Bill's Little Movie Experiment (Part Three)

Either late summer or fall I am shooting a 12 part serial for the web - with *strong* cliff hangers - in San Francisco with a bunch of old friends... without permits and for almost no money. 7 minute episodes, extreme action - more BOURNE style hand-to-hand fighting than (expensive) car chases. Thanks to some cheap stock footage that anyone can afford, at least one building will explode. Here's the story...

NEAR HIT
Building Contractor Dave Jackson checks into a San Francisco hotel for his second honeymoon... without his wife. She's just begun divorce proceedings against him. He's alone in the city. A knock at the door. When Jackson answers, no one there. Just a manila envelope. Inside the envelope: A man's photo, several bundles of twenty dollar bills, and a 357 Magnum. Jackson realizes the envelope has been delivered to the wrong room... And the hit man is after him! Caught between hitman and victim, regular guy Dave Jackson must fight to survive.

Without spoiling the story for you, one of the things that I can do in a screenplay and movie-made-for-pocket-change that a big Hollywood blockbuster *can not do* is do something extreme that pushes the envelope - I don’t have to pull any punches to make the film palatable to the mass audience. When your budget is over $100 million, you need to appeal to as many people as possible. When you are making a film with pretty much no stars and no money, you have to do the *opposite* of that - do things on film that are shocking and controversial. The remake of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT is fading on screens now, but the reason why the original is still memorable is because they did things you just couldn’t do on film.

NEAR HIT is designed to be a thriller, and I hope that it appeals to many people and makes a lot of money, but if I can’t offer a movie star or a bunch of CGI, I need to have something else that makes this a "must see" movie. That’s not going to be gore, like LAST HOUSE, it *is* going to be a take no prisoners attitude. You remember in the first BOURNE movie when that guy gets a ballpoint pen *jammed* into his hand in a fight scene? Okay, I’m going to try to top that. And anyone can die in my movie - anyone. At least one good guy will die - the kind of role that never dies in a Hollywood movie. I need to keep the movie “juicy” at all times.

The strong cliffhangers only bring you back next week if you liked the rest of this week’s episode. My little film isn’t just competing with other little films - it takes as much time to watch a big budget Hollywood movie as it does to watch my film made for pocket change. And they cost the same to rent. I need to make sure my film leaves a mark on the viewer, so they recommend it to their friends. But before it ends up on DVD, I’m doing an experiment in online distribution.

ONLINE DISTRIBUTION

The plan is to roll it out as a web series, then slap the sucker on DVD with 6 extra minutes of bonus footage - probably including nudity and maybe some extra-brutal action - for a 90 minute total running time... along with the regular behind the scenes material. Though I had planned on doing this before DR. HORRIBLE, that experiment kind of cemented the deal. DR. HORRIBLE did well online, thanks to being unique and strange and something you could not get from Hollywood... and having a great cast... then went to DVD with some bonus material and sold well... to many of the people who watched it online. As someone who owns probably a thousand DVDs (maybe two thousand, never counted - but it’s *a lot*), one of the reasons why I buy a DVD is an “extended version” or scenes that were cut, and also the behind the scenes features. Of course, the main reason is that I liked the film and want to see it again... whenever I want. But there have been some DVDs that I bought mostly for the extras. So part of my movie experiment includes those 6 extra minutes - kind of an “unrated version” - plus a bunch of behind the scenes making-of material. Since this is an experiment, I think the behind the scenes stuff will be interesting to many people. But the 6 minutes and the extras are all about selling the DVD to the very people who watched the movie online.

The online element of my project is an experiment, because I have no idea how to really make money online. Online is kind of the wild wild west - there are no rules yet, no patterns, no set way that works... and I’m not sure anyone knows the way to make money. One of the issues with online content is that many people seem to think it should be free - and that leads to this whole culture of piracy. Downloading songs, downloading new movies, and downloading just about everything else for free. My website has a free script tip every day - and it not only costs me time (which is money) to write up all of those articles, it costs me money to keep the website up and running, too. Every once in a while when I get hit with some bill for running the site, I wonder if I should make it subscription... but everyone hates the idea of paying for things online. So my site remains free - except for me.

Some people see a video as “content” that brings customers to the site so that they can click on adverts, and the adverts are what generates the income. That seems like a good model, but I think the issue with adverts right now is that you have to be Hulu (established) to get anyone interested in paying for the adverts, and even then it's tough. In his blog entry about a month ago about THE REMNANTS, John August’s main reason for pulling the plug on the series is that it was costing him $25k per episode to make it (which is cheap compared to half a million to a couple of million for a TV episode) but he couldn’t find any advertisers. This is a guy who has written a bunch of big studio films, and he has a web series with real actors, and yet he can't find a sponsor that matters! You would think that a major brand might step in, but so far he hasn’t found one. The web isn’t metered like TV, so it’s hard to tell if anyone is seeing your adverts - sure, there are hit counters, but that's not the same as the Nielsens. That doesn’t make it attractive to a major brand with stockholders to answer to.

My friend “Better Duck” has a local fishing show in Florida that is broadcast online, and he has found a local bait & tackle shop that covers his costs to make the show in exchange for a commercial. That’s a great idea for an inexpensive show that targets the buyers for a specific product - but John August’s post apocalyptic sci-fi show and my chase thriller aren’t the right kind of show for something like that. Though I may experiment with commercials and product placement, I think those are real long shots... and more likely to result in a free meal for the crew in exchange for a restaurant plug than enough money to make the show profitable online. The problem with the internet is that it is *not* local - I might run my little web series and 99% of the hits come from outside California. So some local biz wouldn't be interested in buying an advert.

Then there are the “passive” adverts, something to click on when you go to my site to see the movie. You may have notice that I have Google Ads on this blog, and I also have Google ads on my Script Secrets site, and on my B Movie site and on my production company site... and you know how much **all** of those Google ads on **all** of the sites combined make me in a year? $100. That’s right - all of the ads on all of my sites combined total $100 a year. Actually a little less than that, because it usually takes 13 months to hit $100 (minimum for them to write a check). So even if I litter the movie site with Google ads and T shirt sales and Amazon and all kinds of other junk, it isn’t likely to make me much more than $100-$150 a year, which isn’t going to pay for making the film.

I think adverts from some national company interested in experimenting online are really the way to make money, but I'm not sure how to get ads when I'm just another dude with a web series. If I’m NBC or I have the 24 webisodes maybe some major advertiser will pay, but as a completely unproven project with no stars and no TV exposure made by some silly screenwriter in Studio City? So I'm hoping the first series gets the second series some real adverts. Maybe I can turn the first series into a hit so that someone will take a chance on the second series (whatever that is). I don’t think any form of adverts is the way to make money if you are just some low budget film with no stars.

Which means I’m going to have to try to get people to pay per view - which most people are adverse to. And how do you get them to pay for a low budget action show sight unseen?

My plan is to give away the first two episodes, then sell the others for a cheap enough price that people will pay without thinking twice. That's why I need the *strong* cliffhangers - I need to make sure people get hooked on the first two episodes and then *must* watch each of the rest to find out what happens. I got this distribution idea from heroin pushers.

I'm also going to experiment with a "tip jar" - you’ve seen them on people’s websites - a place where viewers can make a donation. Whatever they think the episode is worth. If the tip jar works, I may not have to charge for each episode - just let people pay what they think it’s worth. With 12 episodes, I would need 2,000 people each paying 25 cents per episode to cover basic production costs - which really isn’t breaking even because the cast and the crew members (and the 3 of us) are getting shares of the film as payment, and covering costs means they don’t get paid... yet. 2,000 people is also going to take some publicity work - I think I can round up 1,000 people between my blog and my website (pretty much the same people) but that’s only half of what I need. So I’m going to have to find ways to get the word out and hope that friends and bloggers and message boards and anything else out there will help get these first two episodes passed around enough to find at least 2,000 people who will watch every week and donate 25 cents (or pay 25 cents if the tip jar method doesn’t work and I have to set up a pay per view site).

Since this is all part of the internet experiment, I want to focus on ways the average filmmaker can get their film out there - rather than using methods that are unique to me. I can easily get the film plugged in Script Magazine, but the people who buy my book on writing and making your own film can not - so I’m not going to do that. I *will* publicize the hell out of the project - and try to get articles and interviews in all of the indie film mags and on the indie film websites. That’s something anyone can do. And I’ll use Facebook and MySpace and all of the other social networking sites to get the word out on these first two episodes (and the rest of the film). I don’t think I can do DR. HORRIBLE numbers, but just covering production cost means someone else can make their little movie and find an audience online big enough to cover their costs.

And I'm not spending $25k an episode like August, I'm not even spending that for all 12 episodes and the extra 6 minutes and the behind the scenes stuff. Next part I’ll get into the budget and costs, but the plan is to spend no more than $10k total with around $6k to get a finished product that can air online and the remainder going to all of the legal costs and deliverables I will need for the DVD sale. I don’t want to make a film so expensive that the average person can’t credit card it. So even if I charge 25 cents for the 10 paid episodes, that $2.50 per viewer for the whole film... More or less the cost of a film rental. I think that’s a fair price. At one point I was thinking about $1 per episode, but I think most people wouldn’t pay that much. 25 cents seems like *nothing* - I’d pay that if I were hooked on the show and needed to see the next episode to find out if the hero survives. If the tip jar thing works, maybe it won't be pay-per-episode. Who knows? It's an experiment.

The ace in the hole, here, is the DVD release - that's where I'll make the money to pay the cast and crew... and the three of us who will be directing this thing. So this little film needs to look like a slick, high quality movie... not something three guys made for pocket change (which is what it really is). In that scenario, the internet is a commercial for the DVD release - it will help spread word of mouth.

By the way, I already have two distribs interested... and one wanted to presell the film at Cannes! As a "concept test" I pitched the script to some distribs who do in-house (make films) and everybody wanted the script. Passed the test. I think a big mistake many folks make is thinking that the script that nobody wants can become the film everybody wants.

Two companies called after reading the synopsis (the one at the top of this page), and when I explained that I planned on making it myself, they were both interested in the finished film... and one offered a presales deal - they would sell the rights to the unmade film at Cannes. When I finished the film, the buyers would be there waiting for the movie, cash in hand. I would know *in advance* how much money I was going to make.

