Using Google Notebooks to plot your novel

A pretty Neat idea, from The Average Idea blog. I think I'll start using it myself.

Do you plot out your novels on notecards? I did too, until I stumbled across Google Notebook.

Some problems I ran into using paper notecards:

• Cards get scrambled out of order
• A pain to refer back to when I’m actually writing the book
• Don’t always have them on me in case inspiration strikes

So I decided to try out Google Notebook to plot out my current novel. It worked fantastically. Here are some tips and tricks you can use to not only plot out your own novel, but also to get the most out of Google Notebook.

Quickly Add Scenes

You can get the bare bones of your novel in place quickly by just clicking the blank space in your notebook. I rifled through all my ideas for scenes to get a rough idea for how the book would lay out.

Trailer Trash XXIII: Zapped! (Scott Baio, Willie Aames 1982)

"It's a movie that's out of this world, and out of it's mind!"

Before there was "Charles In Charge"... there was Zapped!

It's not that I'm particularly excited about that fact. Don't let the exclamation point fool you - it's part of the title.

Before they went on to star together on "Charles in Charge", Scott Baio and Willie Aames starred in the ridiculous teen skin romp. Y'know the type of movie: a lowbrow comedy starring 20-somethings playing teenagers that's sole focus is to flash a bit of female nudity to a predominantly 13-year-old male audience - maybe a nipple here, a panty-shot there. Think Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Porky's or Revenge of the Nerds. These movies are still being made today, but they definitely hit their height in the 1980s.

If you need a visual hint at what kind of movie I'm talking about, check out the poster:


Just one look at that poster tells you it was marketed with the budding feminist in mind, right? (Disturbing trivia: google image-searching "slutty bratz doll" brings up more than 5,000 results, which might say something terrifying about our culture.)

In any case, the plot of the film involves Scott Baio receiving telekinetic super-powers in a botched marijuana-growing experiment. He the does what any typical high school male (in an 80s teen movie) would do: use the powers to cheat in school, make bullies beat themselves up and remove girls' clothing.

Behold the zaniness:



At 0:05 - The music is already way too exciting for this trailer.
At 0:11 - Gotta love a movie that treats women fairly.
At 0:21 - "Barney, you can do stupid things!"... Does this remind anyone else of Trumpy?
At 0:26 - That's a look that just screams "duhhhhhhhh"
At 0:35 - If you're one of our female readers, I'm already sorry to have made you watch this.
At 0:40 - Is it just me, or does Scott Baio look a little, how shall I say... handicapped... in this trailer?
At 0:52 - He at least looks constipated whenever he's using his powers.
At 1:05 - Okay, you see that, girls? This movie totally respects the laydeez.
At 1:14 - Wait wait wait wait wait! Did he just tell us to GET OFF??
At 1:16 - Good lord, I can't help but laugh (at him, not with him) whenever he makes that face.
At 1:27 - Ok, so I'm sorry again, girls.
At 1:38 - Good lord, did they have to name every character in the movie?
At 1:46 - The tag lines are definitely the funniest things about this movie. Oh, and Scott Baio's face.

Besides the "get off" bit and all of Scott Baio's ridiculous facial expressions, my favorite part of the trailer is when the narrator rattles off the list of non-important side characters. Imagine if every movie did this:

"Get off this summer... with Requiem for a Dream! Also starring... the donut cop! The corn dog stand boss! A mailman! Arnold the shrink! Tyrone's mother! The voice of the jailer! A newspaper man on a train! Paramedic Greenhill! A southern doctor! A prison guard! An ECT technician! A banker and a cast of twenty PARTY ANIMALS!!! This movie is OUT OF THIS WORLD and OUT OF ITS MIND!!!"

A special bonus bit of trivia: screenwriter Robert J. Rosenthal also wrote The Van, which appeared on Trailer Trash earlier this year.

"Get off this summer... with Zapped!"

Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: These movies got made... so can yours! You can read through our archive by clicking here.

Screen Alert - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – Curious, Indeed

Screen Alert is a short, irregular segment highlighting noteworthy films that we saw during advanced screenings. Keep an eye out for these cinematic gems when they hit theaters.

