What, When, Where this Weekend - Sleep Dealer, Lemon Tree

What, When, Where is a weekly guide to select screenings, discussions and events in the NYC-area of interest to screenwriters. Have an event you'd like to see listed here? Give us a heads-up at info@screenwritersleague.com.

Opening this weekend...

SLEEP DEALER, written by Alex Rivera and David Riker, dir. by Alex Rivera


Premise: An intercepted radio transmission is the motivation Memo needs to leave his village for Tijuana, where he goes to dangerous lengths to secure work in the hi-tech factories he once dreamed about.

Playing: City Cinemas Village East, AMC Empire 25

High-concept science fiction on a minimal budget. Don't see enough of this these days.

Check out the trailer here.

LEMON TREE, written by Suha Arraf and Eran Riklis, dir. by Eran Riklis


Premise: A drama based on the true story of a Palestinian widow who must defend her lemontree field when a new Israeli Defense Minister moves next to her and threatens to have her lemon grove torn down.

Playing: IFC Center, Lincoln Plaza

CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE, written and directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor


Premise: When we last saw Chev Chelios, it appeared as though the assassin had met his maker. Wrong. As his story continues, Chelios hunts down the mobster who stole his nearly indestructible heart and replaced it with a battery-powered ticker that requires regular jolts of electricity to keep working.

Playing: Everywhere.

He's back from the dead! After "falling some 10,000 feet, bouncing off of a car, then slamming to the pavement and dying" - I'd see this one just to check out how they try to explain THAT one.

What are you doing/seeing this weekend?

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.

Musician Will Oldham on movie music - do pre-existing pop songs belong in films?

Will Oldham (AKA Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Palace, and about a dozen other pseudonyms) is far and away one of my favorite musicians working today. Beyond his extremely prolific recording career, Oldham is a really talented actor - appearing in the classic Matewan, and more recently Junebug, The Guatemalan Handshake, and the superb Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy.


It's no secret that I absolutely love this guy. I've written roles in screenplays with him in mind - and listened to many, many hours of his music while I've been writing.

Oldham recently did a rare interview with The Onion AV Club where he talks about his creative process, his acting career, and the current state of the music industry. The whole interview is fascinating if you're a fan of his, but his thoughts on film music were what really got me thinking:

AVC: You mentioned talking to Richard Linklater and Caveh Zahedi about your ideas on movie music. Can you summarize those ideas?

WO: Well, for a while, it seemed like you were always seeing movies where all the music was determined by the music supervisors and their special relationships with certain record labels. And I just felt like, “Wow, I’ll bet they spent months or years writing this screenplay, and I’ll bet they spent months shooting this, and I’ll bet they spent months editing this, and now they’re spending no time at all picking these completely inappropriate songs with lyrics to put under a scene that has dialogue.” How does that even work? How can you have a song with someone singing lyrics under spoken dialogue and consider that mood-music, or supportive of the storyline? As somebody who likes music, when that happens, I tend to listen to the lyrics, which have nothing to do with the movie. And then I’m lost in the storyline. Not only is that a crime, but it’s a crime not to give people who are good at making music for movies the work. It’s like saying, “We don’t need you, even though you’re so much better at it than I am as a music supervisor.” Like the cancer that is that Darjeeling guy… what’s his name?

AVC: Wes Anderson?

WO: Yeah. His completely cancerous approach to using music is basically, “Here’s my iPod on shuffle, and here’s my movie.” The two are just thrown together. People are constantly contacting me saying, “I’ve been editing my movie, and I’ve been using your song in the editing process. What would it take to license the song?” And for me it’s like, “Regardless of what you’ve been doing, my song doesn’t belong in your movie.” That’s where the conversation should end. Music should be made for movies, you know?

This bit of the interview really made me stop in my tracks. Anyone who knows me or my writing is aware of how important a part music plays, both there and in most everything I do.

I've (mostly) gotten out of the habit of writing songs into my screenplays, but I'm still setting my scenes to music in my head as I write, creating an imaginary soundtrack. Music can inspire certain feelings and emotions in me much quicker and more efficiently than any other medium. If thinking of a certain song can help me get into a desired mindset, I see no problem with using that as my crutch.

But, once you get past the screenplay phase and into the editing process - does using existing songs distract from the film itself?

I can see myself on both sides of the fence with this one. On one hand, I hate, hate, hate it when popular songs are slapped into a movie haphazardly, without any real rhyme or reason other than to create a hip soundtrack. (I'm looking at you, Juno and Nick and Norah.) I find myself annoyed by the music, and these negative feelings will bleed out onto the films other qualities, or lack thereof.

But on the other hand, there are plenty of examples of movies that have used an existing song to elevate a scene into something sublime - I'll use Apocalypse Now's use of The Doors' "The End" as an example for this, or the unsettling acapella version of Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" in Blue Velvet.

Do pre-existing pop songs have any business appearing in movies? When is it okay/not okay?

