Fiendish Meme

I got tagged by Rachael on this furiously difficult meme, reproduced below (like Mr Campbell, I was hoping to avoid this one. Curses!)

Find a song that sums up what you think it means to be a writer and post the lyrics on your blog and why you've chosen it. NB: It doesn't have to be your favourite song, it just has to express how you feel about writing and/or being a writer. It can be literal, metaphorical, about a particular form or aspect of writing – whatever you want. Then tag 5 others to do the same (reprint these instructions).

Blimey. The best I can think of is this Mclusky lyric (from Collagen Rock) which just about sums up the plight of the perennial spec monkey:

The little kid pissed on the big kid’s porch
He thinks he’s amazing, he’s rubbish of course.

The only problem with this song is that the lyric above is where the writing analogy grinds to a halt, as it further mentions bands with ‘fake tits’. Ahem.

So I’ve alighted on this from Kevin Drew, which is probably something to do with posting off my Red Planet entry:

Well it’s gonna be really hard when we get to the end
It’s gonna be really hard when we get to the end
Well you love the start but it’s really just to begin
It’s gonna be really hard when we get to the end.

But don’t forget what you felt.

If there’s anyone out there who hasn’t been tagged with this thing, then consider yourself ‘it’.

Friday Night Muzak - Mclusky

There's no better way to end the week than with a smidgeon of punk rock and some ubiquitous instrument trashing cats...

Five Things I’ve Learnt This Week, Part 1

1. The word ‘edutainment’ (if it really can be classified as a word) shouldn’t be permitted under any circumstance.
2. Riding a unicyle in an office environment is not the brightest of ideas (especially if you’ve never ridden one before). But then I read this, and everything seemed right with the world.
3. I now know what a hagedorn needle is.
4. My resting pulse is 55 and my temperature is 34.4 C. Jesus – basking reptiles have higher temperatures (is there a doctor in the house? I feel a little peaky).
5. My iPod is possessed, but in a good way – who would’ve thought that songs by Harold Budd, Shellac, Michael Nyman, The Carpenters and Mclusky would sound as if they were meant to be seen in the same room together.

And er, that’s it. Move along now, nothing to see here.

Moan-a-thon

Now that my Red Planet and RISE submissions are out of the way, I can get back to doing what I do best: watching a whole load of really crap TV. Hooray! And first out of the blocks is Hole in the Wall – the ‘gameshow’ where celebrities have to force themselves Tetris-like through a variety of holes or risk being dunked in the drink. I lasted five minutes before I became acutely aware that the show is merely a ploy to drain your IQ so you are mentally unable to switch channels, thereby ensuring that you stay tuned for Strictly Come Dancing (or Celebrity Ham Twirling as it’s known here at Chipster Towers). Shows like Hole in the Wall make you yearn for the golden age of television, where Mr Blobby and the malevolent evil that is Cilla Black presided colossus-like over the Saturday night schedule. As Dale Winton says, “Join me next week for more celebrities and more holes.” Can’t wait.That said, Hole in the Wall wasn’t the stupidest thing I’ve seen on teevee recently – that honour goes to Guy Richie’s Revolver, which wasn’t of course made for television, but hey, who's splitting hairs? The only essential difference between Hole in the Wall and Revolver is that Hole in the Wall is knowingly dumb, whereas Revolver is dumb masquerading as clever, which is in fact even worse than plain old dumb (with Luc Besson contributing to proceedings, you know you’re in for a veritable festival of stupid anyway). Quite what the screenplay is aiming to say is anyone’s guess: characters supposedly inhabit each other’s heads to the point of mind numbing existential tedium, ill-thought out symbols litter the film like so much landfill (twelve dollar bills, half a crucifixion, endlessly boring games of chess), Ray Liotta chews up the scenery (in his underpants mostly, not really my definition of viewing pleasure), and there are swathes of entirely pointless pieces of animation. I was going to mention the long and pointless voiceover and the acres of repetitive dialogue, but I simply can’t be bothered (is it just me, or does the lost art of the voiceover seem to be making a resurgence of late? Most everything I see at the moment features a metric tonne of the stuff: Lost in Austen anyone? The major unifying thread of all the shows I’ve seen recently to feature voiceover is that it’s just not needed).

