THRILLER Thursday: The Fatal Impulse

The Fatal Impulse

The spider web fills the screen, it's Boris Karloff's THRILLER!

Season: 1, Episode: 11.
Airdate: 11/29/1960
Director: Gerald Mayer
Writer: Philip MacDonald based on a story by John D MacDonald.
Cast: Robert Lansing, Witney Blake, Elisha Cook, Steve Brodie, Conrad Nagle and Mary Tyler Moore.
Music: Pete Rugolo.
Cinematography: Benjamin H. Kline.

Boris Karloff’s Introduction: “A phone call in the night. A threat to kill. And then a public announcement that the killing will take place. Is this man just a publicity seeker? Or will he be driven to kill? Will he succumb to the impulse? That’s the name of our story, “The Fatal Impulse”. Our principal players are Mr. Robert Lansing, Miss Witney Blake, Mr. Lance Fuller, Mr. Elisha Cook, Mr. Steve Brodie, and Mr. Conrad Nagle. Before very long, one of these girls unwittingly will be carrying a deadly bomb through the crowded city. As sure as my name is Boris Karloff, one man’s impulse will paralyze a great metropolis for six terrifying hours. I do hope you’re not addicted to biting your nails, because this, I’m quite sure you will agree, is a thriller!”

Synopsis: The episode opens with a campaign poster for Walker Wylie for Mayor next to a pay phone, then has a limping Harry Elser (Elisha Cook jr from THE MALTESE FALCON and just about every Film Noir ever made) dragging his leg to the pay phone, dialing a number, then putting a handkerchief over the phone to disguise his voice as he threatens to kill... Mayoral candidate Walker Wylie (Conrad Neagle, who manages to make everything he says sound like a lie, even his character’s *name*) who was sound asleep in his bed moments before. Wylie hangs up the phone and goes back to sleep. Elser puts some more coins in the phone and calls every newspaper, TV and radio outlet telling them that he will kill Walker Wylie, get those headlines ready!

Detective Rome (Robert Lansing who always reminded me of an alien) and his partner Sgt Hannigan go to Wylie’s office to question him... and his secretary just lets them through without even showing their badges! Rome chews out Wylie, who obviously doesn’t take the threat seriously. Wylie tells Rome he doesn’t have a single enemy in the world (but he’s so insincere that you know there must be millions of them)... Rome doesn’t believe it, says until they find out whether there is or is not a real threat, Wylie will have a policeman with him 24/7. Wylie argues that he’s running for *Mayor* and can’t have a bunch of stupid detectives interfering with his life. Plus, he’s the main guest on a late night talk show tonight! The interview will be shot here in his office at 11pm, can’t have a cop sitting next to him for that! Rome insists, leaves Hannigan behind for protection...

Elser in his garage carefully makes a bomb. It’s a small bomb with a mercury switch, about the size of a couple of packs of cigarettes. Gently places it in another box packed with cotton balls to keep it from being shaken, and...

At Wylie’s Office they are prepping for the TV filming. Crew guys are going in and out of the office... and Elser in a maintenance jumpsuit manages to sneak in with some, right past Hannigan, saying he’s there to change the light bulbs. . When the real crew guys leave, he sits in Wylie’s chair, opens a desk drawer, carefully takes the bomb out of the box and prepares to put in the drawer... when Wylie’s secretary steps into the office and yells for Hannigan! Elser slides the bomb into his pocket, tries to escape... But Hannigan rushes into the office and they fight. Elser tips one of the big TV lights onto Hannigan’s head, glass shattering and leaving Hannigan with raw hamburger for a face and completely blind. Elser makes his escape...

But the alarm has been rung. Rome and some detectives search the building for Elser (a limping man), who is hiding in a janitor’s closet. Elser changes out of the jump suit into a business suit and when the clock strikes 5 he leaves the janitor’s closet and joins the crowd of businessmen and secretaries leaving work for the day. He manages to squeeze into a packed elevator full of women and floor by floor suspense builds as people get on and off the elevator. We know he has the bomb in his pocket, and if it goes off? All of these innocent people will die.

When the elevator reaches the ground floor, everyone exits... and Rome and his men spot Elser and give chase! Elser races across a busy street with Rome and the cops right behind him... and then gets hit by a truck. Rome searches him for the bomb, can’t find it... and Elser’s last words are “girl in the elevator”. The figure the bomb was set to got off around 11pm when Wylie would be at his desk on the TV talk show... and there were around a dozen women on that elevator with him. But who are these women? One of them has a bomb in her purse that will blow up at 11pm tonight, unless she shakes it enough to blow up earlier. “There’s some girl walking around this city with a bomb” and she doesn’t know it.

Rome has his men track down the names of every woman on Wylie’s floor who left work at 5pm, plus any woman who had an appointment with a business on that floor who left at 5pm. Make a list on the squad room chalkboard. Find those women. Interview them. Search their purses for the bomb. Cross them off the list if they didn’t have the bomb. He knows that a couple of women got on the elevator at different floors, but has to start somewhere.

Meanwhile, Rome and his new partner Detective Dumont (Steve Brodie, who was Mitchum’s treacherous partner in OUT OF THE PAST and the father of the director of my movie TREACHEROUS) go to Elser’s house to search for clues. In the car on the way Dumont and Rome discuss Rome’s lack of love life after losing his wife, so we know these two guys have been friends or a long time. They discover that Elser was one of Wylie’s employees who was fired and denied his pension and holds a grudge (kind of like Dennis Hopper in SPEED). When Dumont goes to search the garage... booby trap! The whole garage blows up, killing Dumont right before Rome’s eyes. He’s lost two partners and the episode isn’t even half over!

8:15...

At the Squad Room, they are crossing names off the list on the chalkboard... it’s down to four *known* women who they have not been able to contact. Rome and another detective split the final four and try to find them. Rome tracks down an artist who had an appointment on that floor named Jane Kimball (Whitney Blake) who he finds in a night club with her boyfriend Robert (Lance Fuller). Robert is kind of combative to Rome, he’s on a date here and this cop is screwing it up. Rome explains about the bomb... and Jane and Robert become a lot more cooperative. Rome *carefully* takes the purse out of the crowded nightclub to the lawn in back and *cautiously* takes each item out looking for the bomb. Nothing. No bomb. When he gives Jane back her purse, Robert is mad as hell for ruining their evening... and then it gets *worse* when Jane says that she had been in the building applying for an artist job with her portfolio... and can *draw* all of the people in the elevator. Robert sits on the sidelines pissed off as Jane draws all of the faces.

The last girl on Rome’s list is a wife with a *very* jealous husband. They are fighting when Rome rings the doorbell, and the problem is... the wife was visiting her lover in the office building and lies to Rome about being in the building. But when Rome explains about the bomb, the wife must admit to cheating in front of her husband... and her husband grabs her purse looking for evidence! Now Rome must wrestle the bag away from the husband, and there may be a bomb inside! After the careful search of the purse... Rome finds nothing.

9:20...

At the Squad Room, *all* of the names are crossed off the list on the chalkboard. Rome is stumped. The only possibility is some woman *not* on their list. How can they find her?

In the night club, Jane remembers the woman in glasses who came into the elevator on a lower floor... and calls Rome.

Rome tracks down the woman in the glasses and goes to her apartment. The woman is played by a pre DICK VAN DYKE SHOW Mary Tyler Moore, who tells Rome she checked both her purse and her portfolio and no bomb in either one...

Rome realizes that Jane had her art portfolio with her in the elevator, and it was never searched. He tries to call her at the club, she’s left! He races to her home...

