It's complicated

Writing is hard.

I worked so hard over the last bazillion years I've been at this to get some good scripts written. I wrote stuff that was actiony, not really worrying about attracting talent. I figured if I just wrote an awesome character, the actors would come.

I have new respect for writers who get commercial scripts produced.

I just wrote an outline for my newest idea. I took a long time with it, really put a lot of thought into it, got a solid document written and sent it off to my rep. I finally got a story with a late twenties male white protag who is good looking and talented and put him with a hot love interest. The problem is, I have a small story, and I spend almost as much time with the antagonists as with the protag. Before, when I was writing for the reader, that wouldn't have been an issue. But now I'm not writing for the reader. My stuff is getting past the reader. I'm kind of writing for the producer, but really at this point, I'm writing for A-List Star. This outline I just did? Not good enough for A-List Star.

At first I was really frustrated. I need to do another outline? And for a minute I panicked. This is the second outline. Am I terrible? Is everyone going to abandon me now that I can't produce the right script? This is the end and now I have to kill myself.

I'm very melodramatic when I get notes. Then I shake my head and get back to work.

Anyway, the more I thought about it, the more I got it. I know actors. They love being the center of attention, and they love looking cool. If I want A-List Actor on board, I have to make him look cool a lot. And big and important.

So now I'm back to the drawing board, trying to figure out how to make a story about a late-twenties hot white male who is cool and also in almost every scene. Plus explosions and fight scenes and a love interest and somewhere in there, a motherfucking plot.

This shit is hard.

A day with Cinemagic and 007

Yesterday I took 13 kids on a field trip to visit Pepperdine University, where the Cinemagic folks put together a cool presentation for young filmmakers. Cinemagic is an Irish group that started as a film festival and has grown to be an educational powerhouse for young filmmakers in the UK. Now they make regular trips to the US to do presentations.

So naturally, when I heard about the opportunity, I jumped on. I will be assigning short film scripts later this year, and hopefully following that up with mini films, so I chose the kids who went by who wanted to be project leaders on the assignment.

We saw three short films - one from a Pepperdine film student and two from teenagers in the Cinemagic group. That was some really impressive filmmaking from high-school age kids. The college kid's film was fun, and he followed up with a Q&A, which I know did my kids some good. They learned a lot. I did chuckle a bit when the director talked about how this 10-minute film took him an incredibly long time to write - two weeks.

At one point the presenters asked how many of us want to make films. I raised my hand, as did most of the kids in the room. How many want to be writers? Of course I raised my hand. How many of you want to make comedies? I raised my hand. One of my students said "Put your hand down, Miss, you don't do comedy." So much they don't know.

We got to sit in the control room while a group of college kids put together a show called Buenos Noches, Pepperdine. That was cool. Never been in a control room before.

But then came the kicker. The one and only Pierce Motherfucking Brosnan showed up and sat right fucking in front of me to do a Q&A. They showed some clips from Manions of America, Mrs. Doubtfire, The Ghost Writer, and Goldeneye. During the scene from Mrs. Doubtfire, during which he stood in all his hottest glory, tight chest exposed on a diving board for all to see, the older Pierce called out: "I'm still the same!"

Here he is right in front of me, talking on the phone to Joe Sargent, getting permission to show Manions to the kiddies. I did not take this picture, but the student who did was kind enough to send it to me:

He's still so damn cool. 


He really pushed the kids to stay in school because he wishes he had, and he talked about the process of working with a great director. He said the best thing a director can do is leave him alone and let him do his thing.

So it was a nifty experience. The kids seem to have gotten a lot out of it.

Thoughts on the film: This Means War

Lots of people have been asking me what I thought of This Means War, so I will post about it for all to see.

Overall, it was okay. There were some really cool action sequences - the opening scene and the paintball bit, specifically - and a neat one-shot that was cool to watch even if it was a ludicrous premise because it was like a little dance with the principles. In fact, there were a lot of really beautiful shots; McG knows how to do a good one shot for sure. There were some funny jokes and some great chemistry between the guys. And you can't ignore how damn pretty everybody is.

Fortunately  I read the reviews and knew to go in with lowered expectations, so I wasn't disappointed. The movie was exactly what I expected it to be - fun, but kinda fluffy.

