Alarm. Wake. Shower and shave. Grab bag. Down stairs. The Starbucks isn’t open, but the Costa is. I cut across to Charring Cross Road and walk past bookstores - one with a recently broken front window, to the Charring Cross Train Station on the other side of Central London. I thought about taking a cab at one point, but I need to get the blood flowing, so it’s better to walk. I’ve allowed myself plenty of time... which is both a good and bad thing. I get to Charring Cross Station early - but can not find the side street the class is on. I keep walking around the station - looking at the buildings with storefronts that might have a theater or some other large room for classes. Nothing.
I stop to buy another coffee at a little place that tries to entice me with a full English breakfast, but I don’t have time. I have to find this classroom space. I try walking around the station again. There’s an alleyway that leads to a residential street. There is zero chance that I am teaching this class in someone’s living room, but I go down the alley to the residential street, thinking there might be offices and such *behind* the train station. But this residential street ends up the street I’m looking for... and there’s a little folding sign that says Raindance in front of one of the apartment buildings. I check the address, it’s correct. Okay, this should be interesting... but now I’m way early. I go back for a second cup of coffee - but no English breakfast... that would make me sleepy.
I go back to the apartment building a half hour before the class, go to the indicated side door, open it... to reveal a very narrow spiral staircase going down down down into hell. Oh, and it smells like piss. At the bottom of the horror movie staircase is a basement that smells less like piss, and that’s where I’m holding t he class. It’s a “rehearsal space” - so there’s an upright piano, some props, and a rack of costumes. Wow! I can play dress up! But I can’t show clips, because there is no DVD player or monitor.
Okay, this is partially my fault. Though I requested this stuff in a couple of e-mails, Elliot sent me an e-mail yesterday asking if I still needed the equipment, and because I am developing a lousy attitude about this class, I ignored it. How many times do I have to request equipment? Problem is - I really should have confirmed it. Though all kinds of things are making me angry about this class - no brochures, no posts to UK screenwriting groups, Elliot continuing to tell me how broke they are - when Elliot is trying to be helpful and double checking things I’m being a dismissive asshole. And I’m *still* being an asshole, because I snap at the Raindance folks who have volunteered to help run the class in exchange for sitting in, that there’s no damned DVD player. They get on the phone (which requires climbing the dungeon steps to get a signal) and call Elliot, and he rushes over with all of the equipment. And still being an asshole, I do noth thank him. You see, I *expected* the equipment to be there waiting for me.
This is the smallest class I have ever taught. After 5 classes of 140-200 people, standing room only, I hand out my 15 syllabuses and start talking. You might think that a smaller class is less work than a larger class, but it’s really much more work. Instead of being part of a large group, people become individuals - and everyone wants individual attention. They ask about the specifics of their script, they interrupt more. This is not anything against the students - it’s the nature of a small class. All of the questions were good ones, and it was a lively and interactive class. But I couldn’t just run on automatic, I had to think on my feet and *work*. A larger class where I would have made more money would have been less work. Funny how it works out like that. Bob McKee can do a completely automatic lecture to 300 people at $600 a head and you can’t ask questions or make eye contact or even pee unless it’s an assigned break... but I have a room with just over a dozen people and I have to *work*.
The class goes great, lots of smart people, and Saturday night instead of going to see movies, I sit in a Starbucks and burn a stack of CDs with the other class materials and a bunch of screenplays on PDF. Sunday morning I sleep later, always a mistake, and have to race to get to class. Less time quaffing coffee means it takes me a while to rev up, but I get the rhythm and the day zooms by. Sunday has a couple of longer clips designed to give my voice a rest, but the clips are really good - the first ten minutes of GODFATHER PART 2 and a ten minute cartoon from FANTASIA 2000.
Saturday I went more than an hour over time to cover all of the material and answer all of the questions, but Sunday I have to leave when the class is over because it is closing night of the festival - and I’ve snagged a ticket for Janet’s friend Suzanne (Janet has a ticket) and the three of us are going to have dinner together before the movie and party. One of the Raindance staff (Rory - great guy) comes in close to the end of the class to tell me that Janet e-mail me a slightly incorrect location for the restaurant, and gives me the actual location. So class ends... and I still end up talking for almost half an hour while trying to pack up and leave. There are always people who have last minute questions, and know this is the last chance they have to ask me (except, or course, e-mail - send me your questions!). So I end up *racing* from Charring Cross Station to the restaurant location, overshoot by a block, and have to double back. Pisser is - I have this bag with my 20 lb book of class materials on my shoulder for the rest of the night.
TO BE CONTINUED (in about 2 hours)
- Bill
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
London Interlude 5: This Is Great Cinematography!
I mentioned in my review of MOTHS that it was the best shot film I saw at Raindance, and just stumbled on the trailer on YouTube.
The cinematographer is Maura Morales Bergmann - when I first posted this, and first posted the review, I neglected to give her credit. I included this film in an article for the January 2010 issue of Script Magazine, and *did* credit her in the article.
(I'm running this again, because I did not finish the next "chapter" and need something to run today.)
- Bill
The cinematographer is Maura Morales Bergmann - when I first posted this, and first posted the review, I neglected to give her credit. I included this film in an article for the January 2010 issue of Script Magazine, and *did* credit her in the article.
(I'm running this again, because I did not finish the next "chapter" and need something to run today.)
- Bill
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
London 14B: Day 10 - Dinner Party
So I climb the stairs down to the cinema, still not knowing where my class is tomorrow morning and wondering if I can stay awake (after 4 hours of sleep) for two movies made by people who have taken classes I taught. The more I think about it, the more I worry that if I stay for DEADLINE I won’t be able to jog over to the Raindance Café Bombshelter and find the staff member who knows where my class is. So, I decide to skip DEADLINE - sorry! Maybe I’ll catch the movie at a festival in the USA.
MOVIE: THE DINNER PARTY - Australia - Based on a true story about a group of 20 somethings who attend a dinner party in Australia... which ends in murder. While I was writing up this entry the writer-director (Scott Murden) e-mailed me to say that he was enjoying the blog entries about Raindance and looking forward to reading what I had to say about his film... and to be honest. Though I didn’t say this in my reply - I am usually too damned honest. Has he read any of the stories or reviews of films made by friends of mine? So, Scott, fasten your seat belt. What I’ve decided to do, is not just to say what I liked and disliked about DINNER PARTY, but to try to find some writing lessons in there while I’m at it.
I know from the post film Q&A that it was a true indie film - made on a low budget. Not a Hollywood low budget - a real live we-have-no-money low budget. That is one of the great things about the Raindance festival - they actually focus on independent films, not some movie star multi-million pet project from a studio indie label. Also, I know that the financing fell out at one point... and they made the movie anyway. So it’s an accomplishment that this film exists - the 35mm mumblecore films and that feature length Obsession commercial had money for things like lights and lenses, this film probably had to be creative just to get images on tape (or card or hard drive or whatever).
The story concept was a smart move for an indie film - most of the story takes place in a single house, but instead of some crazed maniac chopping off teenager’s heads, the film is about an unstable young woman who plans on inviting all of her friends over for a dinner party, with a murder-suicide as desert. Only problem is - her boyfriend isn’t in on it. He’s going to be murdered and doesn’t know it. Great dramatic premise for a central location story.
The movie opens with police arresting or interrogating dinner party guests and the hostess, Angela (Laura Cox). Though this has nothing to do with writing - I remember some ragged cinematography and shot choice and editing in the beginning of the film (and there may have been some later, as well) - one thing to remember if you are making your own movie with very little movie is that you can’t do too much planning. You can always change things if you need to, but having shot lists and story boards and a real idea of what the shots and look of your film is going to help when you find yourself needing to shoot a page and a half in an hour because you are losing light or something. You can plan your shots at your leisure before filming or when you have a whole cast and crew waiting on you and the equipment is due back in a few hours. Knowing what the shot is, why you are using this lens and this angle and this camera move (and what this shot will make the audience feel) is critical - especially for the opening scenes. There was some really good camera work later in the film - especially the Angela-Joel in the trees stuff - but that was at the end of the movie. Just as the first ten pages of your script need to be as smooth and professional and typo-free as possible, the first ten minutes of your film need to impress the heck out of the audience (which includes film buyers and film distribs). First impressions. If the first ten minutes looks like it cost millions, we’ll cut you all kinds of slack later on.
After the police, we flash back to the events leading up to the dinner party and the dinner party itself. Somewhere a decision was made to remove “audience superiority”, and I think that was a mistake. All of the characters go to the dinner party knowing that Angela is going to kill her boyfriend and then herself. Audience superiority is when the audience knows something that the characters do not, and it’s a great suspense building tool. If we see a character put poison in a glass on wine, and then set the glass in front of our hero, the audience will be screaming at the screen every time the hero picks up the glass to take a sip - the audience knows something the character does not. Here we have a mix of dinner party guests, and all of them know what’s going to happen next. It might have been better if only one of them had known and the others slowly discover what’s about to happen - because it gives the characters something to accomplish and creates some suspense... will they figure it out in time and put a stop to it? Always be thinking about the viewer’s emotions in your script - not only what are they supposed to be feeling in this scene, but how is this scene *creating* those emotions in the viewer? We don’t want the audience to just watch the film, we want them to *experience* the film.
I probably have a half dozen very different script tips that call screenwriting a Balancing Act - and for everything we take away, we must add something... and vice versa. The great thing about the concept is that the story can mostly take place in the house at the dinner party - but that means we have taken away all of those locations and cut out of that house... we are stuck there. Which means the things we have in the house have to be stronger to keep the balance. When I was writing VICTIM OF DIRECTOR (which was called IMPLICATED back then), I knew that keeping most of the story in the murder victim’s house meant I had to ramp up everything else: there needed to be more plot twists and more suspense and more big character moments and in the case of that story - more nekkid scenes - than in some story where excitement and variety could come from changing locations at the end of every scene. Having DINNER PARTY mostly take place in one house... and in the dining room of that house... puts all kinds of pressure on the other elements in the story.
The six main characters (with one exception) may have enough character for a story where all kinds of exciting things are happening, but when much of the film is just people sitting around a table having a dinner conversation, they needed to be more clearly defined and more distinct. Each really needed a very different point of view, and different vocabularies and attitudes and even looks. The stand out character is Freddy (Kai Harris), who gets all of the great lines and has an active role in the story - he knows what is going on and makes some effort to confront Angela and stop her from killing Joel. But even this character could have used a little work. If *all* of the characters had been at his level, the film would have worked better.
One of the reasons why his character stands out is because he gets some good dramatic scenes with Angela about the murder-suicide plan. Even though the rest of the dinner party guests know about the murder-suicide, they barely discuss it. No one seems to have any strong opinions about it except Freddy. That’s a problem - if a movie is *about* a murder-suicide plan, it needs to be *about* the murder-suicide plan. Much of the dinner conversation was normal, kind of boring, dinner table conversation. As if they all accepted that the night would end with two of the dinner party dead - no big deal. If you told me that the film was mostly improvised, that would make sense - it had that small talk feel of an improvised film. Instead, this should have been a debate about murder-suicide... and a *veiled* debate because the killer and victim are sitting at the table. That would have given the film more drama and more conflict and really made it *about* murder-suicides. Each character should have been given a character-specific opinion and have them hash it out as they eat. Argue. Get in each other’s faces. With only a handful of characters, each could have had a different and very strong opinion on the subject. “Do you have the right to kill someone just because you want to die?” “Hey, when my aunt died, she had her dog buried with her... they had to put the dog to sleep first.” “None of this is any of our business - people control their own lives and we shouldn’t interfere.” “Suicide is a sin - only God should decide when we die.” “So that drunk on the road is God doing his work?” “What if someone is in extreme pain?” “Like in the hospital? You could pull the plug on someone you love?” “What if it’s not physical pain, what if it’s emotional pain?” “All broken hearts heal eventually.” “Not all.” And about a million other things that can turn into big dramatic discussions on the subject of murder-suicide.
Another aspect of this is the characters relationships with each other. If you are inviting people to your suicide, you aren’t inviting a bunch of total stranger or casual acquaintances - these people are your closest friends... Yet, we didn’t get the feeling that they were close friends. Though Freddy brings his roommate Matt (Sam Lyndon), these guys seem more like people who live together because one of them answered an ad on Craigs List. And Freddy is so antagonistic to Angela you wonder why she allowed him to be invited. I wanted more exploration of the relationships and how that connected to the murder-suicide desert.
And what about the guest’s responsibility? Though Matt goes to the party to try to stop the murder, once he gets there he talks and eats. Only Freddy, who starts out thinking he’ll just watch two people die, ends up thinking he has any responsibility for what happens (though other characters later discuss it when the party is over). That’s another subject that could have been hashed out in nice dramatic scenes around the table. Really hashed out, not just brought up and abandoned. Though some of this is in the film, it isn’t strong enough for the single location scenario. It needed to be big enough to balance out being unable to cut to another location. The film’s great scenes take place in the bathroom, where Freddy confronts Angela about some hot shots of heroin designed to cause an OD, and the later discovery of the needles by another character. The rest of the film needed to be at that level... that was great stuff!
There’s another great scene near the refrigerator - also a conflict scene. I think when it comes down to it, without the ability to cut away to some other location or character, the story needed more juicy conflict to keep it going.
The film this most reminded me of was RIVER’S EDGE, also based on a true story, about a group of high school kids who discover their friend murdered his girlfriend and do nothing about it. But that film really focused on whether they *should* do something about it, and some kids were just apathetic while others were afraid of the authorities and some didn’t want to rat out a friend... and the relationships of the kids disintegrates... until one realizes that he must turn his friend in. Oddly, there’s a character named “Sky” in DINNER PARTY and Ione Skye played the female lead in RIVER’S EDGE (unless you count the blow up doll).
One of the issues with characters that are a little sketchy is that it opens the door for some one-note performances, and Angela is a complete bitch 24/7. Aside from an over-all character problem, this creates an interesting story problem: why the hell did Joel hook up with her in the first place? Though there’s some footage at the end of the two in love, and some footage up front of them meeting, there is nothing here that would make me believe Joel would want to move in with this bitch... and that makes me question the reality of the story, and also think that Joel is an idiot who maybe deserves to be killed. I’m not sure that was what they had in mind. The Angela character needs to be *attractive* and interesting and someone you would want to move in with... someone you would want to die with. That’s not a bitch, that’s a seductive and manipulative person. Someone who is dangerous because they can lure you into doing things you don’t want to do. The meeting scene is in a bar where the two dance - but there isn’t much in the way of conversation between the two. Nothing that would show us why these two are meant for each other (or, at least, why Joel would think she’s the one to hook up with in a bar filled with women to dance with). I wanted to see (and hear) the attractive side of Angela - and have that be a part of her character throughout the film.
An important thing with any script in any genre is that the characters be well rounded. You should know why your protagonist is *wrong* and why your antagonist is *right*. Here, we only see why Angela is wrong - completely wrong - and that makes us question why Joel hooked up with her in the first place. We really need to see how wonderful Angela is, and how she can charm anyone into doing anything. That would allow Joel to fall in love with her, her friend to help her buy the hot shots of heroin, and her to be the perfect hostess even when everyone knows her plan is to murder Joel and then maybe kill herself. Funny how these murder suicide pacts usually end with the murder and never get around to the suicide.
As the party winds down, and Joel slumps over in his chair and needs to be helped upstairs, the guests leave to their apartments to discuss what they could have done and should have done... while one character calls the police. Like in RIVER’S EDGE, one of the characters realizes they can’t just be bystanders to a murder, they must do something. And that leads us back to the opening arrests and that flashback of Angela and Joel in happier times. THE DINNER PARTY has a great idea and some great scenes with Freddy, but I wish the other characters had been as fleshed out as Freddy’s character and that there was more debate about the murder-suicide. As a first film made for very little money, it shows promise, and it *was* selected as one of the five films in the Best First Feature category. I hope this leads to some more films from Scott with bigger budgets.
AFTER THE FILM: I am dead tired and worried about finding my class the next morning, and walk out of the cinema like a zombie. I say goodnight to Janet and walk to the Raindance Café Bombshelter, where I find the staff member who knows where my class is! As she’s about to leave! She draws me a map, and it’s near Charring Cross Station, which is a longish walk. I thank her and head back to my hotel to try to get 8 hours of sleep before the class... but remember I have to burn CDs for the class. Hell, I’ll skip movies and do that tomorrow night. I need the sleep!
- Bill
MOVIE: THE DINNER PARTY - Australia - Based on a true story about a group of 20 somethings who attend a dinner party in Australia... which ends in murder. While I was writing up this entry the writer-director (Scott Murden) e-mailed me to say that he was enjoying the blog entries about Raindance and looking forward to reading what I had to say about his film... and to be honest. Though I didn’t say this in my reply - I am usually too damned honest. Has he read any of the stories or reviews of films made by friends of mine? So, Scott, fasten your seat belt. What I’ve decided to do, is not just to say what I liked and disliked about DINNER PARTY, but to try to find some writing lessons in there while I’m at it.
I know from the post film Q&A that it was a true indie film - made on a low budget. Not a Hollywood low budget - a real live we-have-no-money low budget. That is one of the great things about the Raindance festival - they actually focus on independent films, not some movie star multi-million pet project from a studio indie label. Also, I know that the financing fell out at one point... and they made the movie anyway. So it’s an accomplishment that this film exists - the 35mm mumblecore films and that feature length Obsession commercial had money for things like lights and lenses, this film probably had to be creative just to get images on tape (or card or hard drive or whatever).
The story concept was a smart move for an indie film - most of the story takes place in a single house, but instead of some crazed maniac chopping off teenager’s heads, the film is about an unstable young woman who plans on inviting all of her friends over for a dinner party, with a murder-suicide as desert. Only problem is - her boyfriend isn’t in on it. He’s going to be murdered and doesn’t know it. Great dramatic premise for a central location story.
