Contour At The Movies

http://scottdistillery.googlepages.com/the2008blacklist

Makes for a bit of interesting reading.

Overall Impression – Death gets creative.  IN 3D!

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who’s your main character? – Nick.

What’s he trying to accomplish? – Professional: stop Death and survive.  Personal: keep his girlfriend alive.  Private: N/A.

Who’s trying to stop him? – Death, and anybody who doesn’t believe Nick’s story.

What happens if he fails? –  They all die.

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan – Nick and a select few are the only survivors of a tragedy at the race track.  Nick soon starts having visions, premonitions of gruesome deaths.

Wanderer – When the survivors of the tragedy start dying, Nick figures they were supposed to die in a certain order, and that he’s having premonitions of how the next person in the chain will be killed.  He thinks that if they can keep the next victim alive, they can cheat Death by ‘breaking the chain’.  A security guard helps Nick remember the order they were supposed to die in.

Warrior – Nick and his gf race against Death to prevent the demise of the next victims, which include their friends, but soon realize that Death is kinda hard to overcome.  Throw into the mix the fact that Nick remembered the order incorrectly, and it becomes a frenzied battle for survival. Eventually, they think they’ve broken the chain for real.

Martyr – Only they’re wrong, and Nick must risk his life to stop Death and save his girlfriend. Ultimately, this turns out to be futile.

AND, IN THE END…

This won’t come as much of a surprise, but THE FINAL DESTINATION’s biggest offering is seeing attractive teens getting splattered, in 3D. Plot-wise, the fourth installment is so similar to its predecessors that you know beat for beat what’s going to happen.  Indeed, the characters seem to be the only ones not to realize that fighting Death is futile – he’s gonna get you in the end!  The only element of mystery in this movie is how the kids are going to die.

One complaint that tends to crop up about movies with attractive teens getting splattered is that the characters are a little too 2D, which normally means that you don’t care about them.  While I think it’s fair to claim that cannon fodder doesn’t need character depth, I also find horror movies to be far more affecting if you care about the fodder being splattered.  Just watch Aliens.

The root cause of zero character depth is often a lack of any real private goals, of which THE FINAL DESTINATION is a prime example.  If that wasn’t enough, I found them to be largely unsympathetic.  After all, how much can you care about a group of rich, attractive, largely arrogant teens?  This all sounds pretty negative, but in a weird way, it acted as a reverse appeal that made me want to see them die a gruesome death!  When a character that I’ve been led to hate gets splattered by an engine, I feel pretty good!  Given the tidy $65m that THE FINAL DESTINATION cleared at the box office, perhaps 2D characters that everybody loves to hate are the way to go with teen-splatter movies.

- Dan Pilditch

• Marty, if the man and woman walk away 2gether at the end of the picture, it adds $10mil to the box office -Lucas to Scorsese #mscbuys #swu #
• A lot of successful people in Hollywood aren't good listeners. -Ron Lux #mscbuys #swu #
• My advice to a budding literary critic…learn to distinguish banality. Mediocrity thrives on ideas -Vladimir Nabokov #mscbuys #swu #
• Unlike serial killer profiling, writing is a very depressing and lonely profession -Darin Morgan #mscbuys #swu #
• "Actors? Schmucks. Screenwriters? Schmucks with Underwoods." – Jack Warner #mscbuys "swu #
• Found old file on my computer "Shmucks with Underwoods." Quotes about writing and writers. I'll post 1 a day until they run out. #swu #
• "Every 10 minutes there needs to be some kind of 'whammo,' something that gives the movie a sense of forward motion." Joel Silver. #mscbuys #
• Old list, but very interesting. 2008 Spec Script Sales http://bit.ly/3XHfNE #screenwriting #

Overall Impression – An incredible action-horror classic that deserves a place on your DVD shelf.

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who’s your main character? – Ripley.

What’s she trying to accomplish? –Professional: wipe out the aliens for good.  Personal: forge new relationships with Newt and Hicks.  Private: get over her fear of the aliens.

Who’s trying to stop her? – The aliens, Burk.

What happens if she fails? – They’re all gonna die, man!