The problem with this is that a movie with no stars that hasn’t been made may not fetch a good price - but the finished film, with all kinds of great location shooting and explosions and whatever else (maybe a low budget face for the DVD box) may look like a million dollars... and find a distrib that thinks the film was made for $250-$500k... and makes a deal based on that budget rather than the pocket change we really made the movie for. Better *not* to be locked into a deal at this point. We can make more money in the long run.

Sometimes it *is* better to be locked into a distribution deal, because they will have a financial interest in the film and will go out of their way to sell it. But with something like this, the costs is so low that it’s not going to kill me if it all crashes and burns and I end up showing the movie in my garage... the way I showed all of my short films in the old days. But if it all comes together and it looks like a big picture, part of the experiment is to see how much I can sell DVD rights for. How much can you make? How much can you lose? Before people make their own little film, they want to know the answers to those questions... and I’m going to be the guinea pig in this little experiment.

Part Four.

- Bill

Bill's Little Movie Experiment (Part Two)

Okay, the first experiment is the cliffhanger format - kind of sequencing, but with a big twist near the end of each sequence where the hero is in all kinds of trouble and you have to come back next week to find out if and how he gets out of it.

The way I plan on shooting the film is also an experiment. Real movies are filmed all at once - and the bigger the film, the more weeks they take to shot it. A big studio film may take a couple of months of shooting... usually 6 days a week, 12 hours a day. My HBO movies usually shot in 4 weeks, 6 days a week... sometimes over 12 hours a day. The network MOWs and some of the other cable films shot in 3 weeks, 6 days a weeks, 12 or more hours a day. Low budget features (even some cable movies like Showtime’s old Rebel Highway Series) shoot in 2 weeks - 12 days, and often more than 12 hours a day. And I’ve had some “quickies” shot in 9 days straight - which is a week’s worth of equipment rentals with 2 weekends. When it comes time to schedule a film, it’s all about the most bang for your buck. Since part of the experiment is making this film for as few bucks as possible, my plan is to shoot only on weekends.

Equipment houses often have weekend deals, because most of their business is commercials and industrials - which is Monday - Friday schedules (just like a real job, because it is). That leaves the equipment sitting on the shelves on weekends, so the Equipment house usually has a weekend rate - Friday night until Monday morning, often for the price of one day. That’s a deal! It also works well when the other two guys involved have day jobs. Flexible day jobs, but still day jobs. And it will be easier to find a pick up crew on weekends - they have jobs, too.

WEEKEND SHOOTING

So here’s how I plan on filming this - and it directly impacts the screenplay - Six weekends, with 14 minutes/pages shot per weekend. On a crazy 9 day shoot, you have to shoot over 9 pages a day. That’s a lot of pages! The problem is, I haven’t shot anything in years, and even though I will be completely organized with shot lists and sketches and storyboards and whatever else - 9 pages is a lot of pages. I don’t think I can do that; and even if I could, I don’t think the average person who buys my book about making your own movie could do that. You need a well-oiled movie making machine of a crew to pull that off. People that have been doing this for years and can shoot a movie in their sleep. That is not us. So for this to be a “fair” experiment, I’ve decided we’ll aim for 5 pages a day.

I figure if we’ve done our preproduction, we can shoot 5 pages a day with a limited amount of stress - maybe even have a good time while we’re at it. 5 pages a day is still work, and my guess is that some of those days may be long (more complicated scenes), but I think we can make it work and have time to do some cool shots.

The plan is to shoot 5 pages on Saturday, 5 pages on Sunday... and a weekend rental is pick up Friday evening and return Monday morning... which means there’s Friday night! 4 pages/minutes on Friday night - that will probably be all at a single controlled location. I’m thinking 2 scenes, 2 minutes each... but some Fridays might be four one minute scenes or a three and a one. Some combo that adds up to 4 pages.

All of this impacts the script, because I will need 6 locations with 4 pages/minutes at each that will be spread throughout the script. These things have to be built into the script in te outline stage. Also, the easier these scenes are to shoot, the better the chances that they will actually get shot in those few hours after picking up the equipment on Friday night. It will be easier to shoot 4 minutes of dialogue based scenes in the limited amount of time on Friday night than some complicated action scene. It will be easier to shoot indoors where we can set up lights quickly than outdoors - because it is night - where we will have to light the darkness. But because it *is* night, some of these Friday scenes may be night scenes. And it’s possible that one entire block may be driving around in a car stealing establishing shots at night - lighted areas, of course.

The cool thing about shooting digital is that we can set up lighting with a consumer camera before we pick up the rental camera. One of he guys has a high end (HD) consumer camera. We can even rehearse with the consumer camera... and when we actually start shooting? That consumer camera is back up - we shoot everything with the big HD camera and the consumer camera (at slightly different angles). On SLAUGHTERHOUSE MASSACRE a consumer camera saved the film - part of the story had a character videotaping what happened... and the method actor actually hit the trigger and taped during the scenes. In editing, when there wasn’t some shot or not enough coverage (that film was a nightmare of bad planning), they could cut to that camera POV. Though the picture quality on our second camera won’t be as good as the big HD material, it may save our butts to have that footage if something goes wrong. If you don’t have a high end consumer camera, anything you can use as back up is better than having nothing. So Friday will be hell, but we can be completely ready to go when we pick up the camera and blast out 4 pages before bedtime.

ALL FOR ONE, ONE FOR ALL

Part of the plan is also to trade off directing - so one person will be in charge on Friday, someone else in charge on Saturday, and someone else on Sunday. Then we alternate, so that every third week I’m doing a 4 page Friday. I think this will help keep us all fresh over the weekend - instead of being responsible for directing 14 pages, I will be responsible for directing 5 pages (or 4). I can focus on those 5 pages and really try to make them the coolest and most amazing 5 pages possible. One the other 2 days I am a crew member - maybe the Director of Photography or the Gaffer (light guy). I’ll be making a creative contribution, but I won’t be in charge. I won’t be responsible for those days, and everything I do will be to help John or Van put their creative vision on screen.

When I’ve worked on other people’s films, and the pressure isn’t on *you*, you can just do your job... and maybe even come up with some interesting ideas or shots or bits that help the director. On a friend’s short, one of the other crew guys came up with a cool thing for the shot - added a spider and spider web to one corner of the room - which made the scene twice as creepy. The director was busy thinking about all of the other elements in that shot, so the crew members spider web was a *bonus*. If today is my day to be the Gaffer, I might come up with a cool idea or interesting lighting that will make the scene even better than any of us planned. And I hope trading off directing duties will keep it fun as well. No one will get stressed out because they are responsible for 14 pages a week.

Because Saturday and Sunday are full days, they can be more complicated. We’re doing a chase thriller, kind of like 24, so we’ll be doing action scenes and fun stuff on the full days. Since movies are not shot in order, it’s not like we’re shooting a 5 page segment in one day... just 5 pages of scenes that will cut throughout the film. From a script standpoint, that means we have our 4 page Fridays at an easy location, and 5 pages of more difficult material at a potentially more complicated location on Saturday, and the same on Sunday. That may sound confusing to write, but what you do is just figure out the story, then plug in the locations where you want to shoot... and use those same locations until you hit 5 pages (or 10 pages or 9 pages, etc.). So, if I do a 3 page suspense scene at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, I also have to do a 2 page scene there, too. I’ve done this on a bunch of low budget films, and the second scene can be anything from a cop at the crime scene to a crook returns to the scene of the crime to an earlier scene that sets up the location (maybe a dialogue scene or a romance scene).

And just because we are shooting at one location on Saturday doesn’t mean that is has to be one location. A room can be redressed to become another room. An exterior location may be across the street from another exterior location. And because Saturday and Sunday are full days, one location may be different between day and night. By day it has some features, by night completely different features. So the 5 pages at one location may not seem like 5 pages in the same place.

I think the real key in any low budget film is the script. Bad films start with bad scripts. Hey, that’s the one thing we control! So I plan in spending enough time on the script to make sure it works... most of the bad low budget films I’ve seen have huge script problems that probably could have been solved if they’d just taken more time working on it. People are anxious to make the movie, and rush the writing. The last thing you want to do is film your script, *then* realize the script needed work.

Part Three

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Character In Conflict and ROCKY BALBOA.
Yesterday’s Dinner: Fried rice at City Wok... There was a line halfway down the street to get into Nolan's in Toluca Lake, so I just drove past. Did I really need the corned beef & cabbage? No.
Bicycle: No bike today - I ran errands.


Movies: LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT - I saw LAST HOUSE last Tuesday at the premiere (another red carpet), and it is good news/bad news: If you are a rabid fan of the original, the bad news is that this is the mainstream version of that story. You have to go in knowing that this is going to be that R rated, toned down, mainstream version... not like the X rated completely brutal original. It's not going to traumatize you for life like the original. It *is* going to use various household items to kill people in sick ways... within the R rating.

The good news is that it's a pretty good thriller that turns into kind of a family version of TAKEN in the last half - and with TAKEN still running strong after over 5 weeks, maybe it’s time for the French film to be replaced by a movie based on a Bergman film.

That’s right - the original LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT was based on a Bergman film called THE VIRGIN SPRING about simple farmer parents of a murdered girl who take bloody revenge on her goat-herder killers when they seek food and lodging at their farm. The original LAST HOUSE added sex, drugs and rock and roll... and the Manson Family (sort of). A pair of high school girls on their way to a concert stop to buy some weed and end up the prisoners of Krug and company - some completely depraved criminals recently escaped from prison... and are tossed in the trunk of Krug’s car... Which, coincidentally, breaks down near one of the girl’s house. Krug and company take the girls into the woods and do unspeakable acts to them before brutally murdering them... Then go back to the parent’s house to take shelter from a storm. When the parents discover these people killed their daughter, they secretly set out to get revenge - feeding Krug and company dinner as they set up booby traps around the house designed to kill them.