After much thought, I decided to put Brad Pitt’s latest film on Screen Alert. THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON (in theatres December 25th), starring Pitt as the titular character, a man born as an 84 year old baby who ages in reverse, is as much a historical epic as it is a love story. Covering everything from love to life, death, birth, acceptance, death, age, death, and the progression of time, the film raises and attempts to answer a number of deeply thought provoking questions.

Probably the most interesting question, at least to me, is how a child who looks like an arthritic 80 year old when he’s celebrating his 7th birthday gains acceptance, first in boyhood, and then at every other stage in his oddly destined life. At nearly three hours long, BENJAMIN BUTTON has plenty of time to dissect not only the answer, but the question. With a sweeping biopic such as this, it’s inevitable that certain parts of the character’s life simply won’t be addressed or will be glazed over. Button is no exception, but I’m confident in saying that as an audience member, I felt as though the biggest points I wondered about were all touched on at some point or other. Life and death, as all of the characters openly recognize – Benjamin in fact grows up in an assisted living facility, which I thought was a brilliant choice – is an ever going cycle that cannot be fought. Benjamin, though unique in how he experiences those inevitabilities, openly acknowledges that he cannot compare it to a normal life, as he has only seen it through his own eyes. Life and death are accepted by everyone in this picture, as is Benjamin’s condition. Ultimately, the question in the film is love, not whether it’s real – for, ask anyone in Benjamin’s world, and they will tell you that it is unquestionably so – but how many times we are fortunate enough to experience it.

Arguably the most interesting element of the picture – one that the producers willingly recognize – is the logistics behind Button’s reverse aging. “He’s 30 years old now, but he should look… how old?” or “OK, he looks like a tween, but he’s showing signs of his true age (70) in what ways?” I found myself trying to work out the math a few times during the picture, and I can guarantee I wasn’t the only one doing that. Granted, with pretty-boy Brad Pitt playing the protagonist, the filmmakers are going to want to get as much mileage out of his face as possible. For the most part, I think they were pretty true to the logic of the film. I did wonder if he de-aged a bit too quickly at one point, but after a little math, was able to convince myself that the timing worked out. Furthermore, all the while Benjamin is aging down, everyone around him is aging up. As Cate Blanchett’s character recognizes at one point, she and Benjamin are aging from opposite ends and “meeting in the middle.” The middle, though, in Benjamin’s universe is nearly a lifetime long, as he finds acceptance and companionship the entire time.

Visually, the picture is quite beautiful. The make-up artists who worked on Pitt – he’s on-screen the entire time, not once substituted for an older or younger actor (except a baby) – brought a new level of effects to film makeup, and if they don’t earn an Oscar for their work, I don’t know who will. The digital shooting captures a warm, often sepia feel that’s quite inviting.

My primary gripe, and it’s not really a small one, is that Benjamin Button – as the producers also recognized – is the kind of character that writers will receive an endless bombardment of studio notes for. He’s completely passive. With few exceptions at all, he goes through life observing and reacting, and for that reason, the movie, especially in the beginning, dragged on a bit too long for me. The strength lies in the reversal of the age (at 16 he look 70, and at 70 he looks 16), but watching any other boy have his first drink, his first sexual encounter, his first wife would be nowhere near as engaging. BENJAMIN BUTTON gets away with a lot based on the ingenuity of the protagonist’s situation. Nevertheless, those of you looking to see a movie where the stakes continually raise, where the action and the character drive the plot forward, where the main character takes the horse by the reins and steers the picture will be disappointed.

I was also turned off by the fact that the story was set against the backdrop of Hurricane Katrina. While New Orleans was a perfect setting, the decision to end (not a spoiler at all) with the levees breaking did not add anything to the story for me, and actually grounded this otherwise gripping fantasy in something much more tangible and immediate, and that killed some of the magic for me.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON hopes to be a breath of fresh air, a reminder to Hollywood that the industry can and should support historical epics. It works visually and is interesting enough to sustain its running time (though a shorter version could have worked, too). Depending on your mood, this can be an overwhelmingly powerful film on love and life well lived despite what seem to be insurmountable obstacles, and the acting and make-up are top notch. A real head-scratcher, BENJAMIN BUTTON’s weak spot (to those who think it has one) will inevitably come from its meandering pace and observant, inactive protagonist. Ultimately, this is a Screen Alert (though I’ll forgive you this one time if you wait for DVD), because though it can be slow, THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON is an example of an epic biopic that all writers should study.

