Investing In Screenplays

Okay, so the economy is going to hell, but films are doing just fine. Relativity (funding) is investing in Universal, the UAE is investing *$1 billion* in movies, and Disney is announcing all kinds of biog new movies - PIRATES 4, THE LONE RANGER (with Johnny Depp as Tonto) and NATIONAL TREASURE 3...



And what all three of these projects have in common is Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio - who have written or contributed to previous films in the series. Which makes them stars. Disney is investing in things they wrote.

That may have never clicked in your mind before, but a studio or producer doesn't buy our script - they *invest* in our scripts. They hope this investment will pay off in a hit (money making) movie. So part of our job is to create a sound investment.

Is your script a good investment?

- Bill

Kaiser Soze

If you are going to write a speech, make sure it is riviting. You are up against the sililoqy from HAMLET and "Once more into the breech" and the story of the Gold Watch from PULP FICTION and other amazing speeches. Any time you go more than 4 lines of dialogue (not four sentences, four *lines*) you have a speech. The cool thing about this speech is that it is not only our introduction to Kaiser Soze... it has a second level of information once we know the twist end.

- Bill

That 5 Cent Residual Check Is On Its Way!

Tuesday (today) 19:25 (7:25 PM) - Movies 4 Men 2 (UK)
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, Richard Norton.

And... I'm famous in Brazil (and so is BLACK THUNDER)...
http://vaeveja.blogspot.com/

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TOMORROW'S SCRIPT TIP: Villains, Plans & Motivations and LAKEVIEW TERRACE.
Yesterday’s Dinner: Chicken Caesar salad at Fuddruckers.

Entertainment Weekly Hates Me

How out of touch with the real world is Entertainment Weekly Magazine?

Last month Paramount announced they were forming a new division to make D-2-DVD movies. That means almost every major studio is now focusing on the very profitable direct to DVD market. Universal released a DVD original SCORPION KING sequel to coincide with the MUMMY 3 hitting cinemas (and the DVD did better than the theatrical!)... and they keep cranking out AMERICAN PIE sequels every couple of months. Warner Bros has a D2DVD horror label, but since horror is beginning to soften, maybe they’ll come up with another label for action and comedy and thriller DVD premieres. The big daddy of D2DVD is Sony, which seems to be actively working on sequels to everything in the Columbia, Tri-Star and MGM libraries for the D2DVD pipeline. Fox *claims* they have a direct to DVD division, but where are the films? They seem to make a film a year - at best - and ignore outside producers. This is big business folks! Get with the program!

As your local Blockbuster is flooded with these new studio made direct to DVD titles, and Netflix buys truckloads of titles to ship to consumers who need to know how that Scorpion King guy got his start; Entertainment Weekly Magazine has gone through a redesign... dropping the DVD section completely. Now, a handful of DVD reviews are included in both the Movies section and the TV section. So when DARK KNIGHT hits DVD, it will be in a sidebar in the movie section. When the new season of THE OFFICE hits DVD, it will be noted in the TV section of the magazine. But when all of these new studio made direct to DVD movies come out? There is no place in the magazine for them anymore.

I have no idea why they made this decision. They must read the trades, too - and know that all of the studios are ramping up production of direct to DVD movies... Have they just decided not to review them? Not even to acknowledge them?

You may think this might be a quality issue - but some of these studio projects have budgets equal to or sometimes even larger than a low budget theatrical film. One of the reasons why the studios are making sequels to their library titles as D2DVDs is that the cost of *advertizing* a theatrical movie is $35.9 million (average). You read that right. Sometimes the cost of getting the butts in cinema seats is more than the cost of making the film! So skipping the cinemas is a way to make money. DVDs make something like 3-4 times cinema box office on DVD, and a big chunk of the DVD market are things that have never been shown on a cinema screen. By making D2DVD sequels to popular films, the studios believe the original film works as the advertizing for the sequel.

