Why A Goat?

2007-05-24T17:54:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, May 25, 2007, is the 30th anniversary of the release of Star Wars. There is a blog-a-thon going on, but I haven't had time to prepare anything for it. So I'm posting my favorite image from the first three Star Wars movies. Hope you enjoy it.

2007-03-30T17:06:00.000-07:00

Back to the Future

My answer to Mystery Man's throw-down is Back to the Future. It's my favorite screenplay for two reasons. One, it follows Blake Snyder's beat sheet to a T without being slavish or formulaic, and two, the density of details that support the story have given the movie its own destiny in DVD sales and ability to draw new fans over the years. Most films that have achieved cult status get a twenty-fifth anniversary DVD released. I predict this one will get a thirty-year special DVD release just because Marty and Doc traveled thirty years in either direction. What will 2015 bring for this film? One thing is certain; it will bring something. This is not a film that has faded into obscurity with the passing years.

I managed to find a copy of the fourth draft of the script from October, 1984. This revision is very close to what they finally filmed with a few notable exceptions.

The script begins inside the high school. Marty's class watches a documentary about nuclear testing during the fifties. Marty's trademark mirrored Porsche sunglasses are mentioned. They reflect the mushroom cloud of an atomic explosion.

The plan of the two Bobs (as Gale and Zemeckis refer to themselves) was to start the story here and end it in the desert during an atomic test. This seems logical, because the flux capacitor needs nuclear energy to generate the 1.21 jigowatts of electricity it takes to work. But on the commentary track, they say they discarded the scene in the classroom because it would be too expensive. Based on this, I guess they threw out the scene in the desert very early because it would be even more expensive.

By the way, the two Bobs talked to somebody about atomic and electrical energy who mis-pronounced gigawatt. It's pronounced with a hard "G," but their "expert" pronounced it with a soft "G," so they spelled it with a "J." And apparently you can't run 1.21 gigawatts through wires, like they did in the movie. It's too much energy. But that's the magic (or majic) of movies.

The first act of a film has to be very tightly structured. You've got a lot of stuff happening in a very short time. There's the main character to be introduced and his main back-story to set up, as well as the problem in his life that he'll need to solve. There's also the basic plot to set up, get the protag involved in it, and give him some reason to "set his feet upon the road" of his journey.

Blake Snyder has several components to his first acts. There's the Save-the-Cat moment, where the protag does something to bind the audience to him emotionally. For Marty this is when he gives the Clock Lady a quarter. He does it to get rid of her, but it shows that he's too nice a guy to just yell at her to leave them alone.

Next is the statement of theme. This is not in the script that I have, but sometime between this revision and shooting the movie, the two Bobs wisely came up with, "If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything." The script does explore this. Marty starts to mail his audition tape, but then throws the envelope into the trash. When he gets back, the first thing he does is to dig it out of the trash so he can send it off. He does this before he sees how his parents have changed, so it shows that he has gone through his own change.

But the thematic repetition of, "If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything," is a very powerful way to underscore Marty's journey, which starts out as trying to get home and ends up being a journey of self-discovery. Trying to get home is a primal need with which everybody can empathize. Look at how much mileage Dorothy got out of just wanting to get back to Kansas. And she also discovered something about herself along the way.

Hauge and Vogler talk about the hero's two journeys – the inner and the outer journey – and Marty certainly does take two journeys. His external journey is traveling to 1955 and trying to get back to the future (his present). His internal, or emotional, journey is learning that, "If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything."

Blake's next beat is the set-up. This is Marty's journey, so we get to know him better. We know about Doc Brown, but we don't get to meet him until after Marty is all set-up. In the script, the two Bobs try to give Doc a little of his own set-up, but by the time they got to the movie, that was gone. Replacing the opening scene in the classroom with the scene with all the clocks was to accomplish two things. It was cheaper to film, and it gave us some background on Doc without a lot of unnecessary dialogue and blocking. That gave the two Bobs more time to explore Marty.

The script does a good job on set-up, but they definitely refined it on set. In fact, in the script that I got, all of the major beats are there, but not quite as polished as in the movie. Some are better, but they had to re-write based on financial limitations.

The first act is where you have to figure out how to tell the backstory without being expository. Bob Zemeckis said that exposition can be painful, but sometimes you just have to bit the bullet and have somebody spit it all out. That's what he did in the dinner scene at the McFly house. In that one scene we learn that Dave has a dead-end job at McDonald's, Linda doesn't have any boyfriends, Uncle Joey didn't make parole, and the story of how Lorraine met George.

