except I mentioned her in my tip on WHEN A STRANGER CALLS. Problem is that Bud doesn’t care about his daughter at all. He does nothing that a normal dad would do - in fact, *she* takes care of him. In the first few scenes he blows off a couple of important events in her life... and later in the film a Secret Service Agent knows more about the daughter than Bud does! This is a guy who doesn’t care about family at all.

Now, maybe we were meant to identify with the daughter instead of Bud? Problem there is that the daughter (Molly) pushes Bud so hard that she becomes annoying. She’s a shrew, a bitch... almost as annoying as Dakota Fanning in WAR OF THE WORLDS... and not sympathetic. The script gives us no doorway into her character. She’s a smart kid... but we don’t understand her - and I’m not sure there’s enough character there to be a real person. We are given nothing to make her sympathetic.

So, we have two unsympathetic people - and no one to identify with...

And then they introduce the candidates. Both sides are venal, evil, and stand for nothing. They constantly flip-flop just to win Bud’s vote. The film has been mostly humor free so far, but it gets a couple of laughs with campaign ads aimed at ONLY Bud that illustrate the flip-flops. Problem is, there are only two ads. Would have been better to have done a bunch of *quick* ads that just got crazier and crazier... but we get two. The candidates are played by Kelsey Grammar as the President and Dennis Hopper as the Democrat trying to unseat him. Both are stereotypes and hollow... easy targets. They attempt to give each a moment when they realize they are selling out - but these ring so false they almost make them even less sympathetic. And Hopper has a wife who slaps him because he’s lost his soul - only we never knew he had one in the first place (the film never showed it) and nothing is even set up to show us that she’d care whether he had a soul or not. The slap just seems completely out of place in this film.

Discussing this film afterwards with my friends, the movie that came up was DAVE - a great, funny film that kind of covers the same subject. But where Bud is a complete idiot, Dave is an every-man... a hard working guy who has kind of been left behind by the system who gets to run the country for a while - and run it in a way that helps the average joe instead of just leeches off him. Here, Bud is an uncaring, unfeeling, idiot - and none of the other characters are any better.

Flawed characters are more interesting than perfect people, but it’s still a matter of *balance* - your character can’t be all flaws! They have to have some redeeming value. Bud has nothing. Make a litle chart with two columns - one for flaws, one for assets. Keep the character in balance - don’t make them all of one or all of the other. Even a bad person needs some good elements.

Because this film needs to find to worst in everyone and everything, we eventually get to meet Molly’s mother - Bud’s ex-wife - and she’s a drug addicted liar living in filth. I guess everyone in the world is crap.

By the end of the film, Bud does an amazing 180 and cares about casting his vote - but this happens *minutes* before he votes. It’s that Egri thing again about no honest man becoming a thief over night. Bud just suddenly gets his shit together - and it’s so unbelievable that you think the writers must have thought we were idiots.

Oh, he has this speech about what idiots we American voters are. Thanks for crapping on me again! It’s bad enough you think the average American voter is Bud, you have to spank all of us watching the movie. You know, the one thing you can never do is crap on the viewer - they just paid to see your movie, and they aren’t gonna be happy.

After never really discussing a single issue, or the role of government, or even creating a single human character, Bud reads a letter from a voter who has some real problems... and it makes you cry. And you wonder why they didn’t have Bud discover the letters earlier so we could have a gradual change in the character - and maybe even get into some real issues and real problems. But this film doesn’t care about any of that - it just wants to crap on you.

Bicycle: Rode a bunch on Sunday, and will probably ride from a Starbucks to my meeting on Monday.

- Bill

The War With SkyNet

You may have noticed that the Friday blog entry was late. Because I sleep late, and you probably don’t, I set up the blog entries ahead of time (usually the night before) and have them timed to pop up the next morning. Though there’s a complicated way to check out what the blog entry will look like before it runs, I usually just wait until I go on line to make sure things aren’t completely screwed up. When I went online Friday, no new blog entry. Did I make a mistake? I checked it out... and it seems my blog had been identified as “spam” by the Google computers. The notice apologized in the event it was not spam and that I was a human being wrongly accused of being a spam robot. I would have to do some things to prove I was human... and this would send a message to one of the six humans employed at Google to manually check out my blog to make sure I wasn’t some *really* clever spam robot that had figured out how to respond like a human to the Google computer’s human verification questions. This may take time...

The thing that frightens me about all of this is that the Google computer shuts down the website on its own... and *later* a human can correct any mistakes.

So begins the war with SkyNet... only John Conners can save us, now...

But maybe it’s already too late.

- Bill

The Batman Effect

You are reading this *after* I have seen THE DARK KNIGHT, but I am writing this a few hours before I see the film. I have Arclight tickets for Sunday night, which was (is as I write this) my birthday. Some friends of mine and I are having dinner somewhere (maybe Cat & Fiddle) and then going to see the bat man. Usually I’m in Vegas on my birthday, but for the past two years there’s been some complication that has kept me in LA... Last year I had just returned from London and decided to postpone my Vegas trip until August, this year it was a combination of writing projects and a meeting with a producer - I’ll probably go to Vegas later in the year... or maybe just go to Hawaii and watch them shoot my flick instead.

Last year on my birthday, there were no good movies opening. The big film that weekend was I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU CHUCK AND LARRY. I don’t remember what the second tier movies were - but they were crap, too. The best new movie that weekend was SUNSHINE - playing in limited release. That’s what I planned on seeing... but someone ordered an extra round of beers at dinner and by the time we got to the cinema we were late... but there was a showing of CHUCK & LARRY in twenty minutes. You know, wouldn’t have been that bad if the film hadn’t just plain sucked. I expected Jessica Beil in her underwear to be a highpoint of that film - I didn’t expect it to be *the* highpoint.

