Twist & Shout

No spoilers, unless you haven't seen The Sixth Sense. In that case, child please...

I recently watched Gus Van Sant's, Promised Land, a character piece revolving around the environmental debate surrounding fracking. Interestingly, Promised Land has a twist that comes late in the film. The movie didn't seem like the type of film that would have a twist, and my initial reaction was, "Oh, a twist. Didn't see that coming. What a pleasant surprise."

However, that pleasant feeling quickly evolved into annoyance. The twist created too many questions, questions with answers that weren't fulfilling, answers that didn't make enough sense. The twist was too square for the movie's round hole.

Twists are difficult. They have to be a complete surprise, yet leave the audience sinking back into their chairs saying, "Ah, it was there all along. I'm such a dummy. A happy, happy dummy." Once the twist is revealed everything that came before and after it must fit together perfectly. Plot, characters, motivation. It all still has to flow seamlessly, even though everything has changed. Nothing tricky about that.

When I think of a film with a great twist, I always think of The Sixth Sense. It just works perfectly. Every scene has a hint that Bruce Willis is dead. It all makes, well, sense. You don't ask questions, nothing has changed, though everything has changed. You're suddenly watching the movie through a completely new set of eyes, yet everything still looks the same. Quite a feat.

When a twist goes wrong, it murders every good thing you had going in your movie. Those well-developed characters we've been admiring for 90 minutes, who the hell are they? The clever plot, oh, that was cute. The climactic dialogue, I can't hear it because all I can do is sit in the darkness of the theatre trying to figure out if I'm really, really stupid because the twist doesn't make sense. Most of the time it's the twist that's stupid. But I won't come to that conclusion until I'm angrily gripping the steering wheel on the ride home, cursing at that dude who just cut me off.

If you're contemplating putting a twist in your story, make sure you know what your twist is before you start writing. Layer it into every possible scene. In the end, the twist must feel like the story was designed around it, not the other way around. It should never feel like a device added in the third draft in an attempt to spice things up. I'm certainly not saying that Promised Land was guilty of this, but I found it to be a lesson of a twist not working in complete harmony with the movie that came before and after it.

2012 Writing Roundup and 2013 Resolutions

I wasn't as motivated to write in 2012 as I wanted (needed) to be. Yes, I wrote a fair number of things. I finalized some screenplays that have been floating around my life for a number of years. They are officially done, not to be revisited until I have someone expressing interest in them.

My best writing moments came from the first drafts I finished this year: an adventure comedy that I'd been mulling over for awhile, an Awkward spec that I love, a sitcom pilot, and a Two Broke Girls spec that needs minimal revisions to be ready for 2013 fellowship submissions.

So for 2013, I need to just write, write, write. More, more, more. For the first half of 2013, I will strive my hardest to accomplish the following:

1.) Finish the final drafts of my adventure comedy feature.
2.) Write the first draft of my adult comedy feature which I will lovingly refer to as Boys.
3.) Write the first draft of my contained thriller which doesn't even have a pet name yet.
4.) Do another (final) draft of my coming-of-age dramedy, Ten Seconds.
5.) Write a drama spec for fellowship submissions (maybe).
6.) Write first draft of drama pilot, tentatively titled, Bad Names.

And most relevant to this blog...

7.) Blog every Wednesday about writing in some form or another...on my new blog devoted to screenwriting, movies, and the film industry which is here.

I figure #7 will help encourage my ass' getting in gear and doing some actual writing if I have to write about it once a week.

Happy New Year!

October Update

I love nutmeg, so maybe this bodes well for me.

So I set a goal for the month of September to finish a first draft of a feature screenplay. And I basically did it, minus a few (albeit, major) scenes. I ran out of steam for those last few scenes and have taken the last two weeks to write the final fifteen pages. Today I finished.

This week, I need to reread the script and address some minor notes that I've been making during the writing of the first draft, mostly continuity/clarity stuff. I think the draft is good. I hope it's good. I'm almost ready for people to read it, so I'm in that nervous-excited phase. It's the phase right before the oh-god-I'm-overwhelmed rewriting/second draft phase. Can't wait!

September Spirit!

Yea. I feel like cheerleader.

I've set a lofty goal for myself: finish the first draft of a screenplay by October 1st.

This is what my heart feels like when I finish a first draft.

It's been awhile since I've written a feature. Lately, I've been focusing on building up my TV portfolio, and I think it's time to throw another movie into the mix. I've had this script idea for awhile, certain scenes have always been vivid. Months ago, I wrote ten pages and then started working on another TV script.

Over Labor Day weekend I outlined. I'm working off of a 3 page document that contains brief descriptions of all the scenes I think the movie needs. Of course, a lot of those scenes will evolve as I go along and my characters and plot surprise me, but it's comforting to have an outline if you really need to crank out pages in a short amount of time. There's no pondering in front of the computer where the story is going or where it will end up. And if I come up with a better idea for a character or plot point that has a ripple effect on the rest of the story, it's not as big of a deal because I can look at my outline and see exactly how it will affect my other scenes and adjust accordingly.

On Monday I started writing. I have a long way to go, but I'm looking forward to the end of the month.