There were two main things I would have changed.

THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD


First of all, there's this bad guy who's barely in the movie, and it turns out that he's been watching our guys date this girl for some time. Know what would have not only kept him more relevant in the film, but added a bit of extra absurd comedy? If we had seen him occasionally tracking down our guys. He would have been witness to these guys both violating  her privacy and competing for one woman. It would have been a great opportunity for some laughs as the bad guy says what we're all thinking.

Second, this is a MAJOR violation of this woman's privacy. She gets mad when she finds out they knew each other, but fuck that. She's not perfect; she was dating two guys at once and didn't tell either one, so she doesn't really get the right to be indignant about that. What she does have the right to get indignant about is the fact that these guys bugged her house and an entire surveillance team watched her have sex.

But it never comes up. She never finds out what they did. The one element of your story that would cause the most conflict, and it's completely ignored. Imagine what these guys would have had to do to win her back if she found out what they did. So I guess what I'm saying is, I would have focused more of the script on the privacy violation. I think it was the elephant in the theater for me. You could have kept the competition between the guys, but added another element that would have given the film more depth.

There's no reason pretty people can't fight and love and laugh and still be about something substantial. There were missed opportunities here.

Why I will see This Means War

Yeah, I read some of the reviews. I saw the Rotten Tomatoes score (25% as of this posting). My carpool buddy said it looks like the dumbest movie ever and seems to have lost respect for me as a human being.

I don't care. I'm seeing this movie. It's been a long time since simple previews have gotten me this excited about seeing something.

This Means War looks fun. So much fun! I watched those previews by God, I laughed. I smile every time I see the billboard. I watched that segment of Tom Hardy blasting his way through a paintball game and I was filled with joy. I want to have written that scene!

This is exactly the kind of story I want to be writing: fun stuff. So critics be damned, I will see this film. And then I will go eat pizza in Redondo Beach so the Beefcake and I can discuss how much joy it has brought into our world. And that will be the highlight of my weekend.

Ignore the critics, movie. Go ahead and bring me some goddamn joy.

Listen to this podcast

I've started listening to a lot of podcasts at lunch lately. Naturally I listen to Scriptcast and Scriptnotes, but over the past week I've really gotten into the Nerdist podcast.

Are you listening? I remember tuning into one of the earlier Nerdist podcasts and being a little underwhelmed. They mostly shoot the shit and talk about things I don't understand. I thought I was nerdy, and then I listened to these guys and realized how cool I must have always been.

But recently I was looking around for something new to listen to, and I picked out a few of these podcasts. I don't know if I've gotten better at listening or they've gotten better at focusing, but they're really good now.

Today I listened to the one with Conan O'Brien, and if you write comedy at all, you should listen too. He gives a really philosophical discourse on the emotional toll of comedy writing.

He asked this question: Would you rather be funny or happy?

I had to take a second. You'd think the answer would be easy. Happy, right? Except the idea of not being funny struck me as horrifying. How could I not be funny? Who would I be without jokes? Deep, deep stuff.

He talks about the Tonight Show debacle, why he doesn't do insult comedy, his regular battles with self-loathing, and how much of himself you see on stage (hint: all of it). It's one of the best discussions on comedy and this business I've heard in a long time.

Character Development

This week I was sick and grades were due, so I vacillated between sneezing half my brain out and reading some pretty depressing essays.

I took a sick day yesterday and spent all day in bed watching Game of Thrones. I could probably write a pretty cool paper on feminism in that show. But anyway....

In between the sneezing and the murder plots and the essays, I took some time to start plotting out my new spec.

Even if you've got a really fantastic, high concept plot, you MUST know your characters if you want your script to be any good. I used to get a lot of notes about how the characters didn't seem like real people, or how their decisions didn't really make sense. That was because I didn't spend the necessary time developing those characters.

Now I sit with my characters - not just for ten minutes while I crap out a brief bio and shove it in a file - but for days, weeks even, while I figure out what their life has been like to get them here.

So let's say my story is about a fast food employee who foils a robbery. I want him to be a marketable age, an age that's easily casted with a star. So he's 28. Why would a 28-year-old, good-looking (because he will have to be good looking if you expect an attachment) guy work in fast food?