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan – Ripley is found marooned in space, the only survivor of her massacred crew.  She has outlived everybody she knew, including her daughter.  She’s totally alone.

Wanderer – Ripley meets the marines, including Hicks and Bishop.  They prepare for war and investigate a colony believed to be harboring aliens.  They investigate, discovering clues that indicate an alien attack, and find Newt, a young girl who managed to survive.  Ripley negotiates her feelings for her lost daughter as she befriends the helpless Newt, and they soon learn that aliens have nested in the colony.

Warrior – Ripley takes command of the marines as they try to fend off the aliens long enough to escape the planet.  When she loses Newt, Ripley must venture back into the alien nest to rescue her.

Martyr – Ripley faces the alien queen one on one, and is willing to die to blast it out of an airlock and destroy the aliens forever.

AND, IN THE END…

Definitely one of my top 10 favorites.  It’s got it all: a great antagonist, a unique and driven heroine, and marines splattering aliens with giant guns. ALIENS is also great to study because it’s so well structured.

One element I’ll draw attention to is ALIENS’ solid ending.  When Ripley blasts the alien queen out of the air lock, she simultaneously destroys the aliens for good (PROFESSIONAL), saves Newt (PERSONAL), and overcomes her ultimate fear (PRIVATE). By definitively answering the PROFESSIONAL, PERSONAL, and PRIVATE components of the Central Question as closely together as possible, ALIENS delivers a satisfying ending that’s on the mark, clean, and has impact.

Another example, STAR WARS: when Luke fires the final proton torpedo, he simultaneously destroys the Death Star (PROFESSIONAL), saves Princess Leia (PERSONAL) and gives himself over to The Force to become a Jedi like his father (PRIVATE).  A third example, SPIDERMAN: Peter Parker simultaneously defeats the Green Goblin and saves New York (PROFESSIONAL), saves MJ (PERSONAL) and accepts his responsibility as a superhero (PRIVATE).

Paying attention to when the Central Question is answered also helps you avoid structuring a movie that keeps going… and going… and going.  With this approach, you’ll know when the movie should end, because after the Central Question is answered, there isn’t much more to say!

On a random note, I’ve always thought that puppets beat CG when it comes to believing that characters and creatures are real, my logic being that puppets are made of something tangible, whereas CG just objects just aren’t really there.  IMO, The aliens in ALIENS are infinitely more believable that anything that could be created with CG, even today.  I’d be interested in hearing some opinions on this.  When it comes to creating something filmic… puppetry or CG?

- Dan Pilditch

After waxing poetic about my antique typewriter, I got a message from a fellow here in Toronto who makes me look like the real piker I am.

Martin Howard is a collector of antique typewriters and has even gone so far as to have a beautiful, custom display cabinet made to show off his stunning collection:

You can (and should!) check out his website — the Martin Howard Collection at www.antiquetypewriters.com.

–Jeffrey Alan Schechter

Overall Impression – A sweeping epic that’s as fresh now as the day it was released.

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who’s your main character? – Kambei Shimada.

What’s he trying to accomplish? – Professional: lead the samurai in defending a peasant village from 40 bandits.  Personal: bridge the samurai/peasant caste division. Private: figure out if it’s possible to overcome the negative social conventions placed on samurai.

Who’s trying to stop him? – The bandits, dissent among the samurai, and conflicts between the samurai and the peasants.

What happens if he fails? – The bandits will kill the samurai and the villagers.

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan – Kambei is a ronin – a rogue samurai with no master.

Wanderer – Kambei finds and recruits six samurai whom he believes are necessary to defeat the bandits. They travel to the village, where longstanding tensions between the samurai and peasant castes become apparent.  Eventually they learn to trust each other, and Kambei forms his strategies to fight the bandits and trains the peasants for battle.  When some bandit scouts are killed, a few samurai undertake a preemptive strike, learning that the bandits possess not only superior numbers, but also three muskets.

Warrior – Under Kambei’s leadership, the samurai try to hold the peasants together as they launch a variety of attacks and defenses against the bandits, whittling down their vast numbers through strategy and guerilla tactics.  They also try to reduce the bandits’ advantage by taking their muskets, the youngest samurai Katsushiro begins an affair with a village girl, and Kikuchiyo becomes more active in his goal to earn respect as a samurai.