Writing Tips from "Intervention"

I love Intervention. I love how it exposes humanity at its rawest. Love, anger, forgiveness, and, usually, relapse. But this post isn't a love letter to Intervention, it's about writing and the power of action compared to words.

During an intervention, it doesn't matter how many times the family members tell the addict that they love them and how much they would miss them if they died. Most of the time, the addict doesn't agree to go to rehab because people love them, they go because if they don't they won't have a place to live or any support system, so rehab is basically their only option.

Many times, the addiction has been brought on by abuse, a traumatic event, or genetics. In a recent episode, the mother of the addict was also an addict. The mother told her daughter she was leaving to get treatment that night, asking if her daughter would get treatment as well. An immediate answer of yes. I've seen this more than a few times on the show. Even if a relative just agrees to go to therapy, it's usually enough to make the addict readily agree to go into treatment without all the ultimatums. Action is more powerful than I Love You.

Human beings respond to action. Words can mean nothing, which is sometimes hard to grasp when we're creating a story by writing words. It's good to take a page from the humanity exposed on Intervention: a page of dialogue might be replaced with a single action that gets the strong reaction we're hoping to evoke from our characters and our readers.

Beginning, Middle, End

As a writer, my strengths lie in dialogue, characters, and theme. I've never been particularly good at, or fond of, structure. But I know that structure is a necessary, necessary evil. There must be a beginning, a middle, and an end. The middle should be longer than the beginning and end. That's about all the thought I put into structure during my screenplay's first draft, and I always end up where I want to in terms of page count.

I recently watched Meek's Cutoff, a film about pioneers travelling the Oregon Trail. The film looks beautiful, makeup and wardrobe are fantastic. The sound design is spectacular, an eternal wagon wheel squeak effectively conveys the misery that this journey held for everyone seeking a better life out West. For that alone, this film might be worth watching.

What was most surprising was that Meek's Cutoff didn't have a beginning, middle, and end. It only had a middle, which makes for an odd, unfulfilling movie experience.

MILD SPOILERS

At the beginning of Meek's Cutoff, we learn from an etching that our travelling party of eight used to be larger, but we don't know when the other members died or how. Those who have fallen are never mentioned. The remaining group has already realized that their leader, Mr. Meek, has no clue where he's going, so the slow, burning realization moment is non-existent. We're just travelling with the settlers, dum-de-dum.

A couple interesting plot points occur, but it's all just middle-of-the-road stuff. The settlers are miserable and scared. The level of misery and terror doesn't significantly change during the movie, though it does build, slightly. And then it comes time for everyone to make a final choice. We don't know what choice is made because the movie ends.

I'm all for ambiguous endings. The Handmaid's Tale is one of my favorite books. But I think ambiguous endings need to be executed exceedingly well. Remember all the theatre groans at the end of Inception? Didn't quite work, and I felt the same way about Meek's Cutoff. We ended the same place that we started. Yes, the journey was effective, but we didn't go anywhere.

"Current" Political Dramas

If only the script had been edited this heavily.

Political Animals and The Newsroom, two dramas currently airing that are rooted in the recent past.

Okay, pilots are difficult. I try my hardest not to judge a show by its pilot. But I won't be watching any more episodes of Political Animals, so I'm going to judge.

PA revolves around a female Secretary of State whose ex-husband used to be President...but she's from Illinois. Okay, phew. For a minute there, I thought this idea was a smidge biographical.

Besides a small lacking in originality, PA breaks my number one screenwriting commandment: show, don't tell. In the first scene, the Secretery of State to-be gives a televised speech as a Presidential candidate. Each of her family members steps onto the stage one at a time, and a reporter reads us a bio. This felt like a trip down the lazy river waterslide of screenwriting. In the next scene the SoS's mother refers to one of her grandsons as a "homo" which blew what could've been a fun reveal later on. PA spells everything out for us before we meet anyone, and the few reveals later on are lame.

Also, all of the scenes feel too long. So much dialogue without saying anything. Ugh. In the only enjoyable part of the show, the SoS gets out politicked by her ex-hubby, which was a nice twist. However, this satisfaction is short-lived as she promptly gives a feminist pep talk inspired by elephants. I love elephants, but this was offensive.

Looks like we both feel the same way about the show.

I made it through two episodes of The Newsroom before deciding that my time could be better spent doing just about anything, including daydreaming.

Wait, what? We're going to go back in time and Newsroom is going to tell me how the news should have been reported? Are you freaking kidding me? I don't need anyone preaching to me, even if I'm in the choir.

The two female characters are both the same character: Crazy. The same kind of emotionally unbalanced, insecure, I-need-a-man crazy. No, thank you. I can't even start on the romance they are setting up with Alison Pill. It's unbearable. (I know Olivia Munn is in the show as well, but being that she was in one scene in the 2nd episode and then referred to as Victoria Secret and then vehemently defended for her Ivy League degree, I'm already bored).

The Newsroom also suffers from a lack of show, don't tell. In the first two episodes we see Jeff Daniels have a public outburst that makes him quite likeable. Then we hear a bunch of characters saying how unlikeable he is. And then more and more negative mumblings and Emily Mortimer bending over backwards trying to verbally convince everyone he's not a dick. 6ty78ui76yt5rf4e34er5 t6wq2s5werfcgtvl,uiliu8vybhbhtrs. Hello! Sorry, I just fell asleep on my keyboard for a moment.

