Lancelot Link Thursday

Lancelot Link Thursday! For those of you who want to get Clyde from those Clint Eastwood monkey movies a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame, here are some articles about screenwriting and the biz that may be of interest to you. Brought to you by that suave and sophisticated secret agent...




1) Help me spread the word! Click Here and add ScriptSecrets.Net or this blog!

2) America's favorite DVD is... This Film.

3) Great FX, but what about the *story*?

4) Worst Movie Trailers Ever!

5) One man's Treasure is another man's Trash.

6) The 3D Screenplay - what the heck is it?

7) Today's Car Chase:


- Bill

IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Subtle Screenwriting? - is that even possible?
Dinner: Strange Whole Foods Tofu Stroganoff & rice.
Bicycle: Nope.
Movies: TALES FROM THE SCRIPT - a great doc on screenwriters! Funny and frightening. Check it out!

Showbiz Expo & Pot Expo

I have no idea when the first Showbiz Expo was - and I’m too lazy to do the research - but it seems like soon after I arrived in Los Angeles 20 years ago, I went to my first Showbiz Expo. The old Expos were at the LA Convention Center and filled the place with the latest film equipment - with giant camera cranes in the parking lot and the latest 35mm cameras from Panavision indoors. Every company that did something related to the film biz was there - and when Script Magazine put out their first actual magazine version, we had a booth to announce it. In fact, in 1998 my book debuted at Showbiz Expo - I did autographs at the Hollywood Scriptwriter newsletter booth and at Script’s booth.

I used to love going to the show, often with my friend Jim, and we’d look at the cameras and cranes and steady-cam rigs and all of the other cool stuff and talk about how we would use it in *our* film. We got on all of the mailing lists, and knew which equipment company had the best deals this month, and what new gizmos came out between Expos. And there were some cool gizmos! A remote control helicopter with a camera attached that could get an aerial shot swooping down from the heavens to a house window... and then fly through the window and down that hallways to find the actor in some back room of the house. All one shot! There were guys who built miniatures, there were guys who did creature make up, there were stunt people and studios with standing sets and prop houses where you could rent a full sized version of the Lunar Excursion Module from the Apollo missions as well as all of the space suits that go with it. Expo was like a candy store for movie kids.

The problem for me ended up being Script Magazine became successful - as one of those first writers, and a guy who lived in Los Angeles, I became elected to run the booth. At first it was fun, but after a couple of years I was chained to that damned booth and didn’t get to see the show anymore. I do a slow burn kind of thing - I start out being nice and cooperative, then grumble a little under my breath, and finally just get pissed off. Script began assigning some of the other writers to time in the booth, and that was great because I could finally wander around the candy store again. And around that time, Showbiz Expo just stopped happening.

Attendance had been declining over the years - that damned internet became the place where people looked at all of the new equipment - and finally they just closed their doors.

Then, after almost a decade... they came back from the dead.

NEW EXPO

At the end of last year during that week between London and what was supposed to be Hong Kong, was Screenwriting Expo. I thought about doing classes for about a minute - then realized I’d be jet lagged and asleep on my feet. Which I was. But I decided to stop by and hang out for a couple of hours because some of you people would be there and it’s a chance to say hello in person. Except in my jet lagged state I took the subway and then rode my bike to the Convention Center... then followed the Expo signs inside to... Showbiz Expo! Hey, it came back! That’s not where I was going, but I was there so I figured I’d check it out. It was much smaller than before, but that gives it room to grow, right? After doing a walk through I goty back on my bike and rode to the hotel where they were holding the *Screenwriting* Expo and may have talked to some of you.

Only a few months later, they held the Showbiz Expo again, and I went *on purpose*.

Early registration is *free* - which is how it was in the good old days. The difference is that the good old days was a postcard you filled out, now you go online where you fill out *endless* forms. There is the main registration form... then you must go through every single class and seminar and panel and possible upcharge and check whether you want it or not. Plus - would you like a booth? Plus - would you like to display your headshot? Plus - would you like to put promotional materials in the swagbag? Plus - would you like to sign up for their online services listing for $5 a month? Plus....

After filling all of that out, I expected a free burrito or egg rolls or something. But I was into the event for free, so that’s cool.

A few days before the event I start getting robo-dialed pre-recorded reminders that it was coming up. Um, okay.

