Black Friday Sale

Just In Time For The Holidays!

Best Prices Ever on Class Audio CDs ($8) and other select items - prices will never be this low again (Okay, maybe *next* Black Friday)! The prices good ONLY November 27, 28, 29 & 30... Sale ENDS November 30th ("Cyber Monday") at midnight.

For those of you who don't know - Black Friday is our American shopping holiday. Day after Thanksgiving, when all of the Christmas sales begin... usually at 4am. People actually camp out in front of the stores days in advance to be the first ones inside to get the best deals before the store runs out of merchandise. Last year, someone was trampled to death trying to get a sale item. It's festive! Why do they call it Black Friday? A retail store in the red can get back in the black in one day. Not wanting to be left out of the festivities, I figured I'd slash some prices for 3 days. No need to camp out in front of the store or get up at 4.

*** BLACK FRIDAY SALE AT SCRIPT SECRETS! ***


And because it's Friday, here is Jonathan Coe on SABOTAGE:


And I hope that next Friday there will be an actual Fridays With Hitchcock entry!

Now I am going to go see what DVDs are on sale...

- Bill

DVD Times Two

In Brazil, one of my films is a brand new double bill on DVD. You can now get BLACK THUNDER in Portugese *plus* get some movie I did not write! Thanks to my friend Osvaldo for sending this to me.



Does this mean hot models from Rio will dump Leo and come after me? I sure hope so!

Classes On CD - Recession Sale!

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: That great one on Tennis Plotting - and SPEED.
Yesterday's Dinner: McDonalds halfway through a bike ride.
Bicycle: Crazy long bike ride as I attempted to find a non-crowded place to work... and the ride home last night almost froze me.



SCRIPT SECRETS STORE
Top 10 Films About Underpants T Shirt: SALE $9.99

Writer's Roundtable - Is The Film The Movie?

And here is part last of the screenwriters round table, where they discuss whether the films resembled their scripts...



- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: All about your villain - using past Oscar nominees SNAKES ON A PLANE, PHONE BOOTH and LAKEVIEW TERRACE as (bad) examples.
Yesterday's Dinner: Del Taco #6.

Writers Roundtable - Success?

Today I'm posting the other two parts of the Hollywood Reporter's writers round table discussion (last one is at 2pm). The problem yesterday seemed to be that every single writer's website linked or embedded the interviews, and you could not get through to see it. Same problem may happen today. I suggest trying after 5 or 6pm Pacific Time when most folks have gone home for the day.

So, here's part 2 about dealing with success... or even if these folks have found success...



Last one pops at 2pm.

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: All about your villain - using past Oscar nominees SNAKES ON A PLANE, PHONE BOOTH and LAKEVIEW TERRACE as (bad) examples.
Yesterday's Dinner: Del Taco #6.

Writer's Roundtable - Inspirtation & theme

Hollywood Reporter does a series of round table conversations with people in the biz around award season - each segment is about 2 minutes - and here's part one of the series about screenwriters...



Congratulations to the 100 folks who made the semi-finals in Script Shadow's logline contest! Um, I ended up being one of them. Entered on a whim. After reading the other entries - I don't have a chance in hell.

And I have other scripts and projects circling which I will blog about later. Now they're still dreams and possibilities. But, things are happening!

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: You Are A Failure! - and there is nothing wrong with that.
Yesterday's Dinner: Togos sandwich - tuna.
Bicycle: Short ride to an undisclosed location that is not crowded.

Clash Of The Titans

Ray Harryhausen. When I was a kid, that name meant magic. Probably the first Harryhausen film I saw was MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, and it was one of those films that made me want to make movies. It's still one of my favorite movies. The creatures in that film were so real! How did they do that?

And that's how I got to know Harryhausen's name. I started to look for movies he did special effects on - and discovered fighting skeletons and sea monsters and cowboys who roped dinosaurs... and Dynamation (also, the Super type). This guy made things that could usually only exist in the imagination of a kid into something that could battle Kerwin Matthews on screen! He made magic into reality.

But the problem with being a star special effects guy is finding stories where the special effects were the stars... at least, that was a problem in the pre-CGI times. So CLASH OF THE TITANS was Harryhausen and his producing partner Charles Schneer's new excuse to do some stop motion work... and they cast prettyboy Harry Hamlin and brilliant-but-down-on-his-luck actor Laurence Olivier, and the film was, well, okay. The mechanical owl was kind of silly - I'm sure in response to STAR WARS' R2D2.

But a new generation of kids saw that magic and remembered the film... and became studio executives. So a film that was just an excuse for Ray Harryhausen's special effects has been remade *without* those effects. And here's the teaser trailer...



And here's the trailer for the original film...



- Bill

Makes 2012 Look Like A Disneyland Ride

Coming Friday to Los Angeles and New York, this nice little documentary shot at the same location as one of the low budget horror movies I worked on... but much more frightening. It's all about the end of the world. Not some Roland Emmerich natural disaster, but burning through all of our natural resources and killing ourselves. And not sometime in the future - sometime very very soon.

Maybe by 2012.



This looks interesting. It's the end of the world, baby!

- Bill

Happy Birthday Sesame Street!

After the doom and gloom of yesterday's post, something to cheer you up. Sesame Street is 40 years old... and still going strong.



Though The Muppets were aimed at adults and kids, Sesame Street was aimed at kids... and still managed to appeal to adults. The characters where wild and fun and irreverent. Here's a song from Ernie...



And a cross-over from The Muppets Kermit singing a song...



Which brings me to my favorite song of all, from THE MUPPET MOVIE. It's not just some silly Muppet song, it's about *me* and it's probably about you, too.



That song just brightens my day.

Tomorrow - back to doom and gloom... and sometime soon, an entry about The Brad Pitt Guy.

- Bill

Is Cinema Dead?

The American Film Market is going on right now in Santa Monica... or maybe it’s *not* going on. If you have a film market and nobody comes, is it still a film market?

Is this the canary in the coal mine for cinema?

NO... WHAT *IS* A FILM MARKET

In case you don’t know what a Film Market is, it’s a market where they sell films. Obvious, huh? When a producer makes a film they still need to sell it to a distributor... actually, usually several distributors. Basically, these days a studio is really just a distributor and a bank... they fund a producer’s film in exchange for distribution rights. The producer makes a % of what the film makes after the studio subtracts distribution fees and overhead and the cost of making the film and the townhouse they keep in Marina Del Rey for the studio chief’s mistress to live in. But these days, even studios are looking for money from other sources, and often co-producing some film with some other studio in some other country, or just acting as a distrib for hire for films made in some other country.



Most studios either have long standing deals with foreign distribs or they have their own foreign distribution arm. At one point in time many of the majors shared a foreign distribution company, but I think those days are long gone - too much money in foreign distribution to share with the competition. But as more film finance money comes from outside the USA, in order to get the money a studio must often give up foreign distribution or at least share it.

But not every producer has a studio deal - some are independent and have no foreign distribution in place and sell their films to foreign distribs on a film-by-film basis. There are somewhere around 70 foreign territories that buy USA films for their country (or countries - some territories cover more than one country connected by a common language or geography). These independents go to markets - kind of like a trade show - and sell their films...

And USA indie distribs go to these markets to buy foreign films. Often the indie production company will buy the foreign films, take them back to the USA, and sell them to a USA distrib along with their own movies. Anyway - there’s this whole business of buying and selling films to overseas distribs, and the big markets are Cannes (the festival is the sideline, the market is what it’s really all about) and American Film Market. Now, the Hong Kong Market is taking hold, too. Used to be a marked in Milan, MIFED, but it’s gone.