Arguing over whether or not someone is a dick is not compelling television. And, at this point, all we have seen of Jeff Daniels is him being refreshingly honest. I don't know how I'm supposed to feel, but I'm more inclined to feel how I've been shown how to feel rather than how I've been told how to feel.

In The Social Network, we know exactly how we're supposed to feel about Mark Zuckerberg from the first scene. We know he's smart, we know he's dickish and angry. Nobody needs to tell us a thing about him, he already showed us in a fun, riveting verbal whirlwind. I wish The Newsroom had been executed more along the same lines. While the show definitely has the verbal whirlwind going on, the breezes come from all directions, seemingly not knowing which direction to blow.

R.I.P., Nora Ephron

When I saw the headline of Nora Ephron's death on Yahoo, I gasped. One of those shrieking inhales that feels like your heart stopped beating for five seconds.

Obviously, she was a great writer, and I mourn the fact that she will never write another movie or pen another book of essays. But my sadness is also selfish. When I turned my focus to writing a couple years ago, I was asked what screenwriter I wanted my writing and career to emulate. I thought about it for thirty seconds. Nora Ephron. Not just because I write romantic comedies, but also because of the way her great sense of humor shined through in everything she wrote, humorous or tragic. I wanted to have lunch with her, and I dreamed that maybe one day I would. I don't want my idol to be dead.

GIRLS - Season One

 I've had a week to reflect on my thoughts about season one of Lena Dunham's GIRLS. I enjoy the show for the same reason I enjoy TREME; there's not another show like it on TV. But, unfortunately, GIRLS doesn't have enough going for it to make it loveable.

When the show was announced, it received comparisons to SEX AND THE CITY, only younger and more realistic. Um, okay. Yes, I know Carrie Bradshaw lived in an apartment way above her paygrade and had a Manolo Blahnik addiction that would've saddled her with credit card debt for the rest of her life. However, was her living situation so much different from Hannah and Marnie, who live in a sizeable Brooklyn two-bedroom on a lovely, quiet residential street? And they keep spouting off about how they live in Brooklyn all the time, like Brooklyn is the ghetto or cheap or something. No way Marnie could afford that place on an art gallery assistant's salary (ahem, Charlotte). So, financially realistic? Not so much.

The thing that worked about SATC was that those characters loved each other and, as different as they were, the audience believed that they would actually be friends. No matter how crazy their personal lives got, the show was still rooted in the women's relationships with each other, and that tethered everything to reality. GIRLS doesn't have that. I don't know why any of those girls like each other. I don't buy any of them as friends. Yes, they're all extremely self-centered, but that doesn't mean they'll be friends. And also, the best character on the show is Adam. When the best character on a show called GIRLS is the crazy, semi-a-hole, sort-of boyfriend of the lead character, that says a lot. The girls on GIRLS are not nearly as compelling as they should be.

I think the most interesting thing the show has done is appeal to men. I watch the show with Hubs (who hates SATC), and he likes GIRLS more than I do. He appreciates the raw feeling the show has, and I agree. It seems like every episode of GIRLS originates from an idea of an awkward scene or moment and then the show is formed around that. It's a formula that creates some funny moments, but doesn't make for the strongest episodes.

The season finale was a complete misstep for me. Yes, characters need to have arcs. The definition of a character arc does not mean that each of your characters has to end up 180 degrees from where they started, but that's exactly what GIRLS did. It was like they made a list:

-Shoshanna. She's a virgin. By the end of the finale, she won't be. (Okay, I'll give them that one. That actually is a realistic progression that makes sense).

-Marnie. She's an uptight control freak. (I know this not because she acts uptight [she masterbates in public restrooms, so I guess it's all semantics], I know Marnie is uptight because every character on the show constantly tells us that she's uptight). So in the finale, we'll have her pick out the most annoying wedding guest and bang him. Nothing less uptight than slumming. (And, really, it was much more in her character to just hook up with her ex in the bathroom, because we know she's cool with public bathroom sexual activity. We also know she still wants to feel like she has the upper hand in that "relationship".)

-Jessa. She started out as the free-spirited chick who will do anything just to have done it. So we'll have some minor character give her a wierd and inappropriate motherly talking to, and an episode later she'll MARRY a dude that tried to have a threesome with her and Marnie and yelled at them when they spilled wine on his rug. Naturally.

-Adam. At the beginning of the season, he doesn't want to be in a relationship. By the finale, we'll have him practically bathing Hannah's feet and begging her to let him move in. And then he'll violently scream at her about it. But he's crazy, so it makes sense. Mmm-hmm.

-Hannah. She seems secure. But she'll admit that she's the most scaredest scaredy-cat person in the whole widest world. What is she so scared of? She doesn't say. Nothing honest will come out of her mouth, but she'll talk about how she's insecure about her body. A body that she hasn't been afraid to bare in every single episode. A body that in the season finale will be wearing a dress with a hemline six inches shorter than anyone with body issues would wear.

Needless to say, I didn't like this list all that much.

Yes, characters need to have arcs, preferably in the 45-90 degree range. When a character turns 180 degrees, they aren't the same character anymore. Movie characters may be able to do a complete turnaround (though I doubt it would feel realistic) because the film will end soonafter. A TV show can't sustain character flip-flopping. It just makes the viewer ask, who the hell are these people? And why am I watching them?