My friend Kris talked about car pooling, but parking is around $10 (it was actually $12) and I suggested the subway because it takes you a couple blocks away for $2.50 round trip. He wanted to drive, so I did a bike/subway thing so that I could ride the couple of blocks... and called Kris once I got there to tell him that the event was kind of small.

I walk into the Convention Center, following a crowd, and ended up at... some sort of Pot Expo! The main West Hall was Pot Fest 2010 or whatever... there were people in *bong costumes*! Welcome to California! Wait, I thought Showbiz Expo was in West Hall? Well, it was in the little room. I go to the small hall where I’m sent to a line for pre-registered. I am always prepared - and have my computer print out with the bar code in my hand. There is this guy behind me - and old guy - who starts a conversation with some people in the section of the line to our right - ahead of us by a turn. Then he hops the rope, and is now ahead of me. I swear he did not know those people. Anyway - he gets to the front of the line a turn before me, and has to search his pockets for his print out. That kind of stuff pisses me off. Sorry, I feel better now that I’ve vented.

Anyway, I get to the front of the line and the guy scans my print out and tells me to go to computer terminal number 7. I tell him I have preregistered, he says he knows, go to computer #7. I go to computer #7 and there is my name and info... but I have to go through every single class and seminar and everything else again and say I don’t want to take them. Hey, maybe I’ve changed my mind, right?

Most of the classes are aimed at actors, but there are two screenwriting things - one on pitching and one on The Modern Spec Script... which claims that NORTH BY NORTHWEST was a spec. Um, no. Assignment. An *original* screenplay, but not a spec. When I see stuff like that I worry that if they get that wrong, what else are they getting wrong? I again decide not to take the class and find out what they get wrong.
After going through all of those pages a second time, I hit the button and am sent to a printer station where they give me my badge. This is worse than the DMV!

I show my badge and go in... and it’s small. In fact, this was the little annex room they had all of the screenwriting vendors in back in the old days. Where I was stuck for 8 hours every day for 3 days a decade ago. Now, this room is everything. In fact, it’s kind of less than everything - because the back of the room is a bunch of empty tables and a couple of bored dudes behind one of those rolling hotel bars. Oh, and behind them there is a curtain with some tables set up for networking. Networking you have to pay for (one of the checkboxes on the computer).

Most of the stuff seems designed for actors - which is okay. There was a “headshot row” - the right aisle was a table where you could pay to put your headshots and every acting school in Los Angeles (there are a million of them - if you know any actors, you know they take class after class after class and talk about them constantly. “Have you done Meisner?” “Yes, from six different instructors. It really came in handy when I did my scenes study class.” “I’m going to do one of those when I finish this on camera audition class.” “I think next up for me is Stage Movement.” “I did Camera Movement, do you think it’s much different?” “Of course, why else would they have two classes?” The class pushing the hardest seemed to be The Science Of Acting, which had a book and everything.

On the left side of the room they had an Indie Film Aisle where you could rent a TV/DVD combo showing your movie or movie trailer with postcards in front. Who these post cards were for, I do not know. Hard to imagine a film distrib wandering past, seeing the trailer for one of these films, and wanting to buy it. This seemed like a crazy longshot kind of thing. Why not find some better way to bring filmmakers and distribs together?

Movie Magic and Final Draft & Script and Writers Book Store were there, but that was about it for screenwriters. There were a few equipment places with some cool steady cam type rigs and some lights and a grip truck. Plus the most luxurious porta-poties I have ever seen - there are people in New York with apartments smaller than these toilets. Plus a Winnebago screening room conversion and a place that makes fake snow that had ice skating chicks demonstrating and next to it a bunch of confetti cannons that were getting stuff all over the floor that janitors were sweeping up. Oh, no carpet on the floor - I guess that would have cost too much. I did a couple of rounds, talked to Zach at the Script/Final Draft booth, then went to the keynote speech...

Which was not a keynote speech at all, but a panel on the joys of voice over acting. I split after about 20 minutes.

The keynote speech was held in the same room where they had a free film fest, which I did not go to. Maybe I should have. Maybe that was the great thing at Expo.

The guy running a booth in a T shirt with his guy hanging out - and I mean really hanging out - was not the great thing at Expo.

