Sifting through the wreckage...

Last night I got a round of feedback from the League on a recently-completed first draft.

It was easily the most interesting round of notes I've ever been given. People touched on things I'd never thought of, and things I *knew* people would have a problem with going in weren't even touched by anyone. What was most interesting that I got different notes from practically everyone - each Leaguer had different things they like and different things that bothered them. There were things that everyone picked up on, but there were also lots of points where Leaguer's feedback contradicted each other.

The barrage of suggestions and opinions coming from every direction was a bit dizzying. You know when Sonny Corleone gets gunned down in the toll plaza? It kinda felt like that. (I think.)

Despite being left a bit of a bloody mess, I feel a lot more confident about the script coming out of that meeting than going in. When I sent out the pages to the readers, I was afraid I was sending a self-indulgent, clustfucked, unsalvageable mess. But now I feel like I can confidently say I sent a first draft.

And despite the many problems, I *think* people liked it. (Except maybe Onyx. He probably won't talk to me again.)

I've got a lot to think about and a lot to work with. I was never entertaining the thought to myself that this could be close to a final draft - but knowing that there are things in there that connected with people other than myself.

I'd known this would due for a long road filled with re-writes. But now I can rest more assured that it's WORTH re-writing.

All said, it feels pretty awesome.

Greatest one-scene cameos

The Onion AV Club staff posted a list of their 19 Favorite One-Scene Cameos in cinema. Worth checking out, especially for the YouTube video links of each scene embedded in the article.

My favorite on the list is Dean Stockwell's short appearance in Blue Velvet. His performance of Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" wasn't part of the screenplay and was added on-set, but still gives me chills for it's bizarre creepiness. It's an example of one of those characters with so little screen time that only appears for a few minutes, but could have hours and hours of interesting back story.

I also love Jack Nance's small role in this scene. He's one of those wonderful actors that just didn't do enough during his lifetime...

Experience Points

We all know that part of the challenge of being a young writer (or any writer for that matter) is keeping motivated to write and finding the avenues to best develop what you produce. I’ve been thinking lately about how fortunate those in the league are to have a platform where at any given time we can bounce our material off of several trained writers. In some cases the fortune extends to the point where we can contact former professors, some of whom are continuing professional writers, for feedback on our work. Once you’ve maintained the will to write, the ability to get trustworthy feedback is the next goal in my opinion. But sometimes we in the league strongly question or flat out reject the notes we give one another, and we’ve done the same with notes a professor has given us at one time or another. As I await notes for a high concept script from a high concept screenwriter and former professor, it made me wonder; as a young writer how do you draw the balance between accepting script altering notes from a wiser more experienced writer, and maintaining your vision of the script?

I wish this was where I could make a respectful attempt at answering the question, but the truth is that I’m still trying to figure this one out for myself. Hopefully the league will chime in. This will be my first experience with receiving detailed notes from a professor beyond my time as a student. I’d like to think I’ve vastly improved my craft since those days, but to what degree does my experience allow me to challenge his notes in the event that he feels adamant about some major changes? I don’t know. For now I’m tempted to put his notes on a pedestal, although I may discover something new about myself within the next few weeks. In any event, there’s a lot to say about experience.

One of the most beautiful and creatively fatal mentalities that often accompany a young writer, is his/her belief that they can create whatever they want and have it be gold. I saw that all throughout my time in Tisch and I experienced it myself. There was a time when I learned what I needed and completed a new draft thinking that it was ready and I had left little room for improvement. Then came a brief sit down with chair of the dramatic writing department as I proudly handed him my perfection. He scanned the first act and before I could figure out what I wanted for lunch he’d drawn a line through a few pages here, rearranged a few pages there. He didn’t even read the rest of the script. I took a look at his notes, and whereas over hours upon hours of work I couldn’t find any major room for improvement in my work, in five minutes he vastly improved my first act. I was humbled, in awe of a vision for structure, story, and character that I can only hope to one day possess. He developed that vision with experience. I try to remind myself that at some point in the past he was probably similarly naïve and blind as I was.

The Writing Week part 25

I saw three plays this weekend. Of the League, I think it’s safe to say that I’m the one most inclined to write for live theater, in addition to film. Seeing three plays made me want to write (plays), which is good, because other than rewrites, I haven’t wanted to write much recently (it wasn’t so much the desire to write a play, but rather to have people respond to my writing that stimulated me). At all. I’m reading Easy Riders, Raging Bulls right now, and there’s a passage that refers to Paul Schrader (writer, Taxi Driver), which says “He was writing like a machine, and although he didn’t know it then, he was writing himself out.”