The thing about these markets, and American Film Market is where it is most obvious, is that “Independent” covers a lot of ground - from all of those serious dramatic Oscar contenders to modern day grindhouse films. It’s not unusual to see some Merchant-Ivory style adaptation of some classic novel you read the Cliff Notes to in High School being sold across the hall from BLOOD OF THE NAKED MUTILATORS. Anything made outside the studio system is here...

Along with films you *think* are studio films but are really some sort of foreign coproduction starring Bruce Willis or Al Pacino or someone else who “likes to work”.

CROWDED ELEVATORS?

When I first began going to American Film Market it was held in Beverly Hills and *crowded* with buyers and sellers and a million cool movies. Those were the years where a small video company could still get films with B movie starts in cinemas - and you might see some Gary Busey action flick at your local multiplex, or one of those Canon Films with Charles Bronson or Chuck Norris or American Ninja Michael Dudikoff... and a year later the films would go to VHS where they probably belonged. But, as a guy working in a warehouse back then, those were the movies we all saw after work. Beers first, movie, then more beers. And sometimes these movies did some breakout business and became DIRTY DANCING (made by Vestron Video). That’s when cinema - and low budget cinema - was alive and kicking! (especially in the Chuck Norris movies)

A couple of years later AFM moved to Santa Monica, and was still going strong. The films were not getting that theatrical window anymore, but VHS was *hot* and had become a separate market with separate stars. It was strange because there were some stars who were huge in cinemas but when the films went to VHS they bombed... and other people who were nothing in cinemas but massive stars on VHS. And it seemed like the market was still *expanding* for independent films (both arthouse and grindhouse) - cable needed movies! DVD replaced VHS, and needed new movies. And then the studios began to realize that DVD was making so much money on non-theatricals that they jumped in making DVD originals... or, trying to. Studios always seem to have problems making movies on a budget, and are used to throwing money at a problem instead of creativity.

Well, a few years ago AFM began to contract instead of expand... though, they actually expanded geographically by taking over the hotel next door. For the first time there were fewer people at market than the year before, even though the PR firm the AFM hired kept trying to convince us there were more people.

But here’s the gauge - at Beverly Hills you could not get on an elevator. There were hundreds of people waiting for the elevator at any time of the day... so you had to climb the stairs. When they moved to Santa Monica - same exact thing. HUNDREDS of people waiting for the elevator... even on one of the slow days! You had to climb the stairs. By the end of AFM my legs were throbbing and jelly-like. But over the years the crowds at the elevators have gotten smaller, and my joke for the last couple of years is that you could actually get on an elevator right away if you didn’t mind being packed in there.

Saturday I’m at AFM, talking about how it isn’t crowded, and I mentioned the elevator thing, and looked over... and there was *no one* waiting for the elevator. No one. The elevator doors opened and *one person* walked out - no one else in the elevator.

ALWAYS A RODEO IN TOWN

Wednesday afternoon when I dropped by to pick up my badge and the catalogues, it was practically empty... but it’s a week day. Weekdays can be weak days. Never this slow before, but I was sure by Saturday and Sunday the place would be packed. Usually the weekend has a great show in the lobby - hundreds of undiscovered actresses wearing the legal minimum of clothing show up to pass out headshots (insert the obvious joke) and try to get a role in some movie being set up at the market. Also actors, composers, posers, directors, writers, and people who have business cards that say they are producers. They crowd the lobby, pouncing on anyone with a badge. I call them the Lobby Rats. After 6pm you might also see some B movie stars (or even an A movie star from one of the big budget films) in the bar, secretly looking for work. They are the center of attention and I’ll bet none of them even have to buy their own drinks. Just for fun, Troma often sends down some costumed superheroes to promote their films, and other companies or producers might have a team of hot women in T shirts with the film’s title or in costume from the film as promotion. It’s a circus, and fun to watch.

This year - no circus. I was there Friday, and the lobby was almost empty. After hours, Fred Williamson showed up, but the place was still mostly empty. Let me put it this way - there are maybe a half dozen tables in the bar area of the lobby, and usually you can’t get near one. This year, I could have sat at the one behind Fred... it was empty!

Saturday? The same. I saw Corbin Bernsen walk past, but no Al Pacino or Val Kilmer or any of the other guys who I’ve seen before. And the lobby was mostly empty - not even the costumed Troma people. Not even the undiscovered actresses. The place was dead!

The hallways were empty. The elevators were empty. The lobby was mostly empty.

WE GOT OURSELVES SOME O'THAT ART HOUSE STUFF

One of the strange things this year was the exploitation companies selling those Oscar movies. It seems that when they closed down the studio indie labels and the independent art house labels began going out of business, there was no one left to sell art house movies to the foreign market except those grindhouse companies. The latest Polish Brothers quirky arthouse movie starring Billy Bob Thornton was being sold by the company best know for flicks like the Steve Guttenberg thriller FATAL RESCUE. I know you've seen that one - it stars the Gutt! There just aren’t any arthouse places left! They closed Miramax!

And that’s the thing that’s scary. The studios say they are hurting now that DVD sales are off due to the economy and need to find ways to cut their film budgets. The studios have stopped making indie films and don't make many prestige films. Those larger budget indie films with stars are not being made, and when they are, they end up being sold by some grindhouse company because they are still in business. But even the grindhouse companies are in trouble, because that middle has fallen out of low budget. There are still films made for under a million (many well under) and still films made for over $10 million that will get a theatrical release from some studio... but nothing in between.

Over the years I’ve seen big companies die and those scrappy little guys who had offices in the basement of the hotel start to climb floors until their offices were in prime real estate. I’m sure I have mentioned Brain Damage Films before - I’ve talked to the guy who runs it in the past (seems like a nice guy) and they specialize in no-budget horror films people shoot in their back yards for PARANORMAL ACTIVITY budgets (around $10k-$15k)... and they are not only still in business, when a movie is made that cheap, it’s hard not to make money. A baby step higher is The Asylum, who make all of those really bad films you see on SyFy and those knockoffs you see on the Blockbuster shelves with titles like I AM OMEGA and SNAKES ON A TRAIN. These guys used to make films for $100k... with a name in the cast! Now their budgets are a little bit higher (not much) and they have a couple of names... but we are still well below half a million bucks. Again, hard not to make money off a film made for so little. But the problem is - the budgets are getting smaller and smaller and there’s not enough money in the budget to make a living writing something like that... or directing... or anything else.

The canary in the coal mine is falling off its perch.

I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE!

AND IT DOES NOT WORK...

With studios aiming at some Hasbro toy tentpole crap, and the indie world decimated, and the grindhouse world being $10K wonders and $200k mockbusters, where is the business going? I’m having trouble seeing the future. I was talking to Bill from Pulp 2.0 about the market, and joked that the Mayans got it wrong - cinema is dead *today*. I was talking to Bill by phone, because I skipped AFM completely on Sunday - wasn’t worth driving out there. Bill did drive out there, and said it wasn’t worth it.

I think the Hasbo thing, as much as I hate it, is the future of cinema. Instead of making a movie, we will be making something that can sell as a video game, comic book, webisodes, toys, online entity, and maybe a DVD - but the deal will have to encompass all of those things in order to get the financing to make them. The world of selling ancillary rights to movies is over - the *movie* is the ancillary product, now. Marvel and Hasbro run Hollywood. And as the indie films just die, and the grindhouse films get smaller and smaller, the only future I can see for genre movies is if they evolve the same way studio films are evolving and become part of some larger product... We will look back on Uwe Boll and consider him the cutting edge genius who could see the future - he’s already making bad video game movies.

There is no more cinema, there is only the film version of toys and the film version of comic books.

Welcome to Hollywood. The new Hollywood.

