Recently, I was given twenty four hours to write a pitch and synopsis for someone (I’ve done it before, and it’s always good fun to be set stupidly tight deadlines). As the pitch concerned a fictitious rock band, my only major problem was coming up with a suitable name. Small details like this matter to me for some reason – until I’d got the name of the band nailed, writing the pitch and synopsis was a little more difficult that it should have been.
As a starting point, I hit some random band name generators – nothing doing there really, unless you’re really into completely silly names such as Total Vamp Destroyers and Burnin’ Sitar Massacre. I kept a notebook once in which I used to record (amongst other things) ideas for fictitious band names, but I’ve lost the notebook and I can’t remember any of the names. Trawling the internet and watching too much TV (as you do), the odd phrase might pop up from time to time that could double up as a decent band name (My Inner Lesbian anyone?), but nothing that was really suitable for this particular project. And then it occurred to me – I can’t remember where it came from, but it seemed to do the trick: Clothing Optional. That’ll do. The synopsis was a breeze after that.
As part of my weekly blog confession, the names of the two bands I used to play in were Diverse Opera (good god, what a terrible name), and Up, named after the Russ Meyer film. I think I prefer My Inner Lesbian, but then again, who doesn’t ;-)
Wednesday, 27 February 2008
Sunday, 24 February 2008
Cry Baby
Here is an oldish but excellent article in The Guardian by Charlotte Higgins on how blubbing at the theatre has somehow become a cultural faux pas. The theatre I can do without, but blubbing? My life would be severely limited if I had to avoid things that made me blub like the great Gazza.
· That Cancer Research ad with a muzak version of Sting’s Fields of Gold tinkling away in the background (yes, Sting, for Christ’s sake – Sting! Stun gun me now!).
· Come to think of it, any Cancer Research ad.
· Any programme that bears a passing resemblance to Children’s Hospital. I don’t have kids and don’t want any, but this doesn’t stop me howling whenever I have the misfortune to tune in to something like it.
· And talking of hospitals, how about Animal Hospital? Come to think of it, any programme that involves pet euthanasia...
· The Secret Millionaire – it’s weird (maybe because you don't see it on television very often), but basic human kindness in any form makes me grizzle like a four year old.
· There was a documentary some time ago about the children’s charity Barnardo’s. Within twenty minutes I was a complete emotional wreck and had to be helped from the room by a team of paramedics.
· Music – everything from Nick Drake to Kevin Drew is guaranteed to make me snivel and get all bunged up.
· Films? Don’t get me started – I’ll blub at anything and everything. Bambi? Check. Shrek? Been there. The Abyss? A big tick in the box. A Matter of Life and Death? The last time I watched it, it took all weekend to recover. Enchanted? I cried like a six year old all the way through it.
· England 24 – France 13. Yup, you guessed it – at the end of the game I cried.
All in all, you can guarantee that whatever the medium (theatre being the sole exception, where I think you need a good deal more ‘suspension of disbelief’ than with any other medium), I will blub on cue every single time: so much in fact so that it has become a standing joke at Chipster Towers. Whenever I sit through anything that might threaten an attack of the snivels, my wife always checks to see whether or not I’m misting up. And if I am, she has a damn good laugh. It’s also difficult to know whether or not I’m being emotionally manipulated, because I will basically cry at anything.
That said, I watched Ocean’s Thirteen the other night and cried most of the way through that - but not because it was a particularly emotional experience ;-)
· That Cancer Research ad with a muzak version of Sting’s Fields of Gold tinkling away in the background (yes, Sting, for Christ’s sake – Sting! Stun gun me now!).
· Come to think of it, any Cancer Research ad.
· Any programme that bears a passing resemblance to Children’s Hospital. I don’t have kids and don’t want any, but this doesn’t stop me howling whenever I have the misfortune to tune in to something like it.
· And talking of hospitals, how about Animal Hospital? Come to think of it, any programme that involves pet euthanasia...
· The Secret Millionaire – it’s weird (maybe because you don't see it on television very often), but basic human kindness in any form makes me grizzle like a four year old.
· There was a documentary some time ago about the children’s charity Barnardo’s. Within twenty minutes I was a complete emotional wreck and had to be helped from the room by a team of paramedics.
· Music – everything from Nick Drake to Kevin Drew is guaranteed to make me snivel and get all bunged up.
· Films? Don’t get me started – I’ll blub at anything and everything. Bambi? Check. Shrek? Been there. The Abyss? A big tick in the box. A Matter of Life and Death? The last time I watched it, it took all weekend to recover. Enchanted? I cried like a six year old all the way through it.
· England 24 – France 13. Yup, you guessed it – at the end of the game I cried.
All in all, you can guarantee that whatever the medium (theatre being the sole exception, where I think you need a good deal more ‘suspension of disbelief’ than with any other medium), I will blub on cue every single time: so much in fact so that it has become a standing joke at Chipster Towers. Whenever I sit through anything that might threaten an attack of the snivels, my wife always checks to see whether or not I’m misting up. And if I am, she has a damn good laugh. It’s also difficult to know whether or not I’m being emotionally manipulated, because I will basically cry at anything.
That said, I watched Ocean’s Thirteen the other night and cried most of the way through that - but not because it was a particularly emotional experience ;-)
Thursday, 21 February 2008
Fun with Marchmont Films, part 4
I have it on very good authority (but unfortunately cannot divulge my source) that Marchmont Films is "on hold" for the foreseeable future, and that all submissions have been "dealt with" (mostly I suspect by ignoring them in the hope that they might somehow evaporate).
I suspected as much a few months back when the "film arm" of Bloomsbury Weddings went into a self-imposed meltdown, no doubt buckling under the weight of the final fifteen scripts piled up on their producer's desk. At least I can now stop banging on about it, a process that has become less entertaining of recent months, and more akin to kicking a mangy old dog if I'm perfectly honest.
I'll have to find something else to complain about now ;-)
I suspected as much a few months back when the "film arm" of Bloomsbury Weddings went into a self-imposed meltdown, no doubt buckling under the weight of the final fifteen scripts piled up on their producer's desk. At least I can now stop banging on about it, a process that has become less entertaining of recent months, and more akin to kicking a mangy old dog if I'm perfectly honest.
I'll have to find something else to complain about now ;-)
Linkage Mania
Even if you thought Billy Elliot was a load of torrid guff, these articles on the Times Online site are all pretty good (as I’m in search of a working method at the moment, they are especially interesting)...
How John Hodge adapted Trainspotting
Sir Tom Stoppard on writing Shakespeare in Love
How Lee Hall wrote Billy Elliot
David Hare on adapting The Hours
Also, want to know why The Golden Compass was a frustrating grab bag of exposition and all round rubbishness? Let Sit Tom fill you in:
I wrote the first draft of The Golden Compass, but no director was attached to it. Ultimately it got a director [Chris Weitz] who liked to write his own scripts. He never even read mine.
How John Hodge adapted Trainspotting
Sir Tom Stoppard on writing Shakespeare in Love
How Lee Hall wrote Billy Elliot
David Hare on adapting The Hours
Also, want to know why The Golden Compass was a frustrating grab bag of exposition and all round rubbishness? Let Sit Tom fill you in:
I wrote the first draft of The Golden Compass, but no director was attached to it. Ultimately it got a director [Chris Weitz] who liked to write his own scripts. He never even read mine.
Monday, 18 February 2008
What A Scrunt.
Contains spoilers for Lady in the Water
My nephew is currently studying photography at an art college where the ‘lecturers’ seem peculiarly clueless. In putting his portfolio together for a series of degree course interviews, my nephew was told by his tutor (the vast majority of whom seem to be motivated by the twin goals of ‘pussy and paycheque’ (Copyright Daniel Clowes)) that the images he selected should not make sense to anyone but himself – the reasoning being that the artist is the only person who can describe the rationale behind what he does. I can’t begin to list the many and varied ways in which this makes my blood boil. However, if you’re M. Night Shyamalan, then this sentiment is right up your street.
Lady in the Water is an incoherent waste of celluloid – but what makes it so painfully godawful is that it seems to be a paean to what Shyamalan sees as his own shining beacon of genius. Why else would he have a character say (and I’m paraphrasing here), “What person could be so arrogant to presume to know the intention of another human being?” Given the fact that this criticism is indirectly aimed at the thoroughly unlikeable book and film critic Harry Farber, this should tell you all you need to know about what Shyamalan thinks of (his) critics.
Perhaps Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian sums it up best:
As the film continued, I personally began to bow my head in humility and self-knowledge. My pen slipped from my nerveless fingers and hot teardrops fell on my notepad, like a pure and cleansing rain, blurring the vindictive remarks I had scribbled. I was ashamed ... ashamed ... that I had ever given this incredible idiot M Night Shyamalan anything approaching a good review.
The mere fact that Shyamalan puts such words into the mouths of his characters says to me that the director honestly thinks that he is the only person permitted to comment on this excruciatingly awful film. He’s wrong. A film such as Lady in the Water does not exist in a vacuum – once it’s out there in the big bad world it’s going to generate comment, criticism, and even analysis that – horrors! – might conflict with the director’s own view. If I had to sit through every film with Shyamalan’s strict instructions not to apply my own interpretation, I don’t think I’d ever buy another DVD again. I think it was Umberto Eco who said that the novel is a machine for generating possibilities – Shyamalan may well be disappointed to realise that these are usually arrived at without the assistance of the author.
