I Think Spring Is Usually Like This...

As the vertical cursor blinks against the plain white screen of whatever word-processing program I happen to have open at the time, the same thought keeps coming to me as I stare into the abyss of possibility that is a blank document. I like to type out it out, just to see how it looks. There is something about the physicality of words that gives thought a sense of legitimacy. To me anyway.

I usually put it in quotes and precede it with an ellipsis. It has a quality of being being spoken after a long, full pause.

"...so where do we go from here?"

I don't really know what it means. Who is "we?" Where is "here?" I have no idea, but it's become reflective a crossroads, a blank state, a sense of disarray. There's a short story in my head, one that begins with a young man waking up and smoking a cigarette out the window of his Parisian hotel room while a beautiful, naked woman steals a few more moments of rest. There is one major decision about my protagonist's backstory that's holding me back from diving into a second draft of my screenplay. There's another one that I've been wanting to begin since January, but haven't quite worked out the details. None of this includes a few collaborations, and while I don't think there's too much on my plate, I do suspect that it's all so damn distracting.

With so many directions, can things be said about me when I make a choice to commit the time to one or another or all? Can I afford to put things on the back burner, perhaps to never resurface for months? Where does it go, indeed.

There may be something deeper, as there usually is, but in going through this plenty of times, it almost always works out that when I'm writing, everything else feels infinitely better.

***

I guess I should throw in my two-cents about Spider-Man 3, although what hasn't been said? I could certainly pinpoint why, but suffice it to say that while I had a great time seeing the first two installments of the franchise, I actually did not enjoy myself watching Spider-Man 3. Maybe the assholes sitting behind me that didn't stop talking/snickering the entire film played a part in it. Maybe it was because I had to go to the bathroom for the first half of the film (the minute Peter Parker sat down at the piano, I literally clapped my hands, turned to Megan and said, "Well, I'm going to the bathroom."). I just wasn't engaged. The pacing was off, the writing was to coincidental and formulaic, and I was really surprised to see Tobey Maguire give what must have been his worst acting performance in years. He's too talented to sit back and rely on his big baby-blues and readily accessible tears. It came off as showy, a mailed-in performance, totally lacking the true emotional depth that he's showed before.

It didn't suck, but I do have to take back just about everything I said on Friday about the NY Times review. It turned out to be pretty dead-on.

(I won't, however, forgive Manohla Dargis for her Superman Returns review. Ever.)

Write on....


P.S. With Cake Man graduating this week, don't hold your breath waiting on a comic. We'll be back up and running at full speed next week.

Web of Tears

I saw Spider-Man 3 last night after building up my excitement for the picture over the past few weeks. The film had a lot of promise, going by, if nothing else, the track records of the previous two films in the franchise. The villains were some of Spider-Man's oldest and most interesting, there were a lot of unresolved issues between Harry and Peter, and the whole MJ thing just started going well for Peter. (I'll refrain from spoilers as best I can. Suffice it to say, if I feel like I'm about to give something away, I'll warn you, but that shouldn't be the case.) So what was my take on the third installment?

"Oh... Huh."

I was not impressed. I'm a fan of comic books, so it's annoying that there's little way I can phrase my following thought without seemingly coming down on comic books, but within the first ten minutes of the film, I kept thinking to myself, "This is just so much more comic-booky than the other two, in a bad way." By that, I think I mean that where I felt the first two films tried not only to be good superhero/comic book movies, but also good movie movies, this one was just going for comic book film success. The script seemed nowhere near as strong as did the ones for the first two movies. Every plot point was so driven by the writer, it was as if I could sense that, well, "it's time for a plot point, so here comes the incredibly ridiculous coincidence."

I acknowledge the fact that a lot of what happened in the film, well, some of it at least, occurred as it did in comic books. Coincidences are comic books. Things don't really happen to normal people in comic books. By that, I mean that once a normal person becomes a super person for whatever reason, every other cosmic event or random happening seems to happen to him or her only. And that's ok. But in Spider-Man 3, everything just seemed too easy.

I remember writing a scene for my own comic book movie where the love interest of the protagonist is kidnapped by a villain, without the villain's knowledge that she had anything to do with the hero. In fact, the hero's rescuing her was the impetus for the relationship. I got a note form a classmate (and fellow Leaguer) that he could see that coming from a mile away. While the teacher agreed it was somewhat predictable, he conceded that I had done my job well, and that it didn't read as though I had twisted fate within my script to create an impossible situation for the benefit of my plot.

But in Spider-Man 3, that's exactly how I felt. A few times. If I had brought that script into class, my teacher would have smacked me across the face with it. Everything was so driven by the writers that nothing seemed to flow naturally from the story. That was my biggest problem with the film.

