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.

(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.

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.

And, um, well…

I do the second thing you mentioned, Knaight.

/bows

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?

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 on 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.)

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

“Lunatics”- A mental patient learns the institute’s head psychiatrist is actually a demon reaping the souls of the mental patients, and must find a way to destroy her before she consumes all their souls.

Call me flippin’ nuts (which would be appropriate, given the plot), but I actually like this one.  When I first read it, I immediately imagined a cross between One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Suspiria.  And that, to me, would kick quite a bit of ass.  So whatever happens with this lawsuit — whatever happens to Justin’s chances at a career after all of this is said and done — I want to see a movie called Lunatics, with that plot, even if Justin has to film the fucking thing himself and project it on the side of a building somewhere.  (I love me some underground horror.)

I’ve decided to reply here, mostly because, well, I’m sorta banned from that board.  Heh.

At any rate, it’s important to remember that I’m not any kind of authority; I’m just a guy who has read for a couple of contests and for a studio.  If any of what follows comes across as absolute or authoritative, it’s only because I’m an asshole.  Also, I’m addressing common mistakes I see in amateur scripts (hence the heading below), not the type of stuff that would cause me to pass on a script written by a working screenwriter, which is a whole other subject, and one that will be the inspiration for a future blog post.  Maybe.

So here goes (pardon the formatting):

COMMON MISTAKES I SEE IN AMATEUR SCRIPTS

1. A lack of clarity, both on the micro and macro levels.

On the micro level, this means confusing formatting, odd sentences, dialogue that doesn’t make sense, ambiguous word choices, which lead to imprecise visuals* (is the “screen” in question a window screen? A television screen?), etc.

On the macro level, I’m talking about failed attempts to execute Ernst Lubitsch’s famous advice: “Give the audience two and two; they don’t have to be told it’s four.”  Unfortunately, this often leads to vague (or nonexistent) connections between scenes and characters.  There’s such a thing as being TOO subtle.  If your reader can’t see the plus sign between the twos, then you’re in trouble.

2. Under-writing. *

3. Describing unnecessary shit; i.e. drowning the reader in details.

A rule of thumb I use is to write only what will register to an audience watching the movie. There’s a lot of room to play around with that rule of thumb, but I do tend to avoid writing something that’s not immediately important to the moment or isn’t a plant for a later payoff. If the audience needs to SEE that ornate Tiffany lamp sitting on the end table because my protag has a box cutter stashed under the shade (we know she put it somewhere, but we don’t know where yet), and she’s going to use that box cutter to fight off an attacker, then I’ll mention that there’s an ornate Tiffany lamp on the end table.  (Probably more than once and in the context of some sort of action relating to it.) If not, I’ll just give a general description of the room. If I take time to describe that Tiffany lamp, and it doesn’t come into play, then I’m bogging my reader down in a detail an audience won’t notice. It’s part of the mis en scene, in other words, which I can paint in broad strokes.

An exception to the above would be if the ornate Tiffany lamp contrasted everything else in the room and, as such, helped to reveal character.

Or if it was just a kickass Tiffany fucking lamp.

Note: I have absolutely no problem with a bit of description like “A rotten horse-drawn carriage abruptly stops beside them. It was once a sight to see but now it’s falling to pieces. It’s chipped all over. The paint is flaking. The windows are shattered. One of the wheels looks like it will give way at any moment” IF this carriage is going to come into play in more than just this one moment.  And, shit, even if it isn’t.  Maybe.  Oh, who the hell knows?  It’s not like I’m in the same frame of mind every time I read a script.  And overdescription (as long as it’s not asinine) isn’t going to kill a read anyway.

4. Not mining every situation for as much conflict as possible.  Not pushing existing conflict far enough (resolving it too easily).  Not showing us exactly how the conflict affects the characters.

5. Coasting along to all of the major beats in such a way that the script reads like an outline in screenplay format.  (This is an extension of number four.  Basically, the situations are underdeveloped.)

6. Missed opportunities.  (Also an extension of number four.)  Often in the form of…

7. Planting something that seems like it’s going to lead to extreme danger—a really hairy situation—and then never paying that plant off.  So there’s the suggestion of conflict in the near future, which creates anticipation, but no “money shot.”

8. Dialogue that seems to exist ONLY to deliver exposition or reveal backstory.

9. Introducing the reader to thirty characters in the first twenty pages and then never developing any of them as individuals.  (9A.  Underdeveloped characters in general; i.e. characters that don’t get actors/actresses excited to play them.)

10. Failed attempts at avant-garde/arthouse stories.  (Note how I wrote “failed.”)

11. A complete lack of genre, which leads to a complete lack of tone and voice.

12. Screenplays that don’t read like movies on any level.  In other words, there has never been a movie made that resembles what I’m reading.  (And I don’t mean this in a “the writer is breaking new ground” kinda way.)

* These often seem to be the result of a screenwriter trying to follow the “White Space Rules All” edict handed down from gurus.

To expound on the above, here are a few things I wrote elsewhere a while back:

DIALOGUE

Dialogue that is just pages and pages of conversations about the plot or life in general.  No real conflict, no distinct character voices, no use of dramatic ammo, no overriding tension or ominous situation—just conversation, most of which is exposition- rather than conflict-driven.  Not to say that conversation is bad in a script.  My Dinner with Andre is a brilliant two hour conversation.  But if you take a look at that movie, you’ll notice that Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory (who wrote the script together) have very distinct viewpoints and rarely if ever agree.  Also, they use dialogue to tell intriguing stories in a way that makes you forget you’re basically watching two characters talk.