The fact that Shyamalan has cast himself in Lady in the Water as the author of a book that is somehow going to “save the world” should send you screaming from this film at a rate of knots. If it doesn’t, then perhaps the first scene should do it. The down at heel janitor Cleveland Heep (played by the ever dependable Paul Giametti) rattles about under a sink with a broom. A screaming family cower behind him in comedic fashion as the brave Heep makes exaggerated efforts to kill something big and hairy. The whole scene is just so gratuitously stupid, I should have turned it off right then. But then again I would have missed the unintentional comedy of Mr Dury attempting a spot of divination with a crossword puzzle, or his son attempting to do the same with a packed cupboard of cereal boxes. And – Jesus H Christ! – it’s Jared Harris, down on his luck slumming it in a movie with no detectable script.
I thought I’d seen some bad films, but this one takes the biscuit.
My nephew is currently studying photography at an art college where the ‘lecturers’ seem peculiarly clueless. In putting his portfolio together for a series of degree course interviews, my nephew was told by his tutor (the vast majority of whom seem to be motivated by the twin goals of ‘pussy and paycheque’ (Copyright Daniel Clowes)) that the images he selected should not make sense to anyone but himself – the reasoning being that the artist is the only person who can describe the rationale behind what he does. I can’t begin to list the many and varied ways in which this makes my blood boil. However, if you’re M. Night Shyamalan, then this sentiment is right up your street.
Lady in the Water is an incoherent waste of celluloid – but what makes it so painfully godawful is that it seems to be a paean to what Shyamalan sees as his own shining beacon of genius. Why else would he have a character say (and I’m paraphrasing here), “What person could be so arrogant to presume to know the intention of another human being?” Given the fact that this criticism is indirectly aimed at the thoroughly unlikeable book and film critic Harry Farber, this should tell you all you need to know about what Shyamalan thinks of (his) critics.
Perhaps Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian sums it up best:
As the film continued, I personally began to bow my head in humility and self-knowledge. My pen slipped from my nerveless fingers and hot teardrops fell on my notepad, like a pure and cleansing rain, blurring the vindictive remarks I had scribbled. I was ashamed ... ashamed ... that I had ever given this incredible idiot M Night Shyamalan anything approaching a good review.
The mere fact that Shyamalan puts such words into the mouths of his characters says to me that the director honestly thinks that he is the only person permitted to comment on this excruciatingly awful film. He’s wrong. A film such as Lady in the Water does not exist in a vacuum – once it’s out there in the big bad world it’s going to generate comment, criticism, and even analysis that – horrors! – might conflict with the director’s own view. If I had to sit through every film with Shyamalan’s strict instructions not to apply my own interpretation, I don’t think I’d ever buy another DVD again. I think it was Umberto Eco who said that the novel is a machine for generating possibilities – Shyamalan may well be disappointed to realise that these are usually arrived at without the assistance of the author.
The fact that Shyamalan has cast himself in Lady in the Water as the author of a book that is somehow going to “save the world” should send you screaming from this film at a rate of knots. If it doesn’t, then perhaps the first scene should do it. The down at heel janitor Cleveland Heep (played by the ever dependable Paul Giametti) rattles about under a sink with a broom. A screaming family cower behind him in comedic fashion as the brave Heep makes exaggerated efforts to kill something big and hairy. The whole scene is just so gratuitously stupid, I should have turned it off right then. But then again I would have missed the unintentional comedy of Mr Dury attempting a spot of divination with a crossword puzzle, or his son attempting to do the same with a packed cupboard of cereal boxes. And – Jesus H Christ! – it’s Jared Harris, down on his luck slumming it in a movie with no detectable script.
I thought I’d seen some bad films, but this one takes the biscuit.
Saturday, 16 February 2008
Off on a Tangent, Part 9 - More Slab!
I wrote about Slab! here some time ago, and I’m pleased to say that, for a band that’s been defunct for nearly twenty years, they appear to be gaining a good deal of attention, both on the net and beyond.
First off, there’s Slab’s My Space page, set up by Tim Elsenburg of the folktronica outfit Sweet Billy Pilgrim (check out the fantastic tracks Bruguda and the gorgeous Meantime here).
Tim is also writing a piece on ‘songs that changed my life’ for The Sunday Times – the song chosen? Dolores, by Slab!, which you can hear on the MySpace link above. Without a doubt it’s the best track on the album, and probably (for me at least) amongst some of the best – and heaviest – music ever recorded. And lurking underneath the massive beats, drum machines and scuzzed out bass, there’s an honest to goodness tune. It doesn’t get any better than this.
Oh, and if anyone can track down any pictures of this elusive band, let Kevin know on artpics@sunday-times.co.uk
First off, there’s Slab’s My Space page, set up by Tim Elsenburg of the folktronica outfit Sweet Billy Pilgrim (check out the fantastic tracks Bruguda and the gorgeous Meantime here).
Tim is also writing a piece on ‘songs that changed my life’ for The Sunday Times – the song chosen? Dolores, by Slab!, which you can hear on the MySpace link above. Without a doubt it’s the best track on the album, and probably (for me at least) amongst some of the best – and heaviest – music ever recorded. And lurking underneath the massive beats, drum machines and scuzzed out bass, there’s an honest to goodness tune. It doesn’t get any better than this.
Oh, and if anyone can track down any pictures of this elusive band, let Kevin know on artpics@sunday-times.co.uk
Thursday, 14 February 2008
Killed by Death
I had to kill a character in a script yesterday, but had a few issues deciding exactly how to do it.
The choices?
1) Handgun. Too easy to be honest, too abrupt. There’s a certain shock value, but ultimately it seemed a little unsatisfying. What’s more, there’s no physical contact, which doesn’t make for a hugely dramatic scene.
2) Suffocation by clingfilm. A much better idea (anyone seen The Last Broadcast?). But then I started to wonder exactly what sort of weirdo carries a roll of clingfilm round with them (sincere apologies to anyone who does, but come on, let's face it - you're weird).
3) Belt. This is more like it. Easy to come by, always at hand, the ideal weapon if you're in the mood for a spot of one-on-one strangulation.
It then suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t really need to kill this character at all – all I needed to do was to incapacitate him. So I clacked him round the back of the head with a fire extinguisher, which brought to mind Irreversible (no bad thing in my book).
Right, I’m off for a quick garrotting. Wish me luck.
The choices?
1) Handgun. Too easy to be honest, too abrupt. There’s a certain shock value, but ultimately it seemed a little unsatisfying. What’s more, there’s no physical contact, which doesn’t make for a hugely dramatic scene.
2) Suffocation by clingfilm. A much better idea (anyone seen The Last Broadcast?). But then I started to wonder exactly what sort of weirdo carries a roll of clingfilm round with them (sincere apologies to anyone who does, but come on, let's face it - you're weird).
3) Belt. This is more like it. Easy to come by, always at hand, the ideal weapon if you're in the mood for a spot of one-on-one strangulation.
It then suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t really need to kill this character at all – all I needed to do was to incapacitate him. So I clacked him round the back of the head with a fire extinguisher, which brought to mind Irreversible (no bad thing in my book).
Right, I’m off for a quick garrotting. Wish me luck.
Monday, 11 February 2008
Oooh, A New Meme
I don't know what the word 'meme' means (it's a bit like British Bulldog I think), but I’ve been tagged by Martin (New Order fan and Doctor Who know-it-all) on a film book recommendation.
Oooh, let’s see, there are so many:
Censored, by Tom Dewe Matthews: a history of British film censorship from 1896 to the onset of the video nasty. If you think the whole concept of censorship is entirely arbitrary and illogical, then prepare to be astounded by this book - it's a lot worse than you ever thought.
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, by Peter Biskind: a superb examination of the golden era of American film (1969-1980 in case youlre wondering) told predominantly through the stories of Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and others. This has just been released in a twenty first anniversary edition by Bloomsbury, and it’s definitely worth a read or two.
Fire Over England, by Ken Russell – good old Ken gives the British film ‘industry’ both barrels. Enormous fun.
Men, Women and Chainsaws, by Carol Clover – after a long day carousing, I settle down with my pipe and slippers and get stuck into some good old gender theory.
Will that do, Martin? I could go on all night here...
All righty then, I tag Elinor, MJ, Jon Peacey, Oli, and Rob Stickler. Good and hearty people all.
Oooh, let’s see, there are so many:
Censored, by Tom Dewe Matthews: a history of British film censorship from 1896 to the onset of the video nasty. If you think the whole concept of censorship is entirely arbitrary and illogical, then prepare to be astounded by this book - it's a lot worse than you ever thought.
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, by Peter Biskind: a superb examination of the golden era of American film (1969-1980 in case youlre wondering) told predominantly through the stories of Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and others. This has just been released in a twenty first anniversary edition by Bloomsbury, and it’s definitely worth a read or two.
Fire Over England, by Ken Russell – good old Ken gives the British film ‘industry’ both barrels. Enormous fun.
Men, Women and Chainsaws, by Carol Clover – after a long day carousing, I settle down with my pipe and slippers and get stuck into some good old gender theory.
Will that do, Martin? I could go on all night here...
All righty then, I tag Elinor, MJ, Jon Peacey, Oli, and Rob Stickler. Good and hearty people all.