So you’re walking through Blockbuster looking for a rental, or you’re in Best Buy looking for a DVD to buy, and you want to know - is the new AMERICAN PIE movie any good? How about that GET SMART spin off that was a DVD original? How about SCORPION KING 2? The new LOST BOYS movie? ART OF WAR 2 - is it better than the first one? There is no way to find the answers in Entertainment Weekly. There is no section for these films... And SCORPION KING 2 was the #1 rental in the United States! LOST BOYS 2 and ART OF WAR 2 were in the top ten!

So there is an audience for these films... and that audience can’t read reviews or get *any* information in Entertainment Weekly Magazine. They don't even have a Top Rental Chart or Top DVD Sales Chart - it is as if DVDs did not exist! Why did they get rid of DVDs at the very time *studios* are making more original movies?

Write ‘em and ask: Where are the DVD original movie reviews in the magazine?
Entertainment Weekly's e-mail

- Bill

New Issue Of Script Magazine

You may or may not know that I'm the "West Coast Editor" of Script Magazine. The new issue of Script is on newsstands, book stores, and maybe even your mailbox (if you subscribe). Here's the table of contents....

Heroes and Miracles: Miracle at St. Anna
By Ray Morton
Whether you believe in miracles or not, some Divine intervention brought James McBride’s celebrated novel to the attention of celebrated filmmaker Spike Lee. Above writing a powerful screenplay, or creating a beautiful piece of cinema, both men hoped to honor the Buffalo Soldiers of the 92nd Infantry with their Miracle at St. Anna. To accomplish this feat, McBride and Lee delved into World War II history, Italian culture, and the firsthand accounts of black American veterans.

Script to Screen: City of Ember
by David S. Cohen
Caroline Thompson endured a long, difficult slog through development with the first post-apocalyptic children’s movie: City of Ember. As the screenwriter behind some of the most beloved characters in film -- from Edward Scissorhands to Black Beauty -- Thompson talks about her experience on Ember, her writing routine, and her new new-media venture.

Last Page First: Russell Gewirtz on Righteous Kill
by Aaron Ginsburg
With one action hit under his belt -- 2006’s bank-heist with a twist, Inside Man -- Russell Gewirtz had already achieved the pinnacle of screenwriterdom. That is until his second script, Righteous Kill, attracted two screen legends in what some are deeming an “historic” film event.

Un-Scripted With Shawn Ryan by Aaron Ginsburg
You wouldn’t know it now, but in 2002, gritty basic-cable dramas were not considered the norm. Enter Shawn Ryan and his seminal hit The Shield. After seven seasons of pushing the envelope, Vic Mackey and the Strike Team -- and series creator Ryan -- are ready for their final bow.

Networking
by Sandra Lord
In the second installment of her networking tips, Hollywood Networking Breakfast® creator Sandra Lord discusses the etiquette and practices of effective career networking.

ProdCo Spotlight: The Jim Henson Company
by Joshua Stecker
Decades ago, Jim Henson redefined educational programming. Is it any wonder, 40 years after Sesame Street’s debut, The Jim Henson Company has a new definition for the new-media generation?

Writers on Writing: Traitor
by Jeffrey Nachmanoff
Upon receiving the pitch for Traitor, Jeffrey Nachmanoff had some specific concerns about writing in the terrorism genre. Here, Nachmanoff explains how he wrote through those concerns.

Writers on Writing: Lakeview Terrace
by David Loughery
For the forthcoming Lakeview Terrace, David Loughery decided that he would not skirt the tough topics of race relations, suburban hypocrisy, and man’s territorial imperative.

Small Screen: The Starter Wife
by Debra L. Eckerling
Last summer, The Starter Wife mini-series became a must-see event. This fall, with scribes Sara Parriott and Josanna McGibbon on board, USA hopes The Starter Wife series inspires the same must-see fever.

Real Men Write
by Liz Alani
Based on the glut of Iraq-conflict films last fall, it seems like every filmmaker has an angle on the fallout of war. But, what about filmmakers who have been to war? It’s their turn to say something.

