You know how when something bad happens to a celebrity (Heath Ledger's death, for instance), it's all over the news for days and days? And then people talk about it, and how sad it is?
I'd like to start a website that posts stories that are as similar as possible in all the details, except that the subject isn't famous. 28 year old guy dies of a drug over dose? Probably happened in Detroit that day, too. A mom loses custody of her kids and then doesn't show up in court to fight to get them back? I'm sure there's some chick in Alabama with the same problem. Not to mention all the drunk driving arrests, thefts, and so on.
It could be done. Nay, should be done. NAY! Must be done.
How a Stranger Ruined my Day
Current mood: sad
Category: Life
I'm trying to start a screenwriting group. I don't know a lot of other writers, so I posted on Craig's List. I got dozens of responses, most of them from people like me--aspirants who don't have a heck of a lot of experience, but who are trying hard.
Today, I received this e-mail:
I hope this finds you well. I was looking for a writer's group for myself and came across your Craig's List ad and followed it to your site. I get the feeling that you're sincere and truly interested in writing and supporting other writers and facilitating the creative process in general.
Because of that, I'm going to take the liberty of making a few suggestions. Your writing samples don't put your best foot forward. I swear to you, I'm not trying to be mean or arrogant or condescending. I'd really like to think that I'm offering assistance in the spirit of writers supporting each other.
In your chase/mafia/whatever scene, you hit your reader right off the bat with 'all that more sad'. Doesn't make sense, my man. Should be 'all THE more sad'.
You say the room is 'sparse and empty save for a small desk'. We know that it's sparse without being told if we know that it's empty save for the desk. It just reads clunky and amateurish.
You say the former doctor's 'shoulders are slumped from carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders'. It's redundant, Matt. You could say his shoulders were slumped from carrying the weight of the world on them or some other version of that. Shoulders, then shoulders again only a few words down the line. Just doesn't work.
And spelling one-syllable words incorrectly really makes people think that you're not worth reading, even if the words you spell correctly are. You ask how did the doctor 'loose' his license and you say the character hops 'of' the table. Obviously, it should have been 'lose' and 'off'. If a person is reading along and there's any flow, it's knocked sideways when he/she runs across such a glaring clinker.
And you should really be careful of using quotation marks to enclose anything but speech. "Homeless Man" should be 'Homeless Man' and "Police" should be 'Police'.
Anyway, just a few things that jumped right out at me. Your chances of implementing your ideas would be, I truly believe, far better if you cleaned up all the little things that are so blatant.
Sorry if I offended. I swear to you that I have only the very best of intentions.
It's a perfectly nice e-mail. And he's right (except the part about the quotation marks). I'm not mad at the guy, really.
I'm angry at myself for making these mistakes in the first place. Well, not really "in the first place." Everyone screws up on their first draft. I, for instance, have this retarded habit of typing "the" rather than "they" or "them," with frightening regularity. It's gotten to the point where I use the search function to find every instance of "the," just to be sure I didn't screw up.
But those other mistakes? I should definitely have caught them. "Loose" for "lose" is probably a typo, but I should have noticed it one of the eight hundred times I read and edited the script.
And it's not even a long sample! In ten pages, he found five errors. (He thinks he found six, but whatever.) Back when I was a script reader, I had a basic rule that, if I found two mistakes on the first page, or five mistakes in the first ten pages, I would throw the script out. If a writer can't learn basic grammar, he almost certainly hasn't learned story structure.
In other words, I would have thrown out my own script.
read my blogzzz! LOL
Current mood: happy
Category: Life
That's how my friend says I promote my blog on my website. And it's true.
It's a new year, and I decided for one of my resolutions, I should try to blog every day. I have clearly failed already, since I didn't post yesterday.
So, what's going on in my life?
I'm trying to start a writing group. I've gotten a lot of responses, which is a blessing and a curse. I'm trying to separate those who don't know basic grammar from those who simply haven't had their break, yet. This is harder than you might think.
Also, I'm getting closer to shooting my next short film, called the Runner. We'll be filming at the end of the month. The problem is, there's a key scene wherein the heroine swims laps in a swimming pool. I wrote this movie in August; it's now January. I don't think the actress wants to go in the pool anymore...
I entered the Slamdance Horror writing competition. They just posted the top 100 of 600 entries.