What, When, Where this Weekend - Frost/Nixon, Nobel Son, Cadillac Records, The Black Balloon, Punisher: War Zone

What, When, Where is a weekly guide to select screenings, discussions and events in the NYC-area of interest to screenwriters.

- Young Friends of Film are screening Robert Altman's Short Cuts tonight, with two stars (Matthew Modine and Annie Ross) in attendance. It's a wonderful movie starring my man Tom Waits (and no less than 30,000 other big-name actors) - if you haven't seen it, here's a great chance. The screening is followed by a party with an open bar and h'ors d'oeurves, so check it out and mingle with other film fans. Details are available here.

- Fellini's classic Amarcord is playing for a limited run at Film Forum. Like Short Cuts, this is one of those required-viewing movies - if you can't catch it on the big screen, please at least add it to your Netflix queue.

Opening this week...

FROST/NIXON, written by Peter Morgan, dir. by Ron Howard


Premise: A dramatic retelling of the post-Watergate television interviews between British talk-show host David Frost and former president Richard Nixon.

Playing at: Lincoln Square

Lots of great buzz around this one, and the trailers bring about warm, fuzzy memories of Altman's Secret Honor, which is by no means a bad thing. (When did this turn into an Altman-love day?) This is likely to get a nod for best adapted screenplay.

And speaking of that screenplay? You can read it for free over here.

NOBEL SON, written by Randall Miller and Jody Savin, dir. by Randall Miller


Premise: Barkley Michaelson is in a deep life rut. He's struggling to finish his PhD thesis when his father, the learned Eli Michaelson, wins the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Barkley and his mother, Sarah, a renowned forensic psychiatrist, now have the ill-fortune of living with a man-eating monster whose philandering ways have gotten less and less discrete. As if Barkley's world is not bad enough, on the eve of his father receiving the Nobel, Barkley is kidnapped and the requested ransom is the $2,000,000 in Nobel prize money. Needless to say, Eli refuses to pay it and so starts a venomous tale of familial dysfunction, lust, betrayal and ultimately revenge. In the words of Michel De Montaigne, the 16th century philosopher: "There is more barbarity in eating a man alive than in eating him dead."

Playing at: Loews Village VII, AMC Empire 25

THE BLACK BALLOON, written by Elissa Down and Jimmy Jack, dir. by Elissa Down


Premise: All Thomas wants is a normal adolescence but his autistic brother, Charlie, thwarts his every opportunity. Will Thomas, with the help of his girlfriend, Jackie, accept his brother?

Playing at: AMC Empire 25, Village East Cinemas

CADILLAC RECORDS, written and directed by Darnell Martin


Premise: Chronicles the rise of Chess Records and its recording artists.

Playing at: AMC Empire 25, Union Square Stadium 14, Loews West 34th, Lincoln Square

The music geek in me is going to win out here: this tells the story of Chess Records' golden age, when they were the musical stables for Etta James, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Little Walter...

The cast is great, too. I'm in.

PUNISHER: WAR ZONE, written by Nick Santora and Art Marcum, dir. by Lexi Alexander


Premise: After hunting down and killing hundreds of violent criminals, Frank Castle, aka The Punisher, faces his most deadly foe yet: Jigsaw.

Playing at: All over.

This review from Cinemablend has one of the most brutal blurbs I've ever seen:

"It’s as if someone saw Batman Forever and then thought: “Hey I wonder what this movie would look like if it were rated-R,” and then designed their sets accordingly."

Ouch!

What are you doing/seeing this weekend?

More free academy consideration screenplays for your perusal - Rachel Getting Married, Synecdoche, New York

Words can't describe how happy it's made me to have the screenplays of a few of my favorite movies of the year made available online by their studios. I linked to the first batch of free screenplays (click here for that post) earlier, including Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona and The Dark Knight. This new batch has me even more excited.

Rachel Getting Married is currently my frontrunner for favorite film of 2008, and Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York has to at least win for the year's most unusual script. I'm looking forward to comparing these scripts with the DVD releases of the films.

Here's the treasure:

Rachel Getting Married - October 17, 2007 revised draft by Jenny Lumet

Synecdoche, New York - July 30, 2007 revised draft by Charlie Kaufman

I've Loved You So Long - undated, unspecified draft by Philippe Claudel

Thanks again to SimplyScripts!

