Call me Panda

I got called up for jury duty yesterday but I got it postponed so I ended up home by 9:30 am. I had a sub for the day so Writing Partner and I spent the entire day working on the script. Like we were professionals or something.

At the rate Partner's going he might be unemployed soon. He's sort of started neglecting his paying job to work on the script more. But at least he'll have the awesome screenplay to keep him warm when he's homeless.

We probably spent a total of four hours on the phone but we got it done. We read through the entire script from beginning to end which is a hilarious event all by itself. Sometimes we ad lib. Sometimes our ad libs are so funny they make it into the script. I spent a good portion of my day doubled over in giggles.

After we finished our final draft of the script and the day was over and we were all prepared to go to sleep we realized we forgot the title.

Usually I'm good with titles. They just pop into my head when I first think of the script and that's that. But the nature of this story, with the chapters and all, has made it difficult to think of a clever way to sum up our story.

There's a Taoist quote about water Partner wrote into the script and we discussed at length how it sums up our primary theme. So I said, "Running Water"? And he said it sounds like a Hallmark Channel production. He said "Still Water"? And I said that sounds like a Tom Selleck Western on TNT.

We sat for a minute.

"Bamboo Killers," Partner said.

Duh.

A Friend and I had a conversation recently that involved the use of the phrase "bamboo killers". I thought the conversation was interesting so when I needed a character to say something random I yanked the discussion from my memory. When Partner and I read through the script yesterday I told him about the real life conversation and we realized how perfectly it summed up our primary theme.

Plus it sounds cool. Bamboo Killers.

I was so pleased with the title I kept repeating it as I fell asleep.

Bamboo killers. Bamboo killers. Bamboo killerssszzzzzzz.......

You work. I'll sleep.

Partner didn't sleep much last night.

I emailed Writing Partner: We need to finish the first draft of the script so I can upload it for the writers group to read in time for next week's meeting.

He called in a panic: It's not going to be ready!

I was all cool and collected and like, oh sure it will be fine. Just let me finish this thing and then we'll... Oh crap, it's not going to be ready!

I got a little frustrated because one of the scenes I was scheduled to write involved two male roommates confronting the other one about rent while his brother is in the room. So that's four boys in a room in the middle of a confrontation.

Now I'm pretty masculine for a girl and I've spent a lot of time being "one of the guys" but I have no brothers and I don't actually have a penis, so this scene was really driving me nuts. Partner looked at it and said it was fine but I didn't like it. I threw up my hands and made him fix it.

I heard the clackity-clack of his fingers on the keys of his computer as I lay in bead lamenting my frustration with the scene. It was 2 am his time and he was wide awake.

Then he read me what he had changed. It turns out, it wasn't the penises that was the problem, it was one penis who, quite frankly, was not behaving enough like a penis.

One change in a physical position between two characters and suddenly everything opened up. And all I had to do was mumble my agreement as I snuggled up in my pajamas.

So now the chapters are all put together and we're spending today doing one last pass over the whole thing, fixing a few chronology issues and putting a harder edge on one of our characters who needs to act more like a penis.

I get to feel proud for a whole week until we send it to the writers group and start all over when they rip it apart. Yay.

I love Partner.

And I can't wait to see how many people google this post looking for porn.

Women film makers are so cute

Yesterday was a crazy gung ho writing day and Writing Partner and I got a ton of work done on the script. So yay on that.

I was supposed to meet with Lead Actor Sunday to go over the script and look at the new chapters, but he blew me off because of his hangover and offered to reschedule for Monday. Monday he didn't call until 10pm and said he'd been feeling sick so we rescheduled for tonight when I will show up on time and proceed to rip him a new one for his disrespectful attitude. I do believe he's under the mistaken impression that he can't be replaced.

All my conversations about the script mean I only got to see the first hour of On The Lot last night, but what I did see was educational.

Why is a film about two party aliens puking on a stoic cop funny when a woman peeing in a cup on a bus is disgusting? I have no idea, but it is. The judges agreed. The judges kind of agreed on everything, which is probably going to change because arguments between judges get better ratings. But for right now they just kind of keep repeating each other.

Did you notice how hard Garry Marshall was trying to pretend he's not a sexist asshat? Almost every time a woman was on stage he said, "I'm all for women film makers..." to remind us how cute he thinks it is that women still try to break into the business. When the black guy was up there (Was there only one? Because it looked like there was only one) he didn't say "I'm all for black film makers..."

And whenever a woman made a film that involved pee or farting he asked why they tried so hard to be like men. "Why can't you stick to something nice?" he asked. The girls just nodded politely and pretended he hadn't just insulted the crap out of them.

Speaking of nicely worded insults, I loved this one from D.J. Caruso:

"It's a bad concept poorly executed" he said with a disarming smile. Ouch. The girl just nodded in her mummu and acted like her spirit wasn't just crushed into tiny bits.