I bumped into a fellow writer and talked shop, then left.

The Pot Expo was still packed as I walked out of the Convention Center, unlocked my bike and rode back to the subway to Universal City...

NEXT EXPO?

There’s nothing wrong with Showbiz Expo targeting actors - that seems like a good way to build it up. But they need to lose trying to sell classes to the people who already decided not to take them when they preregistered. They also need to spend some more time thinking about things that are not actors. I’m sure a director of photography who went thought it was mostly a waste of time. Just like with a screenplay, you have to know your audience. If you are writing a script for a niche audience, it needs to focus on that niche and what they want to see in a film... and also has to be something that can be made on a budget low enough that it can return a profit from that niche. If you are going after a broad audience your script can cost more to produce because more people will be interetsed in paying to see it... but you have to know what attracts that broad audience and provide that in your screenplay. The problem with Expo is that is was supposed to appeal to a broad audience (it was at the Convention Center and wasn't called "Actor's Expo") but seemed to mostly be targeting actors. That's like writing a big budget screenplay that only appeals to a limited audience... good luck selling that one.

As a screenwriter, I think they need to look closer at their classes and make sure they get someone who knows what a spec script is teaching them. (Hey, I’m available.) They can also find something to bring in screenwriters - something similar to their Headshot Aisle and their Indie Film Aisle. I know there are filmmakers out there looking for scripts - that kind of stuff pops up on Craigslist - why not find some way to do that at Expo? A variation on the pitch events at most screenwriting events, but one designed to bring indie filmmakers and writers together? And how about some hands-on classes for filmmakers - you have the companies with new equipment in the dealer's room - why not have them give a 1 hour class on using the equipment they sell? Same thing, by the way, for the screenwriting programs - how about a Final Draft class? Have The Writers Store round up a panel of folks with books who can do autographs before and after? Make the screenwriting elements into an *event* that can not be missed! Again - like a screenplay: you don't want to write a script that would become a movie that people will wait until it comes out on DVD to see, you want to write that script that they must see on opening weekend... and will stand in a stupid line and maybe even fill out the same damned computer form a second time.

And, just like with a screenplay, you have to establish stuff before you can pay it off. Maybe New Expo needs to build itself up for a few years before they attack you with a million upcharges and going through the forms twice? Have these vendor classes be FREE. If they asked me, I might do a free class as a way to distribute postcards for my website (which I brought - but they had no junk table to put them on). If you are selling the new version of a screenwriting software, wouldn't doing a class that shows all of the new do-dads be a great way to sell a few programs? This would bring people into the event, where you would have some classes you'd have to pay for - which would be more heavily attended because you have more people.

Why not run Expo like a movie - with department heads in charge of each job and have them come up with the coolest classes and contests and everything else that might attract people to the Expo? It seemed like this whole thing was run by actors who had no idea what a screenwriter or crew member or key creative person would want to see at an Expo... so they had some odd stuff that seemed a bit bogus.

And the keynote address? Um, that is all about star power. Also, all about a topical subject. Voice Over Acting is neither. Again, it's like writing a screenplay where the lead is boring. You want the most exciting and interesting character you can come up with, because people will come to see the movie if the character is cool, even if they are not played by a star. Hit Girl from KICK ASS is a good example. So, what is going on in the industry right now and who is the most famous person you can find to talk about that subject?

As with everything else, good idea but lacking a bit in execution.

Hey, it was free (except for the $2.50 subway ticket).

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Character In Conflict - why you need your protagonist to suffer... and the last ROCKY movie.
Dinner: Subway Black Forest Ham - one of those low fat ones.
Bicycle: Shorter than yesterday, but okay.
Pages: I did all kinds of writing yesterday (including this blog entry) and today it's like pulling teeth. Day isn't over, and maybe things will start to click.

William Castle Noir Flicks

Somewhere near the beginning of the month, the American Cinematheque at the Egyptian started Noir City - a couple of weeks of Film Noir movies that were not on DVD and some that were not on any sort of video. The idea is to find the obscure gems that people may not have seen before, and show them on the big screen for a couple of weeks. I planned on seeing a whole bunch of them, but ended up seeing only 4 (between WIND & THE LION and some new films and writing on an assignment). So here are the first two...