Almost 11:00!

Jane and Robert come home from the nightclub (to her house) and once the door is closed Robert’s hands are all over her... oh, and the bomb is there, too! It has fallen out of her portfolio onto the sofa... and is behind a cushion where it can not be seen. As Robert guides Jane to the sofa and makes all kinds of moves on her, the bomb is *underneath her head* behind that cushion. Jane is trying to get him to behave, when there’s a knock at the door. Detective Rome. He asks where her portfolio is, she tells him it’s in the bedroom, he carefully searches it... no bomb.

Tick tick tick... a minute before 11:00!

Rome has no idea where the bomb is... was there another woman on the elevator? Someone they missed? Robert wants him the hell out of there. Rome asks where she put the portfolio when she came home that afternoon, and Jane says on the desk.

Rome starts looking around the desk when Jane remembers it wasn’t the desk, it was the sofa. Rome carefully searches the sofa... finding the bomb! Tells Robert and Jane to get the heck out of the house and run like hell. Then carefully removes the bomb and as the clock strikes 11:00, tries opening the window and it’s *stuck*... breaks the window and throws it outside and explodes on the lawn!

A moment later Jane returns without Robert, and it kinda looks like she’s gonna hook up with Rome. The end.

Review: This was a good, tense, episode... really reminiscent of SPEED in many ways. The “shell game” of having one of 12 or 13 women be carrying around the bomb and not knowing it is a great device, and I’m guessing the John D. MacDonald story gets deeper into who these different women are (we only get 3 of them in the episode). They do a great job of showing us the clock every once in a while, and I wish they had done more of that... but there probably wasn’t time. You do get that ticking clock feel. And when we finally get to Jane’s house, that bomb becomes a great “focus object” ticking away under that sofa cushion as Jane’s boyfriend tries making out with her. The only hiccups in the episode are things that have to do with a limited TV budget: the night club that Jane and her boyfriend are in seems to be a set with one booth and no extras... so we really don’t get a scene where Rome has to carefully carry that bomb outside. And explosions are off camera. Also, some time restraints turn conversations like the one about Rome’s dating life into obvious expositional moments. But these are minor quibbles for an episode that keeps ramping up the tension and really has you worried at the end that they will not find that bomb that has fallen between the sofa cushions in time. This was a really good episode and shows the promise of what the show can do with pure suspense.

The show has finally found its footing, and for a while we’ll alternate between suspense and weird tales... though next week is more crime story, with a twist.

Bill

Film Courage: Writing From Desperation.

FILM COURAGE did a series of interviews with me at the end of 2014, and then again at the end of 2015. There were 36 (or more) segments total. That's almost a year's worth of material! So why not add a new craft article and make it a weekly blog entry? All I have to do is write that new article, right?

WRITING FROM DESPERATION
So you have quit your day job and given yourself a year or two years or whatever is in your bank account to make it as a professional screenwriter... and as that deadline gets closer and closer and you haven’t sold anything, panic and desperation begins to set in... and you realize that low budget horror always sells, and even though you absolutely hate horror, you decide to write a horror screenplay so that you can make enough money to avoid having to work for a living... Good idea?

Terrible idea.



One of the unwritten rules in screenwriting is to never write about screenwriters or writers or Hollywood - it’s incestuous and the general film audience usually can’t relate to the characters... and being a screenwriter is not a common fantasy, like being a superhero or being a tough guy or falling in love or any of the other things that are part of the “dream fulfillment” of the movies. But every once in a while, a Hollywood insider does a “tell all” movie about their experiences in the business (carefully turned into fiction) and sometimes those films are successful... like the great SUNSET BLVD () directed by Billy Wilder (a screenwriter) and written by Wilder and Charles Brackett and D.M. Marshman, Jr. It’s one of the handful of Film Noirs about screenwriters, and a great example of what can happen to you when you are writing from desperation.

In the opening scene, screenwriter Joe Gillis is dead in the swimming pool of a decaying Hollywood mansion, then we flashback to how he came to be in this pool... A crappy Hollywood apartment where he is 3 months behind in his rent and about to be evicted, when there is a knock at the door - a couple of guys from the collection agency who have come to reposes his car, and would like him to hand over the keys. Joe tells them that he loaned his car to a friend who drove it to Palm Springs, sorry. Check the apartment garage if they don’t believe him. After they leave, he goes to the parking lot where he has hidden his car, and heads to the Paramount Lot where he has a meeting with a producer named Sheldrake, who might buy his script and get him out of this financial mess... He pitches the script to Sheldrake, who is skeptical - it doesn’t sound very good. Gillis lies, and says that 20th Century Fox is also interested in it. Sheldrake buzzes his Development Girl, who comes in with the coverage. “I covered it, but I wouldn’t bother. It’s from hunger. It’s just a rehash of something that wasn’t very good to begin with.” (That’s about 6 minutes into the movie - it doesn’t waste any time.) Gillis pleads with Sheldrake for any kind of assignment, he needs the money. But he is sent on his way...

Because when you write from desperation, it shows.

When you just hack out something for a buck, it shows.

When your heart isn’t in it, it shows.

One of those things that producers often say that they are looking for in a screenplay is “passion” - they want this to be the story that you have to tell (not just for money), the story that is a part of you, that has soul. All of the things that tend to disappear when you are writing from desperation, when you are writing from panic. Though the cliche of the serious writer in their garret with only beans to eat while they complete their masterpiece is romantic, in real life that’s no way to write anything that’s actually good. I have a Script Tip called “Projectors” about how whatever we write can’t help but show our feelings and attitude and emotions - our writing *is* who we are - so if you are a bitter angry person, you will be writing bitter angry stories that are probably not going to be entertaining.

After I sold COURTING DEATH to a company at Paramount and moved to Los Angeles, I had 2 years worth of rent and expenses plus a production bonus when they made the film. Except they didn’t make the film. I spent two years like Joe Gillis - holed up in my apartment writing screenplays - and had done absolutely no networking or work to get some other screenplay sold. I could have written all of those screenplays in my hometown of Concord, CA and saved a bundle! Los Angeles is a very expensive place to live. So when my two years of rent and expenses was almost spent, I went into panic mode and tried to figure out how to sell a screenplay. But I was trying to sell the screenplays that I had written from my heart and soul (even though they contained explosions) before I realized that I was running out of money. And I sold one, that managed to get made. And there were others that got me studio meetings and a couple that ended up optioned. I realized that I needed to spend more time on the business side of the screenwriting business and from that point on I actually became a professional screenwriter (as in, I continued to sell screenplays and land assignments).

Another writer I knew was not as successful, and called me in the middle of the night asking if he could crash at my apartment because he’d just been evicted and everyone else he’d called had turned him down. I didn’t know this guy very well, and was probably at the bottom of his list of people to call, and I turned him down as well. I realized that I never wanted to be in that position, and decided that if I was getting close to running out of money again, I would just get a day job. And at one point back in those early years, I had one - working in a wine shop in the Brentwood district, a few blocks from where O.J. Simpson would later murder his wife and her friend. Allegedly. But I realized that it was better for me to write with confidence and heart and soul instead of writing from panic and desperation.

Better for you to do that, too.

So if you give yourself some arbitrary deadline like 5 Years Until I Make It or whatever, don’t quit that day job! You can write 1 page a day and have 3 first drafts in a year... which is what I did when I was working at the warehouse. That’s how I wrote COURTING DEATH (which sold and got me to Los Angeles) and a bunch of other screenplays, some that sold, some that got me assignments, and some that nothing happened with. Lots that nothing happened with! That’s how screenwriting works - you will write a stack of screenplays in order to sell one or land one assignment. So you need something to pay the bills in the meantime.