How about that one guy who did his entire one minute film in one shot? That takes some major planning ahead and patient actors. Very impressive.

Did the contestants get extra credit for including that weird looking Verizon cell phone in their picture? Because the fact that it kept showing up in closeups was making me a little ill.

Yes, it's reality TV, but it's still kind of cool to see Fox giving the prettiest film makers in America and Italy the chance to show their talents to Carrie Fisher. I approve.

Kicking ass and taking names

Writing Partner has caught the bug.

Despite the fact that he went to fancy film school and knows lots about making movies, he doesn't have that much actual writing experience, and he's been very nervous about what I'd think of his part of the script.

Everything we've written up to this point we wrote together. I'd do a piece and send it to him and he'd do a piece and send it to me. But this project is in chapters, so I took two and he took two and we've worked on them independently, only occasionally checking in with the other one to bounce some ideas around.

He sent me a short he wrote on a whim recently and I did not like it, so it made him really worried that I wouldn't like his new stuff.

Then that thing happened. You know, that thing that happens. You know.

He sent his first draft to a friend who sent back three pages of notes. Partner looked at the notes and it hit him what he had to do. And that's when it happened. You know, that thing.

His story took over his brain. He called me like six times in one day to tell me how excited he was that he wasn't in control. The story was telling itself. He just sat in front of his computer for hours typing whatever his brain said to type.

And I cheered and said, now you're a writer.

When I read it today I was generally pleased. I go into every reading of everything expecting it to suck. So if something doesn't suck I am generally pleased. And I was generally pleased. I had some issues so we workshopped for an hour while I walked up to Larchmont, bought some tomatoes and hummus, and walked back. Cell phones are wondrous things.

There was a scene at the therapist. Our character, Sheila, reveals her thoughts to a psychiatrist. It was boring. So I said, this character is only here so Sheila can talk to herself (I heard that about therapists somewhere on this here interweb so thanks, whoever pointed that out - Unk, maybe? Bill?) and we need to ditch the psychiatrist.

But who?

I said, how about a friend? She's already shoe shopping in one scene. What if a friend came with her? Then she could-

That was all it took to get the ball rolling. The ideas started popping out of his mouth and he got really excited again. He called me fifteen minutes later just to tell me how awesome an idea that was. I'm actually a little worried. I think he may have replaced sleep with writing time.

But it did give him the opportunity to write a lesbian make-out scene so that had to be fun.

Don't ask.

I do find it interesting that his chapters are all about sex and mine are all about violence. That has to have some psychological significance, but we will not delve into that because it would be too boring to put on camera since it will not include any lesbian makeout scenes.

I was worried Partner wouldn't be able to keep up my pace but now it's me who's falling behind. I gotta step up my A game so we can make this brilliant.

I'm gonna be such a bitch to everybody when we're rich and famous.

Positive feedback

The boxing story, The Corner, that I wrote to be a part of the modular feature Writing Partner and I are working on, was written with Trainer in mind to play one of the boxers. This week I gave him a finished draft and he read it today.

And he LOVES it. He had no criticisms at all other than technical boxing stuff and a typo. He likes the character and feels like he can do something with the role. He timidly hoped we might consider switching around our shooting schedule so we could shoot The Corner before Game Night because he wants to play the part so much.

So Emily is happy today.

Onto the next hurdle

I've been stumbling over Valerie.

Valerie is one of the two characters in Game Night that it is my job to write a chapter about and she's driving me crazy. Billy was easy - he's violent, drugged up, plagued with insecurities, and I know the actor who will play him. Plus I've been dying to write a boxing story so it was a natural fit.

Valerie, on the other hand, is a contradictory character. She's laid back yet extremely insecure with men. She's smart but easily manipulated. She's a mess, but looks fine on the surface.

I know the setting of the story and I have an idea for a character she needs to meet. But beyond that I've been having a hell of a time coming up with a story that had an actual plot instead of just lots of dialogue as two characters walk down the street.

So I used the old standby teaching method. Today I didn't have the books yet that I thought I'd get for my second period, so I had thirty minutes to come up with a lesson plan and no time to go make copies. So I said well, what do I need them to learn? And I looked around the room and said well, what in this room can I use to get them to learn it? And I came up with a lesson plan about audience and connotation and it ended up being a textbook example of how to do a lesson, the kind they teach you in those useless methods classes. Go figure.

So for the story last night as I drifted off to sleep I started really thinking about Valerie and what I need her to learn in order to get her to the end. What is her arc? Now what in this setting can get her there?