So this year is automatically better - THE DARK KNIGHT. Tickets bought 2 weeks ago.

I am a huge fan on BATMAN BEGINS - that’s one of those movies on the shelf of films I’ll watch on DVD every year (I watched it last night to get in the mood for DARK KNIGHT). It’s my new example for Payback Lines in the revised version of my Action Book (I’m still working on). It’s that rare movie that is both a great mainstream popcorn film *and* a serious film about guilt and revenge and justice and responsibility. You know, a *good movie*. Without the funny costumes and big action scenes, it could play art houses. So I’ve been excited about the sequel since they announced it. And every image or teaser trailer or poster or clip has just gotten me more excited.

And it appears that I am not the only one. I predicted on some message board that of all of the summer films this year - and it’s a very crowded summer - the one movie I thought would be the biggest hit was DARK KNIGHT. I thought it would do better than the Indiana Jones movie (without having seen it). I had no idea IRON MAN would be so good. And my prediction was early enough that it may have even been before Heath Ledger’s death in January. BATMAN BEGINS was a good film that people were still talking about... and they couldn’t wait to see the sequel. Add the death of Heath Ledger and you turn this from *the* event movie of the summer into, well...

So the movie broke midnight show records with $18.5 million.... That would be a good opening weekend for many films, but this was just Thursday’s midnight shows!

Friday, the film broke even more records - $68 million on Friday. How is that even possible? Now, the funny part is that there were some predictions that it might make $100 million over the weekend - man, it was close to $80 million by the end of Friday!

The Saturday numbers are estimated at $48 million - I don't think that's a record, but last Weekend's #1 movie, HELLBOY 2, made $11.6 million on Saturday.

The weekend estimates are a record breaking $155.34 million... and that's just for the movie! Add in the popcorn and candy and sodas, and the meals before the shows...

So, I’m typing away on Saturday in a Starbucks in a shopping area that includes movie theaters and lots of restaurants. Same place I was typing last Saturday. Last Saturday the Starbucks wasn’t very crowded, and when I broke for dinner, I went into one of the nearby restaurants and was instantly seated - oh, and I some choices on tables. “Would you like a booth or a table?” “Can I get a booth in the back?” “No problem.”

Yesterday (Sat), completely different story. Starbucks is packed - and there’s a *huge* line. The people are coming in waves, though, with about half an hour between rushes. So I get a place to sit at Starbucks... and then spend the day watching the line expand every half hour. All of the restaurants in the area are *packed*. Lines waiting for tables. The shopping area is crowded, too. Oh, and the ice cream place - take a number and wait an hour! Now, last week these places were doing okay weekend business, but nothing like this. I mean, NOTHING like this. When I break for dinner, I have to walk far away from the cinemas to find a restaurant where I don’t have to wait... ends up being El Pollo Loco - and they seem to be more crowded than usual, too! I walk back to Bucks and have to wait for the cycle to end before I get a table... and quickly plug in the earphones and crank up the Goldsmith because everyone is talking about the bat man.

I’m wondering if this is happening all over the USA - people are going to see THE DARK KNIGHT as *the* movie they see this year... and they’re going out to dinner before the movie and out for ice cream or coffee afterwards?

You know how our economy was in trouble last week? I wonder if THE DARK KNIGHT is helping to pull it out? Not just the ticket sales, but the restaurants and food places and coffee shops and ice cream parlors and bars and... how many people bought something in one of these stores near the cinemas before or after the film? Will retail sales spike this weekend?

Okay, I’m going to see the movie in a couple of hours and later in the week I’ll report on it. And if it’s good, I’ll probably see it again in IMAX. And if there’s a slow weekend later on in summer... I may see it again. But I have to tell you - this section of town near the cinemas is PACKED with people.... and I wonder how many of these people will see it again? And whether one movie can have an impact on a nation’s economy?

PS: Thanks to everyone who e-mailed me, Facebooked me, MySpaced me, carded me, skywrote me, and wished me a happy birthday in some other way I forgot. I was really hoping that someone would send me Salma Hayek as a gift... but maybe next year.

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: The Wrong Goal and BOURNE ULTIMATUM.
Yesterday’s Dinner: Breast, corn, black beans at El Pollo Loco.

MOVIES: TELL NO ONE - So, what is wrong with American producers? Don’t they know a good thriller? Don’t they want to make a good thriller? Why is it that all of the good thrillers are coming from France these days, and America is making crap? Don Westlake (the greatest writer alive) (and an American) wrote this amazing thriller called THE AX... and it was made into a film in France, by Oscar winner Costa-Gavras. Why the heck didn’t any US producers buy it and make it? Now, the big bestseller by *American* thriller writer Harlan Coben, TELL NO ONE has been made into a movie... by French guys! What is wring with the studios in this country? Why aren’t they buying and making these American thrillers?

TELL NO ONE is the story of Alex Beck (Dave in the book) and his childhood sweetheart Margot (Elizabeth in the book) who are happily married. On vacation they visit the lake where they first met... and Margot is *murdered* and Alex is knocked out. He wakes up to find himself a suspect in his wife’s murder... but the police eventually connect Margot’s murder to a serial killer... but they never stop suspecting him.

Eight years later, Alex still hasn’t gotten over her murder. He has never had another relationship, and visits Margot’s parents on the anniversary of her death. Margot’s parents think he should just get on with his life. Her father is a retired cop, and knows how traumatic an event like this can be (heck, it was his daughter who was killed), but even he thinks Alex needs to move on with his life. Problem is, Alex is still in love with her - always has been. Part of his lack of closure may be that he never saw his wife’s corpse - he was in the hospital recovering. Her father identified the body, and Alex missed the funeral.

On that 8 year anniversary of her murder he gets a strange e-mail... from his dead wife!