DAY JOBS FOR SCREENWRITERS
You don’t want to be writing from desperation. It’s difficult to write when you are worried about financial problems, so it’s best to have an income while trying to break in. What you want is a “disposable job” rather than a career. A career will get in the way of your career! I always picked jobs that I wouldn’t want to do for the rest of my life, as an incentive to write and not do it for the rest of my life. If I got too comfortable at my day job, it became my real job. So I looked for jobs that would pay the rent, didn’t require me to think much (so that I could be figuring out scenes at work) and had regular hours so that I could plan my writing around it. I know people who work in advertizing and do other things that are writing based day jobs and that’s good news and bad news; the good news is that you are writing and getting paid for it, the bad news is that you might use all of your creative energy writing ad copy for a toilet cleaner. But if you have a steady and stable job that is paying the bills, keep it until you have made enough money to survive for at least a year...

And then don’t be afraid to go back to work. There’s no shame in not being evicted and panic calling some guy you know in the middle of the night to see if you can crash at his place, you know, just until you sell something.

But once you get to Los Angeles, there are some day jobs that put you into contact with peopel in the business, and are better than working in a warehouse. In the “Breaking In Bluer Book” I have 15 ways to make connections in Los Angeles, and some of them are day jobs like working as an Office Production Assistant, Reader, Writer’s Assistant or Personal Assistant, and a bunch of others. But jobs that put you in contact with people in the business can be helpful - I know a limousine driver who takes people back and forth to the airport (and other places) and often has celebrities in the back of his limo... and became a Film Producer because he managed to option a screenplay and sign some second tier movie stars from the back of his limo, and then give the package to a few investors and producers and distributors in the back of his limo. Only in Hollywood! But the kind of job that puts you in contact with upscale clients that is in that “disposable” classification is a great way to make connections while you are paying the rent, and because it’s disposable you can quit when you sell a screenplay and then come back to it later if you need to. That was part of the reason why I choose working in the wine shop in Brentwood - celebrities and producers buy wine and I might meet them. That was the plan. I learned that movie stars and producers had personal assistants that did all of their shopping for them... so that’s maybe a better job choice.

But aside from the “disposable jobs” that put you in contact with people in the business, there are also disposable jobs that you can just pick up and drop whenever you want, and those are also good if you have moved to Los Angeles and suddenly find yourself in need of a job to keep from worrying about paying the bills so that you can concentrate on your screenplay and put your heart and soul into it. Scott Frank, writer-director of QUEEN’S GAMBIT (based on the Walter Tevis novel), told me that he trained to be a bartender because that was a job that you could do anywhere and there was always someone hiring. Lots of actors and actresses wait tables between acting gigs, and Kathleen Turner went back to waiting tables after filming her star-making role in BODY HEAT... she has talked about waiting tables when the posters with her picture started going up around town. If you ask any waiter in Los Angeles what they are auditioning for, they will have an answer!

IT’S GOTTA HAVE HEART!
But the main thing to do is find a way to be able to focus on your writing, and not be worried about looming eviction like that writer who wanted to crash at my place just, you know, until he sold something. He never had another film credit, so maybe he never sold anything? He might have become like Joe Gillis in SUNSET BLVD - just writing ‘From hunger. It’s just a rehash of something that wasn’t very good to begin with,” and being so desperate and panicked that they are unable to put your heart and soul into your work.

You don’t want to just hack out what you think they want, because they don’t want hack work - they want something that you care about, that you are passionate about... that is also wildly commercial and will sell a bunch of tickets. What you write from hunger and desperation is going to smell of hunger and desperation - it’s not going to be that story that you needed to needed to tell. Later in SUNSET BLVD Joe Gillis bumps into that studio reader who trashed his script at a New Year’s Eve party, and she tells him that she read over all of the scripts he had submitted to the studio and found one with a great supporting character that she thought should have been the main character. Joe says that he knew someone like that character, and that subplot was personal and emotional to him... and the reader said that showed, and he should break off that character and write a new script about them... and he does. And that’s also what you need to do - find the stories that you are passionate about that also have commercial appeal and write those. Write the kind of movies that you regularly pay to see every week in the cinema - that you would stand in line to see! And you can’t write those from desperation! As writers, we are our “instrument” - we create from within, and it’s difficult to do that if you are worried about something else... so find the ways to be comfortable enough that you *can* create.

Good luck and keep writing!

- Bill

BREAKING IN?

405 Pages!

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Should really be called the BUSINESS BLUE BOOK because it covers almost everything you will need to know for your screenwriting career: from thinking like a producer and learning to speak their language, to query letters and finding a manager or agent, to making connections (at home and in Hollywood) and networking, to the different kinds of meetings you are will have at Studios, to the difference between a producer and a studio, to landing an assignment at that meeting and what is required of you when you are working under contract, to contracts and options and lawyers and... when to run from a deal! Information you can use *now* to move your career forward! It's all here in the Biggest Blue Book yet!

Print version was 48 pages, Kindle version is over 400 pages!

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Seriously - TEN TIMES larger than the paper version (still on sale on my website)! That's just crazy!



Thank you to everyone!

Bill

Trailer Tuesday: OUTRAGE (1950)

OUTRAGE (1950) (aka NICE GIRL)

Directed by: Ida Lupino.
Written by: Collier Young, Malvin Wald, Ida Lupino.
Starring: Mala Powers, Tod Andrews, Robert Clarke, Jerry Paris.
Produced by: Collier Young, Malvin Wald, Ida Lupino..
Cinematography by: Archie Stout.
Music by: Paul Sawtell.
Production Design by: Harry Horner (THE HUSTLER and THE DRIVER!).


First off: There is no trailer available for this film. How is that even possible? So here is some guy's (great) review of the film that has all kinds of great shots in a brief running time.



No secret that I am a huge fan of Ida Lupino, a great actress who knocks it out of the park in one of my favorite movies THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT where she plays the wife of Alan Hale, who owns a long haul trucking company, and plots his murder... by electric garage door opener! She gives an amazing performance in that film... and many others. But as a film director, she became one of my favorites without even knowing that it was the same person! She directed my favorite episode of the THRILLER TV anthology show, GUILLOTINE, and had an interesting career in films as well. After a career of playing sexy young women, she began writing and producing her own films with screenwriter husband Collier Young - and even after they divorced, continued to work with him. Their first film as producers was NOT WANTED (about unwed mothers) and after their director had a massive heart attack a couple of days into filming, she jumped behind the camera and completed the film... not taking credit. But everyone knew she had made the film... and when she decided to direct their company’s second film, the financiers were happy to put up the money. She was a director... and extremely skilled (she paid attention as an actress to the big name directors on the films she starred in). This was her third film, the second film she was credited for as director, and a great example of her social issues films...

Ann Walton (Mala Powers) is a 20 something office worker in a small town, who lives with her parents and is dating a nice young man Jim Owens (Robert Clarke) who she will one day marry. They meet for lunch in the town square every day: he buys sandwiches on his way, she buys desert from a lunch counter (two pieces of chocolate cake, their favorite).The creepy waiter (Albert Mellen) at the lunch counter hits on her... hey, she’s pretty. She meets Jim, and he has good news - he just got a raise and now they can afford to get married. There’s a great bit here where a shoeshine boy and a nosey old woman do everything possible to kill the romantic moment as he asks her to marry him. Ann says he will need to talk to her father, first... who was Jim’s math teacher... and who came close to flunking Jim. After dinner, Jim asks her father and mother (Raymond Bond and Lillian Hamilton) for permission to marry their daughter. Mom is excited, Dad is against it - this is his little girl! She’s not ready to be married! After Mom pulls him aside, Dad reluctantly gives his approval.