The movie opens with police arresting or interrogating dinner party guests and the hostess, Angela (Laura Cox). Though this has nothing to do with writing - I remember some ragged cinematography and shot choice and editing in the beginning of the film (and there may have been some later, as well) - one thing to remember if you are making your own movie with very little movie is that you can’t do too much planning. You can always change things if you need to, but having shot lists and story boards and a real idea of what the shots and look of your film is going to help when you find yourself needing to shoot a page and a half in an hour because you are losing light or something. You can plan your shots at your leisure before filming or when you have a whole cast and crew waiting on you and the equipment is due back in a few hours. Knowing what the shot is, why you are using this lens and this angle and this camera move (and what this shot will make the audience feel) is critical - especially for the opening scenes. There was some really good camera work later in the film - especially the Angela-Joel in the trees stuff - but that was at the end of the movie. Just as the first ten pages of your script need to be as smooth and professional and typo-free as possible, the first ten minutes of your film need to impress the heck out of the audience (which includes film buyers and film distribs). First impressions. If the first ten minutes looks like it cost millions, we’ll cut you all kinds of slack later on.
After the police, we flash back to the events leading up to the dinner party and the dinner party itself. Somewhere a decision was made to remove “audience superiority”, and I think that was a mistake. All of the characters go to the dinner party knowing that Angela is going to kill her boyfriend and then herself. Audience superiority is when the audience knows something that the characters do not, and it’s a great suspense building tool. If we see a character put poison in a glass on wine, and then set the glass in front of our hero, the audience will be screaming at the screen every time the hero picks up the glass to take a sip - the audience knows something the character does not. Here we have a mix of dinner party guests, and all of them know what’s going to happen next. It might have been better if only one of them had known and the others slowly discover what’s about to happen - because it gives the characters something to accomplish and creates some suspense... will they figure it out in time and put a stop to it? Always be thinking about the viewer’s emotions in your script - not only what are they supposed to be feeling in this scene, but how is this scene *creating* those emotions in the viewer? We don’t want the audience to just watch the film, we want them to *experience* the film.
I probably have a half dozen very different script tips that call screenwriting a Balancing Act - and for everything we take away, we must add something... and vice versa. The great thing about the concept is that the story can mostly take place in the house at the dinner party - but that means we have taken away all of those locations and cut out of that house... we are stuck there. Which means the things we have in the house have to be stronger to keep the balance. When I was writing VICTIM OF DIRECTOR (which was called IMPLICATED back then), I knew that keeping most of the story in the murder victim’s house meant I had to ramp up everything else: there needed to be more plot twists and more suspense and more big character moments and in the case of that story - more nekkid scenes - than in some story where excitement and variety could come from changing locations at the end of every scene. Having DINNER PARTY mostly take place in one house... and in the dining room of that house... puts all kinds of pressure on the other elements in the story.
The six main characters (with one exception) may have enough character for a story where all kinds of exciting things are happening, but when much of the film is just people sitting around a table having a dinner conversation, they needed to be more clearly defined and more distinct. Each really needed a very different point of view, and different vocabularies and attitudes and even looks. The stand out character is Freddy (Kai Harris), who gets all of the great lines and has an active role in the story - he knows what is going on and makes some effort to confront Angela and stop her from killing Joel. But even this character could have used a little work. If *all* of the characters had been at his level, the film would have worked better.
One of the reasons why his character stands out is because he gets some good dramatic scenes with Angela about the murder-suicide plan. Even though the rest of the dinner party guests know about the murder-suicide, they barely discuss it. No one seems to have any strong opinions about it except Freddy. That’s a problem - if a movie is *about* a murder-suicide plan, it needs to be *about* the murder-suicide plan. Much of the dinner conversation was normal, kind of boring, dinner table conversation. As if they all accepted that the night would end with two of the dinner party dead - no big deal. If you told me that the film was mostly improvised, that would make sense - it had that small talk feel of an improvised film. Instead, this should have been a debate about murder-suicide... and a *veiled* debate because the killer and victim are sitting at the table. That would have given the film more drama and more conflict and really made it *about* murder-suicides. Each character should have been given a character-specific opinion and have them hash it out as they eat. Argue. Get in each other’s faces. With only a handful of characters, each could have had a different and very strong opinion on the subject. “Do you have the right to kill someone just because you want to die?” “Hey, when my aunt died, she had her dog buried with her... they had to put the dog to sleep first.” “None of this is any of our business - people control their own lives and we shouldn’t interfere.” “Suicide is a sin - only God should decide when we die.” “So that drunk on the road is God doing his work?” “What if someone is in extreme pain?” “Like in the hospital? You could pull the plug on someone you love?” “What if it’s not physical pain, what if it’s emotional pain?” “All broken hearts heal eventually.” “Not all.” And about a million other things that can turn into big dramatic discussions on the subject of murder-suicide.
Another aspect of this is the characters relationships with each other. If you are inviting people to your suicide, you aren’t inviting a bunch of total stranger or casual acquaintances - these people are your closest friends... Yet, we didn’t get the feeling that they were close friends. Though Freddy brings his roommate Matt (Sam Lyndon), these guys seem more like people who live together because one of them answered an ad on Craigs List. And Freddy is so antagonistic to Angela you wonder why she allowed him to be invited. I wanted more exploration of the relationships and how that connected to the murder-suicide desert.
And what about the guest’s responsibility? Though Matt goes to the party to try to stop the murder, once he gets there he talks and eats. Only Freddy, who starts out thinking he’ll just watch two people die, ends up thinking he has any responsibility for what happens (though other characters later discuss it when the party is over). That’s another subject that could have been hashed out in nice dramatic scenes around the table. Really hashed out, not just brought up and abandoned. Though some of this is in the film, it isn’t strong enough for the single location scenario. It needed to be big enough to balance out being unable to cut to another location. The film’s great scenes take place in the bathroom, where Freddy confronts Angela about some hot shots of heroin designed to cause an OD, and the later discovery of the needles by another character. The rest of the film needed to be at that level... that was great stuff!
There’s another great scene near the refrigerator - also a conflict scene. I think when it comes down to it, without the ability to cut away to some other location or character, the story needed more juicy conflict to keep it going.
The film this most reminded me of was RIVER’S EDGE, also based on a true story, about a group of high school kids who discover their friend murdered his girlfriend and do nothing about it. But that film really focused on whether they *should* do something about it, and some kids were just apathetic while others were afraid of the authorities and some didn’t want to rat out a friend... and the relationships of the kids disintegrates... until one realizes that he must turn his friend in. Oddly, there’s a character named “Sky” in DINNER PARTY and Ione Skye played the female lead in RIVER’S EDGE (unless you count the blow up doll).
One of the issues with characters that are a little sketchy is that it opens the door for some one-note performances, and Angela is a complete bitch 24/7. Aside from an over-all character problem, this creates an interesting story problem: why the hell did Joel hook up with her in the first place? Though there’s some footage at the end of the two in love, and some footage up front of them meeting, there is nothing here that would make me believe Joel would want to move in with this bitch... and that makes me question the reality of the story, and also think that Joel is an idiot who maybe deserves to be killed. I’m not sure that was what they had in mind. The Angela character needs to be *attractive* and interesting and someone you would want to move in with... someone you would want to die with. That’s not a bitch, that’s a seductive and manipulative person. Someone who is dangerous because they can lure you into doing things you don’t want to do. The meeting scene is in a bar where the two dance - but there isn’t much in the way of conversation between the two. Nothing that would show us why these two are meant for each other (or, at least, why Joel would think she’s the one to hook up with in a bar filled with women to dance with). I wanted to see (and hear) the attractive side of Angela - and have that be a part of her character throughout the film.
An important thing with any script in any genre is that the characters be well rounded. You should know why your protagonist is *wrong* and why your antagonist is *right*. Here, we only see why Angela is wrong - completely wrong - and that makes us question why Joel hooked up with her in the first place. We really need to see how wonderful Angela is, and how she can charm anyone into doing anything. That would allow Joel to fall in love with her, her friend to help her buy the hot shots of heroin, and her to be the perfect hostess even when everyone knows her plan is to murder Joel and then maybe kill herself. Funny how these murder suicide pacts usually end with the murder and never get around to the suicide.
As the party winds down, and Joel slumps over in his chair and needs to be helped upstairs, the guests leave to their apartments to discuss what they could have done and should have done... while one character calls the police. Like in RIVER’S EDGE, one of the characters realizes they can’t just be bystanders to a murder, they must do something. And that leads us back to the opening arrests and that flashback of Angela and Joel in happier times. THE DINNER PARTY has a great idea and some great scenes with Freddy, but I wish the other characters had been as fleshed out as Freddy’s character and that there was more debate about the murder-suicide. As a first film made for very little money, it shows promise, and it *was* selected as one of the five films in the Best First Feature category. I hope this leads to some more films from Scott with bigger budgets.
AFTER THE FILM: I am dead tired and worried about finding my class the next morning, and walk out of the cinema like a zombie. I say goodnight to Janet and walk to the Raindance Café Bombshelter, where I find the staff member who knows where my class is! As she’s about to leave! She draws me a map, and it’s near Charring Cross Station, which is a longish walk. I thank her and head back to my hotel to try to get 8 hours of sleep before the class... but remember I have to burn CDs for the class. Hell, I’ll skip movies and do that tomorrow night. I need the sleep!
- Bill
Monday, October 26, 2009
London 14: Day 10 - Where Am I Going?
There is not enough coffee in the world for today.
My big two day class starts tomorrow, and I have had no sleep and too much beer and am a complete mess... and still don’t know exactly where the class is being held. All of the students know, but not me. No one has told me. Every time I ask, I get one of those general answers: “Somewhere off Charring Cross Road” - which is like saying it’s somewhere off Wilshire Blvd - covers a lot of ground. Though I can walk to Charring Cross Road from my hotel, and have grabbed a coffee in the Starbucks on the north end of Charring Cross Road, well, there’s a lot more of that road where the class might be, and no one has given me an address, let alone directions.
Because trudging up and down the hotel stairs is a pain in the ass, I get some room service coffee and sit at the nice big desk looking over my class materials. I am not Robert McKee or John Truby or any of those other guru types - I don’t teach classes for a living. The last time I taught the class was three years ago... and I’ve come up with this crazy new “Thematic” idea and haven’t really incorporated it into the class. The one thing I *have* done is watched GHOST a half dozen times and taken all kinds of notes. The original plan was to turn those notes into the Thematic part of the class on the plane, but that didn’t happen... then to do it in my spare time before the weekend class, but with 5 (FIVE!) Free classes I didn’t really have any spare time. So here I am, day before the class, no sleep and probably still drunk, transferring my notes on GHOST onto the pages that will make up the new addition to the class. And it’s all coming together despite having limited brain power.
This whole Thematic thing began with someone’s typo on a message board. They meant to write “theme” but their fingers just kept going and typed “thematic”. My fingers do that often - it’s the curse of too much typing, your fingers finish a word even if that wasn’t the word you were trying to type. I’ll bet there are over a hundred places on this blog where I typed “and” when all I wanted to type was “an”. Anyway - their sentence made no sense at all with the word “thematic”, but I began thinking about that word... and thinking about theme in screenplays, and how I believe that theme influences everything in a script from characters to dialogue.... and I wondered if you could make a brainstorming tool based around theme that could help you flesh out a story idea. If you’ve read my Zombie Article it explores that idea. So I came up with form/chart thingie that started with character or concept and then found the theme and then used that theme to come up with many of the other things you need to develop your screenplay. Characters, scenes, dialogue, actions, etc - all from the theme. Kind of a cool idea, and basically the way I work (consciously now, subconsciously when I first began writing).
Though this is a really cool tool, it also *sounds cool*, and one of the things that all of those guru guys have is some sort of gimmick that makes their screenwriting method sound cool and maybe even easy. Gotta tell you - screenwriting is *not* easy. But one of the big issues I have at Raindance when they are making up brochures (when they do that - not this year) is that my class has no “hook”. It’s just a bunch of tools and techniques that I use that work. Boring. So once I came up with this, I thought it was the answer to my “hook problem” - it’s still just a technique, but it sounds cool. Thematic! Because I’m really good at shooting myself in the foot and kind of hate the whole guru thing, I came up with this semi-parody of a guru sales pitch for the Thematic - not a machine! - and put it in my class description.
But now, here I am trying to take these notes on GHOST and reverse-engineering the film so that I can use it as an example for the class tomorrow... and it fits perfectly. I go over the rest of the class, look at the *menu* of my clip reel again (but don’t have time to watch the clips) and once everything is organized, I put it in my Script Secrets messenger bag, and put the bag by the front door so that I’ll know where it is when that alarm rings tomorrow morning.
The coffee is gone, but I’m awake enough to greet the world, so I gather up my stuff and leave...
One of the things I pack in my backpack are the originals for the class workbook. Usually when I do the class I give everyone a 120 page workbook, but the problem this time around is that I have the smallest class I have ever taught in my life, and I’m afraid if I give Elliot the workbook to make copies, he may find someway to charge me extra for it. The more expense stuff I give them, the more they'll cut off my split, and with so few students I have to be careful. The only thing I want him to be able to charge off on the class is the room. Look, if I come away from these two weeks with a trip to London and an all access pass to the film festival, that's great - I'll be happy. But the weekend class is a lot of hard work, and it would be nice to get paid for it. I'm afraid once the expenses are added up there will be nothing left, and that means I need to control as many of those expenses as possible. So I’ve decided to just print the syllabus, the thematic pages, and the “home work assignments” and give them the rest of the stuff as pdfs on a disk. I have brought a bunch of blank disks in paper sleeves with the web address on them just in case - and had planned to put some script pdfs on them for the class. Now it’s close to 500 script pdfs *and* the class materials in pdf form. But I still have to burn these.
I grab a coffee at the British Museum Starbucks, joke with the German guy, and look for a copy place. I find one not far away, and make 15 copies of the syllabus and thematic and homework stuff - pay for it out of pocket. It’s 30 pages, and easily fills a paper box. The paper box goes in my backpack...
Oh, I should mention that I also have two bottles of wine in my backpack. When I was on the pitching panel they gave all of us a Raindance messenger bag with some goodies inside - including 2 bottles of wine. Though, unlike Dracula, I *do* drink wine, I had no idea how I was going to get it home with me. It would have to be carry on, and that just seemed like a hassle. So I asked Janet if she wanted two bottles of wine, and now my backpack is filled with 450 sheets of paper (stapled) and 2 bottles of wine, plus the laptop and all of the other crap I lug around with me every day (notes on some script I’m in the middle of - did I really think I’d have time to work on it in London?). I walk cross town to the cinema - stopping at the Café first to see if anyone knows where my class is tomorrow... nobody knows. Swell! I stop at the office and ask, and get the Charring Cross Road answer... but they tell me which staff member actually knows all of the details. All I have to do is find her. So, I go to the cinema to unload the wine on Janet and see some movies.
Janet has brought along a friend, a cute woman named Suzanne, and we all go see..
MOVIE: THE INVESTIGATOR - from Hungary - So, I’m half asleep... and this film keeps me awake. A really creepy thriller with a dozen big twists, the story opens with a businesswoman going to her office where we see pictures of her family on her desk. As she prepares to leave, she tries closing the window, but part of the shade is in the way. She climbs onto her desk to free the shade... and falls out the window to the street a dozen stories below. The next time we see her she’s on a slab being cut open by the Medical Examiner, Tibi, our protagonist. Tibi sees dead people - every day at work. He’s quiet, reserved... lonely. He goes to the same cafe every night for dinner - a creature of habit. The pretty waitress flirts with him, but that’s her job... except this night, she asks him out to the movies. She’s lonely, too - and knows that Tibi is a good man with an off-putting occupation. Tibi’s mother is dying of cancer, and because of her age the HMO isn’t paying for the available treatment. He’d have to pay out of pocket... but he doesn’t have the money.
Then he gets a phone call from a stranger who calls himself The Cyclops, and quicker than you can say Tom Ripley, Cyclops offers him a chance to make enough money to pay for his mother’s treatment... by murdering a stranger. Tibi is used to dead people, right? Shouldn’t be a problem for him. Tibi takes the job...but killing someone is not the same as cutting them open when they are already dead. The night he’s supposed to kill the guy he has already set up his second date with the waitress, and bought movie tickets in advance. He makes an excuse and goes to kill this stranger... Suspense builds while Tibi follows the victim, working up the nerve to kill him. The day after the murder he goes out with the waitress, same movie, same time, different day... and gives her the ticket stubs for the night of the murder.
He’ll need that alibi, because a pair of detectives come to question him... you see, the stranger he killed was actually his long lost brother. When he was a child he had a brother and sister, but the family was poor and farmed out the kids to relatives... and Tibi’s family moved when he was an infant and he never knew his brother and sister. Now, he has murdered his own brother. Tibi must find out who is behind all of this and why it is happening, as the detectives close in and his new girlfriend wonders what’s happening... but what if the waitress/girlfriend is part of the scheme? Every time you think you know what’s going on, there’s a great twist that changes everything.
One of the great things about this film are the cool “devices” - the brochure for the clinic Tibi wants to take his mother to *comes alive* and the doctors and nurses in the photos tell about the treatments. Instead of having that VO of the person writing a letter while the character is reading it, the letter writer is *there* - standing on a giant letter - walking towards Tibi and talking to him. These devices are interesting and different and turn exposition into something dramatic and visual and magic. The actors are all great, with gentle giant Tibi coming off sympathetic despite being a man of few words who kills his own brother. Lots of twists and suspense, and some swift graphic violence... plus some humor to keep it all from being too dark.
I’ve had pretty good luck with genre films at the festival - this Hungarian film could easily find an audience among thriller and crime film fans in the USA.
LOBBY: Next up is DINNER PARTY, one of two films playing tonight from people who have taken my classes in the past. The other is called DEADLINE and keeps being removed from the Big Board then returning - the showing gets cancelled every day then goes back on the schedule the next day. I have no idea what’s going on with that film, but it may or may not be on after DINNER PARTY. I’m not sure I’ll be awake for DEADLINE, though, as having only 4 hours of sleep is catching up with me and I have a class to teach tomorrow morning - and I still have no idea where that class is.
In the lobby, the writer-director of THE DINNER PARTY is being interviewed by a magazine reporter, and when he sees me, starts telling the reporter about taking my class and now I really do have to see his movie.
When I go upstairs to get my ticket for THE DINNER PARTY I run into some Raindance people and ask where my class is, and get the same Charring Cross answer - which doesn't help me. I hope I find out where it is before the class begins...