HOLLYWOOD STORY (1951) directed by William Castle, written by Frederick Kohner & Fred Brady. Richard Conte plays a producer who decides to make a film about a 20 year old unsolved murder in Hollywood - a famous film director who had no shortage of enemies. He interviews the suspects and finds new clues and... the killer keeps trying to kill him. But who is the killer? Will he find out before the killer snuffs him? The victim 20 years ago: A big time producer who was involved in a love triangle. The story is based on a real Hollywood murder - William Desmond Taylor who was killed in 1922, still unsolved! The cast of suspects is great - hottie Julia Adams (CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON) is the woman in the love triangle's daughter (and Conte’s love interest) - and there's a great LAURA-like painting on her mom in the victim's office, Jim Backus is an agent, Richard Egan is a homicide detective, Henry Hull (LIFEBOAT) is a once famous screenwriter who now lives in a shack and is constantly drunk, Fred Clark is a producer who once worked with the victim, and there are relatives of the victim and studio guards who sleep through the shifts and about a dozen movie stars making cameos as themselves (possible suspects!) including Joel McCrea.

The cool thing about the story is that almost everyone involved in making the movie *about* the murder is a *suspect* in the murder. Hollywood is a small world, and when you hire the victim’s favorite screenwriter (Hull) to write the screenplay, because he *is* research as well as a writer; you not only end up with a guy who knows every detail of the crime, you end up with a guy who had all kinds of motive to kill the victim. Every single person hired to make this film is a suspect! This concept could be used for a fake documentary film or for a movie about an America’s Most Wanted kind of TV show that stumbles into the middle of the crime while investigating it. The more Conte digs into the case, the more the real killer (one of the people he is working with to make the film) tries to kill him. Nice little film - cheap to make because they shot it at the studio. Not on VHS, not on DVD.

Between the films, Julie Adams (that hot chick from CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON) did Q&A - and was filled with great stories about the film. Her memory is better than mine! And, for however old she is, she looked great. She is still a working actress, doing a bunch of TV work now (she’s on LOST in flashbacks). She was at MONSTERPALOOZA a few days later as part of the CREATURE group.



Next up, UNDERTOW (1949) - also directed by William Castle, screenplay by Arthur Horman and Lee Loeb. Kind of a riff on THE FUGITIVE movie made decades later. Scott Brady plays a guy framed for murder in Chicago who has cops chasing him night and day and must find the real killer before the cops find him. Because the cops have staked out all of his friends' houses, the only one who can help him is this gal he met on the plane to Chicago (cute Peggy Dow) - a complete stranger. This creates kind of a THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR kidnapping thing... and lots of suspense. Brady is an ex-mob guy who is now a legit businessman in Reno, but is in love with the Mob Boss’ daughter (Dorothy Hart in the femme fatale role). He’s going back to propose to her and take her back to Reno with him... but the mob boss gets killed and he gets blamed. Bruce Bennett (from every movie ever made - he played Tarzan and was in TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE and DARK PASSAGE and MILDRED PIERCE and co-starred with Elvis in LOVE ME TENDER and one of his last films was Terrence Malick’s DEADHEAD MILES) plays the cop chasing him - and much like in THE FUGITIVE, if Brady can convince the cop that he is innocent, they will start looking at clues that might lead to the real killer. There is a *great* scene where Brady shows up at Bennett’s house, holds a gun on him in his basement den, and tries to convince him that he’s innocent... while Bennett’s son watches through a window... tells his mother that dad is being held at gunpoint by a desperado... and mom tells him to quit making up stories and get ready for bed. The kid *knows* dad is in trouble and can’t get anyone to believe him... so he grabs his cap gun and goes to rescue his dad. Lots of chases and double crosses and a great plot - part of the story revolves around Brady being kidnaped by the (unseen) killer and shot in order to match the actual wounds the real killer sustained in the crime - all of the evidence created against him by the real killer is insurmountable. The film is full of twists and shot on location in Reno and Chicago - the Chi-town location work is fantastic - all kinds of great local landmarks wove into the story.

The amazing thing about both of these films is that they were low budget throw aways, but really well made, clever, well acted, and are better than some of the big budget crap that is released today. Both were directed by William Castle, who would become famous later in his career for gimmick horror films like THE TINGLER. He was a creative and competent director who knew how to squeeze a buck so that you never knew the film you were watching was made on the cheap. Neither of these films looked low budget - and UNDERTOW looks bigger budget than many of the films I’ve seen from the same period that cost a whole bunch more.