-Maybe he's dumb and could never get through high school, which means he'll have some extra challenges to face when he goes up against bad guys who are clearly smarter than he is.

-Maybe he's a recovered drug addict and he's trying to get his life together. Maybe he's the inside man on the robbery, and he has second thoughts at the last minute because he really likes his boss.

-Maybe he's lazy. So now it's a slacker movie. He foils the robbery by accident, and now he's a hero to the whole restaurant. He doesn't want to be a hero. He just wants to eat burgers and pick up a paycheck.

Each of these choices about this guy's past leads to a whole different type of story. If I just said "I dunno, he's just some guy who works there" I'm missing a whole host of opportunities to make nifty choices with the story. Each of these 28-year-old guys is a different person and would do different things in the same situation. I have to know which person I am dealing with if I want to know where my story goes.

So that's what I'm doing now. Character building. I'm thinking about my two leads, figuring out who they are, imagining conversations they have together that they may not end up having in the script, but that help me figure out their natural dynamic.

Take the time to create the characters before you rush into the script. It will save you time and energy in the long run, and it will make your story that much better.

Meetings, part 2

I had a lull in meeting activity last week, but I'm back on. This is fun. These people made movies I love - some of them movies I've loved since I was a little sapling - and here I am going into their offices, surrounded by posters of these films, talking about myself and writing and awesome movies for an hour.

That's my favorite part of the meetings: when we start talking about why movies are great. There's a reason I became an English teacher. I get to talk about how awesome stories are all day long and children are forced to listen to me. At these meetings I get to do that with people who actually want to be there. It's terrific.

I've settled into my pre-meeting planning to help me relax a bit before I go into the office. I wear an outfit that makes me feel cool - usually a leather motorcycle jacket, jeans, boots or sandals with kitten heels, and some laid back style top (long sweater and a tank top, sheer shirt over a tank top, something else over a tank top). I put on the good makeup and usually put my hair in a ponytail because I look younger with my hair up, and my goal is to try to look as close to 18 as possible so everyone thinks I'm a prodigy.

Today my hair is down, though, because I'm having a great hair day and you don't want to blow one of those with a ponytail. They come along so rarely.

Usually in the car I listen to NPR, but on the way to the meeting I CRANK whatever song will give me the most joy. Today I'm going to blast the Meatloaf Bat Out of Hell album. That way, by the time I get where I'm going, I'm not mad about traffic or parking or politics, I'm just overjoyed at belting lyrics at the top of my lungs.

So far, that method has paid off. I feel happy and full of sparky energy when I go into the office. Because nobody wants to spend an hour talking to Debbie Downer, or that sweaty guy who wears a track suit every day.

On the walk to the office, I've been overwhelmed with nervous butterflies, but I use that walk to remind myself of how awesome I am. Because doggone it, these people are going to like me.

And that's how I walk into that office with perfect posture, a smile on my face and a wink in my eye.

Next time, I'll talk about parking, the receptionist, and how to find the bathroom.

Steam on my television

I was thinking yesterday about chemistry between actors and wondering how much of it is in the performance and how much of it is in the writing.

When I think back about scenes that scorched on screen for me, most of them were from TV, and I think that's because I've invested so much in this couple that I'm overjoyed when they finally get together.

Buffy and Spike are first in my mind. When they finally sexed that house to the ground in season 6, I was fanning myself from the heat coming off my television.

Spike wanted her SO much for so long that when she finally consented I knew how much he poured his desire into her.

I heard from someone who worked on Buffy that almost every time a female actress did a guest spot on the show, she wanted to have a love scene with Spike. Apparently James Marsters is just fucking hot.

So actor with good writing, coming together?

I was thinking this because I've been enchanted by the Canadian show that's now on Syfy, Lost Girl, and the incredible chemistry between the leads. I mean, Kris Holden-Ried is hot as hell, which probably helps, but in every scene he has with the lead (Anna Silk), they burn up the set together. Even dialogue-heavy scenes between them are hot.

Usually it takes an entire season, or six, to get to a point where you feel that energy, but I felt it from the very first kiss between them, which happened in the pilot.

