What Should I Write?

So, I have finished the country western bar thriller, COWBOY NIGHTS, and now I'm outlining two future scripts - the action flick CONTAINED and the thriller I plan to make myself NEAR HIT, and I'm getting ready to jump back into SECOND SON and finishing that sucker.

But I also have to write a new article for Script Magazine by the end of the month... and have no idea what that will be. In the current issue I have part one of my piece on Action Scenes, in the issue before that I had an article on Character Driven scripts; and next issue I have *ten pages* of material: part two of my Action Scenes article and a piece on the new Tarantino movie. But what should come next?

What do you think?

Classes On CD - Recession Sale!

- Bill

IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Mixed Genre Salads and SLITHER.
Yesterday’s Dinner: Burger King - which cost me $10!
Bicycle: Nice day so I rode to a distant Starbucks.

MOVIES: UP - When I first saw the trailer for UP, I didn’t think it looked very good. Some grumpy old guy and some overly cute kid and a dog... had Pixar reached the bottom of the creative barrel? I have loved all of the PIXAR movies, and even liked CARS (which is their worst so far, and still better than most of the movies I saw that year). Everyone has their favorite Pixar movie, and mine is THE INCREDIBLES... probably because it’s an action movie and kind of a 60s James Bond film, too. But I cried my eyes out at TOY STORY 2, and have used FINDING NEMO as an example in an article I wrote for Script Magazine. The amazing thing about Pixar is that they make great movies. Compare a Pixar film to a Dreamworks Animated film - Dreamworks movies are all about the gags - they are like some sitcom extended to 90 minutes. KUNG FU PANDA is all shtick - one gag after another. Hey, that’s great for adults, and kids like it, too... but the films always seem kind of hollow to me. All surface, without much underneath. Pixar films have fewer gags - and the gags they have are often character oriented - but they are all about heart. The first half of WALL-E is pretty much gag-free. It’s all about the character... all about the emotions. You may not laugh as much at a Pixar movie, but you feel more.

I’m sure a lot of people thought UP was a movie about an old guy with a floating house, and on some message boards I’ve read some posts from folks who saw the movie and *still* thought it was about an old guy with a floating house... how could they miss the whole story?
There is no house.

MILD SPOILERS

UP opens with a kid named Carl Fredrickson sitting in a movie theater watching a newsreel on amazing adventurer Charles Muntz - a cross between Doc Savage and Professor Challenger, who believes he has discovered a lost world in South America... and a rare prehistoric bird. Muntz has this amazing Zeppelin that he uses for his adventures - sailing above the clouds. On his way home from the movies, Carl meets a girl named Ellie who has turned an abandoned house into her adventurer’s clubhouse. She and Carl are two of a kind, and soon they are both dreaming if a life of thrilling adventure together. Ellie has a scrap book of all of Muntz’s adventures... and a big section left empty for *her* amazing adventures. She wants to live on the magical waterfall in the lost world. She makes Carl an official member of her adventure club with a special badge made from a grape soda bottle cap. They are a team!

That soda pop cap button is a symbol of their spirit of adventure.

Next we get an amazing montage, maybe 7 minutes, of Carl and Ellie’s entire lives. They grow up, get married, but the run-down house and fix it up, Carl gets a job selling balloons (which figure into the plot later), and soon they are old people, living in the house... and then Carl is alone. There’s a great line from Lennon (John, not Vladimir), “Life is what happens to you, While you're busy making other plans” and that’s what this sequence beautifully illustrates. After Ellie passes away, Carl finds her scrap book... with that whole section where she was going to put pictures of *her* adventures... their adventures. Instead, they just lived a fairly boring life in their house.

If this sequence doesn’t make you cry at least once, there is something wrong with your tear-duct plumbing. Completely silent, but jam-packed with emotions. The great thing about Pixar movies is that they love to tell te story visually - they know that is the direct path to the heart. No need to translate words into emotions, an image is an image. It’s a direct shot. We don’t need to wonder what the character means with those words, we just experience it. A child must learn to speak, learn to understand words... but they already know what they see. WALL-E does more with visual storytelling than any ten live action movies put together, and in UP we get the same ability to pull our heart strings, to make us feel genuine emotions, without dialogue. This is a powerful sequence.

One day a pudgy kid in a cub scout outfit, Russell, knocks on Carl’s door and wants to help him with something, anything, so that he can get the *one* merit badge he is missing from his sash. The sash is *filled* with merit badges, except for one empty spot. This is contrast in action - the best way to show something isn’t there is to show everything else that *is* there. The *only* empty space on his sash is the one merit badge. This also shows what a go-getter and a pest Russell is. The kid is relentless. Driven. And just will not shut up. Grumpy old Carl sends him on a wild goose chase to get rid of him.

When Carl comes across the drawing Ellie made as a kid of the house on the waterfall in the lost world, he gets an idea. His house is now in the center of a construction site, and he refuses to sell... because it’s Ellie’s house. Everything they had together. The house isn’t just a house, it’s symbolic of their whole relationship. Their love. He won’t let a construction crew tear it down to build a new skyscraper in its place. Everyone wants to put grumpy old Carl in a rest home, but that would mean leaving the house... and he can’t bring himself to do that. That would be leaving Ellie behind. So, on that day when they are going to come and take him away to the rest home, he fills a zillion helium balloons and ties them to the house... and floats the whole thing away.

With Russell on the front porch, scared to death.

Carl’s plan is to float his house, Ellie’s house, to South America and that lost world and land it on the waterfall... just like in Ellie’s childhood drawing. To take that adventure he and Ellie never got around to... to take *Ellie* to that waterfall. The house is not a house at all, it is symbolic of his relationship with Ellie, and so it is symbolic of Ellie - the woman he loved his entire life. There is no house, it is a symbol. Everything in this film is a symbol. The house - the memories of his relationship with Ellie - lift him high above the clouds and carry him off on an adventure.

If it weren’t for the damned kid...

One of the cool things about UP is that it has these sly references to adventure fiction and movies, so when the flying house hits a storm, you can’t help but think of the hot air balloon that hits a storm in MYSTERIOUS ISLAND and gets knocked off course... ending up on that mysterious island of the title. When I was a kid, MYSTERIOUS ISLAND was one of my favorite films, and the cool idea that a bunch of escaping Civil War POWs could end up in this lost world kind of place where Captain Nemo docks his submarine when he isn’t out battling giant squids was really cool. The Bernard Herrmann music in that film was fantastic, and I’m listening to it right now as I type this. I’m sure, as a kid, the other thing I liked about MYSTERIOUS ISLAND was they found some shipwrecked women who ended up wearing skimpy animal furs until they found a trunk full of dresses on the sand. But there are no women in UP... unless you watched the Russ Meyer version by mistake.

Instead Carl and Russell and the house end up blown into that Lost World... but the house loses a bunch of balloons in the process, and now is skimming over the ground. Carl ends up dragging the house behind him as they make their way through the jungle to the waterfall in the distance. What was once buoyant and uplifting has become something that may get caught in the trees. Something that must be jockeyed and taken care of every single minute. What was once keeping him afloat now seems to be dragging him down. As much as he loved Ellie, as much as his past dreams excited him, now they are becoming a problem. There is no house.

As Carl and Russell drag the house across the landscape, they discover a silly looking giant bird, that Russell names Kevin. In MYSTERIOUS ISLAND there was also a giant bird - this huge thing that they tried to ride and eventually ate for dinner - drumsticks the size of a Volkswagen. Here, they don’t eat Kevin, but the danged bird keeps following them and this gets on Carl’s nerves. He wants to bird to go away. But Russell keeps feeding Kevin bits of his candy bar, and the bird keeps following them...

And they also meet the misfit dog, Dug, who has been sent to find the bird... by Muntz! Muntz has a huge pack of dogs with “speech collars” so that they can have conversations with their master. These collars are a great gag - they have controls for different languages, and when the evil Alpha Dog gets his collar bumped he speaks in a high funny helium balloon voice. It’s all connected to balloons!

That giant prehistoric bird that Carl wants to get rid of is the bird of happiness for old adventurer Muntz - proof that this species exists, proof that the lost world exists, proof that he is not a fake. Muntz as sent his dogs out to find it, but Alpha and the others are looking one place, while doofus dog Dug has actually found the giant bird. Grumpy Carl wants to be rid of the bird, Muntz will do anything to capture it.

One thing they discover - Kevin is a girl... and a mom... and has a bunch of hungry little birds waiting for her at home. Kevin has a future generation to take care of. Carl has no future, he’s dragging his past behind him. Muntz only has a future if he can capture that bird. Is Kevin a symbol, too?

Now Carl and Russell and Kevin and Dug go on this journey across the lost world, and Carl discovers that his childhood idol, Muntz, has feet of clay. He’s a ruthless opportunist... who will do anything to capture Kevin the bird. Carl’s entire childhood - and maybe his adulthood, too - was based on worshiping adventurer Muntz, but the real man is not the fantasy. And Carl’s life ended up being not the childhood fantasy, but a ho-hum reality. Now he’s stuck dragging this damned house behind him, and it keeps getting stuck in trees... and when they go to Muntz’s cave, it almost doesn’t make it in.