So, to summarise: Revolver – the only film in living memory that would have been improved with an appearance from Andi Peters in a skin tight Lycra bodysuit.

Submissions

My Red Planet and RISE submissions are packed up and ready to go, which means I no longer have to tinker with them until I go all cross-eyed and unnecessary. The script I’m submitting for RISE has been rattling around in my hard drive for a while now, so a week of work to make it ship shape (me hearties) seemed reasonable. However, my Red Planet entry was entirely written from scratch, which meant I had to call on the duumvirate of John Soanes and the still blogless Caroline, who both offered up some decent tweaks (at least they didn’t say it was shite, which is the reaction I usually expect). I also called upon Mr Voodoo himself, Adrian Reynolds, who made a crack about The Bill and the word ‘plethora’, which made me realise I had some rewriting to do. So, thanks to all.

With the first ten pages of my RP entry this year, there were at least a couple of things I wanted to do:

1) Establish the character of my protagonist, and
2) Establish the milieu of the story

However, I wanted to do this in the context of scenes that kept the story moving without becoming bogged down in great big tar pits of exposition. Two films I’ve seen recently helped inform my thinking here – There Will Be Blood, and The Silence of the Lambs. There Will Be Blood's opening fifteen minutes are entirely soundless, and are almost exclusively devoted to establishing the character of the protagonist, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis, giving yet another scenery chewing turn). Whilst mining for silver, Plainview falls down a mine shaft, badly injuring his leg. However, this doesn’t stop him from dragging himself to the nearest prospecting office, where the staff assess his claim as Plainview lies on the floor in front of them, his leg shattered. Whilst keeping the narrative moving, this tells you all you need to know about his character – what’s more, not a single word has been spoken.

With that in mind, I looked at the opening twenty minutes of The Silence of the Lambs, which again, is a fantastic example of how to establish character – however, where There Will Be Blood is almost exclusively concerned with the character of Plainview, The Silence of the Lambs is slightly different inasmuch as there’s one helluva lot of potentially labyrinthine narrative that needs to be covered off. As with most films, I find the first twenty minutes or so of ‘set-up’ to be the most intriguing, but with The Silence of the Lambs, perhaps it’s worth taking a few minutes to figure out how screenwriter Ted Tally did it so well:

* Clarice Starling tackles an obstacle course at the FBI Academy (we know she’s at the FBI Academy as it’s printed on her sweatshirt). The fact that Clarice seems to be running the course by herself gives us an early indication of her character: she’s enthusiastic, ambitious, eager to impress, perhaps even a little desperate.

* After being interrupted mid-course with a message that Jack Crawford (her boss) wants to see her, Clarice jogs back to the Academy , where she steps into a lift with nine red shirted FBI trainees – the fact that these trainees are all men is no accident. When Clarice steps out of the lift some seconds later, the men have all gone. This is the milieu that Clarice finds herself in (the scene is repeated some time later as Clarice stands in a funeral home surrounded by male police officers, just in case we didn’t get the message first time round).

* Clarice walks into Crawford’s office, but he isn’t there. Clarice turns and... that’s the end of the title sequence. Five minutes in, and already we have a fairly good indication of Clarice’s character and the environment in which she finds herself.

Subsequent scenes in Crawford’s office and at the Baltimore State Forensic Hospital keep the story moving forward whilst fleshing out the character of Clarice. From her conversation with Dr Chilton, we learn that she is resourceful and quick witted, even when Chilton tries to unnerve her with a lurid account of the serial killer Hannibal Lecter’s extreme violence. In her interview with Lecter, Lecter mercilessly dissects Clarice’s character (“You’re not more than one generation removed from poor white trash, are you?”), which again gives us some valuable background. And then – horrors! – a flashback to Clarice’s childhood, where it transpires that Lecter’s description of her background was not entirely correct, but pretty damn close all the same.

It’s perhaps worthwhile to note that it’s the secondary characters within the narrative that give us the descriptions of Clarice’s background – the qualities of character that will help Clarice later in the narrative are demonstrated by her in her interactions with Crawford, Chilton and Lecter (a combination of guile, intelligence and ambition). Twenty minutes in, and you know all you need to know about Clarice Starling (even down to the type of car she drives, which is seen as another signifier of her many motivations). And what’s more, the narrative is up and running. The two are pulled along together hand in hand – we know that Clarice is ambitious enough not to let her objective slip from view, and it’s this that initially provides forward momentum.

