Oh, wow…

… I forgot I had this.

Errr…

Well, it’s 2012.  So that’s something new.  And that ADJUSTMENT BUREAU post below.  Yeesh.  Never blog on twenty minutes of sleep.

And…

I guess that’s about it.

For now.

Men. *shakes head*

The Adjustment Bureau paints a bullseye on the brain of every solitary male in existence and shreds it with an AK-47.  Seriously.   The movie is dead on in its portrayal of how the male psyche functions, especially when it comes to love.

(SPOILERS AHEAD) Note how Matt Damon’s character has The Most Important Job in Existence.  He’s not just a politician—he’s the Politician Who’s Going to Change the World.  Even when he returns to the private sector, he pushes his company to support something that will affect the entire planet in a positive way.  Everything about Damon’s character is what men fantasize about being.  He’s a friggin’ everyman superhero—the kind without preternatural powers.

But more importantly, note how Emily Blunt’s character is the only female in the film.  There are some extras, sure, but other than those?  Not another woman in sight.  Damon is obsessed with her to the point where every other woman on the planet is pushed to the background.  To top it off, her entire existence is related to Matt Damon’s character and filtered through his point of view: it’s all about how he views her; how she affects him; how his fears (e.g. her ex-boyfriend calling her four times the morning after she and Damon hook up) give him second thoughts.  She’s the epitome of objectified “Manic Pixie Dream Girl”:  When Damon falls in love with her, he knows hardly anything about her except that she’s The Coolest Chick Ever. And he doesn’t really make an effort to get to know her better until later.  (Sound familiar, ladies?) Not surprisingly, when he does find out about her career, he worries that he’s going to ruin her life forever and that she’s going to get in the way of his career aspirations, so his valiant-act-of-self-sacrifice-in-the-name-of-love is to walk away from her.  (I never took the Adjustment Bureau literally.  To me, they’re representations of Damon’s fantasies and all of the internal conflicts related to them.  I mean, for crying out loud, they tinker with his friend’s mind so that he’ll agree with Damon’s business proposal.)

Also, note how he drops into her life at random intervals, yet she always falls right back in love with him, no matter how much time has passed since they last saw each other, or where she is in her life (which is a typical single guy fantasy).  And the ending is basically Matt Damon saying, “You know what? I think everything’s going to be okay. I can work twenty-hour days in my quest to become The Most Important Man in the World, yet still maintain a healthy relationship.  Win-win!”  If that’s not Male Fantasy 101, I don’t know what is.

Frankly, I think the movie is a superbly written and directed allegory. If I really wanted to get wonky in my interpretation of it, I’d say that everything that happens to Matt Damon after he loses the initial election is his fantasy, starting from the point when he meets Emily Blunt in the men’s restroom.  In fact, shit, that’s not a totally wonky take at all, is it?

Or maybe it is.  I came up with all of this after waking up at three o’clock this morning and being unable to get back to sleep.  I’m probably selectively forgetting a good portion of the film and focusing instead on those areas that represent my own typical male bullshit.

Sham? Wow.

As has been the case a lot lately, I’m going to start my entry with a link to a Done Deal thread.  Specifically, this thread.  And more specifically, this post.

Um…

TrackingB is one of the most legit contests out there.   And I mean OBVIOUSLY legit. Like holy-shit-Mike-Esola-is-on-the-industry-panel legit.  If you don’t know who Mike Esola is, then… Okay, well, there’s no hope for you, but aside from that you can at least draw some sort of positive conclusion based on the companies represented on the panel, right?  Companies like Energy Entertainment, Imagine, Bruckheimer Films, WME, Circle of Confusion, ICM…

Walt Fucking Disney.

(WALT FUCKING DISNEY!)

If none of those ring a bell, then I’m thinking your career aspirations might not be realistic.  After all, it’s really, really, REALLY hard to be a competent screenwriter if you’re completely cut off from the industry.  Last I checked, the various aspects of filmmaking are a tad interrelated; i.e., no individual element exists in a vacuum.