The next day, after telling everyone at work that she’s getting married, Ann heads home... passing the creepy waiter, who is closing up shop and asks her out. She says no... and he begins following her. He unbuttons his shirt slowly - which is really creepy! Ann tries to lose him in the industrial section of town, but he is still following her - his footsteps echoing. This is a great suspense scene that builds and builds and builds. She runs... the Waiter walks... and seesm to be gaining on her. There is no escaping this creepy guy! She yells, “Please! Somebody help me!” But this is the industrial part of town, and darkness has fallen... no one to hear her screams. There’s a great overhead shot here, where she seems powerless as she tries to find a place to hide in a maze of parked delivery trucks. She hides inside a truck, but when the Waiter gets closer and closer and closer she ducks down to hide... hitting the truck’s horn. It gets stuck. The Creepy Waiter yanks her out of the truck, throws her down, and BRUTALLY rapes her - the truck horn drowning out her screams.

This is a film from 1950 - and the rape is shocking.

Ann staggers home - clothes and face dirty and torn... bleeding.

Her Mom finds her collapsed at the front door and pulls her inside.

LATER: A Doctor and a Police Detective talk to her Mom and Dad... Dad feels powerless. When the Detective questions Ann, she keeps saying “I couldn’t get away” and only remembers the scar on the rapist’s neck - not that he was the Waiter. There’s a great shot here of Ann through the bars of the bed headboard as if she is in prison. Trapped. She doesn’t get out of bed, doesn’t leave the house, for a long time. When Jim comes to visit, she tells Mom to send him away - there will be no marriage. She never wants to see another man in her life - severe PTSD. When she finally tries to go back to work, she breaks down - and there’s a great scene where an office worker stamping papers becomes the sound of the rapist’s feet as he follows her down the alley to the parked trucks. Everything reminds her of the rape. Everything.

The police have some suspects in a line up... including the Waiter who raped her. But she completely freaks out and can’t identify him. She’s a mess. Jim is there to drive her home, and he tells her that what happened hasn’t changed the way he feels about her. He loves her. They can get through this together... but she dumps him. “I don’t want you to touch me!”

She doesn’t want any man to touch her. Forever.

This film does a great job of making us understand just how emotionally damaging rape can be.
A man looks at her... it reminds her of the rape. Every man is a threat... and as the audsience, we understand that this isn't just paranoia, those men are real potential threats. She's an attractive young woman, and they see her as a conquest, their prey.

Ann runs away from home - hopping a Greyhound bus for Los Angeles. Not telling her parents or anyone else.

When the bus has a meal stop in some part of rural California, some guy hits on her at the lunch counter and she freaks again and takes off running. Trying to escape every man on earth. Running. Running. Eventually she falls down at the side of the road - passed out from exhaustion.

A car slows... passes her... stops... and a Man picks her up and puts her in his car. Then drives away.

Watching the movie, I said “No! No! Hell no!” Because this film had done such a great job of making me feel her trauma. And that Man who picks her up and puts her in his car? I didn’t trust him, or any other man. And I am a man.

Ann wakes up in a strange bed.

Oh, hell no!

In a strange house.

Oh, hell no!

She seems to still be wearing all of her clothes. The Man hasn’t done anything to her... yet. But when she tries to leave the bedroom... The Man blocks the doorway and tells her to get back into the bed.

Oh, hell no!

She tries to get past him - fighting - but he over powers her and tells her that she has to stay in the room. Orders her to get back into the bed. He begins pushing her to the bed...

Oh, hell no!

Okay, now what do you think has happened to her? Is about to happen to her?

This is a great example of leading the audience, because once the Man has her in the bed.... A kindly Older Woman comes in with some water and calls the man "Doctor" and we understand what the Man's intentions were.

This scene puts us in her shoes, and makes every man a potential threat. We feel what she is feeling and think what she is thinking. That is great directing. Always think about ways to lead the audience so that they are in your protagonist's shoes and feel what they feel - no matter what it is. The reason why we are talking about this film now, and Ida Lupino as a director now, are scenes like this. Where we are frightened for Ann. Where every man is a threat to Ann... and a threat to us. This film is 70 years old, and still powerful.

The bedroom, by the way, is in the Kindly Older Woman's house - her daughter's room before she got married and moved away. The Older Woman, Madge Harrison (Angela Clarke) and her husband Tom Harrison (Kenneth Patterson) own orange orchards in this part of California. A rural area. The Man who blocked her way is Rev. Bruce Ferguson (Tod Andrews), a hunky and handsome (and sexually safe) Minister nicknamed "Doctor", who only wants to help Ann. Make sure that she is safe. He knows that she is running from something, and maybe needs to hide for a while to get her life back together. He promises that he won’t tell the police about her, and will make sure that nobody bothers her... and then he asks Tom if he and will be accompanying his wife to church this Sunday...

Fatherly Tom gives Ann a job at the orange packing plant - it’s harvest season and they need to get the oranges packed in wooden crates so they can be taken by truck and train to market. She’s great at packing oranges...

And this is a great sequence for a lower budget film. We are taken inside the orange business and shown how the fruit are inspected and selected and packed into wooden boxes and the boxes are sealed for shipping - all on a conveyor belt. It’s fascinating. This was shot in Marysville, California and the production value from the endless orange groves in the background and the packing plant that Ann works in takes us into this world that most of us have never seen before. People are fascinated by how things are made, so any time you can show them the details of some job that we don’t really know anything about, it’s better than special effects. This is sort of an Orange Packing Procedural...

Reverend Bruce shows up to make sure that she’s okay, and asks her what she did for a living previously (one of the reasons why I like this movie is that it’s about working class people who have jobs and have to earn a living whether they are men or women), and Ann tells him that she was an accountant for a company... and Reverend Bruce says that Harrison needs an accountant more than he needs an orange packer... and gets Ann a promotion.

All of this is Ann finding a new home, and slowly getting back to normal. Sort of.

On Saturday, Reverend Bruce asks if she wants to go with him while he sketches. Ann alone with a man? She decides to go (showing us that she is healing). He takes her to this beautiful hilltop overlooking the whole town, and sketches the trees and flowers. Tells her that he wasn’t always a Reverend... he was raised in Philadelphia, went off to World War 2, and lost all faith in God during the war. After the war he ran away... finding himself in this small town... and realized that he needed time to heal. Which brought him back to the church, and he became a Reverend. Through his story, he hopes to find out what her story is... or at least to show her a path to peace.

Just as Ann is beginning to find peace in this small town, the County Sheriff (Roy Engel) stops by the orange packing plant to ask if anyone has seem a young woman reported as a runaway by her parents... Tom Harrison and Reverend Bruce cover for Ann... but she is afraid that the Sheriff will arrest her and take her back home... where everyone knows that she was raped. Where everyone knows...

So Ann runs away.

Both Tom Harrison, who has become her surrogate father, and Reverend Bruce (who is hunky and dreamy and not sexual - so maybe her surrogate boyfriend) are worried. They search for her and can not find her. Both want to keep her safe, even if it means continuing to lie to the Sheriff. These are good men.

They can’t find her.

Reverend Bruce goes home, worried, and begins playing the piano to calm himself... when Ann shows up at his front door. He invites her inside and she is alone with a man. She tells him that she is the runaway girl, and confesses to him. He thinks that this is the catharsis she needed. That now she can move on with her life...