The new version makes a lot more sense, with swim team star Mari going on vacation with her overworked doctor father (Tony Goldwyn) and over-organized soccer mom (Monica Potter - giving an Oscar caliber performance in what could have been a throw away role) at their lake-side house in the woods. Though everyone is trying to have a good time, there is a weight hanging over the family - this is the first time they have been to the lake since the death of their son. Mari (Sara Paxton), borrows the SUV so that she can hang out with her townie friend Paige (Martha McIsaac) - who was a lot funnier in the Carl Ellsworth draft I read. Paige accepts an offer from a cute boy she doesn’t know, Justin (Spencer Clark) to go to his motel and smoke some pot. Mari reluctantly comes along... and when the boy’s psycho father, Krug (the brilliant Garret Dillahunt, who plays Chromarte on SARA CONNERS) and uncle (Aaron Paul) and trippy squeeze Sadie (Riki Lindholme) arrive unexpectedly... the girls become hostages. Krug has just escaped from the police, is on the run, and needs a vehicle the police aren’t searching for... and Mari has her parent’s SUV. She will drive them through any roadblocks and get to a side road out of state.

But she drives them toward her parent’s lake house, then crashes the car and tries to escape... but Krug and company catch the girls...

And here is where the remake is most different than Wes Craven’s original. That first version of LAST HOUSE was rated X, and absolutely brutal. Take the worst, most vile, brutal, disgusting, sick thing you can imagine that Krug and his thugs could do to these two girls... and in that first version, what they do is much much worse. No one could ever imagine this. People, humans, can’t imagine actions like this. And that was the strength of the original. It showed you things that once seen, could not be un-seen. You were *traumatized* by that film.

Adding to that was a sense of realism - this was Wes Craven’s first film. It is not some slick Hollywood movie - it used documentary techniques because hand-held cameras were cheaper than dolly tracks and cranes. The film was crudely shot, and that made it seem *real*. So, those traumatizing images seemed like they really happened... You just wanted to vomit, and I’m sure many people did. It was raw, sick, brutal.

The fans of the original will think the remake is wimpy - a Hollywood sell out. And it is. You can’t remake that original scene today. So, what we get is a way way toned down rape, and a murder that is casual but not as twisted and brutal as the original...

And here’s where things get strange - if you go to Rotten Tomatoes and read the Top Critics, you will read a bunch of bad reviews that talk about how disgusting the rape scene is in the new version. I am a huge fan of Patrick Goldstien’s column in the Los Angeles Times, but he came at this film with guns blazing - comparing the rape scene to a violent first person pedophile rape “game” from Japan. I don’t think he had actually seen the film when he wrote this column - he’d just read all of the other reviews. Ebert also focused on the rape scene in his review... even though back in the 70s he gave the original 3.5 stars.

Actually the rape and torture scene in the remake is *very* tame compared to the original LAST HOUSE. In the original, one of the girls was sliced open and many of her internal organs were made external and shown to her as she slowly died... shown to *us* as well. This scene in the original pretty much traumatized me for life.
The new version's rape doesn't even come close to the rape in DELIVERANCE, and it serves the same story purpose. The DELIVERANCE rape scene has Ned Beatty begging and trying to crawl away and being caught and trying to escape again and, of course, squealing like a pig. The scene went on *forever* - and they rip off his underwear and brutally rape him... laughing the whole time. And John Voight has to watch... knowing that he’s next.

In the remake of LAST HOUSE, Krug slams her to the ground, tears off her clothes, *lowers* her panties (doesn't rip them) and then rapes her. It *is* a disturbing scene - and meant to be - but this isn't the protracted struggle from DELIVERANCE. I'll bet the LAST HOUSE scene is maybe a third or a quarter as long as the DELIVERANCE scene. Now, both are disturbing - not glamorized and not sexual in any way. The LAST HOUSE scene is designed to repulse you - to make you hate the rapist, so when the parents want to get revenge, so do you.

So why the controversy? Why is a this wimpy replacement for the original’s traumatizing scene getting all of this flack?

I believe it is because the scene works. The rape scene is disgusting and horrifying and not glamorized in any way... even though it is not even near the original, it is extreme. The scene makes you feel... sick. And it is *supposed to*. So when the critics were affected by the scene, they trashed the film for making them feel.

As someone who has seen the original recently, I thought the scene wimped out. I didn’t think it was bad enough to justify the revenge that follows. Because where this new LAST HOUSE drops the ball is in not having any Ronny Cox character (from DELIVERANCE) to question the concept of revenge. Because this version of Krug and company aren’t the crazed psychos from the original, but a group of pretty standard criminals. I though the biggest problem was the casting of Aaron Paul - who looks like a pretty boy actor, and his character is calm... All of these bad guys are *reasonable*. The original Krug and Company were just so crazed and unpredictable you thought they should be put down for the good of society. That mad dog from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD looks like that cute puppy version of MARLEY compared to Krug in the original.

Revenge is a nasty thing, and the LAST HOUSE remake needed the voice of reason that the Ronny Cox character brought to DELIVERANCE.... and the guilt epilogue from that film would have also been nice.

But it wouldn't matter - because the rape in LAST HOUSE remake is not particularly graphic. The violence *afterwards* - the violence that the *parents* serve up on the rapist and his crew - *is* very graphic. But for some really weird reason, there is no discussion of that by the critics (except Ebert). I suspect that is because none of the critics saw the original... and were not traumatized for life like I was.

Once we get to the revenge element, it is not served as cold as in the original (where the parents calmly feed them dinner) nor are any chainsaws used nor penises bitten off and spit out. Instead, the new version is more self-defense that bobby-traps and torture.

I have always thought of Monica Potter as a “replacement actress” - when Ashley Judd drops out of a movie, she’s the replacement. Kind of a placeholder. But in the LAST HOUSE remake she gives a great, layered performance. There is a scene after she realizes what these people did to her daughter where she must have a conversation with Aaron Paul and make it appear as if she is being a gracious hostess while we see her fear underneath that, and her anger underneath that. It is a creepy and frightening conversation and Potter manages to keep all of these emotions swirling around.

In the Bergman film, the father prays for forgiveness before he takes his revenge. Like the original LAST HOUSE, the father in the remake is a doctor... someone who is sworn to save lives and do no harm... but there is no moral discussion in either film. The original’s killers are so vile, and the daughter’s rape and Paige’s murder so disgusting that anything would seem justified. In the remake, the rape is less traumatic and the villains less crazed... and that makes the parent’s punishment *not* seem to fit the crime. And without any prayers for forgiveness or questions about whether it is right to jamb a claw hammer into another person’s head, the revenge seems like overkill. (Call me sick, but my favorite part was the musical sound the claw hammer makes in one scene.)

By the way, the draft of the script I read had a bit of dialogue that sets up the end... which is missing in the film, and appears not to have been shot. I suspect they were cut out in a later draft or cut by the director because somebody thought that dialogue “telegraphed” the end... except without that set up, the end makes no sense (and people have been complaining about it). Devo Folks - unusual things *have to be established* or else they don’t make sense. They are usual! And you have the whole movie between the establishing lines and the end of the film when that thing is paid off. People will forget.

The new version works well as an R rated thriller of revenge - and may take the place of TAKEN in the top 5, same kind of vibe - but it’s not even close to the brutality of the original. You will not be traumatized for life. And that may be a good thing. You can go to see the new version of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and take a date... without feeling like Travis Bickle taking Betsy to that porno theater.

And if you are a fan of the original? The DVD is still there whenever you want to be traumatized for life again.

- Bill

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

That spinach stuck between your teeth is *stylish* today!

Here are two topical videos - one of which features my favorite movie and TV star (no, not Ice T)...





- Bill (having another Guiness)

Bill's Little Movie Experiment (Part One)

A month ago after my post about the movie I’m making next year, there were a couple of comments about how it sounded like fun and they wished they could be in the Bay Area to help... and within a few days John August posted about his abandoned web series THE REMNANTS, including all kinds of great cost information. I began this blog entry, then something got in the way and I’m just now getting back to it.

If making a little movie really does sound like fun to you, why not consider making your own? I plan on giving you the play-by-play as we actually start making the film, but I’ve already started some of the planning, so why not include you in that? Like all plans, some of this may change - but if you have any interest in grabbing some people in your home town and making a film, this may help.

Probably the main reason for making this film is to hang out with old friends and try to recapture the fun of being stupid 20 year olds making short films that we used to show in my garage. Sure, this will be hard work, but it also has to be something fun, something we enjoy doing, or what’s the point? If this were all about making money, well - I think I’d be better off writing a spec script or going back to work forklift jousting. Any time you make a film, it’s a gamble. It may never make a cent. I don’t want anyone to max their credit cards then blame me when the film doesn’t sell.

This little film is also an experiment - actually a bunch of experiments, but four main ones. When I first began writing for Script Magazine, my column was all about writing for low budget and independent films. I also spent a year writing a column for the Independent Film Channel’s magazine on writing for budget, and I own reprint rights to all of those articles - almost enough for a book. Some of those articles get linked now an then on my website, others have been rewritten for a European Film magazine, and a couple are the basis for the Indie Screenwriting CD. But many are just sitting in the vault... I thought I’d rewrite them into a book on writing for a budget and making your own digital feature - there really isn’t a good book about Indie screenwriting out there. But I would be an idiot if I wrote a book about making your own digital feature and had never actually made one. So, aside from having fun with old friends, this movie is an experiment for my proposed book. As usual, I plan on making a bunch of mistakes then writing about them so that you don’t make the same ones. I have not made a film in ages, so I’m going to have to learn about everything from SAG contracts to distribution.

The four main experiments are:
1) Serial Format.
2) Alternate Directors
3) Web Distribution.
4) Making A Feature For Pocket Change.

So, let’s start by looking at the serial format.

KILLER SERIAL

Part of my grand scheme is to play around with “new media” which is the fancy word for the internet. We all know some 4 minute YouTube short of a guy throwing a Frisbee with his butt cheeks will race across the nation in a heartbeat. But a story? That’s proving to be difficult. There have been a few “web shows” that found an audience, but usually the web is great for some stand alone comedy piece or CHOCOLATE RAIN or something - things that are passed around, and then it’s over. Not something that is more like a TV show - you have to go back every week to watch a new episode. There *are* some webisodes that companions to popular TV shows, but that’s something different. So how do you get people to keep coming back for more every week?