The Writing Week (Vol. 2) part 67 - Baby Step Rewrites

Rewrites are generally pretty tough. We've all moaned about that here. I know I sure have. I think they're difficult for a number of reasons, depending on the situation. They can be hard because you love how your first draft turned out, and you aren't ready to accept that it's flawed. They can be difficult because you know your first draft is flawed, so flawed, in fact, that you really don't know where to begin to fix it. Or, rewrites can be difficult because you simply aren't invested in the project anymore. Whatever the case may be, I think it's always important to get time in between drafts of a script.

After about a month off, I'm just starting to really get back into my Roman army spec. The initial excitement I felt coming off the first draft rapidly cooled as the reality of the rewrite I was facing kicked in. So this week, with an idea of where I had to get the second draft, but no road map to take me there, I started phase one of my rewrite process: baby step rewrites.

Baby step rewrites involve any and all superficial rewrites. The most basic one I can think of is a grammar and spelling rewrite, where nothing but punctuation, formatting (if necessary) and spelling get changed. Sometimes, it's important to do this just to get the brain focused on starting to make changes to the script. Luckily, I'd already moved beyond the proofing stage. So this week was stage two: changing simple plot/setting points. For example, I open the script with a battle sequence, in which the protagonist's opposing general has to display his lack of skill commanding troops. The example I used to show this in the first draft was space filler - it did the job, but it, too, showed a lack of skill, this time on my part. It was dumb, and had to go. This week, it went and was replaced with something better. In another example, I changed a setting to work much better. Simple improvements, but big feeling improvements, too.

The thing that I did not expect, however, with these basic changes was how much they made me realize that many other things will have to change down the road. The baby steps are quickly leading to an out and out sprint out of the starting blocks as draft two gets underway. I just still don't quite know which direction it's heading.

Trailer Trash XLII: Big Stan (Rob Schneider, 2007)

"Do you have anything you can tattoo around my sphincter to make it less attractive?"

Good God. Somehow, SOMEHOW I missed the DIRECTORIAL DEBUT of Rob Schneider. Maybe it's because I'm of at least moderate intelligence and don't require a handler to spoon-feed me my meals. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's go back a bit:

The DIRECTORIAL DEBUT of ROB SCHNEIDER. What the f*ck??

Speaking as a young screenwriter, more often than not bad movies give me a feeling of hope; if a terrible script can be made, then my better-written one has a chance, right? But Big Stan inspires no such good feelings.

Big Stan proves to me that there is no God in Hollywood. Watching the trailer makes me believe the entire film industry is actually a practical joke made at my expense.

The premise for the movie: Rob Schneider goes to prison and must protect himself from being raped. It's like whoever came up with the idea for Big Stan was watching HBO's Oz on DVD, and thought the horrible things that happen in prison would be absolutely hi-larious if they were played for laughs.


I always hoped that that Hollywood had some sort of protection mechanism that would prevent a "prison rape movie directed and produced by Rob Schneider, starring Rob Schneider" - but there evidently isn't. Somebody also put about $10 million dollars into this movie. If it didn't all come from Rob Schneider's own pocket, I'll give up the whole Hollywood dream right here, right now.

I feel a sense of shame putting this trailer up here. I really do. So I'll apologize here. If knowledge of this film's existence managed to escape you until this point, I'm sorry I ever brought it to your attention. If you really must watch it, feel free to stop after the first 20 seconds. The first 20 seconds of this trailer are easily among the most repugnant seconds ever committed to film.



I'll give you a couple minutes to clear the bile from your mouth.

My sole comfort in this film's existence is knowing that despite wrapping its filming in summer of '06, it was only finally released straight-to-DVD almost a full three years later. That just tells me that someone out there didn't want to unleash Big Stan on the world. (Except in Russia, where this apparently got a theatrical release.) I see that person as our guardian angel.

"That's a nice top. Would you mind lowering it a bit?"

Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: Even Rob Schneider can get a movie made... so can you! You can read through our archive by clicking here.

What, When, Where this Weekend - The Pope's Toilet, Anvil! The Story of Anvil

What, When, Where is a weekly guide to select screenings, discussions and events in the NYC-area of interest to screenwriters. Have an event you'd like to see listed here? Give us a heads-up at info@screenwritersleague.com.

Somewhat slow movie weekend, unless you're looking forward to the new Hannah Montana movie, or possibly former Trailer Trash subject, Dragonball Evolution. But, here goes...

Opening this week...

THE POPE'S TOILET, written and directed by César Charlone & Enrique Fernández


Premise: A small South American village is in a flurry over the Pope's 1988 visit.

Playing: The Museum of Modern Art

This film has flown under my radar completely, but it's getting amazing reviews for a movie about a man trying to build an outhouse for the Pope in his back yard. I'm in.

ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL, dir. by Sacha Gervasi


Premise: The founding members of Anvil, the Canadian heavy-metal band that missed out on fame in the 1980s, keep a torch lit as they begin recording their 13th album and head out on a tour to support the record.

Playing: Angelika

I usually avoid posting about documentaries as we try to focus on screenwriters here at the League, but I want to check this one out. VH1 Classic has been running the commercials for it almost nonstop, and as my DVR full of Classic Albums episodes can attest, I'm a sucker for music documentaries.

What are you doing/seeing this weekend?

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.