Almost...almost...and...nope: a few thoughts on Prometheus

FASSBENDER.
RAPACE.
THERON.

You had me at Fass--

This was the movie I was most looking forward to this summer. And, well, I left the theater disappointed.

If you haven't seen the movie, this post contains SPOILERS.

Let's start with the positive, the movie is beautiful. The photography, production design, VFX, everything visual is gorgeous. And, story-wise, the movie starts out well. Two married scientists, Shaw and Holloway, discover cave paintings that solidify their theory about human creation. Fast forward to a space mission searching on for the Creators on the depicted planet from cave paintings. The exploration starts out slow which I didn't mind. Especially in thriller/horror movies, I think it's effective to start slow and ramp up the pace as you go along. The longer it takes for something to happen, the more tension has built up. Prometheus does a good job with that.

It's when stuff starts to go wrong for the crew that the movie derails on me. Now I've only seen the movie once and perhaps I missed a few things. Some of my issues with the movie might seem nit-picky, and I promise I didn't go into the movie expecting to dissect it, there were just a lot of things that rubbed me the wrong way as I was getting theater ass. Ultimately, I found this to be one of the most frustrating movies I've seen in a long time. You know how sometimes you see a movie that wasn't terrible but you didn't like it and you can't quite put your finger on why? Well, I knew exactly why I didn't like Prometheus as I was watching it.

First, the crew (and this crew was large, way too large) find a Creator head and bring it back to Prometheus, their ship. Shaw and Other Female Doctor analyze it. And Holloway, who's spent a good chunk of his life searching for human origin and finally found it, calmly sits across the room boozing it up. WHAT? Is he not a scientist? Why isn't he all up in that? He seems like he'd rather be at a honky-tonk on Earth.

Onto the Geologists (Broken Arm and Acid Face). Are they even Geologists? What are they looking for? I have no idea. They seem terrified by the life form reading, like they know about the existence of potentially-deadly alien life, but it's never clear why they broke off from the others or what they were doing.

And enigmatic David. I'm tired of evil robots. Robots aren't evil. They're neutral. Why wasn't David neutral? Why did he poison Holloway? David was just working for some old dude who didn't want to die. Why was he programmed to kill a scientist? It didn't make sense.

And then there's the Creators. Somewhere along the line some crew member drops a line about this not being the Creators' home planet. This is some dangerous shiz, and they were way too clever to use their own planet as a scientific playground. So why did the cave paintings point to this place? Maybe it's just supposed to be another of the movie's many unanswered questions, but it strikes me as a continuity error. And, as a Creator, if you made a race in the likeness of yourself how many tens of thousands of years ago, and then they just woke you up and spoke to you in your own language, would your reaction really be to kill them? Maybe answer a couple questions, ask a couple yourself, and then kill them. I don't know, just a thought.

There is supposed to be a noble moment near the end when Idris Elba and two other people decide to sacrifice themselves with the ship to stop the Creators from destroying the Earth. Okay. So, here on Earth in 2012, we have the technology to launch things at other things and blow them up, no manpower needed. More than a few decades from now, we won't have the technology to launch an object at another object, no manpower needed? And, more depressingly, why were those other two characters even in this movie? Except for that awesome moment when Idris asks the Asian guy for coordinates or something and his face is freaking out and he's clearly screaming his lines, but they ADR'd him to be calmly say, "I'm pulling them up," or something similar. Did anyone else notice that? I kind of want to see the movie again just for that line, 'cause that's funny stuff. But those two characters did nothing except steal screen time from Idris. How dare they.

And poor Charlize. What the hell was going on there? She crawls out of the hyper sleep, dripping wet and clearly ill, and immediately drops into push-ups while asking for status updates. Girlfriend doesn't need anyone to hold her hair when she pukes. This woman is badass. And then the movie utterly fails at doing the daddy-doesn't-love-me-jealous-sibling thing. And then we're supposed to cheer when she is literally crushed? Why? Because she killed Holloway after warning him 50 times not to come any closer? Because she followed THE EXACT SAME PROTOCOL THAT RIPLEY TRIED TO IN ALIEN? A villain who acts like a hero. Yikes.

And, finally, the confusion of Shaw. She never puts anything together. She never realizes that David killed Holloway, which seems strange. She doesn't seem terribly upset or surprised at the ulterior motives on the ship. Our hero doesn't need to put all the pieces together, but she should at least complete the parts of the puzzle that directly affect her. Also, she seems so sweet and accessible, yet has no relationship with anyone else on the ship, which makes it feel like everyone else is against her. I don't think that was the case but it was confusing.

The Surgery Scene. I know, what could be wrong with The Surgery Scene? Nothing! The surgery scene is a great scene for Shaw. It's gross but highly watchable (and I'm a little queasy). Unfortunately, it comes right after scenes where David drugs her, and Other Female Doctor and Another Male Doctor try to examine her, but she knocks them out. Then we have The Surgery Scene. And then Shaw discovers Weyland and decides to go meet the Creators and boom! EVERYONE was standing in front of the Creator, even though they all just assaulted each other. Awkward.

