Month: October 2015
My recommendations for film watching this week in L.A. 10/23-10/30/2015
First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
Ever wonder what a reader for a contest or agency thinks when he reads your screenplay? Check out my e-book published on Amazon: Rantings and Ravings of a Screenplay Reader, including my series of essays, What I Learned Reading for Contests This Year. Only $2.99. http://ow.ly/xN31r,
And check out my script consultation services http://ow.ly/HPxKE
My recommendations for movie watching this week in L.A. 10/23-10-/30/2015
ON NETFLIX: On the Town, the watered down version of Betty Comden and Adolph Green’s music about three sailors on leave, is still exhilarating filled with marvelous moments, especially on the part of Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Betty Garrett and Ann Miller. Directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, it makes marvelous use of New York locations, has a wonderful score and one of those lengthy ballets that dramatizes Gene Kelly getting his heart broken that climaxes the movie.
ON HULU: Writer Jacques Prevert and director Marcel Carne’s Children of Paradise is a beautiful ode to the life of actors and actresses in Paris during the 1820’s and ‘30s. Garance, an actress, is loved by four other men, leading to tragedy. Made during the last days of the German occupation in 1945, Children of Paradise is one of the greatest romantic dramas ever made.
SPECIAL SHOWINGS: The American Cinematheque kicks off New German Cinema on Thursday, the 22nd, and continues through the weekend.
SPECIAL SHOWINGS: Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers is often considered a sort of, kind of semi-sequel to his earlier film La Terra Trema. In the first film, a group of brothers try to go independent in the fishing industry, but cannot defeat the powers that be. In Rocco… a group of brothers have to leave their home to try to make their way in Milan, where boxing and a prostitute come between the siblings. Epic and powerful, one of the most important Italian films of all time, this is a newly restored version. With Alain Delon, Annie Giradot and Claudia Cardinale.
FIRST RUN and OPENING: Steve Jobs, Suffragette, Bridge of Spies Crimson Peak, Room, The Assassin, The Final Girls, Goosebumps Continue reading
A BRIDGE NOT FAR ENOUGH: Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Oscar Season and Bridge of Spies
First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
Ever wonder what a reader for a contest or agency thinks when he reads your screenplay? Check out my new e-book published on Amazon: Rantings and Ravings of a Screenplay Reader, including my series of essays, What I Learned Reading for Contests This Year, and my film reviews of 2013. Only $2.99. http://ow.ly/xN31r
and check out my Script Consultation Services: http://ow.ly/HPxKE
Warning: SPOILERS
It is now autumn in America. This means that leaves are changing their colors and becoming richer and deeper in tone; that we are transitioning in time between the salad days of yore and winter’s cold meat of the future until we again reach spring when life sprouts once more anew; and that the youth of yesteryear is giving way to middle aged thoughtfulness.
Yes, it’s a metaphor for the state of movies in the U.S. We have now departed the blockbuster summer where the most desirable demographic took center stage, to the more melancholic and self-contemplative movies that appeal more to the mature in us.
Now, there is one thing that should first be stated here, shouted from the rooftop in clarion clarity. This does not mean that the movies will be getting any better. No matter what people will claim, subject matter and weightiness is in no way a guarantee of quality.
In fact, I predict that you won’t be finding many American Hollywood films that will surpass Spies and The Martian.
But change is still upon us.
One of the reasons for this, though not the only reason, is that another name for the season we are now entering is called Oscar. It is the period when studios and major independents are releasing their prestige pictures in order to get as many nominations as they can, because if they don’t get nominations, then they can’t justify making movies about important subjects since they rarely make as much money as The Avengers or Captain America. Continue reading
PAST INTENSE: The Final Girls and Labyrinth of Lies
First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
Ever wonder what a reader for a contest or agency thinks when he reads your screenplay? Check out my new e-book published on Amazon: Rantings and Ravings of a Screenplay Reader, including my series of essays, What I Learned Reading for Contests This Year, and my film reviews of 2013. Only $2.99. http://ow.ly/xN31r
and check out my Script Consultation Services: http://ow.ly/HPxKE
Warning: SPOILERS
The Final Girls is one of those low budget independent films that comes out of nowhere and give low budget independent films that come out of nowhere a good name. Well, maybe I’m exaggerating since most low budget independent films that come out of nowhere are so bad these days, I’m not sure that anything could actually give them a good name, but you know what I mean.