The town has a post harvest dance, and Reverend Bruce convinces her to go... socialize. This is her town, now... she needs to meet people. She feels ready for this. She buys a pretty dress. She goes to the dance...

But she avoids dancing. She isn’t ready for that. There's a great shot of everyone dancing and our protagonist Ann and a homely woman standing on the sidelines watching.

A man comes up to Ann and asks her to dance, she says no.
He GRABS her and starts dancing with her.
She struggles and escapes, running away.
He CHASES her - and it's like a rural replay of being chased by the rapist.

Oh, hell no...

This man, named Frank (played by comedian Jerry Paris from the DICK VAN DYKE SHOW) catches her, says that all he wants to do is kiss her. Without her permission. She seems to have no say in this. It’s just a kiss... just a harmless kiss...

Then we get a big close up of Frank’s lips heading towards her face. And this shot dissolves to the rapist's face coming closer to hers.

What would you do to this guy who just wants a harmless kiss?

The reason why this film is so effective is that by this point, that “harmless kiss” is rape. It’s some guy grabbing at this woman (who we identify with) without her permission, without her consent. Can’t these men just leave her alone? Can’t they just wait until she’s ready to dance or kiss? Can’t they ask first instead of take?

As Frank’s face dissolves into the rapist’s face, she grabs something from the old trailer behind her - a wrench - and slams it into his head until her lets go of her.

Frank lets go of her. Falls to the ground. Head bloody. Dead?

Ann sees what she has done and runs and runs and runs.

Reverend Bruce finds here at his special place, the hilltop overlooking the whole town. “Why’d you do it, Ann?” He tells her that he has to take her back...

At the Sheriff’s Station...

The County Sheriff tells Reverend Bruce that he has taken Ann’s fingerprints and IDed her as the runaway girl... who was raped. Frank who just wanted a harmless kiss and ended up with a wrench to the head, is alive in the hospital and should have no trouble pulling through... but Ann is still in big trouble. The Sheriff will have to charge her. She may go to prison.

Reverend Bruce goes to visit Ann in Jail. Real Jail, not pretty. Not some Hollywood set. This is a dirty, grungy place. He tells Ann that he knows what happened back home... and she opens up, tells Reverend Bruce everything about the rape... about how when that man chased her and tried to kiss her, she just snapped. Thought it was going to happen all over again...

Reverend Bruce makes a deal with the Sheriff - have Ann seen by the Court’s Psychiatrist for an evaluation... and let Reverend Bruce talk to Frank in the hospital. After everyone understands the circumstances, and that Ann snapped because she thought she was going to be raped again, the Judge decides to give Ann probation as long as she gets help.

Reverend Bruce finds out that her rapist was captured by the police... after doing it again... and is now behind bars. He can never hurt Ann again. And her parents and boyfriend Jim are back home waiting for her. Ann says goodbye to Reverend Bruce and heads back to her old life and her old job... and her fiancé.

This movie was amazing for a 1950 film - though the rape was nowhere near as brutal as IRREVERSIBLE, it’s still shocking when they go from the Rapist holding Ann down on a loading dock with the truck horn blasting louder than her screams and slowly move up to a Man who looks out his apartment window, then shuts it so that he doesn’t have to hear the truck horn. This was all in one shot - and that’s one of the amazing things about this director. Even in her first films she was using the camera to tell the story - not just an actress who knew how to do the acting part of filmmaking and thought that was enough to direct. Lupino studied the technical elements and used shots like that to tell her story visually. There’s a great shot in one of her THRILLER episodes from the 60s where she gives us a little girl’s point of view as she swings on a swing - and even though the cameras back then were as big as a Volkswagen, she manages to get one to mimic the point of view of the little girl. That was practically an engineering problem - and she did it in her TV episode, probably shot in less than 6 days. Most of the male directors on that show didn’t do any shots like that (with the same cinematographers - so it wasn’t the camera department covering for her). All of her films and TV episodes are filled with shots designed to tell the story. She understood the language of cinema. There are hundreds of male directors who were never as good as she was. In her first film - the one she took over from the director who had a heart attack after a couple of days of shooting - she has an amazing chase scene that rivals anything that men were doing at the time. One of her mentors was Don Siegel, another of my favorite directors, and her action scenes are comparable to his.

Just used to tell stories with female leads dealing with social issues that were (and are) of interest to women. Rape, unwed mothers, dealing with heartbreak, and many other issues that her films tackled because Hollywood Studios weren't dealing with them. But they would gladly make some money distributing them. Her independent company The Filmakers made close to ten great films... and we will be looking at them in future Trailer Tuesdays. Probably next up (later in the year) will be her first film NOT WANTED about unwed mothers. We still have a THRILLER episode of two that she directed coming up this year.

- Bill

PS: I know that it's a Counter Man not a Waiter - but it's 2020, and who knows what a Counter Man is?

Fridays With Hitchcock: Hitch 20: Banquo's Chair (s3e3)

This is a great new documentary series called HITCH 20 that I am a "guest expert" on. The series looks at the 20 TV episodes directed by Hitchcock and here is the third episode of the third season, which looks at the terror of the unseen in Hitchcock's work.

off!

HITCHCOCK: MASTERING SUSPENSE

LEARN SUSPENSE FROM THE MASTER!

Alfred Hitchcock, who directed 52 movies, was known as the “Master Of Suspense”; but what exactly is suspense and how can *we* master it? How does suspense work? How can *we* create “Hitchcockian” suspense scenes in our screenplays, novels, stories and films?

This book uses seventeen of Hitchcock’s films to show the difference between suspense and surprise, how to use “focus objects” to create suspense, the 20 iconic suspense scenes and situations, how plot twists work, using secrets for suspense, how to use Dread (the cousin of suspense) in horror stories, and dozens of other amazing storytelling lessons. From classics like “Strangers On A Train” and “The Birds” and “Vertigo” and “To Catch A Thief” to older films from the British period like “The 39 Steps” and “The Man Who Knew Too Much” to his hits from the silent era like “The Lodger” (about Jack The Ripper), we’ll look at all of the techniques to create suspense!

Films Included: NOTORIOUS, SABOTAGE, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, THE 39 STEPS, REBECCA, TO CATCH A THIEF, FRENZY, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, THE LODGER, THE BIRDS, TORN CURTAIN, SABOTEUR, VERTIGO, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934), THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1955), SUSPICION, and NUMBER SEVENTEEN. 17 Great Films!

Only 125,000 words!

Price: $5.99

Click here for more info!

OTHER COUNTRIES:

UK Folks Click Here.

German Folks Click Here.

French Folks Click Here.

Espania Folks Click Here.

Canadian Folks Click Here.



- Bill

Of course, my first book on Hitchcock...

HITCHCOCK: EXPERIMENTS IN TERROR

Click here for more info!

HITCHCOCK DID IT FIRST!

We all know that Alfred Hitchcock was the Master Of Suspense, but did you know he was the most *experimental* filmmaker in history?

Contained Thrillers like “Buried”? Serial Protagonists like “Place Beyond The Pines”? Multiple Connecting Stories like “Pulp Fiction”? Same Story Multiple Times like “Run, Lola, Run”? This book focuses on 18 of Hitchcock’s 53 films with wild cinema and story experiments which paved the way for modern films. Almost one hundred different experiments that you may think are recent cinema or story inventions... but some date back to Hitchcock’s *silent* films! We’ll examine these experiments and how they work. Great for film makers, screenwriters, film fans, producers and directors.