Martyr – The samurai and the peasants stage a final battle to wipe out the bandits for good, risking everything by luring them into the village.

AND, IN THE END…

There’s so much packed into this movie that I can barely scratch the surface, but one element I’d like to draw attention to is how fleshed out the samurai characters are, due in no small part to the fact that each samurai, to a greater or lesser extent, featured his own path from ORPHAN to MARTYR.  For example, Kambei’s protege Katsushiro starts off as a masterless samurai ORPHANED by his aristocratic heritage.  He becomes a WANDERER through his tutelage under Kambei and as he negotiates his feelings for a village girl.  He’s a WARRIOR when the fighting starts and as he pursues the village girl, and switches to a MARTYR along with everyone else in the final showdown.

Additionally, SEVEN SAMURAI is said to have established certain plot points that’ve become convention in modern movies.   The most obvious of these is the hero’s gathering of allies into a team to accomplish a specific goal, and if Wikipedia’s to be believed, Roger Ebert speculated that SEVEN SAMURAI established the practice of introducing the main character involved with an undertaking unrelated to the main plot (e.g., Kambei is introduced rescuing a child from a thief).  In hindsight, the movie didn’t feel as dated as I’d expected it to, and that’s probably because it’s filled with filmic elements present in so many contemporary films.

Lastly, you can’t have a samurai movie without some good old fighting, and SEVEN SAMURAI boasts some of the most intelligent sequences I’ve seen.  If you want a great action movie with some incredible depth, give this one a look-see.

- Dan Pilditch

Why was it that I simply HAD to own this typewriter when I saw it at the antique mart?  It’s old, yet incredibly still works perfectly (needs a new ribbon).

I wrote one, 120 page script on a typewriter and the subsequent several dozens of thousands of pages since were all done on computers.   I joke — at least I think I’m joking — that if I had to go back to a typewriter again, I’d quit screenwriting and go to medical school.  Using typewriters only served to make me NOT want to use typewriters.

So why did this typewriter need to be mine?  Maybe, as I get older I feel a link to those writers who came before me and the tools of their craft.  Maybe as  get older I get swept up in useless sentimentality.

Maybe it’s a reminder to me of an age when writing was a physical activity.  Each letter was deliberately pressed.  An accidental brush of a key cap and the Model 12 will hardly know that you’re alive.  You wanna “b?”  You had best press that key like you mean it!

And even the exclamation mark required effort.  You feel like shouting your point?  First you hit the single-quote key ( ‘ ) located on the Model 12 as SHIFT 8.  Then you hit the backspace key and add a period under the quote.  Voila!  An exclamation mark.

On a computer shouting’s as easy as whispering, so why whisper?  Not so with the Model 12.  You wanna make a point?  You better wanna MAKE that point cause the Model 12 is going to make you work for it.  Four keys worth of effort; it better be good.

Ahhh…I’m sure I’m romanticizing, and maybe that’s the point.  The clack-clack of a manual typewriter holds an appeal.  The sound means that someone is doing something.  Not the soft little “squish-a-chiclet” of a computer keyboard.  It’s a primal sound, like something out of the iron age.  Something transformative.  Like dozens of little hammers pounding hot ideas on the anvil of the platen in the hope that something beautiful will be beaten onto or out of the blank sheet.

Until I figure out the appeal, there my Remington Model 12 sits between my Epson RX680 and my Brother DCP7080.  One can’t help but feel a tad sorry for my Epson and Brother for they can’t  appreciate the real significance of this ancient piece of writing magic that’s now at rest between them; what the Model 12 is really saying to them: “Boys?  When you’re time is up and your technology is abandoned, nobody — NOBODY — will love you the way I am loved.  I may be from 1926, but it’s your days that are numbered.”

– Jeffrey Alan Schechter

Found a cool site for scripts and bibles.  Take a look!

http://tvwriting.googlepages.com/index

Overall Impression – A fun and inventive movie that really sucks you into Mark Whitacre’s confused, paranoid world.

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who’s your main character? – Mark Whitacre.

