The Writing Week (Vol. 4) part 197 - When do you Concede on an Idea?

Ideas are not flexible. They are set in stone. That gem of a thought that will lead to the (your) next best screenplay is priceless and incorruptible. It comes as is, or it ceases to be. You won't budge on it, because you shouldn't. And anyone who fails to see the genius that it is clearly just doesn't get it. They never will, so you can forget about trying to show them the light. It's their loss if they ask you to change something. Their loss, and their admission of simple-mindedness. 


My manager called me last week to discuss an idea I had emailed him about, which Jon (known here as Onyx) and I are working on. He was interested in what I sent him, but yet he had a few concerns about it. Mainly, he felt as though there were too many components to it. We were compounding three movies into one, with disparate elements that - while they might function fine together - could be separated and reduced to streamline plot and efficiency. He didn't outright say no to anything, but he wasn't overwhelmingly sold on the complete package yet, either. 


Ideas are malleable. They are fluid, and they evolve based on the needs of the script at hand. A character might not be working, his intentions unclear and ultimately detracting from the script. A plot point might not make sense. The decision to kill off the protagonist will prove itself unmerited, and the result is a grim screenplay without a sense of hope (and therefore, higher sale potential) that comes from allowing your hero to live. The genius idea that birthed the story might falter, but the supporting elements around it can carry the weight, rendering the golden nugget tarnished and unnecessary. Not everything works, and as much as you might love a line or scene or character or other part o an idea, knowing when to let the weak link go is essential to your job as a writer.


Jon and I discussed my manager's feedback briefly (we'll have a longer chat about it later when not both so busy). The main trouble with the outline we presented was the key aspect of the story Jon brought to me - a setup for the overall story, which fades from the setting about halfway through the script. As much as we liked it, as much as we both felt that the foundation for the script was unique and interesting, we both acknowledged that it also added elements to the story that we could remove, without losing much later. Something happens to our protagonist, and he finds himself in undesirable circumstances. The particulars of those circumstances, however, can change. We went one way to start with, but though we both liked it, we know we're not wedded to it. 


It's hard to let an idea go sometimes. Others, the kernel that got the ball rolling can be sufficient as just that; once the idea is more fully formed, you're free to move away from it and to let the project evolve as it needs to. Still, there are other instances in which deciphering that line - when do you hang tight, versus when do you drop something - can be extremely, agonizingly difficult. What do you think? When do you concede on an idea?

The Writing Week (Vol. 3) part 149 - The Dependence on Source Material

The further I get into the industry (and that's still not incredibly far, yet), the more I hear people talk about the importance of source material. If you're unsure what I mean, 'source material' here describes existing material, which your script is based on. It can include anything from books or graphic novels, to other movies or even paintings. Basically, it's something that studio heads and producers can look at as already having found an audience (even if it's a very small one), which makes them more comfortable with backing your big idea. 

A prime example is Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove (and my favorite western). He wrote an epic script about rangers who drive a herd of cattle from Texas to Montana. No one wanted it. He then wrote an epic - 900+ - page book based on it. It was an in-demand property. He quickly tweaked his existing script and sold it as a four-part miniseries. Go Larry.

What this all means, more or less, is that your awesome superhero movie idea, while indeed quite awesome, is less likely to get greenlit than a movie about a third tier superhero that a dozen people read about each month is. Why? Because the product is already in place. More than that, there are already visuals that the writer (or director, or producer, or whoever) can produce in a pitch meeting. You have an idea - and even a script - which is great. What you don't have is a comic book you can point to and say, "look, here is is, hitting something!" It sucks, but I'm finding it's true. 

In the past few months, as I work out future projects I want to develop, I find myself butting up against this 'source material' wall. Superhero stuff - unless a rarity like The Incredibles or Hancock - is basically not gonna happen without a comic book it's based on. Giant sci-fi epics (unless you're James Cameron) are in the same place. For emerging and unproduced writers now, the waters of the market are cold and rough, and a simple, one-sentence pitch of an idea are (perhaps unfortunately) some of the safest boats. Heat worked, so how can you do Heat with a unique spin? That's what you'll be asked.

Of course, I don't want to limit anyone. I was talking with Onyx about this last week, and he reminded me of something important, worth keeping in mind. Sure, it's tough to launch your own The Matrix without source material, but a couple big sales can make all the difference. A tried and true writer can get a lot more experimental than a newbie. So, for the time being, I know that some of my ideas are going on the back burner. I'll keep working on them intermittently, with the hope of one day being that tried and true writer. Then, look out. Something awesome will happen.

The Writing Week (Vol. 3) part 115 - Talk it Out

Writing is often viewed as a solitary pursuit, something that people do in the quiet of their apartment, office, or in the hubbub of a coffee shop. Story lines, character arcs, structure, plot, back stories, and all related elements that go into a script are devised by the scribe alone, with no outside help. At the League, we all believe that to be far from the case. And when I was incredibly stuck on the new outline for my post-Apocalyptic spec, I new I needed help in the form of someone that I could talk it out with (because sometimes, instead of writing, I actually make more progress when working my story out verbally).

On Tuesday night, Onyx and I met up after work at what is fast becoming one of our regular (maybe even weekly) haunts. We went to a restaurant just off Broadway down by Houston Street, saddled up to the bar, pulled out our notebooks, and each ordered one on the night's special $2 pints. That night, we had an agenda, so we didn't spend too much time on unrelated chit-chat. There were three things we wanted to discuss.

First, we talked a bit about a collaboration idea Onyx came up with that we've been talking about working on. He'd sent me an email with some basic thoughts on character, theme, and premise over the weekend, and Tuesday was our first chance to talk about it in person. I'm glad that we began the night with this idea, as I was hoping that beginning some very preliminary talks about one project would help get the wheels turning quickly by the time we moved onto my script. We discussed some of the main characters, tentative relationships they might have with one another, and the general idea of what the script would be. We didn't try to outline anything, nail down any concrete scenes, or even cement who our protagonist would be. Rather, this was a much more basic, building from the ground up type of meeting. I think we made some good progress, too, agreeing on the basics and what our next step would be (some character work and settling on a loose direction based on that).

With the creative juices flowing, we moved on, focusing on my project. As you might recall, I've been asked to attack the second act of my script again. I'd spent the past few days writing a lot of notes down on paper (not something I normally do - I typically make my notes on the computer, since I've found it easier to adhere to my writing schedule when I'm staring at a blinking cursor). Despite all of my notes, some of which were helpful, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was scratching at the surface of the breakthrough I needed to make big strides, but that I wasn't really getting anywhere. There were a few pieces falling into place, but I was feeling far too reluctant to get rid of existing elements from the story without having a really solid reason to do so. There was one character in particular who I was finding difficult to keep in - despite her somewhat large role - but I needed a reason to get rid of her.

While talking with Onyx, he helped me work out the issues I was meeting. Whether he meant to or not, he helped me see a way to take the script in a new direction, one that would make that carry-over character irrelevant. More importantly, though, he helped me ground my character in his setting. My protagonist spends most of the film trying to track somebody down in an unfamiliar land. The problem was, though, he had nowhere to turn when the clues he got led to a dead end. After all, it was unfamiliar land. by talking with Onyx and working on the script out loud, I realized that this lack of familiarity with the setting was one of the big problems I'd been facing, and I figured out how to address it.