It’s a superb opening – not that I’m saying that my RP entry comes anywhere close, but if you’re going to be inspired by something, it may as well be something exceptional.

Factory/Warehouse, Part 2

More from the Factory/Warehouse chaps below. Caveat emptor, people - not that there's any money changing hands, but you get the drift...
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Dear all.

Having various people ask us several good questions, below are various points you should consider to be absolutely clear about what we are offering.

This opportunity is really for any writer but was put out particularly for all new writers who wished to get their work seen by some of the top people in the industry. Myself and my friend/colleague Ben have found ourselves in the unusual position due to previous dealings with some agents to be able to put forward peoples work. Because of our relationship with them we know what projects have interest and that, unlike most scripts that land on their desk, ours will actually be read and considered. They have explicitly not allowed us to mention who the agencies are until further on when it will be important to know who the actors might be so we can try to work toward, what one hopes will be, successful projects.

Once again we must stress that there is no money involved initially. Should the project be packaged then yes of course WGGB payment terms will apply.

The 'Adaption' email states that you should 'think' of these actors when considering writing the Rebecca adaptation. It does not say these 'are' the actors who have agreed to play the part. Any actor would not commit to this unless they have a script to agree upon and this is what this is all about.

Having worked in the business in various capacities and having several writer friends I understand how hard it can be to even get seen despite the level of talent, this is why we wanted to offer the chance to writers. At the end of the day if the writer succeeds then we do, if they don't we don't. We can only offer a couple of guarantees; firstly that if you are a good writer and create a strong script it will get read by the people who are interested in the project and can make a difference, secondly should they approve we then have the ability to package a product and of course offer proper rates. It is doing things back to front, I do appreciate that, but it is a rare chance to put something forward and have it read.

Please have in mind that this is the first time this has been done so all relevant questions and queries are appreciated.

Richard S

Brooked

Contains spoilers for Mr Brooks.

Since the 1970s, the writing team of Bruce Evans and Raynold Gideon have sought to create the perfect script with each collaboration. Academy Award winner Kevin Costner believes they achieved their goal with their most recent project, Mr Brooks.

“Costner was incredibly complimentary,” remembers Bruce Evans, co-writer and director of the upcoming Mr Brooks... “He said, “I’ve read hundreds of scripts in my life and only four perfect ones. This is one of them.” (Script, Volume 13, Number 3, May/June 2007).

Are you quite sure about that, Kevin? Are you quite sure?

Just imagine for one second that your shower has sprung a leak and water is seeping through the ceiling below into your kitchen. Not good. So, after consulting the trusty Yellow Pages, you call a plumber, who duly turns up. You need to pop out for an hour, so you leave the plumber to it – the guy’s a professional, right? You trust him to do a good job – after all, he’s done this sort of thing before; the man knows what he’s doing.

You get back later to find that your plumber has ripped out the shower from upstairs and has relocated it in your lounge using nothing more than a plastic bucket with a hole in the bottom and the crazy magic of gravity. When you enquire what happened to the shower upstairs, he replies that it was old and needed replacing. And anyway – isn’t it more convenient to have a shower downstairs?

Brought to you by the power of crap analogy, welcome to the world of Mr Brooks.

Bruce Evans and Raynold Gideon were the adapters/ screenwriters of Stand By Me, a film that Script rightly describes as “a standout among the classics.” So what the devil were they thinking when they cooked up a film such as Mr Brooks, which is so brain implodingly bad it’s difficult to know where to start?

Kevin Costner plays the titular Mr Brooks, a seemingly happy and successful family man. But there’s a problem: Brooks is a serial killer. And what’s more, he likes it. Well, not Brooks per se, but his ebullient alter ego, Marshall (William Hurt on autopilot). Brooks’s problems start when he murders two dancers with a penchant for having sex with the curtains open; Brooks is photographed in the aftermath of the crime, and is blackmailed by a Mr Smith who rather bizarrely wants ‘in’ on Brooks’s next murder. At that point, at least thirty seven subplots of such stunning silliness drop in uninvited to turn the entire film into a convergence of tangled narratives that lead us precisely nowhere:

* Demi Moore plays Tracy Atwood, the (highly unlikely) cop who’s after Brooks. Atwood is in the midst of a bad tempered divorce from her second husband, whose financial demands upon her seem excessive – that is, until Brooks and Marshall discover that Atwood is a millionaire many times over. This fact alone seems to motivate Brooks to kill Atwood’s husband and his lawyer, an action that inadvertently sets up Atwood as a suspect (only it doesn’t, not really). What does Atwood’s financial status have to do with the main narrative thrust, or anything else for that matter? Absolutely nothing at all. There’s an effort to toss a ticking clock into proceedings, but the device is used in such a convoluted fashion that the detail floats over your head (and who cares about a ticking clock in a subplot anyway? Wouldn’t it better to shoehorn it into the main narrative, where Mr Brooks and Mr Smith drive pointlessly around town looking for someone to kill (which they never actually get around to doing)?).

* Atwood spends a good part of the film being hunted by an escaped convict – a packing slip in Mr Smith’s empty apartment (the contents having been shipped out by Mr Brooks and the slip planted there knowing full well Atwood would find it) leads her inadvertently to this guy’s lair, where they indulge in a boringly filmed shoot-out. Again, what does this have to do with the main narrative? Absolutely nothing at all.

* Most pointless of all is the subplot that concerns Brooks’s daughter, Jane, who has returned from college to admit to her parents that 1) one day she’d like to take over pop’s super-exciting box manufacturing business, and that 2) she’s pregnant. What she neglects to tell them is that there was a murder at her college shortly before she bailed out back home. Suspecting that his daughter has inherited his psychopathic make-up, Brooks flies halfway across the country to Jane’s college and commits a copycat murder, thereby providing his daughter with an alibi (of sorts). This subplot is concluded when Jane stabs her father in the throat with a pair of scissors, thereby confirming his worst fears. But wait: Brooks’s death is all a dream! I’m afraid that I simply do not have the words to describe just quite how staggeringly stupid and inept this entire subplot is.

All bitching aside, if anyone can explain to me exactly what on earth any of these subplots have to do with the main thrust of the film (if indeed there is one), then you’re welcome to my copy of Script in which Bruce Evans and Raynold Gideon recount how they got Mr Brooks off the ground (the one with the rather fetching picture of Randall Wallace on the cover). And if an entire rack of pointless subplots doesn’t do it for you, you might like to ponder the fact that the film resurrects this hoary old scene. Sheesh!

Stand By Me is a great film; Mr Brooks is unmitigated, unfocussed tosh. Weirdly, the one thing both films have in common is that they’re from the same writing team. If I was able to hark back to my crap plumbing analogy at this point, believe me, I would; however Mr Brookes is so bad, I’m pretty certain I’m going to have to think of an analogy that’s even barrel scrapingly worse than that.

Factory/Warehouse

You may well have seen all the ballyhoo over on Shooting Pople regarding a script call made by someone calling themselves 'The Script Factory'. I responded to the original posting, and got this message back today, which I'm offering up below. A lot of work required over the next month! I won't be partaking, and I suspect that not many others will either, but hey ho - who am I to complain?

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Dear writers,

Thank you for your interest in these projects. My apologies for the group e-mail but as you can imagine we have had quite a response from our posting thus it would be too time consuming to do individual responses. Below is a list of several novels that currently are of interest. As stated in the posting we have contacts with a couple of high profile agents who have discussed these projects with their clients and would be keen to read any submissions that we put forward. At this stage there is, unfortunately, no development money but this is an excellent opportunity to have your work read by people at the very top of the industry who actually want to make the project that you have worked on. As long as the agent and their client agree to the project, we will be in a position to package it and offer Equity rates.

There a three projects that we are looking to start with.