Most of my stories - probably most of anyone's stories, really - come from my own experiences. Over the weekend my shower head stopped working properly and reduced it's water pressure to the oomph of something with no oomph. I was all set to call the landlord, then I took the shower head off, inspected it and discovered that the filter had turned sideways and blocked the flow. I fixed it and turned on the shower and today my muscles are visible because the water rinsed all my skin off. And I celebrated by singing the Pussycat Dolls song "I don't need a man" repeatedly to the cat as I did a little dance. He was not alarmed. He's kind of used to that behavior from me.

So I thought about Valerie's insecurities and I thought about the joy I felt in independent problem solving and I realized that Valerie needed that feeling. Then I realized what she has to do. She has to solve a problem by herself. Then I have to figure out what in my setting provides her with that opportunity. I've got a few ideas.

And that's how plots are done. Yay, me.

Can I have my cookie now?

I'm so hungry.

Trainer is on me about my slackness. Apparently there is no RDA for cookies. He's putting down the smack. I'm now running 2 1/2 miles daily, half of them at a gallop, and I'm not allowed to eat bad things. Oh, how I hate him.

If he weren't so pretty there's no way I'd be paying him for this torture.

So instead of my usual chocolate snack during homeroom, today I ate strawberries. I now have pink juice all over my pink shirt because I am a slob. Fortunately I have a screenplay to revise to get my mind off my chocolate-starved stomach.

Partner read the boxing chapter and loved it, but he wants more. That's a hell of a note. "I like it, but I want more." What am I supposed to do with that?

Also he pointed out that boxers can't deliver a whole lot of clean dialogue when their mouths are stuffed with a mouthpiece. Oops.

But it's okay because he had a fabulous idea about how to play the mouthpiece issue for comic effect in what was otherwise a story kind of short on the funny. He turned a liability into an asset, which is always good. Anytime you back yourself into a logic corner you figure out some really creative moves for your story. Now when my shift comes from comic to tragic it will be that much more significant.

One of my favorite moments in literature is in Catch 22 when a couple of soldiers sit on a raft in the ocean in a pretty funny scene filled with the usual Joseph Heller cynicism. So I'm laughing and smiling and then all the sudden a soldier gets hit out of nowhere by what amounts to friendly fire and dies instantly. I literally went from laughing to crying with the turn of a page.

I aspire to that kind of emotional reversal. I'm not saying I'm there yet, but the more I can turn funny into tragic on a dime the happier I'll be and this chapter is my best attempt yet.

So I'm off to rewrite my short so I can get it to Trainer on Tuesday and get the actor's perspective since I designed one of my fighters around him. The best part about getting to direct Trainer in a boxing scene? He has to do the whole shoot with his shirt off. Because he doesn't have a cookie addiction problem.

Partners in crime and punishment

Writing Partner is clever. He threw my belief system back at me.

This week I finished the next chapter of our movie in chapters project and told him I wanted to send it to him to read. But he said he wants to wait until we're both done with all our pages before he reads anything, which I find kind of odd wince we're supposed to be writing together.

But whatever. We're both trying this calm acceptance and respect of each other's opinions so Emily doesn't hang up on anybody method. But I write fast and he's going to take forever, so instead of twiddling my thumbs I told him I'd like to go ahead and workshop the pages with Lead Actor.

Okay maybe I'm a little impatient. But I hate to see my material sit around and wait on people while I could be improving it.

Then Partner lets it slip that he's not really writing in chapters. His characters are just doing one long story.

Silence.

I'm not sure what to say since the coolest part about this was the film in chapters part. I mean, I haven't even given it a name. I just keep calling it "film in chapters." If it's not a film in chapters it suddenly becomes a less interesting story. The twists are gone. The idea of looking at our lives from someone else's perspective is gone. The concept of being a minor player in someone else's story is gone. Our theme turns to mush.

Not that it's not still a good story. But it becomes kind of an ordinary story when you take out the cool format. Like Memento. Without the backwards motion it's not nearly as good a story. Because it's not just what you tell, it's how you tell it.

So I tell Partner, what about when I said this was a film in chapters and you said okay?

He said, well, I told you that and then figured I'd write it my way and we can always change it later.

And I said, so you paid me lip service and ignored what I said?

And he said, no, I wanted to do a vomit draft like you always talk about. Get it down on paper, change it later.

Damn him. Who knew he was listening?

This is how it works: I'm supposed to do a vomit draft. He's supposed to do what I tell him.

Grumble.

So Emily is learning to give up a little control and trust in Partner. We kind of compromised on the phone and he agreed to shift some of his events around to accommodate the chapter format. And I agreed to wait and see what he writes before demanding that he change it. And he agreed to read the chapter I wrote so he can get a better idea of what I'm looking for. He seems to like me taking the helm on the ideas, which sits just fine with me since I like to be in charge. Somebody's got to.

Once again, we didn't yell at each other. Apparently my baby's all growds up.