I’ve been looking at old time movie serials as a model - and watched a bunch. Most of them sucked. If you are unfamiliar with old serials, there was a time in the 30s and 40s when a movie program consisted of an A feature, a B feature, a newsreel, a bunch of coming attractions, and the latest chapter of a serial. Serial chapters back then were about half an hour long - some went 45 minutes - and usually action based. Westerns, super heroes, thrillers, crime stories, war stories and just plain old action. Guys like John Wayne got their start in these things. In a way, they were like TV shows... except made for a nickle by some sub-B studio like Monogram and to make sure that the audience came back to see *their* serial (and not the other guy’s) there would be a *strong* cliffhanger at the end of each chapter.

Here is a link to a website with free downloads of some old serials (all of them fell out of copyright), and I suggest ZORRO’S FIGHTING LEGION as one that is watchable and fun. I have watched Rod LaRogue as THE SHADOW (one of my favorite pulp mags and old radio shows) and it kind of sucks. The John Wayne THREE MUSKETEERS somehow takes place in the French Foreign Legion, and is almost watchable. These things were aimed at kids, and if you can watch them using your 12 year old boy brain, they can be fun and entertaining... even though they are cheaply made and feature silly plots and usually awful acting.

Free Public Domain Movies. (Serial Page)

Movies like RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK took inspiration from them, so I’m kind of looking at an idealized version of those serials - not as much what they are, as what they could be if done a lot better.

So here’s the plan:

Twelve 7 minute segments gives me a feature when I’m finished.

*Strong* cliffhangers at the end of each segment. My theory is that cliffhangers are the answer to the web thing... and even if I’m wrong, it’s going to make a danged exciting movie for the DVD release. What’s the downside?

I considered doing 5 minute segments for a while, and that’s still an okay idea. I just looked at scene lengths and thought 7 might be an easier number to hit every episode. Oh, and there’s a good chance it may time out differently after we actually make it.

The most difficult part of coming up with the script is that I need 11 strong cliffhangers. Oh, wait, some of you probably want to know what a cliffhanger is. In those old serials, each episode would end with a “cliffhanger” so that you would have to come back and watch the next episode. The name comes from the standard serail scene where the hero would get knocked off the edge of a cliff by the bad guy and grab hold of a rock or root and be hanging hundreds of feet over a canyon... losing his grip! End of episode, come back next week to see if he falls or finds some way to climb over the edge. Back wne I was a kid, the Adam West BATMAN show was on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Every Tuesday night episode would end with Batman and Robin being slowly lowered into a vat of boiling oil (or something) by the villain... no way to escape! But when you tuned in Thursday night, they would find some way to survive - usually a hidden Bat-device that King Tut’s goons missed when they searched them - and then we’d get the second half of the story. You had to tune in to find out how they escaped, and the kids on the playground always had their theories. Our theories were always more clever than the hidden Bat-device... which may be why I’m a writer now.

But if you look at RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, it has scene after scene where Indy gets into some situation where there is no way to escape... then he finds the way and gets out of there, until the next scene. In that opening scene, after stealing the idol, he jumps across that bottomless pit, doesn’t quite make it, and is actually hanging from the edge of a cliff... grabbing at that root, which pulls out of the ground! So that’s the way my story is going to work - each of those 7 minute segments ends with a situation where the hero is in big trouble with seemingly no way out... and you have to come back next week to see how the conflict is resolved. I’m looking at these 11 cliffhangers as *twists*, too - not just some predictable bad thing happening to the hero, buy a totally wild shocker that puts our hero in even more trouble! The stronger I can make the twist-cliffhanger, the better the chances of the online part of the experiment working.

And just because I’m using the serial thing for a thriller, doesn’t mean you can’t use the same method for a rom-com or a horror film or comedy or even a drama (but a straight drama is going to be a tough sell - not telling you not to make one, just warning you) - you can use the strong cliffhangers in any genre!

But, as I said, even if the online part of the experiment fails, it all comes out to feature length and with all of those twists and cliffhangers will be one danged exciting film.

I hope.

Part Two


- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Concealing and Revealing information and HARRY POTTER.
Yesterday’s Dinner: I actually forgot to eat yesterday.
Bicycle: Took a bike ride to a far-off Starbucks yesterday, and did a short ride today with me legs screaming for a break.

Movies: WATCHMEN - Fans of the graphic novel will begin tracking me through the city, carrying “The End Is Nigh” signs, and waiting for their chance to brutally kill me after reading this review...

A week ago Sunday I saw WATCHMEN with a group of friends on a massive IMAX screen at the Universal City Cinemas with Night Owl’s hovercraft parked out front. It was amusing to look into the turbines and see painted flames. One of the great things about seeing a movie in Los Angeles is that you may get to see the Batmobile “tumbler” parked in the lobby, or maybe the models of the Enterprise used in the new STAR TREK movie (now at the Arclight Hollywood) or the costumes or props from some movie (costumes from WATCHMEN on the opposite side of the Arclight lobby).

Due to either good luck or bad luck, by the time I realized I was probably the first one there and that they were letting people into the cinema and that maybe I should grab seats for everyone, the only available seats for a group our size was in row, I think, five - right up close to the screen. The IMAX screen. Now, I usually sit in Row 6, so this wasn’t that big of a deal for me - and nobody else in the group complained and a couple thought it was cool to sit right up there close to the screen. Had we known we’d have a giant swinging blue penis flying at us through half of the film, it may not have been so cool... But more about the Smurf porn later.

I have never read the comic book, nor the graphic novel they compiled it into - I didn’t really know anything about WATCHMEN until Time Magazine listed it as one of the 100 greatest novels of the 20th century. Even then, I only knew it as an anomaly - a comic book better than most of my favorite books (which did not make the list)? I didn’t know who any of the characters were or what the story was. I didn’t know one of the superheroes didn’t believe in pants, and let his junk swing in the wind. The trailers made it look interesting, but gave me not a single clue as to what the *story* might be - I hate trailers like that. I also hate trailers that give away the whole danged film, like the one for LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. I like trailers that are just right - they give you the lead character and what the big conflict is going to be, then let you worry about the whole thing until you see the movie. In fact, the reason why you see the movie is because you are worried for the lead character and want to make sure they solve that big asteroid issue or come to the end of that page of numbers and realize that the last disaster is going to wipe out most of the world’s population... unless they can do something about it. But WATCHMEN’s trailer didn’t give me a clue as to the plot - someone was killing superheroes - but was this just going to be Agatha Christie’s TEN LITTLE INDIANS with dudes in capes? A superhero movie needs a super story! They didn’t even show the super villain in the trailer! One of the fun things about a superhero movie is that kid’s game - who would win a fight between Superman and Batman? Except it’s: Who would win a fight between Spider-Man and Doc Oc? And you imagine all of the fights and scenes that might happen, then go to see the movie to find out what *really* happens. But no super villain in the trailer...

So I had no idea what to expect.

The lights go down, the movie begins...

WATCHMEN starts out as one of the greatest movies ever made. The title sequence gives us the entire warped history of the crime fighters - how they began as The Minutemen and later evolved (or devolved) into The Watchmen... and what happens when those with great power shirk their responsibility... or maybe give their word to the wrong people. How absolute superpowers corrupt absolutely. The power of that opening title sequence overwhelmed me.

Then we come to the murder of The Comedian (in the trailer, not a spoiler) which kicks off the whole story - whatever that may be - and... it sucks. First, because I don’t know the rules of the story, I don’t know who the Comedian is or what his powers are or what his character is - except for the name. And, well, he’s not funny in this scene. I realize it’s a scene where he gets killed - but there are plenty of non-superhero movies with characters who are not named The Comedian who say really funny things in fight scenes, or even have really funny last words. Nothing funny here. And the guy who comes to kill him has some sort of super powers - he throws the Comedian across the room - seeming to aim at every glass topped coffee table in the apartment (and there are several). The Comedian does his own punching - and it’s stronger than a normal guy, stronger than Batman, but not as strong as Superman. I have no idea what this guy’s powers are... but the assassin is more powerful.

Now, the big problem with this action scene is that it is repetitious and boring and tells us nothing about the character(s). I just finished a two part article for Script Magazine called Anatomy Of An Action Scene that is all about how an action scene is a character scene and a story scene and needs an emotional component. This action scene had none of that... and was kind of boring. And went of *forever*. After running out of glass topped coffee tables, the bad guy throws the Comedian through the plate glass window of the apartment, and he falls all the way down to the street below. Splat. No shortage of blood.

And the fight scene is not just missing an emotional component, it is shot in the most boring possible way - no reversals, no suspense, no tension, all of it is just *blah*! And the rest of the movie is blah as well - Snyder and the writers seem to find the blandest way to give us information. Nothing is *revealed* - even the “big reveals” in the story are just dumped on us in the blandest way possible. Maybe this stuff worked on the pages of the graphic novel, but this method did not work on that big IMAX screen. The story, like the fight scenes, was told in the blandest way possible.

None of the other fight scenes in the film would have any character or story or emotional component with one exception - a *great* prison riot fight with Rorschach. That scene had everything except a story purpose - but was the highpoint of the film for me. In fact, Rorschach was the highpoint of the film for me, they should have just gotten rid of all of the other characters and subplots and crap and just made the film about him.

That was the big problem with the movie for me - it was a soap opera about super heroes. Too many lead characters, too many subplots, too many minor conflicts masquerading as major conflict. Rorschach investigating the Comedian’s murder is basically abandoned - shoved aside by all of these subplots - so we not only have nothing driving the story, we have all of these soap opera plots taking center stage when they should have just been jettisoned. They get in the way of the story. Back when I was taking Film Appreciation at Diablo Valley Community College (home of the sex-for-grades program) my friend Bruce Dowling did time lapse photography of a full week of a soap opera (I don’t remember which one) compressing 5 hours into 3 minutes of unexpected pregnancies and affairs and break ups and evil twins and all of the other crap in a soap... and it was funny as hell! Because all of these crazy, silly, melodramatic plots compressed into 3 minutes showed them for what they were - over the top junk. In WATCHMEN we have all of those soap plots - an unwanted pregnancy, a relationship on the rocks because he spends too much time at work, some evil twins, an affair with his best friend’s girl, a drunk old man remembering his glory days, the town slut, friends who never come over for a visit anymore, a guy with erectile dysfunction, an ex-fiancé who shows up slowly dying of cancer, a woman with a shameful secret affair... on and on into the Edge Of Night! For the first hour and a half this movie is a big silly soap opera - no plot driving it, just a bunch of little subplots.