These consist of the following -

1. A modern adaptation of Daphne Du Mauriers Rebecca
Feature film
Leads roles think -
Ralph Fiennes to play Max De Winter
Naomi Watts as 2nd Mrs De Winter

Rebecca modern adaptation we will need
- 10 line summary
- 10-15 page treatment
- 20-30 pages of script

2. Adaptation of John Masefields Dead Ned and Alive and Kicking Ned

12 Part mini series for TV
Dead Ned/ Alive and kicking Ned we will need:
- 10 line summary
- 10-15 page treatment
- 1st episode (To give you a feel it should be written as if a BBC period drama)

3. Adaptation of J.Meade Faulkners Moonfleet
6 Part mini series
Moonfleet we will need
- 10 line summary
- 10-15 page treatment
- 1st episode(Again the feel should be written as if a BBC period drama)

Please feel free to choose one that suits you best . If you find you would like to do more then that is entirely up to you. The deadline for the first round of submissions will be the 13th of October. Once again due to the volume it may be impossible to reply to everyone individually but we will let you know if you are offered the chance to present a full script or if what you have done is not what they are after. Once we have been though everyones ideas we will chose to work from a maximum of 3 working scripts from each film/tv project to move forward with. Your interpratation of the projects and the artistic direction you choose to go in is entirely up to you, if you chose to stay close to the stories or venture quite far from them in your adaptation that is at your discretion. The only real criteria is that the projects are exciting, innovative and well written. Not too much to ask for I am sure!

Also could all future responses be sent to the e-mail address scriptwarehouse@yahoo.co.uk as we have discovered that the script_factory e-mail address is very similar to the name of a company that we have no affiliation with, we would not like to mislead anyone. Best of luck and I look forward to reading your submissions.
Richard S

Schooled

Contains spoilers for Half Nelson

Peter Bradshaw in Tuesday’s Guardian (here) picks his favourite films about school (and you can too: simply go to www.teachers.tv/movies and do your thang), but very obviously leaves out one of the best (if not the best): Half Nelson. To be honest, I don’t share Bradshaw’s enthusiasm for the genre. However, he believes (rightly, I think) that the school environment lends itself brilliantly to big, significant themes. However, as we’re talking about kids and education here and all the dull worthiness that that can conjure up, the tendency is to make moralising old flap such as Dangerous Minds. As for Freedom Writers and Renaissance Man (which isn’t about school as such, but you get my drift), I’ve done my level best to avoid them. Films about school? No thanks, teach.

So why Half Nelson? Broken Social Scene contribute a hefty wedge of the soundtrack, so I was intrigued as to how the filmmakers were going to use already recorded songs (brilliantly, as it turns out). But the soundtrack is only a small part of what makes this film so good. Ryan Gosling plays Dan, a history teacher working in inner city Brooklyn – so far, so Dangerous Minds, but don’t run away screaming just yet. Dan’s major issue is that he is a major crack and cocaine user, a fact that strongly conflicts with his fiercely liberal ideals. When he is caught smoking crack in the school toilets after a basketball game by Drey (Shareeka Epps), a brilliantly subtle, elliptical relationship between the two develops. If we were in Dangerous Games territory, then this initial discovery would have played out in a rigid, three act structure with much sturm und drang plastered on like so much theatrical make-up. To Ryan Fleck’s and Anna Boden’s credit, they go absolutely nowhere near where you would expect a film like this to go. Even the plot outline on Wikipedia makes things seem a little more schematic and hard edged than it actually is.

The dynamic between Dan and Drey and the characters that enter their respective orbits is what keeps things moving forward here. Drey’s brother is in jail after selling drugs for Frank, a neighbourhood dealer – in his own way, Frank attempts to look out for Drey by recruiting her for his business, a fact that Dan takes exception to. The problem is, as Dan knows only too well, is that his stance is hugely hypocritical. After Dan is fired (a scene that takes place entirely off camera), Drey resolves to turn things round herself, without Dan's help, and most notably, without Frank's.

There’s so much in this film to enjoy (even the cinematography, which is defiantly rough and unfocussed in parts), it’s almost a crime. Sure beats watching Danny DeVito teach Hamlet, that’s for sure.

Austened

On paper, the prospect of Lost in Austen must have seemed like a pretty good bet. Into the ITV marketing blender went Life on Mars, Being John Malkovich and Bridget Jones – add a dollop of high concept and a hugely intrusive voiceover, and there you have it: television for that supposed demographic who gather round the television supping Lambrini and being ‘carefree’. So: obviously not designed for the likes of me (I’m more of a Special Brew and swearing at passers-by type of guy). However, my wife – who laps up any type of costume drama going – avoided it like the plague. In terms of viewing figures for Lost in Austen, this might be prove to be a significant fact as people desert it in favour of more demanding fare, such as Rory and Paddy’s Great British Adventure (that’s a joke, by the way).