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: No Script Before Its Time - is your script ready to be sent out?
Dinner: Some sort of bunless burger thing at Dennys.
Bicycle: Medium ride to a far off Starbucks, then to another, then back home (which hasn't happened as I type this).
Pages: Finished a new draft on the assignment treatment and also wrote a one pager for Cannes.

Even More Zombies!

Because some people thought the previous blog entry ZOMBIE PROJECTS! was misleading, here is a new film with actual zombies that you may not have heard of. (You may not have heard of the movie, not: you may not have heard of these zombies... because you may recognize some of them as your friends... before they turned.)



- Bill

Zombie Projects!

So, today I want to talk about Zombie Projects. No... not projects about zombies like my super-cool zom-com JUST BEFORE DAWN about a guy afraid to commit to his girlfriend and then a weird outbreak of “space herpes” makes everyone ultra-horny... after it kills them... and now our relationship-phobic hero is forced to live with his girlfriend forever or deal with the horny dead.

I mean those dead projects that unexpectedly come back to life.

Last week I had two long dead projects suddenly come back to life. One was a script I wrote a few years ago that was shelved... I thought forever... then the producer called to set up a meeting. Seems he bumped into a distrib looking for a specific type of genre film - and danged if my old script doesn’t more or less fit what they are looking for. I suspect at the meeting he will want to see if I will make it more like what they want, and I did a quick re-read of the script, and I think a couple of cosmetic changes will do the trick. I had completely written this one off as dead back when they shelved it.

The other project is something I’ve been pushing. Three years ago I had a meeting with a producer on a studio sequel project. I worked out a detailed pitch - which basically means I did an outline for the script and figured out characters and scenes and all kinds of stuff. I put a great deal of work into it behind the scenes... and then the whole project crashed and burned. Well, a producer who has never bought anything from me but has read a couple of my scripts just landed at that studio after leaving Fox, so I thought I’d e-mail them and pitch this 3 year old project to them. They liked it, and are taking it to the studio. If the studio likes it, maybe they’ll hire me to write it. It’s a sequel to a hit movie that spawned a TV show - but couldn’t star the original star (unless he became a zombie). So it’s kind of a sequel/reboot kind of thing. Two projects I thought were dead have come back to life.

Now, both may be dead by the end of this week - or the end of May. There are a bunch of people who can say “no” - and that’s even their job: to make sure the studio doesn’t waste money. But if they always said no there would be no movies playing in the multiplex, so they have to say “yes” sometimes. Usually when Will Smith or some other movie star is attached. I don’t have any movie stars attached to either project.

But the lesson in all of this - even if both are dead again by the end of May - is that nothing is ever dead for sure in Hollywood. Though Quentin Tarantino is famous for resurrecting stars with dead careers in his movies, there are plenty of stars whose careers came back even without being in a QT movie. One of my favorite directors, John Frankenheimer, had his career dry up by the mid 60s after making a bunch of great films. Cannon Pictures, makers of those AMERICAN NINJA movies and Chuck Norris movies hired him to direct 52 PICKUP, based on an Elmore Leonard novel that Cannon had already made once with Rock Hudson in the lead. This time around, they put Roy Schieder in the lead... and Frankenheimer hit it out of the park. Though the film wasn’t a big financial hit, critics loved it and people began hiring Frankenheimer again. His second life. That was when he made this little film called RONIN which you may have seen. Writers also drop off the face of the earth and then return - my friend John Hill who wrote QUIGLEY DOWN UNDER and is one of a handful of pro writers I know who do consulting, says that every once in a while a writer needs to reinvent themselves. In a way, we have it the easiest of everyone in Hollywood - an actor has to be cast, a director has to be hired, but we can just write ourselves a job. If our careers die for some reason, we can write a bunch of new spec scripts and go from “What ever happened to that guy?” to “Have you read the new script by that guy? It rocks!”

