movies

Even better

Maximum Z movies, orson welles, outlines, screenwriting, story

Progress is coming along nicely. I was able to make some changes to the new beginning I worked on yesterday, and it really meshed with most of what I had written before.

And it also seems like it will only need some minor readjustments here and there to really bring it up to speed. Which means I can finally focus on moving forward.

Regarding one subplot of which I was very concerned, I realized I might be able to tie it in with another, thereby tying more of the whole thing together.

I like when this kind of serendipity happens.  Or is it?

-Regarding GHOST TRAIN, I didn’t get a chance to read it during those brief minutes between traffic reports because the Adobe Reader in my studio computer appears to not be working. Knowing this company the way I do, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s been removed altogether.

So I’ll have to read it at home, and with K heading out of town, I’ll have plenty of spare time to do that.

As is typical of my scatterbrained nature, I also forgot about the remaining Black List scripts. Hopefully once the Adobe reader is working again in my studio, I can knock a few of those out of the way.

-I think I’ve mentioned Scriptshadow’s Amateur Friday before, but just in case you’ve forgotten, the site’s moderator chooses a script from those submitted by his readers (accompanied by a note explaining why he should pick this script), reviews about it and posts his comments. A lot of the time the script is made available to the rest of the readers as well.

I sent in DREAMSHIP and WOK & ROLL aka the Chinese restaurant script. I’ll be surprised if he picks either. But you never know.

-Movie of the Moment: a completely forgettable B Western called MAN IN THE SHADOW from 1957. It was on Encore’s Western channel, and the only reason I watched it was because Orson Welles is in it. He appears to be about 40 or 50 pounds shy of his TOUCH OF EVIL weight. This may also be around the time he appeared on an episode of I LOVE LUCY.

Apart from him, there’s nothing unique about the film. I’d heard Welles had been in a Western, purely in an acting capacity. Poor guy. His wunderkind days were far behind him and he probably needed the work to fund his own projects.

Can you imagine being the director on that film? I wonder if the guy ever asked Welles his opinion about how a shot looked. I guess that would be like coaching a community softball team with Tim Lincecum as your pitcher. (That’s the long-haired SF Giants pitching phenom, for you out-of-town baseball fans.)

Title? We don’t need no stinkin’ title!

Maximum Z Bad News Bears, Filmsack.com, hockey, Lake Tahoe, loglines, Lost In Space, movies, outlines, plot, screenwriting, story, Triggerstreet, Veronica, Walter Matthau

Okay.  I’m back from a rousing hockey tournament at Lake Tahoe, where V’s team came in 3rd out of 6, including their 2 wins with her in goal.  In fact, she was awarded the MVP puck for their 8-1 victory on Saturday night.  Overall, it was very exciting.  Cold, but exciting.

Just before we left, I was introduced to Triggerstreet.com, a screenwriting review/forum website (Kevin Spacey is one of the founders). Part of the way they work is having members review other members’ scripts.  I haven’t submitted anything yet, but plan to in the near future.

But it was the forum that especially intrigued me.  I decided to take the plunge and posted a question about my logline for LUCY.  I did that on Thursday afternoon.  By the evening, I had a few responses and something like 75 views.  What’s cool about the set-up is that you can opt to get an email notification that somebody’s responded to your post.  A lot of the drive up to Tahoe was spent checking them out.

I have to say I got some really good feedback, and even better, got what I feel is a stronger logline for the story.  I thought about posting that 3 Stooges one just to see what people think, but I’ll hold off for a little while.

Speaking of which, I sent in the old LUCY logline and the 3 Stooges one to the logline contest.  Neither one won, but honestly, I don’t really think that much of some recent winners.  I may try again with the new LUCY one.  It’s a wait-and-see situation.

-As much as I thought/hoped it might happen this weekend, I didn’t get a lot of work done on the outline.

So now that I’ve got an outline I like much better, I felt I had to start over with it, albeit with a few minor changes.  But as I was looking it over, there didn’t seem to be much I thought had to come out.  There are still a few places where I may have to make some slight readjustments, but it may not be as daunting a project as I originally thought.

And I may have stumbled onto a solution for moving the story along.  All I have to do now is figure out how to incorporate it into the story. Which I think I can do

Movie of the Moment:  A few to go over. First the original BAD NEWS BEARS. The other girl on V’s hockey team owns this, and we watched it on Saturday afternoon.  Watching it now as a parent is a lot different than when I was a lot closer to the age of a lot of the cast.  It was really weird watching Walter Matthau, especially since I’ve seen more of his work in recent years.