Saturday, 9 February 2008
The Queen versus Norman Baker
Contains Spoilers for The Strange Death of David Kelly
I haven’t really seen it properly, but doesn’t The Queen strike you as a completely bizarre idea for a film? When I first saw it advertised in a cinema somewhere, I literally could not get my head round the fact why anyone in their own right mind would want to go and see it, but what do I know? I’m sure there’s a readymade American market that laps this stuff up, and who’s to say that’s a bad thing? Certainly not me.
Like The Last King of Scotland (another Peter Morgan script), The Queen mines a rich seam of unsympathetic protagonists in a study of tradition (represented by Helen Mirren, or as she is now better known: Her Maj) versus populism (represented by Tony Blair and his gang of gurning modernisers). Well, I’m guessing that’s what it’s about – I’ve seen it on three different occasions now and haven’t actually managed to see the whole thing, so no doubt there are huge gaps in my viewing experience. But bear with me.
A little while back, I wrote about the world of Spooks, and how I perceived that there had been a perceptible tonal shift in the ‘culture’ that made such a series possible. Although I liked Spooks, something about it seemed strangely reactionary – and the same thing struck me about The Queen.
The film portrays Blair the head cheese and his gruff, tabloid-wise sidekick, Alistair Campbell, as brave modernisers, wary and respectful of the old traditions, but recognising that by necessity, they must change. With the benefit of hindsight, Tony Blair’s premiership is not likely to be remembered for the Campbell-scripted speech he gave after Princess Diana’s death, but for an ill-advised, illegal and disastrous war.
Which leads me neatly onto The Strange Death of David Kelly, by Norman Baker, the famous Liberal Democrat windbag). This book is a thorough if at times rambling investigative study into the death of the Government weapons expert, David Kelly, found dead in suspicious circumstances in July 2003. The picture it paints of the Blair administration is not at all flattering, and to a certain extent this is to be expected. What is surprising, however, is the forensic diligence that Baker applies to the central question, which leads him to a startling conclusion: that Kelly was murdered by Iraqi intelligence operatives, and his death made to look like suicide, most probably by members of the UK intelligence community.
Baker grinds through a variety of scenarios – even a few that sound positively demented – and emerges with a thesis that is logical and well argued, even if there are a few unavoidable leaps of guesswork. It’s a persuasively and passionately argued book that leaves few stones unturned – a book that, in adapted form, would give a valid counterpoint to The Queen.
Conspiracy theories may well be a little old hat these days, and have almost certainly been overtaken by the imprecisions of ‘historical fiction’. But when a film as reactionary as The Queen pops up, I often wish there was something that could stand alongside it to give an opposing point of view.
As above, hindsight is a wonderful thing – The Queen is set in the initial days and months of Blair’s premiership, where anything seemed possible. Blair and Campbell are matey iconoclasts, all too aware of what they perceive as being the ‘right thing’, and what they need to do to achieve it. However, in The Strange Death of David Kelly, Blair and Campbell are obsessed with the retention of power; their treatment of David Kelly was disgraceful at best, and their political hobbling of the BBC and the ensuing Hutton enquiry were the breathtakingly arrogant actions of men convinced that they were right (and what is particularly galling about the whole episode is that it was the BBC that was right all along).
The Queen is undoubtedly a work of fiction – where politicians strive for the common good, how could it be anything else? Discounting the obvious guesswork that Baker’s conclusion necessarily demands, The Strange Death of David Kelly seems anything but, a world where the good guys get killed and the bad guys get the million pound book deals. Maybe I’m a bit weird, but I know which one I’d rather pay money to see.
I haven’t really seen it properly, but doesn’t The Queen strike you as a completely bizarre idea for a film? When I first saw it advertised in a cinema somewhere, I literally could not get my head round the fact why anyone in their own right mind would want to go and see it, but what do I know? I’m sure there’s a readymade American market that laps this stuff up, and who’s to say that’s a bad thing? Certainly not me.
Like The Last King of Scotland (another Peter Morgan script), The Queen mines a rich seam of unsympathetic protagonists in a study of tradition (represented by Helen Mirren, or as she is now better known: Her Maj) versus populism (represented by Tony Blair and his gang of gurning modernisers). Well, I’m guessing that’s what it’s about – I’ve seen it on three different occasions now and haven’t actually managed to see the whole thing, so no doubt there are huge gaps in my viewing experience. But bear with me.
A little while back, I wrote about the world of Spooks, and how I perceived that there had been a perceptible tonal shift in the ‘culture’ that made such a series possible. Although I liked Spooks, something about it seemed strangely reactionary – and the same thing struck me about The Queen.
The film portrays Blair the head cheese and his gruff, tabloid-wise sidekick, Alistair Campbell, as brave modernisers, wary and respectful of the old traditions, but recognising that by necessity, they must change. With the benefit of hindsight, Tony Blair’s premiership is not likely to be remembered for the Campbell-scripted speech he gave after Princess Diana’s death, but for an ill-advised, illegal and disastrous war.
Which leads me neatly onto The Strange Death of David Kelly, by Norman Baker, the famous Liberal Democrat windbag). This book is a thorough if at times rambling investigative study into the death of the Government weapons expert, David Kelly, found dead in suspicious circumstances in July 2003. The picture it paints of the Blair administration is not at all flattering, and to a certain extent this is to be expected. What is surprising, however, is the forensic diligence that Baker applies to the central question, which leads him to a startling conclusion: that Kelly was murdered by Iraqi intelligence operatives, and his death made to look like suicide, most probably by members of the UK intelligence community.
Baker grinds through a variety of scenarios – even a few that sound positively demented – and emerges with a thesis that is logical and well argued, even if there are a few unavoidable leaps of guesswork. It’s a persuasively and passionately argued book that leaves few stones unturned – a book that, in adapted form, would give a valid counterpoint to The Queen.
Conspiracy theories may well be a little old hat these days, and have almost certainly been overtaken by the imprecisions of ‘historical fiction’. But when a film as reactionary as The Queen pops up, I often wish there was something that could stand alongside it to give an opposing point of view.
As above, hindsight is a wonderful thing – The Queen is set in the initial days and months of Blair’s premiership, where anything seemed possible. Blair and Campbell are matey iconoclasts, all too aware of what they perceive as being the ‘right thing’, and what they need to do to achieve it. However, in The Strange Death of David Kelly, Blair and Campbell are obsessed with the retention of power; their treatment of David Kelly was disgraceful at best, and their political hobbling of the BBC and the ensuing Hutton enquiry were the breathtakingly arrogant actions of men convinced that they were right (and what is particularly galling about the whole episode is that it was the BBC that was right all along).
The Queen is undoubtedly a work of fiction – where politicians strive for the common good, how could it be anything else? Discounting the obvious guesswork that Baker’s conclusion necessarily demands, The Strange Death of David Kelly seems anything but, a world where the good guys get killed and the bad guys get the million pound book deals. Maybe I’m a bit weird, but I know which one I’d rather pay money to see.
Thursday, 7 February 2008
Welcome to Multi-Tasking Script Hell
I am in search of a working method – purely because I don’t have one. I’m the sort of misguided idiot who outlines as he’s limping along, which is guaranteed to send you doolally, especially by the point the eighth draft drops and you haven’t nailed that annoyingly illogical moment in the third act. I always used to think that outlining/writing a treatment helped, but the problem with that is that it kind of sucks the soul out of what I’m writing and turns it into the script equivalent of an Ikea catalogue. I can’t do mechanistic – it hurts.
So I’m taking advice from the great man John August, who I don’t think really trusts outlines much either:
Ask: What needs to happen in this scene? Just come up with one or two sentences that explain what absolutely must happen...
And that’s it – my new working method. I tore apart an eighty-five page first draft the other day and this is the only way I can see to get the damned thing moving again without descending into the brain numbing hellhole of an outline.
(Just as well I don’t have one of those groovy little bar things at the side of my blog to show the progression on my most current draft - on day seven it would be 10% completed, day seventeen would be 85%, and day seventy would be 3%. That’s assuming I would have the technical ability to put one up there in the first place).
There’s also quite a helpful post over at Pillock’s Pad, which neatly summarises what little method I actually possess (It seems that by jumping straight into the writing, the brain mobilises more creative faculties than it does by carefully planning first). By sitting in the scene itself and staring hard at a blank screen, ideas actually start to bubble up that have absolutely nothing to do with an outline. The problem with this of course is that I’m not exactly forging ahead at a rate of knots – every page I write has an effect on the pages preceding it, which means that yes, I’m outlining as I’m writing – which is multi-tasking hell.
On a lighter note, Robin Kelly and I are rejoicing this week as Broken Social Scene has just announced a short UK tour in May. Get your tickets now, kids.
So I’m taking advice from the great man John August, who I don’t think really trusts outlines much either:
Ask: What needs to happen in this scene? Just come up with one or two sentences that explain what absolutely must happen...
And that’s it – my new working method. I tore apart an eighty-five page first draft the other day and this is the only way I can see to get the damned thing moving again without descending into the brain numbing hellhole of an outline.
(Just as well I don’t have one of those groovy little bar things at the side of my blog to show the progression on my most current draft - on day seven it would be 10% completed, day seventeen would be 85%, and day seventy would be 3%. That’s assuming I would have the technical ability to put one up there in the first place).