I was not on this list, which included such amazing scripts as "2gether 4ever," "Bride of Christ ... Bride of Frankenstein!," "The Bum, The Whore, And The Hitman," "Feedin' the Freezer," "Porn Star Zombies," "Thrill Killers," "Yacht Zombie Christmas - A Lesbian's Worst Nightmare," and "The Zombie Diaries."
Where do you get your news?
Current mood: confused
Category: News and Politics
You know The Daily Show, right? It's a fake news show that mocks real news. Pretty funny, usually.
Anyway, some poll or other showed that a large portion of their audience gets their news solely from The Daily Show.
Jon Stewart, the host, along with various other writers on the show, object to this idea regularly. They say that the audience wouldn't get the show if they didn't already know the news. Basically, their theory seems to be, the news is the setup for the joke, and their show is the punchline.
But I don't think that's true. People know how a joke is structured. They can tell when Stewart is going for a laugh (especially since they have a live audience), and then work backwards to the source of the joke.
For instance, a friend of mine once justified his downloading of music by saying, "I'm not going to buy Belinda Carlisle's Greatest Hits just so I can listen to 'Heaven is a Place on Earth."
Now, if you just stopped me on the street and asked who Belinda Carlisle was before I heard this joke, I would have no idea. Maybe I could guess she was a musician, but even that's iffy.
But based on that joke, I can tell, one, that she wrote (or at least performed) "Heaven is a Place on Earth," and two, she probably doesn't have a large number of other good songs.
Couldn't this carry over to an entire half hour of comedy? I think so.
I just received this e-mail from my wife, who is not American:
"I asked Connie what sort of food they had for Thanksgiving. She said yams with marshmallows. i laughed 'cause I thought she was kidding. Apparently she was serious."
People in Los Angeles aren't used to weather. Atmospheric events of any kind are treated with fear and dread. If it's not 85° and sunny, they just don't know what to do with themselves.
And usually this is fine, since it is sunny nine months a year. But on days when it's not, like today, there's trouble. Freeway-crawling, takes-you-twenty-extra-minutes-to-get-to-work kind of trouble.
Granted, this morning's fog looked like this:
But still, it's fog. It won't hurt you. And I promisethere's nothing out there. Please, drive faster than seventeen miles per hour.
Currently
reading
:
Lies, Inc.: A Novel
By
Philip K. Dick
Release date: 09 March, 2004
This movie is going to be either terribly wonderful, or wonderfully terrible.
It looks like the writers thought, "Hey, what if Luke Skywalker worked in an office, instead of a farm? And instead of a light saber, he had a gun."
And then the director said, "Yeah! And let's give Morgan Freeman the Obi Wan Kenobi part!"
Also, isn't it customary to explain why the hell a movie is called what it's called in the trailer? I mean, couldn't they find something at least a little more specific than "Wanted"?
Currently
reading
:
Lies, Inc.: A Novel
By
Philip K. Dick
Release date: 09 March, 2004
Story Telling
Current mood: annoyed
Category: Life
Some people don't know how to tell a story.
And that's okay. It's not a moral failing. It just means your talents lie elsewhere. Probably.
But if you're going to tell me you're a "writer," and you still can't tell a story? Well, then I'm annoyed. (As you might guess, this happens more often than I'd like.)
Last week, for example. A work acquaintance and I were discussing various celebrities we've seen or met (as you sometimes do in L.A.), and Nick Nolte came up. I told my friend that I'd met Nolte once. He said he had a Nick Nolte story, too, but I should go first.
So, I launched into my Nick Nolte story, which goes something like this:
"The company I was working for had produced a movie starring Nick Nolte. We were in post production, and Nick had to do some ADR. Now, of course, celebrities can't drive themselves anywhere, but the company I worked for was too cheap to hire a professional driver. Hanging from the lowest rung of the Hollywood ladder as I was, it fell to me to pick up Mr. Nolte and deposit him at the recording facility.
"I didn't work for the company during the actual shoot, so I'd never met Nolte at this point. But I've heard stories, as I'm sure you have. Plus, several people enjoyed regaling this poor PA with horror stories from the shoot. For instance, Nick regularly showed up on the set wearing only pajamas with a hole in the crotch. And no underwear.
"The nicest thing anybody would say came from my fellow PA, who put his arm around my shoulders and said, 'Well, at least it's not Gary Busey.'
"Needless to say, I was a little nervous on my way to Mr. Nolte's house.
