Year: 2011

Twice as much

Maximum Z laurel & hardy, Movie of the Moment, rewrite, screenwriting, westerns, WWII
I think I'll go....that way

O happy day.

I got to the end of the 3rd quarter of Act Two today, and it’s about twice as long as it was before. For now, that’s good.  It may be edited down when I start doing pages, but I don’t mind.

I wasn’t aiming to do as much, but I’d rather have more to work with than not enough.

I’m workin’ hard at keeping the excitement level up and the pace fast. So far, so good.  Looks like my notebook will get a good workout en route to seeing K’s family next week.  It would be nice to have a solid outline ready to go in the near future.

-Movie of the Moment – Another threesome.  ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, which I was kind of disappointed with.  It moved SO SLOW!  Lots of shots that just went on forever.  2 hours, 45 minutes; could have been at least 30 minutes shorter.  A clever story though, and a great turn by Henry Fonda as the bad guy.  I wonder if this was one of the first Westerns to portray the dirty realism that was the Old West.  Overall, I like Eastwood’s Man With No Name series better.

SONS OF THE DESERT. I’ve never been a big fan of Laurel and Hardy, but I can appreciate them. In the end, I like the Stooges and Marx Brothers better. So shoot me.  This is supposed to be one of their best. I found it…okay.

THE STORY OF G.I. JOE.  Story of a unit in WWII Italy, with Burgess Meredith as famed war journalist Ernie Pyle. Pretty routine, but otherwise nothing special. I guess after you’ve seen SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and other modern WWII films, everything from mid-20th-century seems sanitized.

A nice breather

Maximum Z Movie of the Moment, museum, screenwriting, The Green Hornet

With V out of town, K and I have had more opportunities to do stuff that we like to do, which includes getting outside and being active, or in this case, going to a museum.

There was an exhibit at the Palace of the Legion of Honor featuring works by Isabelle de Borchgrave, a Belgian artist who would recreate an outfit from a painting in the medium of paper.  Literally.  The entire thing was made out of paper, but done in such a way that unless you knew it was paper, you would have to peer in very close to tell the difference.

K had heard high praise for the exhibit, and this was the last weekend for it, so we went.  It was amazing.

But this isn’t a review of the work.  After we left the building and were heading back to the car, we stopped to take in the gorgeous view of the area west of the Golden Gate.  It was also amazing.

My point for all of this is that instead of staying cooped up inside and plotting out the next sequence, or whether or not a particular scene works, I allowed myself the chance to step away from the outline and go and do something enjoyable.

Yes, I probably could have gotten to a desired point in the script, but at the cost of spending time with my sweetie and letting myself relax and broaden my cultural view.  Every writer should allow themselves the luxury of doing such a thing.  It really does help in the end, and on several levels at that.

Besides, I’ll be diving back into the outline tomorrow.

-Movie of the Moment: THE GREEN HORNET. Oh man, was this bad.  I like the old radio show, and have seen a handful of the 60s TV show, but this?  This was just lousy.

My biggest complaint is the lack of motivation for Seth Rogen/Britt Reid. What’s at stake?  What does he stand to lose?  For the most part, he’s really a passive protagonist; Kato does a lot more than he does.

As K succinctly put it, it’s like he becomes a masked vigilante because it seems cool.

And Rogen as a heroic lead is just a bad idea to begin with. I didn’t realize he and his partner Evan Goldberg had written the script, which reeked of lazy writing.  I’m probably one of the few people who didn’t think SUPERBAD was fantastic.

I’ll admit I laughed at a few of the jokes, but if you’re going to do a modern interpretation of a semi-obscure crimefighter from 50 or 60 years ago, you should start with an appreciation of the character and what he/she is all about, THEN work on adapting it to the present day.  This should have been more of a slick noir-type film, not a lame action-comedy.  I think George Clooney and Greg Kinnear were both considered for the lead about ten years ago.  They would have been so much better.  And the script would have been significantly better too.

A guy I used to work with thought this was a great movie.  My opinion of him has dropped slightly.

That’s more like it

Maximum Z horror, rewrite, screenwriting, The Thing, Thor, thrillers

My child is out of the house for the next two weeks, so I have a lot of free time during the day.

Today I went to a 10:20AM show of THOR.  One of the benefits of working morning drive – your day is done by the time everybody else’s is starting.