Films Examined: “Rear Window”, “Psycho”, “Family Plot”, “Topaz”, “Rope”, “The Wrong Man”, “Easy Virtue”, “Lifeboat”, “Bon Voyage”, “Aventure Malgache”, “Elstree Calling”, “Dial M for Murder”, “Stage Fright”, “Champagne”, “Spellbound”, “I Confess”, and “The Trouble with Harry”, with glances at “Vertigo” and several others.

Professional screenwriter William C. Martell takes you into the world of The Master Of Suspense and shows you the daring experiments that changed cinema. Over 77,000 words.

UK Folks Click Here.

German Folks Click Here.

French Folks Click Here.

Espania Folks Click Here.

Canadian Folks Click Here.

Bill

THRILLER Thursday: The Devil's Ticket

THRILLER: Devil’s Ticket

The spider web fills the screen, it's Boris Karloff's THRILLER!

Season: 1, Episode: 29.
Airdate: April 18, 1961

Director: Jules Bricken
Writer: Robert Bloch adapts... Robert Bloch!
Cast: Macdonald Carey, Patricia Medina, Joan Tetzel, John Emery.
Music: Big lush Morton Stevens score... heard it somewhere before.
Cinematography: John Russell.
Producer: William Frye.

Boris Karloff’s Introduction: “The name of our story is The Devil’s Ticket. It has to do with an artist, and they tell us that one picture is worth a thousand words. You will see Macdonald Carey, Joan Tetzel, Patricia Medina, and John Emery. Now there’s a rogue’s gallery if I ever saw one! And I can assure you they’re up to no good, as you’ll find out for yourself if you have the courage to stay with us.”

Synopsis: A Pawn Shop as the sun sets. Pawn Shop owner Spengler (Robert Cornthwaite) is nervous as he closes up, makes sure all of the doors and windows are locked as if he’s expecting an invasion... that’s when the bell over the door begins ringing like crazy. He carefully opens the front door... what could be on the other side? A creature? Sees his cat jumping up and grabbing the bell cord. Brings in the cat, relocks and bolts the front door, and goes to the counter where there’s a HUGE pile of money. He starts counting it when the back door BLASTS open, and fog enters the Pawn Shop. A voice startles him: it’s Satan, saying they had a deal... and now it’s time for him to pay. The cat freaks out...

Crappy apartment: Hector Vane (Macdonald Carey) and his wife Marie (Joan Tetzel) sit at the dinner table eating the last of their food. They are flat broke. He’s a painter who does amazing portraits which capture the souls of his subjects... but everyone wants abstracts these days. He hasn’t sold a painting in ages. He looks for something to take to pawn for a few bucks so that they can eat... realizes they have nothing left except his ratty old coat, and his paintings. He swore he’d never pawn a painting, but...

Pawn Shop: Hector goes to pawn one of his paintings, but Spengler isn’t there. A strange man lets him in... he doesn’t introduce himself, but he goes by many names (Satan played wickedly by John Emery). Satan loves the painting, but tells Hector that he’d rather loan him money on another commodity. In a sly and subtle scene, Satan introduces himself without names, explains that he will pawn Hector’s soul for 90 days in exchange for Hector’s dreams of success as a painter... but at the end of those 90 days Hector must return and give Satan the pawn ticket *and* a painting of someone else... a painting that captures their very soul. Hector’s soul will be returned, but the subject of his painting will lose theirs.

Hector puts the pawn ticket in the pocket of his ratty coat and heads home...

Where Marie tells him a gallery just called, they want to do a one man show of his work. Not just any gallery, but a big uptown gallery where rich people go to buy paintings! Any skepticism about whether the new pawnshop owner was Satan or not disappears.

The Gallery: *All* of Hector’s paintings sell for top dollar, and there are art collectors eagerly awaiting whatever he paints next! They are *rich*!

Luxurious apartment: Hector and Marie sit at a massive dinner table eating a feast. The same scene as before, just with a whole lot more money.

Hector goes to the Pawn Shop with a painting... a landscape. Satan tells him that’s not the way it works: it must be the painting of someone you know... and it must capture their soul. Their soul for yours.... and he has 26 days left to paint and deliver the picture.

Hector tells Marie he’s going to their old apartment, now his studio, to paint. She doesn’t understand why he kept that place... why not find a nice studio? They can afford it. Hector says he likes to be reminded of where he came from...

But really, he uses the studio to meet his mistress Nadja (Patricia Medina) a model he never got around to painting... but bedding? That’s what he does now instead of paint. Nadja wants him to ditch his wife and go to the Mexican Riviera with her. Problem is, the day she leaves is the day he needs to deliver his painting.

Hector sees a psychiatrist Dr. Frank (Hayden Rorke, Dr. Bellows from I DREAM OF JEANNIE) and explains the whole Satan thing. Dr. Frank doesn’t believe in Satan, thinks this new Pawnshop Owner is just some dude playing with Hector’s mind. He only has Hector’s soul if that’s what Hector believes. Hector asks if the dude isn’t Satan, how come Hector became instantly successful after making the deal? Dr. Frank agrees to go to the pawn shop and talk to this guy who may or may not be Satan.

At a fancy restaurant, Hector has dinner with Nadja... and tells her he *will* go away with her.

When he goes to see Dr. Frank the next day, the doctor is gone and Satan is behind his desk. Satan warns him not to do anything like that again. Don’t go to the police, don’t call a lawyer (“In my time, I’ve had dealings with many lawyers”), just deliver the painting... in 13 days.

Hector thinks he has a solution: he will paint Marie... who he no longer loves. But as he paints his wife, he falls in love with her all over again. This creates a problem: he finished the painting with just over 2 days until his pawn ticket and the painting are due... but now he’s fallen back in love with is wife.

When the wife is out, he brings his mistress over to see the painting... and she reacts like a madwoman! She can see that Hector is still in love with his wife just by looking at it, so she SLASHES the painting to ribbons! Then she runs off, saying their relationship is over. To make things worse, the phone rings and it’s Satan reminding him he has 48 hours to deliver the painting.

Hector locks himself in his room and paints nonstop for 48 hours... falls asleep. Marie knocks on the door, he says come in... that the painting is finished. As soon as he delivers it to the customer, they can run off together... a second honeymoon. Marie leaves for a moment, then returns... tells Hector he has a visitor. It’s Satan.

“You know why I’m here. Give me my painting!”

Hector invites Satan in, tells him he will really like the painting he’s done, it really captures the subject’s soul. He unveils the painting, and it’s... Satan! Hector explains that Satan kept asking for *his* painting, so this is a painting of *him*, as per contract. Satan is shocked, he has actually been bested by a mortal. This has never happened before! Satan tells Hector to give him the pawn ticket and Hector’s soul will be returned, and he gets to keep all of the fame and fortune he’s built for the past 90 days plus any he makes for himself in the future. Hector asks Marie to get him his old coat...

She returns with a brand new one. “Surprise!” She got him a new coat for their second honeymoon! Hector asks what she did with his old coat? Marie says it was so old and ratty that she burned it...

Satan smiles at Hector, “Now it’s your turn to burn!”

Review: Bloch adapts Bloch this week in a clever little weird tale probably from Weird Tales Magazine originally. There have been some Bloch short stories adapted on Thriller before, but this is the first time he did it himself. Though best known for PSYCHO, Bloch is one of the great horror writers of the 1950s and one of my favorites. I probably discovered him through Norman Bates, but stayed for Weird Tailors and all of his wonderful short stories and novels. He is the master of the clever writing with lines like “He cut off her scream, and her head” and “He'd captured her heart, and put it in a glass jar”. In this episode there’s all kinds of clever lines, like Satan’s line about knowing a bunch of lawyers.