I love that scene. It's so full of the details I love about this movie. The side-story about Uncle Joey doesn't have to be there, but it adds a richness to the lives of these characters that turns them into real people. Nobody talks about Lorraine being an alcoholic, but we see her clutching her glass, which clearly doesn't hold water, and stumbling and slurring a little. The set is dressed so that we know these people live in a depressing, lower-middle class house filled with mis-matched, second-hand crap.

There's another detail in the script that didn't make it to the movie, probably again because it would have cost more. The scene takes place during dinner, not after, as it does in the movie. Lorraine tells the kids that Uncle Joey didn't make parole again, but in the movie it's the visual of her throwing the cake onto the table that makes that bit the classic that it is. In the script they eat meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and Kraft macaroni and cheese. Lorraine takes extra mashed potatoes and gravy. When her father hits Marty with the car and he eats dinner with the family, they eat exactly the same menu, and Lorraine refuses to eat the mashed potatoes.

It's a nice detail, but for the movie the two Bobs found other details that would be more visual in telling Lorraine's story. That's one thing I've noticed in bringing scripts to the screen. No matter how good the script, or how visual the writer has been, there is always a way to make it more visual, and it's something that is usually found in production.

Back to the beat sheet, the next one up is the Catalyst. This is what Hauge and Vogler call the Opportunity. I've been looking for it in every movie I've watched in the last year and it's always there. This is the one constant in film-making that even the worst movies incorporate. This is the thing that gives the hero, or protag, his incentive to make his journey. It is his inspiration, even if he doesn't recognize it at the time.

Marty's Catalyst is when he sees the Time Machine for the first time. He doesn't know it yet, but this is going to be the instrument of both his greatest sorrow and his greatest joy. It will take him on a journey he can't imagine.

The next section of the first act is the Debate. This is a flexible section in stories. Snyder says it's when the protag debates whether or not he should take the opportunity presented by the Catalyst and finally decides he will take the next step and "set his feet upon the road." Hauge and Vogler say that after the Opportunity the hero's problem seems to have been resolved, but then the solution presented by the Opportunity turns out to be an even bigger can of worms. In Skeleton Key this section is after Caroline gets the job taking care of Ben and before she discovers the hidden room and the black secret that Violet harbors. She thinks she's found the perfect job, but it turns out to be the beginning of her end.

In Back to the Future, this section is used neither for debate or relief. It's just when Doc demonstrates the Time Machine and the Libyans show up. It's exciting and we can tell that something HUGE is about to happen, but we don't know what. This is because Marty is more an anti-hero than a real hero. Just like Dorothy, he travels to another time, or dimension, by accident, and his whole journey from there is just to get back home.

Snyder, Trottier, Hauge, Vogler, and other screenwriting experts tell us over and over that the turning points of the story turn on the action of the hero. A passive hero is death to your story. If the hero doesn't take action, or make a decision, nothing is going to happen. The protag should happen to the story, not the other way around.

So making a story about somebody who starts his journey by accident is tricky. If he never wanted to take it in the first place, how do you show that the journey starts on his active decision?

The answer is that he makes a mistake. This is the epitome of the anti-hero. He starts off as kind of a bumbling fool, a Don Quixote if you will, stumbles around for a while, and finally finds himself in a situation (of his own making of course) from which he has to extricate himself. In doing so, he discovers that he's really not such a bumbling fool.

Marty jumps into the DeLorean to get away from the Libyans and accidentally drives into 1955. This is where we get another of those great details that really makes this movie a classic. And it is in the script. The Twin Pines mall becomes the Lone Pine mall because Marty drives over and kills one of Farmer Peabody's twin pines. We also get another of those thematic repetitions. Marty looks just like the alien on Sherman Peabody's comic (yes, that is his name), and the DeLorean looks like spaceship. Later on, Marty takes advantage of this common superstition to trick George McFly into asking Lorraine on a date.

At this point in the script, the two Bobs took a little break to continue the joke about the mutated zombies. Sherman convinces Pa that Ma has been mutated into a zombie and Pa stares at his wife in trepidation. The scene cuts and we don't know if he's going to kill her or not. They cut this in the movie to follow Marty. That's another way to keep your story going forward: follow the hero. He or she should appear in nearly every single scene. The extra bit with thinking Ma is a zombie was funny, but would have made the movie too long.

Now the second act has started. The hero has taken his action and "put his feet upon the road." On the beat sheet there's a gap of 5 pages before the next element is introduced, and that's about exactly what happens. Marty has to hide the DeLorean and come to terms with the fact that he's traveled back to 1955. The two Bobs wrote that his own house was the only one on Lyon's Estates at the time. It was the model home and Marty was able to hide the DeLorean in the garage because his keys matched. But they had to take out because it was too expensive. He also used the radio in the car to listen to 1955 music and broadcasts, but they took that out as well. There was no reason given, but I suspect they felt it made Marty's journey too easy and they wanted as many obstacles for him as possible.