Now, I suspect that on the comic book page all of this plays - but on the screen it’s all subplot, no main plot. In a *movie* the subplots need to be connected to the main plot.

And no main character. Again - in a comic book, you can do something interesting like have different characters as the lead in each issue. Give them all equal time and a couple of issues to call their own. That works in a novel, too. But on the big screen, it’s all one issue - and all one story - and needs one protagonist. One character that the audience will identify with for the next 2 hours (or, three in this case). If they would have stuck with Rorschach’s murder investigation and made all of these other characters suspects and witnesses (and cut out most of the scenes without Rorschach) it would have flowed better and been more interesting. Less soapy.

When we finally get back to Rorschach about an hour and a half into the film, the movie takes off again and keeps going strong until the end. Much of this is probably due to Jackie Earle Haley’s performance. Because BREAKING AWAY is one of my favorite movies, I’ve been a fan forever - and it’s great to see his come back continue. The thing about Rorschach is, when he’s behind the mask he has the most interesting dialogue in the film, but when they tear off his mask... the film gets great, because we can see layers of emotion on Haley’s face. Much of the dialogue in WATCHMEN is on the nose and stilted, but Rorschach gets the best lines... and the *best* line in the film.

One of the reasons why Rorschach is so good is that the other characters are kind of bland. Silk Spectre 2 gets all kinds of bad dialogue, and until she kicks some ass in the prison scene is basically just Dr. Manhattan’s girlfriend with relationship issues. Night Owl 2 is a quiet nerd, not the most interesting character type. Dr. Manhattan and his swinging blue penis is calm and soft spoken and so far above everything that he’s boring... but that blue dick is distracting whenever it’s on the screen. You don’t want to look at it, but I swear Snyder keeps positioning the danged thing right in the center of the action. Ozymandias is super-benevolent, doing good things for everyone - which is kind of boring. He’s also so full of himself, he’s silly. And he has that awful wig - what’s up with that?

Because of the cancer subplot, I kept expecting Ozmandias to rip off the bad wig at some point in the story and have it be plot related... but it wasn’t part of the story, just bad make up. Plenty of that in the film - this film had the least convincing Richard Nixon ever - his make up was awful. Compare this to Frank Langella, who looks nothing like Nixon and didn’t wear much make up, but was completely convincing in FROST/NIXON. And it wasn’t just Nixon who had bad make up, Silk Spectre 1 (Carla Gugino, who I have a mad crush on) had old age make up that looks like it was applied with a trowel. On a movie of this size, a film that studios are suing each other over, you expect the make up to be *adequate*.

But once Rorschach is sprung from prison, the plot finally kicks in and we move toward the preposterous end. Hey, it’s a comic book, so preposterous ends are okay.

A big problem when we get back to Who Killed The Comedian? Is that there are no suspects at all. They didn’t make any of the other characters into suspects, there were no clues, there is no real investigation, there are no supervillains introduced who might have killed the Comedian as part of some fiendish plan... So when they expose the guy behind the murder, it’s kind of a “so what?” moment. And then we get the villain’s big speech explaining why he did it and what his plan is and...

One of the problems along the way to that end (and in the first hour and a half) is a whole lotta standing around talking - including a bunch of speechifying. A comic book is a *still frame* with speech balloons. A film is frames *moving* at 24fps where the story is told through the actions of the characters. Theses are almost polar opposites. Comic books work entirely differently than movies, which is why they must be *adapted* - changed - changed at he very core of the story, because these two mediums are completely different. When people think that comic books are a natural for movies, they are wrong - sure, both have visuals, but no two mediums could be further apart in how they tell the story. Even a novel has *movement* - but a comic book has characters stuck in a still frame. One of the reasons why I dislike V FOR VENDETTA (aside from the silly plot) is that it’s speech after speech after speech - with the characters just standing there. This is *not* a movie.

The big problem is one of adaptation. The reason why Dr. Manhattan’s big blue dick swings through the frame is because that’s what happened in the comic book - if they had made him wear underpants the fans would have screamed that the studio wasn’t being faithful to the source material. If they had streamlined the plot and gotten rid of all of the soap opera crap and made Rorschach the only lead, they wouldn’t be faithful to the source material. If they had made any changes that made it a *better film* the fans would scream that they weren’t being faithful to the source material. Hey - that thing we see in the cinema is not a graphic novel, it’s a *movie* and must work as a movie! If that means you have to change things to make it work as a movie, that’s what has to be done.

There are a finite number of WATCHMEN fans and a much much larger audience of regular film goers. You can’t make a movie for the graphic novel fans - they made the graphic novel for them - you have to make a film for the movie fans... and that’s where WATCHMEN falls short. On a message board I frequent, there is a die hard WATCHMEN fan who is arguing with anyone who doesn’t like the movie... and anyone who thinks they should have made changes to make it work better on screen. Problem is, you can’t make people like a movie more because it’s faithful to the source material. I didn’t pay $11.50 to watch a faithful recreation of a comic book - I paid for a movie. There is a similar issue with the remake of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT - hardcore fans were afraid they were going to tone down the violence to make it a mainstream movie... and they did. But the big difference between trying to please the fans on WATCHMEN and trying to please the fans on LAST HOUSE is that LAST HOUSE is a low budget horror movie that cost $15 million to make... and WATCHMEN cost more than TEN TIMES that! (Before adverts and lawsuits.) WATCHMEN needed to appeal to a mass audience at that budget, not just the fans. It needed to be a mainstream hit...

The movie I got saw okay, once it finally got started. But the real tragedy to me - there were some interesting ideas and possibilities in WATCHMEN that were never explored because it was faithful to the source. I wish it were possible to make a new movie that was less faithful to the source and more faithful ti the concepts behind the source. Superheroes struggling with their powers... worried that one of them might have gone over to the darkside - but which one? Maybe in 20 years they’d do one of those pointless remakes that uses the basic ideas from the source but is more concerned with making a great movie than pleasing the fans...

And maybe that version will make the Comedian funny, and have Rorschach’s mask serve some crime fighting purpose... and not just create flawed characters, but *show us* these characters ***struggling with their flaws***. Problem with a movie about the death of a complete asshole rapist assassin jerk is that I really don’t care who killed him... and that means I don’t care about the story.

- Bill

Screenwriter of BOURNE and DUPLICITY talks...

There is and interesting interview in The New Yorker with screenwriter Tony Gilroy, who was a writer on all three BOURNE movies and writer-director on MICHAEL CLAYTON and the new Julia Roberts-Clive Owen movie DUPLICITY.

Tony Gilroy Interview

Interesting that he doesn't hold anything back when it comes to directors he's worked with and some of the other behind the scenes drama on his films.

- Bill

UK TV - M4M2 - 3/18/09 - 18:30 Black Thunder - When the world's most powerful stealth jet fighter falls into enemy hands, only one man can get it back. Starring Michael Dudikoff.

You have been warned.

Due To The Success Of WATCHMEN...

Okay, one of the screenwriters of WATCHMEN is *begging* fans to see it again this weekend... and the numbers crunchers are looking at the drop off from Friday to Saturday to Sunday last weekend and think bad word of mouth is at work. On message boards, fans are hating every single minor change while others (okay, that's me) are wondering why they didn't *adapt* the damned thing so that it works as a movie. Can't please *anyone* with this film - and the LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT remake is giving off a strong TAKEN vibe, and you know how well that little French film did...

But all is not lost for WATCHMEN fans! Check out this:



- Bill

The Writer Behind TAKEN

Many months ago when the trailer for the new Luc Besson movie TAKEN surfaced, I posted it here - it looked cool. The film came out, and was an unexpected hit. It's made over $100 million in the USA, and was #3 over the weekend... after 5 weeks in release. It's #2 *today*. Not bad for a French film starring an Irish actor.

Today's Los Angeles Times has an interview with the co-writer, and it's worth a read:

Robert Mark Kamen interview

By the way, this interview answered a long standing question - how did these two ever become partners? Is Besson a huge KARATE KID fan or something?

- Bill

March Issue Of Script Magazine

The March Issue of Script Magazine is on newsstands, and it features articles on WATCHMEN and THE SOLOIST and CORALINE and and article by me about writing Character Driven screenplays...



Table Of Contents:

Saved by Art: Susannah Grant and The Soloist
by Aaron Ginsburg
After being shuffled from 2008 awards contention, The Soloist was moved around Paramount’s 2009 release slate, finally settling in late April. Though the move may have been initially disappointing, there’s something fitting about releasing the story -- a tale of two men saved by their art -- at the height of spring. Here Susannah Grant describes The Soloist’s origins on L.A.’s Skid Row and the process of collaborating with regular people to bring their remarkable lives to the screen.

Anatomy of a Scene: Watchmen
by Bob Verini
Its release was in doubt when one studio claimed the other’s rights -- a testament to the potential blockbuster appeal of Watchmen, which after almost 25 years is finally coming to the screen. Script is there as its two writers sit down for the first time together to discuss a key sequence.

Script to Screen: Coraline
by David S. Cohen
In the late 1980s, Henry Selick joined with the Tim Burton team to create the unexpected holiday perennial The Nightmare Before Christmas. With Coraline, writer-director Selick once again sets out to prove that animation can be as scary as it is fun.

Men Behaving Awkwardly: I Love You, Man
by Ray Morton
Comedy writer-director John Hamburg discusses his take on the awkward social situations surrounding male friendships. In his newest film I Love You, Man, he explores a hilarious “bromance” between a groom-to-be and his potential best man.

Scene Fix: Backwoods Barbie
by Jenna Milly
Who can forget watching Tom Hanks discover he’s big or the freeway sign that sings “Do Wah Diddy?” Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith offer their script tips on Robyn Paris’ Backwoods Barbie in the hopes that her story will join the ranks of these memorable rom-coms with a magical twist.