Meanwhile, the police have found two long-dead bodies at the lake where the wife was murdered... with evidence leading to Alex. The police want to re-open Margot’s murder case, thinking that these two may have been Alex’s accomplices (the guys who knocked him out to give him that great alibi). They want Alex to supply a DNA sample.

As Alex receives more e-mails from his dead wife, many containing information that only she would know, some witnesses and friends of his wife from the past are murdered... with evidence leading to Alex. Now Alex must go on the run to find proof of his innocence... and find out how his dead wife has access to a computer.

A bunch of critics are calling the film “Hitchcockian” - and I just want to know if those critics have the same IQ as the US producers who don’t buy thriller novels or think making I KNOW WHO KILLED ME instead of THE AX was a great idea...

Do these critics think Hitchcock = thrillers? If that’s true, what about all of the other great thriller directors? Are Fritz Lang movies Hitchockian? Are *all* thrillers Hitchcockian? If so, doesn’t that make “Hitchcockian” kind of a pointless made up word? Why not just say “thriller”? Fewer letters, more accuracy. And what about those movies like THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY and MR & MRS SMITH (1941) and all of the other movies Hitchcock directed that are *not* thrillers? Are those not Hitchcockian, even though Hitchcock made them? What the heck do these critics mean when they throw around the made up word “Hitchcockian”?

When *I* think Hitchcock, I think *visual control*. Hitchcock was all about the image, the juxtaposition of images, and how they made the audience *feel*. Every shot in a Hitchcock movie was given great thought - is this the best composition? The best framing? The best angle? The best distance between subject and lens? The best lens? The best movement of the camera? The best... and how do all of these elements combines transfer the exact feeling I want to the audience? In the Hitchcock/Truffaut book he talks about everything from the Kuleshov experiment in editing to the use of the color red in MARNIE to the reason why the shot through the window of the 2 henchmen in THE 39 STEPS is the only angle that works - and the remake used a different angle and the scene loses all of its tension. Hitchcock selected every element of every shot for a specific reason - he controlled what you see and how you see it... and used the camera to tell the story. Since that’s 95% of what he talks about in Hitchcock/Truffaut, I would think that “Hitchcockian” means “visual control” or using the specifics of cinema to create emotions in the audience and tell the story. And the difference between a thriller that’s shot in a bland, pedestrian way (like my HARD EVIDENCE movie) and a thriller where the camera is used to tell the story and create emotions in the viewer (Hitchcock movies... and even French films like DIABOLIQUE) would be “Hitchcockian”. Hitch’s comedy, THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY, is Hitchcockian - there’s a shot of the dead guy’s *feet* that makes you laugh. The angle, the composition of the frame, everything in that shot is designed to make you laugh. Hitch made the feet look funny. That’s “Hitchcockian” to me.

(ASIDE: One of the things in Hitchcock/Truffaut that really got me thinking about how movies work when I read it as a teenager, was an example Hitchcock gives about a couple sitting at a table lit by a chandelier. Though the chandelier might have been established in a long shot, when we cut to a shot of the two of them sitting at the table, the chandelier may not be in the frame - even though it is still the source of the light. Problem is - the light without the chandelier might look artificial... so Hitch says you have to lower the chandelier until it shows up in frame - even though it is not naturally in frame. That way, the audience can see the source of the light, and the shot seems more real... even though it is not. What is important in film isn’t what is real, but what appears to be real - and you often have to change what is real to make it appear real on film... reality may look fake! The face may look real! The job of the filmmaker isn’t to shoot what is real, but to have what is shot look real - no matter what lengths you must go through to achieve the look of reality. The results are what matter.)

The problem is - film critics who have no idea what they are talking about, not even the basic knowledge of film, who somehow didn’t read Hitchcock/Truffaut (even though Truffaut was a critic when he did the interviews), people who are not qualified to do the jobs they are being paid for, who think any movie that is a thriller is “Hitchcockian”. Hey, if you want to use a word, have some idea what it means (or use some other word that you do know). And these guys are calling TELL NO ONE “Hitchcockian” when it is the exact opposite. The film is “Anti-Hitchcockian” - and it often looks like angles and camera placement were completely random... and editing is without rhythm... and nothing is designed with the intent to make the audience feel anything.

The director of TELL NO ONE doesn’t use the camera to tell the story - he just places the camera somewhere and lets the story happen... which isn’t the best way to make a thriller, but the story here is so strong that the movie works despite itself.

Two great stunt scenes are very realistic - when Alex runs across the freeway to escape the police causing a huge pile up - cars skidding close to hitting him - you wonder how they managed to get a crashing car so close to *the star* without killing him. Though CGI could have been used, it doesn’t look like it. France has that great precision driving team from RONIN and the BOURNE movies, so maybe they were involved in this. This scene, by the way, is right from the novel. The other great, realistic stunt scene I don’t remember from the book - and I suspect was an accident that they used in the film - Alex is running flat out, trips, and does a very realistic face plant on a sidewalk. You can’t help but say “Ouch!” outloud.

The thing that elevates this from just being another just thriller (Hitchcockian or not) is the love story aspect - and the end of this film is powerful due to the love story. Alex and Margot are soulmates - and the great flashbacks to when they were kids and first fell in love give this film a gravity and depth that stick with you long after the house lights go up. The tree where they carved their initials in a heart when they were kids... is still on that tree the night Margot is killed... and 8 years later when Alex is brought back to that spot at the end of the film. There are big emotions involved, here. By the way - the flashbacks to when they were kids? In the novel, though handled really well in the film.

One of the elements in the story (book and film) is a MARATHON MAN subplot element with some local thugs who become Alex’s little army when the police *and* the badguys are chasing him. A few of the reviews have mentioned that the actor who plays Alex (Francois Cluzet) resembles Dustin Hoffman - and that probably adds to the MARATHON MAN echoes.