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Characters ARE Relationships - and ALIENS meets BLACKHAWK DOWN.
Yesterday's Dinner: Grilled Ham & Swiss on Rye at home.
Bicycle: No... but should have.
Pages: Um, do these count?
London Blog Entries: 42,000 words = 168 typewritten pages. Crap! I should have written a script instead! Or *two*!

New Issue Of Script

The new issue of Script Magazine is out now! Sherlock Holmes on the cover. My article is reporting from the Ameriacn Film Market on Worldwide Cool - making sure your script plays globally.




Script to Screen: Precious
When director Lee Daniels first read Sapphire’s novel Push, he immediately wanted to see the story come to life. However, trying to illustrate the abuse the protagonist suffers without earning the movie an NC-17 rating seemed almost impossible. Daniels and scribe Geoffrey Fletcher collaborated on an adaptation that would retain its dramatic impact and become a work of art on the screen.

Nicholas Meyer: The View From the Scribe
Some writers struggle in transitioning from one type of writing to another, but Nicholas Meyer has conquered many forms. Learn Meyer’s cross-format storytelling processes and what encouraged him to write his recent memoir, The View From the Bridge: Memories of Star Trek and a Life in Hollywood.

Independents: Worldwide Cool
Visual storytelling, clever scenes, cool battles, emotional plot twists, vivid characters—all of these things and more can be found in the Chinese import Red Cliff. So, what can writers learn from this dynamic film about international box-office appeal and about writing across borders?

Small Screen: How I Met Your Mother
The broadcast-network sitcom How I Met Your Mother is enjoying its fifth season of success on CBS, along with a fervent fan following bolstered by interactive Web content. Writer-creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas explain how they combine team writing, nonlinear storytelling, and the best of their favorite shows to create characters we all want to hang out with.

Anything but Elementary: Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales of super-sleuth Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr. Watson have captivated audiences for more than 100 years. As Lionel Wigram, Michael Robert Johnson, Tony Peckham, and Simon Kinberg pieced together a new story for the famous duo, they balanced the needs of a modern audience with the wit and subversive charm of the source material.

Susie’s Story: The Lovely Bones
Alice Sebold’s novel The Lovely Bones touched a chord when it was published seven years ago. The tale of a 14-year-old murder victim examined the complexities of grief and hope. After spending years navigating Middle-earth, Oscar®-winning screenwriters Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson were ready to explore a less epic, more personal story. Here Walsh and Boyens discuss bringing Sebold’s novel to film.

Writers on Writing: Invictus
After leaving behind his home in South Africa to pursue his screenwriting career, Tony Peckham never thought he would be penning the story of a hero from his past: Nelson Mandela. Invictus’ central challenges were crafting an interesting protagonist when the real-life subject behaved as a saint, and making new the well-worn theme of sports as social politics.

Writer, Edit Thyself!
Reality check: Your final draft is most likely as bad as your first. Unless you’ve made self-editing and heavy revision a priority, you’re nowhere near completing a flawless script. Mystery Man offers advice on how to sculpt your masterpiece while maintaining objectivity and catering to your audience.

Under the Big Top
Equal parts innovator, diplomat, taskmaster and ringleader, the showrunner wears many hats. Responsible perhaps as much as any one person can be for a show, the showrunner must balance creative interests, network interests, and personal conviction—to wide and varied results.

Writers on Writing: The Messenger
Especially during wartime, no civilian can guess what emotions a soldier experiences on a day-to-day basis. Scribe Alessandro Camon tells how he and co-writer Oren Moverman decided to explore the private heartache some soldiers face as part of the “casualty notification” team.

Writers on Writing: The Informant!
Writer Scott Z. Burns delved deep into the journey of Mark Whitacre from federal agent to criminal, but thought it would do more harm than good to talk to Whitacre himself. Read how a bizarre history of crime became a comedy for the big screen ... and even received glowing endorsement from its subject.

- Bill

North By Northwest - 50th Anniversary!

The original plan for Monday was to see NORTH BY NORTHWEST on the big screen again as part of the AFI Fest - in celebration of the film's 50th Anniversary.

Think about that for a moment - that film is 50 years old! Hey, 1:30 minutes into the film, the protagonist is kidnaped at gun point and taken to be killed! I love how those old movies took their time to get to the story!

This is one of my favorite Hitchcock films - it's funny and fast paced and exciting.

Here's is a link to... The Birth Of Roger Thornhill.

And here is a link to... The Fridays With Hitchcock Entry For NORTH BY NORTHWEST.



- Bill

BUY IT AT AMAZON:

Publisher's Weekly Best of 2009 List!

So, yesterday I reviewed my friend Harry's first (published) novel CHILD OF FIRE... and today it was selected by Publisher's Weekly as one of the 5 Best Mass Market Novels of 2009. It's his first novel, and it beat out all of those books at the airport and supermarket and front displays at Barnes & Noble and Borders - those books by big famous best selling writers! (well, beat all but the other 4) (well, it was #4 on the list, so it beat out all but 3).




Big congratulations to Harry! If you read my review below, you know I really liked it and want to see what happens in the next book in the series. But Publisher's Weekly Best of 2009 List? Those guys know what they are talking about, I'm just some screenwriter who prowls used book stores looking for that missing Highsmith book I've never read. This is great news. Here's a link to the list, scroll down to Mass Market...

Publisher's Weekly Best Of 2009 List

The great thing about this is that Harry did not take no for an answer and kept writing, finding a place for his stories... not the big screen as it turned out, but a novel. Well, a series of novels. Well, a series of novels where the first one is one of the 5 Best mass market novels according to Publisher's Weekly.

- Bill

London 16C: Day 13 & 14 - Drinks & Airplanes (heading home)

So the alarm goes off at 5:30 AM, I shower and shave and zip up my suitcases and do a final room check (still not spotting that USB drive) and carry my luggage down the stairs (no lift) to the lobby and check out, and go stand in front of the hotel... at about 6:15. Damn - a prompt man is a lonely man!

The taxi arrives on time at 6:30 - actually a shuttle van - and the driver (a woman) tosses my suitcases in back, and we go to pick up the filmmakers. Except, it’s on the other side of London. We get to their hotel, and no one is standing out from, no one is in the lobby... no one seems ready to go to the airport. The driver calls dispatch to make sure she has the right address - she does - and makes sure she has the name correct. It’s two Japanese people - last name, Japanese, is not easy for the driver to pronounce. The driver sounds like she’s from Russia or Eastern Europe. She goes into the hotel, to the front desk, and asks where these people are. I am sitting in the shuttle van this whole time. Driver comes back - tells me the desk called up to the Japanese women’s room and they were getting ready to come down. We wait. We wait some more. We wait even longer. The driver is thinking about just leaving - I have a plane to catch. That’s when the two Japanese women with a whole cargo hold of luggage come out of the elevator. The bellman is pushing the overloaded cart, and he does not look happy. When he gets to the shuttle, he tells the Japanese women that he can’t unload the cart because he has a bad back. I’m thinking this guy’s a dick... but the Japanese women do nothing - they don’t even tough their small bags. The driver starts grabbing bags and putting them in the shuttle van. There are huge *boxes*, there are massive trunks that seem really heavy. She stacks them all in the van. The bellman gets no tip for loading up the cart. The two Japanese women get in the van, the driver races to the airport... and the women are putting on make up... then they crank the heater up to Hell and take a nap, while I’m sweating like crazy and nowhere near the heater controls.

Guess what? Their flight left before mine. So they were *really* not ready.

The driver gets them to their terminal, and unloads all of their stuff, including the heavy trunks... and the women want to know how their trunks and luggage will get from the curb to inside the airport. The driver points to some carts (free to use at Heathrow) and I think gets stiffed on a tip, then gets back in the van and takes me to my terminal. I tip her, give her a little extra to make up for the women, then drag my luggage into the airport where it costs more per bag to get them home than it did to bring them here.