Now here's something that the writer might not think of, but that the film-maker will. In the script it says, "…the courthouse clock tower is now working." In the movie it's the striking of the clock tower that drives it home once and for all that Marty is in the past. It's done at the end of an ominous musical crescendo on the soundtrack and it's chilling. This is something the writer cannot accomplish in a script, and something he shouldn't even try. You can say that Marty hears the clock strike and he whirls around in shock, but nothing can give the reader the same emotional thrill as sitting in the theater for the first time and hearing it strike as a counterpoint to the soundtrack.

Getting back to the beat sheet, the next element is the start of the B-story, which has its own protag, who acts as both a friend and an aide to the main character. This element is very mushy in most movies. Most of the time, it's not even there. I could see Blake's logic for introducing a new story that would run counterpoint to the main story and a new character, but it's very hard to actually work this into the story. The two Bobs did it and I don't think they even cared about Blake's beat sheet.

Who is the B-story protag? It's the first person Marty meets when he arrives in 1955. It's George McFly. He takes a little time to get acclimated, and then wanders into the diner looking for a phone book only to discover his own father.

During the rest of the second act, Marty helps George and, in doing so, ends up helping himself.

Now we get to the section that Snyder calls "Fun and Games." The hero still must reach his goal, but the obstacles he encounters are fairly easy to overcome. It's also fun and entertaining for the audience.

I don't know if it happened on set, or in the final polish, but the dialogue in the movie is much snappier than in the script. My guess is on the set. Once you get actors together, things can happen that one or even two writers can't predict. The jokes about Pepsi Free and clothing that looks out of place are still there, but not quite as polished. Biff plays the same joke on George, but doesn't repeat the thematic line, "Don't be so gullible, McFly."

From here to Marty fleeing from the Baines household, everything is pretty much the same. Even little Joey in his playpen is here. These are the kinds of details that make the movie such a classic and the kinds of details you want to look for when you plan your own scripts. The only thing that's missing from the script is Sam's last line. "He's an idiot. Comes from upbringing. His parents were idiots. If you ever have a kid like that, Lorraine, I'll disown you." They also described more eating, because the meal they eat is the same meal Lorraine served to her family during the exposition scene. I'm pretty sure that the meals were taken out to make it easier to shoot. When you film people eating, you have to make sure the food left on the plate matches from line to line. Plus, it gets really gross because actors don't swallow prop food. They spit it out. So the food and the eating were cut from both scenes.

Now we get to a pretty big change. In the script, Marty interrupts Doc Brown having a party with "TWO LOVELY GIRLS." The scene that follows has good dialogue, but it's not quite as good as the movie. Christopher Lloyd must have come up with the "Future-Boy" epithet for Marty during rehearsals, because it's not in the script.

In this scene, Marty has driven the DeLorean to Doc Brown's house. The DeLorean runs much better in the script than it does in the movie. Its performance probably degenerated because it's much more dramatic not to know if it's going to work or not in any particular scene.

The other change during this sequence is that Marty can't get over how his brother's head vanished in the picture and it's his concern that leads to the next discovery: that Marty has interfered in his parents' first meeting. In the movie, Marty is more naïve and it's Doc Brown who realizes what the picture signifies.

Getting this scene just right was important, because I believe it's the midpoint. According to Snyder, as well as most other experts, the midpoint is where the stakes are raised. The protag encounters a new problem that magnifies the difficulty he will have attaining his goal. It's a point at which he might think he has attained his goal only to discover that it's even farther away than ever. Trottier talks about having the protag re-commit to his goal at this point. Not only does it get harder, he wants it more than ever.

Snyder's midpoint must have the "whiff of death." Not only is attaining the goal important, it suddenly becomes a matter of life or death. Marty has certainly just realized that his life might "end" if he can't get his parents together. It should also be either a false success or a false failure. In this case it's a false success. Marty has just found Doc Brown and convinced him to help. He's conquered all the obstacles on his way to finding Doc, so it looks like clear sailing. But now he has to get his parents back together or else he'll be erased from existence.

So now we find that "Bad Guys Close In." In this section Biff provides most of the problems Marty must overcome. Every time he tries to get his parents together, Biff does something to thwart him. Marty manages to sneak into George's house and convince him he's a spaceman who's going to melt his brain unless he asks Lorraine on a date.

There's an interesting revision associated with Marty pretending to be Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan. In the script I have, he chloroforms George when he's done so that George won't see him going out the window. This is a better explanation for why George overslept and wasn't in school than what is given (or not given) in the movie. We're left to assume the meeting with Darth Vader was so traumatic for George that he passed out for hours.