In Muntz’s old zeppelin, Dug the dog is picked on by Alpha and the others in the pack, and must wear the Cone Of Shame. Just like the missing merit badge, the Cone Of Same is a symbol that shows us who is “bottom dog”... and it’s always Dug.

Eventually, Carl and Russell and Dug will team up to fight Muntz and rescue Kevin, but to do that, Carl will need an airship that can take on Muntz’s zeppelin. So he will have to make the house lighter... by throwing out all of the things that he and Ellie collected over their lifetime. Pictures of her. Memories of her. He must throw all of these things out of the house... including the his & hers chairs that were the first things they bought for the house... and still remain in the house. This is an emotional scene. Hey, do you think throwing all of these things out of te house so that it can float again is symbolic?

And eventually, Carl will learn to let go of the house. To let go of is past life with Ellie, as great as that was, and look forward to his current life and his future life. This isn’t a movie about a man with a floating house, it’s a movie about a man with a past... and a future. But he must let go of one, to grab hold of the other. If you haven't seen it, yet, check it out. A great film for adults as well as kids, and a great lesson in how to use symbols to tell your story.

- Bill

Cool Guys Don't Look At Explosions

JJ Abrams kicks Ray Manzarek's ass on the boards in this Shamberg song from the MTV Movie Awards about action movie explosions. I had to post it here eventually - it's all about action movies...



- Bill

This Week In Review....

It blew.

Started off okay - I finished a script! Wrote fade out on COWBOY NIGHTS, the country western bar thriller on Monday. Was supposed tp have it finished on Thursday, then Friday, then... well, it was great to finally finish it. The plan for this week was to outline and plan two scripts, and write up treatments for each. The NEAR HIT script I had planned on filming in a couple of months, and an action-thriller thing called CONTAINED. That would set both of those up to be written over the next few months. Then, I was going to spend the rest of this month finishing SECOND SON, which was set aside to work on the studio remake project...

But everything went off the rails on Tuesday.

I have always had problems sleeping. Well, for some reason (maybe excited because I finished the script) I could not sleep Monday... and this created a strange ping-pong effect where one night I slept too little and the next I overslept - and then couldn’t sleep the following night. Anyway, the result is - no outlines, no treatments... and no Hitchcock today. Just a complete bust of a week.

And, I have this list of “brain dead” tasks that I can do, but for some reason when I am brain dead I never remember to do any of them.

I also have a huge stack of DVDs to watch, but I don’t stick ‘em in the machine because I’m too tired to really watch them, and what if one is really good? I’d want to be fully awake while I watch it, right? So - I haven’t watched any of tem (and I’ll bet most of them are okay at best). I think watching a movie (with an end) would help me fall asleep more than watching ABC World News Now... which goes on forever, and kind of loops, so you end up watching the exact same story again two hours later.

Probably adding to my inability to sleep is my lack of bike riding over the past week. The weather in Los Angeles has been weird - it’s overcast and threatening to rain every day. The weather people all call it “June Gloom” - but this is the worst it has ever been. I know that raindrops are not going to kill me, but it often looks really nasty out there and I don’t want to get caught far away from home in a major downpour. I have rode a block or two to the corner Starbucks a couple of times, but that’s not a bike ride. I think the lack of exercise isn’t helping at all.

I hope to finish up the I CONFESS Hitchcock entry tomorrow and put it up... but I still haven’t decided if I should do the outlines and treatments next week, or jump into finishing up SECOND SON so that I’ll have it finished more or less by the end of the month. I have to get this sleep thing under control. Yes, I’m taking some over the counter stuff, but it’s not working well - last night I got a little sleepy, went to bed... and after laying there for over an hour without falling asleep, I felt like I was wasting time... and tried to get some work done until I was really sleepy. That was around 4am... and I slept for 4 hours and woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep for a couple of hours. I went without any coffee or caffeine for a couple of days during the week - and that made me even more brain dead, but didn’t seem to help me get my sleep pattern back under control.

I’m going to try to get to sleep early tonight - and try to keep from giving up after a couple of hours of just laying there... I think that’s the real problem - if I don’t fall asleep after a while, I get impatient and sit at the computer. So tonight: I’m going to watch a DVD, then keep trying to fall asleep until I succeed. If you read some quip by me on Facebook or some screenwriting message board at 5am, you will know that I have failed....

Classes On CD - Recession Sale!

- Bill

IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Voice Over Narration and your typical monkey funeral.
Yesterday’s Dinner: Fish & Chips at home.
Pages: Was going to write new tips, treatments, and a blog entry every day... completely failed at that.

MOVIES: DRAG ME TO HELL - One of the best reviewed films of the year is a horror flick from Sam Raimi (no kidding, check out Rotten Tomatoes) and it’s one of the best times I’ve had sitting in a cinema all year - a crazy funhouse ride at a disreputable carnival that has you laughing as much as screaming. Though I always stress the importance of having a unique idea, this film gives us horror plot #17 (the gypsy curse one, see THINNER and a few dozen other films) but shows us the importance of *execution*. A good script needs a great idea, well written. Here we just get some great writing and directing and it overcomes the tired concept. Oh, if you are wondering why SPIDER-MAN’s Sam Raimi is directing this film, the guy has a whole bunch of horror skeletons in his closet, including the EVIL DEAD movies. For more on the EVIL DEAD flicks, check out But The Third One Was Great blog, which features those films this week!

In DRAG ME TO HELL, Alison Lohman plays a nice girl destined to always finish last. She used to be fat, has a white-trash Southern accent she’s desperately trying to lose, and is doing her damndest to move up a couple of rungs on the social ladder. She works as a loan officer at a bank, and covets the empty Vice President desk across from her - the name plate is empty as if to visually announce Your Name Here. Her boss is played by David Paymer, kind of the older male version of her... and to keep his job, the person he needs to promote to VP has to be someone strong and aggressive. That’s not Alison, but it is the new guy Reggie Lee who seems to have seen WALL STREET a few too many times and actually believes that Greed Is Good. Alison and Reggie quietly battle it out at the bank every day, each hoping to slide their name into that empty VP name plate.

When a really gross phlegm spewing one eyed old gypsy woman comes in, home in foreclosure, and begs for Alison to give her a third extension; she puts the promotion over compassion. The old woman begs... and Alison calls security on her and has her removed from the bank. This puts her at the top of the promotion list, and the top of the gypsy woman’s shit list.

On her lunch hour, Alison visits her boyfriend Justin Long at the University where he’s a first year professor, and I kept waiting for the “I’m A PC” guy to pop up behind him. Justin is arranging a meet-the-tight-assed-upper-class parents dinner, and Alison is afraid to go - she’s fat white trash. As she leaves his office, she overhears his half of a phone conversation with his mother... and knows his parents will hate her and maybe worries that Justin might be charity-dating her. One of the great things about this film is that it’s all about the characters... and still a horror film. There are so many little background thing on Alison’s character peppered through the film that we really get to know and care about her. Hey, she was in the 4H (or, that reasonable facsimile of the 4H the lawyers and E&O insurance folks signed off on). And the film is really about her character arc, from meek bank employee to bad ass demon fighter who will do things you and I wouldn’t dream of doing.

At the end of the work day she goes to the empty underground garage to grab her subcompact crapo car... and notices the old gypsie woman’s ancient rusted out 70s lemon in the garage. Now, you may not know this, but that car has probably been in more movies that David Paymer. It was Uncle Ben’s car in SPIDER-MAN... and has been featured in every film Sam Raimi has directed. It falls from the sky in ARMY OF DARKNESS... It was Raimi’s personal car for years, and when he could afford better, he kept it and uses it in every film. Here it works wonderfully as the barely running gypsy’s car.

One of the great things about this funhouse ride of a film is that there are no shortage of jump moments. And great jump moments - not some silly cat (though, there are a couple of those) but real scares from unexpected sources. Be prepared to spend half of the movie about a foot above your seat. One great series of jump moments is in the spooky garage, when the gypsie shows up and puts her curse on Alison. This film manages to get us to jump over a handkerchief... and it’s the skill of Raimi that the handkerchief also manages to be creeps and suspenseful and build dread in other scenes. You are scared of a piece of cloth!

Once the curse is on Alison she will die within 3 days and be dragged to hell. But those three days will be hell on earth. And all kinds of sick fun.

One of my favorite scenes has Alison go to the gypsy’s daughter’s house to beg that the curse be removed. The daughter doesn’t live in some magical castle with dark windows - this is Los Angeles, she lives in a typical house in the city with no yard and an ally running down the back where the garbage dumpsters are. It’s plain. She goes there, wants to see the gypsy woman, the daughter says she has caused enough trouble - getting the woman kicked out of her house... but Alison barges in... and she’s in some stranger’s house. And this is uncomfortable. And Raimi finds ways to ramp up the feelings of discomfort, including having the entire gypsy family there for dinner. She’s completely out numbered, and all of these people hate her. This could be a scene from a drama... and it *is* a big dramatic scene... but this is also a horror film. Drama *and* horror. And after the drama scene, we get some horror. Sick, disgusting, and funny horror.