In the waiting area for my flight, there’s a cute women near my age who is reading the Samuel French edition of THE CHILDREN’S HOUR. I want to strike up a conversation with her - I played Joe Cardin (male lead) in a community theater production while in high school - and it’s written by Hellman, who was Dash Hammett’s girlfriend. I could probably talk for hours about the play... but I say nothing. I’m tired and maybe still drunk and am afraid I’ll say something stupid. I’m never gonna find a girlfriend this way!

Several hours of absolute torture later - I am too tall for airplane seats - we land in New York where I have to go through customs, then recheck my luggage... then take this crazy shuttle bus to another terminal to catch the plane to LA - the bus driving too close to a runway where planes are landing for my taste. Kill time, they board the plane... and I find that I have the absolute worst seat on the plane - 22A - a window seat where there is no window. In fact there’s something in the wall, there, and instead on the indent between “ribs” it’s flat - meaning less headroom and less shoulder room. Probably not a problem unless you’re 6'4" tall - the most cramped seat I’ve ever been in - and my knees were mashed against the seat in front of me. Seriously - airlines need to tell you the maximum height for their seats, and have emergency exit and bulkhead seating prioritized for people who are too tall for their seats. Someone knows the maximum height number - let’s get that in print somewhere.

They close the plane door, and I realize I only have to be in this cramped position from New York to Los Angeles... when the plane loses all power. Something is wrong, and we haven’t even left the gate. Pilot comes on, says it’s a minor mechanical problem and a mechanic is on his way to fix it, so we’ll all just stay on the plane. Great - I don’t have a window and if the person in front of me leans back in their seat my kneecaps will snap off. It takes forever fo the mechanic to fix whatever is wrong. And we’re still on the plane, at the gate. Eventually it’s fixed. The plane takes off, and by they time we make it to Los Angeles and I take my shuttle home (I bought a round trip and had to make sure I knew where the receipt was the whole time I was in London and make sure I didn’t accidentally throw it away along with the receipt for those socks and British underpants) - and it’s *pouring rain* in Los Angeles - worse weather than in London - tip the driver and drag my luggage into my apartment, I have been traveling for almost 24 hours! Okay, sitting on an unmoving plane isn’t exactly “traveling”, but that took up a chunk of time. My refrigerator is empty. I walk to the store, buy some food, eat a frozen dinner, and go to sleep.

I have no idea how long I will sleep, but I’m hopping a plane to Hong Kong in 6 days, and Screenwriter’s Expo is in there somewhere. Of course, those are other adventures.

- Bill

London 16B: Day 13 & 14 - Drinks & Airplanes (drinks)

The thing I always forget about the Holborn station is that there are two exits on different streets. It’s not as bad as, say, Leicester Square where the exits are spread out on opposite sides of Charing Cross Road - no way to keep an eye on all of the exits there! But it’s a small problem. I stand at the main exit, figuring I not only have the best chance of being seen by someone leaving, but if someone exits on the other side and doesn’t see me they might check the main exit area. I don’t know who I missed, but I found most of the London regulars from past Drink With Bill nights, including the amazing English Dave... dressed in a suit! I almost didn’t recognize him!

I know English Dave from the Done Deal message boards, where he is witty and profane and combative and hysterical. He’s a TV writer in the UK, and he is constantly having run ins with idiot producers. Dave is a real character online, and when I first met him many Raindances ago, he lived up to his online persona. Somewhere back in the past on this blog, or maybe on my website messageboards that were kind of a blog before this, I have a story about one of the Drink With Bill nights where Dave shows up in a Hawaiian shirt and short pants - in London - and we drink until the pub closes at 11pm. Dave is a member of a club, so we can continue drinking... All we have to do is walk (or stagger) across central London to his club. We do this, and it seems like a long walk, even though I have since passed his club a few times sober and it’s really not that far from the Holborn Tube Station (at least by London walking standards). Well, we trek all the way to his club, where Dave tells the man at the door that he’s a member and pulls out his membership card and wants to bring all of the rest of us in as guests... and the guy at the door mentions to English Dave that there is a dress code, and loud Hawaiian shirts and short pants are not allowed. So we all staggered away, back to our various homes and hotels. So, the idea of Dave in a *suit* - what happened?

The other reason why it was great to see English Dave is because he seems to have disappeared. He left the Done Deal message boards in a huff years ago - some dope took was offended by something he said and started a flame war. Um, Dave is *funny* when he’s mean. You just have to laugh at that stuff, not get angry. Dave has a blog, it’s listed over there –> And that’s how I know that he got divorced, quit TV, got remarried, and wrote a novel... but his last blog entry was months ago. Was he still alive?

Yes, and a novelist and working as a consultant in a suit and tie for a while as the novel makes its way to market. As always, he told great stories. Paul & Wolfy talked about their script - the one they pitched at Live Ammunition Pitching Panel - and both wondered why I’m not doing classes to rooms filled with hundreds of people like McKee. The strange thing about Raindance this year is the number of people who have taken some class by me in the past who either have a film here or have come up after one of the free classes to tell me that they optioned or sold a script and some class I did in the past helped them. Maybe I’m selling myself short? The problem has always been - I don’t really want to be a teacher, I just want to write scripts. But maybe I need to find a way to really make both work. Right now the teaching this is completely half-assed. I haven’t done a class in Los Angeles for 3 years. I haven’t done the 2 day class for over 2 years *anywhere* - London was my return to teaching. These other guys teach for a living - I don’t want to do that. But what if I figured out a way to do 4 classes a year? That’s not much, still gives me time to write. Maybe come up with an online class like Max Adams has for people who can’t make it to a live class? I never really think about the classes until people start telling me how much they got out of one. Or I see some success stories with movies or books or working on some TV show.

Anyway, many Guineii were consumed and those damned people would not let me buy a round. That’s unfair! I’m getting smoke blown up my butt and getting drunk on their dime! Close to last call, a woman comes over to our table and tells us that we need to come with her immediately. I wonder if we’ve been too loud, but English Dave figures it out and starts making fun of this woman who is trying to kick us out! That’s when her drunken boyfriend comes over to fetch her - she’s just some drunk woman, not an employee of the pub.

Eventually it’s last call and an actual employee of the pub comes to tell us when we’ve finished our drinks it’s time to go. No staggering to Dave’s club tonight - even though he easily makes the dress code - he has a family to head home to. And it’s Monday night - tomorrow everyone has to go to work... and at 6:30 AM I have to be standing in front of the hotel for my taxi pick up.

Great to see all of the London folks and meet the new people, but now it’s time to stagger back to the hotel and finish packing.

At the hotel, I do the final bit of packing (except for the things I will need for tomorrow)... but what I don’t know then that I have since learned - a portable USB drive that had some materials for one of the 5 free classes that I’d had Elliot print out for me was on the desk with some other things. When I grabbed those things, I knocked the USB drive onto the floor... where it blended with the carpet. Didn’t notice this until after I returned and looked all over the place for it. Nothing critical on it, but a couple of things from an old computer I will now have to unbury from the closet-of-doom and fire up to download those items. Even though I have been back a couple of weeks, now, I still haven’t done that - lost of work for a couple of items. Problem is, I’m afraid I will forget about it and later panic when I can’t find those items on my current computer. Eventually I would figure it out, but when I really need something and it isn’t there, I tend to panic first and think much much later.

I'm tired and drunk and the alarm clock is going to go off a few hours drom now... I get some sleep!