Writers on Writing: The Great Buck Howard
by Sean McGinly
Larger-than-life personalities typically make for larger-than-life studio fare, but writer-director Sean McGinly went another route. His portrait of the grand showman Buck Howard, in The Great Buck Howard -- starring John Malkovich and Colin Hanks -- is drawn from his own life, and on a human scale.

Writers on Writing: Notorious
by Cheo Hodari Coker and Reggie Rock Bythewood
Notorious co-scribe Cheo Hodari Coker says, “Any screenwriter that says he’s happy to be replaced on a project is lying to you.” But Coker found himself happy, and even moved, by Reggie Rock Bythewood’s take on Biggie Smalls’ journey to manhood.

ProdCo Spotlight: Ambush Entertainment
by Joshua Stecker
The industry is full of little-prodcos-that-could with talented people to power them. However, few of those production companies break out of the gate with one indie horror flick and one Oscar® contender. Learn how Ambush Entertainment came to be such a company.

New Media: Death to the Risky Online Series
by Robert Gustafson & Alec McNayr
By now you know that a fresh approach isn’t always a welcome approach in Hollywood -- but that’s not the case in the wild world of webisodes. Take one ass-kicking stuntwoman, one comic-book writer, and one marketing mission from Sony’s Crackle.com and you have one fresh approach to online distribution.

Independents: Problem Protagonists
by William Martell
Here are 10 steps to turn your flawed protagonist into the character that drives the story. Using two hits -- the 1970s’ Five Easy Pieces and Bound for Glory -- William Martell looks at how to write the character-driven screenplay.

Documentaries: Writing Real Life
by Debra L. Eckerling
Before Roger & Me jump-started a whole new approach to filmmaking, documentaries were largely viewed as public-television fare. Now, as filmmakers experiment with story structure and technology, it’s a brand-new day for nonfiction flicks.

To Subscribe:
Script Magazine


- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Conflict Avoidance - And SPIDER-MAN 2.
Yesterday’s Dinner: One of those huge burritos from Tortas on Ventura across from Vineland.
Pages: 9 Pages of rewrite on the Country Western script... but only a couple of those pages are progress... Because I haven't worked on it for a while, I read over all of my notes and realized I had completely screwed up two whole scenes! So I had to rewrite the last two scenes I wrote - making a bunch of major changes. But I am *writing* which makes me happy... and Script e-mailed me asking where my article was. Told ya.

PS: After 5 months, English Dave's blog is back! He was off writing a novel, and now he is blogging about his adventures trying to sell the sucker. I met English Dave online, where his posts were funny and profane and full of actual information about TV writing in the UK... then I met him in real life (he's one of the regulars who show up for my online friends pub night when I'm in London) and he is the perfect person to get drunk with - slightly crazy in all the right ways. One of my best nights in London was when the pub closed and kicked us out, and we staggered across London to a private club where Dave is a member that serves after hours... and once we got there, Dave's attire did not match the dress code: A Hawaiian shirt and shorts.

- Bill

All Roads Lead To...Irresponsibility.

I am a very responsible person. When I was a kid, my family was... poor, lower middle class, working class... you decide the term. If I wanted something, the answer from may parents was: go get a job, earn the money, and then you can buy it. They began giving out this answer when I was a little kid. Family chores included yard work - mowing the lawn, raking leafs, hoeing weeds, etc. But there were other people in the neighborhood whose kids had grown up and left the house, leaving in a void in the yard work department. As a kid, I would mow other people’s lawns, rake their leafs and pull their weeds for a price. Not much of a price, but enough to buy those things I had asked my parents for - toys, model kits, colored pens for drawing, books. Comic books were not allowed, and I never really developed a taste for them. But model cars and drawing material were my addiction. I mowed as many lawns as I could to get the things that I wanted... and still had to do yard work at home and either set the table, wash the dishes or dry the dished every night (rotation with my brother and sister). And take care of my brother and sister - the way things worked in our family is that I had to look out for my brother and sister, my brother had to look out for my sister (the baby) and my sister just had to look out.

Anyway, I mowed lawns and had a paper route for a while and swept my dad’s shop and sometimes the shop next door and for a summer I was my dad’s helper - standing two stories up on a wobbly ladder holding up a heavy sign while my dad bolted it in place. I hated that... but I did it. I was responsible.

I had a job at the local movie theater (Century 21 in Pleasant Hill, CA) when I was in high school, and went from doorman (usher) to Assistant Manager to Acting Manager - full time positions, while still in high school. Oh, and I was in the drama department working backstage or onstage in a bunch of plays on my days off from work. My grades were okay, and in many classes I was that kid who did all of his homework and knew the answer to the questions and did the extra credit work. I also did some homework for other students - and this was a great writing exercise in trying to get their voice right so that they wouldn’t get in trouble. I was responsible.

At 18 (on the dot) I moved out of my parents house into an apartment. I had a job at K-Mart and then a job at Safeway Grocery. I also went to community college and made short films while working full time. One of my problems (then and now) is that I expect that if I do my part everyone else will do their part... and that has screwed me up now and then. After NINJA BUSTERS crashed and burned, so did I. I may do a “Flashback” blog entry about that - because there are some things that happened that are so famous that they were part of conversations with my friends back home over the holidays.

Anyway, once I went back to the day job, I was the guy who showed up on time every day, did a full day’s work even when the boss wasn’t watching, and would do an extra shift if asked. I have a friend who has been fired form every job he has ever had... I was the opposite - they always wanted to promote me. I was always the one they trusted the keys to. I was responsible.

When I sold a script for enough money to quit the day job, I put in my 2 weeks notice and worked just as hard during those last two weeks as in the weeks before. In Los Angeles, I subscribed to the newsletter that would become Script Magazine, wrote a letter to the editor complaining that none of the columnists had any actual experience as screenwriters and were just trying to sell books and classes... and they gave me a column to write for every issue... for no pay. I continued to write for no pay for years, and when they went to a magazine, wrote 3 columns (2 under pseudonyms) for free to save them money. I also used to have them ship me a couple of cases of magazines, and drove around to film book stores and made deals to get the magazine on the shelves. Didn’t get paid for that, either. I was just being responsible.

You may have read about my adventures working for free on my friend’s film a couple of years ago. It was hell on earth, and the film probably sucks (he has never showed it to me... but it just came out on DVD, so I’m going to rent it and see how messed up it is) but I had a good time... and was usually the first one on set. I also ended up doing the grip’s job while the grip went crazy in the grip truck. I stepped up when they needed someone to do the grip’s job... I was responsible.

This year I started with a bunch of new Script Tips, and I’ve been adding more as we go and rewriting old ones - Monday was a page one of an old tip. I want to make sure the website is a good source of information for screenwriters. That’s one of my responsibilities. A lot of people have ditched their blogs, and that’s tempting... but I’m going to try to keep it going (and get back to the Hitchcock Fridays) - It’s another responsibility. I also have these pesky script jobs every now and then - and those are my responsibility. Plus, my website has a message board where you can ask screenwritng questions and I answer them. There’s one I haven’t answered yet... and it bugs me. Oh, and I spent some time in line at the post office today to mail out some CD and Blue Book orders. More responsibility.

So, before the holidays, an organization asked if I would help with a contest. Hey, more responsibility! I tried my damndest to say no, but they explained how great it would be for me to do this and eventually I said yes. That was a mistake. I already have way too much to do, and things fall through the cracks sometimes because I’m busy doing all of the other things. And now, one more thing.

And something I did not really want to do.

So, it became a dreaded priority... that I would avoid... becoming irresponsible.

And that began a domino run of irresponsibility, because on the big To Do List, I had to do the dreaded priority before I did anything else... and that meant while I was not doing the dreaded priority I was *also* not doing anything else that needed to be done. Which may have been a major part of my doldrums. The Hitchcock Friday thing - responsibility I wanted to avoid (along with that dreaded priority project). Blogging - responsibility I wanted to avoid (along with that priority project). And by having so many things I was responsible for, and not wanting to do one of them... I ended up not doing any of them. I became the most irresponsible person on earth. I did *nada*. Well, I did write some new Script Tips, but not as many as I had planned on writing.

After getting some advice from a regular reader of this blog to just get ‘er done - I spent the last day and a half finishing the thing and now I am a free man.

Now all I have to do is write an article for Script, stand in line at the post office again, hopefully finish this half written new tip for Monday, and...

Finish this damned spec script that has been in the home stretch since the beginning of the year. I think I have about 4 days left on it, and Wednesday is DAY ONE. I hope to be writing FADE OUT on Saturday night.

Okay, now you probably want to know if I’ll ever get around to writing up that DARK KNIGHT review...

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: REVEALING INFORMATION - Which includes a 7 minute film.
Yesterday’s Dinner: Togos sandwich while working.

Bicycle: It rained yesterday and it's supposed to rain tomorrow, so today I rode my bike. Medium bike ride to a Starbucks. After my last epic ride I was kind of blah the next day - I think I may have been dehydrated. Today's ride was more reasonable, and I plan on riding Thursday if it is not raining.

French Oscars

Why the French version of the Oscars (the Caesars) are better than the US version - Wardrobe malfunctions that nobody seems to care about except Emma Thompson. In this clip, notice that the MC and the rest of the audience don't see anything wrong with a stray breast popping out...

CAESAR AWARDS - Breast Unsupported Actress

- Bill

Movies On The Radio

On Wednesday I was a guest on the Screenwriter’s Utopia radio show. I think I may have been one of Chris’ first interviews on his website over a decade ago, so it was kind of cool. The subject was The Oscars, so I did some research and made sure I was prepared, with notes set out in front of me when I called in...

I like to be prepared. I was on some panel a few years back on some subject that I had an opinion on, but didn’t really know much outside of my personal experience... so I hit the books and did some research and had some great notes on the subject so that I could sound like an expert. Let’s face it, we all have opinions on all kinds of things we don’t know a damn thing about. This stimulus package? Hey - any money given out for infrastructure projects should only be used on *existing* roads and bridges and stuff - no new stuff! The new stuff can be pork! But, I actually know nothing about any of that stuff... I just have an opinion. We all have opinions, and they are all worthless. Only the facts count. What I believe doesn’t matter - the truth is what matters. So I made sure I wasn’t talking out of my backside and had the facts... and probably should have handed my notes to the moderator, because after we introduced ourselves he threw it open to questions and the very first question was off topic and the whole discussion never even touched on the subject of the panel... and all of my research went to waste.