Raimi does a great job of building dread with some very simple things. When Alison comes home one night, she is alone in a dark, spooky... but completely normal house. There is these terrible noise - link fingers on a chalk board - that ends up being the wind blowing open a rusted metal gate. So many everyday things are turned into terror by Raimi that you worry about going home after the film. By creating terror and building dread with normal things you’d find in almost every house, he gets us where we live. This isn’t some alien world - this is a house just like the one you live in. Raimi did this in the EVIL DEAD movies with tree branches in the wind... which become something else entirely. He can make the raisins in a cake creepy and threatening.

By the way - one of the cool things about the film is how ex-fatty Alison seems to constantly be attacked by *food*. It’s like the curse knows her weakness, knows what scares her on a more emotional level (that she’s going to gain the weight back, or maybe people still think of her as the fat girl) and finds ways to attack her using the things she *emotionally* fears most. Food becomes scary in this film... in that wacky funhouse way.

Oh, and there’s some between the lines social message in this film. Alison is white trash who is social climbing and hopes to marry wealthy Justin. To do that, she must foreclose on the home of someone one rung beneath her in society... turn against someone similar to her, the same way she is turning against her accent and her 4H past and everything that made her who she used to be. Trash the poor so that she can become rich. Again - this is a horror movie, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be more going on in it... in fact, there should always be more than just the surface story.

DRAG ME TO HELL Is rated PG-13, and many horror fans have discounted it before even seeing it. How can you make a good horror movie that isn’t R rated? Well, Raimi knows how to do that. He substitutes gross for gore - and keeps the gross coming! If you’ve seen the trailer, you know there’s a scene where the gypsy woman vomits all kinds of bugs and worms and icky stuff on Alison Lohman’s face. In her eyes, in her mouth, up her nose, in her ears. This is worse that seeing a half gallon of blood spraying from someone’s neck. Your brain knows the blood geyser is fake, but these insects and worms in her mouth and nose? Um, they probably really did that. Yech! You won’t see severed limbs in this film, but you will see things that are worse. This film doesn’t wimp out at all - it just has a different kind of horror. It’s gross (in a fun way).

Which I think brings us to another thing those pimple faced horror fans have complained about on several of the message boards I frequent - that somehow this subgenre of horror is less valid than SAW and FRIDAY THE 13th. That funhouse horror movies are lesser films because they make you laugh. Hey! BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN! Plus a million other flicks, some starring Vincent Price, some starring the late great Bob Quarry (in one of my films, lived in my neighborhood, just passed away, miss that guy!), and of course the Raimi EVIL DEAD movies. If anything, the funhouse style horror films are *more* legit than torture porn and slasher films - they’ve been around longer. These films are crazy scary rides with all kinds of sick laughs.

And DRAG ME TO HELL is full of sick humor. “Here, kitty kitty...”

One of the cool things about this film is the Multicultural Curse. The film opens in the 1940s when a child has been cursed by a gypsy and the immigrant parents take him to a female Hispanic medium who tries to lift the curse... and fails. The boy is dragged to hell by all kinds of demons. That’s what Alison is in for. After she is cursed, she goes to an Indian store front psychic played by Dileep Rao. Dileep plays the role as if he always has one eyebrow raised quizzically. As if *he* doesn’t believe what is happening. He manages to be both the psychic *and* the skeptic at the same time. He also manages to be funny with the non-funny straight man lines. And he manages to play his store front psychic in such a way that we do not know if he’s for real or just a scam artist. This is like the Whoopi Goldberg role in GHOST - does this mean Dileep will be nominated for an Oscar? Oh, wait, this is both a horror film *and* a comedy. When Dileep is overwhelmed by the curse, he knows right where to take Alison - to the female Hispanic woman from the opening scene, who is now an old woman.

And this is where we get the real star of the movie... a goat. It’s always funny when there is an animal in a long scene filled with special effects and crazy horror stuff, because the animal has no idea what is going on. There is a long seance scene with the goat tethered to the table, and it was funny to watch the goat’s reactions (when I was supposed to be watching Alison or Dileep). The goat was completely confused at all times.

Okay, now I don’t want to spoil the film, but I want to talk about one of the great things in this film - the Twist On A Twist. This is one of those great techniques that Raimi uses which elevates this film from your standard horror film to one hell of a great ride that you probably want to take again. There is a twist in the film that you see coming from a mile away. It is set up, it is confirmed, and you suddenly know exactly what is gong to happen. You figure out the twist... and want to yell at Alison that she is making a big mistake, because there’s this twist thing she hasn’t figured out but you have. Here’s the thing - Raimi *wants* you to figure out the twist. That creates audience superiority and creates suspense. You know what’s going to happen! You know the very very bad thing that Alison hasn’t figured out yet! But what you haven’t figured out is the twist on the twist - because what you think is going to happen is *half* right. But if you were really paying close attention, you would realize that the twist you think is going to happen isn’t going to happen... something even stranger is. And that’s the part you don’t see coming at all. The twist on the twist. So, Raimi sets it up so that you know *part* of what will happen, but still be shocked and surprised by the other part. Great technique!

One of the strange things about DRAG ME TO HELL is that it’s one of the best reviewed films so far this year... but no one is going to see it! You would think a fun film with great reviews would have opened at #1 and done great business. So why isn’t it tearing up the box office? My guess is that the sophisticated audience member who would see any other film with this many great reviews is staying away because it’s a horror movie... they are like Justin’s parents. The average audience member is also staying away because it’s a horror movie - those films are crap made for hard core horror fans. And the hard core horror fans are staying away... because it’s one of the best reviewed films of the year! Hey, that stamp of society’s approval means this can’t be a dark, edgy, nasty horror film... it’s probably some watered down safe movie! The critics *great* reviews may have doomed this film! If you look at horror films the critics have loved in the past - SLITHER, BLACK SHEEP, etc - all of those films died at the box office. Good reviews scare away the horror audience. Yet films with *awful* reviews like FRIDAY THE 13th and BLOODY VALENTINE did great business... maybe even because of the bad reviews. If the critics hate this film, it’s gotta be good!

DRAG ME TO HELL is the most fun I’ve had at the movies in a long time. Too bad the film seems to be cursed.

- Bill

Flash Mob - Can't Touch This!

I love the idea of flash mobs - and even have script idea about a flash mob that gets way out of hand and leads to world destruction.

This happened Thursday...



And HERE is an article about a different kind of flash mob - a Guerrilla Drive In Movie, where a secret radio transmission tells you the time and place where the movie will be projected on some wall... but an interesting and thematic wall! Cool stuff!

Classes On CD - Recession Sale!

- Bill

IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Spade/Van Damme Rule and 50 FIRST DATES.
Yesterday’s Dinner: Islands fish tacos.

Movies: HANGOVER - laughed my butt off.
Pages: *Finished* the country western thiller!

- Bill

And again, my awful movies descend on the UK's Movies 4 Men channels...

M4M2: 6/10 - 13:20 - 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.

M4M1: 6/12 - 18:20 - Crash Dive - The crew of a nuclear submarine rescues supposed victims of a boat disaster, but the victims turn out to be terrorists intent on capturing nuclear weapons aboard the sub.

M4M1: 6/13 - 18:35 - 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.

M4M1: 6/14 - 12:15 - Crash Dive - The crew of a nuclear submarine rescues supposed victims of a boat disaster, but the victims turn out to be terrorists intent on capturing nuclear weapons aboard the sub.

M4M2: 6/15 - 14:45 - Crash Dive - The crew of a nuclear submarine rescues supposed victims of a boat disaster, but the victims turn out to be terrorists intent on capturing nuclear weapons aboard the sub.

I am so sorry....

- Bill

Black Sheep

I may have posted about this movie in the past - written & directed by Jonathan King from New Zealand... and funny as hell. After seeing DRAG ME TO HELL last night, I thought about the horror sub-genre of *funny* horror movies - and this one had me in stitches. Saw it a couple of times when it came out, own it on DVD. If you liked DRAG ME, throws this in the NetFlix cue. And yes - there is a romantic subplot with a sheep... that goes wrong.



- Bill

PS: Fridays With Hitchcock was not ready today, so look for I CONFESS next week.

We've Come A Long Way, Baby!

Swiped this off today's Time Magazine site.

When people ask me what my favorite Woody Allen movie is, I do not answer MANHATTAN or any of the serious ones... I answer BANANAS. It has about as many gags-per-minute as AIRPLANE! (which is a lot) and also managed to be topical and political and about heated toilet seats and Fidel Castro. But one of the scenes has been remade as a Bud Light commercial, which was deemed too dirty for TV (even though the 1971 movie probably plays on TV frequently), so it's available on the good old internet!

This scene from BANANAS (1971)...



Clearly inspired this Bud Light Commercial (now) that is too racy to show on TV and even gets blurred and bleeped on the internet!



We've come a long way, baby... Not!

- Bill

RIP: David Carradine

A couple of months ago, my article in Script Magazine featured Carradine in BOUND FOR GLORY as an example of a protagonist at war with the whole world. Carradine's performance in that film was amazing. Here's the trailer...