- Bill

London 16A: Day 13 & 14 - Drinks & Airplanes (settling for less)

The morning after... and I feel fine. I go to the British Museum Starbucks to check my e-mail and get the blood-caffeine level up to Level Orange, then walk down to the Raindance office to talk to Elliot. Kind of dreading it. As much as I talk about conflict in scripts, I *hate* conflict in real life. I’d rather just avoid it. When I get to the office, I cool my heels for a while waiting for Elliot to finish what he’s doing, then he insist on taking me to a local café. Great - a public place. This is not looking good.

At the coffee shop, we have this innocuous conversation that seems to waltz around what he thinks he owes me and what I think he owes me. We talk about how much he wants me to come back next year and I mention how small the class is and how it would be nice to have some advertizing... or at least for them to tell me there will be no advertizing so that I can take care of that myself. I also mention that I think the 5 (FIVE!) Free classes undercut the weekend class - when a waiter serves you 5 trays of free hors d’oeuvres, then asks what you’d like to order for dinner, you probably have already had enough to eat. I bring up all of my problems politely... even timidly... trying not to create much conflict. Elliot says that preparing for the film festival, and all of the problems along the way this year (sponsors dropping out, cinema chains dropping out, etc) turned my class into less than a footnote - and he apologized for that. He wants me to come back next year at some time other than the fest to do my class... and we talk about some ways to insure a larger turn out. We also talk about some sort of deal where I would license my CDs for him to sell in the UK and give me a royalty. Seems he’s already done a test run and sold them., and he owes me $100. We leave the café so that he can show me a place that manufactures CDs for bands - and I keep thinking I haven’t pushed hard enough and we haven’t discussed payment at all.

We look at the CD stuff, swell, and I hint that I’d like to look over the numbers and see what is owed me. And Elliot says, “Of course” and we go back to the office... where we began. I am now ready to push hard to get my money - to argue and fight... but Elliot doesn’t need to be pushed. He apologizes again for the small turnout, and has one of the staff run up the numbers (without me seeing them).

Now, Elliot has told me that a majority of the class came in at half off - the made that deal to film fest pass holders... and just about anyone who would ask. I have done the math for 50% of the class price times the number of students... and I need most of that just to end up with *half* of what they usually pay me. And that’s my number - half of what they usually pay me. Usually there are 50 people in the class, this time... um, less than a third of that. So I may have to fight for my number, because it may leave them with nothing. The staff member totals what they’ve been paid, subtracts taxes, subtracts the room rate, and gives the page to Elliot... who says my exact number. Plus the $100 for the CDs they made and sold. I say, “Deal” and they pay me. Oh, and I find the envelope from the CD sales - $40 - and note that there are about 6 CDs left, and I say they can keep ‘em and sell ‘em.

We talk some more about the CD thing and ways to increase the class size and then I thank Elliot and the entire Raindance staff for a great festival and for helping me sell the CDs and have a great time at the fest. In all honesty, had the deal been teach 5 free classes and get to attend the film festival, I would have been happy. I had a great time and got to see a whole bunch of movies for free.

On the way out, I notice the piece of paper with the numbers... and realized Elliot had split the profits with me! Most people had paid full price, and even with the poor turn out, Raindance had made money off the class! Real, tangible money!

So, the Elliot part of this story had a happy ending. Not a great ending, because I only got paid half of what I usually get, but Elliot paid me what he agreed to pay me without any real problem. I think in retrospect, all of the evasiveness was due to him feeling bad that my class had fallen through the cracks while planning the film festival.

Before I leave they mention that they have a taxi that will take me to the airport tomorrow morning - it’s picking up a film maker and I’m on the way, so I have a free trip to the airport and don’t have to get up early and take the tube... except in order to pick up the filmmaker and to allow for traffic, the taxi will pick me up at 6:30am. Swell.

Because by now it’s close to dinner time, and I’m near that great fish & chips place on Poland Street, I decide to go there again. Once more, great food and great service. Not some little pieces of fish, this was like a huge whole fish! A giant serving of fries. And the homemade tartar sauce was great a second time. Once I’d finished dinner I had to get to a Starbucks to check e-mail and put up a blog entry. Mostly to check e-mail, because some stranger might be coming tonioght and have questions. Though I did a search on pubs near Holborn Tube Station and found one that got great marks that we had not been to in the past, and listed it on the blog, I had also mentioned in that blog entry that I would add more details later... and never got around to it. Though the meeting location and drinking location and time were not going to change, someone might e-mail to ask if it was still on. I needed to answer e-mails...

Except after buying my coffee (no milk!) I discovered the BT Online at this Starbucks was not working. Hey, there’s a Starbucks every other block in London, so I carried my drink to the next Starbucks. BT Online also not working here. After trying a half dozen Starbucks, it was obvious that the system was down... and obvious that I had better run back to the hotel to do a quick packing job before I jogged over to the Holborn Tube Station to drink with friends and strangers.

In my hotel room I do a quick pack - but run out of time and some things will have to be packed when I come back that night. Off to Holborn.

- Bill

London 15C: Day 11 & 12 - Class & I find a Girlfriend (Party)

There are so many people crowded to get into the club for the closing night party - hundreds of them - that Suzanne suggests we get a coffee while waiting for the line to die down. Next door to the club - a late night donut shop! A strange thing in London. In the USA we have donut shops all over (some sections of the Valley seem to have a donut store in a strip mall on every single block!), but other parts of the world have no donuts at all. Donuts are an American invention - a relic of the Great Depression. Deep fried dough was about the cheapest thing you could eat. Odd that even after the depression was over, people had developed a taste for them and they stuck around... though very few people during this financial downturn can afford a dozen Krispy Kremes.

We drink coffee and I eat *two* donuts, trying to absorb some of that wine before adding beer to it. The huge heavy bag is dragging me down, but I’m stuck with it. The donuts are dry - yesterday’s donuts, or maybe donuts made at 6am that day. They donuts are like me - should have been retired hours ago.

After we’re finished with our coffees, there is no line outside the club, so we show our ticket stubs and go in... where the crowd is. As usual, music turned up to ear-bleed, so many people packed into the room that you can’t turn around without hitting someone (and the heavy bag clips a bunch of people) and the line for drinks at the bar? Well, imagine those hundreds of people waiting for drinks! Janet and Suzanne and I split up and stand in different lines... and the race is on! I don’t think I win. But I do get some pilsner. This club is decorated Middle Eastern, so I guess they don’t serve Guiness. After we get our drinks we yell over the music to each other and I say hello to some of the Raindance staff people and some of the film makers and audience members I’d come to know. There is no place to sit - so we stand. As we get to the bottoms of our drinks, we discover that out ticket stubs *also* get us a free drink - from sponsor Absolute Vodka - Vodka mixed with... something. Hell, it’s free so we all stand in line again and snag another drink. I think they were supposed to take our tickets to prevent us from getting a second free drink, but they don’t do this - all of us still have our tickets. Though, I wouldn’t discover that until an hour later...

Because after getting my drink, I lost Janet and Suzanne in the crowded night club.

This really isn’t a problem - it’s a *party* - so I try to mingle as I casually wander through various sections of the club looking for them. A bunch of people come up to tell me how funny the steel cage match joke was (I could not tell if they’d been drinking before the awards ceremony) and most asked if I was an actor, because I had a good voice. Conversation after conversation... and then I find myself talking to the producer of REDLANDS and wondering if she had read my review and was about to poison my drink... but we just talked - I congratulated them on winning Best Debut Feature, and then said I had to split to find my friends (before she could ask me what I thought of her film, which I did not like). I finally found Janet and Suzanne, and they had found a place to sit. Just one place, so we took turns. We all had our tickets, and wondered if we could get another free drink - the bar line was only a couple of people.