There’s also quite a helpful post over at Pillock’s Pad, which neatly summarises what little method I actually possess (It seems that by jumping straight into the writing, the brain mobilises more creative faculties than it does by carefully planning first). By sitting in the scene itself and staring hard at a blank screen, ideas actually start to bubble up that have absolutely nothing to do with an outline. The problem with this of course is that I’m not exactly forging ahead at a rate of knots – every page I write has an effect on the pages preceding it, which means that yes, I’m outlining as I’m writing – which is multi-tasking hell.
On a lighter note, Robin Kelly and I are rejoicing this week as Broken Social Scene has just announced a short UK tour in May. Get your tickets now, kids.
Monday, 4 February 2008
Fun with Product Placement
Contains Spoilers for Perfect Stranger
A few years back, I used to work for a large Champagne house. Every now and again, we’d get requests from film production companies asking us if we’d like our product to feature in their film – all for an exorbitant fee of course, which they would use to offset the cost of production. I’m all for imaginative movie financing such as this, not that it really got anyone anywhere. At the time, Champagne sales were riding high – the French couldn’t produce enough of the stuff (it is a finite product, after all), so why would anyone want to advertise to sell more? The stuff essentially sold itself.
This is something you almost certainly couldn’t say about Perfect Stranger, which plays as if someone has dropped eighty half-written thriller plot points into a huge food processor and simply hit the ‘splurge’ button, not caring what was poured out or what it looked like. The one notable thing about it is the amount of product placement on show. And as this is a film set partially in the world of advertising, that means there’s an absolute rampage of brands queuing up to get their fifteen seconds of A-list Hollywood exposure. Reebok, Match.com, Victoria’s Secret, Heineken, Sony – plus a few others I probably missed.
It’s bad enough when any film starts down this route, but when it’s in your face as much as it is here, it actually starts to disrupt the very narrative that it helped pay for. For instance, Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis), hot shot advertising honcho and prime suspect in the murder of Halle Berry’s arch-nemesis in a plot too convoluted to give a flying arse about, introduces a Victoria’s Secret show (replete with Heidi Klum co-hosting). All this sequence said to me was that there was no way a brand like Victoria’s Secret was going to let their fictitious fashion show be introduced by a cold blooded murderer, imagined or not. Ka-thunk went a major plank of the narrative, and with it my interest.
Watching Perfect Stranger, I’m sure there’s a correlation to be drawn between quite how bad a film is and the amount of product placement shoehorned into it – Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, anyone? That said, my favourite ever product placement moment – if you can call it that – occurs in Blue Velvet. Our hero’s (Jeffrey Beaumont) favourite tipple is Heineken. At one point in the film, the unpredictable and deranged psychopath Frank Booth asks, ‘What kind of beer do you like to drink, neighbour?’ ‘Heineken,’ Jeffrey replies, uncertain as to whether this is the right answer. ‘Heineken?’ roars Frank, ‘Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!’
A few years back, I used to work for a large Champagne house. Every now and again, we’d get requests from film production companies asking us if we’d like our product to feature in their film – all for an exorbitant fee of course, which they would use to offset the cost of production. I’m all for imaginative movie financing such as this, not that it really got anyone anywhere. At the time, Champagne sales were riding high – the French couldn’t produce enough of the stuff (it is a finite product, after all), so why would anyone want to advertise to sell more? The stuff essentially sold itself.
This is something you almost certainly couldn’t say about Perfect Stranger, which plays as if someone has dropped eighty half-written thriller plot points into a huge food processor and simply hit the ‘splurge’ button, not caring what was poured out or what it looked like. The one notable thing about it is the amount of product placement on show. And as this is a film set partially in the world of advertising, that means there’s an absolute rampage of brands queuing up to get their fifteen seconds of A-list Hollywood exposure. Reebok, Match.com, Victoria’s Secret, Heineken, Sony – plus a few others I probably missed.
It’s bad enough when any film starts down this route, but when it’s in your face as much as it is here, it actually starts to disrupt the very narrative that it helped pay for. For instance, Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis), hot shot advertising honcho and prime suspect in the murder of Halle Berry’s arch-nemesis in a plot too convoluted to give a flying arse about, introduces a Victoria’s Secret show (replete with Heidi Klum co-hosting). All this sequence said to me was that there was no way a brand like Victoria’s Secret was going to let their fictitious fashion show be introduced by a cold blooded murderer, imagined or not. Ka-thunk went a major plank of the narrative, and with it my interest.
Watching Perfect Stranger, I’m sure there’s a correlation to be drawn between quite how bad a film is and the amount of product placement shoehorned into it – Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, anyone? That said, my favourite ever product placement moment – if you can call it that – occurs in Blue Velvet. Our hero’s (Jeffrey Beaumont) favourite tipple is Heineken. At one point in the film, the unpredictable and deranged psychopath Frank Booth asks, ‘What kind of beer do you like to drink, neighbour?’ ‘Heineken,’ Jeffrey replies, uncertain as to whether this is the right answer. ‘Heineken?’ roars Frank, ‘Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!’
Friday, 1 February 2008
Metlab Update, Part 5
So, Metlab yesterday.
All very painless as it turned out. Lucy Vee and John Sweeney one side of the table, Martin and I on the other. My notes from the meeting read, “double goal”, “Mind Hunters”, “no gore”, “necrophilia”, “conflict vs empathy” and “dialectical materialism”. Blimey! Sounds a bit like Katie & Peter Unleashed to me. I have a new draft to wrestle into submission (two falls or a knockout, grapple fans) by the beginning of April.
As well as being an all round nice guy, I also discovered that there is very little about Doctor Who that Martin does not know. I’m not the world’s biggest DW fan by any stretch, but I will say that I was seven years old, I loved it. I also have only one DW anecdote, as follows:
When I used to live in Cambridge, there was a great book cum junk shop on Mill Road – I bought a Doctor Who paperback in there for 10p, purely due to what was printed on the spine. The book’s title was Doctor Who and the Planet of Evil, written by Terence Dicks. The problem was the designers/type setters had forgotten to leave a large enough space between the words ‘evil’ and ‘Terence’, so the book was actually entitled Doctor Who and the Planet of Evil Terence Dicks – which is, when you think about it, a pretty frightening prospect (OK, so it was funny at the time).
All very painless as it turned out. Lucy Vee and John Sweeney one side of the table, Martin and I on the other. My notes from the meeting read, “double goal”, “Mind Hunters”, “no gore”, “necrophilia”, “conflict vs empathy” and “dialectical materialism”. Blimey! Sounds a bit like Katie & Peter Unleashed to me. I have a new draft to wrestle into submission (two falls or a knockout, grapple fans) by the beginning of April.
As well as being an all round nice guy, I also discovered that there is very little about Doctor Who that Martin does not know. I’m not the world’s biggest DW fan by any stretch, but I will say that I was seven years old, I loved it. I also have only one DW anecdote, as follows:
When I used to live in Cambridge, there was a great book cum junk shop on Mill Road – I bought a Doctor Who paperback in there for 10p, purely due to what was printed on the spine. The book’s title was Doctor Who and the Planet of Evil, written by Terence Dicks. The problem was the designers/type setters had forgotten to leave a large enough space between the words ‘evil’ and ‘Terence’, so the book was actually entitled Doctor Who and the Planet of Evil Terence Dicks – which is, when you think about it, a pretty frightening prospect (OK, so it was funny at the time).
Tuesday, 29 January 2008
The Unsympathetic Protagonist
Contains spoilers for The Last King of Scotland
‘Adaptation’ seems to be the buzz word of the moment wherever you’re lurking in the ‘scribosphere’ (someone, please – come up with a better term than this to describe what writers do on the internet – I’ll pay good money to see a new non-cringe worthy term). What with Lianne’s Adaptation group convening on 26th February for a spot of cake flinging, adaptation fever is everywhere, and on UFP it’s no different. Okay, so it took me a year to get round to it (after reading a great review on the now sadly and apparently defunct Film Flam), but after having watched The Last King of Scotland I feel the need to go off on yet another wild and rambling tangent. Oh yes.
My wife’s reaction on having sat through Nicholas Garrigan’s (James McAvoy) exploits in TLKOS was, “The bloke’s a twat.” It’s hard to disagree, and therein lies the problem. Although he doesn’t instantly come across as a twat, it doesn’t take Garrigan long to settle into a twat-like groove – and the first three scenes send him down this route quite nicely, thank you. Admittedly, the first three scenes are fantastic: the character of Garrigan – a newly graduated medical student – craves stimulation, excitement. To escape the suffocating clutches of his parents, Garrigan spins a globe in his room and jabs a finger at it in a random effort to find somewhere – anywhere – to run to: he doesn’t care where. Well, he does a bit, as his first choice – Canada – is rejected in favour of Uganda.
Within ten minutes of setting foot in country, he is cheerfully rutting with the citizenry and putting the moves on Sarah Merrit (Gillian Anderson), the wife of the doctor who runs the medical centre where Garrigan is supposed to work. His words about wanting to help seem increasingly empty, especially as Uganda is a place that he knows absolutely nothing about – not that he particularly wants to. The spin of the globe sets this all up superbly. We know that Garrigan doesn’t really care – a fact that is driven home when he absconds from his duties at the medical centre to become Idi Amin’s (Forest Whittaker) personal physician and sidekick. Dazzled by uniforms and medals, Garrigan is essentially a naive lout. As the brutal truth regarding Amin’s dictatorship is made apparent, Garrigan belatedly realises that he’s bet on the wrong horse. His punishment – his retribution – is bloody and terrifying.
