Zodiac

Okay. Not a picture from the movie, but still . . .

I did reach the point during Zodiac, at almost three hours long, when I wondered if this movie would e v e r end. And I wondered how the police ever catch anyone. AND, there was 20 minutes of "entertainment" programming before they turned down the lights and 15 minutes of trailers after. Felt like I was homesteading the place.

But it was a more interesting exploration of obsession than Number 23.

Monday Meme

Happily lifted from Monday's A Bitch

Last time you ate Kraft Dinner?

Never. Seriously, I make a lovely homemade mac and cheese and ham. And I use real cheese not a cheese-flavored petroleum product.

Last thing you bought yourself for no practical purpose whatsoever?

Probably, the 987th pencil in a row.

Last time you left the country?

Went to Canada years ago.

Last time you did a crossword puzzle?

Last week. My EMT text uses crosswords to facilitate learning of the really big words.

Last photograph you took?

Friday, close-ups of some blooming tulips.

And this one from Manic Monday

What do you feel is the biggest waste of time?

As previously reported, used-to-be audiences enjoyed a cartoon before the movie. Now, there are commercials, trailers, then the movie.* By the time I sit through the Coke commercial and the manly fragance commercial and the put your commercial in this space commercial and three trailers, my popcorn is either cold or gone and I have to go to the bathroom.

Hello, if I wanted to watch TV commercials, I would stay home.

If I knew then what I know now, I ....

would have started sooner.

How do you feel your life has changed over the past year?

Time has sped up. I must be living close to a gravity well.



*Alas, no cartoon.

Advanced Screenwriting

Acquiring accurate feedback is an obstacle all aspiring screenwriters face. We need to know if the movie playing in our head is being effectively translated onto paper.

Screenwriters, lucky enough to live near or in metropolitan areas, have a wealth of opportunities and populace from which to choose. Writers groups, college classes, like-minded Starbucks patrons etc.

Those of us living beyond the pale, cope with a different situation. Even though everybody and their brother are writing screenplays, a small town may not offer up enough screenwriters to form a writing group. A writing group made up of three poets, a non-fiction chronicler and a screenwriter will not help the screenwriter.

So, what is the isolated scriptwriter to do?

There’s the Net. Peer feedback forums are all over the place. I post on American Zoetrope. Sometimes a basic –do they GET the story—is all I receive, and that is an important part of the process, but not all of it.

And if they don’t get the story, I always consider that my fault. I’ve developed a minimalist writing style and occasionally I leave out something important.

That doesn’t mean that I never rave to the dog about the pea-brained idiocy of some readers, but she’ll never tell. And, neither do I.

I haven’t quite reached the point where I’m ready to pay for coverage. Brother, that is a scam-filled tar pit waiting for the unsuspecting. What I do instead is enter contests that offer coverage to all.

This has worked quite well – Slamdance provides excellent feedback – BlueCat does too. A few contests whose directors call to inform the finalists who won (or didn’t) often offer remarks about the “close”* scripts. That’s happened to me a couple of times.

And then, there’s the time, coverage for all, is at best a ploy.

Recently, I received my coverage from a contest where my script finished 62 out of 286. Their feedback was a bar graph.

I was not enlightened or amused.**

Even in my lowest expectations, a bar graph does not represent feedback to me.***

But what really annoyed me. What occasioned a private diatribe about inept, ill-informed, stupidly opinionated readers is the scoring and comments on the Advanced Screenwriting Elements.

According to this contest, Advanced Screenwriting Elements are subtext, visual storytelling, creative presentation of exposition and hooks.

Here I am, finally getting to the point.****

I learned subtext from a Montana literary novelist named Deirdre McNamer. She said you have to trust your readers. Write it in. Trust they’ll get it.

Yeah, okay, but I wanted to point to it in some way to make sure they saw --

• 1. how clever am I
• 2. the point.

No, dear. Write it in. Trust they’ll get it. Or it isn’t subtext, it’s badly written exposition.

Now, the bar graph for this portion of the feedback***** was -->

The scene they refer to in the comments section is this:

A young man listens while the old man who raised him, confesses that he (the old man) is going blind and there is nothing doctors can do. He needs help.

The young man doesn’t say anything for a beat, then looks up, sees an old truck in a shed near where they’re standing, says, “You kept the old truck.”

The old man says, “I can’t drive anymore.”

The young man goes to the truck, looks it over and says, “I can fix that.”

The comment was “Jack’s reaction to the news that Will is going blind is a little odd.”