One more free drink, but they took our tickets this time. Probably for the best, because Absolute was the sponsor, not whatever they were mixing it with, and the drinks were *strong*. I was glad I had those two stale donuts. After drinking most of the second drink, I’m floating. Janet and Suzanne skip to the loo, and I notice the Tall American Girl in the corner with a group of Raindance people, and wander over to say hello.

Though she was polite, for some reason she was not interested in a fat drunk guy probably twice her age who was hitting on her with zero subtlety. I wonder why? After saying goodbye, I went back to where Janet and Suzanne were standing and realized I’d made a complete ass of myself. I’m sure I wasn’t the first fat old drunk creep that hit on the Tall American Girl, but it was depressing as hell to think that I was the last. (Wait... is that some other guy talking to her now... hey, I *wasn’t* the last!) Janet suggested I try computer dating - but that’s not really the solution. I must actually find the time in my schedule to get out and find some woman to take to London next time I’m here. Every time I do something cool like this, I’m doing it alone. I need to fix that. And not with an escort who does nothing but talk about investment strategies.

Janet and Suzanne left, I talked to some of the filmmakers for a little while longer, then realized I needed to stagger back to the hotel and stagger up the stairs and get some sleep. Tomorrow would be my last day in London, and I had to settle accounts with Elliot and then head over to Holborn Tube Station to meet friends and total strangers for Drink With Bill In London Night. Great... I’m going to have to make my deal with Elliot hung over.

- Bill

London 15B: Day 11 & 12 - Class & I find a Girlfriend (Girlfriend)

After racing across town and over-shooting the restaurant by a block, I get there just in time, Suzanne and Janet are drinking wine so I order a large glass to dial down the caffeine... This is my first meal of the day, and the glass of Bordeaux I drink before we are served hits me hard. Great, I’m an easy drunk. So I order another glass to go with my meal.

I mention to Janet and Suzanne my fears that once Elliot has subtracted all of the expenses that I will go home with empty pockets. I brought a bag of CDs to sell, and that’s what I’ve been paying for meals and coffee and everything else with. I only brought a small bag of CDs because I was afraid of my bag being deemed “heavy” and the airline charges me not only for the bag, but an overweight fee as well. So I brought half of the CDs I usually bring - not knowing that they would not give me any per diem money - they always have in the past. London is not a cheap place to eat and drink. Though they are covering my hotel room, I have to pay for any phone calls, room service, and leave a tip for the maids who insisted on bringing me new towels every day, or a three page letter explaining where I could get towels if I needed them. Now, Raindance has been great about the CDs - I’ve been leaving them with an envelope for money at the T shirt & Poster table at the Raindance Café Bombshelter, and they have been selling them for me. I’ve taken no inventory, and take the money every night (so that I can buy coffee in the morning), so I’m just trusting them. The Raindance Café Bombshelter closed - with a handful of CDs and my money envelope being carted back to the Raindance Office (I hope) - but most of the CDs have sold, and my wallet is not brimming with cash. *Starbucks* wallets may be brimming with cash, though. I have what translates to maybe $300 left in my wallet after I pay the restaurant bill and take out the rest of my expenses for the stay - and would hate to think that’s all I will make after teaching 5 free classes and talking for 2 full days for the weekend class.

Janet has sent me all of the mailing list stuff she gets as a member of numerous film and writing groups - and none are promoting the 2 day class (though all have stuff about the 5 free classes). I discuss my plan of action - the 5 classes were part of the film festival. My airfare and hotel? Part of the film festival. That will not count against the weekend class. The only expense for the weekend class is that dungeon room. Janet and Suzanne think that sounds fair, and both tell me not to back down.

After the food comes, we eat and talk and laugh and then it’s time to go to the big closing night movie...

AWARDS


Before the movie starts, Elliot grabs me and asks if I would like to hand out the Best Foreign Film Award. Well, sure - wish I’d known, I would have dressed for it. He looks at my cinema tickets - I’m in the wrong cinema. The closing night film is playing on three screens, and Janet, Suzanne, and I are in one of the small cinemas. Elliot says he’ll trying to get me a ticket for the big cinema - where the awards will be. I say - hey, we need *three* tickets. I expect that will be the end of that, and someone else will hand out the BFFA - but one of the Raindance staff grabs me in the lobby and swaps out three tickets for three tickets in the main cinema. I jog up stairs to the men’s room to comb my hair and make sure I don’t have food on my face. I’m also feeling the wine a little... swell, I’m handing out awards hammered!


Our three seats are in the front row, and we watch close up as people collect their awards, then Elliot announces me, and I jump up to read the nominees, give the big dramatic pause, then announce the winner.

Except, when I open the envelope there are *two winners* - a tie! I announce both, then mention that both film makers will battle to the death in a steel cage match to see who goes home with the actual award. Gets a big laugh (everyone else must have had wine with their dinner, too) and 25 CARATS was not there, but an actor from MY SUICIDE is - in a mask - and races up to accept their half of the award. After all of the awards have been handed out, the movie begins...



MOVIE: THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE - USA - No, Soderbergh was not in attendance. Too bad, because that would have made it a much better evening. The film is non-chron, jumping all over the place... but the story just goes no place. It’s one of Soderbergh’s pocket change experimental films, and there isn’t a story to be seen. Escort (read: high class hooker) lives with a guy who is a personal trainer. He accepts her job, as long as it’s just sex. But when she develops feelings for a client (with no scenes to demonstrate this, by the way) the personal trainer guy gets jealous and leaves. Wow! That almost sounds like a plot! It’s that writer thing again - you try to make sense of nonsense and turn it into a story. Mostly, the film is a bunch of unrelated scenes with the same characters - often talking about the stock market crash and how their investments sure took a hit! When Soderbergh throws chronology out the window in a well plotted script like THE LIMEY is works really well, because we have that revenge plot to hold on to. We can sort the scenes by the plot and it all makes sense and is interesting. With something like GIRLFRIEND that has no plot, the non-chron thing becomes confusing... except it really isn’t confusing, because that would require that you *cared* about the story and characters, and here we don’t give a damn about any of them. Imagine making the life of a hooker boring! Lesson: Balance again - if the story is soft and not focused, the way you tell the story has to be strong and focused. You can’t have a fuzzy story and a fuzzy way of telling it, or you end up with nothing but fuzz. Opening night movie HUMPDAY was a million times better than GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE.

After the film, there’s a party down the street. *Not* at TYGER TYGER this time. They tell us our ticket stub is our ticket in. Okay - imagine three sold out cinemas walking down the sidewalk to the same place at the same time. Hundreds of people!

TO BE CONTINUED (in about 2 hours)

- Bill

London 15A: Day 11 & 12 - Class & I find a Girlfriend (Class)

Alarm. Wake. Shower and shave. Grab bag. Down stairs. The Starbucks isn’t open, but the Costa is. I cut across to Charring Cross Road and walk past bookstores - one with a recently broken front window, to the Charring Cross Train Station on the other side of Central London. I thought about taking a cab at one point, but I need to get the blood flowing, so it’s better to walk. I’ve allowed myself plenty of time... which is both a good and bad thing. I get to Charring Cross Station early - but can not find the side street the class is on. I keep walking around the station - looking at the buildings with storefronts that might have a theater or some other large room for classes. Nothing.

I stop to buy another coffee at a little place that tries to entice me with a full English breakfast, but I don’t have time. I have to find this classroom space. I try walking around the station again. There’s an alleyway that leads to a residential street. There is zero chance that I am teaching this class in someone’s living room, but I go down the alley to the residential street, thinking there might be offices and such *behind* the train station. But this residential street ends up the street I’m looking for... and there’s a little folding sign that says Raindance in front of one of the apartment buildings. I check the address, it’s correct. Okay, this should be interesting... but now I’m way early. I go back for a second cup of coffee - but no English breakfast... that would make me sleepy.