At any rate, this new post modern parody of horror films that is also not just a parody but also a film in and of itself (like Scream in many ways, though Scream is more serious, but unlike the Scary Movie franchise which does nothing but make fun of its precursors), is a ton of fun.
The basic premise revolves around Max, whose mother Amanda made the low budget slasher film Camp Bloodbath that unexpectedly was a success and because of that, Amanda could never do anything else and her acting career languished.
Years later, Amanda dies in one of those car accidents that seems to be the de jour way to kill off people in movies today (does anyone die any other way but in car accidents anymore, and not just car accidents, but accidents where a vehicle is hit and goes bouncing around in multiple somersaults like it’s Olga Korbut, always…ALWAYS…ending up on its roof, like a turtle; I have no idea what that’s about) and Max hasn’t been able to get over her death.
She is talked into going to a late night showing of Camp Bloodbath and when there is a fire incident at the theater, she and her friends exit through the screen, ending up in the movie within a movie itself. And now they must figure out what is going on, how to get back and how to stay alive long enough in order to get back. While providing the audience with tons of chills, thrills and giggles. Continue reading
Josh Kim’s film How to Win at Checkers (Every Time), Thailand’s selection for entry in the Academy Award foreign language film category playing for Oscar voters
Josh Kim’s film How to Win at Checkers (Every Time), Thailand’s selection for entry in the Academy Award foreign language film category, will be playing for Oscar voters Oct 27th (Tues) at 7pm at the Arclight Theatre in Downtown Culver City (I know, oh, god, the Arclights are opening everywhere, even Chicago—they’re becoming the pod people of movie theaters). At any rate, I did coverage on this film and am listed in the credits and am very proud of it. I saw it not long ago and it is a very touching and powerful film. The screening is open to the public. Here is an interview I did with the filmmaker: http://ow.ly/TAi2s
My recommendations for film watching this week in L.A. 10/16-10/23/2015
First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
Ever wonder what a reader for a contest or agency thinks when he reads your screenplay? Check out my e-book published on Amazon: Rantings and Ravings of a Screenplay Reader, including my series of essays, What I Learned Reading for Contests This Year. Only $2.99. http://ow.ly/xN31r,
And check out my script consultation services http://ow.ly/HPxKE
My recommendations for movie watching this week in L.A. 10/16-10/23/2015
ON NETFLIX: With A Friend Like Harry… is an odd little thriller written by Gilles Marchand (who also worked on Bon Voyage and Lemming) and written and directed by Dominik Moll (who also wrote and directed Lemming). It’s about a family traveling for a vacation who run into a man who claims to be an old school friend of the husband’s, but the husband can’t quite remember him. But the stranger makes himself part of the vacation and things get a little dark after that. With the wonderful Sergi Lopez (Pan’s Labyrinth) as the friend.
ON HULU: The Bedroom Window is another thriller, but not as odd. Written and directed by Curtis Hanson (who also wrote the clever Silent Partner, but is probably best known for co-writing and directing L.A. Confidential), it’s about a shlub who brings home the boss’ wife for some hanky panky. While he’s in the bathroom, she sees a mugging outside the window and can identify the perp. But not wanting to let people know she was cheating on her husband, she has the shlub claim to have seen him. It starts Steve Guttenerg (okay, it’s not perfect) as the schlub, Elizabeth McGovern as the victim, Isabelle Huppert as the wife, Wallace Shawn in a great cameo as a defense attorney, and Brad Greenquist who has only one line and delivers it brilliantly.
SPECIAL SHOWINGS: The American Cinematheque at the Egyptian starts off the win with New Spanish Cinema. Then on Thursday, the 22nd, they kick off New German Cinema with We Are Young, We Are Strong.