The pisser is that DINNER PARTY is *not* marked in my big fat movie program, a film called CRY OF THE OWL is... starring Paddy Considine (who I met at a previous Raindance) and Julia Styles, and based on a Patricia Highsmith novel (she wrote the Tom Ripley novels and STRANGERS ON A TRAIN and is one of those great, creepy thriller novels). This is a great book (about a normal man who becomes the center of several murder investigations) and I really wanted to see it, but instead went downstairs and into the cinema to see THE DINNER PARTY... but we’ll talk about that tomorrow.
- Bill
My big two day class starts tomorrow, and I have had no sleep and too much beer and am a complete mess... and still don’t know exactly where the class is being held. All of the students know, but not me. No one has told me. Every time I ask, I get one of those general answers: “Somewhere off Charring Cross Road” - which is like saying it’s somewhere off Wilshire Blvd - covers a lot of ground. Though I can walk to Charring Cross Road from my hotel, and have grabbed a coffee in the Starbucks on the north end of Charring Cross Road, well, there’s a lot more of that road where the class might be, and no one has given me an address, let alone directions.
Because trudging up and down the hotel stairs is a pain in the ass, I get some room service coffee and sit at the nice big desk looking over my class materials. I am not Robert McKee or John Truby or any of those other guru types - I don’t teach classes for a living. The last time I taught the class was three years ago... and I’ve come up with this crazy new “Thematic” idea and haven’t really incorporated it into the class. The one thing I *have* done is watched GHOST a half dozen times and taken all kinds of notes. The original plan was to turn those notes into the Thematic part of the class on the plane, but that didn’t happen... then to do it in my spare time before the weekend class, but with 5 (FIVE!) Free classes I didn’t really have any spare time. So here I am, day before the class, no sleep and probably still drunk, transferring my notes on GHOST onto the pages that will make up the new addition to the class. And it’s all coming together despite having limited brain power.
This whole Thematic thing began with someone’s typo on a message board. They meant to write “theme” but their fingers just kept going and typed “thematic”. My fingers do that often - it’s the curse of too much typing, your fingers finish a word even if that wasn’t the word you were trying to type. I’ll bet there are over a hundred places on this blog where I typed “and” when all I wanted to type was “an”. Anyway - their sentence made no sense at all with the word “thematic”, but I began thinking about that word... and thinking about theme in screenplays, and how I believe that theme influences everything in a script from characters to dialogue.... and I wondered if you could make a brainstorming tool based around theme that could help you flesh out a story idea. If you’ve read my Zombie Article it explores that idea. So I came up with form/chart thingie that started with character or concept and then found the theme and then used that theme to come up with many of the other things you need to develop your screenplay. Characters, scenes, dialogue, actions, etc - all from the theme. Kind of a cool idea, and basically the way I work (consciously now, subconsciously when I first began writing).
Though this is a really cool tool, it also *sounds cool*, and one of the things that all of those guru guys have is some sort of gimmick that makes their screenwriting method sound cool and maybe even easy. Gotta tell you - screenwriting is *not* easy. But one of the big issues I have at Raindance when they are making up brochures (when they do that - not this year) is that my class has no “hook”. It’s just a bunch of tools and techniques that I use that work. Boring. So once I came up with this, I thought it was the answer to my “hook problem” - it’s still just a technique, but it sounds cool. Thematic! Because I’m really good at shooting myself in the foot and kind of hate the whole guru thing, I came up with this semi-parody of a guru sales pitch for the Thematic - not a machine! - and put it in my class description.
But now, here I am trying to take these notes on GHOST and reverse-engineering the film so that I can use it as an example for the class tomorrow... and it fits perfectly. I go over the rest of the class, look at the *menu* of my clip reel again (but don’t have time to watch the clips) and once everything is organized, I put it in my Script Secrets messenger bag, and put the bag by the front door so that I’ll know where it is when that alarm rings tomorrow morning.
The coffee is gone, but I’m awake enough to greet the world, so I gather up my stuff and leave...
One of the things I pack in my backpack are the originals for the class workbook. Usually when I do the class I give everyone a 120 page workbook, but the problem this time around is that I have the smallest class I have ever taught in my life, and I’m afraid if I give Elliot the workbook to make copies, he may find someway to charge me extra for it. The more expense stuff I give them, the more they'll cut off my split, and with so few students I have to be careful. The only thing I want him to be able to charge off on the class is the room. Look, if I come away from these two weeks with a trip to London and an all access pass to the film festival, that's great - I'll be happy. But the weekend class is a lot of hard work, and it would be nice to get paid for it. I'm afraid once the expenses are added up there will be nothing left, and that means I need to control as many of those expenses as possible. So I’ve decided to just print the syllabus, the thematic pages, and the “home work assignments” and give them the rest of the stuff as pdfs on a disk. I have brought a bunch of blank disks in paper sleeves with the web address on them just in case - and had planned to put some script pdfs on them for the class. Now it’s close to 500 script pdfs *and* the class materials in pdf form. But I still have to burn these.
I grab a coffee at the British Museum Starbucks, joke with the German guy, and look for a copy place. I find one not far away, and make 15 copies of the syllabus and thematic and homework stuff - pay for it out of pocket. It’s 30 pages, and easily fills a paper box. The paper box goes in my backpack...
Oh, I should mention that I also have two bottles of wine in my backpack. When I was on the pitching panel they gave all of us a Raindance messenger bag with some goodies inside - including 2 bottles of wine. Though, unlike Dracula, I *do* drink wine, I had no idea how I was going to get it home with me. It would have to be carry on, and that just seemed like a hassle. So I asked Janet if she wanted two bottles of wine, and now my backpack is filled with 450 sheets of paper (stapled) and 2 bottles of wine, plus the laptop and all of the other crap I lug around with me every day (notes on some script I’m in the middle of - did I really think I’d have time to work on it in London?). I walk cross town to the cinema - stopping at the Café first to see if anyone knows where my class is tomorrow... nobody knows. Swell! I stop at the office and ask, and get the Charring Cross Road answer... but they tell me which staff member actually knows all of the details. All I have to do is find her. So, I go to the cinema to unload the wine on Janet and see some movies.
Janet has brought along a friend, a cute woman named Suzanne, and we all go see..
MOVIE: THE INVESTIGATOR - from Hungary - So, I’m half asleep... and this film keeps me awake. A really creepy thriller with a dozen big twists, the story opens with a businesswoman going to her office where we see pictures of her family on her desk. As she prepares to leave, she tries closing the window, but part of the shade is in the way. She climbs onto her desk to free the shade... and falls out the window to the street a dozen stories below. The next time we see her she’s on a slab being cut open by the Medical Examiner, Tibi, our protagonist. Tibi sees dead people - every day at work. He’s quiet, reserved... lonely. He goes to the same cafe every night for dinner - a creature of habit. The pretty waitress flirts with him, but that’s her job... except this night, she asks him out to the movies. She’s lonely, too - and knows that Tibi is a good man with an off-putting occupation. Tibi’s mother is dying of cancer, and because of her age the HMO isn’t paying for the available treatment. He’d have to pay out of pocket... but he doesn’t have the money.
Then he gets a phone call from a stranger who calls himself The Cyclops, and quicker than you can say Tom Ripley, Cyclops offers him a chance to make enough money to pay for his mother’s treatment... by murdering a stranger. Tibi is used to dead people, right? Shouldn’t be a problem for him. Tibi takes the job...but killing someone is not the same as cutting them open when they are already dead. The night he’s supposed to kill the guy he has already set up his second date with the waitress, and bought movie tickets in advance. He makes an excuse and goes to kill this stranger... Suspense builds while Tibi follows the victim, working up the nerve to kill him. The day after the murder he goes out with the waitress, same movie, same time, different day... and gives her the ticket stubs for the night of the murder.
He’ll need that alibi, because a pair of detectives come to question him... you see, the stranger he killed was actually his long lost brother. When he was a child he had a brother and sister, but the family was poor and farmed out the kids to relatives... and Tibi’s family moved when he was an infant and he never knew his brother and sister. Now, he has murdered his own brother. Tibi must find out who is behind all of this and why it is happening, as the detectives close in and his new girlfriend wonders what’s happening... but what if the waitress/girlfriend is part of the scheme? Every time you think you know what’s going on, there’s a great twist that changes everything.
One of the great things about this film are the cool “devices” - the brochure for the clinic Tibi wants to take his mother to *comes alive* and the doctors and nurses in the photos tell about the treatments. Instead of having that VO of the person writing a letter while the character is reading it, the letter writer is *there* - standing on a giant letter - walking towards Tibi and talking to him. These devices are interesting and different and turn exposition into something dramatic and visual and magic. The actors are all great, with gentle giant Tibi coming off sympathetic despite being a man of few words who kills his own brother. Lots of twists and suspense, and some swift graphic violence... plus some humor to keep it all from being too dark.
I’ve had pretty good luck with genre films at the festival - this Hungarian film could easily find an audience among thriller and crime film fans in the USA.
LOBBY: Next up is DINNER PARTY, one of two films playing tonight from people who have taken my classes in the past. The other is called DEADLINE and keeps being removed from the Big Board then returning - the showing gets cancelled every day then goes back on the schedule the next day. I have no idea what’s going on with that film, but it may or may not be on after DINNER PARTY. I’m not sure I’ll be awake for DEADLINE, though, as having only 4 hours of sleep is catching up with me and I have a class to teach tomorrow morning - and I still have no idea where that class is.
In the lobby, the writer-director of THE DINNER PARTY is being interviewed by a magazine reporter, and when he sees me, starts telling the reporter about taking my class and now I really do have to see his movie.
When I go upstairs to get my ticket for THE DINNER PARTY I run into some Raindance people and ask where my class is, and get the same Charring Cross answer - which doesn't help me. I hope I find out where it is before the class begins...
The pisser is that DINNER PARTY is *not* marked in my big fat movie program, a film called CRY OF THE OWL is... starring Paddy Considine (who I met at a previous Raindance) and Julia Styles, and based on a Patricia Highsmith novel (she wrote the Tom Ripley novels and STRANGERS ON A TRAIN and is one of those great, creepy thriller novels). This is a great book (about a normal man who becomes the center of several murder investigations) and I really wanted to see it, but instead went downstairs and into the cinema to see THE DINNER PARTY... but we’ll talk about that tomorrow.
- Bill
Friday, October 23, 2009
LONDON 13: Day 9 - That Was A Big Mistake
So, pubs in the UK close at 11pm. Now, you may think that’s early, but people here *drink*. That makes it sound like a nation of drunks, and it’s not - but it’s common to go to a pub for lunch and have a pint or two. And with all of the tourist kids and young people, London is kind of like a college town - filled with people who *do* drink to excess. I was walking down the street near Russell Square and saw a guy stagger from a pub, vomit all over himself, then slip in the vomit and land on his face. So closing at 11pm is a good idea. Also, the tube closes early, and that gives people enough time to stagger to the nearest subway station and get home.
But closing at 11pm throws a crimp into one’s post-cinema drinking... but there’s a loophole in the drinking laws - clubs are allowed to serve drinks late (I don’t know the actual rules, but I think Phoenix Club stops serving at 2am, and doesn’t kick you out until you’ve finished your drinks - which might be as late as 3am). Raindance made a deal with the Phoenix Club to give temp membership to anyone with a festival badge... making it the place to drink after the movies. I had yet to go there, because I had classes at noon and was jet lagged and out of it getting to bed after the movies. But the guys from POPATOPLIS had been going every single night (networking)_and I figured I’d go have a Guiness with them. Also, the Phoenix was actually on my way back to the hotel, so I could pop in for a quick drink on my way back.
Yeah. Right.
So the Phoenix is a bar in the basement of the Phoenix Theatre, you climb down a couple of flights of stairs and there’s this big noisy room filled with headshots with showtunes cranked to near ear-bleed. I actually liked the place - kind of reminded me of Residuals on a Saturday night. Anyway, it took forever to get my Guiness, and then I wandered around until I found the Raindance group in a big room in back... and this crazy Irish dude runs up and yells, “Bill Martell! You finally made it!” and I have no idea who this guy is. Ends up, he took some of the 5 (FIVE!) Free classes and made the short film about the two boys who find the monsters in the house basement I had seen earlier in the day. So I hang out with him and his friends, all fans on the website (and all probably reading this right now) and we shout over the showtunes, and then they buy me a drink or two or maybe even three... and I feel like I’m not doing my part and buying a round - these guys are struggling filmmakers, I’m a guy with a big 1980s remake that appears to be stalled out... I can afford to buy a couple of rounds! Anyway, I talk to other Raindance people, and talk to some hot woman who was at the shorts who I thought was an actress, but she never showed up in any of the shorts, and she was *insulted* that I thought she was an actress (she was dressed in a vest and shirt and hot pants) because she’s a *producer* (but didn’t say which, if any, of the shorts she produced - which was odd, because everyone was there networking and talking about their movies). Um, so Bill did not score. I talked to a bunch of people - well, screamed over the showtunes at them - and drank many Guiness (or Guineii) but only bought one. Everyone was buying me drinks! And I was drinking them! The POPATOPOLIS folks left early - wimps - and so did many other people... including the producer in hot pants.
At 2am they called last call - no more drinks served, but you could stay and finish whatever you ordered - but I told everyone I needed to get back to the hotel. Though I had no free class to teach tomorrow, I had movies to see. I said goodbye to the crazy Irish guy and trudged up the stairs to the cool night air... where a group of Raindance people were standing around smoking. And I stopped and talked to them. There were these two young guys who were in almost every screening that I was in, and they are rabid film fans and want to make movies, and we talked movies for about an hour... and at somewhere near 3am I staggered back to the hotel.
Now, here’s the thing - the last time I was at Raindance on the jury and staying in the Lancaster, I had a similar night of drinking... with the cute producer of BRIDE AND PREJUDICE... and staggered back to find the big outer doors of the hotel locked and bolted for the night. They close up at midnight. Hey, the pubs close at 11pm, who would be staggering in at 3am? Well, I would. How do I get in? That previous time I got back to the hotel just before 6am, and at 6am they unlocked the big outer doors. I was out so late that I was early. But this time - 3am - do I wait until 6am? Too tired for that. Too drunk for that. I ring the night bell and wait... and wait... and wait. Somewhere, there’s a night desk guy whose nap I’ve interrupted. He’s probably putting on his trousers. Eventually he unbolts the door and lets me in, and I stagger up the stairs, enter my room, take off my clothes and fall into bed... I can sleep late and miss the first movie tomorrow...
Except, a few hours later the door lock for the room next door breaks, and after a bunch of slamming on the door, they actually *break down the door* to get into the room. Then, a work crew comes to install a new door. So, after maybe four hours of sleep, I ain’t getting back to sleep at all. Hammering, drilling, work crew guys joking... I’m awake. I shower and shave and stagger downstairs looking for coffee - preferably an IV drip (no milk!).
Wonderful...
- Bill
But closing at 11pm throws a crimp into one’s post-cinema drinking... but there’s a loophole in the drinking laws - clubs are allowed to serve drinks late (I don’t know the actual rules, but I think Phoenix Club stops serving at 2am, and doesn’t kick you out until you’ve finished your drinks - which might be as late as 3am). Raindance made a deal with the Phoenix Club to give temp membership to anyone with a festival badge... making it the place to drink after the movies. I had yet to go there, because I had classes at noon and was jet lagged and out of it getting to bed after the movies. But the guys from POPATOPLIS had been going every single night (networking)_and I figured I’d go have a Guiness with them. Also, the Phoenix was actually on my way back to the hotel, so I could pop in for a quick drink on my way back.
Yeah. Right.
So the Phoenix is a bar in the basement of the Phoenix Theatre, you climb down a couple of flights of stairs and there’s this big noisy room filled with headshots with showtunes cranked to near ear-bleed. I actually liked the place - kind of reminded me of Residuals on a Saturday night. Anyway, it took forever to get my Guiness, and then I wandered around until I found the Raindance group in a big room in back... and this crazy Irish dude runs up and yells, “Bill Martell! You finally made it!” and I have no idea who this guy is. Ends up, he took some of the 5 (FIVE!) Free classes and made the short film about the two boys who find the monsters in the house basement I had seen earlier in the day. So I hang out with him and his friends, all fans on the website (and all probably reading this right now) and we shout over the showtunes, and then they buy me a drink or two or maybe even three... and I feel like I’m not doing my part and buying a round - these guys are struggling filmmakers, I’m a guy with a big 1980s remake that appears to be stalled out... I can afford to buy a couple of rounds! Anyway, I talk to other Raindance people, and talk to some hot woman who was at the shorts who I thought was an actress, but she never showed up in any of the shorts, and she was *insulted* that I thought she was an actress (she was dressed in a vest and shirt and hot pants) because she’s a *producer* (but didn’t say which, if any, of the shorts she produced - which was odd, because everyone was there networking and talking about their movies). Um, so Bill did not score. I talked to a bunch of people - well, screamed over the showtunes at them - and drank many Guiness (or Guineii) but only bought one. Everyone was buying me drinks! And I was drinking them! The POPATOPOLIS folks left early - wimps - and so did many other people... including the producer in hot pants.
At 2am they called last call - no more drinks served, but you could stay and finish whatever you ordered - but I told everyone I needed to get back to the hotel. Though I had no free class to teach tomorrow, I had movies to see. I said goodbye to the crazy Irish guy and trudged up the stairs to the cool night air... where a group of Raindance people were standing around smoking. And I stopped and talked to them. There were these two young guys who were in almost every screening that I was in, and they are rabid film fans and want to make movies, and we talked movies for about an hour... and at somewhere near 3am I staggered back to the hotel.
Now, here’s the thing - the last time I was at Raindance on the jury and staying in the Lancaster, I had a similar night of drinking... with the cute producer of BRIDE AND PREJUDICE... and staggered back to find the big outer doors of the hotel locked and bolted for the night. They close up at midnight. Hey, the pubs close at 11pm, who would be staggering in at 3am? Well, I would. How do I get in? That previous time I got back to the hotel just before 6am, and at 6am they unlocked the big outer doors. I was out so late that I was early. But this time - 3am - do I wait until 6am? Too tired for that. Too drunk for that. I ring the night bell and wait... and wait... and wait. Somewhere, there’s a night desk guy whose nap I’ve interrupted. He’s probably putting on his trousers. Eventually he unbolts the door and lets me in, and I stagger up the stairs, enter my room, take off my clothes and fall into bed... I can sleep late and miss the first movie tomorrow...
