Print, Print, Print!!

I’m far from home, staying at a buddy’s house by the beach, writing. Shoved two screenplays much further down the line. Got a draft done of a children’s novel. It’s been productivie, but at the cost of a few brain cells because I do not have a printer.

And I have suffered for it, I have to tell you.

I keep finding more reasons to shout out that you need to print your work. This week, I found another.

I came down here with a very very very rough assemblage of scenes for the novel. I had a hard copy of that mess. I went through it and did a re-ordering, re-numbering each scene on paper and then plugging that bunch of decisions back into the computer. So, then I had, in theory, the correct stuff in the correct order. Time to read it and clean it up and do a bit of a language-polish.

Having the ms. in the computer was nice for trimming stuff, because you take a line out and you see the page withouth the offending line, and you can instantly know if it’s an improvement.

What DOESN’T work, and this came up a lot, was when the scene itself needed re-ordering or heavy story editing. Two scenes, written at separate times, one above the other in the computer, became unshirted hell to deal with. My tiny brain is not strong enough to look at pieces that I can’t even see and figure out how to shuffle them into the perfect smooth order. I wept for a hard copy. It would have taken five minutes with a red pen… come up with an order for the parts, do it, print it, mark it up, re-order them in the computer, print it again. Presto!

You’re done.

Otherwise it was agony. Agony, I tell you.

Amazingly poor camera placement… BUtterfield 8

Just watched Elizabeth Taylor win an Oscar in BUTTERFIELD 8. Not a very good movie. One she was contractually obligated to perform in, and one that she hated. But, I bet she liked the Academy Award!

I don’t know if you’re a filmmaker or solely a writer, but that movie has the WORST jump cuts in camera placement I have ever seen. And it was nominated for best Color Cinematography. The lighting was fine, but the camera placement blows.

A textbook example of awful, awful camera placement. There’s more at the beginning than later on, but there are some shots that are baffling in the extreme.

One in particular, when Laurence Harvey and Dina Merrill are skeet shooting. There is a two shot of them together, with the camera facing right… then a single, facing left, of Laurence Harvey (?!) standing there looking at (?!) both of them. Amazingly confusing.

Well worth seeing from a “I want to learn where NOT to put the camera!” perspective. Wow. How awful.

The film does have a truly great line of dialogue, though. From Liz to her long-suffering mom, who still believes her daughter is a Good Girl.

“Mama, face it. I was the slut of all time.”

Nearly made up for the wretched camera placement.

Everything is not so hunky dory… even long, long ago.

Just watched SCARFACE, with Paul Muni and George Raft.
Not a very good movie, really. Some stunning lighting here and there. ALL the violence happened off screen. That was a little odd.
The plot didn’t make much sense, or, rather, there was hardly any plot.

Anyway.
It was made in 1932. A while back.
But wow, the rules of drama. They don’t change.

One of the things I learned from a student: “Just when everything seems hunky dory… everything is so… NOT.” Yepper.
Howard Hawks sure understood that one.

I watched SCARFACE on Netflix…
at 1:19, the girl says to her beau, George Raft, “We’ll always be happy, won’t we?”
She’s shacked up with him. Her gangster brother busts in. Is displeased by the fact that Raft is doing the nasty with his sister — so he shoots him. At 1:21, he’s dead.
In a stellar piece of writing, the sister then tells Paul Muni that they had been married the day before.

Earlier in the movie, another lovely piece of writing…

How do you know a guy likes a girl? Visually, without the use of dialogue?
She throws a coin out her window to the hurdy gurdy man, and George Raft catches it. Puts her coin in his pocket and gives his own coin to the hurdy gurdy man. Never stops looking at her the whole time. It’s very clear that he thinks she’s the bee’s knees.
Not a word is spoken.

A Writing Lesson From Ted Williams

This is what Ted Williams (baseball player, not homeless voiceover guy) said:

All I want out of life is that when I walk down the street folks will say “There goes the greatest hitter who ever lived.”

Damn straight.
If your character doesn’t dream BIG, why are we interested?
If your character doesn’t want something that scares her… what have you got?
If your character doesn’t want something that everyone around her thinks is stupidly impossible, why will we turn the page?

You have to know one thing and one thing for sure about your hero… “What does she want?”

Know that (making sure you have the correct desire) and you’ve got something. But it has to be right. And, taking a lesson from Mr. Wonderful, it had better be big and NEARLY unobtainable.

Because that way, your hero is obsessed with her goal. Critical.
Therefore, we’re interested.

Even more critical.

Pirates… low point!

Just saw PIRATES BAND OF MISFITS, which I loved. What fun!

One thing about animated films, they really remind me that they came from a script. Despite my years of experience of going to movies as well as writing them, live action films somehow seem real… like they just photographed real people in the middle of their day. No actors. No lighting. Just real life, with no script. I know, I know, it’s stupid. But that’s how deeply I get into a live action movie.

An animated film, though, is so 100% fake, that the writing shines through a little bit more clearly.

In PIRATES, one thing that came through is the main character’s low point. Wow, does he have one. And I noticed one thing about it, too. One interesting thing.

He loses everything.
All his friends.
All his money.
His ship.
Everything he holds dear.
He’s been deserted by his best friend.
And he’s at rock bottom. No way he could get any lower.

And…

There’s no way he can get out of his problem.

That’s the key to it all. There is no solution for the guy except to take up a life as a friendless loser who makes a living collecting change from phone booths. There is no way out of it. The deeper the hole that you, the writer, put your hero in, the better. The darker the hole, the better. Put him or her in a hole that you can’t figure out a way to escape from… then, keep thinking until you come up with a surprising, believable, and elegant solution. Then you are on the right track.

If you can’t figure out a solution to the hero’s deep-dark-hole problem over a period of two or three hours or days… the the movie going public won’t be able to figure it out in five minutes.

Writing lesson from the folks at South Park

The difference between “and then” between two scenes and “therefore” between them. Hint: You want “therefore.”

Matt & Trey teach at NYU

A super duper writing lesson!

How I Date My Drafts… every day, a new draft

A little housekeeping re: what I do with my files as I write…

Say I’m working on a script called PARLOR TRICK… I name each complete draft with a different letter.

Parlor Trick Draft A
Parlor Trick Draft B
Parlor Trick Draft C
Parlor Trick Draft D

but, every single day when I am working, I put a date on that draft… at the start of every day, Save As a new file…

Parlor Trick Draft C Apr 19 12.fdr
Parlor Trick Draft C Apr 20 12.fdr
Parlor Trick Draft C Apr 21 12.fdr
Parlor Trick Draft C Apr 22 12.fdr

that way, if a file gets corrupted and won’t open (it happens) you only lose one day’s work.
But if you only call it Draft C… and work on it for three weeks and the file gets corrupted, you lose three weeks of work.

When I am finally done…

Parlor Trick Draft I Aug 14 12.fdr

And that is the last draft… Save As and rename that last file

Parlor Trick First Draft.fdr

with no date on it… no sense telling anybody reading it how old it is…!

Then, Save As a .pdf file (which no one can edit… they can only print it or read it, but can’t make changes.)

Parlor Trick First Draft.pdf

And that’s the one I send out.