Unfortunately, Marty's brilliant plan comes to naught when Biff interrupts and Marty accidentally draws Lorraine's attention when he "invents" a skateboard to get away from Biff. In the script he was supposed to lead Biff into a train, but it was changed to a load of manure on set, probably for money reasons.

The other concern for Marty during this time is that he wants to warn Doc Brown about the Libyans who will shoot him before he gets a chance to use his Time Machine. But Doc Brown refuses to let Marty tell him. This is actually the weakest part of the story, and it affects all three movies. Doc Brown is so adamant about not reading the letter that he tears it up. But when Marty gets back and finds that Doc has read the letter, Doc's only explanation is, "…what the hell." That's out of character for Doc.

And it gets worse in the sequels when the 1955 Doc realizes that his 1985 self has gone back to 1885 only to get shot in the back. Marty then says it's all his (Marty's) fault for not listening to Doc when he warned of the consequences of knowing too much about the future. That should absolutely guarantee that Doc digs out the pieces of the letter and burns them, but nothing is mentioned. And it's not like Doc has any time to contemplate the letter. He's still got the pieces in his pockets and is watching the fading fire trails when Marty comes barreling around the corner and tells Doc he's got to get him back to 1985 AGAIN.

Anyway, that's my one pet peeve about the time travel logic that the two Bobs worked out. Maybe they figured that Doc just might figure "what the hell." And you could make the case that the letter from 1885 might have actually convinced 1955 Doc to read his own letter. Who knows.

Anyway, back to the beat sheet. Blake's next beat is All Is Lost. This is when Marty looks at the picture after George has knocked Biff out and realizes that he and his siblings are still fading from existence. He remembers his mother telling him that it was only when she kissed George on the dance floor that she knew she'd spend the rest of her life with him. So he hoofs it back to the band and finds out that they've lost their guitarist.

All Is Lost goes right into Dark Night of the Soul, when the hero thinks he's going to lose everything instead of gaining his goal. Marty goes up on stage and watches himself nearly fade out of existence. He only just manages to get George's attention at the end to give George the final burst of courage he needs to kiss Lorraine.

This is the beginning of the third act and the final showdown. In this case it's the final countdown. Will Marty make it back to the town square in time? He might have more time if he didn't stop to perform at the dance, but who could resist?

In the script this section was focused on Marty, but during production the two Bobs decided to throw in a Frank Capra type scene (their words) and have Marty say good-bye to George and Lorraine. This is a very sweet scene and truly does capture the kinds of simple, yet resonant emotions that Capra played so well in his films.

Back at the clock tower, we get the obligatory race to the wire as time runs out before the lightning strike and Marty and Doc encounter one problem after another. I've seen this movie about a hundred times and I KNOW Marty will make it home, but I always start chewing my nails right here.

Remember how I said you just can't write some things into scripts? Well some things you can. Right there on page 87, scene number 197: "THE MOST SPECTACULAR BOLT OF LIGHTING IN THE HISTORY OF CINEMA STRIKES THE LIGHTNING ROD!" I think they managed to predict the future with that line.

After this it's just a matter of wrapping things up and letting us know that Marty's mistake ended up having beneficial consequences. Nothing is really different in this section, but they polished it up a lot during rehearsals and production.

All of Blake's beats were there in the script, and most of what you see in the movie is also there in this script. Some of the stuff in this script is BETTER than what ended up in the movie. There's a bit in the beginning where Marty uses a mirror and chewing gum to set off the smoke alarm that would have been very funny to watch. The thing about him being able to get into the garage of the model home because he has the keys in his pocket is great. And there's this extra scene with George, where he's practicing hitting a bag of laundry and finally uses his left hand instead of his right. I interpreted it as his left hand being like a direct line to his sub-conscious. The two Bobs cut that scene because they wanted it to be more of a surprise when George finally cold-cocks Biff. But I think it would have worked if they had left it in.

After finally having a chance to read the script, I have to say it's no wonder that Back to the Future became such a huge hit and a cult classic.

Thank for the opportunity, Mystery Man.

2007-03-23T16:57:00.000-07:00

On April 8 it will have been a year since I had to put my little Chili dog to sleep. To honor her life, I have started an account at cafepress. Cafepress sells items printed with unique artwork (like the picture of Chili) one at a time.

You might have noticed that in this picture, she doesn't have the Superman symbol on her chest. Cafepress doesn't print items that contain copyrighted material, but I'm sure the pawprint means Superdog in canine. My good friend Tony Baldacci suggested the pawprint instead of a blank blue chest-plate.