FIRST RUN and OPENING: Bridge of Spies Crimson Peak, Room, Truth, Meadowland, The Assassin, Experimenter, The Final Girls, Taxi Tehran, Victoria, The Martian Continue reading
SUCH STUFF I AM. A NOVEL. CHAPTER ONE: I FLEE
I know the exact moment when it happened, more or less, when the feeling hit me, punched me, slapped me awake, even though I wasn’t asleep, I was fully conscious, I know that, I’m positive I was, the feeling was far too vaguely clear for me not to have been eyes wide shut and completely aware of my faculties.
I remember the moment I knew it was coming, even if I didn’t have the faintest what it was that was on its way, that even though I didn’t know the specifics, I just knew the way someone just knows something without really knowing it.
And I knew it well enough to know how to react even though I didn’t know what I was reacting to except that it was feral and frightening.
I had to leave, well, no, I had to flee, not leave, that’s too cavalier, too cool, calm and collected, I needed to go with extreme prejudice.
And so I decided to flee.
And once I made that decision, though I had no choice in the matter, I entered a world that was lethal in its lack of logic, but made perfect sense as I POV experienced it, that bowed to no laws of nature, but was not bereft of cause and effect, that would change on a dime, nickel, quarter, half dollar, Susan B. Anthony, and there was nothing I could do about it, nothing but try to survive, try to keep up, try to make sense of it, even though I knew that nothing would ever make sense again because that was the point, that there was no point, and no matter what surrealistic idiocy I was stranded in, I had to act and react as if it were as realistic as theatrical naturalism.
And so I knew I was about to be born or reborn or rebooted or re-somethinged, whatever can best explain it, unless I fled.
At the time, I was living on The West Coast in a…a…well, if I accurately described it, you would think I was describing a crack den, but there were no drugs, no cocaine, no meth, no heroine, not even pot.
It was a single unit dwelling, or a house as it’s more commonly known, with many, many rooms though I only knew of two of them. There was nothing special about it. If you came from the area, it was exactly like all the other ticky tacky houses in the ‘hood, but with its own peculiar structure and style.
I wasn’t living alone, but I don’t know how many of us there were, can’t be sure, the inhabitants would constantly change in number depending on the hour of the day, coming and going, coming and going, talking of Michelangelo. And Leonardo. And Raphael. And Donatello.
They were in their early twenties, like I was, or was I, I think I was, I must have been, though I’m not sure if I was as old as I was or as I felt I was. We were the best minds of my generation and I knew that what would soon happen is what always happens to people like us every twenty-five years or so, becoming indispensable and necessary and redundant and lemming-like.
And they all dressed as hipsters. You know, starched, immaculate Mormon-white shirts and snazzy black vests that were just a tad too small, with taught black pants in cuffs like a French poet of the 1950’s, and some sort of half boots for shoes, untied so you could just slip your feet in, unless they wore high tops, in which case they were carefully and perfectly laced and bowed as if they spent hours on the process.
And they crowned their heads with Frank Sinatra type hats that said “coooooool man, cool, do you have a cigarette”, though no one smoked.
I couldn’t tell half the time if they were people like me or some Amish teens on rumspringa.
How they knew to come there, I don’t know, I never knew, people just appeared, as if beamed. They were lost and then found themselves again when they got there by immediately losing themselves again.
I don’t know how I ended up there either, and I don’t know how I even heard about it to even get there in the first place. I just knew it wasn’t by accident, unless it was a carefully planned one, which seemed to be how my life was going, and as my friend told me, though I can’t remember his name or even picture his face, I just know he was a friend, and he said, that’s the way it goes, when you need a place to stay, the place you end up staying at is the place wherewith you stay.
It had mattresses on the floor, people just sleeping wherever they could or felt like it. When I first got there, I instinctively knew it couldn’t possibly work out for me, it wasn’t right, there was something off. I mean, there were too many just everywhere, tribbles of them. And I had always revered my privacy, though I had never had any.
The furniture was newly bought from garage sales and found on the streets, had been left out at night when no one was looking, like unwanted children, and nothing matched, colors clashed (though I can’t seem to think of it in anything but muted tones or black and white with a dark border at the edges of my outermost sightline, like a silent movie), and there was too much of everything, with a perfect harmony that was quite calming and zen-like in its chaos.