Even though this episode has a built in ticking clock, with the 90 day pawn ticket and the days ticking down throughout; this is more a twist end story than a tale of suspense like YOURS TRULY JACK THE RIPPER (which also has a twist end, but manages to build some real suspense and dread whenever one of the women goes walking after dark). No suspense situations in this episode, it ends up being more of a drama about the toll of success. Part of the problem might be the direction, which is typical TV so some of the things which might be milked for suspense end up being used for surprise. But the*type* of story is less suspense and more twisted tale.

Macdonald Carey is a really odd choice for the lead, who is supposed to be a young struggling artists and is even called “young man” by a couple of characters... Carey was not young when this was made. The other characters were adjusted upwards as well, with Nadja his mistress looking late 30s... compare her to the hot young artist’s model from YOURS TRULY! Even though Carey seems to old, that age adds a layer of desperation which may not have been there with a younger actor. This old man has been struggling all of these years and *still* hasn’t made it?

Just as beatniks were part of the time period so they pop up in YOURS TRULY, having an analyst or psychiatrist was also an element of the times... and shows up in this story, When Hector goes to see Dr. Frank, that would make more sense at the time than going to the police... people went to their shrinks. Their shrink would solve the problem. One of the elements of a thriller story like NORTH BY NORTHWEST is that the authorities have to be taken out of the equation... so Roger Thornhill is accused of a murder and can’t go to the police for help. Here, Hector goes to his shrink for help... and we must remove the authorities from the equation... so Dr. Frank’s power must be nullified. That kind of tells us something about the power of psychoanalysis at the time period: it’s equal to calling the police!

How do you show Hector worrying about his pawned soul? You can’t *show* someone’s soul, right? So you need to find a symbol of their soul... and that’s the pawn ticket. I call this a “twitch”, it’s a physical manifestation of the protagonist’s emotional conflict. He’s worried about his soul, so he pulls the pawn ticket out of the pocket of his ratty old coat and looks at it, and we understand that he’s worried that he might lose his soul. You find a symbol, and this one comes directly from the story. It’s a great device to show us what is going on inside a character’s head. Every time Hector takes the ticket out and looks at it, we understand what he’s thinking.

Speaking of that ratty old coat, because it’s the big end twist, in order to “play fair” we have to establish that the wife wants to get rid of that coat and make sure that’s understood by the audience but also forgotten by the audience (to make it a twist). Here’s where *the story* makes this work: Hector has a secret reason for keeping the ratty old coat that his wife doesn’t know: the pawn picket in the pocket. So even though it makes sense for him to throw away the old coat, we know why he wants to keep it. Several times, when the wife is wearing new clothes and Hector puts on his ratty old coat it makes sense for her to comment on it... and the audience doesn’t notice that they are being set up for that twist at the end. We’re so busy worrying that the wife will discover the pawn ticket that we don’t realize we’re being set up for her *not* discovering the pawn ticket. That’s some good writing!

Probably because I’m more into the suspense based episodes, this one is in the good category but not in my great category. It is very entertaining, and John Emery kills it as Satan... he milks every one of Bloch’s clever lines!

Next week we look at an episode that may have inspired Stephen King’s CARRIE.

Bill

Film Courage Plus: Researching Locations

FILM COURAGE did a series of interviews with me at the end of 2014, and then again at the end of 2015. So why not add a new craft article and make it a weekly blog entry? All I have to do is write that new article, right?



LET'S TALK LOCATIONS!
One of my early movie crushes when I was a kid was Leslie Ann Warren, who played CINDERELLA in the TV version of Rogers & Hammerstein’s musical back in 1965. I was 8 years old! It’s not that she was cute (she still is) but the song she sang “In my own little corner in my own little room I can be whatever I want to be” - that was (and is) me! So maybe I really have a crush on Oscar Hammerstein? Only he’s definitely not as cute. But I was a clumsy unpopular kid who lived in my imagination - and could be whatever I wanted to be. I think that’s a major part of being a writer, whether you have seen the musical version of CINDERELLA or not. We imagine ourselves doing exiting and amazing things... while we sit at our laptops or tablets or whatever we write on. But how do we write about being a cowboy or astronaut or spy or whatever exciting life of we have never lived that life? How do we write about all of those exotic places that the story takes place in (the old west, space, cool international cities) if we have never been there? We need to combine our imaginations with research.

One of the things that I talk about in the clip is my script that takes place in Finland - a country that I have never been to. About ten years ago, I landed an assignment with a company that had connections to a company in Finland and was looking to do a co-production that was similar to TAKEN - a fast paced action revenge film. They called me, and I pitched them an idea that was similar to TAKEN but different. Everything I write has some autobiographical thread in it, so my idea was: what if a guy who writes spy novels, and knows all kinds of things about the spy world, went to a big event with his wife, and she wore the exact same dress as the President’s wife... and got kidnaped by mistake? Now our novelist hero has to get her back before the bad guys realize that they have the wrong person and kill her. He writes about spies, but can he live that life for real? (I can be whatever I want to be!). The whole deal was to take advantage of shooting in Finland, but I have never been there! And the Finish co-producers *live there*.

In the old days, when I had to write about some foreign country, I bought a bunch of travel books. I found that the “Let’s Go!” books were great because they were designed for backpackers and usually had interesting “non tourist” places to check out. They also had really good descriptions of places, even if they didn’t have pictures. This was in the pre-internet times, where you couldn’t just Google someplace. So I had to find other books (usually in the library) that had photos of places that sounded interesting in the books. The problem always was - these were glamor shots of buildings and streets, made to look as beautiful as possible. And I was sure that in real life those places didn’t look as nice. But I wrote a giant stack of spy and thriller screenplays and even a couple of novels using the “Let’s Go!” books and travel picture books and the occasional travelogue film. Worked fine, some of those screenplays sold and were optioned...

But for the Finland screenplay? Since the internet had been invented, I went online. I discovered that Helsinki often doubles in movies for St. Petersburg, Russia - so that’s where I began my story. I found the sections of the city that they used in other movies and the sections of St. Petersburg that they were supposed to be. I found everything I needed online. In the clip I talk about looking at people’s vacation videos of Helsinki online - Google search. Made me feel a little like the crazy killer Frances Dollarhyde in “Manhunter” (1986) who works at a film developing lab and selects his victims by watching their home movies. Creepy! But watching a bunch of family’s home videos of their fun Finland vacation gave me multiple angles of locations and all of the small things that never made it into those pretty pictures in the travel books. One of which was a guy with a push cart who sold fish snacks (and sodas and everything else). In two different home videos! This guy is always there! So I put him in my screenplay.

DETAILS
Which is a great lesson in research. Find the details that make it seem real. Look for the things that are unusual and distinctive about the location... and look for locations that are different than anywhere else on earth. If you are writing a scene in Finland, don’t have scenes take place at a location that could be anywhere else. Not only do the details create a vivid image in the reader’s minds, they add a level of reality that your slugline can’t do on its own. Details are like anything else in your “description” - they need to be part of the story and “action”. So my guy with the push cart who sold fish snacks wasn’t just part of the description, he was critical to the scene. My spy novelist hero, when searching for his kidnaped wife, asks the street vendor questions that will help him find her or the people who took her. You don’t want to include *pointless* details in your screenplay, so you need to find a way to make all of the details important to the story... and the great part about that is that it makes the details memorable.