Yet sometimes you'll have characters come together in a way that is supposed to get me all hot and bothered, but I got nothin. And I wonder if the relationship between them just wasn't set up very well or are the actors just not compatible. I dunno.

It's just a thing I was thinking about.

The kind of script you should be writing

I'm going to try as much as I can and without causing myself trouble, to blog about things I'm learning that nobody told me about when I was hunting for a rep.

Today, I'm going to talk about the biggest challenge ever: THE NEXT BIG IDEA. People will often tell you to write commercial, but they don't tell you what else you need to write. Just having one good script is not enough. You need to show that you can continue to produce work the town will want to read, and hopefully buy.

So I've got a script worth reading. Heck, I've got two scripts worth reading. I'm taking meetings, working my thing, getting introduced to the town.

Meanwhile, I have to figure out what to write next. Those ideas I've been saving up for years on little color coded index cards? USELESS.

When you're on your own you can write whatever you want. Want to write a Civil War martial arts story? Knock yourself out. Passion can drives your work. You write the idea that excites you the most.

Once you start building a career, you write the idea that excites you the most but which also 1) has a commercial concept, 2) fits within the genre of your previous work, and 3) can have a star in the lead role so you can make attachments.

Never underestimate the importance of a star vehicle. When you're writing a script to get the attention of a rep, you need something that will attract a star, and not just one or two stars. If the only person who can star in your movie is The Rock, it's going to be a hard sell. What happens if he's not available, or if he doesn't want to do an action movie right now? You're stuck.

So the best thing you can do to get noticed is write something commercial with a lead who is a white male in his early 30s. Then write another one.

This is a lot harder than it sounds. That's where I am now, trying to beat out an idea that fits that criteria and has obvious potential to make money. I think getting my masters degree was easier.

Thoughts on the film: Haywire

I liked Haywire, and here's why:

It was refreshing to see the camera lay back and let the star do all the work during action scenes. We've come to expect our action scenes to have a zillion cuts, largely so we don't notice the big stunt double who's doing all the tough stuff in between close-ups of the beautiful star's face looking intense. In this movie, there was no need for the star to have a stunt double do all the work, so we got to watch the pure action scene without cutting in and out and back and forth and shaky-cammed to death.

She looked like she could kick ass, she acted like she could kick ass. I felt like Gina Carano's acting was just fine as long as she had something to do, although the scenes when she was sitting still and talking were not so good. Anything that took place inside a car was cringe-worthy.

BUT-

The MOS stuff in Barcelona was terrific, and for once I actually liked Channing Tatum, and you just can't beat those action scenes. I'm jealous of how well that woman can move her body to kick major ass.


Is it a perfect movie? Definitely not. I barely understood the plot, and the parts I did understand had some serious holes, but it was shot beautifully and clean. No extra bullshit. I wish more action movies were shot that way, because sometimes I feel like the constant movement of the camera is trying to make me think there's more going on here than there is. I loved that in one scene, Carano was just running after a guy. Just running, trying to catch him, doing what a woman like that would actually do. It wasn't super fancy. It was just straight up, old school running.

The problem is, the marketing made you think this was a Bourne movie with a chick. It's not. The premise is similar, but the shooting style is vastly different, and if you went in expecting Bourne you'd be angry at what you got. That's probably why audiences responded so poorly.

I'm sad about the audience response, but at least nobody can blame the weekend on a strong female protagonist. Thank you, Underworld 4. And Haywire will make its investment back because of its low budget. Hopefully this was a great introduction to Carano and we will see more of her soon. I'd write something for her in a heart beat if the job came up.

Go to Haywire.

This has been an insanely busy week. I had a doctor's appointment on Tuesday to get started on therapy for my wrist, I had a walk through with the caterer Wednesday to plan for the wedding, I had a studio meeting on Thursday, and in between I've been managing a big sales push for yearbooks at work, so I haven't had any time to actually sit down all week. I had a whole slew of blog posts planned and no time to write them.

The more stuff I have to do, the more wired I become. I'm sure by the time I walked into the office on the lot yesterday I looked like a cocaine addict. I hope I wasn't too frightening.

Tonight's activity is Haywire.

Haywire. Go see it, everybody.