With the taste of a big breakthrough in my mouth (and another $2 beer to compliment it), we finally talked a bit about something that Onyx was working on. We threw around a couple more ideas, further proving just how useful it can be to have someone to talk to your scripts about, someone who has read that material and knows what you're trying to do with it. For days, I had been staring at a blank page or blinking cursor, getting nowhere. An evening at a bar after work with someone from the writers group who has been following the project closely proved more valuable than the past few days combined. Granted, those few days of seemingly little progress were integral to me starting to see what I had to lose (or had to prepare to lose) from the old drafts. But that night out talking about the script was the eureka moment I needed to push forward with my work.

Even if you only have one other person to talk to about your writing, I'd highly suggest that any aspiring writer find someone to share every draft of their script with and be able to talk about the project with out loud. It can be such a more productive use of time than watching the seconds tick past as that page in front of you remains untouched.

Decade in Review - Onyx's Top 10

A couple months ago Backer had the idea of posting our top 10 movies of the decade. He followed through and posted his list, as has Cake Man, and Zombie has his full list coming. Inspired by their efforts to sift through ten years of cinema for ten movies, I went ahead and put together my top 10 for the decade. This list does not represent the top 10 greatest films of the decade. These movies (in no particular order) are my personal favorites over that time span, and I've learned from it. I've learned that I am clearly a dude...and I understand more clearly why my girlfriend and I can never agree on anything to watch.

No Country For Old Men (2007)

There's a lot to love about this Cohen brothers film, but it makes my list because of Javier Bardem's portrayal of Anton Chigurh, one of the most intimidating and relentless villains I have ever seen. His determination and sheer lethality took me back to The Terminator where we saw a seemingly unstoppable force barreling towards our protagonist. The fact that the terminator couldn't be killed by any bullet only added to its fear factor. Chigurh is a flesh and blood human and can be done in by any well placed bullet, but you almost begin to doubt that in the way he takes life. Even when Chigurh is wounded it's only a brief delay in his pursuit of Llewelyn Moss. As we saw in The Terminator, the antagonist takes a scene to mend his wounds himself. It's the only time Chigurh and the terminator aren't in direct pursuit of the protagonist and it doesn't last that long. What more could you want from a bad guy?

Gladiator (2000)

It always surprises me that I can't remember if I saw one of my favorite movies in theatres. I'm sure Cake Man remembers the exact date, time, and place he first saw the forest battle in Germania or Maximus' first battle at the coliseum. Everyone has a few movies that you can just sit down and watch again regardless of how many times you've seen it. Of the movies made in the 80s, I came back to Predator more times than any other. Of the films made in the 90s, The Princess Bride took the replay value crown. For this past decade, Gladiator was that movie. Each time I watch it I still hope Maximus can return to his estate in time to prevent the slaughter of his family. That's when I know I really love a movie, when I keep hoping despite having seen the outcome dozens of times.

Taegukgi (2004)

My college roommate recommended this Korean movie to me back in school when he realized I was somewhat of a military junkie. I should have been studying at the time, but instead I was glued to my computer screen as the dvd played, fighting off tears at times.

Taegukgi follows two brothers who are forced into the Korean War. Jin-tae is the street-smart older brother who always looks after his book-smart kid brother, Jin-seok. When Jin-tae learns that recipients of a prestigious medal of valor are granted special requests, he volunteers himself for any mission no matter how dangerous in the hopes of winning the medal and sending his brother home. But as the brothers fight for their lives and the fate of their country, Jin-seok seeks to step from within his brother's shadow and stand on his own as a soldier and a man.

Taegukgi has intense military action sequences that can stand with anything Hollywood can put out, but the movie also has character and lots of heart. If you enjoyed Saving Private Ryan and can stomach subtitles Tai Guk Gi is well worth a watch.

Collateral (2004)

It didn't take much more than mention of Michael Mann and a hitman to get me to watch Collateral in theatres. I'll admit, Tom Cruise had something to do with it too. I feel as though I'm one of the few people who openly like the guy. He had me at Top Gun, and I wholeheartedly enjoyed seeing him transformed into Vincent, the ruthless silver-haired hitman. Jaime Foxx was excellent in his role as a cab driver who gets the unfortunate task of driving Vincent around the streets of Los Angeles for one night while he eliminates his targets. It never hurts to have Michael Mann direct in my opinion. I can't quite pinpoint all that I like about his directing, but I find myself drawn to his movies and I certainly appreciate that when guns go off in his films you instinctively feel like ducking.

Go (2001)

When I first saw Go in my Japanese Cinema class it was my first exposure to the racial tensions that exist in Japan between Koreans and Japanese. I wasn't surprised that such tensions existed, but this was my first exposure to them, and although a movie isn't the real thing, it can be a very intimate portal into those experiences we otherwise wouldn't know. The human emotion that propels us through these experiences are the same on both sides of the world, but it's always refreshing to see it through another perspective.

Go is a teen drama that follows Sugihara, a Korean national who lives in Japan with his parents. He attends a communist Korean school, but he speaks Japanese and hangs out with Japanese kids. When he falls in love with a Japanese girl, Sakurai, he hides his heritage from her in fear of rejection. There's a great deal of anger within Sugihara as he is a young man who doesn't quite know how to blend into Japanese culture while being at peace with his heritage.

Go is an exciting, stylish film, but it has great emotion at its core in a story propelled by youthful love. It manages to go beyond teenage angst. It's not just about the pressure of Sugihara's love for Sakurai. The film touches on real societal pressures and familial pressures that add to Sugihara's strife. I don't really remember caring about a character recently in the way I cared about Sugihara.

Black Hawk Down (2001)

There were a lot of movies I was thinking about including over Black Hawk Down, but I'd just be lying to myself if I didn't put it on my list. I'm a sucker for great military drama and action, right next to the guy kissing the girl at the end of the movie. I'll admit there are other places to look for better military drama, but Black Hawk Down is a spectacle for military action. This movie was almost exhausting in its relentless action as it portrayed what was described as the most intense gun battle involving US military forces since the Vietnam War. I remember it fondly as one of the loudest and most entertaining movie going experiences I've had, and Mark Bowden's book was just as good. I wish there was something I could say on a character or story level but there really isn't. As much as I love great characters and great stories, sometimes I just want to see something blow up.

Kill Bills (2003 and 2004)

Never has a quest for vengeance been so much fun. If we're not being wowed by stylish slice and dice fight choreography amid an ultar cool soundtrack, we're sitting through drawn out scenes of dialogue that we absolutely don't mind sitting through. I consider Tarantino to be a master of dialogue, and he so often manages to create a full cast of great characters. In some movies you might lose track of the supporting cast, but how often have we seen small 1-3 three scene roles in Tarantino movies go down in the better part of cinema history? Congratulations to Tarantino for creating Beatrix Kiddo, the best movie heroine of the past decade in my opinion.

JCVD (2008)

Our love of movies has to start somewhere, and I'm not ashamed to say that Jean Claude Van Damme was one of my favorites as a kid. When I got older and began exposing myself to films that contained more than spin kicks and shootouts, it was easy to see the shortcomings in a lot of Van Damme's work, but you have to keep in mind that movies like Bloodsport and Double Impact aren't being put out as oscar bait. Van Damme is an aging action star, and I'll always respect his legacy in entertainment.