But the story and the writing still hold up.  Some good jokes sprinkled around here and there, but more would have been nice.  It’s also really weird to have a PG movie from the mid-70s have so much mild cursing in it.  From a writing point of view, the character development is strictly textbook, but effective.  What was also clever was that only a handful of scenes are set inside; a majority are set at the ball field.  And you get to know almost all of the kids on the team; just a handful don’t serve much purpose.  I know they made a remake with Billy Bob Thornton a few years ago, but I don’t see the point.

The other movie was LOST IN SPACE, only because it was on TV today while I was working.  I saw this in the theater back in 1998, and enjoyed it.  Not a lot, but worth the $6 for the matinee.  Incidentally, this would be a great choice for the Filmsack guys.

But looking at it today, it really drags in some places and the dialogue doesn’t really do much for me.  I still don’t understand why they didn’t just kill Gary Oldman’s Dr Smith.  He tried to sabotage their mission and they still let him live?  Ridiculous.  And don’t get me started on the cgi monkey alien.  Lame.

Akiva Goldsman, who wrote it (as well as BATMAN & ROBIN, but also A BEAUTIFUL MIND – go figure), has become more of a producer and has thankfully let his writing career diminish.  While I love the concept of the movie, this one just felt forced and could have been a little shorter.  Still, to me it’s one of the slightly better 60s-TV-show-based films, as opposed to that big ol’ chunk of cinematic Velveeta known as WILD WILD WEST.

Now just try to get that gigantic steampunk spider-tank out of your mind.

You’re welcome.

Our campouts were never like this

Maximum Z analysis, Black List, Boy Scouts vs Zombies, characters, comedy, horror, movies, screenwriting, story, zombies

Finally got to read BOY SCOUTS VS ZOMBIES, a horror comedy that ranked on the Black List.

The concept: A troop of Boy Scouts on their weekend camping trip must protect an island town after a zombie outbreak and save the local girl scout troop.

Personally, I’m getting a little tired of the whole zombie thing (although ZOMBIELAND was fun), this sounded interesting.  Seeing as how I was a Boy Scout (big surprise, right?), I wanted to see what the writers, Carrie Evans and Emi Mochizuko, would do with it.

First and foremost: A really fast read.  I zipped through this thing in about 90 minutes.  The whole thing really moves along.

I was also surprised how just about all the characters veer into stereotypes. The somewhat bland main character who’s too shy to tell the girl he likes her, the too-cool friend, the fat slob other friend, the mama’s boy, the overenthusiastic scoutleader, and so on.

It was a little difficult keeping track of all the characters, especially since the first half really focuses on the boys, then really adding the girls into the mix around halfway.  It was also pretty easy to tell which characters were going to be the token redshirts.

Once it settled into ‘will they survive or won’t they?’ mode, I was trying to figure out which characters would be the surprise death.  Surprisingly, that didn’t happen.

And the subplot about the top-secret lab where the whole thing starts seems to disappear after they decide to send out the commandos to neutralize the situation.  Some kind of follow-up would have been nice.

I’d also like to add that technically, the zombies here are the “infected with a virus that simulates zombie-like characteristics” type rather than the truly living dead.  This seems to be the go-to reasoning behind a lot of recent zombie stories.  I guess that’s easier than figuring out how to really raise the dead.  George Romero used radiation, so why not something similar?  But I digress.

Some of the jokes fell a little flat, but there were a handful that made me laugh out loud.  I especially liked the line after one girl turns zombie and tries to eat her friends, one says “Jenny! No! You’re a vegan!”  I also liked how even as everything around them is going to hell, the scouts try to take care of things via the Scout Handbook.  Again, I’m biased.  I don’t know if the guys in my troop would have been able to keep their heads like this.

I wasn’t crazy about when the wide margins would say something about the characters that should really come across in their actions and dialogue (“Matt’s dad has great expectations for his son, and they don’t involve fat slackers and comic books.”)  I always thought this sort of thing was frowned upon, but these two writers were in Disney’s Writing Program, so maybe there are exceptions.

I also wasn’t sure about the idea that a zombie can do the same things they did when they were alive, like a rock climber who turns into a zombie remembers how to climb a cliff.  It seems a little weak.

I really think with a little tweaking here and there, this thing could be fantastic.  It’s already been picked up for production, so it’ll be interesting to see what they do with it.

Would I pay to see it in the theatre?  Probably not.  But I’d definitely put it in the Netflix queue.

This is my last post for 2010, and since I haven’t seen that many movies in the theatres this year, I don’t have a list of my top 10 picks.  I’m just happy to be able to watch so many good flicks, and still plan on my own stuff being part of that someday.

Have a great 2011, and feel free to drop a note once in a while.

p.s.  Almost forgot.  If you’d like to take a look at any of these scripts, let me know and I’ll forward it to you.