New Media: Not So Lonely Anymore
by Robert Gustafson & Alec McNayr
When LonelyGirl15 was revealed for what she was -- an actress playing a role -- she could have gotten the cold shoulder. Instead, creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried got a development deal.

Independents: Film Market Mistakes
by William Martell
Every independent film that finds distribution will end up at the American Film Market in Santa Monica -- from Oscar® nominees to low-budget horror movies. How to make sure your film gets there.

Screenwriting Legend: Anthony Minghella
by Ray Morton
When an accomplished artist dies in the middle of an exemplary career, it is cause for sadness. But the work he left behind is cause for celebration. A look at the brief, yet prolific, career of Anthony Minghella.

For more info:
http://www.ScriptMag.com

PS: The pisser with this issue. They told me it was going to be a Do It Yourself theme, and all of the articles were going to be about making your own movie. Well, I've written all kinds of stuff about writing scripts for cable and Indie - and making the film yourself out of pocket. People think they can just write any script and then make it themselves... then they realize they have to schedule and budget the script. It's easy to type a new slugline, much more difficult to find a new location, secure a location (rent it or talk someone into giving it to you), and then a complete pain in the butt to pack up all of the equipment and move to a new loaction, just because you typed a new slug line. And it's easy to type up new characters, and end up with 30 or 40 characters... much harder to find 30 to 40 friends who can act, or actors who will work for free, or actors who will work cheap. Most people just never consider that what they write has to be filmed. I have an audio class on Indie Writing that goes over all of this... So for this issue I thought I'd write something about distribution - what you need to have. So many people make their film and have no money left over for all of the elements they will need to *sell* the film. Or they forget to take still pictures - or don't take enough. There's a huge list of things a distrib needs from you - and that's what my article was all about.

Except... I'm the only article in the issues about making your own movie! So the article looks weird. Hey, I just work here...

- Bill

The Meal Meeting Diet (part three - Breakfast)

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

Okay, I have to pitch my take for a remake of a hit 1980s film to a legendary producer... and I haven’t seen the film since the 1980s when it came out. My *memory* of the film is sketchy. And I have another magazine article I have to crank out, plus the Arclight has been doing these screenings of new prints of sci-fi films, plus screenings of new prints of films from the 100 Great Film Series - often with director doing Q&A. Some friends and I have tickets to these, bought way in advance... and a couple of these screenings hit between MOW meal meeting and the remake meeting. I can handle it. I can handle it.

But I really have too much to do. And the first real problem is finding a copy of this film on DVD. I went to a couple of places to buy a copy, and they didn’t have it. Both places had a DVD with all of the sequels, but not the first film. Pisser. I know that I *can* find it somewhere, because it’s on Amazon. I should have just ordered it from Amazon, but I kept thinking I needed it *now* and couldn’t wait for delivery. But it would have been delivered by now, had I ordered it. The cold is what killed me - I just wasn’t thinking straight. Now that the cold is over, I'm thinking fine... and thinking that I should have ordered the danged DVD from Amazon. Anyway, I realize I can drive all over town... or just go down the street to Odyssey Video and rent it.

Odyssey is one of those places that has everything. They have two or three stores in Los Angeles, and that’s it. One store is right down the street from me, and I’ve rented there forever. On Tuesdays & Thursdays - every movie, including new releases, 99 cents. Can’t beat it when you want to see that film that got 5% on the Tomato Meeter to see it it really is that bad... or the latest Nic Cage “quirky hair” film. The great thing about Odyssey is that they keep new releases on the new wall until they stop renting well... and it becomes kind of a gauge as to how well your film is doing. For some reason, NIGHT HUNTER was on the New Release Wall for over a year - it was *always* rented out. I have no idea why. Many of my other films stayed on the wall *long* after studio new releases went into general population with the rest of the riff-raff. Anyway, I search their DVD section for this film and they don’t seem to have it - maybe it’s rented out. I go up to the counter, where they look it up and are shocked that they don’t have it on DVD at all... but they still have it on VHS. Hey, I actually still have a VHS player. I grab it - 99 cents a day every day - and watch it and take notes and watch it again... and keep it for 5 days.