One of the odd things with my guy with a push cart is that the production companiy’s readers who *lived* in Finland knew exactly who I was talking about. That guy is a fixture in that neighborhood. Though you may not have a producer who is familiar with the details that you use as part of your story, details are convincing. A vague description of something sounds less credible than one with a specific detail that makes you feel as if you are there. One distinctive details is worth hundreds of words about something general. And words are gold in screenwriting. You don’t want to spend words on worthless things... or use too many words.

Thanks to the internet we can be virtually anywhere. Google Street View allows us to see those great details anywhere in the world. I think I might have mentioned my screenplay that takes place in Detroit, a city I have never been to, and finding a You Tube video that gave me a guided tour of one of my locations. I also used Street View when I did a recent rewrite to improve the description of a specific location. I wanted to make sure that people in Detroit wouldn’t think I had never been there. I had written a screenplay ages ago, “Recall”, about the auto industry and even though I had read some books I had managed to get some things wrong (reading about a location isn’t nearly as good as seeing it with your own eyes). Though it might be nice to actually go there, as writers we end up writing about places all over the world... that we have never been to. My “Hours Of Darkness” screenplay takes place in Seattle, a place that I hadn’t been to since I was 5 years old. I had seen multiple pictures of one of my locations... but none of them showed the railroad tracks that ran behind the building.

That came from a *map* - another great tool when dealing with places that you never have been. One of the great moments in Wesley Strick’s “True Believer” screenplay is when our lawyer hero realizes that two locations that seem far from each other are actually close to each other and connected by an alley. That’s the clue that helps them prove their client innocent of murder. So grab a map for locations where you have never been and look for the details that may not be in pictures. Maps are great research tools!

UNIQUE LOCATIONS
Unusual locations make it look as if you are very familiar with the city or country that you are writing about. As someone who was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area I get bored with the generic locations in most movies (and the Golden Gate Bridge... which is the *second* most important bridge in the city - nobody ever shows the Bay Bridge that connects Oakland and San Francisco). There’s a travelogue element in going to the movies, so I want to show the audience places that other films haven’t shown them. If I’ve seen it in another movie, I want to find someplace else to set the scene. So in my “Past Lives” screenplay I have a scene in Tommy’s Joint - a bar and restaurant that’s kind of the DMZ - where a cop might be having lunch at a table next to a crook. It’s a fascinating place that I have never seen in a film. My big suspense ending takes place at one of the *two* Dutch Windmills in Golden Gate Park. You probably didn’t even know there were Windmills in San Francisco. So I am showing you something that isn’t in the usual “Welcome To San Francisco” montage.

Every city has “tourist places” and places that the residents know of, and part of making your story seem real is finding those places that don’t usually end up in films... and making them part of the story...

Though the way that can backfire is if they shoot your screenplay in Vancouver.

But think of the “Travelogue” element when writing your screenplay - where can you set a scene that shows the audience someplace fun and exciting to visit, so that the audience feels as if they have been on a vacation while watching the film? Growing up, I loved how the James Bond movies took me to exotic places around the world, and set scenes in those places so that I could see more details than if it were just that “Welcome To Tokyo” montage. In YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE a scene is set at a Sumo Wrestling Match - the wrestling is going on in the background, but you feel as if you are right there! Because every word is gold in a screenplay, you want to *incorporate* these interesting locations into your story, so we get the “travelogue” in the background... and it’s required to go to that exotic location by the story itself.

One of the things that I found in my Finland screenplay research was an ancient island fortress that is now a park. I asked if we could film there, and found out that parks are an “easy permit” and inexpensive. There were rules - I couldn’t have explosions or fires or anything else that might damage the old fortress, but I could have scenes where people are chasing each other and fighting hand to hand. Great!

But while researching the island fortress, I discovered many things that made it into the story, including a fairly new emergency tunnel *under the sea* that was built in the 1970s. Ambulances and fire equipment could quickly get to the island, now... but that also meant there was a way to get there other than the ferry boats. And usually long tunnels have places to turn out and maintenance rooms along the way... so I had my villain using a maintenance room as his hideout, and when they triangulate a cell phone call it shows that the villain is in the middle of the sea! On a boat? They look for a boat and there isn’t one. So how is it possible? Our hero eventually finds out about the new tunnel - and finds the villain. Researching locations finds story possibilities that you didn’t even know existed. You *need* to research locations!

LOCATION IS CHARACTER?
My COWBOY NIGHTS script is kind of "cowboy noir" and takes place present day. The protagonist gets fired from a dude ranch and heads to the city, where he becomes involved with a femme fatale who has a robbery scheme. In order to make the protagonist's choice to hook up with the femme fatale something we could see - visual, and not just words on the page - I created a nice cowgirl as a potential romance. That meant there *was* a choice - the femme fatale wasn't the only woman available. The protagonist now must make a physical choice between the two women, and that nice cowgirl he doesn't end up with becomes a physical symbol of his wrong choice when things go south in the robbery scheme. Also, she allowed me an ending where our protagonist gets a shot at redemption and a future.

There are several scenes in the script where the protagonist and femme fatale have sex, and one where the protagonist and nice cowgirl make love. Now, you can see the distinction between those two things on the page - I've used different words - but how do you make sure those words show up on screen? How do you turn words into something visual so that they do not stay on the page? In both scenes, the protagonist has sex with a woman. Sounds like the same scene... but what if I used *Locations* to help tell the story?

The first thing I did was look at what made the two female characters different. The femme fatale was a city girl and the nice cowgirl was a country girl - and all of the basic character things and specific character things that come from that. I wanted to use location as one of the elements to explore character - even if it was so subtle most people wouldn't consciously notice. The sex scenes with the femme fatale were all rushed and in urban locations. The rushed element matched the hustle of city life, but also fit the story - the femme fatale is the wife of a small time gangster and these sex scenes are cheating on her husband, so they have to be fast so they don’t get caught. But the scenes could have taken place in beds or anywhere - I decided to use previously established urban locations that would make these sex scenes part of the city. One takes place in an alley, one is in a car parked in a busy parking lot, one is in the husband's place of business. None of the scenes take place in a location that is *not* obviously a city.

The nice cowgirl love scene takes place in the country - which fits her character - and is also relaxed and unrushed. They have a picnic in a beautiful outdoor location after a horse ride. Where the femme fatale’s sex scenes are surrounded by car horns and buildings; the nice cowgirl scene takes place surrounded by trees and wild flowers without a building in sight. I high-lighted all of the simple beauty of nature, and the simple beauty of the cowgirl. When they make love, they take their time, and are surrounded by the best scenic location the location scout can find. Because the location is beautiful, the audience will subconsciously find the sex scene to be beautiful as well. The location is doing its part to tell the story and reveal character.

The other difference between the two types of sex scenes was also designed to show that the tone of these scenes was different: The sex scenes with the femme fatale always took place at night and in darkness. The love scene with the nice cowgirl took place is bright daylight. Bad girl and nice girl, darkness and light. Hey, seems obvious when I say it, but how often do you *consciously* notice the time of day in a sex scene? This is something that the audience *feels* more that *realizes*. A simple thing we do in the slugline that changes the tone of the scene and changes the way the audience sees the actions. As different as – NIGHT and – DAY!

Locations can be instrumental in telling your story - and researching them is easier now than it ever has been. So takes some time to think about the best location for your scenes. The best location for your story. Locations that are evocative and distinctive...

Then they will probably film it in Vancouver.

Good luck and keep writing!

- Bill