I go back to the apartment building a half hour before the class, go to the indicated side door, open it... to reveal a very narrow spiral staircase going down down down into hell. Oh, and it smells like piss. At the bottom of the horror movie staircase is a basement that smells less like piss, and that’s where I’m holding t he class. It’s a “rehearsal space” - so there’s an upright piano, some props, and a rack of costumes. Wow! I can play dress up! But I can’t show clips, because there is no DVD player or monitor.

Okay, this is partially my fault. Though I requested this stuff in a couple of e-mails, Elliot sent me an e-mail yesterday asking if I still needed the equipment, and because I am developing a lousy attitude about this class, I ignored it. How many times do I have to request equipment? Problem is - I really should have confirmed it. Though all kinds of things are making me angry about this class - no brochures, no posts to UK screenwriting groups, Elliot continuing to tell me how broke they are - when Elliot is trying to be helpful and double checking things I’m being a dismissive asshole. And I’m *still* being an asshole, because I snap at the Raindance folks who have volunteered to help run the class in exchange for sitting in, that there’s no damned DVD player. They get on the phone (which requires climbing the dungeon steps to get a signal) and call Elliot, and he rushes over with all of the equipment. And still being an asshole, I do noth thank him. You see, I *expected* the equipment to be there waiting for me.

This is the smallest class I have ever taught. After 5 classes of 140-200 people, standing room only, I hand out my 15 syllabuses and start talking. You might think that a smaller class is less work than a larger class, but it’s really much more work. Instead of being part of a large group, people become individuals - and everyone wants individual attention. They ask about the specifics of their script, they interrupt more. This is not anything against the students - it’s the nature of a small class. All of the questions were good ones, and it was a lively and interactive class. But I couldn’t just run on automatic, I had to think on my feet and *work*. A larger class where I would have made more money would have been less work. Funny how it works out like that. Bob McKee can do a completely automatic lecture to 300 people at $600 a head and you can’t ask questions or make eye contact or even pee unless it’s an assigned break... but I have a room with just over a dozen people and I have to *work*.

The class goes great, lots of smart people, and Saturday night instead of going to see movies, I sit in a Starbucks and burn a stack of CDs with the other class materials and a bunch of screenplays on PDF. Sunday morning I sleep later, always a mistake, and have to race to get to class. Less time quaffing coffee means it takes me a while to rev up, but I get the rhythm and the day zooms by. Sunday has a couple of longer clips designed to give my voice a rest, but the clips are really good - the first ten minutes of GODFATHER PART 2 and a ten minute cartoon from FANTASIA 2000.

Saturday I went more than an hour over time to cover all of the material and answer all of the questions, but Sunday I have to leave when the class is over because it is closing night of the festival - and I’ve snagged a ticket for Janet’s friend Suzanne (Janet has a ticket) and the three of us are going to have dinner together before the movie and party. One of the Raindance staff (Rory - great guy) comes in close to the end of the class to tell me that Janet e-mail me a slightly incorrect location for the restaurant, and gives me the actual location. So class ends... and I still end up talking for almost half an hour while trying to pack up and leave. There are always people who have last minute questions, and know this is the last chance they have to ask me (except, or course, e-mail - send me your questions!). So I end up *racing* from Charring Cross Station to the restaurant location, overshoot by a block, and have to double back. Pisser is - I have this bag with my 20 lb book of class materials on my shoulder for the rest of the night.

TO BE CONTINUED (in about 2 hours)

- Bill

London Interlude 5: This Is Great Cinematography!

I mentioned in my review of MOTHS that it was the best shot film I saw at Raindance, and just stumbled on the trailer on YouTube.



The cinematographer is Maura Morales Bergmann - when I first posted this, and first posted the review, I neglected to give her credit. I included this film in an article for the January 2010 issue of Script Magazine, and *did* credit her in the article.

(I'm running this again, because I did not finish the next "chapter" and need something to run today.)

- Bill

London 14B: Day 10 - Dinner Party

So I climb the stairs down to the cinema, still not knowing where my class is tomorrow morning and wondering if I can stay awake (after 4 hours of sleep) for two movies made by people who have taken classes I taught. The more I think about it, the more I worry that if I stay for DEADLINE I won’t be able to jog over to the Raindance Café Bombshelter and find the staff member who knows where my class is. So, I decide to skip DEADLINE - sorry! Maybe I’ll catch the movie at a festival in the USA.


MOVIE: THE DINNER PARTY - Australia - Based on a true story about a group of 20 somethings who attend a dinner party in Australia... which ends in murder. While I was writing up this entry the writer-director (Scott Murden) e-mailed me to say that he was enjoying the blog entries about Raindance and looking forward to reading what I had to say about his film... and to be honest. Though I didn’t say this in my reply - I am usually too damned honest. Has he read any of the stories or reviews of films made by friends of mine? So, Scott, fasten your seat belt. What I’ve decided to do, is not just to say what I liked and disliked about DINNER PARTY, but to try to find some writing lessons in there while I’m at it.

I know from the post film Q&A that it was a true indie film - made on a low budget. Not a Hollywood low budget - a real live we-have-no-money low budget. That is one of the great things about the Raindance festival - they actually focus on independent films, not some movie star multi-million pet project from a studio indie label. Also, I know that the financing fell out at one point... and they made the movie anyway. So it’s an accomplishment that this film exists - the 35mm mumblecore films and that feature length Obsession commercial had money for things like lights and lenses, this film probably had to be creative just to get images on tape (or card or hard drive or whatever).

The story concept was a smart move for an indie film - most of the story takes place in a single house, but instead of some crazed maniac chopping off teenager’s heads, the film is about an unstable young woman who plans on inviting all of her friends over for a dinner party, with a murder-suicide as desert. Only problem is - her boyfriend isn’t in on it. He’s going to be murdered and doesn’t know it. Great dramatic premise for a central location story.

The movie opens with police arresting or interrogating dinner party guests and the hostess, Angela (Laura Cox). Though this has nothing to do with writing - I remember some ragged cinematography and shot choice and editing in the beginning of the film (and there may have been some later, as well) - one thing to remember if you are making your own movie with very little movie is that you can’t do too much planning. You can always change things if you need to, but having shot lists and story boards and a real idea of what the shots and look of your film is going to help when you find yourself needing to shoot a page and a half in an hour because you are losing light or something. You can plan your shots at your leisure before filming or when you have a whole cast and crew waiting on you and the equipment is due back in a few hours. Knowing what the shot is, why you are using this lens and this angle and this camera move (and what this shot will make the audience feel) is critical - especially for the opening scenes. There was some really good camera work later in the film - especially the Angela-Joel in the trees stuff - but that was at the end of the movie. Just as the first ten pages of your script need to be as smooth and professional and typo-free as possible, the first ten minutes of your film need to impress the heck out of the audience (which includes film buyers and film distribs). First impressions. If the first ten minutes looks like it cost millions, we’ll cut you all kinds of slack later on.

After the police, we flash back to the events leading up to the dinner party and the dinner party itself. Somewhere a decision was made to remove “audience superiority”, and I think that was a mistake. All of the characters go to the dinner party knowing that Angela is going to kill her boyfriend and then herself. Audience superiority is when the audience knows something that the characters do not, and it’s a great suspense building tool. If we see a character put poison in a glass on wine, and then set the glass in front of our hero, the audience will be screaming at the screen every time the hero picks up the glass to take a sip - the audience knows something the character does not. Here we have a mix of dinner party guests, and all of them know what’s going to happen next. It might have been better if only one of them had known and the others slowly discover what’s about to happen - because it gives the characters something to accomplish and creates some suspense... will they figure it out in time and put a stop to it? Always be thinking about the viewer’s emotions in your script - not only what are they supposed to be feeling in this scene, but how is this scene *creating* those emotions in the viewer? We don’t want the audience to just watch the film, we want them to *experience* the film.