But not my only one. Problem 2) the crying. So much crying. I don't know why Spider-Man didn't just cry on Sandman to kill him, it would have been more effective than anything else he was doing. Everyone was crying in the movie. Peter. MJ. Harry sort of. Aunt May. Uncle Ben (in flashback). The Sandman... somehow. Gwen Stacey. A bunch of extras. The usher in the theater, because apparently in Spider-Man world, crying is contagious.

Problem 3) Venom... er, the lack of Venom. Venom, who I understand to be Spider-Man's foil and arch-nemesis, the anti-Spider-Man, was barely in the film. He was introduced just to be defeated about ten minutes later. He was like Bane in Batman and Robin, completely under used and kind of dumb looking, a great villain turned into a temporary, fleeting threat. Way to go, Marvel.

Problem 4) -and this is where you might want to skip if you're concerned about spoilers- The Sandman/Uncle Ben stuff. Sandman was cool, but he was completely gratuitous. Unnecessary. The only reason Sandman was in there was so that there could be a double team fight at the end, which could have been done any number of ways sans Sandman, albeit not as a two-on-two brawl. Sandman looked cool, but there was no way, in the film, that Spider-Man was going to be able to beat him, and his presence added about a half hour of useless plot. What irked me the most was how, because of Sandman and the need to tie him personally to Peter, the filmmakers decided to change Uncle Ben's death to put it on Sandman's hands. (Um... remember those really coincidental coincidences I was talking about?) So most of Sandman's screen time was dedicated to rewriting how Uncle Ben died, which we didn't need. If they still wanted to make a 2 and a half hour movie, Avi Arad and co. should have cut Sandman and decided to focus more on Venom, who was almost lost in the picture.

Problem 5) Emo Peter. Um... yeah. I wonder if we'll get an Emo Spider-Man action figure that cries when you squeeze it. Or at least dances really badly.

Bruce Campbell was good in the film, but that's because, well, when is he not? But other than him, I was actually pretty disappointed. Marvel seems to have a habit of making lukewarm first installments of a trilogy, nailing the second completely, and just crapping out on the third. That's how the X-Men films went. That's how many people feel about the Blade series. That's certainly what happened in Spider-Man's case. And, if trailers for the second Fantastic Four are any indication, that's how that trilogy is going, as well. (Of course, with FF, there's been no real talk about the third yet, but the first wasn't great, and the second looks better, so we'll see.) I really wish that someone had stepped in and done something about Spider-Man 3. But, then again, when you're guaranteed to make almost 150 million your first weekend, if not more (just a ballpark figure I threw out) why even bother trying? So, yeah, I'm glad I eagerly waited for that one.

Oh, and P.S. In response to LoKor's post about the absence of any word about Venom in the NY Times review, I think I know why that was. He was barely in the film.

Compromises

(Click to enlarge image)

Missing: an Extra Villain

So...

The NY Times has their review of Spider-Man 3 out today...only it doesn't mention Venom...at all...in any way. There's also no mention as to whether or not the movie ties things up, completes the package set up by the other two films...so...did Manohla Dargis even see the whole thing before writing her review?

My guess? Nope.

Manohla Dargis is probably my least favorite film reviewer...on the planet. She makes no attempt to hide that she brings her own agenda to her reviews (see Superman Returns or even X-Men 3), and when it's all said and done, after she gets off her fucking soap box, I have no understanding, really, what the movie is even about let alone why a normal person who doesn't think that movies necessarily need to make grand statements about society would or would not want to see it. I'm not asking for a synopsis and a thumbs-up-or-down, I would just like to see her, you know, address the matter at hand. Save the analyzing for the inevitable book that will flood (and collect dust on) book shelves everywhere.

Dear New York Times: please let A.O. Scott review a superhero movie. Just once. PLEASE.

Belated Box Office, an Interesting Weekend, and Other Musings

Call it the calm before the storm if you'd like, but basically nothing happened at the movies this weekend. Disturbia led all comers with $9.1 million, followed by the debuting The Invisible ($7.6 million) and the Nicolas Cage-driven Next ($7.2 million).

(Funny note about Next: remember that "The Best of The Wickerman" clip I posted earlier? Well, the NY Times review for Next mentioned that clip in order to highlight Nicolas Cage's horrendous taste in choosing roles. Needless to say, the review didn't get any kinder from there.)

The top five was rounded out by Fracture and Blades of Glory.

(Just to highlight how abysmal this month has been for the film industry, Blades is the only film in the top 10 that has grossed over 100 million. Assuming that the summer onslaught is about to begin, that's just...sad.)

