Getting there

Maximum Z animation, antagonist, Black List, Christopher Nolan, Lucy Steele, Murder of a Cat, outlines, screenwriting

The rain returned today, which means I worked until noon, thereby depriving me of about 2 hours of script work time, so there wasn’t much progress today.

But there was at least some.  And it may be more significant than I realize.

My problem was I had this bad guy connected to Lucy’s past.  In fact, he plays a pretty significant role.  I was trying to inject him into the story in a certain way, but kept running into obstacles of one kind or another.  And it wasn’t working.  So I tried another approach, even though I was worried it might seem a little cliched.

But it works better within the story.  So I’ll keep it for now, and see how things develop around it.

It’s supposed to rain all week, so the overall progress may be somewhat limited.  But this latest development is encouraging.

-I finally got around to reading another Black List script: MURDER OF A CAT, by Christian Magalhaes and Robert Snow.  I’ll have more detailed comments tomorrow, but for the most part, I wasn’t that impressed.

Movie of the Moment: Watched DESPICABLE ME with V.  I enjoyed it.  It was clever, original and never condescending, which I always appreciate.  And probably the first time I could actually tolerate Russell Brand.

I always find the best animation to be in the vein of the old Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons.  At first they seem geared towards kids, but a lot of jokes are there for the adults.  Surprisingly, this wasn’t nominated for Best Animated Feature.  It probably wouldn’t win, but at least it could have been nominated.

I also managed to watch INCEPTION over 2 days.  I liked it, but I couldn’t help but keep hearing a co-worker’s comments throughout in that almost everything Ellen Page’s character asks is for the benefit of the audience. “What’s a kick?”, “Limbo?”, “Whose consciousness are we going into again?” and so on.

I especially liked the whole execution of the dreams within dreams part, and each one’s relation to the one it was set inside, which I guess really was the whole second half of the film.

More than once I was thinking “How did they do that?,” but my DVD from Netflix didn’t have any bonus features, so I don’t know how they pulled off any of the special effects.  I’m fairly certain the fight scene in the hotel hallway was similar to the space station in 2001, complete with a circular rolling set.

While the story was a little hard to follow in some parts, visually it was stunning.  Christopher Nolan is definitely one of a kind, and it makes me look forward to THE DARK KNIGHT RISES that much more.

-I applied to a potential short-writing gig.  Zombies are apparently involved, which are always fun.

Thank you, inner me

Maximum Z outlines, screenwriting

I think I may have found a solution to my bad guy problem.

Even more amazingly, it came to me while I was sleeping.  Kudos to my subconscious for being a team player.

I was hoping to work on it during a rare Saturday afternoon shift, but the roads have been busy, which means I’m busy, which means I get no writing done.

But now that I know what I want, when I sit down on Monday, I’ll be able to make the necessary fixes.

And that’s cool.

Movie of the Moment:  Tonight’s planned feature is DESPICABLE ME. K & V saw it last summer, so I’m the odd man out.  It’s supposed to be good, so I’m looking forward to it.

Short post; big problem

Maximum Z antagonist, characters, LA Confidential, outlines

I realized what’s been bothering me about my main antagonist.  I haven’t fully figured out his goal.  I thought I did, but turns out I was wrong.

And until I do, I can’t move forward.

This is going to be tough.  But not impossible.  It’ll take some effort, but I’ve been down this path before.

Good thing I’m running into this now, during the outline process, rather than while writing actual pages.  That would suck even more.

Time to put the creativity into overdrive.

Stay tuned.

Quick Movie of the Moment: L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, which I was reminded of while reading THE GANGSTER SQUAD.  I stumbled upon it while channel surfing.  Damn, this is a finely executed piece of storytelling.  I still cry foul that this lost Best Picture to TITANIC.

There is so much packed into each scene, even the short ones.  It zooms by.  The first act alone is almost an entire story unto itself.  There are so many subplots throughout, each one connected to the others, and easy to follow.

I’m guessing this was supposed to be Guy Pearce’s breakout film, but the spotlight shone on a very young-looking Russell Crowe.