- Bill

Stand Up For Yourself!

British Government Public Service Message on Standing Up For Yourself:



Classes On CD - Recession Sale!

- Bill

IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Unlikeable Leads and BAD SANTA.
Yesterday’s Dinner: Togo's sandwich - eaten while writing.
Pages 7.5 pages on the Country Western Thriller - in the homestretch!

Drag Me To Hell Poster - Is She Diggin' It?

Two great pieces in Patrick Goldstein's LA Times Blog on movie posters.

First he looks at the poster for DRAG ME TO HELL and wonders if that is a look of ecstacy... and what does that mean?
Drag Me To The Bedroom?














And then he looks at some other cool posters from the past.
Great Movie Posters.















I have a copy of the CHINATOWN poster, and my super 8mm feature had a great poster by mt friend Brenda that was modeled after it. For me, the modern practice of just throwing a bunch of star's faces around the film title isa terrible idea. A movie poster needs to show us what the movie is going to be - like DRAG ME and CHINATOWN and JAWS and many others that give us the story and the tone for the movie that we will see. CHINATOWN was at the height of Jack Nicholson's stardom, yet it's not all about Jack... it's his character and the woman who haunts him.













- Bill

Indoor Voice

So, I work almost every day in some coffee shop or another (usually 2 or 3 with meals or bike rides in between). I am in a Starbucks right now. I have my *headphones on*. I have the Jerry Goldsmith CRANKED. I can still hear the LOUD people sitting behind me. I can't hear my music, but I can hear them yelling at each other. And they are not fighting - they just have the volume cranked to 11. It is really pissing me off, and I can not wait for them to leave so that I can get back to work. I've been working here all evening without problem until they sat down.

Okay. I've vented.

- Bill

Bond vs. Bond

Pierce Brosnan wants his old job back...



- Bill

Terminator: Salvation

I had the same problem with this film that I had with STAR TREK - that kid is too young to play Kyle Reese!

The strange thing about TERMINATOR: SALVATION is that STAR TREK has all of the same problems - all of them - but for some reason got much better reviews and was more readily accepted by those people on message boards who bitch about movies. I do not know why this is - maybe because most of the past STAR TREK movies haven’t been winners, yet the first two TERMINATOR movies are classics that may be two of the best genre movies ever made. When you see a STAR TREK movie, if it’s enjoyable and in focus it’s good (though the lens flare thing still bugs me)... but with a TERMINATOR movie you can’t help but compare it to the first two - and almost any film compared to a James Cameron film is bound to suffer (unless you are comparing it to PIRANHA 2: THE SPAWNING). You just expect more from a TERMINATOR movie.

Though TERMINATOR: SALVATION has all kinds of problems, it’s still a fun, stupid, somewhat enjoyable action packed summer sci-fi movie... but as a TERMINATOR movie? Crappy. If there had never been any Terminator movies, or if this had not been connected to the franchise - would have been dumb summer fun. Problem is, the "baggage" of the past films means this has to be better than dumb summer fun - and it was not.

Though I do not know the whole script backstory, from press stuff I know that John Conner was a minor character in the original script - which focused on the Marcus character. When they hired Bale and he became the *star*, he had the whole script rewritten and (by Bale’s account) told the writer what he wanted to do. I think this may be the case of an interesting script being turned to crap in rewrites.

I think Marcus is the most interesting character - and all of the John Conner scenes undercut the Marcus story and undercut the film. Had this been all about Marcus, this guy who wakes up in the future after the world has gone to hell and tries to figure out what happened and figure out who he is now and what his place in this world is... that would have been involving and interesting. But when Marcus is often second banana to an emotionless dude who yells and makes speeches on the radio all the time - the film loses just about everything. (For instance - the big reveal scene becomes about how Conner was betrayed by Marcus, instead of how Marcus was betrayed.)

I liked the Road Warrior chase stuff - and was shocked that the kid from ROAD WARRIOR had a sex change and was now a mute little girl, and thought the different terminators were cool - but there wasn't that one cool thing... like the liquid metal T-1000 (or the T-800 in the first film). These different terminators were okay but not mind-blowing cool. The grabber one I liked best - it made me jump a couple of times... but haven’t I seen that in TREMORS? When you think about the first film - the concept of this completely unstopable killing machine from the future that can imitate the voices of your loved ones and repair it’s skin and pass for human... that was all amazing stuff back then. And it’s even amazing stuff now. When I rewatch that film, I forget how cool it is when the Terminator pretends to be Sarah’s mother on the phone... and lures her into a trap. And the cool factor of repairing itself - the exposed machinery under the skin is right out of that Matheson short story. T2 has the amazing shape shifting T-1000 - kind of the voice imitation taken to the extreme. These things are leaps of imagination that are not present in T3 and T4 - and that is a major problem with T4 as a Terminator film. It’s doesn’t have anything so amazing that you wonder how something even came up with that. Though the big *grabber* Terminators and their motorcycle attachments were cool - a great idea within the world of Terminators - there wasn’t anything that was outside what we expect... not a problem for a non-Terminator film, but the mid-blowing elements are what we *expect* in a Terminator film.

Just as STAR TREK had plot holes you could drive a whole convoy of trucks through, T4 has all kinds of plot problems.

The other three Terminator movies are chase films - with an unstopabale killer robot of some sort after a human character. In T1 we have Ah-nuld chasing Sarah Conner. In T2 we have Robert Patrick chasing Sarah and teen John. In T3 we have Kristanna Loken chasing John Conner as a young man. In T4? No one is being chased! No one is being threatened! The biggest problem with this film is that both the antagonist and protagonist have non-existent or hollow goals. Late in the game someone notices that it might be a bad thing for Kyle Reese to be killed - but that isn’t driving the story... nothing really is. And here’s the problem with the Kyle Reese thing - Skynet has a billion chances to kill him and is so inept it doesn’t act. What’s up with that?

Since the Marcus character and Kyle connect early in the film, I wonder if there was a draft of the script that focused on Kyle being the target of a chase, with Marcus protecting him... and eventually going into Skynet to rescue him? And I also wonder if the big reveal happened *near the end* in that Skynet scene that exists in the film?

The “machine stopping signal” thing - and even Michael Ironside (with both arms) in the submarine - undercuts Kyle Reese as a target. By creating a second plot that is all about destroying Sky Net HQ, we now have a second reason to go to Sky Net HQ. So, which is more important - Kyle Reese or blowing up Skynet HQ...

And it seems to be a regional HQ at that - not the thing that changes the fate of mankind, just a minor battle. Though we know this is the first of a proposed new trilogy, we still need to have the ending for a stand alone movie. McG has leaked to the press that he had a darker ending but decided not to shoot it - and even though that ending sounds interesting, it’s still a *crap* ending. It isn’t that big blow-up-the-Death-Star ending we need in a summer movie. Just more ho-hum crap... just more interesting ho-hum crap than the filmed version.

They needed to "build the legend" of the Sky Net San Francisco HQ - so that it is a really big thing, and no one has ever come out of there alive, and they steal people and... do something... to them there. Why do machines need people? Build that up into the thing that drives the story. Maybe there are other Skynet HQs, but none of them are stealing *people* and doing something with them... what could they be doing? There’s a great Philip K. Dick story (turned into the most boring movie in the world) called “Second Variety” about a future man vs. machines war where the automated machine assembly line has come up with a new type of killer machine... but nobody knows what it is. They only know it exists. The story is a quest to discover what this new type of machine is... and they discover it is an infiltration unit that looks and acts human... which leads to everyone pointing the finger at everyone else like in Carpenter’s THE THING and there’s a nice big twist end in the story *after* they think they have destroyed the man-machine. The initial mystery in that story about what the heck this new killing machine is could have been used to fuel T4. And even though *we* know what a T-800 is, and why they need human flesh to create them, the characters wouldn’t - which could be used to create suspense. We know they shouldn’t go in that old dark house where a bunch of people were killed in the first ten minutes, but they don’t. They could have given the characters clues to what happens in that factory, and the characters could have gotten them *wrong* - maybe thinking that they were peeling skin from people as a form of torture to interrogate these people and find out about the underground. That would have built some audience participation - we’d be yelling at the screen: No! They’re stealing people’s skins for T-800s! But they needed to **build** the legend and mystery of the San Francisco HQ so that it becomes the Death Star. It can’t just be some building, it has to be the biggest and most interesting thing in the movie.

Oh, and Marcus gets in too easy.

Oh, and the resistance isn’t ever the underdog in this film - making the story not work on a basic level. Hero must always be underdog. Here - people are constantly outsmarting the machines (oh, the old rope-across-the-street trick!) so that you wonder why we are watching this movie in the first place - humans are obviously going to win this.

Oh, and this was one of the reasons why people didn’t like *T2* - humans are at war against machines. So any time the humans use a machine, that’s stupid. It’s at odds with the concept. Giving the humans a huge airforce and all kinds of other helpful machines doesn’t just stop them from being the underdogs, it also has them collaborating with the enemy! BATTLE FOR TERRA has an *amazing* alien world where wind and wood have replaced metal. I think it would have been cool to create a post-apocalypse world where all machines were suspect, and humans *only* used non-computerized, non-metal, non-electronic devices. Let’s create a future where people actually *fear* machines!