I suppose the easiest way to describe it is that it was a hippie den without the sex, drugs and rock and roll. It was a hippie den without all the things that made a hippie den worthwhile.
Everybody took it all so seriously, I couldn’t help but laugh.
But in the end, I felt completely comfortable there, at least as comfortable as one can be in uncomfortable surroundings. Maybe because when you have to live a certain way, it’s strange how you can get used to living that certain way, even if it means getting use to never getting used to something.
I had friends, I know I did, because they asked me what I was doing when they came upon me that night packing in a panic and they were asking me as if our relationship gave them a right to and as if somehow what I was doing might impact them and that maybe they should do the same and I said maybe they should, maybe they should, and some did, though I know they never left, fled, like I did.
But I knew something was up. They asked if it was the police and I said it wasn’t the police. I knew they weren’t the it. I told them it couldn’t be because I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, though I also knew that didn’t mean anything when it came to the police coming or not, because we all knew that they were always suddenly coming for you, even if it wasn’t you they were coming for.
So I started packing. I only had one backpack, though in the end, I suddenly found myself filling a second one, so I had two to lug around.
And for some insane reason, I was very rational at first at getting everything together. The computer goes here, the ear plugs are kept separated in this little pocket so they wouldn’t get tangled up, the notebook goes in this pouch, and there’s holder for a water bottle, etc. A place for everything and everything in its…
But just as suddenly, I stopped simply packing and started forcing my clothes in faster and faster. Instead of folding them, I was shoving them in, like my backpack was a mouth, the jaws of a shark complete with background music, and was starving and was going to die unless it got filled.
And there were so many shirts and pants and underwear. I didn’t know where they all came from. I didn’t wear them. I didn’t have a reason to own all of them, but I knew they were mine, they had to be, whose else could that be, which is normally how I knew something was true. And they weren’t clean. I can’t remember when I had done laundry last, it wasn’t something that we, any of us, did. Though I can’t be sure that we did anything at all.
And they all stared at me. One asked me, I guess he was my best friend, he must have been, what else could he have been, he was wondering why I was acting the way I was, but I didn’t know what to tell him. And then I think a few others were getting the idea that maybe I had the right idea, though no one knew what that idea was, but that was irrelevant because ideas are either right or wrong whether you know what they are or not.
The panic became a virus, invisible, but it was plain on their faces.
In the end, I didn’t finish packing. I had, thank you, thank you, two backpacks full as it was and I couldn’t carry any more, and the clothes were like Sisyphus, they just never seemed to end. So I just stopped, made a deliberate and arbitrary decision, and took off, didn’t even zip up the other backpack, I didn’t want to take the time.
I left the room I was in and went to a smaller room, like a walled in porch or a reading nook, all screened in casements and one long window seat in a sort of half-octet configuration. I got there through a vast opening and once in the room, I saw two doors that led outside. It didn’t matter which one I took, they both led to the same location, so I thought about it awhile and took the right one and left, fled, bolted.
The backyard was large or it seemed large, though it might have been small and I was looking at it through forced perspective. I mean, it did all feel somewhat like an optical illusion. But it was a typical neighborhood type enclosure of its kind, backyards to the right of me, backyards to the left of me and ahead I saw the backyards of some of the other houses, typical houses, houses that looked like all other houses on the block though they didn’t quite resemble each other.
There were one, two, three of them and though they all had fences and gates separating this house and theirs, they were easy to get through, there was nothing stopping me, and there were no other fences or walls or barriers after that to the street, and the grass was sooooooo very verdant and green, though all I could see was a sort of greyish white.
It felt very three dimensional, but I almost felt it was a green screen of some sort.
But the question was not just which yard to go through, but what to do when I hit the street I could see clearly ahead of me. I could get to a road, but what then? What do I do to get out of there? Call a taxi? Ubur? A limo service? Such vehicles didn’t just run up and down these lean streets.
And I just stood there, calmly panicking while trying to think.