And also, if you're going to drop a line about humans not being able to survive on the planet's atmosphere without oxygen for X amount of time, please have a payoff somewhere. Anywhere. And also, if you drop a line like this, please don't have the Creator, with the same DNA as humans, able to hop about from one ship to the next in the open atmosphere, when it's been established that they breathe oxygen, too.

And, finally, ohmygodwhyhaveGuyPearceplayanoldman??? I mean, I know old actors play all the major roles in every single movie nowadays, so I'm sure it was near impossible to find someone over 60 in Hollywood looking for work. But TRY. Old people masks look like old people masks. He looked more computer generated than the Creators. Ugh.

I tried not to watch the trailer during the oodles of sports programming leading up to the movie's release. I could shift my eyes away, but I would still hear the music. That creepy, siren pulsing, techno-y music sounded perfectly terrifying. That music is not in this movie. This movie has a lot of...wait for it...french horn. Wow. I really thought they were going to go more cutting edge with the music. The french horn seemed wrong and distracted me more than once. I know it was an artistic choice to have a very '90's sounding, old-school score, but I think the movie would've benefited from more of a Chemical Brothers feel, since the look of the movie was so cool.

I hadn't seen Alien in many years and I watched it before seeing Prometheus. Perhaps the ship that the Alien crew comes across was not supposed to be the same ship as in Prometheus. But it looks just like it. Couldn't they have ended the movie with the last surviving Creator crawling back onto its ship and climbing into the Captain Chair (yes, that's its scientific name) before dying? I would've forgiven a lot if that would've matched up. I may have even smiled. But, alas, Prometheus ended and the chair was empty. Along with my expectations.

Prometheus feels like an episode of LOST; an episode near the end where the characters were as confused as the audience and for every question answered, three more questions pop up in its place. I think it's merely coincidence that Damon Lindeloff had a hand in the movie. Remember the whole Nottingham debacle? If not, please check out Sex in a Submarine's article, it's well worth the read. Ridley Scott makes the movie he wants to make. And that's that.

This is what I've taken away from Prometheus as a writer: you can make your story as confusing as you want, as long as it's clear how your characters FEEL about the situation they're in. I didn't know how Shaw was feeling about anything after the first act. I knew I wanted to root for her. I wanted her to find closure. But her character never seemed...anywhere, emotionally. If your character doesn't know where they're at, your audience won't care where they're going. And that is movie death.

And Onto Other Things

Okay, so my big plan for November was to write a novel, or at least get deep into a first draft of one.

Well, that didn't happen. As usual, I'm full of excuses, but I don't feel like this has been a failure. My job is still long hours. My commute is still awful, and seems to grow a little worse every day. But my creativity, well I'm feeling a little better about it.

I started strong. I was really going to write those 50,000 words. And after my second writing session I had an idea for a screenplay. So I dropped the novel and wrote the screenplay instead.

No, not exactly.

I'm still percolating on this screenplay idea. It's a thriller and I usually write comedy, so I find this interesting in the same way that I thought trying to write 50,000 words in 30 days was a good idea. But the point is that trying to write the novel opened something in my brain and I came up with this idea that will eventually turn into something grand. I just know it.

And I'm not done with the novel. I'm just done for now. I actually really loved the adaptation process. I didn't have to think so terribly hard as to create a new world since I had the screenplay written, I just had to reimagine the telling a of a world I already created. Extremely challenging, and the few days I did work on it just left me wanting longer stretches of time to work on it. I know during my next break from unemployment, I'm going to crank out that first draft and it's going to feel great.

I wonder if I'll end up writing the novel before this new screenplay. We shall see. Another new project added to my internal To Do list.

A New Challenge

I haven't been blogging much lately. I started a job in August that requires long hours and a substantial commute. It's been draining. I haven't been writing. At all. I even have a sit com pilot outlined, an idea that I like, but I just don't have the taste for it right now. I don't feel funny. Most of the time, I just feel tired.

So I'm going to participate in NaNoWriMo. Yes, I'm going to try and write a novel in 30 days. A little crazy, but I'm going to adapt a screenplay I wrote around this time last year, so I have a pretty solid outline working for me. I think it will help free my mind and make me use my creativity in a different way than I'm used to, hopefully expanding my skills. And I don't have to be funny in the same way I do when writing dialogue that's supposed to make people laugh out loud, and that is a relief. I've written 3 pages, although in novel writing pages don't count like screenplay pages. It's all about the words. 832 down, 49,168 to go.

I love the idea of so much creative energy going towards the same place at the same time. Good luck to everyone participating!

Captain America: The Mediocre Beginning of Another Hopefully Uncrappy Franchise

I haven't seen any comic book movies this summer. Not even X-Men, which was well-reviewed, and I loved the first X-Men movie, so I've been upset at myself for missing it. Since all the critics seemed to enjoy CA, I thought it would be a last ditch effort to see a good summer popcorn movie.

Okay, it's been a long summer season, and I think the critics' brains have been fried. My expectations were raised due to all the good buzz, and boy was this disappointing. I don't think I've ever seen Chris Evans in a movie, and I know all the young hot guys in Hollywood competed for this part, so I expected his charisma to just leap off the screen at me. Nope. Not that he was bad, but I didn't feel like this guy was a star. (Oh, I just remembered, he was in Scott Pilgrim, not that it matters.) And Hugo Weaving doing his best Werner Herzog! All I could think of was Werner Herzog reading Go the Fuck to Sleep (the best celebrity reading so far). It was so hard not to get the giggles every time he was onscreen.