I work out three different ways the story could go, e-mail the producer, and he picks one. Then I start to come up with how that story would work in 2010 (that’s when this film will hit your local cinemas). One of the major elements in this story has to do with the events of the time - and that has to be replaced with something new. And one thing that always bugged me about the movie is that it has an artificially happy ending. There is a huge tragic event in the story, and due to some fancy foot work on the part of the original writer, the tragic event is *erased* by the end and everyone lives happily ever after. One of those happy endings that makes no sense if you think about it... but everyone is grabbing their coats and leaving the cinema, and not thinking. So I come up with a cool solution to this that *keeps* the tragedy, and uses it for a big emotional scene at the end. Instead of a happy ending, we get a big cry ending. I think that works even better. I pitch my ending to a friend who has seen the original movie, and he thinks it works... and will be one of those “E.T.” “I’ll be right here” scenes (which is what I was going for).

Then I get the phone call... the meeting was supposed to be in the afternoon, but will now be a *breakfast meeting* at 9am. I don’t do mornings. I don’t do breakfast. I do not function at a high enough level at 9am to convince a legendary (and intelligent) producer that the end of one if his hit films doesn’t work, and I have a better ending. And this 9am meeting is right around the corner!

I transfer all of my notes to index cards, my cheat sheet for the meeting. But as I’m doing this, I’m coming up with new ideas and rearranging the cards and still fine tuning...

And I’m doing this up until about 2am before that 9am meeting. I *want* to go to bed early, but I just can’t sleep. I’m excited and nervous and worried. I keep going over the cards. I keep worrying that he will absolutely hate my ending.

Alarm goes off a few hours later, I shower shave dress, and head down to the restaurant for breakfast. I’m there a half hour early (as usual) and flip through the cards again - actually pulling out blanks and writing a new scene. I need coffee... and I almost cross the street to a Coffee Bean, but think that’s stupid - I’m about to go to a breakfast meeting. There will be coffee.

Legendary producer arrives, with two other members of his team. Everyone orders a big breakfast, as do I. Everyone orders coffee, as do I. There’s a little chit chat, then I pull out my cards and begin the show... but I’ve had a couple of sips of coffee and the caffeine hasn’t kicked in - I’m mostly reading off cards. This is good, because if I didn’t have the cards, I’d probably just be drooling or something. I get to the first indication that I’ve changed the impossible happy ending... and I see the Legendary Producer’s expression change. He hates it. Now, *I* think that when we get to the end, it will all come together, there will be that “I’ll be right here” ET moment, he’ll cry... and everything will end happily ever after (even if the movie doesn’t). Except... The producer has another meeting on his film in post (they’re about to lock it, and need to do any last minute changes), and has to split before I get to the ending. His two team members stay, and both seem to like my ending. Actually one really likes it, one doesn’t hate it. But the meeting is over, and I’ve taken *one bite* of my big breakfast... everyone else has cleaned their plates. The Legendary Producer actually cleaned his plate before zipping away to his meeting on the new film. Everyone else has probably drank three times the coffee as I have... because they were drinking coffee and eating while I was talking. So, when we leave, I look down at my big breakfast... and think for a moment about doggie bags and starving people in Africa and all kinds of other things... but don’t want to be the guy carrying the doggie bag out to my car, so let the busboy take it away.

Three meal meetings, and I probably had three to six bites of food total. When you’re the guy doing all of the talking, it’s difficult to eat at the same time. Maybe there’s some trick to it that I don’t know. Anyone know how to actually *eat* at a meal meeting?

So, now we have another meeting on the remake project before we go out to the studios.... and I’m not planning on eating anything at the meeting. If I keep having meetings, who knows how much I can lose.

- Bill

PS: Obviously VERTIGO has been bumped back to *next week*, but I figured a "real blog entry" would be better than "content generation".