This is all well and good, but the central problem still remains: the bloke’s a twat. The writers Peter Morgan and Jeremy Brock have certainly crafted a memorable enough character, but as George Lucas points out (I’m paraphrasing here), writing an unsympathetic character is easy – all you have to do is make him/her kick a dog: job done. Garrigan’s journey sees him travel from naive simpleton to naive simpleton who’s had a bit of a slap – not much of a character arc there, if that’s what you’re looking for. The spin of the globe is brilliant screenwriting – but making us care for a character whose sole function appears to be pursuing his own mostly hedonistic pursuits is probably a draft too far in this case...
...which all seems very strange when you start comparing Giles Foden’s book with the screenplay. In the book, Garrigan is more of a clueless prat than the gung-ho know-nothing McAvoy portrays him as. Due to this, there are several scenes in the film that jump out due to their incongruousness. Whilst treating Amin for a hand injury, Garrigan grabs Amin’s own handgun and shoots an injured cow that is ‘ruining his concentration’. Garrigan’s pursuit of Sarah Merrit is portrayed in a soft romantic focus that lacks the harder edge of the book, where Garrigan misreads the situation and is unceremoniously rejected, a scene that partially speeds his journey to Amin’s side. The script manoeuvres him quickly out of the medical centre, which only reinforces the idea that he’s a naive simpleton overly impressed by power and shiny medals.
I guess you could make the argument that Garrigan actually wants to help, but this is rather swamped by his starry eyed admiration for Amin. In this case, expecting us to follow Garrigan for two hours does rather try the patience, not least because the story is told almost exclusively from Garrigan’s point of view. His ignorance becomes our ignorance; he knows nothing about the history – post-colonial or otherwise – of Uganda, and so neither do we. To expect any film to do something like this is a tall order, so the script relies upon the larger than life character of Amin to deliver this aspect of the narrative. Does it succeed? Sort of. However, you have to negotiate round a bone-headed protagonist in order to see it properly.
There’s nothing wrong with unsympathetic protagonists of course – look at Taxi Driver, which juggles with this issue brilliantly – the problem with Garrigan is that he doesn’t appear to possess much humanity in the first place. The spin of the globe tells you all you need to know.
‘Adaptation’ seems to be the buzz word of the moment wherever you’re lurking in the ‘scribosphere’ (someone, please – come up with a better term than this to describe what writers do on the internet – I’ll pay good money to see a new non-cringe worthy term). What with Lianne’s Adaptation group convening on 26th February for a spot of cake flinging, adaptation fever is everywhere, and on UFP it’s no different. Okay, so it took me a year to get round to it (after reading a great review on the now sadly and apparently defunct Film Flam), but after having watched The Last King of Scotland I feel the need to go off on yet another wild and rambling tangent. Oh yes.
My wife’s reaction on having sat through Nicholas Garrigan’s (James McAvoy) exploits in TLKOS was, “The bloke’s a twat.” It’s hard to disagree, and therein lies the problem. Although he doesn’t instantly come across as a twat, it doesn’t take Garrigan long to settle into a twat-like groove – and the first three scenes send him down this route quite nicely, thank you. Admittedly, the first three scenes are fantastic: the character of Garrigan – a newly graduated medical student – craves stimulation, excitement. To escape the suffocating clutches of his parents, Garrigan spins a globe in his room and jabs a finger at it in a random effort to find somewhere – anywhere – to run to: he doesn’t care where. Well, he does a bit, as his first choice – Canada – is rejected in favour of Uganda.
Within ten minutes of setting foot in country, he is cheerfully rutting with the citizenry and putting the moves on Sarah Merrit (Gillian Anderson), the wife of the doctor who runs the medical centre where Garrigan is supposed to work. His words about wanting to help seem increasingly empty, especially as Uganda is a place that he knows absolutely nothing about – not that he particularly wants to. The spin of the globe sets this all up superbly. We know that Garrigan doesn’t really care – a fact that is driven home when he absconds from his duties at the medical centre to become Idi Amin’s (Forest Whittaker) personal physician and sidekick. Dazzled by uniforms and medals, Garrigan is essentially a naive lout. As the brutal truth regarding Amin’s dictatorship is made apparent, Garrigan belatedly realises that he’s bet on the wrong horse. His punishment – his retribution – is bloody and terrifying.
This is all well and good, but the central problem still remains: the bloke’s a twat. The writers Peter Morgan and Jeremy Brock have certainly crafted a memorable enough character, but as George Lucas points out (I’m paraphrasing here), writing an unsympathetic character is easy – all you have to do is make him/her kick a dog: job done. Garrigan’s journey sees him travel from naive simpleton to naive simpleton who’s had a bit of a slap – not much of a character arc there, if that’s what you’re looking for. The spin of the globe is brilliant screenwriting – but making us care for a character whose sole function appears to be pursuing his own mostly hedonistic pursuits is probably a draft too far in this case...
...which all seems very strange when you start comparing Giles Foden’s book with the screenplay. In the book, Garrigan is more of a clueless prat than the gung-ho know-nothing McAvoy portrays him as. Due to this, there are several scenes in the film that jump out due to their incongruousness. Whilst treating Amin for a hand injury, Garrigan grabs Amin’s own handgun and shoots an injured cow that is ‘ruining his concentration’. Garrigan’s pursuit of Sarah Merrit is portrayed in a soft romantic focus that lacks the harder edge of the book, where Garrigan misreads the situation and is unceremoniously rejected, a scene that partially speeds his journey to Amin’s side. The script manoeuvres him quickly out of the medical centre, which only reinforces the idea that he’s a naive simpleton overly impressed by power and shiny medals.
I guess you could make the argument that Garrigan actually wants to help, but this is rather swamped by his starry eyed admiration for Amin. In this case, expecting us to follow Garrigan for two hours does rather try the patience, not least because the story is told almost exclusively from Garrigan’s point of view. His ignorance becomes our ignorance; he knows nothing about the history – post-colonial or otherwise – of Uganda, and so neither do we. To expect any film to do something like this is a tall order, so the script relies upon the larger than life character of Amin to deliver this aspect of the narrative. Does it succeed? Sort of. However, you have to negotiate round a bone-headed protagonist in order to see it properly.
There’s nothing wrong with unsympathetic protagonists of course – look at Taxi Driver, which juggles with this issue brilliantly – the problem with Garrigan is that he doesn’t appear to possess much humanity in the first place. The spin of the globe tells you all you need to know.
Friday, 25 January 2008
January Meltdown
That sounded a little unnecessarily dramatic, didn’t it? Let’s start again...
The script that had hung around at Hammer for a while before propping open a door at Marchmont for about a hundred years has now been taken under the kindly wing of METLAB. No doubt I’ll have my work cut out there over the next few months, but rewriting is kinda fun (in a vaguely masochistic way).
With that script out of the way, I've started angling about for something new to work on. I thought I’d alighted on something at the beginning of the year, but it turned out to be a false start (i.e., twenty pages in and I just wasn’t feeling it). So I’ve taken the momentous decision to write it in prose, which brought about another momentous decision: I have bravely postponed doing anything on it until 2009, which gives me another year to think about it.
So, something new.... hmmm... When in doubt, I always delve into old notebooks and half written/abandoned scripts in an attempt to revitalise something that once upon a time sounded like a good idea. And I think I’ve got one. Sort of. Maybe. What I've got is a rough and ready draft that comes in at the 85 page mark before it runs out of steam, but it’s got legs I think. I’ll drag it out and give it a dust down and see what can be done with it, if anything. And if I can – well, I guess that’s 2008 sorted out. As I spent the whole of 2007 rewriting, it’s about time I tackled something new.
It’s either that or antagonise Marchmont again, but I’m getting bored of that...
The script that had hung around at Hammer for a while before propping open a door at Marchmont for about a hundred years has now been taken under the kindly wing of METLAB. No doubt I’ll have my work cut out there over the next few months, but rewriting is kinda fun (in a vaguely masochistic way).
With that script out of the way, I've started angling about for something new to work on. I thought I’d alighted on something at the beginning of the year, but it turned out to be a false start (i.e., twenty pages in and I just wasn’t feeling it). So I’ve taken the momentous decision to write it in prose, which brought about another momentous decision: I have bravely postponed doing anything on it until 2009, which gives me another year to think about it.
So, something new.... hmmm... When in doubt, I always delve into old notebooks and half written/abandoned scripts in an attempt to revitalise something that once upon a time sounded like a good idea. And I think I’ve got one. Sort of. Maybe. What I've got is a rough and ready draft that comes in at the 85 page mark before it runs out of steam, but it’s got legs I think. I’ll drag it out and give it a dust down and see what can be done with it, if anything. And if I can – well, I guess that’s 2008 sorted out. As I spent the whole of 2007 rewriting, it’s about time I tackled something new.
It’s either that or antagonise Marchmont again, but I’m getting bored of that...
Wednesday, 23 January 2008
Off on a Tangent, part 8 - Chester Babcock Calling...
This has got nothing to do with anything, apart from the fact that it made me laugh...