When JCVD was released it was interesting to be able to hear people collectively talk about a Van Damme film in a positive way. JCVD is an intimate film, semi-autobiographical and semi-fictitious as Van Damme plays himself and touches on his difficulties as an aging action star, marital woes, and the pressures of public criticism. The story follows Van Damme retreating back to his home country of Belgium in an attempt to escape the madness, but the national icon can't seem to catch a break as he becomes one of several hostages in a botched post office robbery. The film is a gift for any Van Damme fan, but as critics' praise revealed, JCVD is a solid film that any movie goer should be able to find merit in.

The Last Samurai (2003)

Every once in a while a movie comes along that you feel was made just for you. Cake Man has The Dark Knight, and I have The Last Samurai. I'm not sure if I'm ready to call it my favorite movie over the past decade, but it stands out as my most rewarding movie going experience over that time. Some might say that I should have seen more movies, but let me try to explain the way the stars aligned for me on this one.

I tend to enjoy Tom Cruise and his off screen antics don't really have an impact on whether or not I see his movies. In addition, I have long had a fascination with samurai and that fascination continues to this day with my study of Kendo (the way of the sword). In the film Hiroyuki Senada played the role of Ujio, one of the most fierce and enjoyable characters in the movie. I've long had an appreciation for him considering that he voiced the protagonist in Dagger of Kamui, a 1985 anime that certainly played a major role in my love of movies. Let us not forget that the music in the film was composed by Hans Zimmer, my personal favorite. Oh yeah, it also has ninjas.

There was no way I wasn't going to see The Last Samurai and there was no way I wasn't going to like it. The film was well acted all around, especially by Ken Watanabe. Its epic action is right up there with Gladiator and Braveheart, the ninja ambush being one of my all time favorites. It was beautifully shot and the score perfectly complemented the drama and the emotion. I bought it on dvd the first day it was out.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)

Master and Commander was released a few months after the first Pirates of the Caribbean film. I was a freshman at NYU at the time and I remember that I was doing my best to capitalize on my interest in piracy by developing a true to life screenplay on pirates. As much as I enjoyed Captain Jack Sparrow and company, I always felt that the romanticized take on piracy overshadowed a very dramatic and movie worthy reality that took place on the high seas. Master and Commander wasn't directly about the golden age of piracy, but in it I found a serious representation of men of action on the high seas. I always see in it the potential for what a serious pirate movie might be.

What I love about Master and Commander is that it's a chess game in the form of a pursuit across entire oceans. One day the HMS Surprise and Acheron are exchanging broadsides at twenty yards, then the next the two vessels are separated by hundreds of miles of ocean. Another day one vessel is in hot pursuit, a few miles off the bow of the other. By morning the vessels have swapped places, and a few days later they're separated by hundreds of miles of ocean again. With no vessel captured by the next it's all due to the cunning of two captains, Jack Aubrey being portrayed by Russel Crowe. With Master and Commander it's like keeping a car chase exciting across an entire country rather than a city block. With Peter Weir at the helm I believe they did a masterful job.

There's the list. No turning back now, but here are a few other titles that could have just as easily been included. Lost in Translation, Pan's Labyrinth, Spirited Away, Amelie, Inglourious Basterds, Princess Mononoke, and History of Violence.

Shame on District 9, Body of Lies, Miracle at St. Ana, and The Hurt Locker for not being what I had hoped for.

Surrogates - Forget the Alternate Body, Get an Alternate Script

I guess it's about time to admit that I saw SURROGATES on opening night. (Onyx and I had passes to a free screening, and we were in the mood for some brainless Friday night on-screen action.) The fact that I feel as though I have to defend my decision to go see it should be indicator enough of what I thought about it.

Based on a graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele, the screen adaptation is written by Michael Ferris and John D. Brancato, the writing duo that most recently disappointed Onyx with Terminator Salvation. The premise behind SURROGATES, which stars Bruce Willis, is that a detective in a world where 98% of humans live their lives remotely through surrogate robots of themselves must solve a string of homicides that has left both robots and their human operators dead. Theoretically, having a surrogate safeguards people against physical threat, since if their robot gets shot or hit by a car, all people have to do is disconnect from their surrogate command module long enough to activate a new robot. People can design their surrogate to look like anyone - kind of like second-life online - so in this near-future, city streets are clogged with supermodel robots controlled by balding, overweight slobs who haven't left their apartments in nearly 15 years. Romantic notion of the future, no?



One of the largest problems I had with SURROGATES is that no one seems to have bothered to ask some very basic, yet very essential developmental questions. For one, other than not being able to get hurt and being able to design your surrogate's appearance, we're given no indication why 98% of the human population has adopted this lifestyle. Yes, not getting hurt has its perks. And the movie does do a half-hearted attempt of explaining that surrogates have the sense of touch (though breezes right over the fact that watching your surrogate is more like watching TV than anything else). But there is never any real reason given for why almost everyone in the world has opted to stop going outside, stop directly communicating with loved ones and friends, stop having any sort of actual human interaction in favor of growing old in a chair, watching their younger-looking robot self live life for them. When I explain the premise to friends, their first question is always, "why would people want that?" I can't for the life of me explain it, and perhaps Ferris and Brancato couldn't, either.

The notion of a 98% utilization rate brings me to my next biggest gripe. As writers, we're hounded (or should be) to explain everything in the script, down to the smallest details. SURROGATES avoids major issues like it's its job, issues like how people can afford this complex mechanized versions of themselves. Just about everyone has one (if not more). Are we to assume that these are just given out on the street like fliers for Subway sandwiches? How can they have become so universal? In the intro to the movie, we learn that this all happened in a matter of 14 years. Fourteen years for near total acceptance of life through surrogates. I didn't buy it then, and I don't buy it now. Again, maybe the filmmakers couldn't answer this one, so they opted to sweep it under the rug.

There's a lot that's been deftly ignored in SURROGATES. In what must by now be in his contract, Bruce Willis once again plays a troubled cop with a broken family life who must win back his wife. Yet, the family stuff hardly plays a role in the movie at all. Sure, it affects his decision in the end, but the 88 minute run-time allows for much more character detail than we're given (not that I would have wanted to sit through much more of SURROGATES, mind you). There's a fairly major reveal with anti-surrogate movement leader Ving Rhames, but that's another thing that the final cut just dances right past. If you find yourself wondering why people who refuse to use surrogates are forced to live in slums worse than the aliens in DISTRICT 9 have, don't worry - you're not alone. You will, however, have to stop worrying about the answer, because you won't get that one, either.

The plot is convoluted and disappointing enough, but to me, it's these major omissions that are at the heart of the problems with SURROGATES. In the most recent issue of Creative Screenwriting, there's an article about the film, in which Ferris and Brancato mention that they were racing to complete the script before the 2007-2008 WGA strike. As a result, they did very few drafts of this. Unfortunately for all involved and for audiences, it shows. Watch SURROGATES, but only as an example of why you have to answer (at the very least) the big questions in your alternate-reality flick.

Bite The Bullet

My thesis professor once told me that he always gives his script to his wife because he knows she'll be flat out honest with him and tell him what's working and what's bullshit. I've always been a little hesitant to give my writing to my girlfriend. I'm not worried about how much she knows about screenwriting. She knows enough about the craft and is more involved with the entertainment industry than I am right now. There's just something about getting criticism from the person I wake up next to that scares me from time to time. I can deal with her being frustrated with my choice of tv shows, or with my wastefulness of faucet water, but her being frustrated with my screenwriting is often more than I'm willing to deal with. I usually opt not to fight my battles so close to home, but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet. I did more than bite the bullet. I put the gun in my mouth and pulled the trigger, and in a Fight Club kind of way, I feel like it saved my life.