My only complaint: the Rollo Tamasi angle.  It seems a little too fabricated and Keyser Soze-ish to me.  But other than that, I really like this movie.

Ink: a review

Maximum Z Netflix

For some reason, I was really exhausted today, so didn’t get any work done on the outline.  But the ideas are neatly organized in my noggin, so hopefully it won’t be too difficult to get them down on paper tomorrow.

But I finally managed to finish watching INK, courtesy of Netflix. I can’t remember how it popped up in my recommendation list, but it looked interesting. Something about it seemed vaguely familiar.

The description reads: Late one night, a lost soul named Ink snatches 8-year-old Emma (Quinn Hunchar) into the world of dreams. There, he hopes to use her soul to join the ranks of the evil Incubi. In the real world, Emma lies comatose, to the despair of her father, John (Chris Kelly). But the Incubi’s benevolent opposites — the Storytellers — rally to help Emma, motivating John to wage war for his daughter. Jessica Duffy co-stars in this dark fable.

Hmm. Forces of good and evil, dreams, a child. Where have I heard that before? Getting a little too close to DREAMSHIP territory for my taste. But I didn’t have to worry.

While my story is more action-adventure, this one is more…artsy. I went into it expecting a straightforward kid-oriented story, but it wasn’t. Not by a long shot. It’s almost adult in nature, seems a little too cerebral in some parts, and some story elements were never really explained. Or if they were, I missed them.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s well done. I get the feeling they had a limited budget, and did a great job in getting the most out of it. The special effects also fit in nicely, not drawing too much attention to themselves, but just enough to support the story where necessary.

There’s a fascinating 10-minute video diary of how this film was put together, ranging from the writer-director documenting the assembly of the business plan they were going to present to potential investors, to the cast’s audition footage, to choreographing the fight scenes, to filming in a wide variety of locations around Denver.

Even more fascinating is that the filmmakers couldn’t get a distribution or studio deal, so they pitched it to independent theatres and handled the video aspect of it by themselves. After it’s release, it became one of the most downloaded movies on file sharing torrent sites, which resulted in higher video sales.

One of the things Jamin Winans, the writer-director says in the making-of segment is that they started out with no money, but didn’t let stop them from moving forward. Good for them.

INK is available on Netflix’s Instant Queue. Check it out.

Where exactly do you put a 300-pound Irishman?

Maximum Z characters, Lucy Steele, Netflix, outlines, screenwriting

Not the set-up for a joke, but a question that will be answered shortly.

I took yesterday’s work on the outline and inserted it into the main one today.  Still have some gaps to fill in, but it’s coming together nicely.  This is really turning into a rip-roaring adventure story, let me tell you.

But I couldn’t help but notice one thing about everything I had worked on last week, especially those scenes from page 45 to the midpoint.  There were a lot more than I remembered writing.  While it should be somewhere around 15-18, this was more like 27.  Way too much!  Some emergency editing was necessary.

As much as I hated to do it, I was going to have to get rid of the scenes involving a character I really like.  That would be the somewhat rotund fellow in the title of this post.  He and his flunkies would have to go.  One of the many rules of screenwriting: Kill Your Darlings.  So I did.  The end result is still satisfying, but not as much as it was when I had two sets of double-crosses in the works.  Now it’s back to one.

But all is not lost.

Since I’m now focusing on the next set of scenes, the midpoint to around page 75, part of those involve a mine.  I don’t know what kind, but originally it was going to be abandoned.  Not anymore.  I’m working on turning it into a kind of hideout where this nefarious band of ruffians is currently holed up, thereby increasing the level of conflict in the story.

It keeps surprising me how writing something one day, and maybe jotting down a thought or line, even just on a whim, can really pay off somewhere down the line.  I really like when that sort of thing happens.  It’s almost a kind of self-vindication.

I’m hoping to have a Movie of the Moment for tomorrow.  I haven’t had a lot of spare time lately, so I’ve had to spread my film-watching out over a few days.  Surprisingly, parts of this film are eerily similar to DREAMSHIP.  Crazy, huh?