As of this writing, it's got 84% on Rotten Tomatoes. Hey, that's good! It's got an ass kicking chick who actually knows how to fight. Did you see that arm bar she pulled on Channing Tatum in the first five minutes? Textbook. Don't know what an arm bar is? You don't have to! It's still awesome to look at!

Like Ewan MacGregor? This movie has that!

If this movie does well, cool options open up for me. If this movie does not do well, I've got an uphill climb with some of my projects. So believe me, I'm completely self-centered when I say please, everyone, go see this kick ass movie. You know you want to. You've been thinking about it. You said to yourself, hey, maybe I want to see that tear jerker about the kid and his dad and whatever? No, you don't. That kid doesn't even punch anybody in the face in that movie.

Remember how George Lucas has betrayed you? Yeah, you don't want to go through that again.

Underworld is okay, but we all know the fourth of anything isn't all that great.

So go see Haywire, because it's awesome, and also because seriously go see this movie.

Meetings: Part 1

Now is the time when I go to meetings. I haven't done too many yet; I hope to fill my calendar with them in the coming year. These are great meetings because I'm just going in to chat with people, make sure we like each other, see if they have any projects for which I'd be a good fit.

Driving on a studio lot is cool. I've been on the Warner Brothers lot before as somebody's guest at one of those bi-annual sales where they sell off all the shit left over from old TV shows and movies, but I've never been on a lot in any kind of official capacity.

So when I drove on a lot the other day, I admit I got a little giddy. I've seen enough movies to know how you're supposed to act, so I just pretended this was like any other day for me when I told the guards where I was headed. It's a nice feeling when your name is on a list. And not a list of people who've been banned from Putt putt for climbing the fake rocks.

Anyway, I took the water like everybody else, but the problem with drinking water during a meeting in an unfamiliar place is that I always have to ask where the bathroom is. And in all that talk about water bottles, here's something nobody ever mentioned before: Tip the valet a dollar. I had to ask some guy who was standing next to me waiting for his car.

I've got another meeting this week - thankfully within a short distance of my house this time so I won't be in traffic for an hour, not that I mind, then another at the end of the month. I'm excited about both meetings, and I hope they shove another one in there soon.

Meanwhile, I'm writing, writing, writing, and finding ways to avoid grading papers.

A few general thoughts on reps

Having a rep is amazing, but as I learned last time I had a manager, it does not guarantee any kind of success. Their job is to give you opportunities. Your job is to make the most of those opportunities.

Reps sign you on because they think you can make them money. They can get your career going. The few I've dealt with have struck me as people who love getting excited about working with someone they believe has talent, and that excitement is contagious. Your job, as an unrepped writer, is to get that excitement going over you.

But there are different kinds of reps. If you don't know about hip pocketing, that's when the rep doesn't do any work on your behalf, but if you need someone to submit for you, they'll do it. So let's say you're at a party and you meet a studio exec. You pitch him an idea, he likes it, tells your rep to send it over. That's when you call your hip pocketing agent to send that requested script over. And maybe if he likes you enough, or if you show signs of promise, he'll decide to fully represent you.

Any "agent" or "manager" who wants money up front is a fraud. Period. I don't care how much they gush over you. They are full of shit and you shouldn't do business with them.

There are plenty of stories of reps who sign a writer then forget about them. It happens quite a lot, actually. But as a very successful A-lister once told me, a rep who never calls is not a rep. If you end up with a rep who hasn't contacted you in months, break it off. They're not interested in you. Remember the excitement the like to feel? As soon as they lose that sense of excitement, you've lost them.

But it's not the end of the world if you have to fire a rep, even if you have to go back to being without one for a while. Sometimes it's not a good fit. I know plenty of successful writers who've been through three or four reps until they found the right one, and I know successful writers who stuck with the first one they landed. It's different for everybody.

But the important thing is, no matter who is representing you, keep working. Bust your ass, do what they say, and maybe you can keep that excitement going. That's where I am now: busting my ass to take advantage of the opportunities I'm being given.

And now, the busying

You guys are amazing. I actually had to block off a couple of hours on Friday morning just to respond to all the nice emails and posts and tweets.