You have great actress Jane Alexander, and she gets a couple of lines of dialogue? No way! I kept thinking she should be like the leader-woman from THE STAND - this could have been a great part! Instead I wondered why the hell she was in this film.

Thought Kyle Reese's speech after he was captured was good, and I liked the allusions to the war on terror in some other character's dialogue, much of the dialogue was OTN crap. Instead of finding ways to recycle some of those iconic lines of dialogue from the first two films, they needed to come up with *new* iconic lines. This is a major problem in the film biz right now - instead of trying to do something new and interesting and unique... a film that amazes us now - everyone seems to be picking through the bones of past films giving us a bunch of remakes that are more of the same. And T4's biggest problem is that it is nothing new - no amazing new ideas and no amazing new lines of dialogue. Find me an original quotable line of dialogue in this film! We can’t predict what is going to stick with the audience, but we can sure as hell write some amazing dialogue that gives them a selection of things they might quote. Give them bland, stale dialogue and they aren’t going to remember any of it.

Another big problem with the film is that it’s not emotional. The great thing about the first two Terminator movies... and even the third one... is that they were filled with big emotional scenes and big emotional decisions. “I now know why you cry.” Man, no line in film has gotten me to tear up like that one... and I was crying for a freakin’ robot played by the future Governor of Califlowernia. We can learn a great screenwriting lesson by tracing that line through the preceding movie - it was set up so well! The set up scenes were great scenes! There was *nothing* in T4 even close to this - the big emotional scenes all belonged to Marcus, and many were undercut by John Conner’s character. Conner had *zero* emotional scenes, and that is the biggest mistake in the film. By making the leader of humanity into this cold heartless idiot, they make me wonder why I should care whether the machines win or not. I mean, why would I want a world where humans act more like machines than the machines do?

I ditched the TV show when it became apparent that they had no idea what they were trying to do. The show jumped the shark in whatever first season episode that was when they jumped up in time - it became a dopey soap opera instead of a show about John Conner learning the skills he would need to lead the human race to victory. I don't think those are *fighting* skills - I think it's learning what makes us human. The first season ender was great - but second season was just more crap. They never figured out what the show was *about* - and that ends up being the problem with T4, too. What is this movie about? What are the big emotional decisions the characters must make?

Remember in T2 when Sarah goes to kill Dyson (the always great Joe Morton) who she thinks is the evil dude who will start Skynet... but he’s a nice guy with a family? And she realizes she still needs to kill him? That is one great scene without a single special effect. Hey, and if we *only* look at the character of Dyson, what an amazing journey that guy takes! How many big emotional scenes does he have? And his final scene - how haunting can you get? I can still hear his raspy breathing in my mind. Every character in T2 has *big* emotional scenes and *big* emotional decisions to make... And even in T3 we get some big juicy scenes - Kate and her father, John realizing he must step up to be the leader, and that ending... Plus, one of the fun elements of T3 was the bickering couple being chased - kind of like Hitchcock’s 39 STEPS - and even though they dislike each other, they are fated to be married. Doesn’t seem likely throughout the movie, until that big ending where we realize it’s inevitable. As much as you may not like T3, it still works as a Terminator movie, and it still has some great emotional moments and one hell of an ending.

T4 - what are the big moments? Where are the emotions? They squandered a great chance for -something- with the relationship between Marcus and the Moon Bloodgood character. A great place to put in those little detail moments that later pay off in “I now know why you cry” moments. But we got nada. And that relationship was nada. I really liked the idea of a hot kick ass woman, but they even squandered that! Hey, this was the CHARLIE’S ANGELS director - you’d think he could have at least got that part, right!

I liked that they brought back Helena Bonham Carter from the opening scene - but that scene was undercut by the earlier reveal. But it seemed like Bryce Dallas Howard (who is hot) is only in the film because her character was in T3... and they needed some way to make Christian Bale seem like less of a machine. And Common - who has one of the most interesting faces in the biz - is completely wasted as Conner’s pointless second in command. Why not give that guy something cool to do? This gets back to the “what’s it all about, McG?” thing - but why weren’t we given different characters with different theories about how best to *have* a future of mankind? Let Common completely disagree with Conner, let Jane Alexander have a strange theory that makes complete sense in this post-apocalypse world, create a *discussion* of what the future of mankind should be. A debate. Give us some *ideas* that we can think about later!

Problem is - I don't think McG knows why we cry.

The film seemed to fight any chance at being more than just summer action crap - it often seemed like they were on to something and then buried it - between Marcus discovering who he is and throblem is - I don't think McG knows why we cry.e signal going two ways (these things seem connected) it seemed like there was a better draft of the script somewhere that got destroyed in rewrites - where the intentions of things like this were not understood by the new writer... or maybe it was just the director who didn't get it.

Like STAR TREK, I think if you are going to do something in a beloved series you have to do something great... not something that just cashes in on the name brand. I still don’t understand why the stupid summer movie that is T4 is any worse than the stupid summer movie that is STAR TREK - they both have the exact same problems (Nero's loopy plot, only one big emotional moment, a massive amount of plot holes, crazy coincidences, how come Kirk & Spock can walk to the Fed Outpost when both had to hide in the cave from monsters earlier, etc, etc, etc). But since most of the previous STAR TREK films sucked, a silly summer movie version of STAR TREK is considered "good". TERMINATOR: SALVATION has to carry all of the baggage of the first two great fims, and the third okay film... and collapses under the weight. I liked the film as a dumb summer action flick, was disappointed in it as a Terminator movie.

Two more films in this proposed trilogy... but did this one terminate the last two?

Classes On CD On Sale!

- Bill

IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Where's The Beef? and why act 2 should be easy.
Yesterday’s Dinner: Chicken Caesar salad.
Pages:

Green Latern Trailer

This fan made fake trailer is amazing. It makes me want to see a movie that doesn't exist, and makes me want to ask my friend Paul who is stunt-double for Nathan about all of the behind the scenes stuff (which obviously hasn't happened... yet!).



Things like this make me feel like a thawed out caveman - some danged kid probably made this on his laptop... and I can't figure out how to get my VCR to stop blinking 00:00.

AND: My friend Scott who does coverage for producers for a living, also offers his services to screenwriters. Find out what the studio reader thinks of your script - for $60. Sixty Buck Notes.

- Bill

I'm on Twitter

As if I didn't have enough to do already.

wcmartell

It's connected to my Facebook page - so you can get all of my tweets there. Trust me, it's not like I'm going to have time to tweet much (and most of the time I'm doing something boring like writing).

HITCHCOCK: Because I was facing a deadline on an emergency article and was only half done with DIAL M and for many folks in the USA Friday was a half day, I decided to postpone that Hitchcock entry until next week.

PLUS: Go over to *Also, I Can Kill You With My Brain* (blog linked in that endless messy stream of links on the right ->) and check out Shakespeare's Star Trek.

- Bill

Have I Seen Any Movies?

The summer I graduated High School I took off from work and just saw movies. Hundreds of them. All in cinemas (no other choice back then). I averaged three films a day in cinemas that summer - many of those films were in far off cinemas that required hours of driving from one cinema to the next with fast food meals in the car in between. I had a diary, and listed every movie I saw, where and when I saw it, and a couple of lines of what I thought about it.

When I first added the MOVIES element to the Important Updates on this blog, the plan was to start that diary all over again. Great plan, wish it would have worked. The first entries here were often the title of the movie and a line or two about what I thought of it. But some movies I wrote full reviews of, trying to figure out where they went wrong or what they did right and how all of that applied to screenwriting. And that’s where things went wrong. Because those full reviews were often mini screenwriting lessons, and I could use them either to update old Script Tips on my website or as the raw material for whole new Script Tips. Suddenly, the movie entries were more than just part of my daily diary on this blog, they were *important*. I couldn’t just jot down a sentence or two that night before going to sleep or the next morning while waiting for the coffee to kick in - I had to think each movie out and find the screenwriting lesson hidden within and analyze the good and the bad and... well, it became *work* (my least favorite four letter word). So everything depended on how much spare time I had, how much energy I had to write up the reviews, and how much I gave a crap about my website at the time.

I have notebooks filled with notes on films I have seen, but never gotten around to analyzing for valuable screenwriting lessons. Many of those notes have often found the lessons to be learned from these films, but I never found the time or energy or enthusiasm to type it all up for you folks to read... and later for “harvest” into Script Tip material. So months later I come across the movie entry in my notebook and realize that I should type it up, and that goes on the big To Do List along with everything else I never got around to. The worst thing is when I come across the entry for some awful film that is the *perfect* bad example to illustrate how some element of story can be done completely wrong - and I have some old tip that needs an example like this - but my memory of that awful film has thankfully been wiped... and writing it up would require me to see the film again. Um, do I really want to waste the time and money to see a *bad* movie again?