“I can fix THAT.”

Hello. Is this mic on?

Is it subtext if they don’t get it?

Or is it subsubsubsubtext no one sees because, afterall, there is no window into my head. My movie plays to an audience of one. Alas.

Subtle is in the mind of the beholder.

Too subtle is a judgement call.

I still believe that it is my responsibility, if the reader doesn’t get some part of the story, not just because they’re ignoramuses.******

I haven’t decided if I should make the subtext more clear. How clear can it be and remain subtext? Or leave it alone and trust.

Trust. A high wire over a flaming pit.





*close. A level of Hell devoted to screenwriters only.
**ok, that’s not really what it said –“Needs Improvement--Excellent” but you get the drift.
***although, technically, I suppose it is some jackass abbreviated version.
****that minimalist writing style only applies to my scripts.
***** :P
******possibly.

Double Feature

Back in the day* audiences could see two features and a cartoon on any given night at the movies. Today, I decided I wanted an old-fashioned Double Feature, so I went to two movies.

VENUS starring the lovely Peter O'Toole and The Number 23 starring the imaginative Jim Carrey.

Venus

Well, after raving about GHOST RIDER last post, I hesitate to denigrate the film that’s everyone’s darling now, lest you decide I have a cretin’s taste in film. But, c'est la vie, as the French would. I thought this film was vile.

It might be that O’Toole is such a good actor, he made the lech so real, or maybe because they used humor to ingratiate the old tosser to the audience.

Whatever the reason, by mid-story, I didn’t like the characters or anything they did. I almost walked out twice, but kept thinking, it’s gotta be over soon. Alas, not soon enough.

I KNOW we’re all going to die, we seldom get exactly what we want, old age can be a lonely, painful time, and when some men say they love you, they only want to fuck. I don’t need a movie, no matter how well acted, to reveal this to me. I was not entertained.

The Number 23

I’m in that generation of women who have math anxiety. Do not try to get me to do math. I cringe when I read scientific articles that proclaim the universe can be explained with numbers; that mathematics is the universal language.

Excuse me, why can’t the universal language be colors or music or art?

I just finished a novel the premise of which was that God is explained by math. Well, God save me.

Anyway, the opening credits to this movie are intriguing. The film that follows is okay. 23 could have been better, The pacing was off. Too much voice-over. But I didn’t guess the end to the mystery, and I think Jim Carrey is a better actor than he gets credit for.

All in all, a blah day at the pictures. I must have jinxed myself raving about two good movies in a row. I was interested enough to look up the #23 Enigma, which, apparently, is actually something. Go figure.**

The 23 Enigma

The Number 23 -- a frequency chart.

The 23 Synchronicity












*and I say this at the reveal of my advancing age.
**just don't try to get me to do math.

Movies, Movies, Movies

This weekend I saw The Departed, Music and Lyrics and Ghost Rider.

The Departed

Finally, rented this on DVD. Can't believe I missed two theater runs of this one.

Stop reading now - SPOILER --

Stopped? Ok.

Cops and Robbers. Everybody dies.

Scorsese should have won the Oscar for Gangs of New York.

Music and Lyrics

This soft, innocuous bit of fluff was still fun, generated genuine laughs and most of the audience left with silly grins on their faces. What's wrong with that?

Ghost Rider -- (some spoilers)

Ok, this one is getting bashed all over, pro movie reviews, screenwriting boards, and yet ...

I liked it.

It's definitely a boy movie. Little boys (about 9 years old), teenage boys and those twenty-something slacker boys.

Really, single girls want to know where all the boys are? Go to a comic book movie. (Except possibly Spiderman, where the audience is all the girls looking at Tobey.)

Anyway, the effects are cool(ish), not awesome as in Pan's Labyrinth, but neat.

Nic Cage's sincere, energetic, all-out acting style is perfect for a guy being turned into Fire. And just when one might think all the scenery's been chewed, Cage does something so subtle, it kills any preformed smirk.

He's about to reveal to his old girlfriend, what's wrong with his life. He looks at her earnestly, sincerely, and says, "I sold my soul to the Devil." And s l o w l y raises one eyebrow. In boy movie parlance, Sweet.

And the scene where Sam Elliot's character and Nic's character head toward the final showdown and the soundtrack fades up Ghost Riders in the Sky. Ok, sue me. It was way cool.

I followed one long thread on a screenwriting board about the stupid state of Hollywood and how bad GR is and brother, they are missing the point.

The audience enjoyed this movie. And that's what it's about.