"I pulled up, went to the door, and rang the bell. Nolte answered the door himself, fully dressed. So far, so good. He introduced himself, I introduced myself, and we hopped in the car.
"We made small talk about traffic and weather and so forth. I mentioned I was from the Midwest, and he said he was, as well, so we chatted about that, too. All in all, it was very pleasant.
"And then I got lost. I don't know why, but Culver City isn't laid out on a grid, like most cities. It looks more like the streets were designed from a tangram box. It's like M.C. Escher was on the city planning board.
"Anyway, I got turned around and flustered, and I'd couldn't figure out where the hell I was on the map. I was afraid that if I stopped and asked for directions, I'd run into a little muppet who'd tell me, 'Don't go that way. It leads directly to the studio!'
"So, I'm screwed. Not only am I lost and I'm late, I've got the bat-shittingest crazy motherfucker in Hollywood in my back seat.
"I think he must have realized I was lost as I flipped through the Thomas Guide like Number 5 needing input. He asked where we were, and I admitted I had no idea. He told me to hand over the map, and proceeded to give turn by turn directions. We took a bunch of side streets, and managed to get there only five minutes late.
"As he got out of the car, I apologized for getting lost. He told me not to worry about it, everybody gets lost sometimes. Then he thanked me. And he even remembered my name.
"And that's my Nick Nolte story. He didn't flip out or go nuts. He didn't kick me in the head, or pee on me while doing coke off a hooker's ass. He didn't do anything! What the fuck's up with that? I wanted a story that involved the phrase, 'I'm sorry, Mr. Nolte, I don't know where to score an eight ball.' Instead, I get a nice, normal guy, who understood that we all get lost sometimes. Damn it!"
My friend laughed, enjoying the story. So, I ask him to tell me his Nick Nolte story. As best as I can recall, this is how it went:
"My wife and I were shopping for a new home. Our realtor showed us a really big house. The basement had a huge, brass-covered dance floor. The bedroom had a huge ceiling, and it even had a basketball hoop. The realtor asked us if we knew whose house this was. We didn't. He said, 'Nick Nolte's.'"
And that was it. That was his... "story."
Let's compare the two for a moment.
Mine has a clear structure. First, I establish the expectation that Nick Nolte is a batshit-crazy motherfucker. This is fairly easy for the audience to accept, I think. Then, I contrast this expectation with Nolte's actual behavior, which was quite pleasant. Hopefully, at this point, the audience is assuming that my initial impression is only a set-up, so that whatever nutty thing happens next will seem even nuttier by comparison. Finally, I undermine this expectation by revealing that Mr. Nolte was, in fact, quite pleasant. Then, I throw in a topper, by acting indignant that Nick Nolte wasn't a batshit-crazy motherfucker, which humorously contrasts with the reaction most normal people would have, i.e. "Thank God Nick Nolte wasn't a batshit-crazy motherfucker."
Now that I've dissected the frog that is my anecdote, let's look at my friend's. He went to a house. It was owned by Nick Nolte. That's it. Period. The end. Freeze-frame, star-wipe to credits.
What the hell? That's not a story! It's not even a series of events. It's an event (looking for a house), a physical description of the locale (a basketball hoop in the bedroom? my stars!), and a brief backstory (the house was owned by Nick Nolte). Whoopedy fuck.
And this guy claims to be a screenwriter! Argh! What is wrong with people? Do you not realize that you're here for my amusement? Amuse me, damnit, or shut up and listen to people who know what they're doing.
I was skimming Variety.com, and I found a link to this blog entry criticizing Variety's odd use of language. This is the example he cites as abuse of the English language:
"The rookie self-destribbed indie pic, helmed and lensed by Alan Smithee, is geared for upscale fest auds and urban markets, particularly in Euro zones west and east. But the protags are too high-hat for wider BO appeal. Most perfs are boffo and tech contributions are on the money."
As I read the paragraph, I kept waiting for something incomprehensible to pop out at me. By the time I got to the end of the quote, I realized, "Oh, God, I'm one of them."
On a side note, I find it funny that he predicted a headline to read, "Hax Nix Variety Lingo," when, in fact, the response was, "Crix Nix Variety's Tix." Ironically, that headline is both a cleverer parody, and less defensive (in that they refer to him as a critic, rather than a hack).
angry
sad
happy
confused
chipper
cold
cheerful
annoyed
distressed