British actress Kristin Scott-Thomas plays one of Alex and Margot’s friends, and she speaks fluent French and *acts* French in this film... it takes you a moment to recognoze her!

As strange plot twists mount and the bodies pile up, the mystery of Margot’s e-mail frm beyond the grave becomes more and more complicated... and you begin to wonder how the hell they’re going to come up with a solution that covers everything that has happened... and that’s when the film begins to go south. Because there are a half dozen crimes in the past that resulted in the murder of Margot... and the film sinks under the weight of too many backstories, We end up with kind of a Rube Goldberg explanation of what happened to a dozen characters who aren’t even part of the present story which lead up to this twist ending... But it’s like a half hour of backstory! The film just goes into reverse!

You know, scripts are written in the present tense... and a film story should move forward and be about things happening now - not things that happened a long time ago that result in big chunks of exposition. TELL NO ONE gives us the exposition and flashback combo - so we see all of these long ago things... but they are still long ago events. And there are *so many of them* that the whole film seems to be moving backwards instead of coming to a conclusion - for about half an hour. And just when you thought the backstories were all over... we get a *different* version of one of the backstories exposing a character’s lie. All of this is just too much - someone should have simplified all of this stuff and cut away all of the unrequired complications - there is one event that could have caused all of the present problems - we didn’t need every bad thing that has ever happened to Alex throughout his life to be explained... and part of some conspiracy! Make sure your scripts are about what happens *now* - not what happens before the film starts. (Yeah, CITIZEN KANE and MEMENTO... but those are the exceptions). You want to keep the story moving forward... and keep the backstory to a minimum.

But the very end of the film is saved by a flashback to the lovers as children - showing just how strong Alex and Margot’s love is... it has lasted beyond the grave. In a strange way, the end reminded me of another film critics wrongly called “Hitchcockian” - CACHE. That film had such a strong image (the suicide) near the end that you forgave all of the problems that came before... and here the unending love of two people makes us forget all of that backstory...

TELL NO ONE is a riveting story with some great plot twists... But the romance and story of undying love make it more than just THE FUGITIVE with a bunch of French people. If you can forgive the chunk of backstory tying up all of the story threads at the end, this is an interesting thriller. Note to US producers - why let the French guys make all of the great thrillers?

- Bill

As Luck Would Have It...

I’m writing this “new” spec SECOND SON - and it’s part struggle and part joy. Now, I could help you procrastinate by telling you all about the struggle part, but wouldn’t it be more fun to waste valuable time when you really should be writing (and so should I) telling you about the joy part?

First - I’m really awful at this blogging thing. I find myself killing time (when I really should be writing) on some message board where I give advice or (worse) write some opinion piece that really should be *here* on this blog. And I talk away great subjects sometimes. So, I was at the movies with some friends a week ago and mentioned something that happened while writing and we had a nice little conversation about it, and later I’m thinking “That should have been on the blog!” So here it is....

I finish the SECOND SON scenes at the Dead Sea and The Vatican, and now my story takes me to a major American city. When I first came up with the idea for this page one rewrite of an old script - that ends up not using a single word from the original so far - I wrote up a treatment. This was a couple of years ago, and motivated by an unusual factor - a Guy I Know was looking for a project that would be a well-known rapper’s first film. The rapper *did not* want to be the star, he wanted to be a sidekick. His first film, he didn’t want to have it crash and burn because it was all about him. The GIN (Guy I Know) said what he really wanted was a buddy action movie that had some horror in it... huh? Well, I had this dusty old script I had planned on rewriting some day, and I thought if I could use that script as a base, it would be quicker and easier to write. Hey, I’m lazy. Actually, I don’t know whether the chicken came first or the egg - I may have come up with the basic idea and realized that I could use that idea to rewrite the old script about the President’s Pregnant Mistress. When I wrote the treatment, it was mostly aimed at pleasing the GIN and the Rapper. The GIN loved it... and then the rapper got into some PR problems and nobody wanted to make a movie with him anymore. This was the second time a project of mine aimed at a Rapper had died because of the Rapper’s personal problems. So, I had this treatment for a rewrite and some notes... And while I was looking for notes on *another* script I was going to rewrite, I stumbled on the DEMON HUNTER (now SECOND SON) notes and decided it would be fun to write it.

When I reach the major American city part - where the rest of the script takes place - it was Los Angeles in the treatment because that’s where the producers are. It’s kind of a default location. But the great state of Michigan has one of the best filming incentives in the USA right now, so I thought I’d set the rest of the script in Detroit. Why not? Maybe some producer will read it, know about the incentives, and decide he can get more bang for his buck by shooting a movie in Detroit?

When you write scripts intended to be filmed, you walk a tight-rope between vague and specific. I have an old article about it somewhere that needs a rewrite. The problem is, no matter where your script takes place, chances are they will film it in Vancouver. So you need a script that isn’t so specific that it can’t be shot in Vancouver or Romania or wherever the good film deal is. At the same time, you don’t want your script to be bland and take place in Generic City. So a script written to be filmed needs to have locations that are generic enough that you can find them in Vancouver and Romania and anyplace else where they film movies... but still has establishing shots that can be filmed second unit in some interesting unique place. These shots are not called Establishing Shots in a spec script, it’s just an EXT. of a location without any of your actors in the scene. That way, they cut from the EXT of some interesting building to the interior, which can either be a set on a sound stage or a practical location easily found in whatever country they shoot in. You want to give the flavor of a specific location without forcing the producers to shoot there. On my big specs - which are not necessarily written to be filmed as much as they are written to sold or get me an assignment - I will put characters in locations that are unique to the city where the story takes place. So in the script I was originally going to rewrite, HOURS OF DARKNESS, the story takes place in Seattle and there are scenes on the monorail and Space Needle and all kinds of other landmarks that can not be found anywhere else. In my PAST LIVES script, the big finale takes place at the Murphy Windmill in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park - you can’t film it anywhere else. Obviously, if they buy either of these scripts and decide to make them, they can either do a major rewrite so that it can shoot in Romania or Vancouver or spend the money to shoot those scenes on location. But on SECOND SON I’m writing the script so that it’s an “easy shoot” - the producer can either take advantage of the great incentives by filming in Detroit (where the story takes place) or just do some second unit work there and film the rest in Romania or Bucharest. They decide, the script doesn’t force them to shoot in Detroit.