Except, a few hours later the door lock for the room next door breaks, and after a bunch of slamming on the door, they actually *break down the door* to get into the room. Then, a work crew comes to install a new door. So, after maybe four hours of sleep, I ain’t getting back to sleep at all. Hammering, drilling, work crew guys joking... I’m awake. I shower and shave and stagger downstairs looking for coffee - preferably an IV drip (no milk!).
Wonderful...
- Bill
Thursday, October 22, 2009
I'm Sorry! (my movies attack the UK again)
After having a great time in London, where everyone welcomed me with open arms and bought me drinks and treated me well... I am unleashing the terror that is CRASH DIVE on the UK almost every single day on Movie 4 Men! And this is a direct assault - M4M rather than M4M2. I am so sorry!
10/25 - 10:15 - Crash Dive - The crew of a nuclear submarine rescues supposed victims of a boat disaster, but the victims turn out to be terrorists intent on capturing nuclear weapons aboard the sub.
10/26 - 20:10 - Crash Dive - The crew of a nuclear submarine rescues supposed victims of a boat disaster, but the victims turn out to be terrorists intent on capturing nuclear weapons aboard the sub.
10/27 - 13:15 - Crash Dive - The crew of a nuclear submarine rescues supposed victims of a boat disaster, but the victims turn out to be terrorists intent on capturing nuclear weapons aboard the sub.
10/29 - 18:20 - Steel Sharks - When a United States submarine is seized by terrorists, a rescue attempt by Elite Navy Seals goes awry. The submarine crew wages a silent war beneath the waves in this tense undersea thriller.
- Bill
10/25 - 10:15 - Crash Dive - The crew of a nuclear submarine rescues supposed victims of a boat disaster, but the victims turn out to be terrorists intent on capturing nuclear weapons aboard the sub.
10/26 - 20:10 - Crash Dive - The crew of a nuclear submarine rescues supposed victims of a boat disaster, but the victims turn out to be terrorists intent on capturing nuclear weapons aboard the sub.
10/27 - 13:15 - Crash Dive - The crew of a nuclear submarine rescues supposed victims of a boat disaster, but the victims turn out to be terrorists intent on capturing nuclear weapons aboard the sub.
10/29 - 18:20 - Steel Sharks - When a United States submarine is seized by terrorists, a rescue attempt by Elite Navy Seals goes awry. The submarine crew wages a silent war beneath the waves in this tense undersea thriller.
- Bill
LONDON 12: Day 9 - Large Breasts Are Best
I have no idea why coffee shop people remember me. This is my third time stopping at the Starbucks across from the British Museum (mummies!) and the guy behind the counter is joking with me. He has a German accent and a British accent, and I *can* understand what he is saying. He also speaks clearly, and that helps. I have a pretty good ear (ask me to do voices next time you see me) but when someone has *three* accents, one on top of another, I have trouble understanding what they are saying. Also, if they have two accents and mumble. When you are in a cultural hub like London, there are people from all over the world... and often people who are from several different places. Add up all of those accents and I often have no idea what the person is saying. I remember one time when I was here there was a Café Nero employee with one accent too many and they might as well have been speaking in their native language.
But this guy is easy to understand (and I’ve made sure I enunciate, so that everyone can understand my American accent) and I get my mocha and head downstairs for my free wifi to check e-mail and post blog updates before heading to my lunchtime class - Structural Freaks.
I get to the Raindance Café (the block-long basement) where I was drinking beer only a few hours ago, set up my materials on the stage and look around for the cute tall American girl (probably half my age) who has been videotaping these things (after a suggestion from a blog reader - thanks), but she isn’t there this morning. No equipment, either. So this one won’t end up on YouTube cut into 5 minute segments... and I won’t be able to flirt with the cute tall girl. This is the last of the 5 (FIVE!) Free classes... and like the others it is standing room only. There are probably close to 200 people here. It seems like every day there are more. One reason for that is that the free classes are getting a plug in the Shooting People daily newsletter, another is word of mouth. I’m sure the *main* reason is the price.
The class goes well - lots of questions and interaction - and afterwards I have people who want to hang around and ask questions - but I have some movies to see! I feel like a complete slacker because I have seen so few films this year - usually I’m seeing movies all day - but the combination of lost luggage and jet lag and these 5 (FIVE!) Free classes and the movies playing on 3 screens (with no late night or morning screenings) means I have fewer hours to watch movies. Today kicks off with a series of creepy short films I marked in my program...
SHORTS SERIES 10:
ROAR: One of the creepiest films I’ve ever seen! Woman goes to one of those places that makes spare keys, young guy behind the counter (with *huge* ears) tries to flirt with her a little about why she needs the extra key, and she shoots him down. We feel sorry for the guy... until he enters an apartment, plays the answering machine message - a friend’s consolation for the end of a relationship - then grabs a drink from the fridge and pokes around... and we realize it’s *her* apartment! He has made himself a key! After touching all of her things (creepy!) she comes home. He grabs her, murders her, cleans up afterwards, and leaves. Back to the key shop, as another woman enters... and he turns and smiles. Running time: 16 minutes. Scare time: 16 minutes!
INFIDEL: Pardon the flash forward, but this film won the Best Short Award... A suburban British couple go to a co-worker’s house for dinner for the first time - another typical suburban couple. Dinner is great, the two couples get along well, and after dinner the host’s wife suggest the host show the visiting guy his stereo system. They go into the host’s den, where he has an elaborate stereo complete with turntable. He puts on a record and demonstrates how the stereo is set up to play in every room - including the bathroom - and you can control which rooms hear the album and which do not from this control center... The strange thing is that the record the host is playing is of Hitler’s greatest speeches! As the shocked guest asks the host why this particular record, the host becomes angry - this is *Hitler*, the greatest man to ever live! The guest becomes more and more uncomfortable as the evening goes on. And, there’s a nice little twist end when the guest goes home. Though this wasn’t my favorite short at Raindance, it was provocative and funny in that uncomfortable way.
SCREAMING SKULL: Um, I did not like this one, even though it was interesting to watch. Though computers may have been involved, it looked like a stop motion collage of photographs of a man entering a really creepy country estate haunted by a screaming skull, which I don’t remember actually screaming in the short. Eventually some stop motion stuff happens and no matter what the man does, he can not get rid of the skull. The skull ends up getting rid of him, the end. Had a distinctive look, but not much story, and what story it had was difficult to follow. Seemed as if it was trying to get mostly on mood (which it had plenty of) but mood is not a replacement for a coherent story. And I say that as a fan of REPULSION and THE TENANT.
JERICHO: This was a fun one! A depressed man who wants to kill himself discovers all of his childhood stuffed animals, and they basically kidnap him and force him to have fun. The great thing is - this guy is on the edge of insanity to begin with, so you wonder if this is all in his mind or not. The film goes *outdoors* with the living stuffed animals - including a massive stuffed ape. The animals dance and play with him... and no one seems to notice. I laughed all the way through - and then realized I was probably laughing at a man with a serious mental illness. Oh, well... he was laughing, too.
WAKE: You know, I don’t remember a thing about this film! I think it may have taken place in a hospital where a man wakes up after an accident, but I’m not sure. Strange, because the other films I remember vividly.
WHERE THE MONSTERS GO: You know that creepy old house at the end of the street that your friends used to dare you to run up to and touch the door? We had one in our neighborhood. This film is about two boys who dare each other to go through a vent into the basement of a house like that. They get inside... and there *are* monsters down there! And both boys are probably eaten. Then we see the caretaker finding all of the items the boys have dropped on the ground before entering the basement and destroying them... everything except a candy bar wrapper that blows away in the wind. Haunting and spooky and filled with authentic childhood memories.
MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME: Okay, this film was most like a Roman Polanski movie of any at the fest... A guy has a party at his apartment, lots of people. Eventually it thins out to three guests, and he doesn’t seem to know them. He tells them it’s late, he has to go to work the next morning, so if they make sure the door is locked when they leave they are free to finish their drinks and conversations. Next morning - they are *still there*! As the film goes on, days pass and they *will not leave*. He calls all of his friends trying to figure out who they are and who they came with... and nobody knows them! They are party crashers who have now become roommates. Two men and a woman. He tries being polite. He tries hinting. He tries just telling them it’s time to go - but they don’t seem to get it (or pretend not to get it). They get into arguments, they roughhouse in his apartment at all hours keeping him awake. Finally he just explodes with rage and tells them to get out - and they get offended and leave. Probably crashing someone else’s party.
Next up is the potentially sexy British film... about a screenwriter. Um, as a screenwriter, there isn’t much sexy about my life. But here’s the thing that gets me - a large number of films at the festival were about screenwriters or directors or actors, and that strikes me as lazy and completely unimaginative. As a screenwriter, I do not want to watch screenwriters on screen. Sure, there are some great movies about screenwriters like SUNSET BLVD and IN A LONELY PLACE and BAD & THE BEAUTIFUL and BARTON FINK, but for the most part screenwriters are boring people living boring lives. One of the things we did in the idea generation class was to look at interesting occupations we could take an audience into. A movie like HURT LOCKER is fascinating because we get to live in the world of bomb disposal experts for a couple of hours. In the class we tried to find some interesting and unusual jobs (I once dated a woman who was a professional horse masturbator) - and think of all of those films like TOP GUN that bring us into an interesting world through the occupation of the protagonist. Part of our job as screenwriters is to find that interesting world and fascinating job. And “screenwriter” is not it. Booooooooring! So, I was worried about this film just by the synopsis in the program... but that synopsis also said sexy and provocative, so I figured I’d give it a shot.
Before the film, a short by one of those “You have to see my film!” people, called LUCKY QUID... and it was brilliant. A nice little song/poem about a homeless kid who finds a lucky gold coin on the street. Spend it on candy? He’d love to do that! Spend it to look up a hooker’s skirt? Spend it on food? On a blanket? No - he does the smart thing and buys a brush and cleaning supplies and begins his own business, and the money comes rolling in... and soon he is an old man, still homeless, but happy... and able to afford more candy than you can imagine! The candy is the punchline - and this short is fast and funny and seems like a whole life in a few minutes of screen time.
DESIRE: as opposed to the feature, that seemed like it was taking most of my life for the first ten minutes! Arty, pretentious, heavy voice over narration... and we get to *watch this guy write*! Story has a new nanny almost magically appearing in his home, and teasing us with shots of him caressing her - fantasy sequence? Flash forward? I actually didn’t stick around long enough to find out, as Janet looked at me from a couple of seats over to gauge my boredom, and whispered that maybe we should grab dinner before POPATOPOLIS. I was already heading to the door...
DINNER: So, the question was - what should we eat? We had already had Chinese food once (Chinatown being a short walk from the cinema), but I said I hadn’t had any pub food... and Janet knew of a new fish & chips place that was either on Poland Street (where the Raindance Café Basement Dungeon was) or a street over. We went there... and it was *excellent*. Absolutely massive portions, and delicious. I ordered the homemade tartar sauce (fresh from someone’s teeth) and it was amazing. Had a beer, I think a London Pride, not sure right now. It was a really good meal. The waitress was cute and attentive and the food came fairly fast. I liked the place, and decided to try to get back there if I had the chance.
After dinner we walked back down to the cinemas to see POPATOPOLIS...
POPATOPLIS: Okay, I think I mentioned that director Jim Wynorski screwed up my VICTIM OF DIRECTOR... er, I mean DESIRE, movie. The script was SEA OF LOVE meets STAKE OUT, about an SEC investigator tracking down a CEO who embezzled $72 million from his company, and then gets murdered about ten minutes into the film and the money has vanished. Did the CEO’s trophy wife do it? Our hero does some “undercover” investigating and finds all kinds of clues... while trying not to get caught sleeping with the #1 suspect by his Homicide Detective stake out partner. The film was produced by the guy who produced last year’s PUSH, with MGM releasing in the USA. Well, releasing on video by the time the film was finished. Anyway, it’s a mess. And POPATOPOLIS is a documentary on the director... as he attempts to shoot an entire feature film in 3 days. You read that right! THREE DAYS!
The film is a hoot - Jim is a character, he yells at everyone, he swears like crazy, he has all of these funny pet phrases that he says again and again... and he wants to make this silly T&A film called WITCHES OF BREASTWICK in 3 days in a remote mountain cabin, seemingly for no money... starring a bunch of *very* top heavy women. Um, you wonder how some of these women stand upright. Though I am a “breast man” and when I hear the phrase “more than a mouthful is a waste” I usually say that I have a very big mouth (I know - too much information), but Jim seems to be interested in freaks of nature. Women with breasts that Godzilla would think is more than a mouthful. You are probably thinking of really big breasts right now - but *double* whatever you are thinking and you still may be a cup size smaller than all of these women. These gals are structural freaks!
You may not know how impossible it is to shoot a movie in 3 days, so let me explain that a studio film will shoot for a few *months* and when I first got into the biz a movie of the week usually shot for 4 weeks, then they began to go to 3 weeks... and my super cheapo super-fast Roger Corman movie about robot hookers from outer space shot in an impossible 9 days... so this is a third of *that* impossible schedule! Usually with fewer days of shooting, you have a larger crew - but Jim has *2* crew members total - a cameraman and a soundman. Usually on a film, there are 2 guys doing sound: one checking the recording levels and one with the boom mike (holding it just off camera over the actor’s heads). Here - one guy has to do both. Also, one guy has to hold the camera, change the focus as people move, and slate the shot (though - not much of that). No costumer, no costumes - the actors bring their own clothes and do their own make up... and later discover they should have brought their own food, since there isn’t any. After buying food, the stars have to cook their own meals! Talk about a powderkeg waiting for someone to drop a match!
And Jim is that match! After a while you get used to Jim, and just understand that he’s got an abrasive personality. Jim is Jim. He’s really a nice guy. The first or second time I went to AFM, he gave me a ride to his screening of SWAMP THING 2 so I wouldn’t have to lose my parking space and then pay for parking at the cinema. He didn’t even know me. So, he’s a nice guy - who screams at everyone. Watching him make his movie in 3 days, you couldn’t help but think of Ed Wood (played by Johnny Depp) saying “Perfect!” after a not-so-perfect shot.
When you do a nude scene in a movie, you are not actually nude. Women wear a patch - thong sized - over their private parts, and men wear a sock-like thing over their private parts. Neither has straps, so it appears as if they are nude from almost every angle. Though something like the "sock" and the "patch" may seem weird to you, they are a normal part of filming nude scenes - every time you see someone naked on camera in a movie they are wearing one of these things. They sell them in costume and prop and equipment stores. The production company buys several of these, as they are not exactly reusable. Jim didn’t buy any for this 3 day film. So, there’s a scene where an actor asks where “the sock” is, Jim says “take off a sock and use it”, and the slightly confused actor takes a sock off his foot and puts it on his other part... and then the actress gets grossed out because it was on his stinky foot. And we are even more grossed out... but laugh.
The film is really funny, and Jim is a good sport for allowing the on set tensions (which blow up real good) to be shown on film. But it’s Jim’s mom who steals the show - she’s this sweet little old lady who doesn’t like swearing or nudity or sex on screen... and Jim has done everything possible to make sure that his mom doesn’t see any of his films. She wants Jim to meet a nice girl and settle down... and then we see Jim on set with these unbelievable top heavy actresses disrobing for a scene and it’s just funny. Film has great interviews with everyone from Roger Corman (who gave Jim his start writing publicity materials), to Andy Sidaris who made a living making T&A action films, to my friend Penthouse Pet of the Year Julie Strain who talks about Jim and how the B movie business has changed over the years - from a place where a guy like James Cameron could get a start making a film like PIRANHA 2 before moving on to bigger and better things, to where it is now - movies made in 3 days with no money or made by amateurs in their backyard on video. When she was doing B films (including VICTIM OF DIRECTOR) they were shot on 35mm film with a real crew and TV stars or supporting actors from A movies and there were either studios involved in the distribution or some indie distrib that might get the film a limited theatrical run somewhere. All of that is gone, now, since the middle fell out of the indie genre business. Julie is smart and beautiful and quit the business before the business quit her. She also went to high school with my sister, and we had many of the same teachers. Small world.
POPATOPOLIS is a fun documentary about a fringe filmmaker who has made some films you’ve probably seen. If not - check out SWAMP THING 2 and CHOPPING MALL and 976 EVIL 2 (for my favorite mash-up: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE - every time you hear a bell, another zombie rises from hell). The POPATOPOLIS crew was there in London, answered questions after the film, and terrorized the population with their little robot.
After the film, we all went to the Phoenix Club for some drinks... which was a mistake.
- Bill
Popatopolis "Killbot" invades London:
Chopping Mall trailer:
But this guy is easy to understand (and I’ve made sure I enunciate, so that everyone can understand my American accent) and I get my mocha and head downstairs for my free wifi to check e-mail and post blog updates before heading to my lunchtime class - Structural Freaks.
I get to the Raindance Café (the block-long basement) where I was drinking beer only a few hours ago, set up my materials on the stage and look around for the cute tall American girl (probably half my age) who has been videotaping these things (after a suggestion from a blog reader - thanks), but she isn’t there this morning. No equipment, either. So this one won’t end up on YouTube cut into 5 minute segments... and I won’t be able to flirt with the cute tall girl. This is the last of the 5 (FIVE!) Free classes... and like the others it is standing room only. There are probably close to 200 people here. It seems like every day there are more. One reason for that is that the free classes are getting a plug in the Shooting People daily newsletter, another is word of mouth. I’m sure the *main* reason is the price.
The class goes well - lots of questions and interaction - and afterwards I have people who want to hang around and ask questions - but I have some movies to see! I feel like a complete slacker because I have seen so few films this year - usually I’m seeing movies all day - but the combination of lost luggage and jet lag and these 5 (FIVE!) Free classes and the movies playing on 3 screens (with no late night or morning screenings) means I have fewer hours to watch movies. Today kicks off with a series of creepy short films I marked in my program...
SHORTS SERIES 10:
ROAR: One of the creepiest films I’ve ever seen! Woman goes to one of those places that makes spare keys, young guy behind the counter (with *huge* ears) tries to flirt with her a little about why she needs the extra key, and she shoots him down. We feel sorry for the guy... until he enters an apartment, plays the answering machine message - a friend’s consolation for the end of a relationship - then grabs a drink from the fridge and pokes around... and we realize it’s *her* apartment! He has made himself a key! After touching all of her things (creepy!) she comes home. He grabs her, murders her, cleans up afterwards, and leaves. Back to the key shop, as another woman enters... and he turns and smiles. Running time: 16 minutes. Scare time: 16 minutes!