And if the companies do look familiar to you, then you should kinda sorta maybe trust that the contest is on the up and up.  (If you’re still not convinced, then, hey, call up a few of the companies.  I’m sure they’d be happy to set the record straight.)

Yeah?

Good.

Isn’t The Trickster a Character on SUPERNATURAL?

So a friend of mine started a thread here, and I’ve decided to reply to it here.

And, um, well…

I do the second thing you mentioned, Knaight.

/bows

I made a poople

Which is a cross between a poodle and a poop.  Or maybe a poodle and people.  But then it couldn’t be singular, could it?  It would have to be “I made poople.”

At any rate, this is the extent of what my brain is capable of right now — the old skull-encased supercomputer is firing on pretty much no cylinders… after a lengthy virus scan… and a failed reboot.  And somewhere in the stream of consciousness word-puke that composes this blog entry are a couple of thoughts about screenwriting.

But I’ll be damned if I can find them.

Can you?

My Reaction to Today’s Amateur Friday Review on Scriptshadow

A couple of years ago, when I was doing some contest reading, I ran across a number of scripts that were variations of the script Carson reviewed today.  And my reaction to those scripts was pretty strong.  Pretty negative.  But not in a way that was obnoxiously critical of the writers or anything like that.  It was more that I was terrified I was making the same mistakes in my own writing.

A few people who know me pretty well are aware that about seven or so years ago, I went through a period that I like to call my “Ralphy W phase.” During this period, I was so put off by all of the screenwriting advice on the internet that I purposely wrote stuff that was basically a big “fuck you” to the craft — and in a voice that was that of Simpsons character Ralph Wiggum, but sardonic and allegedly brilliant as well as silly and clueless… and somewhat psychotic.  (Yep, this is how my internet alter ego was spawned.)  Unfortunately, the deleterious effects of that “blue period” (or would it be yellow, in honor of Ralphy?) were twofold:

1. I lost all confidence in my writing.
2. I wrote some pretty awful shit (in the name of humor, which is what I think the writer of Orbitals did), which in turn affected my writing from that point on. I’ve actually had to CONSCIOUSLY undo some of the bad habits that seeped into my system, like playing everything for a joke  and thinking I’d be the next Charlie Kaufman.

That last part is particularly important.  I was obsessed with Charlie Kaufman, not just because he’s a genius when it comes to dramaturgy, but because everything he wrote* seemed to be the biggest eff-you ever to the craft while at the same time displaying a mastery of the craft that few writers possess.  I was hoping that all my years of studying, writing and general passion for film would allow me to tap into the same well Kaufman had tapped into.  I was wrong.

Had I kept going that route, I might have come up with a pretty strong script at some point, but I doubt it.  It wasn’t my voice, after all.  It was, in fact, a sidetrack — a distraction.

At any rate, the point (what little there is) of this entry is that I actually did things backwards.  My first scripts were incredibly strong on craft because I had professors looming over my shoulder to make sure that I was applying said craft to everything I wrote (while developing my voice).  I wrote the “eschew craft entirely” stuff much later in my writing life and as a reaction to what I’d been reading on the internet — to the fact that I had overloaded my system with advice, much of which was contradictory.

And now I find myself adding to all that advice (see my post about mistakes in amateur scripts).  Which is a bit ironic, no?

If I had to give one piece of advice right now, it would be to allow yourself to go completely off the rails when you first start writing.  Don’t make the mistake of doing it on your ninth or tenth script.

Yes, I just used a blog entry to exorcise some of my own writing demons.  Oh well.

* The one exception was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  At the time, I didn’t care for the script and actually criticized it for being “too conventional.”  (Though, I did like the movie.  Which shows you how far away from the actual purpose of screenwriting I’d strayed: I looked at scripts and movies as being two wildly separate media.)

Ah, Summer…

How I love you.  How’d I’d love to make love to you.

Is it possible to be hopelessly smitten with a season?  (Or, um, maybe I’m talking about Summer Glau.  Yeah, that’s it.  Okay, it’s not — I’m actually talking about the season.)

Anyway, I’m going to go outside now and bask, naked and with a raging erection, in the early evening sun.

It’s currently 97.4 degrees.   Did I mention that? /shudders with delight