And, true to form, after a couple of Oscar questions... the subject changed to me. Now, this is my least favorite subject. If you read my article in the new issue of Script Magazine, it’s all about two movies - not about me. When I wrote that out of print book the note I got from everyone was “more personal stories”... I argued that I’m not William Goldman, but everyone said I have such funny stories about how my scripts got screwed up, I should include a couple. When I first began doing classes (at Raindance) they were all about writing screenplays with nothing about me or my experiences... except the Q&A section of the class ended up being all questions about my experiences and my writing and “how did you sell your first script”, etc. So the class evolved to include some horror stories...

I think I’m a boring subject.

I was also not prepared to talk about myself.

And in a class or in a script tip or whatever - when I talk about some experience I’ve had on the front lines in the world of writing the screenplays you would not want to have on your resume, I do it to *illustrate some aspect of screenwriting*. Just like my subscription to Playboy, references to my career are strictly for educational purposes.

So when they began asking me questions about my so called career without any noticeable educational purpose, I had no idea where it was going an no idea how to form my answer. And sometimes when the purpose of the question became clear, I realized I had given the completely wrong answer... They asked me about breaking in through direct to video movies, and I gave the factual answer - the middle has completely dropped out of the DTV business, leaving studio sequels (AMERICAN PIE 27: STIFFLER’S MOM GOES TO BAND CAMP) and movies made for pocket change by Asylum. The studio sequels are studio movies - and getting that job is the same as getting any other studio screenwriting job (not easy). The surviving low end D2DVD guys like Asylum make movies for next to nothing and pay writers a couple thousand bucks (or less) for the script and rewrites. You can’t make a living doing that. And with DVD sales flat right now (bad economy, people are renting more than buying) the DVD world is even more difficult to break in to, because they will probably be making fewer original DVDs until this whole economy thing gets straightened out. Anyway, that was not the answer they wanted to hear - I think they wanted to know some easy way to break in. Instead, I was Debbie Downer.

Then I said, if some company like Asylum is only going to pay you $1k for your script, you’re better off making the film yourself... And that was not the answer they wanted, either. As someone who frequently stresses that money is supposed to flow *to* the screenwriter (rather than away from the screenwriter into someone else’s pocket), I understand their POV.

Anyway, all kinds of things that were not the Oscars were discussed, but it came off more the free-form screenwriting conversation I might have in the Driskill Bar during the Austin Film Festival after several beers (though, no alcohol was consumed during the radio interview). One of the reasons why I prefer doing online interviews than “talkers” is because I can come up with a good answer, instead of fumbling around for a while until I come up with a good answer... if I ever do. And, I guess, because as a writer - I would rather *write* the answers. But it was relatively painless, and I hope to be a guest on the show again sometime in the future.

Damn! This whole blog entry ended up about me!

I’m still trying to get caught up - I have a bunch of things on the To Do List, and it keeps growing. I have a bunch of half written blog entries that I need to finish...

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Character Secrets - and The Tuxedo.
Yesterday’s Dinner: McD's - on the bicycle - The bacon angus burger.

Bicycle: I only slept 4 hours on Monday night, and had the same problem on Wednesday night... so Tuesday and Thursday were just screwed up. Instead of getting on the bicycle and trying to get some blood flowing, I sat around and ate a bunch of junk food. Making me feel even worse. So today (Friday), having slept okay last night, I decided to take an epic bike ride. Actually, I never decided... I was sitting in one Starbucks and decided to ride to another Starbucks, and just kept riding. There’s a Circuit City in Van Nuys, and DVDs are 60% off, and there’s a bike path that goes from the North Hollywood subway station across the valley, so I just started riding. It's not a short ride. Once I got to Circuit City - sweaty - I went to the DVD racks... picked over, not much left. Lots of copies of HANCOCK and CRYSTAL SKULL (I mean *lots*) and as the guy on the other side of the aisle joked to his buddy, Nic Cage movies were over represented, there really wasn’t anything I wanted. But at 60% off, I grabbed that DMX Iceberg Slim movie - $4 - and stood in the never-ending line... which suddenly came to a dead stop when the cashier’s day came to an end and her replacement hadn’t arrived, yet. Ten minutes later the guy shows, and after all kinds of drama, he starts doing his job and the line starts moving again. And I pay my $4 and can get back on my bike and ride home... except I stop at this Starbucks about 3/4s of the way home to rest and check my e-mail and type up this blog entry. Now I’m going to ride the rest of the way home - I think my legs are ready for it. Anyway - a good bike ride today.

Movie Mix Ups!

Someone on a message board asked if anyone had the script to BLADES OF GLORY, and I answered that I had the script to BLADE and the script to GLORY... would that work?

Okay, if you combined BLADE and GLORY into one story - BLADES OF GLORY - what would that story be about? What is the one paragraph pitch for that movie?

Just for fun - what is your movie mash up that takes two existing movies to create a third existing movie - and what is the one paragraph pitch for that movie? The comments section awaits your pitch!

- Bill

My movies continue to attack the United Kingdom...

M4M2 - Sunday 2/22 - 20:05 - 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.

Monday 2/23 - 17:30 - Black Thunder - When the world's most powerful stealth jet fighter falls into enemy hands, only one man can get it back. Starring Michael Dudikoff.

Tuesday 2/24 - 20:05 - 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.

You Have been warned!

- Bill

New Steven Seagal Movie

Before we get to today's action flick trailer, I just have to mention that FRIDAY THE 13th broke all kinds of records over the weekend. It made $19 million on Friday alone, which is more than it cost to make. For the standard Fri-Sat-Sun weekend it made over $40 million, which is the biggest opening weekend for a horror remake ever. And it ended the holiday weekend with over $45.2 million (estimates, real numbers to come as soon as they finish counting up all of that money). Hey, box office is still up (President's Day Weekend up 32% over last year) and ticket sales are still 20% higher than last year - everyone is going to the movies. That's great for all of us.

But this redoodle of FRIDAY THE 13th is good for *me* because my big remake project has the same producer (he's produced many other movies, but I care mostly about mine), and with F13 being hot, I hope my project will get fast tracked onto the big production boards. And that might nudge some of these other circling scripts onto studio landing strips. Heck, maybe I'll even get an agent out of it.

Now to the trailer for the Steven Seagal film I wish that I had written...


Don't you wish you had written that?

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: SHOULD I WORRY ABOUT RATINGS?.
Yesterday’s Dinner: Subway.
Bicycle: It's been raining like crazy in Los Angeles, so I haven't been on the bike in a while... and when you add in the holidays, I'm getting fatter just typing this. So Saturday we had a dry day and I took a long bike ride... and Sunday my legs were painful jello. We have more rain coming, but I need to get my legs back in shape before they turn to permanent jello.

Record Ticket Sales In January

From an AP story on this weekend's box office numbers...

North American box office revenues were up nearly 20 percent in January over the same period last year, reaching a record $1.03 billion for the month. Attendance was up 16 percent over last year, said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Media by Numbers.

"This is exactly how you want to start a year," Dergarabedian said Sunday. "I think people feel movies are a good value for their dollar. Going to a movie is a habit people aren't willing to break."

Hey, money may be tight but movies are doing well - someone tell Wall Street!

And that's not just a record January as far as money is concerned - it's a record for *ticket sales* - which means more people are going to the movies!


- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: INTERESTING PROTAGS - Making your Protagonist more interesting than that supporting character in scene #37.
Yesterday’s Dinner: Food Court BBQ chicken.

Movies: TAKEN - I don’t think it’s any surprise to you that I love kick ass action movies. When I first saw the *trailer* to TAKEN, I posted it on the blog because it looked like the kind of movie I would see on opening night. You know, a foreign film starring a serious actor. I was on somebody’s list and saw NIKITA at a screening long before the film came out. They told me it was a French action film, and as a fan of Melville and Chabrol and some of the other French genre guys, this excited me. But I was unprepared for even the opening shot! Wow! This guy Luc Besson was great! So I immediately rented SUBWAY and couldn’t wait for LEON and have seen everything he’s done since then... and wish he’d go back to directing. But directing a film may take a year or two, and he can co-write and produce a handful of films a year. I have no idea how he hooked up with the KARATE KID writer, but I wish it had been me instead. The films he and RMK have co-written always seem like they needed a couple more rewrites and maybe someone every once in a while to say “Bad idea, let’s do something else here” - but they are always good junky action entertainment. I was there on opening night for TRANSPORTER 3 and I was there on opening night for TAKEN.

Liam Neeson is one of those actors with a foot in serious drama and the other foot in the DARKMAN costume - I think he likes movies like this. Great that he’s playing the lead, here, because it turns a pretty much by-the-numbers revenge film into something better. It’s not a great film by a long shot, but imagine if they had cast Ah-nuld (oh, wait, they did and called it COMMANDO). Neeson brings not only acting to the role, but *attitude* - he can be serious and playful at the same time. When Neeson is torturing somebody, his taunts are light and amusing.

One of the things I liked about the film is that they allow Neeson to do some acting - he’s a divorced dad who seldom saw his daughter while she was growing up, and now that she’s almost an adult has retired and put his life on hold to try to make amends. They get the divorced dad thing right - it’s messy, with all kinds of unresolved issues. There is no happy ending - family gets back together feel in this film - this is a family torn apart and it’s going to stay that way. Neeson has never missed her birthday, and is stressing over her birthday gift - a karaoke machine. He reads over the specs and keeps going back to the electronics store - showing that he’s a guy who is all about the details and thinks through everything. When he wraps the gift, he carefully creases the corners of the wrapping paper - making them perfect. He is Mr. Precision.