And that was the easy part!

Maximum Z Harry Potter, movies, outlines, plot, Richard Curtis, screenwriting, story, train, westerns

I must have gotten more done on the first act of LUCY last week than I thought, because I didn’t have to spend much time on it today, and for the most part, it’s done.

Hooray for me.

While I’m extremely happy with the way everything’s working out so far, I’ve also been mulling over what happens in Act Two, aka the vast wasteland.

It is somewhat daunting to be starting on the bulk of the story, which is why I’m really glad to be fine-tuning everything now.  I can figure out what works and what doesn’t.  I’m also really glad I set up those plot point milestones, which will help me get where I want to go.  That western and train checklist has also come in handy.

I’ve started plotting out what happens as Act Two gets underway, but still need a plausible way to get to my page 45 twist.  Somewhere in there I’d like to introduce my bounty hunter character (and I already have his name ready).  What would be even cooler is to somehow tie him in to what we’ve already seen, but I think I can do that too.

Movie of the Moment:  I took V to see HARRY POTTER 7 yesterday.  A little long, but seems like a nice start to wrapping the whole thing up.  I remember when the book came out, a reviewer commented on “HP and the never-ending camping trip.”  Which was on full display.  Despite the occasional question (“What did he say?,  What does that mean?, etc”), V seemed really enjoy it.  I’m sure we’ll see part 2 next summer.

There was also the requisite GREEN LANTERN trailer, which V was very excited about.  I am also guilty about that, despite Ryan Reynolds still being better for the part of Barry Allen rather than Hal Jordan.  But that’s what they get for not asking me.

I did watch PIRATE RADIO earlier today.  It was a blast.  I didn’t realize Richard Curtis wrote and directed it; he wrote FOUR WEDDINGS & A FUNERAL, NOTTING HILL and wrote and directed LOVE, ACTUALLY.  After I learned that, I could see similarities between some of the films.  Multi-character storylines with one main character tying the whole thing together.  And he collaborated with Rowan Atkinson on some of the later Blackadders, so you know his comedy skills are top-notch.

But getting back to PIRATE RADIO.  Lots of funny stuff, most of it possibly true, and just a fun story.  It also had the requisite happy ending, but I won’t say how.  Suffice to say, what led up to it was unexpected, but it all fit together very nicely.

So long, rules!

Maximum Z adventure, jobs, movies, outlines, plot, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Roger Corman, screenwriting, story

One of the first things I learned about screenwriting was when something had to happen.

Page 3 is statement of theme.  Page 10 is your inciting incident, and so on and so on.

I mention this because today was about reinforcing what I already have for the first act.  I opted to start with my thrilling opening sequence.  All I had written down was ‘rousing action sequence,’ which really doesn’t grab you.  So I jotted down some notes about what I wanted to happen and got to work.

After a few false starts, it started to come together.  I keep going back to RAIDERS, with Indy and Alfred Molina in the temple, followed by the escaping-the-natives/introducing-Belloq sequence.  So much info and detail about each character in a space of minutes. Incredible!  Could I pull off the same feat?  Maybe.

It’s a little different when your main character is a train engineer.  What can they do besides drive a train?  One of many things I had to figure out.  But then the mental reminder that this is still the first outline, so things will change down the line.  But for now, she can drive a train and is pretty good with a gun.

As I worked on ramping up the conflict, I couldn’t help but notice that this was growing well beyond the original 3-page limit I had set up.  It was reaching at least 6.  Possibly 7.  And all of that would really mess up having the inciting incident on page 10.  Yikes!

But the more I thought about it, the less it mattered.  I was trying to have a thrilling introduction to my main character (plus her sidekick), and if it went beyond 3 pages, then so be it.

I’m also trying to figure out how to end the whole sequence.  I have a pretty good idea of what it will be.  It’s working out the details that’s the hard part.

-Something somebody at the writing group said last week also struck a nerve, and I’m really glad I wrote it down:  What’s at stake if Lucy fails?

This has been bothering me ever since.  What WILL happen?

What I have now under the ‘what she wants’ label is: to catch the real thieves.  Which is okay, but seems like it should be bigger.  Something a lot of people can relate to.

Again, working out the details is pain in the butt.

No Movie of the Moment tonight, but we did watch the original DEATH RACE 2000 the other night.  Wow, was that cheesy.  Once you suspend disbelief about everything going on, there are some funny moments.  Unfortunately those were few and far between.

As K pointed out, it was more interesting during the race and less when they were off the road.  Interesting early performance from Stallone.

All things being equal, we may put the Jason Statham-starring one on our Netflix queue.  For purely academic curiosity, of course.