That said, at least Rory and Paddy are actually going somewhere. I lost patience with Lost in Austen after forty minutes, as it didn’t seem to be doing or saying anything. Once the realisation struck that there was another three hours of this stuff to sit through, I went elsewhere. The only conclusion I can draw from that is that Lost in Austen isn’t as 'high concept' as it likes to think it is.

Consider the set up: bank clerk Amanda Price finds a portal into the fictional world of Pride and Prejudice in her bathroom – she enters the world of the novel at the start point and immediately begins to inadvertently subvert this fictional world by attracting the eye of Bingley (nice but dim), thereby disrupting Mrs Bennet’s plans to marry off her gaggle of daughters to the first big pile of bank notes that wanders past. The only problem here is that there is absolutely nothing at stake. Price (herself a fictional construct) is fannying about in a fictional world where the worst that can happen is – what exactly? That Mr Darcy ends up marrying someone other than Elizabeth Bennet? Why does this matter, and more to the point, who cares? And if Amanda Price has entered the novel at its outset, who’s writing it? Jane Austen herself? In which case, perhaps she’s having some type of weird Georgian psychotic episode as she imagines a future Hammersmith where people obsess about Jane Austen novels to the extent that they start having their own psychotic episodes where they believe that they are in fact interlopers in Austen’s own fictional world? With this type of brain-boiling logic on show, the more I watched the more I became convinced that the only explantion as to what the hell was going on was that Price was a raving lunatic – and watching what are apparently the romantic delusions of a demented bank clerk does not make entertaining television in my book.

All these meta-questions would be interesting if posed by someone like Charlie Kaufmann, but judging by the second episode preview, we’re going to get more of the same, i.e., Price trying to guide the course of the novel through to its ‘rightful’ conclusion – and where’s the fun in that? Like a great deal of high concept cinematic guff, in pitch format (forty words hurriedly garbled to an ITV executive) Lost in Austen’s premise sounds pretty good. However, in its execution you start to wonder exactly what the point of it is. Perhaps a gallon of Lambrini might have helped.

Pitch

This just in from the Writer's Guild Bulletin (thanks to Mister G, as usual).

Son of a Pitch - Pitching Competition

It's that time of year again, plans are afoot for the next International Screenwriters' Festival (likely to take place in early July 2009) and a call for entries has been released for the very popular pitching competition. The competition, which is in association with 4Talent, will run from 5pm on Monday 8th September until 5pm on Friday 28th November 2008. After which, ten lucky finalists will be chosen to come to the SWF'09, take part in a pitching masterclass before standing up in front of a live audience and pitch that idea to a panel of industry experts.

Please go to this address for all the competition rules, regulations and timelines: http://www.screenwritersfestival.com/a-pitch-in-time.php

Schedule

I like deadlines. Like most men, I’m only really organised when I have to be. However, when a deadline swims into focus, I get all Kubrickian and things get done in a frenzy of military precision. My entry for the Red Planet prize this year is no exception. Bearing in mind I had nothing that fitted the brief, three months still seemed like a generous timeline in which to get a 60 minute script written, read, abused and rewritten. And what’s more, I’m on schedule – a month and a bit to write the thing, a week waiting for feedback, and then a fortnight of rewrites. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I did something similar for Sharps a while back, but in comparison that took me three days – if I write any more than about ten pages a day, I tend to go somewhat manic, probably due to the reservoir of coffee I have to throw down my neck in order to keep pushing things forward.

So, deadlines: I like ‘em. There’s certainly enough of them to keep me busy at the moment - as well as Red Planet, there’s also that RISE thing. The difference here is that I have something that is essentially (bar the odd tweak) ready to go – I’ll spend a week looking at that, and then it’s on with the treatment I’ve been looking at since March of this year. I’ve been informed it’s about “85% there”, so another month fiddling about with it should see it OK. I also got a nice letter back from the BBC Writersroom last week inviting me to submit my next script on an “as and when” basis, so I’ll have to cook something up for that. And then there’s METLAB: my treatment is progressing slowly, but as I’ve had to go back to scriptural year zero, it’s no surprise really.

Come about the end of October, I’ll be due for a holiday, unless a whole other bunch of deadlines show up in the meantime. In which case, I’ll get the coffee on…