DVD Junkie #1: Deadwood

Oh, December, how I love thee. For this is the one time a year when HBO shows become affordable to real human beings. Here's how it works: once an HBO show has been on TV for roughly a year, the network will release a ridiculously overpriced, uselessly ornate DVD of the season to us struggling masses who won't pony up $20 a month for the two or three hours a week we'd actually watch the damn channel. Besides obviously giving us sad peons the chance to have our very own special piece of premium television, these DVD's have recently become redundant with the advent of HBO full-season DVD sets. Why pay $80-$100 a season when you can wait a year or two and get the whole shebang for $150? This is a banner year for HBO box sets, with three great shows being released in their entirety - The Sopranos, The Wire, and that lovable romp through the cocksuckin' old west, Deadwood.

Any of these three would be worthy of a long and meandering personal review, but unless you've been under a rock for the past 6 years, you already know you should watch the Sopranos (and shame on you if you haven't) and if you were still under that rock when the hipsters discovered the Wire, then you might not know that it's very popular these days to say ZOMFG TEH WIRE IS THE BEST SHOW EVAARR DID YOU KNOW ITS ABOUT DRUGS AN BLACK PEOPLE? Both of these shows are fantastic, don't get me wrong, but their quiet, foul-mouthed cowboy cousin is what I'm focusing on today.

The western genre has swung wildly from great to terrible since its heyday in the mid 20th century. In the past 20 years or so, it's been increasingly abysmal - with 10 "Texas Rangers" for every "Unforgiven" that comes out. On TV, the odds of something worth the five minutes it takes to get to the first commercial break are next to nil, with the only one I can think of off the top of my head being "Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman" and that's a show that's so toothless even senior citizens find it condescendingly crowd-pleasing. We get it, Solitaire has ditched the sexy Bond-villainy and been transported to the Wild West, where she's a woman in a man's world who wears a hat and blah de blah blah blah...zzzzzzzz

Anyway, one of the only bright points on TV in the straight western genre is Deadwood, the golden child of David Milch - he of Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue and other blue things fame. Set in a lawless town before the annexation of the Dakota territory, Deadwood centers on a rotating cast of around 10 characters, some based on actual people, some not, but all of whom could probably use a good bath.

Now let me just preface the rest of this review by saying that I'm a huge fan of westerns. I'm a sucker for antiheroes and most westerns worth watching serve them up with reckless abandon. Also, morality is turned into a compellingly personal and flexible concept in fiction based on the old west. It's like an end of the world survival film, but without the cataclysmic inciting incident or zombie horde. Getting breakfast or playing a quiet game of cards with your best friends is a matter of instant life and death every day, and through that sense of urgency, tension can be kept at a fever pace even through 6 minutes of people silently staring at each other across a graveyard. The stakes are sky high the minute the title card fades, so if you've done your job your audience is already involved.

Deadwood is a show you would buy a used car from. It's convincing, and reliable, and above all else, is absolutely fascinating. The characters shoulder the plot with grace and skill, especially in the first season. You honestly care about what their fate, and when major characters get killed off, there is a true sense of loss. Above all else it grips the gritty realism that is so characteristic of the post-sopranos hour-long drama with a reckless tenacity, down to the speech patterns in the dialogue and the wanton, awesome violence.

It's a little-known fact that mustaches served as currency in the old west.

The cast was mostly made up of unknowns four years ago - Timothy Olyphant had yet to steal the Internet in Die Hard: Deathrattle, and the various actors that made up the original major cast had, god bless 'em, been climbing the industry ladder the hard way in Law and Orders, small episode runs in shows not Law and Order, and small parts in movies. The biggest exception to this was Ian McShane, an actor with a 50-year pedigree in theatre, film, and movies. If you're over the age of 30 and British, you might know him from his previous show "LoveJoy" which was apparently created using the British standard for creating dramas: madlib

"a [lovable/foppish/shrewd] [name of quirky profession/vicar/timelord] travels the countryside solving mysteries, with the help of their assistant, [young woman/comic relief/close definitely “heterosexual” friend]"

In re-watching the first season, I am first struck by the slickness and ease of the opening sequence - designed by Rock Paper Scissors and a52 visual effects (which is better known for car commercials and music videos, most notably the quite ridiculous "God Gave Me Everything" by Mick Jagger), one thing you can say about HBO is that they know how to set a tone. Their long opening sequences are like foreplay, and it's quite obvious they know this by how much care and design know-how goes into each.