I probably have a half dozen very different script tips that call screenwriting a Balancing Act - and for everything we take away, we must add something... and vice versa. The great thing about the concept is that the story can mostly take place in the house at the dinner party - but that means we have taken away all of those locations and cut out of that house... we are stuck there. Which means the things we have in the house have to be stronger to keep the balance. When I was writing VICTIM OF DIRECTOR (which was called IMPLICATED back then), I knew that keeping most of the story in the murder victim’s house meant I had to ramp up everything else: there needed to be more plot twists and more suspense and more big character moments and in the case of that story - more nekkid scenes - than in some story where excitement and variety could come from changing locations at the end of every scene. Having DINNER PARTY mostly take place in one house... and in the dining room of that house... puts all kinds of pressure on the other elements in the story.

The six main characters (with one exception) may have enough character for a story where all kinds of exciting things are happening, but when much of the film is just people sitting around a table having a dinner conversation, they needed to be more clearly defined and more distinct. Each really needed a very different point of view, and different vocabularies and attitudes and even looks. The stand out character is Freddy (Kai Harris), who gets all of the great lines and has an active role in the story - he knows what is going on and makes some effort to confront Angela and stop her from killing Joel. But even this character could have used a little work. If *all* of the characters had been at his level, the film would have worked better.

One of the reasons why his character stands out is because he gets some good dramatic scenes with Angela about the murder-suicide plan. Even though the rest of the dinner party guests know about the murder-suicide, they barely discuss it. No one seems to have any strong opinions about it except Freddy. That’s a problem - if a movie is *about* a murder-suicide plan, it needs to be *about* the murder-suicide plan. Much of the dinner conversation was normal, kind of boring, dinner table conversation. As if they all accepted that the night would end with two of the dinner party dead - no big deal. If you told me that the film was mostly improvised, that would make sense - it had that small talk feel of an improvised film. Instead, this should have been a debate about murder-suicide... and a *veiled* debate because the killer and victim are sitting at the table. That would have given the film more drama and more conflict and really made it *about* murder-suicides. Each character should have been given a character-specific opinion and have them hash it out as they eat. Argue. Get in each other’s faces. With only a handful of characters, each could have had a different and very strong opinion on the subject. “Do you have the right to kill someone just because you want to die?” “Hey, when my aunt died, she had her dog buried with her... they had to put the dog to sleep first.” “None of this is any of our business - people control their own lives and we shouldn’t interfere.” “Suicide is a sin - only God should decide when we die.” “So that drunk on the road is God doing his work?” “What if someone is in extreme pain?” “Like in the hospital? You could pull the plug on someone you love?” “What if it’s not physical pain, what if it’s emotional pain?” “All broken hearts heal eventually.” “Not all.” And about a million other things that can turn into big dramatic discussions on the subject of murder-suicide.

Another aspect of this is the characters relationships with each other. If you are inviting people to your suicide, you aren’t inviting a bunch of total stranger or casual acquaintances - these people are your closest friends... Yet, we didn’t get the feeling that they were close friends. Though Freddy brings his roommate Matt (Sam Lyndon), these guys seem more like people who live together because one of them answered an ad on Craigs List. And Freddy is so antagonistic to Angela you wonder why she allowed him to be invited. I wanted more exploration of the relationships and how that connected to the murder-suicide desert.

And what about the guest’s responsibility? Though Matt goes to the party to try to stop the murder, once he gets there he talks and eats. Only Freddy, who starts out thinking he’ll just watch two people die, ends up thinking he has any responsibility for what happens (though other characters later discuss it when the party is over). That’s another subject that could have been hashed out in nice dramatic scenes around the table. Really hashed out, not just brought up and abandoned. Though some of this is in the film, it isn’t strong enough for the single location scenario. It needed to be big enough to balance out being unable to cut to another location. The film’s great scenes take place in the bathroom, where Freddy confronts Angela about some hot shots of heroin designed to cause an OD, and the later discovery of the needles by another character. The rest of the film needed to be at that level... that was great stuff!

There’s another great scene near the refrigerator - also a conflict scene. I think when it comes down to it, without the ability to cut away to some other location or character, the story needed more juicy conflict to keep it going.

The film this most reminded me of was RIVER’S EDGE, also based on a true story, about a group of high school kids who discover their friend murdered his girlfriend and do nothing about it. But that film really focused on whether they *should* do something about it, and some kids were just apathetic while others were afraid of the authorities and some didn’t want to rat out a friend... and the relationships of the kids disintegrates... until one realizes that he must turn his friend in. Oddly, there’s a character named “Sky” in DINNER PARTY and Ione Skye played the female lead in RIVER’S EDGE (unless you count the blow up doll).

One of the issues with characters that are a little sketchy is that it opens the door for some one-note performances, and Angela is a complete bitch 24/7. Aside from an over-all character problem, this creates an interesting story problem: why the hell did Joel hook up with her in the first place? Though there’s some footage at the end of the two in love, and some footage up front of them meeting, there is nothing here that would make me believe Joel would want to move in with this bitch... and that makes me question the reality of the story, and also think that Joel is an idiot who maybe deserves to be killed. I’m not sure that was what they had in mind. The Angela character needs to be *attractive* and interesting and someone you would want to move in with... someone you would want to die with. That’s not a bitch, that’s a seductive and manipulative person. Someone who is dangerous because they can lure you into doing things you don’t want to do. The meeting scene is in a bar where the two dance - but there isn’t much in the way of conversation between the two. Nothing that would show us why these two are meant for each other (or, at least, why Joel would think she’s the one to hook up with in a bar filled with women to dance with). I wanted to see (and hear) the attractive side of Angela - and have that be a part of her character throughout the film.

An important thing with any script in any genre is that the characters be well rounded. You should know why your protagonist is *wrong* and why your antagonist is *right*. Here, we only see why Angela is wrong - completely wrong - and that makes us question why Joel hooked up with her in the first place. We really need to see how wonderful Angela is, and how she can charm anyone into doing anything. That would allow Joel to fall in love with her, her friend to help her buy the hot shots of heroin, and her to be the perfect hostess even when everyone knows her plan is to murder Joel and then maybe kill herself. Funny how these murder suicide pacts usually end with the murder and never get around to the suicide.

As the party winds down, and Joel slumps over in his chair and needs to be helped upstairs, the guests leave to their apartments to discuss what they could have done and should have done... while one character calls the police. Like in RIVER’S EDGE, one of the characters realizes they can’t just be bystanders to a murder, they must do something. And that leads us back to the opening arrests and that flashback of Angela and Joel in happier times. THE DINNER PARTY has a great idea and some great scenes with Freddy, but I wish the other characters had been as fleshed out as Freddy’s character and that there was more debate about the murder-suicide. As a first film made for very little money, it shows promise, and it *was* selected as one of the five films in the Best First Feature category. I hope this leads to some more films from Scott with bigger budgets.

AFTER THE FILM: I am dead tired and worried about finding my class the next morning, and walk out of the cinema like a zombie. I say goodnight to Janet and walk to the Raindance Café Bombshelter, where I find the staff member who knows where my class is! As she’s about to leave! She draws me a map, and it’s near Charring Cross Station, which is a longish walk. I thank her and head back to my hotel to try to get 8 hours of sleep before the class... but remember I have to burn CDs for the class. Hell, I’ll skip movies and do that tomorrow night. I need the sleep!

- Bill