We get a great scene at the birthday party - his ex-wife (Famke Janssen) has married a millionaire (played by completely underrated brilliant actor Xander Berkeley) and the party is at this mansion with heavy security. Neeson wants to give the gift to his daughter personally, but security wants him to put it in the assigned place. He is a complete outsider here, and they seem to be doing everything they can to get him to turn around and go home. But he gets past them, to his daughter and ex-wife. Ex-wife is still needling him, and *she* wants him to put the gift in the assigned place. He refuses, and has his daughter (Maggie Grace) open the gift in front of him. Now, we expect this to be the greatest gift ever, because he has spent so much time and effort selecting it... but the great thing about TAKEN is that again and again it does the unexpected. A boom box - because she wants to be a singer. Janssen snipes that she wanted to be a singer years ago... but Grace gives him a big hug anyway... and then Berkeley comes in with his gift - a Thoroughbred horse! She goes crazy, runs to the horse... leaving Neeson’s gift on the ground. Heart breaker. Major heart breaker.

The most OTN scene in the film is the barbeque with Neeson’s ex-spy guys. It’s a huge exposition dump disguised as guy banter - but the banter isn’t funny enough to make it work. At the end of the night they ask Neeson if he’d like to do some security work with them - these ex-spies now guard rock stars for a living. Neeson has always said no, but says yes this time... and helps guard this Shakira-like singer at a concert. Before the concert, he tells the singer that his daughter wants to be a singer and does she have any advice... and she just *slams* him. Again, in the Hollywood version she might have given some advice or at least not been so brutal. After the concert, when they are hustling the singer off stage, someone opens a door and a bunch of fans charge at her. The rest of the guys control the flood of fans, while Neeson gets the singer to her waiting car... but someone is waiting in the dark with a knife and attacks. Another unexpected event - we thought this was all about the fans, not an attack on the singer with the fans as the diversion. Neeson is prepared, takes down the attacker, stomps him, and gets the singer to the car and the car the hell out of there... in almost one fluid move. This guy is a badass!

Now the bitchy singer thaws and gives Neeson a business card with all of her contact info, and says if his daughter really can sing, she’ll do everything she can for her. Neeson realizes this is something rich stepfather Berkeley can’t do for his daughter - the business card is his big chance to connect with her. He arranges to have lunch with her, no ex-wife to ruin everything... but when Grace shows up, so does Janssen. But no matter what his ex-wife says, it can’t beat the business card, right? Maybe it’s *good* that Janssen showed, he can kind of rub her nose in it... But before he can get to the business card, his daughter asks a favor - she wants to spend the summer in Paris with her friend, and because she’s under 18, needs Neeson’s signature on a permission slip. The summer Neeson was going to spend getting closer to his daughter? She’s going to be in Paris. The whole conversation turns to allowing his 17 year old daughter to go to another country - where she could get into all kinds of trouble. The business card - which is what we expected the scene to be about - is forgotten.

When Grace and her friend get to Paris, they split a cab with a cute guy... and Grace discovers that the relatives of her friend they were supposed to be staying with are on vacation for the summer - so it’s just two boy-crazy girls in a Paris apartment. While she’s on the phone to Neeson, admitting that there is no adult supervision - some guys break into the flat and grab her friend. It’s sudden and unexpected and the struggle knocks over half the furnishings. Neeson tells her to find a bedroom and hide under the bed, then talks her through what will probably happen - including that killer line from the trailer where he says “You will be taken”. Hey, we though ex-spy dad would have some sort of plan to prevent that from happening! Nope. It’s inevitable. But we get a clever bit, here - Neeson tells her to leave the phone under the bed and yell out a description of the guys who grab her so that he can hear. The guys come into the bedroom, do a search, and leave without finding her... we are sure she’s safe! Then - YANK - someone grabs her feet and pulls her from under the bed. She screams her description, one of the badguys grabs the phone, Neeson makes his threat... and the phone is *smashed*.

But Neeson has recorded the phone call, takes the recording to one of his ex-spy buddies for analysis. Now, when they introduced all of these guys, I was sure they would end up part of the movie later on... but they don’t. The guys were played by recognizable character actors, so you think they will come back later in the story, Nope, This is it. One of the guys uses voice print technology and finds out that these guys are from Albania and even the exact village, based on their accent. Neeson packs his bags and jets to Paris to kick some Albanian ass.

Oh, and there’s a great bit of unexpected plotting here - two *wealthy* American girls are kidnaped. When the cute guy they share the cab with drops them off, the girlfriend says they have the whole fifth floor of the building... and the cute guy notes the expensive luggage and clothes and everything else. So, when the girls are kidnaped, we immediately think there will be a call to Xander Berkeley with a ransom demand. But there is no call. After being lead to believe this will be about ransom, it’s not. It’s a “white slave” ring - kidnaping tourist girls, getting them hooked on drugs, forcing them to work as prostitutes. Not what we expected. After setting up how rich Berkeley is for the first third of the film, the story does something else. That’s the thing I liked most about this film - whenever you thought you knew what would happen next, they did something you’d never expect.

Plus, these nasty Albanians can turn a carefree American girl on vacation into a drugged out whore in 96 hours - which gives us a ticking clock.

We get a couple more fairly clever scenes - one where Neeson walks through the Paris flat while listening to the phone call recording and matching destruction to sound. This helps him find clues in the flat. He finds the bedroom his daughter hid in, finds the smashed cell phone... and pulls out the chip. Takes the chip to a prints digital photos in some shopping area, and clicks through all of the cell phone photos his daughter took - including one of the two girls taken by the cute guy - and Neeson finds a reflection of the cute guy, blows it up, prints it...

And starts up the ladder of bad guys until he gets his daughter back.

Every time you think he’s finally found her, he hasn’t. We keep coming to that end scene where he kicks down a door, kills a bunch of scumbags, and rescues her... only she isn’t there. She’s been sold to somebody or transferred or moved, and Neeson must start all over again. There are many more completely unexpected things: A scene where he begins bothering a streetwalker to flush out her Albanian pimp - you expect Neeson to kick the pimp’s ass and force him to give information.... but he just apologizes and leaves, after planing a bug on the pimp. A scene where he’s kicking ass in a make-shift whorehouse at a factory - blankets hung on clotheslines to create rooms - and searches each “room”... spotting his daughter’s jacket (set up in earlier scenes) on the floor near a girl with long brown hair (like his daughter’s) who has just taken a conga-line of factory workers. You steel yourself for the heartbreak when he turns the girl’s face so that he can see it... not his daughter. But a clue to her - the drugged out girl remembers a street name and the *distinctive* color of the door to the building where they got her hooked on heroin. There’s a *great* unexpected scene where Neeson is cornered and shoots a *completely innocent* person in order to escape - doesn’t kill the person, but this is someone you *like*. Completely unexpected and brutal.

The film may be a straight ahead revenge flick, like GET CARTER or POINT BLANK, where the protagonist kills his way up the ladder until he gets to the person ultimately responsible, but even though the story itself is linear the scenes within the story are not. Unexpected things happen, and *anything* can happen. Neeson doesn’t win some of the fights, bad things happen to innocent people, and we are often lead to believe one thing will happen in a scene and then the exact opposite happens.

This unpredictability makes many of the scenes seem like they were made up on the spot, but really the opposite is true. These things take planning. As a writer, you either have to know your genre inside out so that you know exactly what the audience expects to happen in any given scene - so that you can do something completely different... or you have to create the expectations in the audience by leading them down the wrong path. Here we are constantly lead astray - after building up how wealthy Xander Berkeley is and dropping all of these clues that the girls were kidnaped for ransom... that’s not the case at all! After creating the expectations that Neeson is going to kick everybody’s ass - he just walks away from the pimp like an idiot tourist. After setting up a relationship between Neeson and this innocent person, he shoots them! Besson and Kamen had to create these expectations in order to subvert them. They had to know all along that Neeson would shoot this person so that they could make it seem like that would be the last thing Neeson would ever do.

One of the things I thought was clever about TAKEN was that the girls go on vacation to Paris - so that this French film can actually be shot in France.

The problems with TAKEN: Look, Paul Greengrass is now on my hit list for ruining action films. You can either do quick cuts *or* use a handheld camera. Can’t do both - because when the camera isn’t locked down and moves around, it takes our eyes longer to “grip” the image. When you do quick cuts we have less time to “grip” the image. Use one or the other and our eyes can “grip” the image and see what is happening. Use both and we don’t have time to see what that shaking image is before we are on to the next shaking image and it all ends up kind of a blur. We can process the overall concept of the scene, but not the specifics. Things get lost in the scramble of pixels and the sequence uninvolving and less affective. There are lots of ragged action scenes in the film, and another one of those car chases that looked like it might have been exciting and I wish I had been able to actually see it.

The film was also drama-deprived. Okay, I like kick ass action movies, but I also like a little drama and character woven in. It’s as if, after spending much of Act 1 giving Neeson some good acting scenes, they just got rid of anything that required acting for the rest of the script. There were even some good juicy scenes that seemed to be set up for drama - when Neeson is caring for the drugged out girl and tells her he’s the father of a kidnaped girl, there *needed* to be a scene. Heck this drugged out girl has a father, too - she’s exactly the same as Neeson’s daughter! Why not make that into a scene? Why not hold back a smidgen of the Neeson-wasn’t-there-for-his-daughter and use it here? Why not turn the girl into more than just a clue to the next round of scumbags for Neeson to kill? And in several other places in the film, I would have given Neeson a chance to do some acting. There was more drama in the last Jean Claude Van Damme movie!

Also, the villains were cardboard cut outs waiting to get killed. Sort of central casting bad guys. This goes back to Hitchcock, the better the villain, the better the movie. In the first PIRATES movie Barbosa becomes more frightening when his motivation is revealed and we *understand it* - now it’s not just a bad guy doing bad things, he has a motivation that makes so much sense we know he can’t be deterred. Barbosa has too much at stake to be talked out of this or give up if it becomes too difficult - and that makes him more frightening that the cardboard cut out bad guys in this film. They needed to take the villains - even the Albanians - and give them a human moment where we understood their motivations and understood that they would rather die than give up the information about Neeson’s daughter. That makes the task *more* difficult and *more* dangerous. Good villains make good movies. Cardboard bad guys make crap action movies like this - hey, great to see a guy kick ass, but better if it’s not just action porn and I *feel* something.

Still, pretty good action porn, mostly due to the brutal and unexpected stuff and Neeson... and a non-Hollywood ending.

- Bill