I figured I'd at least have a couple of people making snide comments, but it was all positive. All people who are happy for me. That was great.

The nature of this blog will probably change now, but I think it will be helpful to chronicle as much as I can the journey as it happens. I can't go into any specific or name any names, but I can talk in general terms about what I encounter.

I had a rep before, but I didn't have this kind of attention, so now I'm bracing myself for the amount of work I have to do. Obtaining a rep is step one; Step two is taking advantage of the opportunities with which they provide you.

I have to come up with my next project, which is a lot harder than you'd think. I was working on a Civil War martial arts story. That is obviously nixed for the time being, because while you're fucking around on your own, your dream project is all well and good, but when you're trying to build a career, you need to write material more than three people would pay to see. I'll go back to that script some day. It will be my Inception.

In the meantime, I must come up with something commercial that fits the kind of work I consistently want to write. I had a lot of ideas I'd been saving over the years, none of which are good enough for this task. So I'm in the process of developing something new. I'm also revising an old script to get it up to par.

This week I start taking general meetings. I've had one of these meetings ever, so I'm still really green on meeting etiquette. But I'm not worried. If I can make 46 juniors read a novel silently in a classroom, I can probably handle a polite conversation with a studio exec.

But I am busy. Busy busy busy. I'm so busy I'm thinking of ways I can change my original plan for the rest of the school year so I don't end up having to take so much work home. The kids shouldn't suffer because I've got a second job, but there's no way I can do my job the way I always have and still have time to build my screenwriting career.

Then again, I'm at my best when I have 100 things to do. It's a good busy. I couldn't be happier to have no time.

Winning

I've had a lot of time to think about what I'd say here today because I've been sitting on this news for weeks, unable to tell anyone. I wrote about four posts already before settling on this one. This must be what it's like to work on Project Runway.

In case you haven't yet heard, I was one of the three finalists in The TrackingB feature script contest.

I entered Nice Girls Don't Kill the first week the contest opened for entries, then I got busy working on my next script, How My Wedding Dress Got This Dirty. It turned out that the contest still had a week to go when I finished the script, so I entered it at the last minute.

Now that I had two low budget commercial scripts completed, I got back to work on my Civil War martial arts story. Things were going swimmingly, moving along at a casual pace. I wrote pages. I graded papers. Ladeda.

Then one night while I was entrenched on the couch, grading essays, lamenting that fact that it was taking me longer to give notes on these essays than it took the kids to write them, when I got a message from The Insider, the guy who runs TrackingB and the contest, asking for my phone number.

This can mean only one thing.

I pretended to be all cool and nonchalant as I answered the phone, and he told me I was one of the finalists with How My Wedding Dress Got This Dirty.

I probably said "That's awesome!" about eighty times during that conversation. Adjectives are not my strong suit.

This was a Sunday night.

Monday I drove straight from work to the Circle of Confusion office, where I met with Ken Freimann. I thought he was just awesome, and even though I knew other managers were reading my script, I signed with him on the spot.

I spent the next couple of days letting people know I'd already found a rep, thank you for your interest. All the while, The Insider let me know who he'd sent the script to, asked how I was doing and what I had decided, and gave me great advice on how to make the best choices in the middle of all this heat.

Tuesday, between grading more essays (I feel like for the past three years, nary a moment has gone by when I did not have an essay to grade), I approved the new cover for my script, complete with COC logo.

Wednesday Ken and I met with Ava Jamshidi at ICM. I loved her. Even though I knew we were waiting for other agents to read the script - agents you would cream your pants to meet with - I decided on the way home that I couldn't do any better than Ava. She's awesome, and she gets shit done. She and Ken had some terrific plans for me.

My team was made official on Thursday morning.

So to recap: Sunday night I was grading papers in front of the TV, watching a marathon of MI5 episodes. Thursday I had a manager, an agent, and my script was already in the hands of three production houses, one of which I'd been trying to get my work to for years.

And now here I am, still grading these fucking essays while my team gets my career started.

It's pretty awesome.

Keep going

I'm an eternal optimist. It helps in this town. There's an interesting dynamic here, where half the people tell you that your shit smells like roses and sunshine, and the other half fling poo in your face. Somehow you have to let your ego ride straight down the middle. So, it helps to always think everything will be okay.