It was fun; not IRON MAN fun, but still sorta/kinda enjoyable. I’m not too familiar with the comic book. Just a very casual fan. I knew who the characters were, and that’s about it.  I did get the Don Blake joke; that was clever.

My main gripe was the storyline about how Thor could get his power back. I get that he had to learn humility, but how did dying accomplish that?  Or was it a lesson about the fragility of life?  I don’t know.

Unfortunately, this didn’t give me that “I can’t wait to see that again!” feeling.  Up next – probably X-MEN: FIRST CLASS.

After I got home, I jumped feet-first back into the rewrite.  And it felt great, despite not remembering where I had left off.  Turns out it was the 2nd quarter of Act Two. I consulted my notes and got to the midpoint.

While I like the immediacy of working with the laptop, most of this work has been handwritten.  I typed in what I had so far.

And I gotta say I really like how it’s coming along. Looks like my next challenge is firming up the 3rd quarter of Act Two.  But I did it before. I can do it again.

-Movie of the Moment: Last night we watched the first half of INDY IV. I was really disappointed when I saw it in the theatre.  It doesn’t seem as bad now, but is still somewhat of a letdown.

Tonight we’re watching part of John Carpenter’s THE THING. I haven’t seen this in years.  Despite the fake blood and overly-gooey special effects, it’s great at setting the feeling of helplessness, and in an isolated location to boot.

Too bad they don’t make scary movies like these anymore, with more emphasis on gradually scaring you rather than seeing what kind of crazy torture porn they can come up with.

I can only do so much

Maximum Z rewrite, screenwriting, writing gigs

I got a follow-up email from the writer looking for help with their rewrite.  They had implemented some of my recommendations, but for the most part hadn’t really changed that much.

They stated they had not done a huge rewrite,which in my opinion was their first mistake.  This thing needs a major, page-one overhaul, complete with a well-developed outline.  I’d be happy to consult on that, but that’s not why I was contacted.

All I had to do was take my suggestions on how to make it better and put them in where necessary.  Simple things.  Like establishing who the main character was, or having conflict in each scene, and so on.  That’s a much bigger job than this person realizes.

You can’t fix a lousy script with little fixes here and there.  Screenwriters just starting out usually hear the metaphor that the script is the blueprint for your building.  If the blueprint isn’t solid, the building will come crashing down.  Same thing applies to screenwriting.  Lousy script, lousy movie.

I can’t tell if this person is impatient or just doesn’t want to go to the trouble of actually fine-tuning a good concept into a solid script.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized how miserable I would have been working on this.  So I politely said thanks, but no thanks.  It was the right choice.  The proverbial weight on my shoulders has been lifted.

On a positive note, I’m starting on a new freelance project next week and waiting to hear about another one, so in my spare time I can get back to the rewrite, which I’ve really been looking forward to.

Good times are ahead and getting closer.

The writing gods are testing me. Again.

Maximum Z freelancing, jobs, rewrite, screenwriting, writing gigs

I got an email from the person who had me ‘rewrite’ their script last month.

They want to know if I could look at the latest draft and ‘make any necessary changes,’ but ‘without drastically changing the direction of the story.’

Now, I’m always up for a good project, but the last I saw, this script really needed a lot of work.  Basically, a page one rewrite was in order.

That was a month ago, so I don’t know how much progress, if any, has been made on subsequent drafts. I’m happy to help out, but if I see that none of my suggestions have been implemented, I may have to be a little more harsh in my critiquing.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting I’m the end-all and be-all when it comes to screenwriting.  I just think I have a pretty firm grasp on the basics, or at least a little more than some.

Such as knowing who the main character is supposed to be.  Things like that.

Just to be on the safe side, I sent them the plot point breakdown sheet I always use. Hopefully they’ll apply it to their script with positive results.

It’ll be interesting to see how this works out.

The only downside to helping somebody else is less time for my own stuff.  I haven’t been able to do anything on DREAMSHIP in at least a week, maybe more, and it’s driving me crazy.

But I’m not scheduled to work any extra hours this week, which gives me some more time to work on their script and mine.  But I’m also in the process of lining up some freelance (non-script) writing projects, so that also takes away from working on my stuff.

Somehow, I will work my way through all of this and come out triumphant (and possibly well-compensated).  At least, that’s what I’m hoping for.

No Movie of the Moment. I’ve been too frikkin’ busy.