PPS: As soon as this becomes more than a bunch of meetings and turns into an actual deal, I'll have some more entries - including whether my major end change stayed and what happens when we try to set this up at a studio (that begins on Monday). But I'm going to wait until it's over before telling you about it.

IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Sullivan's Travels and 9/11.
Yesterday’s Dinner: Chicken tacos at Del Taco.

The Meal Meeting Diet (part two - BBQ Chicken)

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

I have a meeting with a *very* prolific MOW production company at the end of the week, I have to come up with a “take” on the remake of a hit 1980s film, and I have a killer cold.

I get absolutely nothing done while I have the cold, except blow my nose and goof off online. I actually write a new script tip - but nothing on the remake project. I get a call from the MOW producer - Friday at 1pm. This is great, because the cold is still a bit sniffly on Thursday, but will be gone by Friday.

And 1pm is a good time for a meeting in Simi Valley. That’s out in the boondocks on the very far edge of the 30 mile zone. Way out there. And it’s bedroom community for Los Angeles - so you *don’t* want to be heading there during rush hour. At 1pm, I can get there, have my meeting, and get home *before* rush hour. And even if the meeting lasts a bit longer than expected, I’ll be heading in the opposite direction as rush hour traffic. But Simi Valley? That’s a long way to go for a meeting.

Now, I’m a prompt person in a business where everyone is running late. So I’m in Simi Valley a half hour early... when I get the cell phone call pushing back the meeting two hours. So I figure I’ll just go to some Starbucks, open up the laptop, and work on the remake project. Except I can’t find a Starbucks. In fact, I can’t find anything. There is nothing to be found. One way, the road goes into the mountains. Another road leads into miles of tract homes. And then there’s the road that leads back to the freeway... where a strip mall and a gas station can be seen by big rigs zipping by. No Starbucks in the strip mall - but there’s a liquor store and a Round Table Pizza. Hey, I can work in the pizza place!

Except it’s mostly a delivery / take out place - *two* tables, *four* chairs total - no electrical sockets, so my 2 hour laptop battery is it. Not a problem, the meeting is in 2 hours. But it’s a meal meeting, so I wasn’t going to order a pizza... and they only have 2 liters of Pepsi and 20 oz bottles. I bought a 20 oz bottle, gave the guy behind the counter a $20 (all I had in my wallet was $20s, fresh from the ATM). He opens the register - no change. He counts out singles... and quarters... and there isn’t enough. He’s panicking. I ask if there’s a minimum for credit cards - yes there is. What about debit cards? No... hey, if I paid the $1.80 with a debit card, the change thing wouldn’t be a problem. I give him my debit card, he punches in numbers and runs it, hands it back to me... and he has charged me $18.00. Um, mistake. The guy says he can credit my card... but I’ll have to wait until the manager comes in. How long will that be? A couple of hours. Maybe sooner.

So I drink my $18 Pepsi and open the laptop and do a little work, but my brain just isn’t into it - I’m thinking more about the upcoming meeting, and wondering if the manager will return to credit my account before I have to leave for my meeting. As my battery is starting to flicker... my cell phone rings with the answer. The meeting has been pushed back until 5pm, now. This is all because they are trying to target one of their film’s meal breaks, and they were at a meeting in Westwood that ran late, creating a domino effect. So, now I’m stuck in this 2 table Simi Valley pizza place - without power - for a couple more hours. The manager comes, they credit my card and *give me* the Pepsi. I jot notes on the remake project... and at 4:30, I leave. So what if I’m early.

They have gates and guards and I have a drive on pass - just like any other studio. The place is huge - not as big as a real studio, but not like one of those converted warehouse places out in the north Valley. Kind of like CBS Radford or Raleigh. Gate guard tells me where to go. I get to the correct production office, and the person who recommended me for al of this is there. Introductions, conversation, apology.... It’s looking more like 6pm, now. This is the second to the last day on this shoot, and they have to get scenes on film before they can break for a meal. Okay. But they’ll give me a quick tour of the facility to kill time - which ends up being cool because they have all kinds of sets, including what looks like the CRASH DIVE submarine set (though I forgot to ask). They have 747 interiors, they have just about anything you can imagine - anything you would need for an MOW.