The movie starts out slowly, ahem, boring. Just as it gets interesting, it becomes a montage. Captain America is never, not even for half a second, ever in danger. There is no tension at all. No big obstacles for him to work around and outsmart. No suspense. Isn't that what action movies are all about? Halfway through the movie I turned to Hubs and said, "I set my expectations way too high." He thought the movie was even worse than I did.

I will keep Captain America in mind when writing action in the future. Your protagonist needs to be in peril. Preferably more than once. The audience shouldn't be able to figure out how he/she is going to escape. There must be tension. The opening scene should be awesome in some way that's unexpected. The last scene should be solid and feel like a real ending. The best part of the movie shouldn't be a trailer for another movie.

A Few Thoughts on R-Rated Comedies

The cineplexes have been filled with R-Rated comedies this summer. I saw Bridesmaids, Horrible Bosses, Bad Teacher, and No Strings Attached and Going the Distance (which came out earlier this year). I have not seen Hangover 2 (I saw the first one, so I think I already saw the second one) or Friends with Benefits.

Okay, I loved Bridesmaids. Yes, it had its moments of raunch, which usually aren't my thing, but they made the movie funnier. Therefore, it's R-rating was earned. And, this movie, whether it was rated G or R, had a soul. The characters came first. I cared about them and wanted everything to work out for them. Even the moments of raunch were character driven, not just stuck in there to be gross for the sake of being gross. Future R-rated comedies take note.

Another R-rated comedy that worked for me was Going the Distance. The dialogue was witty and frank. The cursing was funny and natural sounding. The nudity was comedic. Good chemistry between Justin Long and Drew Barrymore. R-rating earned. However, I think the R-rating hurt this film. It was promoted as a simple rom com, not the raunchy R-rated comedy that it was. The rom com crowd didn't want it, the raunch crowd didn't know about it. Ironically, it's one of the best rom coms I've seen in a long time, it just happens to be rated R. It was much, much funnier than the more successful No Strings Attached, which lacked in chemistry and character development.

I enjoyed Horrible Bosses, but I didn't think it needed to be rated R. I mean, Aniston didn't even get naked. No R-rating there. Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day have all proven to be hilarious on network television with no swears. Plus, there should have been more Golden-Globe-Winner Colin Farrell. He was hilarious. And sorely underused.

Bad Teacher definitely didn't need to be rated R. Take out an unfunny dry humping scene and a couple out-of-place f-bombs and it could've easily been PG-13. Why is it so uncool to be PG-13? Maybe I'm biased because I tend to write PG-13 comedy. In real life, I love to swear. It's a vice I relish in. Oddly, I always find it hard to make my characters swear. In my writing, profanities are like exclamation points; I use them sparingly for emphasis.

This pattern in my writing stems back to my teenage years. When I was in high school, all I wanted to do was go see movies. I lived in a small town and there wasn't much to do if you weren't causing trouble, so I spent a lot of my free time at the movie theatre. And the box office lady, nicknamed Skeletor, was the Guardian of the Realm of the R-Rated. She knew exactly who was seventeen and who wasn't, and it was her sacred duty to protect our innocent eyes. And, shockingly, my entire adolescence I was under seventeen. So movie options were limited.

I think I'm always writing for my sixteen-year-old self. Yes, I write scripts about adults, for adults. But I remember when I was a teen I wanted to see movies about adults. I wouldn't have wanted to see Selena Gomez and Leighton Meester trouncing around Europe (not that there's anything wrong with that). I would've wanted to see Bridesmaids. I would've wanted to see Horrible Bosses. I would've wanted to see Bad Teacher. And I would've wanted to see Crazy, Stupid, Love.

As an adult, I'm still excited to see Crazy, Stupid, Love. It looks like it has soul. I hope all the high-schoolers, and everyone else, show up and prove that it's profitable to make a funny PG-13 movie so Funny = R is no longer the law of the land.

Battling Writer's Block

I have not been nearly as productive the last few months as I should have been. I've had the luxury of taking some time off of work and in the last half of 2010, I wrote like a madwoman. I completed first drafts of two screenplays, did a major rewrite of a third, and wrote a drama pilot. Not too shabby. Even better, I think all those projects are solid pieces to enhance my portfolio...after I do one or two more rounds of revisions.

2011 came around and I was still on fire. At the beginning of the year, I wrote a comedy spec, which also turned out well. And then I was done, spent. I missed bringing home a paycheck, and I missed the socialization I got at work. Who would've ever thought I liked people so much? But, worst of all, my enthusiasm for all my half-ideas dried up. Yes, I had writer's block. And it sucked. All spring, I wrote nothing. I'm sure I could've done a better job of pushing through it, but I felt uninspired and helpless. This was the first time I've had such a creative block. It was my worst fear, and wallowing in it felt like I was confronting it, I guess. I don't know. I don't have any great advice on how to get through writer's block. But it's over, and hopefully it won't return, ever. But that's a lofty goal. Part of me is glad I've gone through it. I survived. I didn't even need to go on anti-depressants.