A few months ago I was feeling none too thrilled about life. My girlfriend was feeling more like a roommate, she was making strides in the industry while I sputtered, the lease on my interest in my job was expiring, writing was slow, and my closest work friend and confidant was leaving the office to face her unknown destiny. I tried to fall back on my writing and completed two first acts to two different scripts. I enjoyed the concepts and hope to return to them, but the pages weren't fulfilling. I did something I've never done before. I abandoned my 200 million dollar concepts, dug real deep to get to the marshmallow of my personal emotions, and poured it all out into a minuscule budgeted, character driven script. It was a different animal. Those closest to me would be able to point at specific characters and events and say "Wait, I know that." It was the most personal thing I've written to date, a 90 pager about a recent grad who begins to question his current path and the relationships surrounding him after experiencing a traumatic work incident. So much of this script stemmed from feelings towards my girlfriend, some positive (love, admiration), and some not so positive (jealousy, envy). Even though the script was a work of fiction, it would hit home with her and had the potential to cause wounds. I felt it would be an extreme one way or another. Either she would be pretty upset and uncomfortable that I could write something like this without her having any knowledge of the process or content, or she would appreciate the invitation into parts of my life and value what I had chosen to share with her and what I had been able to create from those feelings. Despite some cautioning from the league, I gave her the script.

Around 10pm last night I got a voicemail from her stating that she'd read my script and she wanted to talk about it. Oh no. She can't even wait until she gets home from her late night commercial shoot to tell me how awkward she feels. In perfect dramatic fashion I couldn't make out the second half of the message. "I hate you" jumped through my mind, but it turns out it was "I love it." In our five years together I've been fortunate enough to get my fair share of "I love you", but this was the first "I love it", pertaining to a screenplay. I called her and we talked on the phone for half an hour about the script until she absolutely had to get back to work. I can't remember a time we talked for half an hour on the phone, and I can't remember a time she felt so strongly about one of my screenplays. You have to factor in the emotional connection to the material, but it was more than that. The discussion was surprisingly less personal but rather focused on the script as a story and how it might play out on film. I was so excited and relieved, because it just wouldn't have been fair to me to love the script as much as I did and have her not enjoy it.

In writing my untitled piece I not only got back on track with my writing, but I had put myself through self therapy and was feeling healthier. I felt better about my relationship with my girlfriend, my job situation (used to be a fatal tailspin, now just a loss of cabin pressure), and my emotions concerning my friend who had moved on. On top of that, I now have a very affordable, character driven script that I'm confident is pretty good. Lucky for me I get the league verdict on that later tonight at our next meeting.

I love the league and respect their opinions, but this might be the one I put my foot down with. I feel like I wrote it the way I wanted to write it and the way it needed to be written. There were so many moments when I felt the urge to make traditional screenwriting choices, things that would crank up the drama and solidify structure. But each time I tried to make those choices I felt like I was betraying the script and losing the human element that made it real. There are a few elements I'm open to changing, but I will most likely be stubborn as a mule regarding the vast majority of edits. That stubbornness might not make the script better, but maybe it will. Right now it doesn't matter, because I feel I've completed something more important than material.

The Hurt Locker

The more I read about The Hurt Locker the more I feel like I’m the only person who left the theatre disappointed. My disappointment turns into confusion when I read about people praising Kathryn Bigelow’s film as “a near perfect movie.” I just don't get it. God knows that when I first saw the trailer, I wanted this film to be near perfect. I wanted it to be the summer gem that you remember for all the right reasons. I’ll remember The Hurt Locker for a long time, but not for its cinematography or fresh angle on the modern war experience. I’m going to remember a frustratingly one dimensional protagonist, an out of focus narrative, and too many key moments lacking realism in a film that's strongest when grounded in reality.

The Hurt Locker follows a three man bomb squad operating during the Iraq War. Jeremy Renner plays William James, the “new guy” on the team and the one who gets to put his hands on the dreaded IEDs that litter the streets of Iraq. I really enjoyed seeing the war through the eyes of a bomb technician. It wasn’t that this fresh perspective shed new insight on the war (the Iraq War still sucks here) but more that it provided a new vehicle to show us how the war is terrible and how it puts an awful mental and physical strain on the men and women who participate in it. Every soldier has a role in the field, some more exciting than others, and some more suspenseful than others. You might think that bomb squad technician gives you a healthy combination of the two, but I found that it was heavy on suspense, leaving the film searching for excitement in other ways.

In the beginning of the movie somebody other than Jeremy Renner is wearing the protective bomb suit, and seeing that Renner is nowhere to be found everyone knows that the film is going to start with a bang. You know exactly what’s coming, yet Bigelow and company manage to create one of the most suspenseful scenes I’ve seen in recent memory. The very nature of a bomb is suspenseful. They’re relatively small inanimate objects, but in the blink of an eye they can literally change the face of the world around them. You know what will happen, but you ask yourself when and how will it come to be. It’s equally impressive in later scenes when the suspense is maintained in moments where you know the bomb won’t detonate. If the bomb that can take out a city block goes off in front of William James, movie over, but we never lose that fear. I personally think it would have been excellent to have a dream sequence where the entire team gets annihilated. It’s a curveball nobody would have seen coming.


In order to keep its excitement on par with its suspense, The Hurt Locker abandons what it does best and floats off into the realm of unrealistic and illogical action scenes. One sequence has James sneaking away from the safety of his base to track down answers in the middle of Iraq, completely alone and armed only with a pistol. On another occasion the three man bomb squad decides to turn into an assault force and go hunt down terrorists in the middle of the night and without back up. All of this happens on a hunch, and why even bother with the other 100,000 soldiers that are there to help you get the job done? Moments like this find the film stretching for the sort of Hollywood action that betrays the nature of the film.

I’d be curious to see what real soldiers think of William James. He’s a rebel, a man who needs the adrenaline from having a bomb in his face much more than he needs authority. William James doesn’t care about his life and he continuously demonstrates that he doesn’t care about the lives of those surrounding him. In one scene his teammates toil with the idea of killing him and having it look like an accident. It’s the most realistic scene in my mind, because all I could think about is how terrible a soldier James is. But that’s his character and some would say that the film nailed that. Sure, but how are we supposed to care about this guy? I found that I cared about his teammates much more, and any tension I was feeling was out of concern for their safety and not James’. It’s possible that I might accept someone like James for a protagonist, but he has to be well developed and we have to understand him. The film’s lack of an antagonist makes it episodic and we often lose the sense of building action. This all makes deep characters that much more important, but the film gives you no depth and no way to understand James. In one of the scenes James’ teammate openly asks him why he was wired the way he was. Why does he take so many risks? Why is he not afraid? My ears perked up at the prospect of understanding this guy, but all he does is shrug and say something along the lines of “I don’t know, I just don’t think about it.” Great, thanks Mark Boal.

I’d say the film is a good presentation of the Iraq War. It's consistent with the theory that it sucks big time over there. Soldiers plod along, mission after mission, often not knowing who the enemy is, never truly knowing how to win. That’s exactly how The Hurt Locker felt, chapter after chapter of men struggling to survive and stay sane, but never really working towards anything. If a clear, traditional narrative isn’t that important to you, The Hurt Locker will be far more tolerable. Last I checked though, everyone needs well developed, likeable characters. I’m still trying to understand how the film managed to satisfy so many viewers (or movie critics at least) in that regard.