And then everything went white, a huge bright light. Like a picture being over exposed, or an atomic explosion or a film flap, flap, flapping out of the projector just leaving a blank screen.
So for all my trouble, I hadn’t gotten away. It had gotten me, whatever it was.
And after the white explosion, I opened my eyes and I had returned home, no, not my home, to where my family now lived, my home was someplace else, to start my journey that I didn’t want to take, but couldn’t wait to begin, because though I knew it was meaningless, it was the only thing that gave me any meaning.
YOU WANT ME TO READ WHAAAAAAT? A Snob’s Guide to Alternative Sources for Structure in Plotting for Screenplay and TV Writing, Part I: Stories of an Epic Nature
First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
Ever wonder what a reader for a contest or agency thinks when he reads your screenplay? Check out my new e-book published on Amazon: Rantings and Ravings of a Screenplay Reader, including my series of essays, What I Learned Reading for Contests This Year, and my film reviews of 2013. Only $2.99. http://ow.ly/xN31r; check out my Script Consultation Services: http://ow.ly/HPxKE; also available for revising, script doctoring and ghost writing.
Usually when people suggest books for screen- and television writers to read for ways to structure and plot their scripts, they tend to point them towards tomes written by screenwriting gurus. I don’t think I have to name them. We all know the usual suspects and everyone has their favorites.
And this essay’s purpose isn’t to denigrate any of them and suggest that they don’t know what they’re talking about.
The purpose of this essay is to perhaps point out other sources, sources you might not immediately think about, as guides to us in trying to tell your story, sources that you might not have thought of or even considered of any use in this area.
The idea of writing this essay originated with the sudden rise of what is now being called a second golden age of television, as well as a paradigm shift in the way movies are made.
There are now so many different ways of telling a story on the tube, from episodic, to soap operic, to a different story each season, to a story being told over a very small number of episodes, so many variant structures and styles that, unless you have been a devotee of the BBC, which has been telling these sorts of narratives for almost fifty years now (aesthetically, the U.S. has often been the last out of the gate), you may not have realized that writing has become a whole brave new world that hath such people in it.
And in movies there is a shift away from the Hollywood/Studio type of filmmaking (who are making fewer and fewer of the films being released today) to an approach even more independent than the 1990’s.
Because of this, I believe that thinking outside the box when it comes to finding ways to tell stories might be a wise move to make at this time. Continue reading
IS THERE A BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF SCREENPLAY COMPETITIONS: Parts One through Three and Bonus Round
First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
Ever wonder what a reader for a contest or agency thinks when he reads your screenplay? Check out my new e-book published on Amazon: Rantings and Ravings of a Screenplay Reader, including my series of essays, What I Learned Reading for Contests This Year, and my film reviews of 2013. Only $2.99. http://ow.ly/xN31r
and check out my Script Consultation Services: http://ow.ly/HPxKE
IS THERE A BATTLE FOR THE SOULS OF SCREENWRITING CONTESTS
Part One http://ow.ly/TgQ9s
Part Two http://ow.ly/TgQeu
Part Three http://ow.ly/TgQiJ
Bonus Round http://ow.ly/TgQon
ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL: Variations on Structural Engineering When It Comes To Screenplays, Parts I-V
First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
Ever wonder what a reader for a contest or agency thinks when he reads your screenplay? Check out my new e-book published on Amazon: Rantings and Ravings of a Screenplay Reader, including my series of essays, What I Learned Reading for Contests This Year, and my film reviews of 2013. Only $2.99. http://ow.ly/xN31r
and check out my Script Consultation Services: http://ow.ly/HPxKE
The complete list and links for the parts to this essay:
ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL: Variations on Structural Engineering When It Comes To Screenplays
Part I Multiple Story Lines http://ow.ly/TgNEh
Part II Flashbacks and Points of View http://ow.ly/TgNHX
Part III Surrealism, Impressionism and Alternative Realities http://ow.ly/TgNMf
Part IV Screenplays that Use Time to Structure Their Story http://ow.ly/TgNUU
Part V Miscellaneous http://ow.ly/TgNYG
Howard Casner - Rantings and Ravings 