I don't know how much people will want Chili in their lives, but I'm donating all my profits, however tiny they may be, to the ASPCA, so that Chili really will be saving the world one dog at a time.

Cats are welcome too. I'm not sure if I should change it to, "Saving the world one PET at a time," but hopefully people will know that the ASPCA saves all pets, regardless of demonination.

I'm still building this "shop" at cafepress, so any comments are welcome. Should I change "dog" to "pet?" What kinds of products should be available? So far I just have a coffee mug, but there are other items available. They put pictures on T-shirts, bags, caps, etc. Just about anything you can think of.

I was already planning this when the GREAT PET FOOD RECALL started this week. It's very sad that this happened, but it's serendipitous that it happened just when I was thinking of honoring my dog by raising money for the ASPCA.

In addition to Chili, I lost two cats last year and have only one left. She is twelve. She ate 3 cans of the suspect food, but so far she is as healthy as ever. My daughter's two ginger toms ate 22 cans of food that might have been tainted, but they seem fine too. Don't worry. They didn't eat all 22 cans at once. They eat wet food several times a week as part of their regular diet. I know other people who own cats and dogs, but I haven't heard from them yet.

Here's hoping the crisis will pass soon and our pets will be healthy and happy for years to come. If you would like to save the world, one dog at a time, please let me know so I can set you up something nice at cafepress.

Thanks.

2007-03-19T17:26:00.000-07:00

Mystery Man called out for a blog-a-thon throwdown. During the weekend of March 30 - April 1 we're all supposed to post our favorite script on our own blogs along with an article about why we like it so much. I hope it's okay to use the same artwork he did. It makes it kind of thematic.

I downloaded two versions of the script for my favorite movie, but I can already tell it went through a lot of re-writes on its way to the screen. The versions I have might not actually be good screenplays, so that gives me a hint for the article.

I'd also like to give a quick shout-out to Mark Heinsoo, who has posted comments on both my blog and Carl's blog. He's a very active Triggerstreet member and a great guy.

Hopefully in the next few days I'll post a longer story about the progress on the screenplay I'm writing for my director. It's back to the horror story.

2007-03-02T13:11:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to post some comments on the progress of the romcom I've been writing for my director, but I've been spending all my spare time just writing the thing.

I just finished it. Yes. Just about 30 seconds ago. So now is the perfect time to update you on how it's been going.

We hit a snag over a major scene. This is actually the scene that starts the end of Act Two. It's the big emotional crisis scene that precedes the depression section that leads to the final showdown. In "Bridget Jones" It's the scene where Mark and Daniel have the big knock-down, drag-out fight all over the street and in the restaurant.

I wanted the scene to go one way and my director wanted it to go another way. Without giving away any of the details (because that would just make it all so clear), he wanted the scene to end with something the male lead would use as internal motivation and I had planned to end it with something that would be external motivation. He had an excellent point. It's always better to have your characters move forward on their own. Yes, their reasons for moving forward always come from things that happen to them: external motivators. But these external forces should inspire decisions, not leave them without a choice.

So I changed the scene. But I had also used it to uncover a secret that one character was keeping from another. My director didn't want me to do that. I felt it would make the scene stronger. Then he said revealing the secret was good, but it had to happen closer to the end of the story.

I had only sent him a rough draft of the scene itself without putting it in context. When I explained that it would come near the end of the second Act, things fell into place for him. So we ended up with a stronger scene with better motivators for the characters and the big surprise for the one character.

There's another scene during the first Act that we ended up going over and over and over for some reason. It didn't really strike me as a pivotal scene in the set-up when I wrote it, but it turned out to be, because we each had definite ideas about how and WHY it should play that way. My director wanted me to switch the dialogue between two characters. It didn't make sense to me until he explained it from a man's point of view. The characters are both men arguing about a "code" that exists between guys. When I got his point, I sort of switched the dialogue, but tweaked it a bit more than that.

So it's been an interesting process. I'm really looking forward to finally being able to get some feedback from the reviewers at Triggerstreet.

Wish me luck.

2007-02-18T10:04:00.000-08:00

Compelling Characters and Unexpected Plot Twists

If you've been awake since February 8, you have probably heard that Anna Nicole Smith died and left behind a legal mess. The news of her death temporarily usurped news of the war in Iraq and the Scooter Libby trial. This is hardly surprising. Celebrity deaths, especially in dramatic circumstances, are usually fodder for the journalists. I have to admit that, even after the initial shock and awe, I was glued to the CNN website, refreshing it every five minutes for the latest Anna Nicole update.

Of course, like any good, introspective writer, I asked myself why this story fascinated me so much? And why did it fascinate my fellow writers on Triggerstreet? The thread about Anna Nicole grew to nine pages in three days and got more hits than some of our more vociferous thread discussing religion.