24 and Counting

It feels like it was just a couple months ago that I was sitting down and writing about my goals for 23. Here I am now at 24, an age that has nothing going for it except that it's almost 25. We can choose any day of our lives to reflect on progress and set goals, but I like to check in for a life analysis on my birthday. It’s our personal new year’s day. Looking back at the goals I set for myself a year ago, I can’t say that I’m satisfied with the recent past. But I’m very excited for the future, and a good deal of it has to with the fact that I finally want lots of other things to be great in my life aside from my writing.

The first goal I remember setting for myself at 23 was placing in a screenplay competition. The year before, I had done well and made it to the semi-finals in a competition with my thesis script from NYU. This time around I had finished an action/horror spec. It was a ton of fun to write and I still think it’s got some of my best material to date. It’s the only script I entered into a competition and I didn’t advance one round. Some of these competitions sure make you wait a long time for disappointment. I haven’t given up on the competition circuit yet, and don’t expect that I will anytime soon.

The second goal was to have conversations with three people I've never met before who work in a relevant corner of the industry. I did pretty well with this goal, although today I wish I hadn’t phrased it as someone in a “relevant” corner of the industry. At this point any corner of the industry is relevant. The top tier LA set designer I met at a party is going to be able to help me with my pursuit of being a Hollywood screenwriter a lot better than the LA/NY screenwriter I never met. Luckily I did have a chance encounter with a working screenwriter who lives in New York and continues to work with some big names in the industry. I hope to pick his brain further soon. I also had a great conversation with a screenwriter who took a major Hollywood studio to court over claims they stole his material. He eventually won at the end of an ordeal that spanned many years. That encounter was more cautionary than inspiring, but it can never hurt to understand the potential dangers that lurk in the industry.

The last goal was to have six scripts polished to the point where I wouldn’t hesitate showing them to somebody in the industry. I failed miserably here, but I think part of the reason was that some of my previously valued ideas suddenly didn't seem as movie worthy, or I realized they were a really tough sell for a beginning screenwriter. I have to be honest though, the previous year has been plagued by lack of motivation as well as stubbornness. I got notes from an established LA manager on where my action/horror spec needed to go, and I haven’t acted on those notes in any way. I’ve spent a lot of time this past year not being happy and fulfilled by my writing. It's hard to press on when your therapy starts feeling like torture.

I’m a writer and that’s how I want to make a living. Everyone in my life knows that, and when people want to check in on me, especially those I'm not in regular contact with, they ask me how the writing is coming. But these days I want people to ask about more than the writing. Some people say life is long, others say life is short. I haven't decided for myself yet, but I do know we have the capacity to be great at so many different things. I plan on being a better writer by 25, but I'm going to accomplish that by being great at other things. When the writing slump hits, I'm not going to wait it out by watching movies and playing video games. I'm going to practice other skills and take on new hobbies. I'm convinced that if I can be fulfilled through other endeavors, then I can afford to wait for the words to return to me. When the words do return, I'll have the positive energy from other facets of my life propelling me back into my craft. The first two new endeavors that I've taken on are Kendo, which I've been doing for a few months now and studying spencerian penmanship seeing that I never learned cursive. I don't have any goals for 24 directly related to screenwriting, but I know this will be one of my most pivotal years of screenwriting to date.

Terminator Salvation - False Prophet

Salvation seems appropriate given that some fans of the Terminator franchise have been anticipating this particular kind of Terminator movie as if it were the second coming. Terminator Salvation, the action packed fourth installment to the franchise, is a bit of a false prophet in that regard. The film recovers some of the ground that many feel the franchise surrendered with Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, but even with a perfectly awesome John Connor and lots of big summer action, fans will find it hard to escape the feeling that the film fell well short of its potential.

Directed by McG, Terminator Salvation takes place in the post apocalyptic world that we’ve seen in flashbacks throughout the previous films over the course of the last quarter century. John Connor (Christian Bale) is the prophesied leader of the human resistance against Skynet. On the brink of a major breakthrough in the war against the machines, Connor must decide whether or not to trust his instincts when he encounters one of Skynet’s latest creations, a part machine, part living human entity. The hybrid character remembers a human life and goes by his human name, Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington).

Salvation takes a duel protagonist approach with Connor and Wright, surprisingly giving both characters fairly equal screen time throughout the movie. Christian Bale has a serious approach to his role, and he truly makes you believe that most of John Connor’s life has been dedicated to the fight against the machines. His routine consists of sending radio addresses to the fragments of humankind around the world and obsessing over his mother’s recordings, searching for any bit of intelligence that will give him an edge in his fight. John Connor has spent the majority of his time in the franchise running for his life, but Bale presents us with a Connor that’s ready to stand and fight, and more than qualified to do so.



Skynet’s design of Marcus Wright is very complex, but you don’t leave the movie thinking he’s a complex character. There’s a simplicity to him that I enjoyed. Similar to Connor, he’s a bleak individual, a man of few smiles. He’s in search of redemption for actions undertaken in the life he remembers, but for him redemption doesn’t seem attainable for much of the film. He carries his emotional pain while distributing physical pain to any man or machine that gets in his way. It’s easy to watch Marcus Wright in action. He’s bad ass to the point where you kind of want to see more of his story in the pre-apocalyptic world.

What I appreciated most about John Connor and Marcus Wright was that their attitudes fit what I envisioned to be the world of Terminator Salvation. Unfortunately, the nuclear devastated world as presented by McG, was hardly what I was hoping for in this installment. There just isn’t really a sense of dread surrounding Skynet and their operations. The conflict between man and machine appears be a fair fight, a far cry from the hopeless world we saw in flashbacks where dozens of terminator infantry were annihilating humans with the support of heavy armor and aircraft. In post-apocalyptic Los Angeles Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) fights a single bungling terminator with the use of silly pulley system traps. For over twenty years our imaginations ran wild about what an impossible obstacle Skynet must be. In Salvation we get to see one of the Skynet bases and it’s defended lightly enough that a helicopter can swoop in and land right in the middle. Most of the characters look clean, trimmed, and in some cases salon styled. If you’re a fan of the previous films and love the gritty world they painted of the future, the world of Salvation was a flat out disappointment. All in all, if you don’t dread the terminators and fear the outcome of them catching up to the main characters, a Terminator movie can’t succeed. The film made the worst possible mistake they could have by having terminators that absolutely suck at terminating.

It would be hard not to blame this failure largely on the PG-13 rating, something that made all fans cringe when first discovered. The violence the terminators inflict is hardly intimate, because the rating prohibits it to be. Most of the time we see a huge explosion and surmise that several humans must have just met their end. Terminators in the previous films were a force to be reckoned with, primarily because they could get up close and personal and do things like gun down a police station, punch out somebody’s heart, or spear somebody through the mouth. That is not mindless violence. It reinforces the idea of a purely lethal force that only exists to find our protagonist and extinguish his/her life. Considering that John Connor and Kyle Reese are such high priority targets for Skynet and given the lethality of the terminators in previous films, it’s just frustrating to see terminators get their hands on the characters over and over again and fail to kill them.

After seeing Salvation I couldn’t help but think back the original Terminator and admire everything they accomplished. Michael Biehn was simply amazing as Kyle Reese. From the moment he comes scurrying into pre-apocalypse LA, we see someone who has been entirely consumed by an almost hopeless fight for survival. What fuel he has left in the tank is solely dedicated to finding and protecting Sarah Connor. Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor was equally excellent as she presented a completely overwhelmed and utterly terrified woman who is suddenly confronted with her grim destiny. Let’s not forget about Arnold, whose terminator is still the standard for what every killing machine should be. “Are you Sarah Connor?” The moment that unfortunate lady said yes, there was absolutely no escape. But had that been Salvation she would have been able to run out the backdoor with the terminator firing inaccurate shots into the ceiling.