That’s exactly what I’m worried has happened to me. I wrote at a break-neck pace for the first 4 months of this year, remember making a comment to someone about how I had so many ideas I could write forever, and then woke up one day feeling like I was all dried up. Granted, I’m quite young still and the ideas are there. I just haven’t felt that fire under me for a few months now, which is why I’ve been doing re-writes (if not a result of doing re-writes). I hope it will pass soon, but in the mean time, the going is tough. And slow.

Finally, I think it’s worth mentioning the new rule recently created regarding the Academy Awards. As I’m sure you heard, no movie will be allowed any more than two nominations for “Best Original Song” anymore. This new regulation follows triple nominations for Dreamgirls and Enchanted, neither of which landed an award in said category. Personally, I find it entertaining when a film loses a category in which it has so incredibly stacked the deck, garnering three out of the five nominations. I knew (somehow) that it was inevitable that neither of those films were going to win, and was satisfied when the awards went elsewhere. At the end of the day, though, I didn’t really care either way about the decision to limit the nominations.

However, I got to talking with someone, and they made me realize something: restricting the number of nominations penalizes a film that is truly deserving. Now, to be fair, I didn’t see either of the triple-nominated films, so the songs were out of context to me (and therefore less enjoyable than they may have been otherwise). I didn’t really like the songs, but if they were three out of five of the best original songs in their respective years, then don’t they deserve that recognition? I was trying to come up with a situation where this new regulation would affect me (should I ever receive Oscar nods), and the closest scenario I could think of for comparison would be if the Academy limited the number of, say, Best Original Screenplays a single writer could be nominated for in one year. If, by some miracle, I had three movies released in the same year, each worthy of an Oscar nomination for writing, then wouldn’t it be unfair to neglect to recognize one, simply because the other two had already received nominations?

Anyway, I’m rambling; A) this will probably never be an issue for me and B) it has next to nothing to do with what I did (or didn’t) write this week. I just wonder if it should be taken as a sign of other regulations to come, and if it is, how they’ll affect us.

George Carlin RIP

George Carlin passed away yesterday. Listening to his old routines reminds me of long road trips with his books-on-cassettes playing through the car stereo.



His infamous "seven words" routine.

Naughty joke at expense of Will Smiths's new movie...

Signmakers having fun at the London premiere of Hancock. Via The Beat.

The Writing Week part 24

All in all, a pretty good week. I got another draft of my post-Apocalyptic spec out. It's tough for me to gauge how it went. On the one hand, I think that the few, yet important changes I made have strengthened the script a lot. Act Two flows much better, the scenes are connected much more, and the characters' desires, especially the protagonist's, are much clearer. On the other hand, though I cut one scene here and reordered a few there, I really changed very little structurally. The vast majority of the scenes are still in this draft, and other than how they're linked and what's said within them, they are not incredibly different.

I don't know if this new draft works on a different level. If this was my first draft, I believe I would have received different notes than I got the first go around, but the League might have told me I had a more solid first draft. Having given up the impact of the first completely new draft already, I know that any future notes I get from people who have already read the script will be in light of what they know. It's inevitable, but the notes will be a comparison to what they've read before, and not a fresh take on a new project. Some larger problems that I'm not seeing might go under their radar, too. This is not to criticize the feedback we Leaguers give one another; I think we offer great insight and incredibly helpful suggestions. But a first draft will always, I think, have an inevitable air of "newness" to it that subsequent drafts, no matter how different, will lack. (Granted, I've written scripts that, by the fifth draft, are virtually unrecognizable as a descendant of the first draft. The people who read the pages since step one, though, still sometimes offer feedback that draws upon that first, wretched draft.)

This current project has gotten me thinking about something, which is probably deserving of its own post, but I'll throw it in here anyway. I've been thinking a lot about perfection versus production. By that, I mean: if an agent or a producer read my comic book script and asked for something else, I would be inclined to give him/her the post-Apocalyptic spec. But what if that script wasn't ready? Not quite. Do I go for production - I'm a young writer; if someone wants to give my $500K (I'm also optimistic) for a script that might not be as good as it could be - who am I to say no? Or, do I go for perfection - I'd be thrilled to have that opportunity present itself, yet I know, deep down, that my script doesn't quite do the justice to my idea that it could, and that if I had more time, not only could I write a movie, but I could write a great movie?

Perfection. Or Production. As a young writer, it seems ridiculous to think of turning down any opportunity. But where should I place the value of my work? I don't want to turn around one day and know I could have written a better movie, but I don't want to risk not having one produced.