Why did it rivet our attention? The headline says it all. If I may quote member crossword without his approval, "You can't write about this sh*t, no one would believe you." I guess I did quote him without his approval. But it's true. If somebody made a movie with this story as a plotline, it would be deemed too unbelievable to even be a good comedy.

Anna Nicole is the ultimate great character. Despite appearances, she has a lot of depth and contradictions. Consider this. No less than four men have come forward to claim that they could be the father of her child. Now you could say they're just after the millions of dollars her little girl stands to inherit, but why do they all think they might have a chance at paternity of that baby? Because they all had sex with her during the pertinent time period. Do none of them realize that this means she was screwing all four of them at the same time? Did they know this when they were having sex with her? And one of them, the Prince, doesn't need the baby's money. He has more to lose by claiming to be the father and she (the baby) has more to gain by having him as her father. No matter the motives of the other three, he seems to have some genuine feeling for Anna, and because of her, for her child.

In Victorian England women were expected to embody one of two characteristics: the Mother or the Whore. Men didn't want the mothers of their children to enjoy sex and they certainly didn't want the women they took their sexual pleasure with to bear their children. They were kept separate, the Mothers and the Whores, and woe to the woman who thought she could embody both of these characters.

Anna Nicole seems to have managed it. Of course the morals and beliefs of Victorian England are a long way behind us, but small sensations sometimes still linger. It's still fairly surprising, even in our enlightened times, that she managed to balance both these characteristics and lose none of the benefits that come with each one.

But it's not just that we're coming to find out that she's a great character. Let's not forget that "you can't write about this sh*t." This story has more twists than the average human colon. Her lawyer is her boyfriend, but another man might be the father of her child. Fine. You could see that one coming. But then another man – a Prince married to a woman who is a celebrity in her own right – comes forward to claim paternity. That's interesting. But wait, that's not all. The baby's father might be none other than…wait for it…her old rich husband who's been dead for more than a decade. She might have had his sperm frozen. Wow! I did not see that coming.

Now if you're going to do this in a movie (for real), you have to establish that there was an old rich husband who died, so that the plot twist in the third act that he might also be the baby's father doesn't seem so contrived. And if you're going to make this into a movie (a REAL movie, not the movie of the week), you have to decide which plot line you're going to follow. Do you follow the romance? Or do you follow the possible corruption in the world of diet supplements? Because those diet products might have killed her. If you're the president of a company that makes diet supplements and your spokesperson drops dead, do you hope and pray that it wasn't your product that killed her? Anna Nicole was involved in a class action lawsuit that claimed that she used other products to lose weight. So now you're the president of a company that makes diet supplements and your spokesperson might have used other people's products – not just your own – to lose weight. Well, of course you want to deny that as loudly and as often as you can. But when she drops dead, what then? Do you suddenly blame the other guy's product? Or do you continue to insist that she only used your product? It's a Catch-22. You see? That whole scenario is a movie all by itself.

But wait! Just like the K-tel commercial, there's more. There's always more. They can't bury her because they need a piece of her DNA to prove that the child they're testing in really hers, not a ringer. And they don't even know where they're going to bury her. Her mother is positive her boyfriend killed her and her boyfriend says she hated her mother.

Now if I were going to open up a blank Final Draft document and write this down, I would have to decide a few things. First of all, there's genre. Comedy is pretty obvious, but I might go with horror and bring in the ghost of her old rich dead husband to claim paternity to the baby. I might also go with the baby being the child of the Devil, or possessed by the spirit of the dead son. Those are all good plot twists. It could be intrigue. Maybe the president of the diet supplement company killed her. Or maybe the president of a rival company killed her. Maybe the president of the rival company paid off her boyfriend to kill her, but he backed out at the last minute, so they had to figure out another way to get rid of her. Maybe her son's death was a hit gone wrong. She was the intended victim all along, but she didn't feel like eating her custard in the hospital and he was hungry. Five months later, they (the shadowy "They") got it right and down she goes.

In this scenario, I'd have some kind of memory planted in the baby that could be triggered when she turns eighteen, so she could avenge her mother's death. If only Anna Nicole had eaten her custard that day instead of her son, she wouldn't have had time to get that memory planted, so their plot failed anyway.

Hopefully anybody who reads this knows it's just idle speculation for the sake of stories, but I'll put in a disclaimer anyway. None of these scenarios are meant in any way to reflect reality. I don't think Anna Nicole was the victim of a nefarious plot that went wrong the first time. And I don't think she was murdered by a rival diet supplement manufacturer. This post is not meant to offend any of her family or friends. It's meant as an object lesson in how to structure a story and how to create memorable characters.

