The Writing Week part 26

Twenty six. That's half of fifty two, by my ever decreasing math skills. That means we're halfway through 2008. Halfway. Halfway...

Hmm.

I suppose it's fitting to do some kind of mid-year recap at this point. (But first, let’s get that weekly blabbering out of the way.)

This week was, in fact, a writing week. I wrote. I did. I wrote a page of a play that I had no idea about. I wrote the first two pages to a script just for the hell of it, a script that won’t go anywhere. I wrote a lot of notes about ideas that I didn’t follow up on. I wrote general ideas down here and there. I may have written a poem somewhere in there. I just wrote and wrote and wrote, with little to no direction at all. Which is why, now, I have an extra half dozen project folders on my computer. I’m trying to zone in, to focus my writing, but I’m still in this place where I’m just not feeling lit by anything at the time being. I even had a brief “wow, I gotta write this right now” moment last week, but that passed by the time I had dinner that night.

The goal, though, is to do a rewrite (more like rewriting the first half of a script and writing the rest from scratch), while working on something original. With competition results coming up in a month and a half (we just found out that the five leaguers who submitted to PAGE International Screenwriting Awards are up against 3,860 other writers), I know that I need to have as much polished material by the end of August as possible. Just in case something happens, something good, like someone interested in my submission.

As for the year recap… let’s see. Two scripts (first drafts) written in the first four months of the year, followed by a lull and some minor re-write activity the last two month of the period. (I did get some good notes this week, though, from a few Leaguers regarding my post-Apocalyptic spec. The consensus is that it’s on the right track. There’s a lot of work I have to do, but I think I can see the horizon, and, after letting it sit and build on itself for about a month, I’ll get back to it and hopefully finish it in a fury of re-writing during the month of August.)

The one thing I will say for the year, though, is that, probably two months ago, I wrote about not wanting to just sit and wait for these competitions to happen. I wanted to make something happen. Well, I’m doing more sitting than I would have liked. But, it’s a tricky situation. I don’t really want to push forward without competition results, and I need to do rewrites until then. But, I also have another month and a half of “inactivity” when it comes to trying to get my material seen. What do I do? Do I push ahead and send out query letters, before receiving the competition results? I think it’s a better plan to make sure I have as many scripts in my arsenal for after the results come in, rather than try to sell one thing and not be able to back it up with anything else. So then how do I shake this inactive, waiting feeling?

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.