Sometimes I'll write a script and think it's pretty damn solid, so I get notes. And sometimes those notes tell me to shove my head in an oven. I'll get sad, spend a day weeping, think about giving it all up and resigning myself to turning teaching into Plan A.

But that feeling lasts a few hours, until I think about the notes and figure out how to incorporate them into the script. Then I get all excited about the rewrite and figure it will all be okay eventually.

Because eventually, if I keep working and I keep learning and I keep searching for the best story, someone will take notice.

The only people who don't make it in this town are people who refuse to learn. Don't give up, Listen, Learn, Work hard, and it will happen. I firmly believe that. You have to have faith that it will all be okay, then you have to work your ass off to make sure it does.

Bye, 2011. Long live 2012

It's cursory year-end post time.

You know how it doesn't matter how great a movie was, if the ending sucks all you remember is the sucky ending? Or the opposite. A good ending can sort of wipe away the bad memories.

I spent six months of the year in constant pain. I managed to write a script during that time - How My Wedding Dress Got This Dirty, a script that turned out pretty damn good. I have high hopes for the script in the new year.

But I don't even remember the pain now. My surgery was a major success; I even painted the living room this week. Writing is easy, and good exercise for my recovering wrist.

So in 2012, I'm going to take advantage of my new capability and write like crazy. I also want to get back into martial arts. I'll probably start with Thai Chi and yoga and move on from there to Muy Thai again, hoping eventually to get into Jujitsu.

But first, I will write this new action comedy I started last week. I've written the first draft of the outline, because I've gradually become a fan of detailed outlines after seeing how well it worked on the last script. I hope that having a great outline will allow me to write the first draft of the script super fast again. Before it was a necessity to write fast because of how little time I was able to write through the pain, but in the process I realized how much easier that made the work, pain or no pain. So I just spent two weeks on an outline on the hopes that it will reduce the amount of time I spend on the script. If I solve the story problems in outline stage, I don't have to stop and ponder solutions after I've already written pages of script.

I got engaged, finally. It was an inevitability, but it's glad to finally be able to throw my carefully laid plans into action. I'm going dress shopping next week. How funny that I just wrote a wedding script.

So I think 2012 will be a good year. I've got some cool stuff coming up besides the wedding, which I'll talk about a bit next week. I'll be doing a podcast again toward the end of the month where I can talk about it at detail, a fun way to start a good year.

2011 taught me a lot about writing and time management and controlling my ego. It has prepared me well for the year to come.

How was 2011 for you? What's up your sleeve for 2012?

Planning

For someone who loves multitasking and planning as much as I do, 2012 is going to be the best year ever. I've got screenplays going on, I've got a job to do, and now I've got a wedding to plan.

Although I confess the wedding was already planned once I decided this was my groom. I love watching wedding shows, and I was engaged once before so I already planned on wedding, and I enjoy planning things and making lists ever so much. It was really a given that I'd have a file on my computer with my wedding plans.

I've already called the caterer and the dress salon. I'm making up a guest list today, but I'm leaving room for all the celebrities I'm going to meet this year.

I'm also working on an outline for a new project, and it was flowing along nicely until I got to the final sequence. I can't figure out the magical clue that gets my protag to find where the bad guy is. I hope that as I use up those Christmas gift cards over the next two days, brainless shopping will unlock the answer, so I can go into the new year with a well-laid plan for an awesome script I can bang out.

And somewhere in there, I have to grade papers. I hate grading papers, but it must be done. Fortunately I don't have to do much lesson planning because one class is going to read Romeo and Juliet, and the other The Great Gatsby. One of the good things about teaching literature is that a lot of your class time is spent just reading. So that will help me spend more time planning weddings and screenplays and shit.

Okay, 2012. Let's do this.

Thoughts on the film: Battle Los Angeles; How this film could have been great

I've spoken many times to anyone who will listen about how much I love Pitch Black. The reason I love Pitch Black so much is that you think you're going to watch a silly B horror movie about some people fighting off monsters on another planet, but what you get is a philosophical treatise on what it means to be human and the nature of sacrifice. I love when a film surprises me by being way better than it needs to be.