So I am rethinking the MOVIES and DVD update section - and hopefully from now on there will be three kinds of listings there - what I saw last night in a quick paragraph, what I saw last night in a longer review... and sometimes the full analysis of some movie which may have only gotten a quick paragraph the day after I saw it. That way it works as a diary entry... and also allows me to come back later with some details (or not). For a the next few days I’m going to try to clean out some movies recently seen with some quick reviews, starting with....

Classes On CD On Sale!

- Bill

IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Relationships and Cool Hand Luke.
Yesterday’s Dinner: Massive Buritto at Tortas on Ventura Blvd - so big I can not eat the whole thing.

Movies: GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS PAST - How many movies have stolen the main concept of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol? Some steal it well, like IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, but most use the device poorly or for some silly reason that results in a terrible film. Add to that the number of actual versions of CHRISTMAS CAROL, whether they are faithful (like the Mr. Magoo cartoon version) or updates (like the brilliant Bill Murray version) and you have a plot device that is overused. But, where critics are quick to discredit a film because they’ve seen this one before, a familiar story is often an asset to the audience, provided there is some unique twist on it - like being haunted by old girlfriends who show the protag his past, present, and future romantic life. That actually seems like a fairly clever way to spin a rom-com.

But it *was* a rom-com and my hopes were not all that high for this film. Which was probably a good thing, because it was better than I thought it was going to be, mostly due to Michael Douglas doing his best version of 70's stud Robert Evans (producer of THE GODFATHER and many other great films, and sex partner of many hot actresses and starlets). Douglas is funny as hell, and a little tragic at the same time, and pretty much steals the show.

The rest of the film is okay - amusing enough - but the big problem comes with the end and McConaughey’s character - who is a completely uncaring creepy who has slept with a million women (great sight gag as there is a never-ending night club filled with every one night or one hour or 15 minute-in-the-coat-room stand he has ever had... and it juts goes on and on into infinity), but is redeemed at the end and hooks up with the one girl he loved, Jennifer Garner (looking a little wide in the hips, here, compared to the army of hot bods in McConaughey’s past - but maybe that’s a good thing). Just like in Christmas Carol, he wakes up in the morning a completely changed man - and after being a complete jerk for the previous 90 minutes it’s hard to believe the change. The movie gives us a potential love interest for Garner that is everything McConaughey is not - and the problem is, since I like Garner I wanted her to hook up with that guy and not McConaughey. The better end would have been for him to release her to the other guy. That wouldn’t have been the rom-com ending, but after a whole movie about what a jerk McConaughey is, it’s hard to actually want him to hook up with Garner. Instead, you want him to pay penance somehow - maybe become a monk with a vow of chastity.

The film earns points for digging below the surface and giving us real characters and real relationships (like his relationship with his brother played by Breckin Meyer), for fleshing out even the minor characters like the bridesmaids at his brother’s wedding (all are potential bedmates for McConaughey, but each is actually given a unique character even though their screentime is limited), for acknowledging the Christmas Carol roots of the story with some clever gags, and for actually being funny - the film is genuinely funny. Oh, and Matthew McConaughey - not my favorite actor (is he an actor?) - does a great job of playing this jerk in a way that we don’t hate him... we actually like him. He’s smooth talking and funny and can beak hearts in ways that are either so over the top they are some sort of fantasy or so clever that the woman doesn’t realize she’s been dumped. Between the script and McConaughey’s performance, you like this character who by all rights should be unlikeable. You just don’t want him marrying your sister - or Jennifer Garner. And that’s the problem.

- Bill

Fango Tango 2009

The Sunday before my horror class I was living the horror movie life style at the Fango Horror Convention in Los Angeles. The whole thing began on Friday morning - it’s a three day event - when I met with my friend Rod at the LA Convention Center at 1pm, the convention began at 2pm but sometimes there’s a line for tickets.

Here’s the scam, in case you want to go next year - the 3 day ticket costs $65, but you can get $5 off coupons for every day and only spend $55. So that was the plan.

Another part of the plan - Rod and I split a room at the Holiday Inn across the street from the Convention Center so that we could drink all night and not worry about getting popped for a DUI. Last year a bunch of us closed a bar every night, and it’s so much easier to just walk back to the hotel and crash, than have to drive home and get up the next morning to drive back. Also, the hotel included parking... and Convention Center parking can be expensive (there was a Laker’s game one of the nights and a Brittney Spears concert on the other night - making parking *really* expensive. Those Convention Center lots have signs with all kinds of prices, depending on what’s going on.)

So, first thing I noticed - the event was even smaller this year than last year... and spread out in a crazy way. They had two rooms with speakers and presentations - a big one and a small one - on opposite sides of the Convention Center! You had to run from one event to the next. The screening room was a shoe box, like last year, and they didn’t have anything that was a must see. I always think this is one of those things they could easily turn into the center ring - we have so many new horror films coming out, why not *preview* the hot new films at Fango?

This year they *did* do my suggestion from last year and have some seminars - the screenwriting class was from Clive Barker. Clive is notorious for clubbing all night and then showing up for morning events the worse for wear, and I wondered how his 2 hour class went... and if he even made it there. By the way, his 2 hour class on writing horror cost more than my full day class a week later. Oh, and there were no fliers or adverts at the event for my class (should have been). A couple of years ago I told Tony I’d be happy to do a 2 hour class for them... but I guess Clive is a better draw than I am. Still curious what his class was like. They also had a class in make up effects and a class in low budget film making.

The dealer’s room was literally half the size of last year - same room with a divider down the middle. That may have actually been a good thing, because all of those vendors who had women with their asses hanging out last year were not there. Last year there were all of these crazy sex/horror things - from start up magazines that featured naked girls and horror movies to websites where you could find a hot girl penpal who would pretend to be interested in geeky horror guys (and probably take off their clothes and pose for a fee). That’s where all of the half naked girls came from. This year, those guys were gone - just a single naked girl/horror magazine. There were still some attractive women, but not a hundred half naked women packing the joint so that people would regret bringing their kids. I know that sounds silly when we’re talking about an event featuring people dressed as ghouls and zombies, but kids know that’s let’s pretend stuff and kids also have that love/fear thing going on with monsters and dinosaurs and scary stuff. The horror stuff is make believe, the tits and asses are real... hmmm, okay - the *asses* are real. Hmm, okay, never mind, it’s all make believe.

Corey Haim was there trying to sign autographs but no one was buying. He was in a film the began with a script I wrote that is so bad it is not even available on video in the USA... but I didn’t ask for an autograph, either.

PANELS

Sam Raimi was in the big room on Friday with a preview of DRAG ME TO HELL... which I think we saw the trailer for last year. This year we got some clips - including a great one where bugs are projectile vomited. What’s interesting about Sam is that he started out making these dopey little horror movies but now he’s Mr Hollywood. Maybe this is a return to his roots? Looks cool... and it’s about home foreclosure leading to a Satanic curse. What could be more topical?

One of the problems with Fango has always been a sense of disorganization - they need to resolve this. It’s fine for some small show to be a little ragged around the edges, but the show is no longer something that takes place in some small rented hall - this is the Los Angeles Convention Center. Things need to look professional. When the announcing is just babbling and there are long pauses between guests and often the moderator is not prepared, this isn’t good. They should at least get a moderator who can both be prepared for the interview *and* tell jokes or kill time in an entertaining manner if they are waiting on late panel members. Every year Seth Green and some hot babe are there wandering around the dealer’s room - why not hire him to by MC? There has to be some stand up comic who is also a horror fan.

Oh, and another big problem is the way they do speaker autographs. After a guest or panel speaks in the big room, they go behind the stage to an autograph area... and the Gold Ticket holders in the first ten rows all get up and get in line for autographs... leaving the front of the auditorium vacant for the next speaker or panel. Half the audience is standing in line for autographs instead of sitting in their seats - the audience loses out and the speakers may be insulted by the empty room.

Other panels I went to had some problems. Every year they have a “Spooksmodel” contest to find some hot babe to be the Fango LA Spooksmodel (I have no idea what the duties are, and what would happen if one were not chosen some year - probably complete chaos.) The whole thing is just an excuse to get hot women to model for horror geeks. I have never been to the competition... but last year’s Spooksmodel was supposed to moderate the original cast of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT panel, and was about half an hour late. The audience was just sitting there for half an hour without any moderator explaining the problem - because there was no moderator. When she eventually showed up, she was unprepared and asked a bunch of dopey questions. So the panel took over for her and asked each other questions - which was really great. David Hess and Fred Lincoln were like a comedy team.

I went to the panel for my friend Darin Scott’s new movie DARK HOUSE about a Halloween haunted house event in a legendary real haunted house... that goes terribly wrong when the *real* haunts get confused with the fake haunts. The film looks like fun, and stars Jeff Combs and Diane Salinger and a bunch of young actors. But the moderator *only* asked questions to Jeff Combs! It’s like he had a man-crush on him or something. There were about 8 panelists, and all of the questions were directed on *one* of them. This was not only insulting to the other 7 who just sat there, but as an audience member I wanted to hear from all of the other cast members as well. Either Combs or Darin deflected a question to Salinger - who has been in a bunch of movies and TV stuff and was Simone in the first Pee Wee Herman movie! But after she answered, the moderator went right back to Combs... until Salinger finally interrupted and mentioned there were other people on the stage, why not ask them some questions? This got some applause from the audience. Seriously - they need a more professional group of moderators!