INFIDEL: Pardon the flash forward, but this film won the Best Short Award... A suburban British couple go to a co-worker’s house for dinner for the first time - another typical suburban couple. Dinner is great, the two couples get along well, and after dinner the host’s wife suggest the host show the visiting guy his stereo system. They go into the host’s den, where he has an elaborate stereo complete with turntable. He puts on a record and demonstrates how the stereo is set up to play in every room - including the bathroom - and you can control which rooms hear the album and which do not from this control center... The strange thing is that the record the host is playing is of Hitler’s greatest speeches! As the shocked guest asks the host why this particular record, the host becomes angry - this is *Hitler*, the greatest man to ever live! The guest becomes more and more uncomfortable as the evening goes on. And, there’s a nice little twist end when the guest goes home. Though this wasn’t my favorite short at Raindance, it was provocative and funny in that uncomfortable way.
SCREAMING SKULL: Um, I did not like this one, even though it was interesting to watch. Though computers may have been involved, it looked like a stop motion collage of photographs of a man entering a really creepy country estate haunted by a screaming skull, which I don’t remember actually screaming in the short. Eventually some stop motion stuff happens and no matter what the man does, he can not get rid of the skull. The skull ends up getting rid of him, the end. Had a distinctive look, but not much story, and what story it had was difficult to follow. Seemed as if it was trying to get mostly on mood (which it had plenty of) but mood is not a replacement for a coherent story. And I say that as a fan of REPULSION and THE TENANT.
JERICHO: This was a fun one! A depressed man who wants to kill himself discovers all of his childhood stuffed animals, and they basically kidnap him and force him to have fun. The great thing is - this guy is on the edge of insanity to begin with, so you wonder if this is all in his mind or not. The film goes *outdoors* with the living stuffed animals - including a massive stuffed ape. The animals dance and play with him... and no one seems to notice. I laughed all the way through - and then realized I was probably laughing at a man with a serious mental illness. Oh, well... he was laughing, too.
WAKE: You know, I don’t remember a thing about this film! I think it may have taken place in a hospital where a man wakes up after an accident, but I’m not sure. Strange, because the other films I remember vividly.
WHERE THE MONSTERS GO: You know that creepy old house at the end of the street that your friends used to dare you to run up to and touch the door? We had one in our neighborhood. This film is about two boys who dare each other to go through a vent into the basement of a house like that. They get inside... and there *are* monsters down there! And both boys are probably eaten. Then we see the caretaker finding all of the items the boys have dropped on the ground before entering the basement and destroying them... everything except a candy bar wrapper that blows away in the wind. Haunting and spooky and filled with authentic childhood memories.
MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME: Okay, this film was most like a Roman Polanski movie of any at the fest... A guy has a party at his apartment, lots of people. Eventually it thins out to three guests, and he doesn’t seem to know them. He tells them it’s late, he has to go to work the next morning, so if they make sure the door is locked when they leave they are free to finish their drinks and conversations. Next morning - they are *still there*! As the film goes on, days pass and they *will not leave*. He calls all of his friends trying to figure out who they are and who they came with... and nobody knows them! They are party crashers who have now become roommates. Two men and a woman. He tries being polite. He tries hinting. He tries just telling them it’s time to go - but they don’t seem to get it (or pretend not to get it). They get into arguments, they roughhouse in his apartment at all hours keeping him awake. Finally he just explodes with rage and tells them to get out - and they get offended and leave. Probably crashing someone else’s party.
Next up is the potentially sexy British film... about a screenwriter. Um, as a screenwriter, there isn’t much sexy about my life. But here’s the thing that gets me - a large number of films at the festival were about screenwriters or directors or actors, and that strikes me as lazy and completely unimaginative. As a screenwriter, I do not want to watch screenwriters on screen. Sure, there are some great movies about screenwriters like SUNSET BLVD and IN A LONELY PLACE and BAD & THE BEAUTIFUL and BARTON FINK, but for the most part screenwriters are boring people living boring lives. One of the things we did in the idea generation class was to look at interesting occupations we could take an audience into. A movie like HURT LOCKER is fascinating because we get to live in the world of bomb disposal experts for a couple of hours. In the class we tried to find some interesting and unusual jobs (I once dated a woman who was a professional horse masturbator) - and think of all of those films like TOP GUN that bring us into an interesting world through the occupation of the protagonist. Part of our job as screenwriters is to find that interesting world and fascinating job. And “screenwriter” is not it. Booooooooring! So, I was worried about this film just by the synopsis in the program... but that synopsis also said sexy and provocative, so I figured I’d give it a shot.
Before the film, a short by one of those “You have to see my film!” people, called LUCKY QUID... and it was brilliant. A nice little song/poem about a homeless kid who finds a lucky gold coin on the street. Spend it on candy? He’d love to do that! Spend it to look up a hooker’s skirt? Spend it on food? On a blanket? No - he does the smart thing and buys a brush and cleaning supplies and begins his own business, and the money comes rolling in... and soon he is an old man, still homeless, but happy... and able to afford more candy than you can imagine! The candy is the punchline - and this short is fast and funny and seems like a whole life in a few minutes of screen time.
DESIRE: as opposed to the feature, that seemed like it was taking most of my life for the first ten minutes! Arty, pretentious, heavy voice over narration... and we get to *watch this guy write*! Story has a new nanny almost magically appearing in his home, and teasing us with shots of him caressing her - fantasy sequence? Flash forward? I actually didn’t stick around long enough to find out, as Janet looked at me from a couple of seats over to gauge my boredom, and whispered that maybe we should grab dinner before POPATOPOLIS. I was already heading to the door...
DINNER: So, the question was - what should we eat? We had already had Chinese food once (Chinatown being a short walk from the cinema), but I said I hadn’t had any pub food... and Janet knew of a new fish & chips place that was either on Poland Street (where the Raindance Café Basement Dungeon was) or a street over. We went there... and it was *excellent*. Absolutely massive portions, and delicious. I ordered the homemade tartar sauce (fresh from someone’s teeth) and it was amazing. Had a beer, I think a London Pride, not sure right now. It was a really good meal. The waitress was cute and attentive and the food came fairly fast. I liked the place, and decided to try to get back there if I had the chance.
After dinner we walked back down to the cinemas to see POPATOPOLIS...
POPATOPLIS: Okay, I think I mentioned that director Jim Wynorski screwed up my VICTIM OF DIRECTOR... er, I mean DESIRE, movie. The script was SEA OF LOVE meets STAKE OUT, about an SEC investigator tracking down a CEO who embezzled $72 million from his company, and then gets murdered about ten minutes into the film and the money has vanished. Did the CEO’s trophy wife do it? Our hero does some “undercover” investigating and finds all kinds of clues... while trying not to get caught sleeping with the #1 suspect by his Homicide Detective stake out partner. The film was produced by the guy who produced last year’s PUSH, with MGM releasing in the USA. Well, releasing on video by the time the film was finished. Anyway, it’s a mess. And POPATOPOLIS is a documentary on the director... as he attempts to shoot an entire feature film in 3 days. You read that right! THREE DAYS!
The film is a hoot - Jim is a character, he yells at everyone, he swears like crazy, he has all of these funny pet phrases that he says again and again... and he wants to make this silly T&A film called WITCHES OF BREASTWICK in 3 days in a remote mountain cabin, seemingly for no money... starring a bunch of *very* top heavy women. Um, you wonder how some of these women stand upright. Though I am a “breast man” and when I hear the phrase “more than a mouthful is a waste” I usually say that I have a very big mouth (I know - too much information), but Jim seems to be interested in freaks of nature. Women with breasts that Godzilla would think is more than a mouthful. You are probably thinking of really big breasts right now - but *double* whatever you are thinking and you still may be a cup size smaller than all of these women. These gals are structural freaks!
You may not know how impossible it is to shoot a movie in 3 days, so let me explain that a studio film will shoot for a few *months* and when I first got into the biz a movie of the week usually shot for 4 weeks, then they began to go to 3 weeks... and my super cheapo super-fast Roger Corman movie about robot hookers from outer space shot in an impossible 9 days... so this is a third of *that* impossible schedule! Usually with fewer days of shooting, you have a larger crew - but Jim has *2* crew members total - a cameraman and a soundman. Usually on a film, there are 2 guys doing sound: one checking the recording levels and one with the boom mike (holding it just off camera over the actor’s heads). Here - one guy has to do both. Also, one guy has to hold the camera, change the focus as people move, and slate the shot (though - not much of that). No costumer, no costumes - the actors bring their own clothes and do their own make up... and later discover they should have brought their own food, since there isn’t any. After buying food, the stars have to cook their own meals! Talk about a powderkeg waiting for someone to drop a match!
And Jim is that match! After a while you get used to Jim, and just understand that he’s got an abrasive personality. Jim is Jim. He’s really a nice guy. The first or second time I went to AFM, he gave me a ride to his screening of SWAMP THING 2 so I wouldn’t have to lose my parking space and then pay for parking at the cinema. He didn’t even know me. So, he’s a nice guy - who screams at everyone. Watching him make his movie in 3 days, you couldn’t help but think of Ed Wood (played by Johnny Depp) saying “Perfect!” after a not-so-perfect shot.
When you do a nude scene in a movie, you are not actually nude. Women wear a patch - thong sized - over their private parts, and men wear a sock-like thing over their private parts. Neither has straps, so it appears as if they are nude from almost every angle. Though something like the "sock" and the "patch" may seem weird to you, they are a normal part of filming nude scenes - every time you see someone naked on camera in a movie they are wearing one of these things. They sell them in costume and prop and equipment stores. The production company buys several of these, as they are not exactly reusable. Jim didn’t buy any for this 3 day film. So, there’s a scene where an actor asks where “the sock” is, Jim says “take off a sock and use it”, and the slightly confused actor takes a sock off his foot and puts it on his other part... and then the actress gets grossed out because it was on his stinky foot. And we are even more grossed out... but laugh.
The film is really funny, and Jim is a good sport for allowing the on set tensions (which blow up real good) to be shown on film. But it’s Jim’s mom who steals the show - she’s this sweet little old lady who doesn’t like swearing or nudity or sex on screen... and Jim has done everything possible to make sure that his mom doesn’t see any of his films. She wants Jim to meet a nice girl and settle down... and then we see Jim on set with these unbelievable top heavy actresses disrobing for a scene and it’s just funny. Film has great interviews with everyone from Roger Corman (who gave Jim his start writing publicity materials), to Andy Sidaris who made a living making T&A action films, to my friend Penthouse Pet of the Year Julie Strain who talks about Jim and how the B movie business has changed over the years - from a place where a guy like James Cameron could get a start making a film like PIRANHA 2 before moving on to bigger and better things, to where it is now - movies made in 3 days with no money or made by amateurs in their backyard on video. When she was doing B films (including VICTIM OF DIRECTOR) they were shot on 35mm film with a real crew and TV stars or supporting actors from A movies and there were either studios involved in the distribution or some indie distrib that might get the film a limited theatrical run somewhere. All of that is gone, now, since the middle fell out of the indie genre business. Julie is smart and beautiful and quit the business before the business quit her. She also went to high school with my sister, and we had many of the same teachers. Small world.
POPATOPOLIS is a fun documentary about a fringe filmmaker who has made some films you’ve probably seen. If not - check out SWAMP THING 2 and CHOPPING MALL and 976 EVIL 2 (for my favorite mash-up: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE - every time you hear a bell, another zombie rises from hell). The POPATOPOLIS crew was there in London, answered questions after the film, and terrorized the population with their little robot.
After the film, we all went to the Phoenix Club for some drinks... which was a mistake.
- Bill
Popatopolis "Killbot" invades London:
Chopping Mall trailer:
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Vacation Trailer
This is *not* National Lampoon...
The Japanese film I saw at Raindance and liked, already reviewed.
More of the Raindance adventure to come...
- Bill
The Japanese film I saw at Raindance and liked, already reviewed.
More of the Raindance adventure to come...
- Bill
Sunday, October 18, 2009
25 Carats Trailer
This was my favorite film at Raindance, and (co)winner of the Best Foreign Film Award (which I ended up presenting)...
Crime film, reminds you a little of LEON: THE PROFESSIONAL, but really focuses on parent/child relationships.
- Bill (still jet-lagged)
Crime film, reminds you a little of LEON: THE PROFESSIONAL, but really focuses on parent/child relationships.
- Bill (still jet-lagged)
Friday, October 16, 2009
Note: I Will Be At Expo Saturday
I'm not teaching classes at Expo this year - so jet lagged I can barely think - but will probably wander around on Saturday afternoon with a bag of CDs in case anyone wants to buy one. To think I actually considered doing classes this year! These 6 days between trips is mostly recovering and packaging orders.
More from the London adventure is on its way... I'm just working on an article for Script right now so that I can turn it in before I fly to Hong Kong.
Bonus YouTube video for boys and naughty girls...
How To Put On A Bra
- Bill (where am I?)
More from the London adventure is on its way... I'm just working on an article for Script right now so that I can turn it in before I fly to Hong Kong.
Bonus YouTube video for boys and naughty girls...
How To Put On A Bra
- Bill (where am I?)
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Los Angeles Interlude: Humanzee
Okay, more reviews and London adventure to come... but I'm so out of it right now from jet lag and lack of sleep it may take a few days.
Meanwhile - Sick and twisted genius James Gunn (SLITHER) has a new web sitcom that just debuted on his site (on that list over there -->) called HUMANZEE. About a man who sends his sperm sample to a lab where it fertilyzes a chimpanzee egg and is returned as his new son, Humanzee. Each episode deals with the valuable life lessons he learns raising his new son.
Um, not safe for work, not safe for children or pets, not safe for people with previous medical conditions... it's just not safe. You probably should not watch it.
- Bill
Meanwhile - Sick and twisted genius James Gunn (SLITHER) has a new web sitcom that just debuted on his site (on that list over there -->) called HUMANZEE. About a man who sends his sperm sample to a lab where it fertilyzes a chimpanzee egg and is returned as his new son, Humanzee. Each episode deals with the valuable life lessons he learns raising his new son.
Um, not safe for work, not safe for children or pets, not safe for people with previous medical conditions... it's just not safe. You probably should not watch it.
- Bill
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Los Angeles Interlude - Brown List
Who are the most hated executives in Hollywood?
The Brown List
Also lists most liked executives.
- Bill
The Brown List
Also lists most liked executives.
- Bill
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
LONDON 11: Day 8 - Scenes & Janitors
The day begins with my (free) Scene Class, and it is packed. My Italian friend is in the back of the room and I wave at him. This was the class that they switched at the last minute - and it ended up being a segment of the weekend class that isn’t part of this version of the weekend class - so I have plenty of material and am fully prepared. That is good, because every day is different as far as sleep and jet lag are concerned. Some nights I have no trouble sleeping, others I sleep for an hour then wake up... my body thinking it is whatever time it is in Los Angeles. But I am usually pretty clear headed even when I am sleepy - and today is a day when my eyelids want to close, but I still make it through my class... and even use MOTHS as an example of a story that may take place mostly at one location, but still contains many scenes.
I have decided not to stress over the weekend class - whatever happens happens. I suspect it will be a small class this time, but how can worrying about it change that?
I’m at a film festival, watching films, and I want to have a good time.
My legs are tired, and I realize it’s because I have walked *everywhere* since I have been in London - no taxis, no tube, no buses... I’ve walked from one side of town to the other and back every day... and sometimes a couple of times a day, as I usually return to my hotel with my class materials and drop them off before heading back to the cinema to the screenings. Another reason for my sore legs - no lift at my hotel so I am *constantly* climbing stairs, and the cinema is down 2 flights of stairs (they have a lift, but I never use it). I’m getting a great workout every day, and not eating very much. Usually just a sandwich every day from the EAT across from the cinema.
I race to the cinema to meet Janet and see...
MOVIE: PHILOSOPHER KINGS - an interesting sounding documentary about university janitors in the United States. I’m thinking this is going to be the real life version of GOOD WILL HUNTING, but the film is all hook and no delivery. They interview a handful of janitors, and even though some are interesting and likeable, none are philosophers or geniuses. And, once introduced as janitors, they never really show them doing their job! One guy at UC Berkeley keeps getting sent to restrooms... which are clean and in order and do not need him to do anything! If you are doing a movie about janitors, I want to see some moping and toilet unclogging and janitorial duties!
The film focuses on their personal lives - a man from Haiti who uses whatever spare money he earns to do basic improvements in the village he came from - bringing safe drinking water down from the mountain using pipes, etc. A one armed man with children. A woman from the south whose mother went into a coma and she had to take care of as a child. An art student drop out who cleans up an art college... and a sweet Viet Nam Vet who works at a Christian College and has had every job you can imagine before he became a janitor (Rodeo Clown? Check!) Though their lives are interesting, the film doesn’t focus on the janitor side (they could be anyone) and none is a genius or philosopher or seems particularly wise. This is just a group of regular people with regular people problems. Not a bad film, but not exactly what was advertised.
The new edition to Raindance is the Café - where I am teaching my classes - which has a party going on throughout the festival. There are some evening events there, but mostly there is a Meet The Film Makers Party there every night. I have yet to attend one of these, but I decide to drop by tonight and see what it’s like. The problem ends up being that they have a DJ who has cranked the music to “Ear Bleed” and no one in the café can hear each other... so there is a group of people standing on the street outside the café talking and very few people inside.
The other problem is a Raindance screw up - the plan was to sell drinks and food, but they neglected to secure a license. That means they can *give away* beers and glasses of wine and sandwiches and fresh fruit, but can not *sell* it. So they have a donation box... and Elliot is *constantly* telling people to donate. Every time he speaks he encourages people to put money in the box. I put a fiver in the box and grab a beer (worth about half that) and walk around talking to people... er, shouting over the extra-loud music to people... and have a couple of conversations with film makers who have taken my class in the past and want me to see their movies.