Thematically, screenwriters John Brancato and Michael Ferris focus on what separates a human from a machine. Marcus Wright provides the perfect vehicle for exploration of this, but the film doesn’t seek to dive in too deeply to the questions it poses. Instead John Connor and Kyle Reese have thematic blurbs that do little more than reinforce the thematic conclusions the audience already had in their heads. Zombie seemed concerned because this is the screenwriting team that gave us Catwoman. Rest assured, Salvation is far from Catwoman, but you won’t be studying the script much. Most of the story’s disappointments will most likely be overlooked because something else will disappoint viewers or audiences will be distracted by a fairly quick pace and blockbuster action.

Salvation does leave things open for future John Connor adventures. There’s no doubt that they’ll stick with the PG-13 rating and cash in on Christian Bale’s fantastic box office run, but fans will cling to hopes that the fifth film will tap into the full potential of the world the first three movies established. Salvation was the skirmish in man’s fight against machines. What we want to see is the all out war.

Star Trek: Warp Speed to $300 Million and Beyond

Apparently Star Trek is a big deal. The original series of 1966 paved the way for four additional live action series, an animated series, several movies, video games, comics, books, a new language, and I’m sure there’s more. Trekkies will have to forgive me. My exposure to the Star Trek universe is limited to fragments of the various series, and one prolonged exposure to Star Trek Voyager during a nine month stint where I was stranded on my brother’s couch with nothing but Spike TV to watch. I’m a fan of science-fiction, but I never was completely sold on Star Trek, so I approached J. J. Abrams' latest film with skepticism. Could it really be as great as all these reviews claim? After seeing the movie I think most critics are being a little too rewarding, but nonetheless, Star Trek is definitely a fun addition to the summer movie season. The film moves at brisk pace with lots of exciting sci-fi action, a beautiful presentation, and the gags you’d associate with a summer blockbuster.

Star Trek presents the origin story of the original crew of the starship Enterprise. There are seven crewmembers we follow, but the film stays closest to James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto). The film moves at warp speed pretty much from the first scene, where we witness the dramatic conditions surrounding Kirk’s birth in space. The next few scenes parallelize the lives of Kirk and Spock as we see the development of a spontaneous and brash Kirk compared to the more subdued and logical entity that is Spock. It’s impossible for me to gauge how well Pine and Quinto’s characters stack up to the originals, but most of the Star Trek fans I know feel they did a good job. But from a story standpoint, Abrams’ ultimate goal is not to appease trekkies, but establish the polarity, rivalry, and eventual friendship between the two main characters. In that regard you have to acknowledge that they did a fine job, but the film ultimately serves the relationship of these two characters more than it does its story and conflict.


Eric Bana plays Nero, an alien obsessed with destroying The United Federation of Planets (this includes Earth) and seeking revenge against Spock for his failure to save his home planet. The circumstances surrounding this failure are unfortunate, but in my opinion don’t add up to match Nero’s hatred and motivation. Even if I were entirely comfortable with Nero’s desire for revenge against Spock, his desire to go on a planet destroying rampage is somewhat forceful. But hey, it’s a sci-fi movie, villains are allowed to be unreasonable. Sci-fi movie or not, a great antagonist will always feel locked to the protagonist emotionally and physically. There’s something about Nero that feels separate from James Kirk, even though Kirk was born in the wake of Nero’s destruction. The two characters weren’t even both aware of one another until the climax. For much of the movie Nero is fixated on Spock, and Kirk seems to inherit Nero as his greatest obstacle.

Star Trek is fortunate that its quick pace takes us from one action scene to the next before audiences can really get hung up on some logic problems and big coincidences in the story. Going into some of the coincidences could venture into spoiler territory, but from a screenwriting standpoint it’s the kind of stuff that every league member would have gotten called out for if we tried it in class. It’s hard to determine if screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman were lazy. I have a hunch that the film has a ton of extras that didn’t make the final cut, some of which might have ironed out a few kinks. If I’m wrong then I would say that the screenwriters are guilty of writing what they needed to get from A to B, and not what the story needed.

The supporting characters aboard the Enterprise are introduced and come to their posts aboard the starship quickly. Treating it any differently would have involved slowing down the movie and cluttering it with more dialogue. To Abrams’ credit, Star Trek stuck with its desired pace over the course of a comfortable running time of just over two hours. Of the supporting characters I need to mention Nyota Uhura (Zoe Saldana), the character that gets the fourth most development of the seven. She’s probably the only thing more pleasing to the eye other than the great visual effects the movie has to offer. Women are underrepresented in the film, and if Uhura is an indication of what women will be like in the future, unfortunately the best description would be intelligent harlots. Uhura shows promise in the early going. She’s smart, motivated, and one of the more qualified members aboard the Enterprise. All of my respect for her as a character went out the window with the way she throws herself at Spock. It made no sense to me. It was as if suddenly Abrams had to throw a bone to the thirteen year old boys in the audience who wanted to see her rub up on somebody. Where’s a Captain Janeway when you need one?

One could look at Star Trek as a two hour introduction that sets up the adventures to come. Abrams puts his pieces in place well and manages to mask most shortcomings by whisking us quickly from joke, to great visual, to action scene. We can expect the sequels to be equally entertaining, but viewers should demand a more rewarding story that has the capacity to engage the characters more thoroughly. A menacing and ever-present antagonist would be a great step in this direction. I wish I could comment more on how the film stacks up in the minds of true Star Trek finds, but I know you guys are out there. Chime in and let me know what you thought about the movie.

Good Distractions

I’ve recently come to the conclusion that I love my home, but I can’t write there anymore. There are just too many distractions, but that’s almost too negative a word because I’m very fortunate to have everything that’s competing for my attention in that apartment. Let’s start with the beautiful girlfriend, who manages to capture my attention in so many different ways. If I’m lucky she’s batting her eyelashes at me with a grin on her face. How do you write with that going on? I’d close the door to the study, except I don’t have a study. I write in the living room and she’s always about twenty feet away no matter what room she’s in. Anyway, not the worst problem to have, although sometimes those bedroom eyes narrow and get angry, most often for silly things like me not wanting to walk to the food co-op with her, or scheduling a weekend of drinking with buddies over a Saturday engagement that she is “100% positive I told you about you douche bag. Don’t even think about it…you’re fucking going.” Sorry Cake Man and Zombie, I don’t think I can make the DC trip. At least my next favorite distraction never gets angry or talks back. Oh Xbox.

I think Xbox 360 was made by God as a test to see just how determined some people really are in their pursuits. I’ve shot that terrorist through his red beret so many god damn times, but I can’t stop going back to shoot him again. It doesn’t matter if I’ve finished the game. I can still play it through on expert. Funny thing was last weekend my girlfriend was in New Orleans, so I actually managed to get two hours of decent writing done one day. I decided to reward myself, and for some reason the best way I could think to do so was to fire up the Xbox to defend virtual United States for six hours straight. I watched the sun go down, but didn’t want to get up to turn on my living room light. I’m just glad I got the girlfriend before I got the Xbox. I hear girls don’t dig guys sitting in their boxers, wearing headsets, and talking to their buddies across the city with videogame controllers in their hands.