I think that what happened to Anna Nicole was a tragedy. By all counts, she was a lovely, genuine person, so when I think of the human Anna, I'm very sad. I guess concentrating on the character Anna makes it bearable. Beyond that, any way that this story goes, it's going to make us say, "Wow," and "Oh my God!" And that's just what I want the audience to do when my stories finally make it to the big screen.

2007-02-03T10:28:00.000-08:00

THE SAGA CONTINUES

If you're going to write a story, you have to be able to come up with one. We had some good characters, and knew what we wanted to happen to them, but we couldn't get into their heads enough to figure out how to get them from point A (FADE IN) to point B (FADE OUT) without losing our audience to boredom.

So we did the smart thing and bailed.

I don't want this project to be MY story. I want to be able to write HIS story. The low-budget horror was HIS story and HIS characters. I just massaged everything into a reasonable structure and came up with some cool twists. In other words, I did my job.

And we both love this story, but there's that darn expensive special effect that he doesn't want to give up. And kudos to him for not wanting to compromise this element. It's going to look totally awesome on screen if it ever gets there.

So he suggested writing a romcom. I've never written one, but I do have a huge sense of the absurd. I've never felt qualified to write comedy, but I've seen many romcoms and what I like about them is that the comedy is not as broad or as ubiquitous as in what you would call a comedy. In romcoms you often chuckle or smile at a scene, but you don't expect the big belly laughs and hysteria that you do with a comedy.

But then we ran into the problem of what to write. I came up with an idea that I really like (and I'm writing it on my own), but it didn't appeal to my director. Then we came up with this other idea that turned out to be a bust because we couldn't find that elusive path from point A to point B.

Finally, earlier this week, he came up with a kind of logline/outline for a NEW story, and we BOTH like this one. So I'm taking a moment to let you know that we're back on track and full of hope and confidence (like new parents), and then I'm going to spend the rest of the day coming up with character bios and the first act.

Woo Hoo!

2007-01-27T10:21:00.000-08:00

Writing vs. Story-telling

People have been telling stories to each other since they first developed language and learned to communicate. Telling stories pre-dates writing. Before we learned to build our own shelters and had to use what nature provided, we used stories to keep our history, to teach each other basic living skills, and to explain natural phenomena that affected our lives. We can still see remnants of those early stories in the oral histories of Native Americans. Alex Haley's ROOTS owes a lot to oral history passed down in the form of stories from one generation to the next.

Because we used to rely on our stories to tell us where we came from, our story-tellers were given high status. Before there were movies, or radio, or even books, we relied on our story-tellers to entertain and educate us. They were chosen as children and trained into adulthood by the current story-teller and there were often ceremonies to show that the new story-teller had completed his training and was ready to take up the responsibility of keeping history intact.

Part of the story-teller's job was to incorporate new events into the tapestry of stories that made up the oral history of a group of people. If an earthquake destroyed the cave and killed half the population, the story-teller had to decide how to tell that story. There were certain conventions to story-telling: familiar phrases used according to the situation and the story. Very often a story-teller would start out, "I tell you as it was told to me." This let us know that it was the original story, not a variation. Even today we still use, "Once upon a time," to start a story.

Then we developed spoken language, which naturally led to written language and alphabets. We had to apply rules based on convention because otherwise we wouldn't understand each other. Everything had to be consistent.

Scribes approached the story-tellers and asked for their stories. They wrote them down just as they heard them, word-for-word, so that the stories could be preserved forever. And thus began our written history.

With the development of standardized spelling and rules of grammar and punctuation, writing became a skill and art separate from story-telling. Stories were still told, but the tellers were now called writers and became known for their "style" and ability to "turn a phrase." It was no longer enough to say that the sun set in a blazing ball of glory. Our scribes needed to know how to spell "blazing" and to know that it set, not sets, and not to use any commas. Because we use different parts of our brains to absorb a story through written words than to absorb it through spoken language, the words had to form sentences that were easy to read and immediately created images in the mind of the reader.

Being able to use written language became important.

Screenplays are not meant to be read and enjoyed by the masses. Libraries don't have special sections reserved for screenplays, even the ones that have been nominated for, or won, Academy Awards. They are not meant to be literature.

A screenplay can best be described as a blueprint for a movie. It sets down events told visually, and in a certain order, and dialogue that illuminates the characters. There are award-winning screenwriters who do not use proper grammar or punctuation, and whose action lines read like a laundry list of shots. The language is sometimes awkward, but the meaning comes across.