And our old scripts - sitting on their shelves or sitting on ours - always have a chance at coming back from the dead. If you have an old script that doesn’t work, you can always rewrite it so that it does work. I’m always looking for the solutions to scripts that didn’t work, and when I figure out some way to make them work - they get a rewrite. Sometimes it’s an easy fix, sometimes it’s a complete overhaul where everything changes. But no script is completely dead - you become a better writer as time goes on, and even those first couple of stinky scripts can be rewritten to remove the smell. In that out of print book of mine I tell the story of DIE HARD... which began as the shelved sequel to a film from 1968. Back in 1968 the star didn’t want to make the sequel... and Fox shelved the project. Over a dozen years later, Joel Silver was looking for a property the studio already owned to make into a film... and found DIE HARD (called NOTHING LASTS FOREVER at the time). A dead script is resurrected!

So, you don’t just have one chance - you have millions of them. That script that may not work today may be the perfect script for 5 years from now. Sometimes timing is the problem. Sometimes finding the right star is the problem. Sometimes that script that nobody likes in 2010 is just ahead of its time and needs the world to catch up with it. And sometimes we can’t figure out how to make the story work until a couple of years after we’ve finished it. But no script is even really dead.

Recently someone on a message board was celebrating being read and rejected by a big producer at Warner Bros - and that is totally the right attitude. Because we do not have crystal balls and can not read minds, so we have no idea whether that script will be the one that the development executive can’t get out of his head... and a couple of years later he’s working for some other company and tries to get them interested in that script. Things like that happen all of the time.

Just as these two projects of mine have seem to come back to life, your dead projects may come back, too. So here’s to your zombie projects! Hope they come back!

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: They Gave It Away! - they are going to show all of the good parts of your script in the trailer... so you need even more good parts!
Dinner: Some storefront Teriyaki place - Salmon and brown rice.
Bicycle: Did a bike/bus combo on Thursday to Westwood to have lunch with a fellow writer and complain about the biz, did a medium ride on Friday, Saturday took the subway to the Convention Center for Showbiz Expo - more on that later.

Movies: THE LOSERS... okay, but either the direction or the script was downright unemotional. I suspect the direction, because there were some okay twists in the script that seemed like they might have been designed to make us feel something - yet the direction distanced everything in a shaky cam / Michael Bay "people are products and this is a commercial" camera placement. When shots should have been some form of POV or over the shoulder to put us in the character's shoes we get these quick cut externals that are outside of the action instead of inside the action. Jason Patric plays a psycho ultra-evil villain from some 1980s movie who kills people for making simple mistakes - but doesn't seem to be smart enough to realize that now no one is doing that task. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is a freakin' movie star - the American Jason Statham - he kicks ass and *is* tough without having to act it. Zoe Saldana is hot and kicks ass - there's a cool shot in the film where she is on a rooftop with a rocket launcher that is ultra sexy. Chris Evans plays a geek... who can run faster than anyone else in the film - great semi-parkour scenes. Columbus Short is the soul and heart of the team - he worries that he will miss the birth of his first child. Oscar Jaenada is the cool, quiet, sniper who never says anything... unless you touch his hat. Idris Elba is the effing badass of the group - when he's not beating the crap out of bad guys, he's beating the crap out of team members. The characters are well defined, which is why I suspect the direction was the problem. Lots of big action scenes, some good humor... but it just feels flat. The plot is kind of stupid. This ends up being the studio version of a B movie - grab a six pack go in with low expectations and enjoy it on DVD.

Lancelot Link Thursday

Lancelot Link Thursday! For those of you who go to the cinema for the cuisine (popcorn is a vegetable, right?), here are some articles about screenwriting and the biz that may be of interest to you. Brought to you by that suave and sophisticated secret agent...



1) South Park Fatwa - Matt & Trey on Muslim hit list!

2) Hitler parodies removed from YouTube... and this is what Hitler had to say about it...


3) James Cameron: "I have a deal with the studio and it goes like this: Any movie I make that makes over a billion dollars goes out without a bunch of crap trailers for your other movies." The whole Cameron interview.

4) 94 year-old actor Eli Wallach still loves going to work every day.

5) Canadian Writers Guild Awards.

6) Writers vs. Writers - the most clever critics!

7) Will Smith returns in MEN IN BLACK 3?

8) Will Smith returns in ID4 2 and ID4 3?

10) Ninja Slugs! Finally, the perfect role for pudgy ex-action stars!