But using Detroit was entirely arbitrary based on current incentive programs.

Once that decision was made, I hit the books and Google to find those cool exteriors. I needed a hospital and a church and some other places. Because my lead is the Vatican’s version of Indiana Jones, it would be nice if it was Catholic hospital - but it didn’t have to be. It could be any interesting looking hospital. And in the treatment, it was a Baptist church, because I figured that would fit with the rapper. Now, the character isn’t going to be played by a rapper, so it could be anything. Since Catholic churches seem to be the most ornate, I’d take a look at those as well as any other old Christian churches in Detroit.

And, as luck would have it, the 2nd oldest Catholic Church in America is located in Detroit! St. Anne’s - and it’s the kind of beautiful old church that looks great on camera. I looked at some other churches (online) and St. Anne’s is the winner. Now, what are the odds of the 2nd oldest Catholic Church being in the city I picked due to its film incentive program?

Now I’m looking for a hospital, and when I Google my criteria I get the oldest hospital in Michigan... originally St. Vincent’s, then St. Mary’s, then a notorious mental institution, then Detroit Memorial, now Providence. Wow - even the names are story related! And the pictures? Okay - here’s one:


The mental institution past? How could I be so lucky?

And my luck continues... In the treatment I had a chase where they escape the hospital, chased by demons. I didn’t want them to be chased across a parking lot by demons - that seemed silly. There was a scribbled note in the margin of the treatment - “how about tunnels?” And guess what? In another old Detroit hospital that was turned into a mental institution there were underground tunnels connecting various wings of the facility - with photos of mental patients in the tunnels! Okay, a little poetic license and Providence has these long forgotten tunnels from when it was a mental hospital. People in Detroit might catch me at combining two locations - but both are real locations, so I hope they will forgive me. And now I have this spooky looking old hospital, which is now a training hospital by the way, with forgotten underground tunnels for my chase... and all of this from a completely arbitrary decision to use Detroit as my location because it has a good incentives program.

Luck? Who knows - but there’s nothing like doing the research and finding something better than what you had hoped for. And that happens all the time. It’s one of the joys of writing - elements come together as if by magic sometimes. On SLEEPER AGENT I needed to get my characters from Turkey to Eastern Europe on some unique form of transportation... that could be easily found in any of the Eastern European countries where they might film this, and my search uncovered hydrofoil ferries. Cool! Perfect! Better than anything I cold have made up!

And that’s one of the big joys of screewnriting - when all of the pieces come together in ways you never expected. When the cool old Catholic hospital used to be a notorious mental institution. When the 2nd oldest Catholic Church in America just happens to be in Detroit instead of Chicago or New York or some other big city.

Even though the rapper isn’t really a part of SECOND SON anymore, I’m in Detroit, right? I love MoTown music... so the hospital orderly who becomes the sidekick in the story still has some music in his background. Oh, and when the Vatican’s version of Indiana Jones rents a car - it’s a vintage Mustang muscle car (great in the car chase that comes up later). Detroit.

Every script has happy accidents... I live for them! Hope you find some in the script you're writing.

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Query Letters - and checking your bait.
Yesterday’s Dinner: Ceasar Salad at Fuddruckers to make up for all of the junk I've been eating.

MOVIES: HELLBOY 2 - I saw it Friday night with Q&A afterwards with del Toro.

Completely amazing film - reminded me of STAR WARS and EMPIRE in a way. Not just because of all of the creatures that seem like a much better version of the cantina scene, but the way the story juggles adventure and action and humor and romance and real emotions without ever dropping a ball. In a strange way, Hellboy is like Han Solo and Rick Blaine - a guy who sticks his neck out for no one. He doesn't care. He respects no authority - and kind of respects no one, not even himself. And, as the story unfolds, he's placed in situation after situation where he must take a side and care... and eventually he *must* care about what happens.

Here's what I think is amazing about this flick - it's a superhero movie about a megavillain who has an evil plan to destroy mankind, and the superhero who must stop him. And it has all of the story elements we expect to find in that story. But it's also weird. Imaginative. Dangerous. It colors within the lines using colors not to be found in the 120 pack of Crayolas. (Okay - it has lots of red and blue). It works as a mainstream movie - but also works as a strange del Toro movie.

MILD SPOILERS

My favorite action scene is with the Elemental - it is an exciting scene, an magical scene, a character scene, and has ends up *haunting* instead of happy. Red rescues a baby at the start of the action, and must protect the baby throughout the action scene - which not only works as part of the over-all emotional story for Red, it also shows two sides of his character at the same time - he's tough, violent, angry... and compassionate and protective. But this scene also forces Red to make a big decision - this is the *last* of the Elementals, can he kill the last of its kind? This gives us a no-win situation: if he kills the Elemental, he has destroyed a treasure and destroyed a part of nature. The world will never be the same. But if he doesn't kill the elemental, he may be killed himself. So a selfish hero must choose between himself and the planet... and finds himself unable to make that decision. Which prolongs the battle... and causes more destruction. This is not an easy choice - and once he finally makes it, he isn't happy with what he's done. He's the monster. He's the villain. This is not a safe scene - not a Hollywood scene. This is a *great* scene.