I just landed a new job that starts in a couple weeks. It's going to be hard. It's going to be a lot of hours. The commute is not going to be fun. But I'm happy to be collecting a paycheck again. I'm relieved to have a set schedule. And I'm really unafraid of writer's block now. Whenever I'm working and don't have the time I'd like to have for writing, that's when all the ideas come. Oh, cruel, cruel creativity. So I'm looking forward to having little time to write and making the most of it. Creativity, bring it on.

Game of Thrones

Okay, I'm officially caught up on Game of Thrones. I was really excited about this show when it premiered. The promos were beautiful. I'm all for any medieval show that doesn't revolve around Merlin-type magic. I thought the first episode was a little meh, but the second episode got better, and the third episode was a little better still, and then it pretty much tapered off.

There are a couple major problems with the show that violate basic screenwriting rules taught in every beginner screenwriting class in America, which is why I find these problems so irritating. I'm going to try and keep spoiler-free. I'll list some plot points, but not give away any twists and turns. And there are 800 characters on this show and I can't remember any of their names, so there won't be any of those either.

Basic Screenwriting Knowledge Violation #1: Show, don't tell.

This is the most exposition heavy show I've ever seen. We're in this beautiful world, and all everyone does is stand around and talk. It is freakin' boring. The whole show starts with the inciting incident of someone noteworthy being killed. But the person is already dead, and everyone just stands around talking about how the person is dead and who killed him. And they somehow all figure out who did it (still don't know how they got from A to B on that one) and then they tell the guy who did it they know he did it and he admits to it, and nothing comes of it. Um, then why couldn't we have just seen that person kill the guy as the first scene of the show? The whole thing would've been a lot less confusing. We would've known the killer was a bad guy right off the bat, and we wouldn't have been wondering who the guy was who got offed that everyone kept talking about for three episodes.

On a recent episode, a major character was attacked by a boar during a hunting expedition. Sounds interesting, right? But GoT would choose the least compelling way to have a boar attack. The seqence went something like this:

Character announces he's going hunting. Character's friends race back yelling that Character was attacked by a boar. Character lies in bed and tells how the boar attacked him and how he still killed the boar.

Wow, that was exciting, wasn't it? So much more exciting than seeing Character kill the attacking boar. The show could've used a little CGI boar, all I'm saying.

GoT clearly knows its exposition is boring because it's now trying to hide it instead of just getting rid of it. For example, during a particularly graphic sex scene, someone just happens to be talking about his past love throughout the entire scene. Awkward. And, hello, no one is listening because we're distracted by the, um, showing and don't care so much about the telling when there's naked people going at it. On GoT people also like to have deep conversations while bathing. And in two scenes in last week's episode, dead animals were being butchered during conversations to make it seem like something was happening. Yeah, we weren't fooled. It was still all just talk, talk, talking. Thanks for thinking that I'm dumb, GoT. Speaking of dumb people...

Basic Screenwriting Knowledge Violation #2: Characters make stupid decisions for no reason.

Ned Stark, the lead character, doesn't seem like a stupid guy, but he makes dumb decisions all the time. And it makes no sense! I don't even need to go into this because BuzzFeed has done the work for me and it's very funny (contains Spoilers): Introducing: Stupid Ned Stark.

GoT, please cut down on the exposition, and make Ned Stark a little brighter. And try to put Peter Dinklage in every scene. He's so, so good, easily the best part of the show.

Blargety, Blargety, Blargety

That's the backwards sound that plays on the guys' production company logo during one of the seasons, and for awhile it was infectiously stuck in my head.

Nickelodeon Fellowship application has been mailed. Fingers crossed.

Time to start working on a new comedy spec and pilot.

A Few Notes About Romantic Comedies

Romantic comedy chat has come up on Done Deal recently. One thread asked what's wrong with romantic comedies. I commented that they aren't living up to their namesake. There's no romance. There's no falling in love. Where has all the chemistry gone? The "New York Times" had this article awhile back: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/opinion/04dowd.html?_r=1

Most people blame the recent plummet of rom coms on their formula. We all know how it ends; the couple gets together. Well, movies are all formulaic. In general, they're going to end two ways, happily or sadly. When you go to see an action movie or a thriller, you know the bad guy gets it at the end, or he doesn't. It's either one or the other.

We don't pay to see movies because of the endings, we pay for the journey. And just because rom coms have predictable endings, doesn't mean the journey has to feel tired. The journey feeling boring and been-there-done-that is a problem within the genre, but just pointing to rom coms and saying, "Ick, formula, run!" is a cop out.

People either like the genre or they don't. Which is fine. Viewers who like rom coms will continue to pay to see them because they want a happy ending. People want to see feel good movies. Why do you think The King's Speech has been so successful? Word of mouth has spread about it's excellent performances and how uplifted people felt when they left the theatre. Can't say the same about The Social Network, Black Swan, or Inception. All, in my opinion, are better films than TKS, but they don't leave you with that fuzzy warmth in the pit of your stomach.

I'm a proud writer of romantic comedies. I focus on trying to create journeys that don't feel like a road I've been down a thousand times before. It's effin' hard to create a world that has to satisfy genre expectations and feel fresh. I like the challenge. And I find it depressing every time a rom com comes out and sucks. It feels like a little piece of my favorite genre is dying.