Next week will simply be a question of how much Spider-Man 3 grosses. I'm thinking it's going to be something downright ridiculous. The hype machine has been churning since the second film premiered, all the reviews so far have been positive (but still willing to point out plenty of flaws), and this movie features one of the most popular villains in comic book history, a fan-favorite, and our hero's ultimate foil. Plus, the series just feels like it's built up to this, doesn't it? Though the second film was a great stand-alone effort, didn't you just get the feeling that it was all building toward something incredibly huge? Enter Spider-Man 3.

---

I finished what can only be called a "rough draft" of my script this weekend, writing a staggering 47 pages in two days. Cake Man was quick to question the quality of the pages, and he was justified in doing so - I like the ideas on the page. The execution on the other hand? Could have been better. He tried to rephrase his question before I could eek out an answer by saying, "In other words, will you just need to rewrite it all before you can show it to The League?"

The last half of the script has been an odd journey for reasons that I've brought up here before: I got excellent feedback on the first half of the script, notes that raised questions and ideas that would greatly change the first half. Those changes would, more or less, make the ideas I had for the second half almost completely moot. Sure enough, after proofreading and cleaning up the 47 pages from this weekend, I already realized that the script I had, as a whole, just didn't work. Already I had ideas for how I wanted to restructure the first act - including new scenes with different emphases that only retain the spirit of the original pages - and a much clearer idea of the characters, including one big one, who will come off as someone almost entirely different.

As I've mentioned before, the images invade my head and I can see things so clearly that I write them from there. But having finished a draft, it's like a new level of clarity has been created. To use a video gaming metaphor, it's as though the draft I finished had the graphics of early-released games for the PS1. Already, the ways I'm envisioning the scenes, the characters, and the course of the plot have taken a feel more akin to the last efforts of the original X-Box. It's just that different.

(and at some point this thing's gonna have to look like reality. Getting there...)

This is process. This isn't something that I'm bothered by, but the truth is that I don't feel a need to give anyone my rough draft for comments. There's just too many things wrong with it that I'm already aware of, that I don't think I'm going to get any helpful feedback. There is a writing group that I'm in that has seen the thing develop from the first 10 pages I submitted to them. They're a good group to work with. However, this has the feel more of an outline than a draft, a hurdle I had to get over, and so I'd rather get another draft completed before handing it out to people have no idea where it's coming from.

With that said, I would suspect that in the coming workshops I will be submitting new pages from the new draft for feedback as I go. So, for some of you in The Cartel waiting to take a look at this thing, and for anyone in The League that thought I was jumping in looking for feedback on a completed draft....well, sorry.

Write on...

But Craft is Fun!

(Click to enlarge image)

In the screenwriting class I just finished taking, my teacher introduced us to an aspect of craft known (to him, anyway) as "Emotional Resonance." Basically, it's a way of creatively giving insight into the feelings of the characters without coming right out and saying it. A great example can be found in the script for Casablanca. It's happens in the scene where Rick is first meeting Lazlo and reuniting with Ilsa. I don't remember the line, but it looks something like this:

RICK
(but why is he looking at Ilsa?)
Blah blah blah, poorly delivered line.

It actually does make a world of difference in a screenplay, but as it was the first time I was introduced to the technique, I...well, struggled with it. While I can't destroy buildings like my superhero counterpart, believe me, the frustration was definitely there. Enjoy!

Meetup.com

One of the things that young artists have to realize is that they can't succeed in this industry alone. While just about everyone hears the terms "networking" and "connections," it's ambiguous what these actually mean.

The truth is, I don't really know either.

The League is based in New York (duh) and even though there are plenty of people working in and aspiring to work in the entertainment industry, they seem to be hidden in the woodwork, waiting till the rains come to wash them out.

I have no idea where I'm going with that.

The point might have been that you actually need to seek out like minds in this city. True, being actively involved in a lot of different things can bring you connections regardless (being an actor in New York and doing shows and films found in Backstage is a great way to do this), but as a writer, it's a little more difficult because your craft is so incredibly solitary.

But "network" you must. You must find the assistants, the upstarts, the people whose ambition meshes with yours and so I wish to mention one important, incredibly useful source:

meetup.com

It is exactly what it sounds like. It's a site that hosts communities of like minds whose goal is to MEET UP, to get together, to share ideas - to physically get bodies together in a room. The idea behind this site is nothing short of invaluable, and it's in every artist's best interest to make sure that it succeeds. So create your logos, get your business cards made, and start creating your own buzz among the people who will ultimately count most: your peers. The site and most groups are free to join. While there is a fee to form a group, there is nothing wrong with joining an already established crowd.

But naturally writers, while selling yourself, don't forget to keep writing.

(New York screenwriters! We're big fans of New York meetups, "NYC Screenwriters Meetup" and "SCENE NY Film and Media Industry Network." Check our links list for the pages of meetups we enjoy, and we just might see you there.)