OKAY - BIG SPOILERS - DON'T READ UNLESS YOU'VE SEEN THE MOVIE.

And the decisions don't get easier - they become even more difficult. The final battle is a completely no-win situation. And a funny little bit with Abe putting on contact lenses to look more attractive to a member of the opposite sex, and mentioning that his eyes have no tear ducts, pays off big time.

SPOILERS OVER

I think this may be his best movie - a great combination of mainstream entertainment and wild fantasy with very serious subject matter. I laughed, I cheered, I cried.

- Bill

People Are Reading Screenplays!

You’d think with a potential SAG strike on the horizon that might close down the biz for a few months (which I don't really think will happen - but the threat is there), no one would want to read a screenplay... but suddenly everyone wants to read my scripts. I have no idea what this is all about. Though I’ve been sending out query letters like crazy, most of the people reading are coming from other places.

There are a half dozen producers reading my scripts right now, as well as an agency and a management company. Literally six producers... plus I have some folks e-mailing me about reading scripts. Now, I’m sure this will all come to nada, but right now I have lots of possibilities - lots of “Chances To Win”.

All of the production companies are indie - so maybe they have SAG waivers and are looking for material to make if there *is* a strike. One of the odd things is that the scripts aren’t all low budget stuff - most are in that medium budget range. All are thrillers or action, by the way - no one is requesting horror.

In fact, I’m kind of worried that there are so many people reading, there won’t be enough scripts to go around. What if, by some miracle, all of these people want to buy a medium budget action script... I’m not sure I have enough to go around! I’d better get back to work on the new spec!

Hopefully one of the reps will bite. It’s frustrating to have scripts passed around town and end up at a studio based producer... then just sit there because there is no one to push anyone into making a decision. I brainstormed up *70* high concept sequel ideas for a particular studio’s library... but I don’t have any direct connection with that studio, so I’m at the mercy of the producers I know. Heck, I could generate 70 high concept sequel ideas for any studio - if someone could get me in the door. As it is, anything that happens in my career is an “accident” - someone reads a script and hands it to someone. It would be nice to have a career on purpose.

Of course, by the end of the month this flurry will be over, and nothing will have happened - but it would be nice to sell another script this year.

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Submission Definitions.
Yesterday’s Dinner: Nothing.
Pages: Still cranking on the new spec... haven't finished the day, yet, so I don't know my page count.

I'm Grumpy!

I’ve been more grumpy than usual for the past few weeks - sorry. A month ago I got a letter from my building manager saying that they would be re-painting the building and making some exterior improvements. That sounds like a good thing, right? I thought it was a good thing at the time. Hey, they’re taking care of the place! They aren’t going to bulldoze it and put up a new building (in Los Angeles, they often tear down a 20 year old building because it is “old”). The place would be freshly painted and look nice.

But when the very noisy construction guys began sawing and hammering and scraping and yelling at each other at 7:59am every morning, it wasn’t such a good idea. I know I’m getting no sympathy from most of you - 8am? What the heck is Bill complaining about? I’m up at 6am or 5am in order to get to work! Hey, but you don’t go to sleep at 2am or 4am like I do. Lately it’s been 4am, because of the bike. I often ride home at midnight, by the time I get there I’m hungry and my blood’s flowing, so I have something to eat and then watch Kimmel... and then catch the rebroadcast of the news at 1am, just to make sure the world didn’t end or something, then at 2am I begin to wind down... and sometimes I might watch a DVD.... and next thing you know it’s 4am.

Okay, I can sleep until noon, and still get in a bunch of writing during the day before Starbucks kicks me out at midnight. But when these noisy guys start pounding at 8am? I wake up and can not get back to sleep.

So I’ve been cruising on 4 hours a night, except on weekends when construction guys are off, for a couple of weeks. I thought once they finished getting the building ready to paint, it would be smooth sleeping... but do you know how loud a freakin’ air compressor is? Now that they are painting, it’s just as noisy... maybe even more so.

And after a couple of weeks of 4 hours sleep a night, I’m feeling like crap. Oh, and the week before they began making all of this noise we had a record breaking heat wave in Los Angeles, and by the time I’d get home every night my apartment was an over. It took forever for the AC got the apartment cool enough to sleep. So it’s probably been three weeks of bad sleep. The good news is, they are finished *spraying*, so I will be sleeping soon. And probably less grumpy in the future. How much noise can a paint brush make when they do the trim work?

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: ONE (IDEA) IS NOT ENOUGH - and Semi-Pro's comedy shortage.
Yesterday’s Dinner: BBQ food - hot dogs and potato salad.

MOVIES: HANCOCK - The first trailer for this film had me laughing, the second trailer - with the prison scene - had me laughing even more. Add to it that this was a hot spec script - on the Black List. I never read the script, but just the idea of a dysfunctional superhero is great - and like all great ideas, my imagination began looking at the possibilities. Being a superhero means you are responsible for other people’s lives - and what if you don’t want that responsibility? It also means when you make a mistake, people die. What kind of guilt caused him to become this foul mouthed drunk? There was a solid dramatic element underneath the comedy idea. So when the reviews came out and were mixed - and not in a good way, I hoped they were just cranky critics who didn’t know what they were talking about.

But I hated the movie. Okay, hate is too strong - basically, I didn’t enjoy it. They took a great concept, and screwed it up.