There's a lot that's been said about Deadwood's dialogue. It's not in iambic pentameter, as many people have posited, but it might as well be. The cadence and the sheer density of it is almost overwhelming. In a genre that is characterized by silent looks and shoot first ask questions later, the residents of deadwood are unusually chatty. So much of the story happens in the dialogue that you find yourself paying close attention without really realizing it, so when someone gets shot or stabbed or somesuch it's that much more brutal because you're already so involved. And if you've got a problem with profanity, this is not the show for you. Not by a long shot. Just as an example, here's an episode from Deadwood cut down to nothing but its profanity (obviously, extremely NSFW)



It's two and a half minutes long. By my art school math education, that's something like 5%? 5% of this show is swearing. Awesome.

Also, I can't stress the strength of the cast enough. There are times in the later two seasons where the writing lags, and the story gets lost in its own opulence, meandering through its paces for episodes at a time. These are the times that the best actors shine - most of the times that this happens Ian McShane as brothel owner "Al Swearengen" shoulders the plot, with the considerable talents of Robin Weigert, Dayton Callie, W. Earl Brown and Brad Dourif taking the most of the rest of the burden until the story gets back on track, so even when she story is weak, the show is quite strong. Technically, Timothy Olyphant's "Seth Bullock" is the other main character of the show, but he's not one of the shining stars of the cast. Everyone is beyond capable, but Olyphant seems to phone it in a tad more than others, glowering and tight-lipped mumbling his way through much of the series, though some of the best moments in the show happen when Bullock and Swearengen are in direct conflict.

Much like many of the situations in the show, Deadwood did not come to a pleasant end. Deadwood's story progressed in two-season arcs, with a nice, clean temporary resolution at the end of each even-numbered season. The show was cancelled suddenly after the third season had wrapped shooting, so the end is frustratingly open. It was a very expensive show to produced, with sets and costumes almost all having to be created from scratch, and at the time HBO was in the middle of Rome as well, which was even more expensive, so the economic reasons for canceling make sense. But fans of the show at the time were angry and bitter, and would have sworn up and down that the reason the show was cancelled was David Milch, and specifically his new show John From Cincinnati which was heavily promoted shortly after word got around that a 4th season wasn't going to come.

The average Deadwood fan's opinion of "John from Cincinnati"

Part of me thinks that that show failed because people were angry about Deadwood. I'm not going to lie, I still have considerable resentment that we never got to have the closure that we all craved, especially since the third season seemed to be leading the show in a different direction, with many new characters being introduced then never shown to pay off. But the vigor with which its fans defend and mourn their fallen show is simply more proof of how compelling and immersive Deadwood is. God rest the soul of that great show ... and pussy's half price for the next 15 minutes.

All three seasons of Deadwood will be released in a shiny 19-DVD box set on Tuesday, December 9th for $108.99 on Amazon.com. It's well worth it.

DVD Junkie is a weekly review of TV Series on DVD. Kosmic has seen more TV than could possibly be healthy by anyone's estimation, and never sits with her back to the door when playing cards.

WENDY AND LUCY screenings at Film Forum - followed by Q&A with filmmaker Kelly Reichardt and star Michelle Williams

This is easily my most-anticipated new film in December, and I was really sad to have missed seeing it at the NYFF. I'm an unabashed Will Oldham fan, which led me to renting Reichardt's Old Joy, which he starred in. Saying the "plot" of the film was simple would be an understatement - two men go camping in the woods, talk a while, and then return. But that simplicity was beautiful - Reichardt brought out more depth in those two characters than most filmmakers bother bringing to a more action-packed film. I loved it. Wendy and Lucy seems to be similarly simple - about a woman and her dog on a road trip to Alaska that - I can't wait to see the magic she works with such a bare canvas.

The movie will open at Film Forum next week. Director Kelly Reichardt and star Michelle Williams will be in attendance for the 8:00 shows on Wednesday, December 10th and Friday, December 12th.

Tickets are available day-of at the box office only. Details are available here.