I also talk to the director of POPATOPOLIS - a documentary about sleazy director Jim Wynorski (whom I hate) who directed my VICTIM OR DESIRE movie (which I call VICTIM OF DIRECTOR). They have a little remote control robot that has been terrorizing London (and the film fest) and their film is showing tomorrow. The director and his editor are funny people and we talk about working with Jim and just working in Hollywood. I plan on having lunch or dinner or something with them when I return to LA - well, if their movie is good.
The strange thing about festival films is that many of them are overly arty (like the Italian film that was *not* made by my Italian friend) or ragged and indie or just too strange. A film like that can play at a festival and even win a festival, but has almost no chance of doing anything in the real world. Rebelling against the focus ring is great for fests, but most people kind of like their films to be in focus. So I’ve seen a mix of weird films and really good small films that really deserve a release of some sort in the United States.
After I’ve finished my $10 beer, I walk across London to my hotel, climb the stairs, and try to get some sleep. Tomorrow I have another class, and some films (including POPATOPOLIS and a film about a screenwriter that is supposed to be arty and maybe filled with female nudity).
- Bill
I have decided not to stress over the weekend class - whatever happens happens. I suspect it will be a small class this time, but how can worrying about it change that?
I’m at a film festival, watching films, and I want to have a good time.
My legs are tired, and I realize it’s because I have walked *everywhere* since I have been in London - no taxis, no tube, no buses... I’ve walked from one side of town to the other and back every day... and sometimes a couple of times a day, as I usually return to my hotel with my class materials and drop them off before heading back to the cinema to the screenings. Another reason for my sore legs - no lift at my hotel so I am *constantly* climbing stairs, and the cinema is down 2 flights of stairs (they have a lift, but I never use it). I’m getting a great workout every day, and not eating very much. Usually just a sandwich every day from the EAT across from the cinema.
I race to the cinema to meet Janet and see...
MOVIE: PHILOSOPHER KINGS - an interesting sounding documentary about university janitors in the United States. I’m thinking this is going to be the real life version of GOOD WILL HUNTING, but the film is all hook and no delivery. They interview a handful of janitors, and even though some are interesting and likeable, none are philosophers or geniuses. And, once introduced as janitors, they never really show them doing their job! One guy at UC Berkeley keeps getting sent to restrooms... which are clean and in order and do not need him to do anything! If you are doing a movie about janitors, I want to see some moping and toilet unclogging and janitorial duties!
The film focuses on their personal lives - a man from Haiti who uses whatever spare money he earns to do basic improvements in the village he came from - bringing safe drinking water down from the mountain using pipes, etc. A one armed man with children. A woman from the south whose mother went into a coma and she had to take care of as a child. An art student drop out who cleans up an art college... and a sweet Viet Nam Vet who works at a Christian College and has had every job you can imagine before he became a janitor (Rodeo Clown? Check!) Though their lives are interesting, the film doesn’t focus on the janitor side (they could be anyone) and none is a genius or philosopher or seems particularly wise. This is just a group of regular people with regular people problems. Not a bad film, but not exactly what was advertised.
The new edition to Raindance is the Café - where I am teaching my classes - which has a party going on throughout the festival. There are some evening events there, but mostly there is a Meet The Film Makers Party there every night. I have yet to attend one of these, but I decide to drop by tonight and see what it’s like. The problem ends up being that they have a DJ who has cranked the music to “Ear Bleed” and no one in the café can hear each other... so there is a group of people standing on the street outside the café talking and very few people inside.
The other problem is a Raindance screw up - the plan was to sell drinks and food, but they neglected to secure a license. That means they can *give away* beers and glasses of wine and sandwiches and fresh fruit, but can not *sell* it. So they have a donation box... and Elliot is *constantly* telling people to donate. Every time he speaks he encourages people to put money in the box. I put a fiver in the box and grab a beer (worth about half that) and walk around talking to people... er, shouting over the extra-loud music to people... and have a couple of conversations with film makers who have taken my class in the past and want me to see their movies.
I also talk to the director of POPATOPOLIS - a documentary about sleazy director Jim Wynorski (whom I hate) who directed my VICTIM OR DESIRE movie (which I call VICTIM OF DIRECTOR). They have a little remote control robot that has been terrorizing London (and the film fest) and their film is showing tomorrow. The director and his editor are funny people and we talk about working with Jim and just working in Hollywood. I plan on having lunch or dinner or something with them when I return to LA - well, if their movie is good.
The strange thing about festival films is that many of them are overly arty (like the Italian film that was *not* made by my Italian friend) or ragged and indie or just too strange. A film like that can play at a festival and even win a festival, but has almost no chance of doing anything in the real world. Rebelling against the focus ring is great for fests, but most people kind of like their films to be in focus. So I’ve seen a mix of weird films and really good small films that really deserve a release of some sort in the United States.
After I’ve finished my $10 beer, I walk across London to my hotel, climb the stairs, and try to get some sleep. Tomorrow I have another class, and some films (including POPATOPOLIS and a film about a screenwriter that is supposed to be arty and maybe filled with female nudity).
- Bill
Monday, October 12, 2009
London 10: Day 7 - Sex & Italian Films
The day began with one of the 5 (FIVE!) Free classes - on sex & violence. The other class I had scribbled notes for on the flight over. I had very little material on this one and would be winging the full 2 hour class. The problem with winging a class is jet lag, lack of sleep, and all of the various problems that I might have making stuff up off the top of my head when the top of my head isn’t working.
But the class went well, there were lots of questions about both sex and violence - and this is where I realized that it was a difficult subject for a class because answering questions was slightly embarrassing... and difficult to be precise as to how much sex or violence is too much. But the class went better than expected... and once again was sold out. The room was completely packed with people - around 150 or so.
And here’s the problem - Raindance has not printed brochures for my weekend class at all, but Elliot is passing out brochures for one of *his* upcoming classes in every sold out class that I do. Even though he mentions the weekend class in the intro, are the people just supposed to remember that after the class? They have no way of knowing *how* to sign up or where or how much the class costs... And my fear is that these free classes are completely undercutting my weekend class - it’s like getting 5 free servings of hors d’oeuvres and then the waiter asks what you would like to order for your meal... well, you’re really not hungry any more. In the past these classes had a nominal fee - 10 pounds (about $15) and there was only one of them... just to whet your appetite, but leave you hungry for more. This time, even though all of the classes are “selling out” there is no actual selling as they are free. There is standing room only, but not only does none of this translate into even a small amount of money per course, the audience is filling up on the free food and not hungry for the weekend class.
The Shooting People daily mailer has been promoting the 5 free classes, but not the weekend class. And Elliot wants to do a split of profits with me instead of the flat fee for teaching the class which we had done previously. Of course, in the past the weekend class has done well, so Raindance made a pile of money of giving me a flat fee. I suspect that no one is signing up, so they want to give me a % of what little money they make. I’m already wondering how I will handle this... but I have no idea how many people have signed up, so maybe I’m worrying overt nothing.
After the class I have several people come up to me with questions, and I answer a few then tell folks I must race to the cinemas to see films...
MOVIE: BREAKING ROCKS - A documentary about Billy Bragg’s program to buy guitars for prisons so that prisoners have a way to express themselves through music. They follow Bragg and others as they buy guitars, stencil them with the program logo (and other fun things) then deliver them to various prisons in the UK, and start guitar workshops. Prisoners learn how to play, learn how to write songs, and eventually perform at prison concerts... and when an inmate is released they perform at a charity concert to raise money to buy more guitars and keep the program going. The prison wardens and guards love the program because it keeps prisoners busy doing something constructive. One guy (outside) says - the problem with just punishing prisoners is that eventually they are released and may move into your neighborhood. It’s better to try to rehabilitate them and give them options in life for when they are released. This makes sense - and the idea behind this program is to teach prisoners to sing about their problems rather than let the anger bubble inside of them. The doc shows some success stories who have had music careers after release, but they stress the purpose of the program isn’t to teach prisoners to be folk musicians, but to find a safe way to vent their angers and problems through music. After the film, one of the prisoners (who has been paroled) played three songs he wrote in the cinema - and they were pretty good.
MOVIE: MIME-MIME - Okay, I have a problem. An Italian filmmaker who has attended a couple of my free classes told me that I *must* see his film today... and I do not remember the title. I bumped into him in the lobby and he said, “You are seeing my film today, right?” And I said, of course... but what is the title? I thought it began with the letter M, so I go to the screening of Mime-Mime... which is a Japanese film.
Story has a spoiled Japanese college girl who is having an affair with her (married) high school teacher while she tries to sort out her life. She ends up meeting a guy her age who she used to know when they were children, and this guy is a mess... a philosophy major who dropped out of college and seems to be drifting through life like she is. When he misses the last train after they have dinner together, he sleeps at her apartment... and this slowly blossoms into a romance, which means she must stop sleeping with her high school teacher as she decides to become exclusive with this guy. Kind of a quiet little story about 20 something Japanese kids trying to figure out what to do with their lives - every indie... but the problem for me? Every other scene was them having a meal! I have had nothing to eat, yet - and the film must contain 20 meal scenes where we focus on them eating. Even the scene where a friend eats a bowl of noodles while our gal takes a shower in the next room focuses on the noodles! There should be a warning before movies that are almost all meal scenes, so that you can make sure to have eaten first! The cinemas have popcorn and sweets but no *food*. I’m now very hungry... and still have to figure out which film is my Italian friend’s.
MOVIE: EMILIA GALOTTI - After Mime-Mime, I dash over to another cinema where the movie began 5 minutes ago. The problem with having 3 screens showing festival films is that the showing are often not in sync - and you must miss part of some movie in order to see another. I have now missed the first five minutes of this film... in *Italian*. Hey, is this the right movie?
After a few minutes, I hope not. This is the most arty and pretentious film I have ever seen. It reminds me of the Calvin Klien Obsession perfume commercials that Saturday Night Live did parodies of... except this is a movie like that! Characters spin and pose and speak as if what they say is the most important thing in the world - and the entire film is fake looking... there will be an over-the-top conversation in front of a background of ocean waves or something. And in almost every shot there are three models posing in the background or on the side of the screen. The story is some sort of rise and fall of a famous fashion model, and her wealthy patron and potential lover. Everyone poses with every sentence, and the sentences are big and flamboyant. And the backgrounds are arty as hell - often a spotlight on one person who speaks while the three models pose and someone else sits in a chair and speaks in strange cryptic slogans. As this thing goes on - and the models keep posing against false backgrounds of birds flying in slow motion or waterfalls or whatever, I wonder what I’m going to tell my Italian friend when he asks, “Did you like my movie?” This is the most pretentious piece of crap I’ve ever seen! At least the Obsession commercials are over in 30 seconds!
I duck out and buy a popcorn, still hungry from the Japanese film, and when I sneak back in, the film is winding down... Well, I really have no idea if it is winding down or not, but the fashion model is posing against a strange background as she does drugs and ODs and ends up posed artfully on a morgue slab as the three models pose and wail in the corner and her wealthy benefactor and his assistant talk between wild poses.
When the film ends, my Italian friend enters the cinema... and I get really worried about what I’m going to say to him... when he thanks me for coming to see his film, takes a seat, and the *next* film begins...
MOVIE: MOTHS - Ah, *this* is the correct Italian film! To date, the most beautifully shot film I have seen at the festival. Amazing lighting that reminds me of Gordon Willis. After a festival filled with ragged indie cinematography or overly arty cinematography, this film just looks beautiful.
Film starts with a mid-40s man telling his mother and father he’s going out - and everyone is shot beautifully. You wonder what this guy is doing still living with his parents, but we’ll get to that... As he walks through the city - some Italian coastal town, I’m sorry I don’t know which one - we get all of these *mazing* post card shots. One great shot after another. Unlike the previous Italian film, these shots are of real places... but the cinematography makes them look like the most beautiful place on earth.
The guy gets to this alley by the sea where he meets his pal, and the story slowly unfolds. These two guys in their 40s are small time criminals - not members of some gang or mob, they are much much smaller than that. Two petty thieves, two failures, two dreamers whose dreams have never come true. They guy who still lives with his parents is the less talkative of the two... the other guy is the one with the schemes. They are waiting for some guy who will completely change their lives - allow their dreams to come true... and as they wait, they talk about their dreams and schemes and lives. It’s good that we have had those post card shots of the city, because much of the rest of the film is these two guys standing in the alley talking as they wait. Still beautifully shot - but two guys talking. This might seem like some film I would not like - two guys just standing there talking - but what they say is constantly funny and the scheme is slowly revealed.
Though this is not Jules and Vincent from PULP FICTION, these guys have the same kind of clever dialogue that reveals them as dreamers and losers - the schemer has convinced a guy to sell him a Ferrari, and they will meet in this alley. But the plan is to knock the guy out with a baseball bat, steal his car, and drive to Paris where every woman is beautiful and easy to seduce. Once they have that car, every door that has ever been closed to them will instantly open! As they discuss their futures and pasts, love in the heart versus physical love, friends of theirs who were not as lucky as they are (a cab driver who was robbed and beaten and is now confined to a wheelchair) and what kind of yacht they will buy when they get to Paris; bits and pieces of their personal lives come out, and we really get to know these guys (as we laugh at the outrageous things they say). The schemer’s plans to live in Paris are shown in a collage fantasy sequence with the two of them driving their stolen Ferrari in post card photos... great, because it is *not* real. Eventually the schemer admits he has never been to Paris, but has seen pictures of it, you know, on the internet. Even though it is two guys talking, it never gets boring (I laughed the whole time) and eventually the Ferrari actually does show up...
And that is when things go really wrong, and we get away from the alley to a sea-side stairway where the end of the film takes place... and secrets are revealed and more plot twists occur. Oh, and this is more beautiful cinematography that makes you want to hop a plane for Italy.
After the film, my Italian friend (the producer) does a Q&A along with the director and one of the two stars (the guy who lived with his parents). This beautiful film was shot in 5 days. Based on a stage play, the two stars had played these roles on stage, knew the dialogue, and they basically did the play in front of the camera (variety of angles) in the alley again and again. Made on a shoe-string, though you would never guess by looking at it. Though the conversations are shot from several angles and look great, and we often see the ships at the dock near the alley as they wonder what the people are doing on those ships and where those ships may be going, it was shot very quickly. My producer friend they shot as much as 40 minutes one day! A great little movie, dialogue driven, and a nice actor’s showcase.... plus is looks great! Tarantino should bring this one to America on his Rolling Thunder label.
I'm so glad this was my Italian friend's film and not the other one!
- Bill
But the class went well, there were lots of questions about both sex and violence - and this is where I realized that it was a difficult subject for a class because answering questions was slightly embarrassing... and difficult to be precise as to how much sex or violence is too much. But the class went better than expected... and once again was sold out. The room was completely packed with people - around 150 or so.
And here’s the problem - Raindance has not printed brochures for my weekend class at all, but Elliot is passing out brochures for one of *his* upcoming classes in every sold out class that I do. Even though he mentions the weekend class in the intro, are the people just supposed to remember that after the class? They have no way of knowing *how* to sign up or where or how much the class costs... And my fear is that these free classes are completely undercutting my weekend class - it’s like getting 5 free servings of hors d’oeuvres and then the waiter asks what you would like to order for your meal... well, you’re really not hungry any more. In the past these classes had a nominal fee - 10 pounds (about $15) and there was only one of them... just to whet your appetite, but leave you hungry for more. This time, even though all of the classes are “selling out” there is no actual selling as they are free. There is standing room only, but not only does none of this translate into even a small amount of money per course, the audience is filling up on the free food and not hungry for the weekend class.
The Shooting People daily mailer has been promoting the 5 free classes, but not the weekend class. And Elliot wants to do a split of profits with me instead of the flat fee for teaching the class which we had done previously. Of course, in the past the weekend class has done well, so Raindance made a pile of money of giving me a flat fee. I suspect that no one is signing up, so they want to give me a % of what little money they make. I’m already wondering how I will handle this... but I have no idea how many people have signed up, so maybe I’m worrying overt nothing.
After the class I have several people come up to me with questions, and I answer a few then tell folks I must race to the cinemas to see films...
MOVIE: BREAKING ROCKS - A documentary about Billy Bragg’s program to buy guitars for prisons so that prisoners have a way to express themselves through music. They follow Bragg and others as they buy guitars, stencil them with the program logo (and other fun things) then deliver them to various prisons in the UK, and start guitar workshops. Prisoners learn how to play, learn how to write songs, and eventually perform at prison concerts... and when an inmate is released they perform at a charity concert to raise money to buy more guitars and keep the program going. The prison wardens and guards love the program because it keeps prisoners busy doing something constructive. One guy (outside) says - the problem with just punishing prisoners is that eventually they are released and may move into your neighborhood. It’s better to try to rehabilitate them and give them options in life for when they are released. This makes sense - and the idea behind this program is to teach prisoners to sing about their problems rather than let the anger bubble inside of them. The doc shows some success stories who have had music careers after release, but they stress the purpose of the program isn’t to teach prisoners to be folk musicians, but to find a safe way to vent their angers and problems through music. After the film, one of the prisoners (who has been paroled) played three songs he wrote in the cinema - and they were pretty good.
MOVIE: MIME-MIME - Okay, I have a problem. An Italian filmmaker who has attended a couple of my free classes told me that I *must* see his film today... and I do not remember the title. I bumped into him in the lobby and he said, “You are seeing my film today, right?” And I said, of course... but what is the title? I thought it began with the letter M, so I go to the screening of Mime-Mime... which is a Japanese film.
Story has a spoiled Japanese college girl who is having an affair with her (married) high school teacher while she tries to sort out her life. She ends up meeting a guy her age who she used to know when they were children, and this guy is a mess... a philosophy major who dropped out of college and seems to be drifting through life like she is. When he misses the last train after they have dinner together, he sleeps at her apartment... and this slowly blossoms into a romance, which means she must stop sleeping with her high school teacher as she decides to become exclusive with this guy. Kind of a quiet little story about 20 something Japanese kids trying to figure out what to do with their lives - every indie... but the problem for me? Every other scene was them having a meal! I have had nothing to eat, yet - and the film must contain 20 meal scenes where we focus on them eating. Even the scene where a friend eats a bowl of noodles while our gal takes a shower in the next room focuses on the noodles! There should be a warning before movies that are almost all meal scenes, so that you can make sure to have eaten first! The cinemas have popcorn and sweets but no *food*. I’m now very hungry... and still have to figure out which film is my Italian friend’s.