I also went to Fred Olen Ray’s panel on the TV show THE LAIR - which I have never heard of, except on Fred’s message boards. It was in the big room, and that was kind of strange, because Fred does little low budget genre films. He directed my robot hooker from outer space movie (and is probably the *nicest* director I have ever worked with). Well, THE LAIR is like a Gay version of DARK SHADOWS that plays on one of the Gay cable stations. Not my demographic. But it seems that Fangoria Magazine is reaching out to the Gay horror audience, which appears to be much bigger than you would think. They have a column on Gay horror, now. I think Dave DeCocteau pioneered that niche many years ago - and while the Fango Convention was running downtown, Dave had a triple feature of Gay Horror Films playing at a cinema in Beverly Hills. Anyway - Fred was funny as usual, and the clips were interesting. Fred said they shot as many as 22 pages in a single day - the budget was low and they had to shoot fast. The average low budget film is probably going to shoot between 5 and 10 pages in a day - and 10 pages is close to impossible. But 22 pages? What does this show look like? Well, the shocking thing was that it looked *great* - in the clips was this really creepy slow dolly shot on a dead body at the morgue which popped up. How the hell can you do dolly shots when you are shooting 22 pages a day? I asked Fred afterwards and he told me his theory of shooting fast (which is the same theory that I have) - most of the shots are going to be standard coverage - a wide shot, then some close ups. But every 5th shot Fred tries to do something interesting and artistic. That way the show has some style. On the robot hooker movie, we always had the camera on dolly tracks and Fred tried to have as many moving shots as possible because low budget films tend to be “sticky” - they look like they were shot on sticks (tripod) with no camera movement. But I’m amazed that Fred can shoot 22 pages (that’s like a whole half hour episode!) in one day and have style, too.

FANGO FUTURE

The big problem with the Fango Convention is that it seems like the same old people we saw last year and every year. The novelty of going to a convention and seeing the actors from some iconic horror film or seeing the trailers for new movies isn’t there anymore. Much of this probably has to do with the internet. It used to be cool to go into the dealer’s room and pick through posters and toys - I remember seeing Quinton Tarantino there one year - before he was famous - looking through posters in the dealer’s room. Now you can go on the internet and look at posters for sale all day. And while you are on the internet, you can see behind the scenes stuff from classic films, or even watch interviews and panel discussions. And there is no shortage of info on horror websites - from old movies to new movies to rumored movies. You know all of this stuff *before* you come to Fango - so what’s left to experience there?

Maybe Fango needs to partner with a studio or two and become *the* place to announce new films and show new footage - like Comicon has become? They need *exclusives* - things you can not see anywhere else but at the Fango Convention. Not on the internet. If they partnered with LionsGate to be the *exclusive* convention for their films - that would make it a must attend event. Problem is - why would LionsGate want to limit their publicity to Fango? They have to figure out an answer to that - a way to make LionsGate *want* to give Fango first dibs on exclusive clips and trailers.

Then they need to find some movies to *premiere* at the screenings. And not some crappy low budget back yard movie - a real big theatrical horror flick. See it here first. And keep an eye out for horror films at festivals that have not been released in the USA, yet - maybe turn the screenings *into* a horror fim fest? Right now DEAD SNOW is playing the festival circuit in the USA... why didn’t it play at Fango? Every time I go to a festival, there are horror films playing at midnight... and sometimes movies like CALVAIRE in competition. Why not snag these films and show them as *events* - movies that are not available in the USA yet, but you *can* see them at Fango! Now the screenings seem like an afterthought - a way to use up that extra room they rented.

AFTER HOURS

Though there was no epic night of drinking with fellow Fango fans in the hotel bar this year, there were a couple of gals in the hotel who were going to the convention for the first time, so Rod and I acted as their guides... and we had dinner together and went drinking in some interesting upscale bar downtown for the two nights they were there. I had no idea there were that many cool bars *downtown* (you know, where they shot SOLOIST). Sunday afternoon they caught a plane back to whatever state they came from, and I have no idea whether they will be back next year... or what the convention will be like next year. Half again the size? Maybe a closet with a single chair in it, like that cinema in the multiplex in BACHELOR PARTY?

How do you make a convention exciting in the age of information when people can find out anything just by going on line? Why is ComiCon growing every year and Fango shrinking? Someone needs to figure out the secret to ComiCon's success and apply it to Fango. I'm sure that it has to do with exclusive content - the reason why you go to an event like this is because you can not get the information anywhere else. Maybe they will figure all of this stuff out and next year will be amazing.


Classes On CD On Sale!

- Bill

IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Love Racks! and how to make sex scenes interesting.
Yesterday’s Dinner: A couple of Big Burgers at Carls Jr which I think are better tasting than the more expensive burgers they sell.

Movies: - STAR TREK - I did not go into this film with high expectations - I do not think J.J.Abrams is a genius, and am a non-fan of the writers (THE ISLAND, LEGEND OF ZORRO, TRANSFORMERS, M:I:3)... but the film was okay, maybe even good. Just not great - and I think when you are rebooting a beloved franchise you need something better than “good”. On the whole, STAR TREK comes off as enjoyable summer junk food.

The movie opens up *great* - with a really emotionally wrenching *action scene* where Kirk’s father sacrifices himself so that Kirk’s pregnant mother will live... and she gives birth just as his father dies. A great opening scene that really involved me in the story... of Kirk’s father.

From there we get a scene with kid Kirk that is pointless - okay, it shows that Kirk is a troublemaker kid, but that’s an *external* - the scene doesn’t give us anything like the emotional material in that opening scene, and doesn’t take us inside the character. It’s a cool action scene that is also *cold*. The kid Spock scene is much better, showing him picked on in school for being biracial, and struggling to be a good Vulcan.

One reason why the kid Kirk scene doesn’t work is because it’s duplicate information - we have a nice bar room brawl with Kirk when he’s an adult that gives us all of the same info, plus introduces Uhra, plus introduced Pike, plus is the thing that gets Kirk to join Star Fleet. This is a much better scene, but we are still mostly on the exterior of Kirk’s character - we don’t understand why he’s a brawler. Is it because he didn’t have a father figure... or because he can’t measure up to his hero father? These are two opposites, and would take the character on opposite emotional journeys. There are dozens of other possibilities, as well - we get none of them. We just know the symptom, not the reason - so we can not know what Kirk must accomplish in order to become a whole individual. We don’t know what specific things in life will set him off into bad behavior, and what things will put him on the right track to conquering his demons.

And, the film doesn’t seem to really care.

After the great emotional opening, it’s mostly about cool stuff. We get another good emotional scene where a character’s family member is killed before their eyes, but that’s pretty much the end of human characters in this film - we are on to big summer brainless popcorn film.

A popcorn film with some cool scenes here and there, but a loopy plot that seems completely contrived - and not well contrived. I don’t understand what the hell Nero is up to - he wants revenge for something that hasn’t happened yet and also happens off screen - it’s just an excuse for the action, and not one that makes any sense. And though the planet implosion things was cool - and probably the one shot in the trailer that made me *have* to see this film - it’s complete nonsense. Red matter? Doesn’t matter. The Villain and the Villain’s Plan and even the method of that plan and the Villain’s motivations are the engine that runs the story, and this engine doesn’t work very well. It’s just a house of cards that creates conflict.

One of the critical things in an action film is the relationship between hero and villain - think of Indiana Jones and Belloq or Luke Skywalker and Darth or Itchy and Scratchy... Usually the hero and villain either have the same issue but different ways of dealing with it, or are polar opposite sides of an issue. Whatever point your script is secretly making, the hero and villain are the most important elements in illustrating that point. Here, Nero wants revenge and Kirk wants....?

The film gets some of the relationship thing between Kirk, Spock, Bones... but not the banter. Take any episode of the old TV show and these guys are throwing lines at each other and seem like they're the space version of the Rat Pack. I think the two things that made the original show memorable is the relationship between these three guys - always bickering and yet they are friends. It was a buddy comedy in outer space. Here, not quite as fun.

The other thing that made the original series something we think about today is that the shows were *about something* - made in the late 60s, and they always tackled issues. Even a comedy episode like TROUBLE WITH TRIBBLES is tackling an important issue and making a point about our society. In the movie - no issues, none of that basic use of science fiction as a way to reflect our current social problems. And in most of those old episodes, Kirk usually learned some valuable lesson - yes, you may think that kind of stuff is corny, but it’s a basic part of storytelling. You can do it right - and it’s a deeply moving element of the story, or do it wrong and it’s fake. Here - not done at all! It’s almost as if all of the *character* elements from the original series were left out for some reason. I think that’s what makes this just popcorn junk - it is pointless and the characters are all surface, no depth... except for Spock, who - by nature of his biracialness (not a word) - gets to actually wrestle with his identity. He comes off as the best character in the film, and it makes you wonder why the others are so 2D. Was it because Spock has a built in emotional conflict from the original series and none of the others do? Hey, this is an origin story - so let’s dig into the characters and find out what made them who they would become!