By the time 6pm rolls around, I was wishing I’d had a pizza. They break shooting for dinner, I’m taken by the office person who is, I guess, my contact at this company, to the area where the catering truck is parked and the tables are set up, and we grab a place in line to get food. Hey, is that Faith Ford? She’s the star of this MOW. And other actors I recognize. There are three choices of entree, I think BBQ chicken sounds good, I get a breast dripping with BBQ sauce and some yummy sides and am taken to the “adult table” to meet the two people in charge of production. One is good cop, one is bad cop. Or maybe that’s just their personalities. Or maybe that’s what makes for a good producing partnership. Whatever.

My contact person introduces me, “This is Bill Martell, the writer I told you about...” and then the introduction goes off track. I’m sure this person was trying to reassure them that I can write for an MOW budget, and that I’m less expensive than David Koepp, but if you can imagine the absolutely worst ways to say that - this was even worse than that! I would rather be introduced in a way that points up the best parts of my career, rather than things that might be the worst parts. No mention was made of those best parts. My personal problem is that I don’t brag well. I either say nothing, being modest... or when there is a glaring omission, I hit too hard. That easy middle that most people have - I have yet to master. I am a social misfit. I usually say nothing at all, or joke about my achievements. Anyway, there was no humor in the delivery of this introduction...

I scramble to set things right, but the conversation is already on to their company and what they do and what they’re looking for... and Bad Cop keeps hammering me on everything... and that delicious chicken breast drizzled with BBQ sauce sits untouched on te plate. I pick at the salad and vegetables. The chicken requires actual public mastication, and between not wanting to look like a hungry hack and not wanting to do a spit take with food in the event of further introduction details, it sits untouched on the plate. I *think* I get things back on track, and I *think* I correct my introduction, but the end result is... they need a script *now* that would appeal to families, and is something that my mother would enjoy watching on TV... and I don’t really think I have something like that. Oh, and it has to have a Christmas theme. I tell them about my Barrel Racer treatment, they want to look at it, and COMPLEX, which they want to read. And they say because they make 48 films a year, they are always looking for writers to work with and material - specifically scripts centered aroudn a holiday - that someone like my mom might enjoy watching on TV. So if I ever have anything like that, send it their way.

Meeting is over, cast and crew are going back to work on the film... and I’m leaving a plate full of food on the table. On the way out of Simi Valley, I head in a different direction... passing a big shopping mall with movie theaters and a Starbucks. If I’d know the geography of Simi Valley I could have hung out in that Starbucks (with power for my laptop) and worked until the meeting. Instead, basically a day shot and it takes a full week for that $18 credit to pop up. Now all I have to do is develop this remake pitch... based on a movie I haven't seen in 20 years and barely have a memory of.

And find some dinner.

- Bill

The Meal Meeting Diet (part one - Chinese Food)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Bill

End Of An Era

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is It Because I Have A Penis?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Bill

CLASSES ON CD - ON SALE NOW!

Flash Mob Assignment: See IRON MAN Again!

You want to mess with The Man in Hollywood?

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

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

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

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

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

- Bill

Good Tire

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



- Bill

Hitchcock On Hiatus This Week

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or two fewer blog entries.

Or 10 fewer pages on the new spec.

Or some rewrite work on that Hawaii script.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or maybe get back to work on the rewrite?

Or work on that remake pitch?

Or sleep?

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

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


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

Wanna Buy Some Great Rock & Roll Stuff?

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

EVERYBODY I SHOT IS DEAD

I hope everything works out for her and her daughter.

- Bill

Hollywood Shake Ups!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Bill

The War With SkyNet

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

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

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

But maybe it’s already too late.

- Bill

The Batman Effect

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Bill