The following is an excerpt from an article on Chester Babcock in this February's Vanity Fair:
His favourite word, for more than one reason, was "cock". As Frank Sinatra's best friend, songwriter in chief, and sometime travelling partner in the hard-swinging 50s, Jimmy Van Heusen - born Edward Chester Babcock - had a habit, upon arriving in any American city, of leafing through the directory and phoning at random anyone whose last name, Hancock, Woodcock or Hitchcock, happened to end in the same pungent suffix as his own. It was always nice if a lady answered. "Mrs Glasscock?" he'd say, in his W.C. Fields-ian tones, "Chester Babcock calling. I just wanted to check what the other cocks were up to." Sinatra, it is reported, would roll on the floor every time.
When Frank and entourage stayed at Rome's Grand Hotel, Van Heusen would step onto his balcony each morning and, like some crazed American rooster, crow out the word at the top of his lungs. Back in the States, piloting his own plane cross-country, he would screech it into the radio until, inevitably, some poor, confused air-traffic controller would squawk back, "Please identify yourself!" At which point Van Heusen would declaim it louder still. Even after suffering a stroke in his late 60s, wheelchair-bound, language having largely deserted him, "just out of nowhere, he'd yell 'Cock!'", a witness remembers.
"Jimmy," Van Heusen's good friend and occasional lover Angie Dickinson recalls fondly, "could say 'cock' like nobody else."
There's got to be a short script in there somewhere.
The following is an excerpt from an article on Chester Babcock in this February's Vanity Fair:
His favourite word, for more than one reason, was "cock". As Frank Sinatra's best friend, songwriter in chief, and sometime travelling partner in the hard-swinging 50s, Jimmy Van Heusen - born Edward Chester Babcock - had a habit, upon arriving in any American city, of leafing through the directory and phoning at random anyone whose last name, Hancock, Woodcock or Hitchcock, happened to end in the same pungent suffix as his own. It was always nice if a lady answered. "Mrs Glasscock?" he'd say, in his W.C. Fields-ian tones, "Chester Babcock calling. I just wanted to check what the other cocks were up to." Sinatra, it is reported, would roll on the floor every time.
When Frank and entourage stayed at Rome's Grand Hotel, Van Heusen would step onto his balcony each morning and, like some crazed American rooster, crow out the word at the top of his lungs. Back in the States, piloting his own plane cross-country, he would screech it into the radio until, inevitably, some poor, confused air-traffic controller would squawk back, "Please identify yourself!" At which point Van Heusen would declaim it louder still. Even after suffering a stroke in his late 60s, wheelchair-bound, language having largely deserted him, "just out of nowhere, he'd yell 'Cock!'", a witness remembers.
"Jimmy," Van Heusen's good friend and occasional lover Angie Dickinson recalls fondly, "could say 'cock' like nobody else."
There's got to be a short script in there somewhere.
Monday, 21 January 2008
Oh Dear...
Contains spoilers for The Sentinel
The Sentinel, directed by Clark Johnson, written by George Nolfi, adapted from the novel by Gerald Petievich.
When it comes to narrative logic, I am positively, pedantically autistic – which is unfortunate when a film like The Sentinel stumps up. It’s fun to throw bricks, but not at the disabled. That said, if you want to know how to conscientiously build character and narrative from the ground up, watch this film: it’s a veritable masterclass in how to get it all entirely WRONG.
The Sentinel is about three drafts away from a tolerably half decent but dull thriller. Forget the workmanlike direction from Clark Johnson and focus instead on the clunkingly ham fisted script. I mean, Christ, where do you start?
Perhaps the most glaring load of old hokum is the drastically underwritten subplot regarding Pete Garrison’s (Michael Douglas) private life. First off, he’s having it off with the First Lady (Kim Basinger – so that’s at least one of Douglas’s contractual obligations met). So far so good. However, Dave Breckinridge (Kiefer Sutherland), the relentless and brilliant Secret Service guy, is pissed off with Garrison as he blames Garrison for breaking up his marriage by sleeping with his wife, something that Douglas denies. In a completely unnecessary detour down a narrative dead end, Garrison meets Brekenridge’s wife, who admits to Garrison the real reason her marriage split up was because her husband was impossible to live with.
What this suggests is that in an earlier draft, some studio executive/reader decided that the conflict between the two leads needed to be ramped up a couple of notches: hence the painful shoehorning in of a convoluted subplot. Not only does a pointlessly artificial conflict clog up the narrative for no good reason, it also starts to play illogical games with Breckenridge’s character. Bear in mind that Breckenridge is supposedly a top notch investigator, able to analyse and deconstruct a crime scene in seconds – the same guy is completely unable to figure out what went on between Garrison and his own wife (i.e., nothing). But rather than using this dichotomy to provide some interesting character asides, it’s simply forgotten – Breckenridge ends up reunited with his wife and all is well. Gah!
Character development is another interesting way to look at this narrative, purely because there isn’t any. When the film starts, Garrison is a good ole boy (he saved the Prez twenty years before). When the film ends, he’s still a good ole boy (hey, whaddya know: he’s saved the Prez again). Yawn! Breckenridge’s character is similarly developed, and as for Jill Marin (the impossibly gorgeous Eva Longoria): what on earth is she even doing here? The only point to the character is to act as eye candy, not only for the audience but for the other characters in the film, who seem to spend an inordinate amount of time asking her out for coffee and looking at her ass (I mean, who wouldn’t?).
The central narrative is massively underdeveloped as well: Garrison is being set up as the mole in the Secret Service who is responsible for leaking details about the President’s movements so nasty terrorists with funny accents can nail him (said terrorists come from a fictitious ex-Soviet republic, scriptwriting shorthand for ‘let’s not offend anyone here, guys, especially those that reside in overseas markets’). The script then goes on to explain why the terrorists want the Prez dead – uh, no, hang on a minute, it doesn’t. You could argue that this isn’t the central thrust of the film at all, and you’d be right – however, why make such a big song and dance about it in the first place if it’s not important? Oh, and the terrorists are led by a guy who possesses a vaguely Cockney-ish accent. Uh? It’s probably best not to ask ‘why?’ as you will drive yourself insane with the sheer implausible sprawling mess of it.
You want more hokum? You got it!
- Garrison takes fifty minutes to go on the run in an attempt to clear his name. Douglas huffs and puffs about a bit before realising he’s far too old for all this nonsense, and sensibly wraps up the chase after half an hour – tension over.
- What happens to the Prez’s marriage (remember that Garrison was boffing the First Lady)? No idea! What this tells me is that if you have an unresolved plot point at the end of your script, just ignore it! As if by magic, the issue will disappear and no-one will remember it anyway. Problem solved!
- Jill Marin goes from rookie to experienced Secret Service agent purely on the basis that Garrison tells us. She does nothing of real note throughout, but does remember to bring her ass with her (see above), which of course is most fortunate.
The best way to watch a movie like The Sentinel is to completely erase it from your mind as soon as it’s finished. Or watch something decent like Serpico, which I did yesterday. Oh, and avoid anything written by George Nolfi (who apparently had a finger in The Bourne Supremacy - oo-errr, missus!) – that should just about do it.
The Sentinel, directed by Clark Johnson, written by George Nolfi, adapted from the novel by Gerald Petievich.
When it comes to narrative logic, I am positively, pedantically autistic – which is unfortunate when a film like The Sentinel stumps up. It’s fun to throw bricks, but not at the disabled. That said, if you want to know how to conscientiously build character and narrative from the ground up, watch this film: it’s a veritable masterclass in how to get it all entirely WRONG.
The Sentinel is about three drafts away from a tolerably half decent but dull thriller. Forget the workmanlike direction from Clark Johnson and focus instead on the clunkingly ham fisted script. I mean, Christ, where do you start?
Perhaps the most glaring load of old hokum is the drastically underwritten subplot regarding Pete Garrison’s (Michael Douglas) private life. First off, he’s having it off with the First Lady (Kim Basinger – so that’s at least one of Douglas’s contractual obligations met). So far so good. However, Dave Breckinridge (Kiefer Sutherland), the relentless and brilliant Secret Service guy, is pissed off with Garrison as he blames Garrison for breaking up his marriage by sleeping with his wife, something that Douglas denies. In a completely unnecessary detour down a narrative dead end, Garrison meets Brekenridge’s wife, who admits to Garrison the real reason her marriage split up was because her husband was impossible to live with.
What this suggests is that in an earlier draft, some studio executive/reader decided that the conflict between the two leads needed to be ramped up a couple of notches: hence the painful shoehorning in of a convoluted subplot. Not only does a pointlessly artificial conflict clog up the narrative for no good reason, it also starts to play illogical games with Breckenridge’s character. Bear in mind that Breckenridge is supposedly a top notch investigator, able to analyse and deconstruct a crime scene in seconds – the same guy is completely unable to figure out what went on between Garrison and his own wife (i.e., nothing). But rather than using this dichotomy to provide some interesting character asides, it’s simply forgotten – Breckenridge ends up reunited with his wife and all is well. Gah!
Character development is another interesting way to look at this narrative, purely because there isn’t any. When the film starts, Garrison is a good ole boy (he saved the Prez twenty years before). When the film ends, he’s still a good ole boy (hey, whaddya know: he’s saved the Prez again). Yawn! Breckenridge’s character is similarly developed, and as for Jill Marin (the impossibly gorgeous Eva Longoria): what on earth is she even doing here? The only point to the character is to act as eye candy, not only for the audience but for the other characters in the film, who seem to spend an inordinate amount of time asking her out for coffee and looking at her ass (I mean, who wouldn’t?).