The thread on rom com problems led to someone creating a thread asking to name your favorite rom com. This was particularly comical because you find out real fast who likes rom coms and who doesn't.

I like Shaun of the Dead (liked Hot Fuzz better) but it is not a rom com. It was listed again and again. Yes, there's a tiny romantic storyline, but if the last scene of the movie is about a dude hanging out with another dude (and they're not making out) it's a freaking bromance! And bromance is not romantic comedy.

Someone listed True Lies. If I would've been drinking when I read that I would've spit all over my computer screen. That is a person who haaaates romantic comedies. That's like me saying that My Best Friend's Wedding is an action movie because there's a chase scene in it. Hah!

For the most part, I don't watch movies multiple times. But these are the rom coms that I can (and do) watch over and over again:

It Happened One Night
The Philadelphia Story
Bridget Jones's Diary
You've Got Mail
Kissing Jessica Stein
Love, Actually
The Cutting Edge
Green Card
While You Were Sleeping
Cousins
Clueless
I.Q.

Runners Up (They're very good, but I wouldn't watch them more than once a year):

When Harry Met Sally
Peggy Sue Got Married
Moonstruck
Fever Pitch
Return to Me
Date with an Angel (childhood favorite)

I'll keep adding to the list as they come to me.

Thick Skin

Having thick skin is a necessity as a writer. I always want my writing to improve with each draft and absorbing others' criticism is vital. I know I've improved at taking criticism, but it's taken time and practice. The more I write, the more confidence I gain in my writing. The more criticism I get, the thicker my skin grows.

Sometimes throwing yourself to the wolves works, too. I got a jump start with the thick skin when I was in college. I took a poetry workshop and I loved it so much I decided to do a poetry minor. That meant lots and lots of workshops. For the first few workshops I had the most amazing instructor, Maureen Seaton. She's an amazing poet and an incredible human being. The only acceptable criticism in her class was the constructive kind and even if comments were negative, the vibe was always nurturing. In her class, when you offered feedback, your first comment always had to be positive. It's something I always do when I critique any one's work; lead with something positive. That way you always start off on the right foot. And after people here something complimentary I feel they're more receptive to what needs work.

I wrote about very personal subjects during these workshops. I think there was a lot of baggage I needed to expel, and in Maureen's workshops I felt safe enough to write about my love, hate, shame, grief. Everything. The same students and I had been through so many workshops together by this point, I felt close to them. I looked forward to what they were going to say about my work. I even had a poem published. I thought I was the next Adrienne Rich.

Near the end of my poetry minor, Maureen got offered a better job across the country and left. I took my advanced workshop with the head of the poetry department. He's a well-regarded poet who runs a successful literary journal. He was a nice enough guy. Most of my old colleagues were in this larger class, but there were a lot of new faces. The new guys were poetry majors. They had been in the advanced workshop with this instructor for two years. But I wasn't intimidated. I knew I was talented. Maureen had believed in me, so would my new instructor. Well, not so much. The feedback was all negative. I know poetry is subjective, all writing is, but my work was not well received. And I sat and watched as the language poets would write down random words all over the entire sheet of paper and the students would ooh and ahh over the white space on the paper. I puked in my mouth a little. I was still writing about subjects near and dear to me. One student called one of my poems "trite." It's the worst word you can hear as an artist: your work is trite. You may as well have just spat on my soul.

The whole vibe of the class was awful. It was negative and competitive. This was poetry. There is no reason to be competitive. There is no money to be made. Again, this is poetry. I felt the students were being nasty just for the sake of being nasty. My favorite comment was a snotty, "This is like a Billy Collins poem." Okay. Billy Collins was the Poet Laureate of the country at the time, and this opinion was given with a negative connotation. A number of my classmates nodded in disdain. I almost laughed out loud. This was like sneering, "This is like an Brian Helgeland screenplay." Even if you don't love his work, you have to respect his success. There is no way to negatively compare a screenwriter to Brian Helgeland. That would be insane.

So, I guess that's my best advice; take a poetry workshop, write about personal subjects and have your babies ripped to shreds. You might cry a little after class. Your love of poetry may wither and die. But you will have thick skin. And then you can start writing screenplays.

Sunny

It's taken much longer than anticipated to figure out the spec I'm going to write for "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" for the Nickolodeon Fellowship.  Initially, I thought it wouldn't be so hard. The show doesn't have many limitations. The episodes are all stand-alones, so there aren't any arcs that I need to figure in story-wise. It's pretty straight forward. Degenerates being politically incorrect degenerates.

I decided to write the spec after watching the 6th season which recently aired on FX, which I thought was hilarious. I went back and watched the previous five seasons to immerse myself in the show and learn more about how these characters came to be. I had all of these great ideas for my episode storylines and I'd jot them down. As I watched the five seasons, one by one, my ideas had already been done. Wah-wah. Slowly, I regrouped. I had ideas for my A and B storylines, got them to work together, but was lost for a C story. Then I got the C story and it didn't fit into A and B in their current form. So today, everything was made to work together. Sort of. I now have an outline I feel confident enough in that I can start writing. Tomorrow, dammit.