Screenwriting has its roots in story-telling as it evolved around the community fire that kept the members of the cave alive. The dancing flames that illuminated the faces of the audience have been replaced by dancing images on a screen. The faces are still illuminated, but they no longer sit on logs and stones, and nowadays they eat popcorn instead of dried meat from the last hunt.

You don't have to be a great writer to be a great screenwriter, but you do have to be an exceptional story-teller. In earlier times the story-teller's words kept the members of his community close to the fire, where it was safe. While it may be safe nowadays not to watch movies, and we may be able to live our lives perfectly well without sitting down in the dark with popcorn and our own company, it still enriches us and teaches us and brings us together.

So remember your calling, and keep your community close to the fire.

2007-01-18T20:03:00.000-08:00

Change of Plans

The low-budget horror has been put on hold. My director is very happy with it, but there's a special effect that he can't afford and doesn't want to give up. So we've switched gears to a romcom.

I've never written a romcom, but I'm game. I've studied the genre and it will still have character arcs, conflict, a three-act structure, and subtext in the dialogue. That never changes.

He asked me for ideas and I couldn't think of anything. Then I got one of those falling-asleep ideas that seemed really great. But my director didn't like it. He wanted another idea.

So I've come up with another idea and it's slowly coming together. We've created some characters and a basic concept. And every time we talk about it, we find another element we can work in.

Every screenplay I've written has developed in a different way. Sometimes you get the ending and then have to figure out how everybody gets there. Sometimes it's just one scene and you just know it's part of a larger story. I'm working on another one that started off as a 10-minute short and has now developed into a larger story. Part of the inspiration for this one are two actors who are available, so we came up with characters for them.

I can hardly wait to start talking about this story, but I will probably wait until we get at least a rough draft. Hopefully it won't be so long before I post again.

2006-12-31T10:16:00.000-08:00

Thanking My Lucky Stars, Part One

My amazing good luck is that I have the support of my family in my quest to become a paid writer. In the last two years I have become part of a community of writers. We all support and encourage each other, and in many ways only the help of another writer is what gets us all through our occasional periods of self-doubt. But I am equally blessed to have a husband who rearranges his own life to accommodate my writing.

Some of my fellow writers live alone, or with their pets, which is not really alone, but let us say without human companionship at home. Some of them like it this way. Some of them have family obligations. They have children who need their attention or spouses who don't understand why they must do what they do. They love their families, but these cherished people are an obstacle to their writing.

I debated a long time about writing this post, because it sounds too much like bragging. But it's not. Every day I run into my own obstacles, which get me down and seem hard to overcome. Then I remind myself that I have a wonderful man who notices when I don't write and asks me what's wrong. He wants to know what he can do to help me get back to my latest project. Or else he simply tells me, "Write, you lazy bitch."

How can you not love a man who allows you to dress him up as Raggedy Ann for Halloween, which is his favorite night of the year, when he'd rather go as a blood-soaked zombie?

He is my number one fan and I don't know what I'd do without him.

2006-12-21T18:05:00.000-08:00

I just finished a low-budget horror for one of the TriggerStreet film-makers. I wrote a crime-thriller for this same film-maker earlier this year and I was in the middle of a re-write when he asked me to drop it and switch to this low-budget horror.

We've developed an interesting relationship and one that I think will be profitable to both of us. He wants to make movies and I want to write. So we work together.

Most of the film-makers I know who are working toward their career in film-making write their own scripts. But if you look up any ten movies on IMDB, most of them are written by one or two people and directed by somebody different. I just checked out what's currently playing, but you can pick your own ten movies.

When you look up the credits for each director, they all have writing credit on their movies, but they aren't listed as the primary writer. So a quick scan of any ten movies (or what's playing now) shows us that directors and their writers work together as a team.

That's what's been happening with me and this director. It was his concept, and I turned it into a story. He has a credit on the screenplay because most of what's happening in the story is based on something he wanted. But I was the one to guide the course of the story, provide advice on certain elements that wouldn't work, and come up with the dialogue. And I typed it all into Final Draft. Never underestimate the value of somebody who can type quickly and with few mistakes.

He wants to finance this himself, so many of his notes are, "I can't afford this. Make it cheaper." Now there's a creative challenge. I've been having fun with limited sets and props that are easy (and cheap!) to procure.

I'm very excited about this project, so I'll probably have a few updates on it in the future. Wish us luck!

2006-12-16T09:07:00.000-08:00

Happy Chanukah everybody. It started last night at sunset.

2006-12-09T07:33:00.000-08:00

This week the Unknown Screenwriter directed us to www.LetsSayThanks.com and asked us to send a card to our troops overseas.

My son's best friend is about to go over there, and I worry about him.

This is the card I sent from the site. It's free and easy. It doesn't come with a free turkey, but you can't have everything.