The central narrative is massively underdeveloped as well: Garrison is being set up as the mole in the Secret Service who is responsible for leaking details about the President’s movements so nasty terrorists with funny accents can nail him (said terrorists come from a fictitious ex-Soviet republic, scriptwriting shorthand for ‘let’s not offend anyone here, guys, especially those that reside in overseas markets’). The script then goes on to explain why the terrorists want the Prez dead – uh, no, hang on a minute, it doesn’t. You could argue that this isn’t the central thrust of the film at all, and you’d be right – however, why make such a big song and dance about it in the first place if it’s not important? Oh, and the terrorists are led by a guy who possesses a vaguely Cockney-ish accent. Uh? It’s probably best not to ask ‘why?’ as you will drive yourself insane with the sheer implausible sprawling mess of it.
You want more hokum? You got it!
- Garrison takes fifty minutes to go on the run in an attempt to clear his name. Douglas huffs and puffs about a bit before realising he’s far too old for all this nonsense, and sensibly wraps up the chase after half an hour – tension over.
- What happens to the Prez’s marriage (remember that Garrison was boffing the First Lady)? No idea! What this tells me is that if you have an unresolved plot point at the end of your script, just ignore it! As if by magic, the issue will disappear and no-one will remember it anyway. Problem solved!
- Jill Marin goes from rookie to experienced Secret Service agent purely on the basis that Garrison tells us. She does nothing of real note throughout, but does remember to bring her ass with her (see above), which of course is most fortunate.
The best way to watch a movie like The Sentinel is to completely erase it from your mind as soon as it’s finished. Or watch something decent like Serpico, which I did yesterday. Oh, and avoid anything written by George Nolfi (who apparently had a finger in The Bourne Supremacy - oo-errr, missus!) – that should just about do it.
Friday, 18 January 2008
No Brainer or Five Brains?
I never thought I’d say it, but there are far too many films out there – and for some lunatic reason, I feel duty bound to watch them all in the hopelessly deluded notion that perhaps one day I will simply come to the end of all films ever produced.
Let’s hope so if Die Hard 4.0 is anything to go by...
Die Hard 4.0 – directed by Len Wiseman, written by Mark Bomback.
Watching this, all I could think of was something I read in The Guardian a little while back, inasmuch as that the film industry is the only industry that has used digital techniques to significantly increase costs. What we used to have was a two hour film with five to ten minutes of expensive effects – in Die Hard 4.0 there’s an eye-wateringly expensive digital effect every two minutes. Add in your trademarked ‘Really Shit Sidekick’ (hang on a minute, that sounds like something on Cartoon Network) and all of a sudden, you’re in dumbass heaven (unfortunately it looks like the new Indy film is going to be cocked up by an surfeit of RSS as well.)
(I suspect the reason that the Really Shit Sidekick theory is being applied to well loved franchises such as Die Hard and Indy is purely to get that all-important teenage demographic through the turnstiles, which probably means that the scripts have been ‘written’ by focus groups, marketing goons and clever bits of software. That said, it’s surely got to be better than anything written by George ‘Lead Ear’ Lucas).
And then, king of the nerds Kevin Smith shows up!
What set the first two Die Hard films apart for me was the tight focus by way of location (respectively, an office block and an airliner). In Die Hard 4.0, McClane rushes around the US as if he’s on some weird and incredibly boring tour of electricity substations. Surely the template for any action movie is to keep the focus tight and light the blue touchpaper: something that Die Hard 4.0 completely neglects to do.
I’m with Gilbert Adair on this one – I love special effects, I just don’t like the films they’re in.
Inland Empire – written and directed by David Lynch.
I really was not looking forward to this at all. Three hours of brain-bending cryptic nonsense all filmed on digital video – sounds like a migraine waiting to happen.
And you know what? That’s exactly what it is.
Don’t get me wrong – I love Blue Velvet. Wild at Heart is a blast. Lost Highway is deranged, most certainly. Mulholland Drive is, yes, well, ahem... But Inland Empire? If there was ever a need for restraint and a roomful of rabid script editors, this film is living proof.
Maybe I’m just not intelligent or patient enough to watch films like this – either that or I need to grow a little goatee for some serious beard scratching.
Sight and Sound voted this number 2 amongst their Top 10 films of 2007. Uh, hello? Here are some selected critical highlights:
Mark Fisher: Convoluted and involuted: Lynch's rabbit warren anarchitecture of trauma is difficult, unsettling and endlessly, weirdly fascinating.
Peter Matthews: After ten minutes of more or less consecutive narrative, you're pretty much free-falling. David Lynch's three-hour surrealist odyssey vanquishes the conscious ego and heads straight for the id. A mind-warping masterpiece.
Chip Smith: What’s going on here then? Oh, look, rabbits – I like rabbits. My head hurts. Is it over yet? Ooh, time for a nap. Zzzzz...
If you need to suspend all brain functions to watch a film like Die Hard 4.0, then you need to harness the processing power at least five brains to try and piece together what the flying arse is going on here. That said, perhaps Inland Empire is some kind of bizarre intelligence test – everyone who professes to understand it or at least expresses an admiration for it will get a regular column on Sight and Sound. Everyone else who simply shrugs and scratches their head will get a job on The Dandy (and I know which one I’d rather write for).
Admittedly, the three hour running time doesn’t help. After the first hour, the film went into a determinedly mentalist freefall and I dozed off intermittently (only the second time I have ever done this, Institute Benjamenta being the other culprit). Even the end title sequence is tortuous and never–ending.
After the most gruelling three hours I have ever spent in the company of a DVD, I read this in The Guardian – the thought struck me that David Lynch is no longer a filmmaker, he’s an artist. As far as any audience is concerned, that really is not a good place to be.
Let’s hope so if Die Hard 4.0 is anything to go by...
Die Hard 4.0 – directed by Len Wiseman, written by Mark Bomback.
Watching this, all I could think of was something I read in The Guardian a little while back, inasmuch as that the film industry is the only industry that has used digital techniques to significantly increase costs. What we used to have was a two hour film with five to ten minutes of expensive effects – in Die Hard 4.0 there’s an eye-wateringly expensive digital effect every two minutes. Add in your trademarked ‘Really Shit Sidekick’ (hang on a minute, that sounds like something on Cartoon Network) and all of a sudden, you’re in dumbass heaven (unfortunately it looks like the new Indy film is going to be cocked up by an surfeit of RSS as well.)
(I suspect the reason that the Really Shit Sidekick theory is being applied to well loved franchises such as Die Hard and Indy is purely to get that all-important teenage demographic through the turnstiles, which probably means that the scripts have been ‘written’ by focus groups, marketing goons and clever bits of software. That said, it’s surely got to be better than anything written by George ‘Lead Ear’ Lucas).
And then, king of the nerds Kevin Smith shows up!
What set the first two Die Hard films apart for me was the tight focus by way of location (respectively, an office block and an airliner). In Die Hard 4.0, McClane rushes around the US as if he’s on some weird and incredibly boring tour of electricity substations. Surely the template for any action movie is to keep the focus tight and light the blue touchpaper: something that Die Hard 4.0 completely neglects to do.
I’m with Gilbert Adair on this one – I love special effects, I just don’t like the films they’re in.
Inland Empire – written and directed by David Lynch.
I really was not looking forward to this at all. Three hours of brain-bending cryptic nonsense all filmed on digital video – sounds like a migraine waiting to happen.
And you know what? That’s exactly what it is.
Don’t get me wrong – I love Blue Velvet. Wild at Heart is a blast. Lost Highway is deranged, most certainly. Mulholland Drive is, yes, well, ahem... But Inland Empire? If there was ever a need for restraint and a roomful of rabid script editors, this film is living proof.
Maybe I’m just not intelligent or patient enough to watch films like this – either that or I need to grow a little goatee for some serious beard scratching.
Sight and Sound voted this number 2 amongst their Top 10 films of 2007. Uh, hello? Here are some selected critical highlights:
Mark Fisher: Convoluted and involuted: Lynch's rabbit warren anarchitecture of trauma is difficult, unsettling and endlessly, weirdly fascinating.
Peter Matthews: After ten minutes of more or less consecutive narrative, you're pretty much free-falling. David Lynch's three-hour surrealist odyssey vanquishes the conscious ego and heads straight for the id. A mind-warping masterpiece.
Chip Smith: What’s going on here then? Oh, look, rabbits – I like rabbits. My head hurts. Is it over yet? Ooh, time for a nap. Zzzzz...
If you need to suspend all brain functions to watch a film like Die Hard 4.0, then you need to harness the processing power at least five brains to try and piece together what the flying arse is going on here. That said, perhaps Inland Empire is some kind of bizarre intelligence test – everyone who professes to understand it or at least expresses an admiration for it will get a regular column on Sight and Sound. Everyone else who simply shrugs and scratches their head will get a job on The Dandy (and I know which one I’d rather write for).
Admittedly, the three hour running time doesn’t help. After the first hour, the film went into a determinedly mentalist freefall and I dozed off intermittently (only the second time I have ever done this, Institute Benjamenta being the other culprit). Even the end title sequence is tortuous and never–ending.