Another thing that made the original series fun when I was a kid was that it took us boldly to where no man had gone before - it had that gee whiz factor. A sense of awe and discovery. Here - just kind of mundane. Everything has a “been there done that” feeling that makes the whole film kind of ho-hum. Some complete wrong headed thinking filled the Academy with aliens and had Kirk nailing a green alien girl between classes... hey, that stuff is supposed to come with exploring alien worlds! The original series would take the Enterprise and her crew to a new planet every week where there was a new crises, at least one new form of alien life (and some hot extra terrestrial for Kirk to nail), and some valuable social issue lesson for Kirk to learn by the end of the show (it was the late 60s). But here we get the alien girl is a given - just another girl. And the alien dudes at the Academy - just another dude at he Academy. Nothing special about them. Nothing special about *anything* in this film. Because the strange is made normal, the film seems old and bland. I know they thought they were being clever with this stuff, but the screwed the film for something that isn’t even a laugh - just an acknowledgment of the original show. They destroyed the *spirit* of the show to make a refence to the show. What were they thinking?

STAR TREK isn’t a bad film, it’s a pleasant way to kill a couple of hours. Some amusing scenes, some action packed stuff (but the action was not directed well - choppy and mushy and not as exciting as it could have been). I liked Kirk, I liked Spock, I really liked Uhura, I liked McCoy, I liked Sulu... I hated Checkov. Way too young to be flying the ship. And I *hated* the lens flares - what’s up with that? Calling attention to it being a movie makes it less real! Bad move. But I still enjoyed it more than a lot of the other films I've seen this year.

Oh, and the audience booed the Transformers trailer. I have no idea why, but it doesn’t bode well for the film. Or, maybe it’s just that STAR TREK fans don’t like TRANSFORMERS. Who knows?

- Bill

Book Value Increases

My out of print book sells used on Amazon for about $100 - it's been as high as $321. It's sold on e-bay for $750... I get none of this money. It seems like most of the places on Amazon are book stores and used book stores - I can imagine someone coming in and trading 5 books (including mine) and getting one free... and then the book store sells the book online for $100!

Or maybe $182.15 - the current asking price for a used copy on Amazon!

AMAZON COPIES:



Amazing! I hope the guy who traded it at the used book store got something nice.

I haven't checked e-bay, yet - but maybe there's a copy there for under $200!

- Bill (still working on the new edition)

George Lucas' STAR TREK Test Film

You may not know that Paramount (the distributor of the INDIANA JONES movies) offered the STAR TREK franchise to George Lucas a couple of years ago. Here's the leaked test footage he shot...



Wouldn't that have been better than the version they released?

Classes On CD On Sale!

- Bill

IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Projectors (how we can read your attitude in the script) & NETWORK.
Yesterday’s Dinner: Burgers at Carl's Jr.
Bicycle: I have been riding a lot. That is good. I did the North Hollywood jaunt yesterday - 6.5 miles, but seems like less because it's just down the street. But I'm taking a couple of days off from riding to rest a bit. I think I've been pushing myself too hard. But on Thursday, the car keys go back in the envelope and I ride into Toluca Lake.

Important Information For All Of Us!

Yes, it's Friday and the Hitchcock articles are still trapped in my computer trying to get out. But here's a public service message that will help everyone live a better life. It's about Zinc Oxide...



There - aren't you glad you took the time to watch that? Have a great weekend!

Classes On CD On Sale!

- Bill

IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Reversals in action & ROAR WARRIOR.
Yesterday’s Dinner: half a chicken at a non-chain chicken place while bike riding... against the freakin' wind!

Class Dismissed!

I know it’s been a while since my last real post, but I was busy with my class. A while back the Expo folks asked me if I wanted to do a one day class for them, and I said yes. Like I have nothing else to do! They wanted me to do the horror class because it always gets great “grades” from the students at Expo every year... and I’ve been doing it every year since the first Expo.

Well, two problems with that from my POV - the class is basically an hour and a half that I can expand to 2 with clips, and since I’ve been doing it every year at Expo to packed rooms I think everyone has already taken it. Well, they wanted a full day and they wanted horror because it was a proved success. My spit and gaffer’s tape solution was to combine the horror class with the thriller class (which is about 3 hours, and can be 4 hours with clips) - but that’s still 2 classes I’ve done every year at Expo.

My problem last year at Expo was that they picked the classes for me - instead of letting me do the 4 new classes I’d written, or even a mix of old and new, they gave me the same classes I had been doing since Expo #1 - because they had been successful in the past. Ironically, one of those classes is on ideas where I say that you need something the same but different. Something unique. And now I’m doing a one day class that is more of the same. How to attract an audience to something that most people have heard before?

Well, the first thing I decided to do was write some new material. That way, even if you took the class every year at Expo there would still be new material. So last week was spent writing new stuff for the class - 5,327 words on Contained Thrillers on Tuesday, 2,234 words on Creative Kills on Wednesday, and 6,136 words on Horror stuff and Thriller stuff on Thursday. And I was watching new horror films every night, looking for trends of elements that I could add to the class. Friday I selected clips and organized the class materials (and went to the movies). Saturday was my last day of prep...

The class began at 9am in Beverly Hills (Pico & Beverly Drive) and I needed to be there at least a half hour early. Problem is - as Beef says in PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE, “I am a professional”. I sleep until noon sometimes. I don’t do mornings unless there’s some important meeting. To get to Beverly Hills by 8am I’d have to get up... well, probably around 6:30. Sure, I probably could have slept until 7, but that’s when there’s a wreck on the 405 and I end up late. By the way, the location is not freeway close. Fastest way to get there would be over Laurel Canyon... which is a narrow road, one lane in places, and can get jammed.

And once I arrived? Even if all I did was quaff coffee in the car, I’d still be sluggish. No blood flowing, no exercise... I’d probably nod off halfway through class. That’s okay for a student sitting in the back of the room, not so good for the teacher. So I came up with a crazy idea (as usual) - I would ride my bike. Not over Laurel Canyon - that’s suicide - but there is a little bus with a bike rack that goes from the Laurel canyon News Stand over the hill to the Beverly Center. I could ride to the news stand, then drink coffee on the bus, then ride from the Beverly Center to the class. I’d get some blood flowing, get some fresh air, and would probably even zip by stop-and-go downtown traffic on my bike.

Of course, all of this was weather dependant. There was some rain in the forecast, and if that hit on Sunday instead of Saturday morning, I’d be driving and nodding off in class after lunch. The week leading up to the class had crappy weather for bike riding - lots of high winds - and the plan to get some good rides in before the class ride didn’t happen.

We got our sprinkles early Saturday morning, so weather on Sunday was perfect... and even cool and not windy! Problem, as usual, was that no matter how early I went to bed on Saturday night I did not get to sleep until late. Alarm went off at 6am, I showered, rode to the newsstand, drank coffee over the hill, rode to the hotel... got there just before 8, so I found a Starbucks for more coffee and went back at 8am and set up. Got instructions on how to use the DVD player/projector and did a test before anyone showed up. Cool!

I wondered how many people would show, since it was a class I’d done a million time before, and there were some behind the scenes issues. I asked for a banner for the class - never got one. They promised that there would be Lunch With An Agent as part of the class - that didn’t happen. They were supposed to have an advert in Creative Screenwriting Magazine (*their* magazine) - didn’t happen! They couldn’t even get an advert for their own class in their own magazine! I still had to make the deadline to get my class description to them for the magazine press date - they just didn’t get it in there. So I had no idea how many people would show... ended up filling all but seven seats! Not bad.

Class went well - I was awake, felt pretty good. There were enough questions that I didn’t even use all of the new material!

So, after class was over I got on my bike and made a crazy decision. Instead of riding back to Beverly Center, I would ride to the subway station at Wilshire and Western. Take the subway back (the Universal Station is practically in my back yard). My theory was - if I got tired, I could put the bike on the front of a Wilshire bus like a wimp. I had no idea how far the Western subway station was... but it was a reasonable bike ride. A couple of times (at hills) I thought about wimping out... but decided I’d just work through it. Wasn’t until I got home and Mapquested that I realized it was a little over 7 miles without a break. Add the morning ride segments and that was over 9 miles for the day.

In the old days, before I got fat, I used to ride from my apartment to Priscilla’s Coffee in Toluca Lake, do a half day’s work, then ride to Coffee Bean on San Fernando for the rest of the day’s work, then ride home... round trip was 10.5 miles. I did that every day except Sunday, when I’d ride somewhere else. I am not even close to being able to do 10 miles a day every day in this fat incarnation of me, but after the 9 mile ride on Sunday I still felt pretty good... and did a 6.5 mile round trip down the street to North Hollywood and back to run some errands on Monday.

So I feel really good about being able to ride that distance without my legs turning to jello, then still being able to ride the following day without falling apart.

Now if I can just get this new spec script finished...

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:

Yesterday’s Dinner: Pork Fried Rice & Pot Stickers at City Wok.
Today's Script Tip: All About Antagonists!
Movies: I have seen a whole bunch of movies... reviews to come.