No, what I’m referring to are conversations where the characters are mostly in agreement and are either revealing their exact thoughts about a situation or are talking about the plot itself (in which case the dialogue is doing all of the heavy lifting as far as telling the story is concerned).  I’ve even run into scripts in which the characters were talking about what they were doing on screen as they were doing it.  “I’m sorting through the bananas, trying to find a bunch with ripe ones.  That’s how I choose bananas.  I’m now picking up this bunch and studying it.”  In some cases, characters tell each other not only what they would already know but what the audience/reader already knows.

Even worse than conversations are a number of long speeches about the plot or about what a character is feeling or thinking.  In general, if I flip (or scroll) through a script and see huge blocks of dialogue, I know I’m in for a tough read.  This is not to say that conversation-driven scripts can’t be amazing (a la the aforementioned My Dinner with Andre), but if a writer is going to go that route, then the conversations must be interesting, lively, entertaining, creative, and original.  And each character should have his or her own voice.

Note:  It’s fine to have a character who says exactly what’s on her mind, like Cordelia from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  She was a great source of conflict.  The problems arise when every character says exactly what’s on her mind, and none of what’s on any character’s mind conflicts with what’s on any other character’s mind.

GENRE

No real genre.  Not even a hybrid.  I’ve read scripts that had me scratching my head wondering exactly what I would be watching on screen.  This is actually an extension of the [aforementioned dialogue-related] weakness because generally these scripts are speech/conversation-driven.  In a lot of cases, I think writers believe that by eschewing genre entirely they’re developing their own voice and giving the reader something that is uniquely them.  Unfortunately, just the opposite is true.  Most of these scripts are identical in tone, so, voice-wise, they all “sound”/read the same.  With scripts like these, I usually label them dramas, but even that isn’t really accurate.  (Note: I’m not talking about innovative scripts that play with genre conventions or combine genres in a neat way.  I’m talking about scripts that are genre-less, which means that they’re pretty much tone-less.)

TOO MANY CHARACTERS

A whole bunch of characters but no focused point-of-view—no particular character or characters we’re supposed to “go along for the ride” with.  No anchor for the reader or audience.  I’m not referring to deftly written ensemble stories; I’m talking about scripts that never give enough time to any of the characters.  None of them are ever developed.  I’ve read scripts that introduced thirty characters in the first fifteen pages and never established a point-of-view of any sort, thematic or otherwise.

NOT MINING SITUATIONS

Not pushing scenes and individual beats/moments within scenes far enough.  Terry Rossio has a great column called Scene Character (http://www.wordplayer.com/columns/wp51.Scene.Character.html) in which he talks about the importance of giving each of your scenes flavor, uniqueness, and an identity of its own, the same way you would your characters.  A lot of newer writers have an idea for a scene and what the scene is supposed to accomplish but write it in a very linear manner, communicating all of the basic points and moving on.  These scenes lack depth of conflict, the creation of hope vs. fear in the audience, a “back and forth” rhythm between characters and each other and/or between characters and their environment.  As such, these types of scenes are bland; they don’t really burst to life on the page.  I’ve seen a lot of obvious missed opportunities to add some emotional depth to scenes because the writer was content just getting the major idea or conflict across.  A series of scenes like this (most commonly exploring clichéd territory, especially in comedies) add up to a screenplay that feels more like an outline for what could be a good script than an actual script.  The important moments don’t resonate.  And a lot of individual beats within scenes aren’t mined for conflict that is obvious within the context of the scene.  In many cases, the resolution of the conflict is one dimensional: either the character overcomes the obstacle easily or the obstacle gets the better of the character easily.  Either way, it’s not really a dramatically viable scene—there’s no push and pull to it.

LACK OF CONFLICT

A complete lack of conflict, from the premise on out.  This one sort of speaks for itself, but essentially I’m talking about scripts in which the characters are developed/drawn in such a way that there is no inherent conflict in any scene.  Either they overcome obstacles too easily or they’re not at odds with their goals and obstacles in any way, shape or form.  Whatever you may think of Liar, Liar, one thing you have to admit is that it’s dramatically sound.  You have a chronically lying lawyer who has made a career out of dishonesty… whose son makes a birthday wish that his father won’t be able to lie for twenty-four hours.  The wish magically comes true, and the lawyer has to win the biggest case of his career (this is hugely important from a dramatic point-of-view) without lying.  A lot of amateur screenwriters don’t think their premises through from a “how is my protagonist the worst possible person to go through this?” standpoint, and as a result, they don’t push their protagonists; they let them off too easy.

(Note: Chris Lockhart has made this last observation on a number of occasions.)

——–

And, well, that’s it.  My contribution to the thread on Done Deal… if someone, you know, posts a link for me.  If they don’t, then I fear this entry is doomed to the same fate as that proverbial tree in that proverbial forest.

The whole online poker fiasco smacks of the type of social engineering I hate (from both parties; after all, it was G.W. who got the ball rolling on it).  To me, it’s nothing more than an attempt to force professional poker players out into the world and make “productive members of society” out of them*, which is enough to nudge me back to full-blown libertarianism.

* After all, how many would-be lawyers and engineers — I’m talking people with degrees — have admitted on national television that they gave up pursuing those careers in favor of poker?  Can’t have that, can we?