“Are you talking to them or playing with them?”

“Both! What don’t you understand!?”

Have you ever been writing and making progress on a scene, and then suddenly the next moment you’re looking at porn and you don’t even remember how you got there? Cake Man says he disconnects the internet when he writes. I’m just going to assume the scenario that makes me giggle the most. You should do the same.

Anyway, to get back on track I’ll just say there are a lot of things at my apartment that I like, but they aren’t helping my writing much these days. So I’ve decided to return to a practice I abandoned several months ago and start writing at work again after work hours. In most cases once the clock strikes five I’m still in work mode and have a get shit done type of mentality. Some people have told me they don’t have the discipline for an after work routine at the office, but I think it takes more discipline to keep motivated for writing once you arrive back home at your sanctuary. This is the practice that led to some of the best writing I’ve experienced. Since I’ve gone back to working at the office I can say for certain that I’ve moved past my recent slump. It’s a beautiful thing to see that you’ve written four new pages in a day when it took you all of last month to reach that number. If anybody out there has been having trouble with turning out pages and you have a work environment that would allow you to stay on for an hour or two to write, I’d strongly recommend you give it a try. If you hate your job, knowing that your workplace has been a creative temple for your craft could give you a new appreciation for your space. No matter how much I might dislike arriving at my desk early in the morning, I’ll always know that this is the space where I wrote one of my strongest scripts, and that means something to me.

Challenge Issued

Over the past two weeks I’ve been exchanging emails with a coordinator for Writer’s Boot Camp. For those of you who haven’t encountered them, Writer’s Boot Camp is a resource for the development of screenwriting, both feature and television. Operating out of LA and NY, the premiere service from WBC is their 22 week think tank where screenwriters develop 3-5 screenplays with script evaluation conferences, script readings, web support, and more. I’m not the best source of information, so for more info check them out at www.writersbootcamp.com.

In the email exchange the coordinator outlined the perks of the program, which I’m sure has helped many writers develop their craft. I was hesitant to sign up, and the coordinator was consistent in his opinion that what the writers receive through WBC is beyond what I have, which at this point is an education in screenwriting from NYU and the support of the screenwriter’s league. My argument, or point rather, wasn’t that I thought WBC wouldn’t help me, but rather that it was an investment, as was my NYU education. I graduated in 07 and in some ways I’m just starting to put what I’ve learned to practice. Not even two years out, I wanted to give my investment a chance to pay off before I determined that I needed to fortify my craft through additional resources, many of which mean spending dollars in a tough economy. I thought it was a fair point to make, and I think the coordinator did as well. In his last email he mentioned that a typical development cycle takes six months and that we should check in around then. Whether or not he intended it to be a challenge, I took it as such, but not the type of challenge where two cavemen bark at one another for the right to club a mate. It was something more elegant, like I stepped on his toes at court and he brushed me across the face with a silk glove.

I think it’s funny how this should happen during a stretch where I’ve been grappling with motivation. It’s just the sort of motivational spring board I’ve needed. I’m fully confident that I can get back into the swing of things and have a well developed product by the time the six month check-in arrives. But who knows, there’s also the chance that I fall flat on my face. One of the things I miss from my time at NYU was that there was always somebody waiting to see the writing, expecting the developed pages. It’s hard for a lot of students to find that when they move on. Even though it’s half a year from now, I feel like there’s someone waiting for these pages. He might not remember me when we get there, but I plan on delivering anyway.

Torn

Lately I’ve been trudging through one of my worst writing slumps yet. It’s the kind of slump that forces you to sit in front of the computer for hours on end without banging out a meaningful sentence. Stretch that over a period of 3-4 weeks and you know what I’m going through. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the last bad slump I had was around this time last year, which happens to be one of the busiest stretches for me at work. It’s tough enough to get the pages flowing when you’re mentally exhausted by the time you sit at your computer, but it’s another thing when you’re mentally exhausted and you don’t know which of your ideas you should be working on.

I don’t have a manager just yet to tell me “That idea is great and it’s got current appeal. You should work on that now, I know just the person who would be looking for it.” It’s up to me to reach in and grab one of my ideas, which seem to be constantly shifting their order of potential and priority. Right now I’m torn between writing what I want to write and writing what I need to write. In one hand I have several ideas that are more high concept and big budget in nature. These are the kinds of scripts that I enjoy writing most, especially if I’ve got one that’s historical in nature. They’re my “want to” scripts. In the other hand I have a series of script ideas that are more low budget and contemporary. These are the scripts that I feel like I need to write, largely because they balance out my body of work. Of my scripts that are most industry ready, they are definitely expensive, hard sells. Another reason why I feel like I need to write some of these smaller scripts is that the stories are more personal in nature. There’s more opportunity for me to put first hand emotional experience into the characters in these stories than in the bigger, high concept pieces.

I suppose it could always be worse. I could not even have an idea to choose from. Instead, I have several ideas that I feel are all above average. I just keep going back and forth, struggling through a few pages of one script before having a mini revelation and deciding that the other project is what I should be struggling through. How do you gain momentum when you keep switching creative vehicles? I feel like ultimately I’ll have to abandon one idea and focus my limited energies on the other until things improve and the slump lifts, but there’s still the question as to which one. I’m curious as to what some of you might think of a situation like this.

If you’ve got a distinctly character driven story and a distinctly concept driven story, is there ever one of the two that’s the safest bet? I know that can depend on so many things, but let’s enter the realm of fantasy and say you’ve got the best concept driven story ever and the best character driven story ever, but you can only do one. Which would you choose?

The Collaboration: Why The Ship Sank

About six months ago, Cake Man, Zombie, and I decided that we wanted to collaborate on a script. We were pretty gung-ho about it, and it wasn't long before we were exchanging ideas and nominating three concepts from a list of fourteen ideas that spanned several genres. The plan was to have this featured segment where I would report on our weekly successes and failures with the project. It was going to be informative, and hopefully inspiring. Half a year later and all I have to report on is why I think the project didn't work.

I'd first like to mention why I think collaborating is important, even though I have little experience with it. In my circle of writers we mostly envision a career where the concept is born in our mind, put to page by our hand, and sold with our name alone. The fantasy might be something along the lines of getting a call from an agent and finding out that two studios are in a bidding war for your script. Rarely do we fantasize about being commissioned to write an idea that isn't our own, or better the pages that another scribe already wrote, which is the more common reality of a working screenwriter. Collaboration is only a part of the equation, but I think you have to be trusting, flexible, and more detached than you normally would be with your own project because you don't have sole ownership. It's the flexibility that I'm most interested in, because looking at myself and my friends, I wonder how many of us could succeed if a concept was suddenly dropped on our table and we HAD to write that and not one of the ideas that we'd been toiling with in our heads for years. I don't think we'd manage very well, at least not right now. But the more versatile we are the easier it would be, and I certainly think collaborations could help in that regard.

So what happened with our project? The first thing that comes to mind (no particular order of significance) is the script concept. Not to say that we didn’t have a solid idea. We spent several meetings making sure that the concept was right for a first time collaboration and that we weren’t going to be using fluff for a first go. If we nailed the script we wanted it to be something we could push. The one thing about the script idea was that it was a balanced creature, designed to be manageable for different writers with varying interests and styles. We were all interested in giving it a go, but I think we lacked the sheer excitement that comes with starting a new script of our own. We didn’t absolutely have to write it like Cake Man had to write his Post-Apocalyptic spec, or like how I had to write my Action/Horror Western. The idea felt just right for all three of us, but not absolutely right, which I think it needed to be, especially given our differences as writers.