Most horror movies are about the scare, and Pitch Black had some scary moments, but the story was a delivery system for an intelligent conversation, not just scares.

So flash forward a number of years and here I am, on Christmas Eve Day, watching Battle Los Angeles. This looks like it will be a pretty generic action movie, mostly about effects. The majority of action movies released these days seem to be delivery systems for explosions.

And this one was no different. It paid some lip service to character development. (The black guy is not a stereotype because he wears glasses! And his nickname is Specs!) It tried to get me to care, but it didn't take advantage of opportunities to elevate the material into something to make me think.

Minor Spoilers Ahead.

There's a scene on a roof top where that hot redneck from True Blood tells another soldier how he wonders if these aliens get scared. What if they're just like us? Then Aaron Eckhart observed that the aliens have their weapons welded onto their bodies or something, as if they are 24/7 soldiers. Okay, we're getting somewhere. We can run with that. We're fighting these creatures, but we're just like them. Could we become them? Were they like us once? Is there a way we can get to them and talk this out?

No, they didn't really go that way.

There's your now cliche scene where the humans find an alien and drag him into the base to examine him so we can learn how to fight the enemy. They decide to stab it in lots of places to find out what kills it.

Now, here's what I was thinking. Hey, aren't they basically torturing that thing? And nobody there has a problem with it?

There's a veterinarian in the room. She offers to help by staring at them enthusiastically as they stab the creature with various pointy tools. It would have been neat if she had spoken up. Maybe, instead of torturing it, we can find a way to communicate with it? I'm not saying she'd be right, but she'd be on theme. There would have been some interpersonal conflict. There would have been a moment for our characters to argue about strategy, about what defines us, separates us from the enemy. They're the bad guys, but we're torturing a prisoner. Is that okay?

I'd love to have had that conversation with this film, but that's not what happened. They stabbed the thing until they finally found its weakness, then went on blowing shit up, restricting the interpersonal conflict to cliched gripes about who's in command. Michelle Rodriguez is tough. The black guy wears his glasses. The guy with the pregnant wife.... well just that, there's a guy with a pregnant wife. Have you ever seen a movie about a bunch of soldiers at war and one of them DIDN'T have a pregnant wife?

I guess this was supposed to be about Eckhart's journey as a leader, but then the rest of the movie should have been about the nature of leadership or something. Let's see the aliens have chain of command issues. Let's see the civilians question the leadership decisions. Maybe Eckhart's character questions the decisions of the higher ups.

The film really did give us some character arcs, but the main reason Eckhart's didn't work for me is because I didn't buy it. This guy's men think he's a douchebag, that he left some guys behind and is a horrible leader. From the second he steps onscreen, I know that isn't true. So I don't feel any real conflict, just a misunderstanding that will get cleared up eventually.

But I digress.

The point is, the script needed to pick a thesis and stick to it.

I tell the kids all the time: Once you pick your thesis, the entire essay revolves around it. So if you say a hero is someone who  likes to wear purple underwear, then every paragraph needs to go back to that purple underwear. It doesn't need to veer off and talk about spikey hair, it needs to be about purple fucking underwear. Your theme is your thesis. If your thesis is the nature of humanity, then by god, every choice you make in your story should reflect that theme.

That's how you go from just okay to great. Don't let your script be nothing more than a delivery system for explosions/scares/sex/laughs. Let those elements help your story be a delivery system for a question we can think about when we leave at the end.

Say hello, but not anonymously

I finally had to turn off anonymous commenting. I've had a run on what I suspect is the same person spamming me with strange comments that made me uncomfortable, and after asking the person to stop, they kept at it. So now you have to log in to post comments. You can log in as any of the standard methods, I think, although I'm not sure. Let me know if you have a problem with the process.

I know I get a fair amount of readers, but I rarely get more than a couple of comments. So I invite you, this holiday season, tell me about yourself. Log in and tell me who you are. How many screenplays have you written? What kind of stuff do you write? What kind of things do you want to know about screenwriting? Whatever. Say hi. I'd love to get some questions I can try to find answers to in the new year.

And while we're at it, Merry Christmas everybody. I hope this weekend is as good for you as it is turning out to be for me.