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: The Best Idea Wins! - you don't want your story idea upstaged by some throw away idea in some scene.
Dinner: City Wok - cashew chicken and brown rice.
Bicycle: Rode between the raindrops! Was lucky - rode to a NoHo Starbucks under cloudly skies and got a drop or two on me, rode back to Vent/Vine when the skies were clear, rode home when it began sprinkling again... and when I was safely home... it rained.

The Devils 8 At The New Beverly

On the same double bill as THE WIND AND THE LION exactly a week ago was THE DEVILS 8, a screenplay co-written by John Milius and one of the folks who wrote HOWARD THE DUCK... hmm. I had never done the bicycle/subway to the New Beverly Cinema before, always driven. But my thing now is to try to ride the bike everywhere possible - because that car habit is an easy one to get into. When I was at Monsterpalooza, a bunch of people who basically only see me twice a year - at Fango and Monster - mentioned that I looked like I’d lost a bunch of weight, and I probably have... but never weigh myself, and if I accidentally see myself in the mirror I look pretty much like I did the day before. So the bike thing is a good thing, and I don’t want to blow it and go back to driving a block to my corner Starbucks.




I always bike/subway to Hollywood - which is just over the hill (actually, 2.5 miles as the mole burrows through the mountain - the joys of research!) - but riding through the Cahuenga Pass is akin to Polish Roulette (which is Russian Roulette with 5 bullets and one empty chamber) - the road is ultra narrow and the cars do 40mph on hairpin corners. I have actually done that ride a couple of times and was so happy to be alive afterwards that I figured a $1.25 subway ride was probably much safer. I’d be going to the same station - Hollywood/Highland - then zip over to La Brea, and zoom down to the Fairfax District. That always seems like a long way, because usually it is bumper to bumper traffic. I had no idea how long it would take me, but I’ve done some epic bike rides lately and I’m in okay shape. I might end up tired by the time I got home, but you want to be tired before going to bed, right?

Well, my first problem was at the Universal subway station - it was a complete mess because the North Hollywood station had some power problem or something, and *everyone* had to get on and off at Universal. Add to that, it was around rush hour. After fighting that crowd, and a bunch of confusion, we zipped through the mountain those 2.5 miles to Hollywood... and I was running a little behind schedule. I still needed to eat dinner before the movies or I’d be eating a New Beverly hot dog with popcorn as my veggie.

But the Fairfax District really isn’t that far - I zoomed past traffic and got there in no time. I grabbed some BBQ pork fried rice at the strip-mall Chinese place across the street from the cinema and watched the people line up for the movie. All 8 of them. Hmm, 8 for THE DEVILS 8? Nine after I 8. A few more people joined the others milling around in front of the cinema, including Clu Gulager - who is a regular at the cinema. I know Clu from the Thursday Night Drinking Group (which I have not attended for *months*!) and had just seen him a couple of days earlier on the RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD panel at Monsterpalooza, and a couple of days before that at Duane’s double feature. I am kind of starstruck by Clu, because he was one of the stars of THE VIRGINIAN when I was a kid. Whenever I see him, the VIRGINIAN theme starts playing in my head. Here’s the opening titles from the show.

WIND AND THE LION & DEVILS 8

Though I own WIND AND THE LION on DVD, it’s one of my favorite films so I want to see it on the big screen again. The problem with DVD is that you just can’t see old movies on the big screen anymore. THE DEVILS 8 is *not* on DVD at all, so the only way to see that film is to head over to the New Beverly Cinema or head over to Spudic’s Video Emporium in Van Nuys and buy a copy on VHS - Spudics is one of the only stores specializing in VHS movies. If you ever want to see one of the hundreds of movies that have yet to make it to DVD (think about it - AFRICAN QUEEN, one of the most popular films of all time, *just* got a DVD release!) head on over to Spudics and see if he has it on VHS.

Well, more people filter in, and the cinema has a respectable audience. The row behind me is 100% WIND AND THE LION virgins - none have ever seen the movie. It’s a *whole row* of people who know each other, and just before the movie starts a guy around my age and his wife (or girlfriend, or nurse, or whatever) takes the last two empty seats in the row - they are the reason why all of these other people are there. The guy played the boy in the movie!