The question has to be brought up as to just how compatible the three of us were as collaborative writers. I’ll admit that between our trio there are some major differences in terms of style and interests. Sometimes Zombie and I seem a world apart, while Cake Man is more of the bridge. On paper we probably don’t amount to the ideal writing team, but part of me has to believe that as three trained writers we can successfully collaborate on a screenplay despite differences. A script is so skeletal, and though our time at NYU saw screenwriting students hone their creative abilities in different ways, our technical abilities were being developed the same. I anticipated that we’d be able to lay a functional foundation, and scratch and claw over the layers that we put over it. Unfortunately we never got that far. In Cake Man’s latest writing week he discussed the possibility of writing becoming a chore. I think the collaboration was a bit of a chore for all of us and several factors contributed to that, one of the most significant being the blessing of a steady 9 to 5.

Employment, as beautiful as it is in our current time definitely played a role in terminating the collaboration. But whereas the idea and our level of excitement may change, the reality is the factor of our day job will always be there (fingers crossed) through personal projects and collaborations until we find greater success as writers. It's something that just about all writers will have to deal with. In the end it boils down to our discipline and determination outweighing the fatigue of a 9 to 5 and other obligations. Our discipline was there with room for improvement, but the determination to get the job done faded fast.

2009 is still young and I hope that by year’s end I’ll be able to log some collaboration time. I expect that Cake Man and Zombie have their eyes set on round two as well. Even if it’s just pulling hairs over a first act, or simply banging out a few sub-par pages, it’s still a start, and writing tends to have that snowball effect where all you need is a start. I'm determined to give this process a go again, and I'll admit that it got the better of me as I'm sure it has many writers. What are your collaboration experiences like? Do you think it’s necessary, or even worthwhile?

Friday the 13th - Not Dull, Not Sharp

American horror’s favorite son is back yet again. In Friday the 13th, fans of the franchise will quickly recognize the grisly craft of Jason Voorhees as he uses many a sharp object to dispatch the meddling youths who wander onto the abandoned property of Camp Crystal Lake. Pretty faces meet the wrong end of an arrow, an axe, deer antlers, a screwdriver, and the signature machete. It’s a decent arsenal, and horror fans young and old will be filling the seats to see how Jason uses it, and more importantly, they’ll want to get a good scare. Unfortunately Friday the 13th is everything you would expect and doesn’t deliver enough on both counts. You can see the lazily thought out scares coming a mile away, and there won’t be any memorable kills to write home about, assuming you write home about memorable kills.

Director Marcus Nispel opens his film with what you might as well call a fun twenty minute horror short. A group of attractive young adults enter an abandoned camp ground in search of the bounty of marijuana that is rumored to grow there. I know, it took me a minute to adjust to weed featuring so heavily in a Friday the 13th movie. Stoners beware, because if you read into it the wrong way it might seem like the Office of National Drug Control Policy is pushing Jason as a consequence of marijuana use, which would be terrifying. But that’s not the case. By the end of the twenty minute intro you’ll have a fine sense of Jason’s work and understand that he’s really motivated by the commands of his crazy slain mother. Flash forward six weeks to another batch of Abercrombie & Fitch models who arrive at Crystal Lake. Jared Padalecki plays Clay Miller, a young rogue in search of his sister Whitney (Amanda Righetti), who went missing with the previous group of Crystal Lake wanderers. Clay eventually unites with a group of weekend partygoers and the rest is murderous mayhem.


If you’re a big slasher horror fan, the scares won’t do much for you. The movie has all of the standard thrills. You’ll see characters pull back curtains to find nothing there, but wait, the killer suddenly appears behind them. You’ll see someone kneel down to pick something up and rise to find the fright waiting for them. There’s nothing new here, and once I accepted that, I was hoping the characters would shine in some way, maybe even just twinkle for a moment, but this movie is not an appropriate study of character. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. If I had a nickel for every Friday th 13th movie I’d have sixty scents, but if I had a nickel for every poor decision a character has made in this franchise, I’d be rich.

It’s hard to feel bad when movie characters die because of a stupid decision they made. During the brisk 95 minute run time you’ll see characters try to escape by knowingly running to Jason’s home. You’ll see a character abandon the relative safety of the middle of the lake for the shallow water beneath a pier, after she’s seen a machete wielding Jason waiting for her on the shore. Safety in numbers seems to be common knowledge, except in horror movies. The characters run off on their own when they know there’s a killer on the move. One of the characters finds a gun, a perfect find when you have a killer after you, except he spends all of his ammunition shooting at creaks in the wall. Stupid, stupid, stupid, but it got me wondering. Could writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift truly believe their characters would act this way, or are they consciously providing us with the sort of character choices that make audiences cringe in their seats as they wait for the sure kill?

Friday the 13th is not a good movie, but there’s something effective about it. Every time I saw one of those stupid decisions being made, the audience collectively cringed and lowered in their seats, but with a smile on their faces. They were being primed for the kill situation, which I’ve determined involves 1 - The poor decision. 2 - The moment of false peril. 3 - The moment of true peril. And 4 - The kill. The whole experience felt amazingly similar to a roller coaster. On the ride, you see the big drop coming, you brace yourself as best as you can, and then the thrill hits you. Immediately after the a big drop, there’s a period of relative relaxation as you prepare for the next drop. The rhythm of Friday the 13th, and perhaps most horror movies, is similar. I think that’s why the movie will make bank and doesn’t need to be great. People are addicted to that rhythm and the formula for these movies. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t leave with a smile on my face, as did everyone else. And like a roller coaster, we passed the smiling faces of everyone waiting in line to get on the ride. You know what you’re getting into with this one. If you want the cheap thrills, a few laughs, and a good helping of nudity, Friday the 13th is for you. If you want the next great horror movie, proceed at your own risk.

The Creative Screenwriting Podcast

For those of you who haven’t discovered it yet, I’d like to take a minute to shine the League spotlight on the Creative Screenwriting Podcast, brought to you by the good people at Creative Screenwriting Magazine. Each podcast, and there are dozens of them, feature the writers, directors, and producers of some of the hottest movies over the past few years. The sessions are hosted by CSM senior editor Jeff Goldsmith and usually run from about 30-60 minutes. It’s fair to liken the podcast to Inside the Actor’s Studio, but for writers. When Jeff is at his best he’s getting the answers to the questions that all hungry writers on the outside want to know: How did you break in? What’s your writing process? How did your baby evolve from concept to movie?

I’ve got a lot of catching up to do with the podcasts, but I’m in no rush. Each session has been an enjoyable listen and frequently informative on how screenwriters are doing their job. You’ll also appreciate the tidbits of information that you wouldn’t necessarily know about some of your favorite movies or writers. I loaded up the Gone Baby Gone podcast the other day and listened to Ben Affleck reflect on his writing experience on Good Will Hunting and how as young writers he and Matt Damon were resisting studio notes that tried to sway them from their approach of having Will be stalked by a National Security Agency operative. A few drafts and an academy award later, nobody’s complaining. Man, I'd love to argue over my own studio notes.

You can check out more about the Creative Screenwriting Podcast at the link below. You can also just hop onto iTunes and run a search for Creative Screenwriting Podcast. The best part is that it’s all free. Definitely worth checking out if you haven’t done so already.

http://www.creativescreenwriting.com/podcasts/main.html