What’s he trying to accomplish? – Professional: help the FBI gather evidence against a supposed worldwide price fixing conspiracy organized by his company.  Personal: keep his personal life intact.  Private: deal with paranoia caused by his bipolar disorder.

Who’s trying to stop him? – Mostly obstacles brought on by his bipolar condition, at times being the FBI and his coworkers.

What happens if he fails? – Consumers the world over will remain victims of price fixing, and Whitacre and his family will lose everything.

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan – When the FBI investigates a price fixing conspiracy rooted in Whitacre’s company, he can’t talk to anybody and feels like he’s being watched – he becomes an outsider in his own life.  Additionally, Whitacre’s unique way of looking at the world sets him apart.

Wanderer – Naively believing that he’s going to become a hero and secure the top job at the company after the ‘bad elements’ have been rooted out, Whitacre becomes an FBI informant.  Working with agent Shepard, they figure out the best way to gather workable evidence.  Gradually, the FBI learns that Whitacre isn’t he saint he made himself out to be, and that his accounts are as much fantasy as truth.

Warrior – When Whitacre’s ever-changing accounts threaten the case, the FBI tries to sort truth from lies and keep Whitacre on track.  However, Whitacre becomes aware that being an informant is ruining his life instead of improving it.  As he contends with financial, professional, personal and media fall-out, Whitacre starts doubting himself and what he’s gotten himself into.

Martyr – When Whitacre finally starts telling the truth, he becomes what he was trying to avoid: the fall guy. Even after everything he’s done for the FBI, his lies and criminal activity (which he’d justified in his mind) burn him more than anyone he was trying to incriminate. Whitacre loses everything and goes to jail in the name of ‘justice’.

AND, IN THE END…

I’m still wrapping my head around THE INFORMANT!, which I think is its intended effect.  Mark Whitacre is such an enigma that he had trouble discerning between reality and his own fiction, and the movie does such a great job of pulling you in that when Whitacre is revealed as untrustworthy, you start questioning the film’s events as much as the characters do.

THE INFORMANT! provides an interesting twist on the notion that the hero must give up what he wants before he can get what he needs.  Often, the hero willingly becomes a martyr, or at the very least, accepts that there are no other means by which success can be achieved.  By contrast, Whitacre can be seen as an unwilling martyr.  He wanted nothing more than for the FBI to go away, leaving him with his perfectly planned life.  Instead Whitacre had everything taken from him, which really amped up a feeling of poignancy that might not have existed had he been willing and compliant.  It’s interesting to see how a movie’s message can vary by making the main character a willing or unwilling martyr.

- Dan Pilditch

• Eat, sleep, pray. Eat, sleep, pray. Repeat for a month. Happy New Year. #
• Patrick Boivin — One of the most talented directors you’ve never heard of http://bit.ly/4gT4T #
• Talked last night about the age of the guys in our show playing high schoolers. Today I saw this http://bit.ly/2rqgqF #screenwriting #
• Met Alex Epstein last night at WWTV. Nice surprise having him there. His Blog — http://bit.ly/kTy1m #screenwriting #
• When I write I listen to film soundtracks. Just found this cool site that reviews them. http://bit.ly/30kf9 #screenwriting #
• Ever wonder what a meeting with most production executives is like? http://tinyurl.com/oxeecf #screenwriting #mscbuys #
• Great writing tool for getting culture snapshots each year back to 1980. http://tinyurl.com/pjlut7 #screenwriting #mscbuys #
• Am I the only one who didn’t know that “Nobody puts Baby in a corner,” is a famous line of dialog? #screenwriting #RIP Patrick Swayze #
• Great quote from Playback Magazine: “Jennifer’s Body stars Megan Fox as a succubus/cheerleader who…Really, does it matter?” #screenwriting #
• Sad about Patrick Swayze. I thought if anyone could kick cancer’s butt, it’d be him. He fought valiantly and with dignity. #
• Jeff Biederman and I screening an ep of Overruled and speaking @ WWTV on Wed nite in Toronto. http://tinyurl.com/mcg6vx. #screenwriting #
• #mscbuys Finally started work in earnest on my book “My Story Can Beat Up Your Story!” Dumped WORD and am now using Scrivener. 1 word-WOW! #