Month: August 2011

Fasten your safety belts

Maximum Z action, Bill Murray, Movie of the Moment, mystery, outlines, rewrite, screenwriting
The Thunderbolt at Kennywood Park in West Mifflin, PA

After some nice progress on fixing problems at both ends of the first act, I ventured into Act Two and was able to make some good changes there as well.  A lot of on-screen action takes place, and I want to make sure it really grabs you and doesn’t let go until absolutely necessary.  I think I was able to do that, and made it to the midpoint as a reward.

I opted to stop at another point that’s been giving me trouble. My hope is that I’ll be able to get past that and continue on to at least the end of Act Two.

I’ve noticed when trying to convert a scene from the outline to the pages that it’s really easy to say in the outline what I want to happen, but things suddenly get a lot harder to translate into something on the page. I know in my head want I want to say, but have trouble getting it out the way I want to say it.

We’ll see how it goes.

-Movie of the Moment – THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE (1997), a clever pseudo-homage to Hitchcock-style mysteries.

Bill Murray is a video store clerk who pays a surprise visit to his wealthy brother in London.  But the brother is hosting a dinner party to finalize ‘the biggest deal of his life’, so sends Bill off to an audience-interactive show, where scenes are played out throughout town.  But he intercepts a call meant for a secret agent, and follows the trail of clues, thinking the whole thing is part of the act.

Only got about halfway through it, but really looking forward to finishing it.

I was worried it would be more like WHAT ABOUT BOB?, but it’s actually smarter than you might think.  What’s really fun about it is how something is set up, followed by a payoff, but there’s also a twist in interpretation or context, thereby giving even more effectiveness to a well-structured double plotline: the one Bill sees as the theatre experience, and the one we the audience know is the actual secret agent storyline.

All that and Joanne Whalley’s gams.  What more could a film geek want?

Did it again

Maximum Z Movie of the Moment, outlines, rewrite, screenwriting, scriptshadow
Kinda, sorta feeling like this...

After days of working extra hours, thereby not being able to do much/anything on the outline, as well as agonizing over whether or not I’d be able to properly fill in some small plot holes, I sat down and started to work. Fear be damned!

Turns out I didn’t have to worry too much. I was able to make some pretty good changes. Nothing phenomenal, but slightly better than I was expecting.

Don’t know how much I’ll get done next week, since it’s the last week of summer vacation and Mom & Dad Camp will again be in session. I’ll do what I can.

It’s also helped that I read three scripts this week, including two from ScriptShadow, each of which I made a point of commenting on, and a spec from 6 years ago that was really impressive.

I didn’t realize until I was finishing that last one that it was a great model to work with if/when I ever redo my Christmas Noir script.

-Movie of the Moment – THE NAME OF THE ROSE. K and I have been watching it little by little over the past few days.

A murder mystery set in a 14th century Italian monastery, with Sean Connery as the investigating monk and a very young Christian Slater as his assistant/protege.

A little slow, but a clever premise, and fun to watch detective story tropes used throughout (primitive glasses with magnifying lenses, deducing from clues, etc.).

Only complaint – spotty sound quality, but this was DVR’d off TV, so you might have better luck on video.

Drat, drat and double drat

Maximum Z rewrite, screenwriting
yep. it never ends

I have gotten absolutely no writing done these past few days.  It’s a combo of working until noon, which saps more energy than it used to (jeez, I hate getting old), V spending the last two weeks of summer vacation at Mom & Dad Camp, and constantly rewriting the damn opening pages in my head over and over again.

I was all set to redo that opening when I realized there was a character trait that comes into play during Act Two that I need to set up somewhere in the beginning.

Basically, I need to go through the entire outline and make sure everything flows, payoffs are set up properly and effectively, and that all of it is relatively easy to follow.

Not necessarily a piece of cake, but I may be letting the stress get to me.  Time to enter Zen mode and launch a methodical assault.

Wish me luck.