After the most gruelling three hours I have ever spent in the company of a DVD, I read this in The Guardian – the thought struck me that David Lynch is no longer a filmmaker, he’s an artist. As far as any audience is concerned, that really is not a good place to be.
Wednesday, 16 January 2008
Celebrity Screenplays
I may risk going off on a tangent here (no change there then), but it suddenly occurred to me the other day that the one area of creative endeavour seemingly uninfected by the virus of celebrity is the screenplay. Sure, there are celebrity screenwriters, but they tend to be people who are first and foremost writers, and not celebrities double or triple-hyphenating their way across from other branches of the media and/or creative arts.
The cult of celebrity in the publishing trade is well known, to the extent that the use of ghostwriters is now commonplace – Naomi Campbell is reported as stating that she has never read the novel that has her name on the cover (Black Swan), and it’s obvious that all of Jordan’s ‘novels’ have been ghosted (by Rebecca Farnworth just in case you were wondering). For the most part, the name on the cover acts as a marketing hook – the celebrity functions as a brand name that can be utilised to sell anything from perfume to fitness DVDs to underwear and, of course, novels.
So why doesn’t the same exist in the world of screenwriting? Or, perhaps more to the point: should it?
Of course the economic model of filmmaking is entirely different from that of the mass market publishing industry, where the mantra is ‘pile ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap’. However, it does seem a little odd (to me at least) how screenwriting hasn’t necessarily been ‘contaminated’ by celebrity in quite the same way that the publishing industry has.
That said, not so long ago it seemed that wherever you looked, some celebrity somewhere was penning a screenplay: Toby Anstis, David Emmanuel (well, maybe ‘celebrity’ is too strong a word, but you get the idea) – you name ‘em, they were all hitting the keyboard in the belief that it was the one surefire way to fame and riches. And you know what? Good luck to ‘em. Far be it for me to dictate how Toby Anstis spends his time, just so long as he’s not clogging up the airwaves with more bottom feeding reality shows.
However, Toby Anstis aside, perhaps the collision of screenplay and celebrity is a marketing tool worth exploring by aspiring and established screenwriters alike (I’m not entirely sure if I’m being sarcastic or not here, so bear with me).
A screenplay is a blueprint – of course it can function as a commodity, but unlike a novel, it isn’t a ‘reader friendly' format. However, if there are celebrities out there who are convinced that their screenwriting talents are going to bear fruit, perhaps it should fall to the screenwriting community to ‘assist’ them in their endeavours? After all, a screenplay with the name of a well-known celebrity on the front page would no doubt generate a certain degree of interest (depending on who the celebrity was, of course). So what if the words inside aren’t written by that celebrity? If the name on the front helps that screenplay gain attention, then surely that’s a good thing – right? Also, as and when that commodity is sold, the celebrity screenwriter could then be used as that all important ‘marketing hook’ to provide ongoing publicity for the production up until its release.
The most important thing from my own point of view is that this would almost certainly open up a new (if somewhat limited) market for spec screenplays. So, rather than Toby Anstis slaving away over a hot keyboard, his agent could simply shake hands with a ‘ghost screenwriter’ and have a product ready to hit the market that afternoon (maybe Toby Anstis is the wrong example: think Robbie Williams, Anthony Kiedis, Victoria Beckham, Katie Price).
Also, wouldn’t the whole concept of ‘packaging’ become a little more fun? Rather than trying to excite interest in a screenplay with the name of an actor attached, why not just attach the name of a celebrity as the writer? It could work. That said, knowing my luck, I’d probably end up with the Cheeky Girls or Michelle (‘How low can you go?’) Bass, thereby guaranteeing a slow, embarrassment laden death on cable TV.
That said, perhaps I am being sarcastic (but maybe just a little bit).
The cult of celebrity in the publishing trade is well known, to the extent that the use of ghostwriters is now commonplace – Naomi Campbell is reported as stating that she has never read the novel that has her name on the cover (Black Swan), and it’s obvious that all of Jordan’s ‘novels’ have been ghosted (by Rebecca Farnworth just in case you were wondering). For the most part, the name on the cover acts as a marketing hook – the celebrity functions as a brand name that can be utilised to sell anything from perfume to fitness DVDs to underwear and, of course, novels.
So why doesn’t the same exist in the world of screenwriting? Or, perhaps more to the point: should it?
Of course the economic model of filmmaking is entirely different from that of the mass market publishing industry, where the mantra is ‘pile ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap’. However, it does seem a little odd (to me at least) how screenwriting hasn’t necessarily been ‘contaminated’ by celebrity in quite the same way that the publishing industry has.
That said, not so long ago it seemed that wherever you looked, some celebrity somewhere was penning a screenplay: Toby Anstis, David Emmanuel (well, maybe ‘celebrity’ is too strong a word, but you get the idea) – you name ‘em, they were all hitting the keyboard in the belief that it was the one surefire way to fame and riches. And you know what? Good luck to ‘em. Far be it for me to dictate how Toby Anstis spends his time, just so long as he’s not clogging up the airwaves with more bottom feeding reality shows.
However, Toby Anstis aside, perhaps the collision of screenplay and celebrity is a marketing tool worth exploring by aspiring and established screenwriters alike (I’m not entirely sure if I’m being sarcastic or not here, so bear with me).
A screenplay is a blueprint – of course it can function as a commodity, but unlike a novel, it isn’t a ‘reader friendly' format. However, if there are celebrities out there who are convinced that their screenwriting talents are going to bear fruit, perhaps it should fall to the screenwriting community to ‘assist’ them in their endeavours? After all, a screenplay with the name of a well-known celebrity on the front page would no doubt generate a certain degree of interest (depending on who the celebrity was, of course). So what if the words inside aren’t written by that celebrity? If the name on the front helps that screenplay gain attention, then surely that’s a good thing – right? Also, as and when that commodity is sold, the celebrity screenwriter could then be used as that all important ‘marketing hook’ to provide ongoing publicity for the production up until its release.
The most important thing from my own point of view is that this would almost certainly open up a new (if somewhat limited) market for spec screenplays. So, rather than Toby Anstis slaving away over a hot keyboard, his agent could simply shake hands with a ‘ghost screenwriter’ and have a product ready to hit the market that afternoon (maybe Toby Anstis is the wrong example: think Robbie Williams, Anthony Kiedis, Victoria Beckham, Katie Price).
Also, wouldn’t the whole concept of ‘packaging’ become a little more fun? Rather than trying to excite interest in a screenplay with the name of an actor attached, why not just attach the name of a celebrity as the writer? It could work. That said, knowing my luck, I’d probably end up with the Cheeky Girls or Michelle (‘How low can you go?’) Bass, thereby guaranteeing a slow, embarrassment laden death on cable TV.
That said, perhaps I am being sarcastic (but maybe just a little bit).
Monday, 14 January 2008
Branded
On 4th January, the earnest but clueless Verity Sharp presented A Culture Show special on Icelandic progressive noodlers Sigur Ros. Ostensibly the show was a promotional junket for Sigur Ros’s new CD, which in turn is the soundtrack for their new concert film. So far, so good. However, it’s entirely possible to view this Culture Show outing as a way of hitching Sigur Ros’s music to the BBC branding juggernaut. After all, Hoppipolla was used as the trailer soundtrack for the BBC’s Planet Earth – so much so in fact, that the opening notes of the song have become familiar to the point of ubiquity (never a good sign for any band’s career).
Of course, it’s great that the BBC dedicates time to the lost art of music programming – however, if it wasn’t for the supposed marketing synergy that some bright spark at the BBC has detected, then it might be a different story. Why not just feature great music regardless of the fact that the band that makes it might NOT have a commercial/marketing relationship with the BBC? I guess that’s what Later with Jools Holland is for, or even (*shudder*), Top of the Pops (did it really make a re-appearance on Christmas Day with the also clueless Fearne Cotton, or was it those sprouts repeating on me?).
Of course, it’s great that the BBC dedicates time to the lost art of music programming – however, if it wasn’t for the supposed marketing synergy that some bright spark at the BBC has detected, then it might be a different story. Why not just feature great music regardless of the fact that the band that makes it might NOT have a commercial/marketing relationship with the BBC? I guess that’s what Later with Jools Holland is for, or even (*shudder*), Top of the Pops (did it really make a re-appearance on Christmas Day with the also clueless Fearne Cotton, or was it those sprouts repeating on me?).
Saturday, 12 January 2008
Metlab Update, Part 4
Got my METLAB feedback back from Lucy Vee this week – to summarise I got one ‘Argh!’, one ‘YAWN!’, one ‘I may die if I read one more script with these in’, a line about nipple tassels and a recommendation to watch Pitch Black until my eyes bleed (thank you Amazon: Pitch Black for 80p!). All in all, I thought my script emerged a little bruised but still cocky enough to think it might just have something. Lucy’s notes are always fun to read anyway (especially when she’s putting the boot in).
Bearing in mind the average Hollywood screenplay typically goes to eleven or twelve drafts even before production, there’s still a good deal of work to do here (currently at third draft stage) – but hey, I happen to like re-writing, which is just as well really.
Bearing in mind the average Hollywood screenplay typically goes to eleven or twelve drafts even before production, there’s still a good deal of work to do here (currently at third draft stage) – but hey, I happen to like re-writing, which is just as well really.
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