I hated the direction - it was like Michael Bay on speed. Constantly moving hand held camera, quick cuts, and these long-lens extreme close ups often with “garbage” in the frame - usually the unlighted back of the head of someone else in the scene. Okay, maybe this is just “old man syndrome”? Maybe all of the noise really is music? Afterwards, in a Dennys, my friends and I talked about this... and, to be fair, we are all old men. No 20 year olds among us. But all of us disliked the direction, and for the same reason - it pulled us out of the story instead of brought us into the story. It was style without purpose - “look at me, I’m the director!” stuff. Instead of using the camera to tell the story, it was constantly fighting the story. One of the guys brought up this article he’s read where Kathryn Bigelow was interviewed about James Cameron’s directing style, and vice-versa (they were married at the time). And the article showed how each had a different style, but both styles were based on *purpose* - they were using the camera to tell the story. I mentioned the bonus material on THE LONG GOODBYE where Altman talks about wanting to give the viewer the feeling that they are voyeurs - spying on the people in the story. So the shots are often looking through a window at people arguing or peeking around a corner or rising over a fence - the camera moves were all based on a purpose - a feeling the director wanted to create in the viewer. It wasn’t just a bunch of style the pulls you out of the story.

I also hated the music - it just didn’t fit the story. We open up with a blues sound track, which you might think fits the drunk superhero thing - but it’s existing music and doesn’t match the rhythm of the film... and the thing about genre bending films is that the closer they stick to the elements we expect from the genre, the more effective the story twist. The more HANCOCK seems like a superhero movie, the better the drunken foul mouthed part works... let alone the later dramatic elements. In a way, the blues music was telegraphic that this wasn’t going to be your standard superhero movie *plus* completely undercutting the differences. But the blues stuff just seemed like a bad idea, it wasn’t until they used the theme to SANFORD & SON as the underscore to a scene that I really *hated* the music. Because first, the tone of the music didn’t fit a prison confrontation... and second, a few notes into the music you think, “Hey, isn’t that the theme to SANFORD AND SON?” which completely pulls you out of the film and makes everything you are seeing completely artificial. We always want to believe that what happens in the film is *real* - even if it’s a superhero comedy.


The story *happens*, but didn’t involve me - and I’m going to blame the music and direction for most of that - but there were things in the story that didn’t work as well as they should have. Now, maybe these things were in the script but didn’t make it to screen, or maybe they were removed in the rewrites (this script has been around). The big story problem for me was that they didn’t “water their plants”. There are three big emotional events that happen near the end of the film that had almost no emotions because they were not set up well, or set up and forgotten. Usually when we plant and pay off information, we *want* the audience to forget that Ripley is an expert with the loader, so that when she fights the Alien Queen in the loader we go - “Right! Cool!” instead of “I knew that was going to happen.” But when a character is going to do something that changes their nature, we need to establish that nature and continue to show that nature (and the conflict it creates) so that the scene at the end is a *big* scene, an *emotional* scene, not just another ho-hum scene.

END SPOILERS!

Okay, there are twists in the story that I’m not going to spoil for you - though I alm going to talk about things that happen at the end. Hancock the drunken superhero is kind of “adopted” by PR guy Jason Bateman, his wife Charlize Theron and their son. Theron hates him - he’s a foul mouthed drunk. But Bateman’s career has hit a bump and he sees a way to help Hancock *and* help his career by becoming his PR guy. The “Hancock Makeover” is the basic story, and his interactions with Bateman and his family are an important part of that... theoretically.

Bateman’s son is young enough to see Hancock as a superhero and not really notice the swearing and drinking and bad attitude. By the end of the film, Bateman does something heroic - and his son is in that scene. So that seems to be set up and payoff. But the son doesn’t really display any hero-worship for Hancock. He likes Hancock, but the Feral Kid in ROAD WARRIOR worships Max more than this kid worships Hancock. And the kid never likes Hancock *at the expense* of his father. There is no sense that Bateman is losing his son to Hancock in the film. There is a scene where the son gives Hancock a present... but Bateman isn’t in that scene. And when Bateman does his little act of heroism at the end - we don’t see it from the kid’s POV... in fact, we don’t really see the kid much in that scene, even though he’s there. What could have been a *moment* - and seems to have been written as a moment - is just another thing that happens in a big action scene. To make it an emotional scene where Bateman becomes his son’s hero, we need to show the progression of Bateman losing his son to Hancock. We need scenes that show Bateman realizing he is losing his son. Scenes where the son chooses Hancock over Bateman. We need to do more than just plant it, we need to keep watering that plant throughout the story, so that the scene at the end has power... then we need to give that scene power.

Bateman’s PR guy is introduced in a scene where he’s trying to sell a company on this concept of doing a good deed for the publicity. They turn this down, and later Bateman and Theron are in bed and he says that his PR thing is really trying to save the world. Okay, by the end of the film Hancock helps Bateman with his quest to save the world... but I thought that was just a PR gimmick. I never believed Bateman really wanted to save the world - even though he does the “Save the world PR spiel” twice. The problem is, he’s a PR guy - and PR guys are full of crap. And Bateman is never shown as a particularly charitable guy - he never does anything himself that shows him really trying to save the world. Since the idea of doing a good deed to get good publicity is pretty basic PR stuff, I never thought it was anything other than him doing his job... and when he tells Theron that he wants to save the world while they’re in bed, I thought he was just trying to look like a good guy to his wife so that she won’t just roll over and go to sleep. I try to look like a good guy to get laid, too (so far, hasn’t worked very well). So when we get to this scene at the end that pays off Bateman trying to save the world, it’s just a thing that happens. In fact, it seems a *forced Hollywood crap ending* thing, instead of the big emotional moment - showing Hancock’s friendship and appreciation for Bateman - that it was probably intended to be. You need to make sure we know the “save the world” thing isn’t just some PR gimmick, but Bateman’s dream - his big goal. That means you need to keep watering that plant so that we know this is who Bateman *is* - that his purpose in life is saving the world. His actions in scenes that *aren’t* speeches about saving the world need to show him doing little things to save the world.