MOVIE: EMILIA GALOTTI - After Mime-Mime, I dash over to another cinema where the movie began 5 minutes ago. The problem with having 3 screens showing festival films is that the showing are often not in sync - and you must miss part of some movie in order to see another. I have now missed the first five minutes of this film... in *Italian*. Hey, is this the right movie?
After a few minutes, I hope not. This is the most arty and pretentious film I have ever seen. It reminds me of the Calvin Klien Obsession perfume commercials that Saturday Night Live did parodies of... except this is a movie like that! Characters spin and pose and speak as if what they say is the most important thing in the world - and the entire film is fake looking... there will be an over-the-top conversation in front of a background of ocean waves or something. And in almost every shot there are three models posing in the background or on the side of the screen. The story is some sort of rise and fall of a famous fashion model, and her wealthy patron and potential lover. Everyone poses with every sentence, and the sentences are big and flamboyant. And the backgrounds are arty as hell - often a spotlight on one person who speaks while the three models pose and someone else sits in a chair and speaks in strange cryptic slogans. As this thing goes on - and the models keep posing against false backgrounds of birds flying in slow motion or waterfalls or whatever, I wonder what I’m going to tell my Italian friend when he asks, “Did you like my movie?” This is the most pretentious piece of crap I’ve ever seen! At least the Obsession commercials are over in 30 seconds!
I duck out and buy a popcorn, still hungry from the Japanese film, and when I sneak back in, the film is winding down... Well, I really have no idea if it is winding down or not, but the fashion model is posing against a strange background as she does drugs and ODs and ends up posed artfully on a morgue slab as the three models pose and wail in the corner and her wealthy benefactor and his assistant talk between wild poses.
When the film ends, my Italian friend enters the cinema... and I get really worried about what I’m going to say to him... when he thanks me for coming to see his film, takes a seat, and the *next* film begins...
MOVIE: MOTHS - Ah, *this* is the correct Italian film! To date, the most beautifully shot film I have seen at the festival. Amazing lighting that reminds me of Gordon Willis. After a festival filled with ragged indie cinematography or overly arty cinematography, this film just looks beautiful.
Film starts with a mid-40s man telling his mother and father he’s going out - and everyone is shot beautifully. You wonder what this guy is doing still living with his parents, but we’ll get to that... As he walks through the city - some Italian coastal town, I’m sorry I don’t know which one - we get all of these *mazing* post card shots. One great shot after another. Unlike the previous Italian film, these shots are of real places... but the cinematography makes them look like the most beautiful place on earth.
The guy gets to this alley by the sea where he meets his pal, and the story slowly unfolds. These two guys in their 40s are small time criminals - not members of some gang or mob, they are much much smaller than that. Two petty thieves, two failures, two dreamers whose dreams have never come true. They guy who still lives with his parents is the less talkative of the two... the other guy is the one with the schemes. They are waiting for some guy who will completely change their lives - allow their dreams to come true... and as they wait, they talk about their dreams and schemes and lives. It’s good that we have had those post card shots of the city, because much of the rest of the film is these two guys standing in the alley talking as they wait. Still beautifully shot - but two guys talking. This might seem like some film I would not like - two guys just standing there talking - but what they say is constantly funny and the scheme is slowly revealed.
Though this is not Jules and Vincent from PULP FICTION, these guys have the same kind of clever dialogue that reveals them as dreamers and losers - the schemer has convinced a guy to sell him a Ferrari, and they will meet in this alley. But the plan is to knock the guy out with a baseball bat, steal his car, and drive to Paris where every woman is beautiful and easy to seduce. Once they have that car, every door that has ever been closed to them will instantly open! As they discuss their futures and pasts, love in the heart versus physical love, friends of theirs who were not as lucky as they are (a cab driver who was robbed and beaten and is now confined to a wheelchair) and what kind of yacht they will buy when they get to Paris; bits and pieces of their personal lives come out, and we really get to know these guys (as we laugh at the outrageous things they say). The schemer’s plans to live in Paris are shown in a collage fantasy sequence with the two of them driving their stolen Ferrari in post card photos... great, because it is *not* real. Eventually the schemer admits he has never been to Paris, but has seen pictures of it, you know, on the internet. Even though it is two guys talking, it never gets boring (I laughed the whole time) and eventually the Ferrari actually does show up...
And that is when things go really wrong, and we get away from the alley to a sea-side stairway where the end of the film takes place... and secrets are revealed and more plot twists occur. Oh, and this is more beautiful cinematography that makes you want to hop a plane for Italy.
After the film, my Italian friend (the producer) does a Q&A along with the director and one of the two stars (the guy who lived with his parents). This beautiful film was shot in 5 days. Based on a stage play, the two stars had played these roles on stage, knew the dialogue, and they basically did the play in front of the camera (variety of angles) in the alley again and again. Made on a shoe-string, though you would never guess by looking at it. Though the conversations are shot from several angles and look great, and we often see the ships at the dock near the alley as they wonder what the people are doing on those ships and where those ships may be going, it was shot very quickly. My producer friend they shot as much as 40 minutes one day! A great little movie, dialogue driven, and a nice actor’s showcase.... plus is looks great! Tarantino should bring this one to America on his Rolling Thunder label.
I'm so glad this was my Italian friend's film and not the other one!
- Bill
Sunday, October 11, 2009
London Interlude 4
One of the odd battles I fight every time in I’m in London is about milk. If you order a coffee it automatically comes with milk. You must *stress* that you want “Coffee Black” and even then they will give you a strange look as if you have just ordered a chicken dinner with the head still on the chicken. In the Starbucks here there are no coffee drinks without milk. None. They have just begun drip coffee (before everything was espresso based) and you must stress that you want it black or they will just put milk in it automatically. There are no iced coffee drinks where which do not have milk - none. I usually drink iced coffee, and this has been a major issue in every Starbucks. They ask how you can drink iced coffee without milk? I don’t really know how to answer that. In one Starbucks I said that in America we stop drinking milk when we start drinking beer... and they looked at me as if I were an alien... and then told me this could not be true. At another Starbucks they insisted that all Americans drink whole milk every day. You also get milk in your tea, here - I was at a restaurant a couple of days ago that *only* served iced tea with milk in it. In fact - you can not get iced tea in Starbucks. It is not on the menu at all. If it was, I’m sure it would *only* come with milk in it.
I get my vitamin D from the sun, I don’t need to drink milk.
- Bill
I get my vitamin D from the sun, I don’t need to drink milk.
- Bill
Saturday, October 10, 2009
London Interlude 3
My hotel room has maid service every day... but I am one man with 2 towels, and do not need maid service every day. I am used to the hotels in the USA which now have an environmental thing going on where you can save pointless laundry by using the same sheets and towels for a few days. I don’t need fresh sheets every day, and I only need fresh towels every other day. I ask how to handle this at the front desk and they tell me to use the Do Not Disturb door card to keep the maids from automatically replacing unused towels and changing the sheets... but this results in a letter from the head maid telling me that if I need fresh sheets I can call this extension on my phone and they will change my sheets... How many trees am I killing to prevent wasting unused towels?
- Bill
- Bill
Friday, October 09, 2009
London Interlude 2
“Here, take one.” It’s a bowl of gold disks, like fake gold coins. I take one and put it in my pocket before leaving the Raindance Café on my way to the cinema. I get to the cinema, and wonder what is in that gold foil container... could be chocolate, could be a condom. There were condoms in the gift bags one year at Raindance. I don’t want to open it up in the cinema lobby if it’s a condom... and I *really* don’t want to open it and pop it in my mouth in the dark cinema if it’s a condom. That means it is staying in my pocket all day until I get back to the hotel.
Except at the end of the day I’m at a party at the Raindance Café where the music is so loud you can not hear what anyone else is saying and I reach into my pocket to check the time on my iPod and... it’s slippery. Chocolate. I have a pocket full of melted chocolate. Yech!
- Bill
Except at the end of the day I’m at a party at the Raindance Café where the music is so loud you can not hear what anyone else is saying and I reach into my pocket to check the time on my iPod and... it’s slippery. Chocolate. I have a pocket full of melted chocolate. Yech!
- Bill
LONDON 9B: Day 6 - Pitch Panel Notes
The previous post was all about the Pitching Panel, and here are some notes on pitching...
CLEAR TITLES
One of the things I mentioned right off - if you are pitching a script, make sure you speak slowly and clearly when giving us the important things - like the title and your name.
Don’t mumble it. And don’t speak so fast that we can not hear it. If you were writing your script on paper, you wouldn’t scribble it in crayon - you would want it to be easy to read. The same is true when you are *speaking* your story - you want it to be easy to hear. You want to enunciate your words, don’t slur them together. Don’t speak so softly we can’t hear you. Yes, you are a writer not a public speaker - but when you are ordering coffee in a coffee shop or talking to a friend about those pricks on the pitch panel who didn’t pick your pitch as the winner, you are speaking to be understood. Why should the barista or your pals get the benefit of clear and easy to understand speech and those of us trying to hear your pitch do not?
Even when you are pitching against the clock, talking faster does not help at all - it just makes it more difficult for us to understand what you are saying. People also tend to speak faster when nervous - I know I do - so try to keep that under control. We need to be able to understand what you are saying. Speak clearly.
And make sure you have a title that isn’t going to take me a half hour to write down or will be impossible for me to remember. In a way, your title is the very first pitch for your script - so make sure you have a good one. When we get into that room to decide which pitch wins, we will need to remember the title - so pick a memorable title. Nothing generic or complicated or something that doesn’t match the story or something that requires some special knowledge on our parts to make sense. Your title is part of the pitch - it had better be great!
GENRE?
One of the problems was that we had no idea what these stories were going to be, and often thought the story might be a comedy from the beginning of the pitch, then the story veered off into violence and we realized it was some other genre. Tell us what the genre of your story right up front, title and genre, and then it will be easier for us to see that story. And strange tonal shifts and genre shifts? Don’t work in a pitch and usually don’t work in a script as well.
Tell us the genre right up front so that they have a context for the rest of your pitch. I think I say this in my Thriller Class CD - there is often a fine line between the thriller and comedy genres, and dealing with a dead body can be a frightening experience in BLOOD SIMPLE or a laugh outloud comedy in WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S. Tell us which your script is so that we can properly imagine it as you pitch it.
SKIP THE DETAILS
A pitch is not about your complete story - that’s why you have the script. A pitch is about your concept, the idea of your story. The main problem many people had was that they wanted to tell their entire 110 page script moment-by-moment in 2 minutes. How is that even possible? Many people began with all of these details that proved to be meaningless to the story. They began with the protagonist waking up and brushing his teeth and taking a shower and dressing for work and... then the bell would ring because they had used up their time!
I understand setting up the protagonist in their ordinary world... in the screenplay. But in a pitch if you tell us that this is an accountant, I will *imagine* what his ordinary life is like. If you tell us it’s an astronaut I will imagine their ordinary life. The key to pitching is to find the essence of *everything* including character, and then trust us to figure it out. Better to have us not sure of some detail than bore us to death... and never get to your story because you have run out of time.
THE SCRIPT TELLS THE STORY
The same goes for scenes and bits of dialogue and story details. The script tells the story, the pitch is all about the basic concept... and interesting us enough so that we ask to read that script. Don’t worry about telling us the story, and don’t give us a scene-by-scene telling of the script - that’s not a pitch. You want to condense the story down to the absolute essentials, and don’t tell us what happens in any scene unless it is critical to the story... and even then, save that stuff for late in the pitch. You want to begin with the concept, and *never* tell us the story scene-by-scene. Let the script do its job and let the pitch do its job.
SEED OF THE STORY
Give us the seed of the story - protagonist has a problem. Not the details. And give us that seed of the story right up front. Begin with title and genre and (maybe) some similar film to give us an idea of tone and then give us your 3-5 sentence logline. Tell us the whole story in a couple of sentences right up front. That way if the bell rings, we still know your whole story. And if the bell doesn’t ring, you can fill in a couple of spicy details, which we’ll talk about in a moment.
The biggest problem with many of the pitches is that they had no seed of the story - and no story. Often they were a bunch of scenes that seemed to be unrelated (except they happened to the same characters). If you can not distill your story down to a few brief sentences, you do not have a story... or you do not know what your story is.
CONCEPT RULES
The difference between a pitch that caught our attention and one that did not all came down to concept. You know I harp on high concept or having some sort of story hook, but here I was surrounded by British film industry people who are probably the anti-Hollywood, and the pitches that caught *their* attention were the ones with high concepts. When you distill your screenplay down to its essence - that story seed - what becomes important is how interesting that concept is. If your story *idea* is interesting, we will want to read the screenplay. If your story idea is boring or we have heard it before, why would we want to read it?
The winner of the night had a great high concept, and so did the two runners up. These *ideas* caught our attention and intrigued us. I know that a couple of the judges actually wanted to read some of the scripts from these pitches. If your concept is unclear or your concept is something we have heard before - throw that script away and write one with a great idea. The goal here is a great story well told - and so many pitches did not start with a great story... or, if it was in there, they didn’t focus on it or get to it before the bell rang. You are pitching the *concept* so get to that right away - it’s part of that story seed, that protagonist with a problem. Find the most interesting concept that expresses your story - if you have a woman who wishes she knew in high school what she now knows, you can have her coach a kid similar to her... or return to high school in disguise as a student... or ZAP back to high school and be that student again (as in PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED). Your concept is critical - so pick the very best concept for your story. I would not want to read the first version of this story at all, would be mildly interested in the second version (which is NEVER BEEN KISSED) and be really interested in reading that third version. PEGGY SUE has that magic and fantasy that we go to the cinema to experience... and connects to our wish fulfillment to actually have the chance to change our lives (instead of just relive it). Make sure you start with the great concept instead of the okay one - it’s not “A Just Okay Story, Well Told”.
WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT?
If you are doing something in a genre, you need to tell us right up front what makes this cop-chases-serial-killer story completely different than any other. One guy pitched his story and it was *exactly* the same story as a popular film, just with one character from the film removed and replaced by another. Um, that’s a Search & Replace job, not writing an original screenplay. But even if your story doesn’t *obviously* resemble some other film, because you only have a limited time to pitch your story, you will be giving us kind of a short hand version without details, and some elements may sound a little generic, so you need to tell us what makes your story unique and unusual right up front so that we use that as a frame of reference for those parts that may sound a bit generic.
And whatever makes it different needs to actually make it different. If you have a buddy cop story and one is tall and the other is short, that has zero impact on the story.
CONCEPT MATTERS
One problem with some of the pitches was that they had *excuses* for the story and contrived plots that just rang false. When you have 110 pages to tell your story you might be able to do some fancy footwork and disguise these things, but anything false and contrived becomes obvious when you compress and condense your story down to a pitch. The strange part is that many people who pitched didn’t think these things were important because they only became apparent in the pitch. Problem is, once the film is made the *trailer* is a pitch, and will expose these defects... and when stars go on talk shows and pitch the film, it will sound awful (or incomplete). The concept actually matters - and if you have contrived something it will sink the film, so no one will even want to read the script. You need a story where the concept makes sense without footnotes.
If your story is a romantic comedy about an old fashioned newspaper reporter chasing the same story as a slick television news guy... and they begin hating each other and eventually fall in love, you may not think the story they are both chasing is important. It’s a rom-com, not a news film... but that story is what brings them together and what drives the story, so it is *critical*. The story they are chasing is the story the audience is watching as they fall in love, and you can’t leave it out of your pitch. It can’t be boring. It can’t be unrelated to the theme of your script. It can’t be unrelated to each character’s emotional conflict. That story they are chasing is what the film is about, while your couple is falling in love. So it had better be great and unusual and original and amazing.
WHY IS THIS A MOVIE?
Often the stories pitched sounded like they would be better on the small screen or the pages of a book or a stage play. If what you are pitching is a *movie* it needs to be something that requires the big screen to work - a larger than life story that fills that huge screen. If the story you are pitching is internal - something that would be better suited to a novel - you need to write it as a novel. Your story needs to match the medium.
When you pitch the story, focus on the elements that make it a movie. The things that will fill the screen and the things that are visual. If your story is two people talking in a house for 90 minutes, that is a stage play. What do we *see*? How is the story told through the actions of the characters? Don’t pitch a TV movie to a cinema panel. And if someone on the panel asks you why this is a movie - you had better know the answer. You had better know why this is *not* a novel or a play or a TV movie - why it *must* be a movie in order to work.
And part of this is probably why 600 million people worldwide would pay to see it. Why your story is going to be something worth spending the $106.7 million the average film costs to get to the screen. Every producer wants to know how they are going to make their money back... and make a huge profit as well. If your story isn’t going to get people all over the world lining up to see the movie, don’t pitch it. If you *must* tell that story on film, find the money and make it yourself. Put your money where your mouth is. If you want to use someone else’s money, you must have a story that will be a great financial investment for them. Why is your story a movie? Why will people all over the world want to pay to see it? Why can it *only* work on that big screen?
WHO IS YOUR AUDIENCE?
So, here I am the Hollywood guy on the panel, and the British guys are asking “Who is your audience?” A film shows in a cinema. A cinema has a line of people buying tickets. Who is buying tickets to see this story? Who does this story appeal to enough that people will leave their homes and stand in line and buy a ticket? What age group? What sex? What other popular films is your story like? One thing I always say is to go to BoxOfficeMojo.com and look at the top 20 films for the past 5 years... that is 100 films popular films. Odds are your story is like one in that 100. If not, that’s a problem. But usually the potential audience is obvious - because they are the people around you when you go to the cinema. You should be writing the kinds of movies you regularly pay to see in the cinema (not wait for DVD or cable). And that gives you a clue to who the audience is. But when someone on the panel asks, *know* your demographic and *know* how well similar movies do with the audience. When you pitch a script you are trying to sell it to the producer, and that means you need to be able to explain why it’s a good investment.
DON’T READ IT
Yes, you are nervous... but if you read your pitch off a piece of paper in a monotone and never make eye contact with us, we are going to pay just as much attention to you as you are playing to us... and *not* want to read your screenplay. You can use the page for reference, or hold on to it in case you forget, but it is *better* to just tell us the story as if you are telling a friend about the movie you saw Friday night. Just talk to us.
I know this may seem completely unfair, but performance matters to some extent. If you sound bored when you read your story, we will think your story is boring. If you sound passionate and excited by your story, that will rub off on us. You don’t need to be an actor, you just need to be *human*.
By the way, one person who pitched was *too slick* - it was a complete turn off for me because they were *not* human, but some sort of TV Sham-Wow Pitchman type. Plastic. This person also used a bunch of completely obvious tricks in an effort to make us listen (they named their protagonist after panel members) and this completely backfired. I don’t want to hear some fake person pitch their false pitch, I want to hear a real person who is passionate about their story.
After I was told to announce *not* to read your pitch, the very next person who pitched read their in a boring monotone. If you can not learn from those who pitch before you, and can not change things at the last minute, you are doomed. This is all about knowing your story and caring about your story. As the night went on, the time allotted for a pitch went from 2 minutes to 90 seconds to 1 minute... yet almost no one altered their pitch to fit the shorter time period! Most continued to tell us moment-by-moment what happened inj the story instead of cutting to the chase!
FLASHY & TWISTS RULE
You may not like this, but in a pitch a great idea or interesting character is what matters. One of the pitches had a funny idea for a protagonist that had the whole panel laughing... and that was one of the two runners up. Guess what? That person was racing the clock and I’m not sure we got all of their story, or that the story even made much sense in the long run. But that character was so fascinating and such an amusing idea for a character that we all wanted to read the script. Now, we may read that script and the story doesn’t hold up - but the purpose of the pitch is to get us to read your script. Then it’s up to the script. If you have some flashy element or location or character or situation or some plot twist that completely rocks our world, we want to read that script. When you are pitching, make sure to include the good parts!
Oh, and your story better *have* a story - not just a set up. There were a couple of pitches that were all Act 1 with no visible Act 2... and when someone on the panel asked what happens next, the answers were vague and evasive. Just some stuff happens. Nothing exciting or interesting. Your *entire screenplay* needs to be exciting and interesting! Every single moment!
FRESH MEETS?
I was surprised that the others on the panel were *encouraging* those who pitched to reference some other popular film as a way to give us an idea of general tone. But it really is much easier to imagine what the film will be like if you start out by telling us it’s like RAISING ARIZONA or like TAKEN or like RANSOM or like SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON - four very different movies about a kidnaping. By telling us which movie your story resembles right up front, we can imagine it in that context. Pitching is short hand, and whatever you can do to get that idea to us quickly is great.
But anything that confuses us is a problem. There were people who did the “meets” thing - it’s STRAW DOGS meets DRIVING MISS DAISY meets ABSOLUTE POWER meets AMERICAN GRAFFITI... and I have no idea what the hell that story can be! If you are going to have films meet, make sure there are *ONLY* two films meeting and that those two films meeting makes us instantly see what your story is. More than two films is confusing. Two films that have zero in common is confusing. If you have two films meet, make sure they are compatible!
BEST SCENES
If you get all the way through your pitch and the bell hasn’t rang, tell us one or two of the greatest scenes in your script. The scenes that will end up in the trailer and attract that paying audience. Again - cut to the chase and don’t give us all of the details of the scene, but the *concept* of the scene. And make sure that scene is something that captures our imaginations and makes us *need* to read that script.
ENDINGS
Here’s the thing about a pitch - if you have a story where we can see a possible ending, you don’t need to tell us what that ending is. We can imagine it. If we imagine a different ending, not a problem. But if you have the kind of story where we can not easily imagine a potential ending, you need to show us that you *can* resolve this conflict... and that means telling us the ending. We need to know that you didn’t paint yourself into a corner before we waste our time reading a screenplay without an ending (or where the ending clearly doesn’t make sense or doesn’t work). Don’t worry about ruining the story by telling us the end - this is all about getting us to read your script. If your story has a twist end, it had also better have an exciting beginning and exciting middle and exciting 109 pages before the big twist on page 110. We may know how it ends, but the rest of the ride needs to be exciting - and those are the details you are not telling us in your pitch. A great film can be seen more than once - even after we know how it all ends.
So, those are some pointers on pitching your script - next time I hope to hear a bunch of great pitches!
- Bill
SCRIPT SECRETS: LONDON - October 10 & 11, 2009 - BIG IDEA class, using GHOST as our primary example and it includes the new Thematic element!
CLEAR TITLES
One of the things I mentioned right off - if you are pitching a script, make sure you speak slowly and clearly when giving us the important things - like the title and your name.
Don’t mumble it. And don’t speak so fast that we can not hear it. If you were writing your script on paper, you wouldn’t scribble it in crayon - you would want it to be easy to read. The same is true when you are *speaking* your story - you want it to be easy to hear. You want to enunciate your words, don’t slur them together. Don’t speak so softly we can’t hear you. Yes, you are a writer not a public speaker - but when you are ordering coffee in a coffee shop or talking to a friend about those pricks on the pitch panel who didn’t pick your pitch as the winner, you are speaking to be understood. Why should the barista or your pals get the benefit of clear and easy to understand speech and those of us trying to hear your pitch do not?
Even when you are pitching against the clock, talking faster does not help at all - it just makes it more difficult for us to understand what you are saying. People also tend to speak faster when nervous - I know I do - so try to keep that under control. We need to be able to understand what you are saying. Speak clearly.
And make sure you have a title that isn’t going to take me a half hour to write down or will be impossible for me to remember. In a way, your title is the very first pitch for your script - so make sure you have a good one. When we get into that room to decide which pitch wins, we will need to remember the title - so pick a memorable title. Nothing generic or complicated or something that doesn’t match the story or something that requires some special knowledge on our parts to make sense. Your title is part of the pitch - it had better be great!
GENRE?
One of the problems was that we had no idea what these stories were going to be, and often thought the story might be a comedy from the beginning of the pitch, then the story veered off into violence and we realized it was some other genre. Tell us what the genre of your story right up front, title and genre, and then it will be easier for us to see that story. And strange tonal shifts and genre shifts? Don’t work in a pitch and usually don’t work in a script as well.
Tell us the genre right up front so that they have a context for the rest of your pitch. I think I say this in my Thriller Class CD - there is often a fine line between the thriller and comedy genres, and dealing with a dead body can be a frightening experience in BLOOD SIMPLE or a laugh outloud comedy in WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S. Tell us which your script is so that we can properly imagine it as you pitch it.
SKIP THE DETAILS
A pitch is not about your complete story - that’s why you have the script. A pitch is about your concept, the idea of your story. The main problem many people had was that they wanted to tell their entire 110 page script moment-by-moment in 2 minutes. How is that even possible? Many people began with all of these details that proved to be meaningless to the story. They began with the protagonist waking up and brushing his teeth and taking a shower and dressing for work and... then the bell would ring because they had used up their time!
I understand setting up the protagonist in their ordinary world... in the screenplay. But in a pitch if you tell us that this is an accountant, I will *imagine* what his ordinary life is like. If you tell us it’s an astronaut I will imagine their ordinary life. The key to pitching is to find the essence of *everything* including character, and then trust us to figure it out. Better to have us not sure of some detail than bore us to death... and never get to your story because you have run out of time.
THE SCRIPT TELLS THE STORY
The same goes for scenes and bits of dialogue and story details. The script tells the story, the pitch is all about the basic concept... and interesting us enough so that we ask to read that script. Don’t worry about telling us the story, and don’t give us a scene-by-scene telling of the script - that’s not a pitch. You want to condense the story down to the absolute essentials, and don’t tell us what happens in any scene unless it is critical to the story... and even then, save that stuff for late in the pitch. You want to begin with the concept, and *never* tell us the story scene-by-scene. Let the script do its job and let the pitch do its job.
SEED OF THE STORY
Give us the seed of the story - protagonist has a problem. Not the details. And give us that seed of the story right up front. Begin with title and genre and (maybe) some similar film to give us an idea of tone and then give us your 3-5 sentence logline. Tell us the whole story in a couple of sentences right up front. That way if the bell rings, we still know your whole story. And if the bell doesn’t ring, you can fill in a couple of spicy details, which we’ll talk about in a moment.
The biggest problem with many of the pitches is that they had no seed of the story - and no story. Often they were a bunch of scenes that seemed to be unrelated (except they happened to the same characters). If you can not distill your story down to a few brief sentences, you do not have a story... or you do not know what your story is.
CONCEPT RULES
The difference between a pitch that caught our attention and one that did not all came down to concept. You know I harp on high concept or having some sort of story hook, but here I was surrounded by British film industry people who are probably the anti-Hollywood, and the pitches that caught *their* attention were the ones with high concepts. When you distill your screenplay down to its essence - that story seed - what becomes important is how interesting that concept is. If your story *idea* is interesting, we will want to read the screenplay. If your story idea is boring or we have heard it before, why would we want to read it?
The winner of the night had a great high concept, and so did the two runners up. These *ideas* caught our attention and intrigued us. I know that a couple of the judges actually wanted to read some of the scripts from these pitches. If your concept is unclear or your concept is something we have heard before - throw that script away and write one with a great idea. The goal here is a great story well told - and so many pitches did not start with a great story... or, if it was in there, they didn’t focus on it or get to it before the bell rang. You are pitching the *concept* so get to that right away - it’s part of that story seed, that protagonist with a problem. Find the most interesting concept that expresses your story - if you have a woman who wishes she knew in high school what she now knows, you can have her coach a kid similar to her... or return to high school in disguise as a student... or ZAP back to high school and be that student again (as in PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED). Your concept is critical - so pick the very best concept for your story. I would not want to read the first version of this story at all, would be mildly interested in the second version (which is NEVER BEEN KISSED) and be really interested in reading that third version. PEGGY SUE has that magic and fantasy that we go to the cinema to experience... and connects to our wish fulfillment to actually have the chance to change our lives (instead of just relive it). Make sure you start with the great concept instead of the okay one - it’s not “A Just Okay Story, Well Told”.
WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT?
If you are doing something in a genre, you need to tell us right up front what makes this cop-chases-serial-killer story completely different than any other. One guy pitched his story and it was *exactly* the same story as a popular film, just with one character from the film removed and replaced by another. Um, that’s a Search & Replace job, not writing an original screenplay. But even if your story doesn’t *obviously* resemble some other film, because you only have a limited time to pitch your story, you will be giving us kind of a short hand version without details, and some elements may sound a little generic, so you need to tell us what makes your story unique and unusual right up front so that we use that as a frame of reference for those parts that may sound a bit generic.
And whatever makes it different needs to actually make it different. If you have a buddy cop story and one is tall and the other is short, that has zero impact on the story.
CONCEPT MATTERS
One problem with some of the pitches was that they had *excuses* for the story and contrived plots that just rang false. When you have 110 pages to tell your story you might be able to do some fancy footwork and disguise these things, but anything false and contrived becomes obvious when you compress and condense your story down to a pitch. The strange part is that many people who pitched didn’t think these things were important because they only became apparent in the pitch. Problem is, once the film is made the *trailer* is a pitch, and will expose these defects... and when stars go on talk shows and pitch the film, it will sound awful (or incomplete). The concept actually matters - and if you have contrived something it will sink the film, so no one will even want to read the script. You need a story where the concept makes sense without footnotes.
If your story is a romantic comedy about an old fashioned newspaper reporter chasing the same story as a slick television news guy... and they begin hating each other and eventually fall in love, you may not think the story they are both chasing is important. It’s a rom-com, not a news film... but that story is what brings them together and what drives the story, so it is *critical*. The story they are chasing is the story the audience is watching as they fall in love, and you can’t leave it out of your pitch. It can’t be boring. It can’t be unrelated to the theme of your script. It can’t be unrelated to each character’s emotional conflict. That story they are chasing is what the film is about, while your couple is falling in love. So it had better be great and unusual and original and amazing.
WHY IS THIS A MOVIE?
Often the stories pitched sounded like they would be better on the small screen or the pages of a book or a stage play. If what you are pitching is a *movie* it needs to be something that requires the big screen to work - a larger than life story that fills that huge screen. If the story you are pitching is internal - something that would be better suited to a novel - you need to write it as a novel. Your story needs to match the medium.
When you pitch the story, focus on the elements that make it a movie. The things that will fill the screen and the things that are visual. If your story is two people talking in a house for 90 minutes, that is a stage play. What do we *see*? How is the story told through the actions of the characters? Don’t pitch a TV movie to a cinema panel. And if someone on the panel asks you why this is a movie - you had better know the answer. You had better know why this is *not* a novel or a play or a TV movie - why it *must* be a movie in order to work.
And part of this is probably why 600 million people worldwide would pay to see it. Why your story is going to be something worth spending the $106.7 million the average film costs to get to the screen. Every producer wants to know how they are going to make their money back... and make a huge profit as well. If your story isn’t going to get people all over the world lining up to see the movie, don’t pitch it. If you *must* tell that story on film, find the money and make it yourself. Put your money where your mouth is. If you want to use someone else’s money, you must have a story that will be a great financial investment for them. Why is your story a movie? Why will people all over the world want to pay to see it? Why can it *only* work on that big screen?
WHO IS YOUR AUDIENCE?
So, here I am the Hollywood guy on the panel, and the British guys are asking “Who is your audience?” A film shows in a cinema. A cinema has a line of people buying tickets. Who is buying tickets to see this story? Who does this story appeal to enough that people will leave their homes and stand in line and buy a ticket? What age group? What sex? What other popular films is your story like? One thing I always say is to go to BoxOfficeMojo.com and look at the top 20 films for the past 5 years... that is 100 films popular films. Odds are your story is like one in that 100. If not, that’s a problem. But usually the potential audience is obvious - because they are the people around you when you go to the cinema. You should be writing the kinds of movies you regularly pay to see in the cinema (not wait for DVD or cable). And that gives you a clue to who the audience is. But when someone on the panel asks, *know* your demographic and *know* how well similar movies do with the audience. When you pitch a script you are trying to sell it to the producer, and that means you need to be able to explain why it’s a good investment.
DON’T READ IT
Yes, you are nervous... but if you read your pitch off a piece of paper in a monotone and never make eye contact with us, we are going to pay just as much attention to you as you are playing to us... and *not* want to read your screenplay. You can use the page for reference, or hold on to it in case you forget, but it is *better* to just tell us the story as if you are telling a friend about the movie you saw Friday night. Just talk to us.
I know this may seem completely unfair, but performance matters to some extent. If you sound bored when you read your story, we will think your story is boring. If you sound passionate and excited by your story, that will rub off on us. You don’t need to be an actor, you just need to be *human*.
By the way, one person who pitched was *too slick* - it was a complete turn off for me because they were *not* human, but some sort of TV Sham-Wow Pitchman type. Plastic. This person also used a bunch of completely obvious tricks in an effort to make us listen (they named their protagonist after panel members) and this completely backfired. I don’t want to hear some fake person pitch their false pitch, I want to hear a real person who is passionate about their story.
After I was told to announce *not* to read your pitch, the very next person who pitched read their in a boring monotone. If you can not learn from those who pitch before you, and can not change things at the last minute, you are doomed. This is all about knowing your story and caring about your story. As the night went on, the time allotted for a pitch went from 2 minutes to 90 seconds to 1 minute... yet almost no one altered their pitch to fit the shorter time period! Most continued to tell us moment-by-moment what happened inj the story instead of cutting to the chase!
FLASHY & TWISTS RULE
You may not like this, but in a pitch a great idea or interesting character is what matters. One of the pitches had a funny idea for a protagonist that had the whole panel laughing... and that was one of the two runners up. Guess what? That person was racing the clock and I’m not sure we got all of their story, or that the story even made much sense in the long run. But that character was so fascinating and such an amusing idea for a character that we all wanted to read the script. Now, we may read that script and the story doesn’t hold up - but the purpose of the pitch is to get us to read your script. Then it’s up to the script. If you have some flashy element or location or character or situation or some plot twist that completely rocks our world, we want to read that script. When you are pitching, make sure to include the good parts!
Oh, and your story better *have* a story - not just a set up. There were a couple of pitches that were all Act 1 with no visible Act 2... and when someone on the panel asked what happens next, the answers were vague and evasive. Just some stuff happens. Nothing exciting or interesting. Your *entire screenplay* needs to be exciting and interesting! Every single moment!
FRESH MEETS?
I was surprised that the others on the panel were *encouraging* those who pitched to reference some other popular film as a way to give us an idea of general tone. But it really is much easier to imagine what the film will be like if you start out by telling us it’s like RAISING ARIZONA or like TAKEN or like RANSOM or like SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON - four very different movies about a kidnaping. By telling us which movie your story resembles right up front, we can imagine it in that context. Pitching is short hand, and whatever you can do to get that idea to us quickly is great.
But anything that confuses us is a problem. There were people who did the “meets” thing - it’s STRAW DOGS meets DRIVING MISS DAISY meets ABSOLUTE POWER meets AMERICAN GRAFFITI... and I have no idea what the hell that story can be! If you are going to have films meet, make sure there are *ONLY* two films meeting and that those two films meeting makes us instantly see what your story is. More than two films is confusing. Two films that have zero in common is confusing. If you have two films meet, make sure they are compatible!
BEST SCENES
If you get all the way through your pitch and the bell hasn’t rang, tell us one or two of the greatest scenes in your script. The scenes that will end up in the trailer and attract that paying audience. Again - cut to the chase and don’t give us all of the details of the scene, but the *concept* of the scene. And make sure that scene is something that captures our imaginations and makes us *need* to read that script.
ENDINGS
Here’s the thing about a pitch - if you have a story where we can see a possible ending, you don’t need to tell us what that ending is. We can imagine it. If we imagine a different ending, not a problem. But if you have the kind of story where we can not easily imagine a potential ending, you need to show us that you *can* resolve this conflict... and that means telling us the ending. We need to know that you didn’t paint yourself into a corner before we waste our time reading a screenplay without an ending (or where the ending clearly doesn’t make sense or doesn’t work). Don’t worry about ruining the story by telling us the end - this is all about getting us to read your script. If your story has a twist end, it had also better have an exciting beginning and exciting middle and exciting 109 pages before the big twist on page 110. We may know how it ends, but the rest of the ride needs to be exciting - and those are the details you are not telling us in your pitch. A great film can be seen more than once - even after we know how it all ends.
So, those are some pointers on pitching your script - next time I hope to hear a bunch of great pitches!
- Bill
SCRIPT SECRETS: LONDON - October 10 & 11, 2009 - BIG IDEA class, using GHOST as our primary example and it includes the new Thematic element!
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