Third, there is a big emotional sacrifice a character must make at the end of this film that is tied to the plot twist - so I am not going to get into specifics, and the film doesn’t want to give it away so that the audience jumps the gun. But there were things they could have done to hint that would have worked withing the early scenes that wouldn’t have given away the twist at all... and *after* the twist they needed to do some more watering so that the sacrifice at the end was a sacrifice. We do get a scene that is *almost* the type of magical scene we need... but you can’t just water a plant once and expect it to grow. There is a reference in the film to positive and negative which made me think of magnets. And I think if the magnet idea had been used throughout the story, in several scene, that sacrifice would have actually been emotional - rather than just a scene. It’s like they had all of the elements in that scene to make it work - to make it into a big scene... but they didn’t spend enough time setting it up. And when I say “time” that doesn’t mean more pages in the script or more running time in the film (though at 92 minutes, they could have spent a couple more minutes if they wanted) - it means *better* using the minutes they had. And again, this may have been all in the poor direction - the script may have used that magnet thing throughout (since it was in the dialogue - and maybe that line of dialogue was a payoff to what happened in scenes... but the director neglected to focus on in previous scenes). But the film squanders the end scene by not spending enough time building up to that end. Not enough watering.


Last, there is the twist itself - which comes off as the most insane coincidence imaginable, because it was not set up. Again - the fear on a twist is that the set up will give away the twist, but that is where the skill of the writer (and director) comes in. At Dennys afterwards we discussed ways this twist could have been set up so that it becomes natural and motivated - instead of fake - without giving away the twist. One possibility was to have Hancock explain why he came to Los Angeles. Another had to do with the contents of his little tin of treasures - that was a great place to plant a clue to the twist... instead we get a stick of gum. But even that gum could have been used. We must have come up with a dozen ideas to make that twist logical - which made us all wonder why the filmmakers didn’t come up with any of them? The real tragedy would be that one or more of these ideas were in the original script - and developed out over the years.

The key to planting information that will be payed off with a change to the status quo or an emotional pay off at the end is that you have to do more that just set it up and forget it, you need to water it regularly... so that it becomes the normal world. That way, the pay off at the end is what changes the normal world... giving it power and emotions. I’m now curious about the HANCOCK script (TONIGHT, HE COMES) and want to see whether these problems came from development or poor direction... or if they were things on the page that could never be seen on the screen. You never want to leave the story on the page - you want to make sure everything can be seen or heard.

Pages: Still cooking on the SECOND SON spec - 5 pages - a bit behind because of the holiday on Friday and a party on BBQ Saturday. Though this is technically a page one rewrite of an old script, there isn't a single word in act 1 from the original script. It's all new material.

- Bill

I Can't Wait!

Which James Bond you like depends on how old you are. If your first Bond film was with Roger Moore, that's who you think Bond is. If your first Bond film was with George Lazenby - you're screwed. My first memories of James Bond was watching some Connery film (maybe GOLDFINGER, probably YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE) reflected in the back window of my parent's car at the Pleasant Hill Motor Movies when I was *supposed* to be sleeping in the back seat. This made Bond both forbidden (there was violence and nekkid chicks) and something adult... something to look forward to. Eventually I saw Connery Bond films on TV, and that's who I think is the "real Bond". Connery punched people. He wasn't elegant - he was savage. The joke was when Moore took over that Connery was the Bond who had a wetsuit on under his tuxedo... Moore was wearing a tuxedo under his wetsuit.

One of my favorite opening scenes is in THURDERBALL. It begins with a funeral for "JB" - James Bond is dead? Then Bond is revealed at the funeral with that hot Japanese chick who might have been Kissy Suzuki... and we discover the funeral is for a SPECTRE agent named Jacques Bouvar. Bond and Kissy watch the funeral procession... Then, at Bouvar's mansion, Bond shows up to pay his respects to the widow, Mrs. Bouvar.... then hauls off and punches her in the face! What? Then Mrs. Bouvar returns a punch - and this massive savage fight begins. What? Revealed that it's not *Mrs* Bouvar - but Bouvar himself, who has faked his own death. Bond figured it out when she opened her own car door at the funeral. Heck, everything you think you know about the story so far keeps changing! The fight is amazing - no pice of furniture in that room is not used as a weapon and subsequently destroyed. Chairs, sofas, fire pokers - if it's in the room, it's used to hurt someone. They just don't make fight scenes like this anymore... except for in the last Bond film.

For me, the Bond reboot CASINO ROYALE was a return to the Bond I grew up watching. Though my first "legal" Bond film was LIVE AND LET DIE (also at the Pleasant Hill Motor Movies - Mom allowed me to actually watch the film, and that meant my little brother and little sister could watch, too) with Moore, I always think of Bond as the guy who can really throw a punch. There was all of this talk that Daniel Craig was too wimpy to be Bond, but that opening scene where he basically destroys every appliance in a men's room with a bad guy's *head* gave me confidence. And the rest of the film, though flawed, delivers that Connery style Bond I'd been craving. Part of the reboot was Bond for the BOURNE audience - a more realistic style of action. When I was writing my SLEEPER AGENT script, I was trying for something between FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE and the BOURNE movies...

There were rumors that the new Bond film was going to go back to teh Roger Moore style - that it was going to be filled with dopey action and quips and not nearly as brutal. Okay, here's the trailer... you be the judge.

Don't know about you, but I'm excited. One thing I think is cool is that it seems to take place *seconds* after the last one ended. And that Bond is still that violent renegade agent who smashed through anything that gets in his way. Where do I stand in line?

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: You Need A Busload Of Scripts To Get By. New script tips M-T-W this week!
Yesterday’s Dinner: Panda Express in NoHo on the way to my friend's movie premiere.
Pages: Lots of pages of new tips! Probably because I'm supposed to be working on something else. I've also poked around on the DEMON HUNTER script, which I think I'm going to call SECOND SON, even though there is a Charles Sailor novel from 1979 with that title that is also about the second coming... though completely different than my story.