The print of WIND AND THE LION was pretty good considering it was one of the original prints from the 1970s... for all I know, the exact same print I watched when I saw the film on opening day way back then. The film still holds up, and is still exciting and beautiful and romantic and made me want to sword fight during intermission.

All of the trailers between the films were from other movies John Milius wrote - and that’s the great thing about the New Beverly - this is a cinema run by movie lovers who actually know that somebody wrote that. We got to see the trailers for every single film Milius wrote, plus some other trailers for movies similar to WIND AND THE LION, including LION OF THE DESERT which was produced by the guy who produced all of the HALLOWEEN movies.

DEVILS 8

Then they started DEVILS 8... great opening scene, very much like the opening of 48 HOURS, chain gang somewhere in the South with prisoners doing backbreaking work (though, none of it made much sense - one guys was breaking rocks and another guy was throwing them in a lake! One guy was just sawing boards. But its was all hard work stuff) - then a fight breaks out between prisoners: one of them is our star Christopher George from RAT PATROL. Just like in 48 HOURS, the fight is a way for the prisoners to overpower the guards and escape. George grabs a bunch of prisoners - 8 of them - and says he has an escape route. They run through the woods, coming out at a clearing... where a huge helicopter lands! There are *military guys* with guns in the helicopter! George tells the guys not to worry - this is part of the plan. What plan?

Cool flashback to George and some hottie making out in a car when his carphone rings (when this film was made, that was sci-fi or James Bond) and it’s a mission. George has to stop making out and go to do some spy work. In this case - it’s breaking up a huge moonshine operation run by this GODFATHER-like guy named Burl, played by some fat old guy. Seems that Burl’s organization has Senators and Congressmen and Police and maybe even FBI guys on his payroll. He’s a big fish, and George is supposed to find some way to take him down.

We get out of the flashback in another cool screen-bending dissolve...

STRUCTURE FAILURE

And here’s where we begin to run into trouble. Because DEVILS 8 has some serious structure problems. Because it’s kind of a knock off of THE DIRTY DOZEN, it kind of steals the way that film worked - where about half of the film is training a bunch of anti-authority criminals to become good enough soldiers to complete the mission... and all of the conflicts involved in having a dozen guys with bad attitudes who hate each other living under the same roof. Then, the last half is the mission against the Nazis - and how it goes wrong but they still manage to blow the hell out of the place. Okay, that works for DIRTY DOZEN because the mission is complicated and the guys are a major challenge to train. But in DEVILS, even though the guys are escaped prisoners and have all kinds of conflict with each other - including racial: Henry (Robert DoQui) is pretty much hated by everyone because he’s black - there isn’t a single psycho like Telly Savalas or a real hardcase like John Cassavetes. These 8 convicts may all be lifers, but they are reasonable guys. So the conflict between them is not as intense as it is in DOZEN. Plus, the training is, well, mostly lame. They wrestle. All at once. No one is trained in karate or something, they just all wrestle. They learn to shoot guns, but it’s kind of boring target practice without any tension. They learn to drive crappy cars through a slalom course of cones - wow! Though there are some car wrecks here that really help this section of the film - there aren’t enough crashes and they aren’t very cool and they aren’t *story related*. Just a car crashing in the middle of nowhere.

This half of the movie ends with some crazy stuff - throwing grenades out of cars for no apparent reason. Well, actually, by the end of the film they will have to do this, but in the training camp it makes no sense. And there isn’t any clear set up in this that pays off in that later scene - it’s just a scene where they get to blow up garbage cans with grenades - kind of false action.

After their training is over, they go out to somewhere in the South where Burl’s moonshine gang rules the roads.

ROSS HAGEN - THIEF

And here’s the crazy part about this film - the star is Christopher George from RAT PATROL, but the great role in the film - the “lead” in a way - is Ross Hagen playing Frank Davis, ex-moonshine runner and ex-member of Burl’s Gang. Part of this may be Ross acting the hell out of his role, and part of it is that this is the most interesting character in the film once we get to moonshine country. Though Frank was an important character in the training scenes, when we get the ex-gang member back into gang country he becomes the center of the conflict. Ross has been in a couple of films I’ve written, and is one of those actors that can turn the line “How are you?” into two dozen different things - he comes to the show with interesting line readings you’d never considered or ever knew existed. He’s a great actor for low budget movies because you just hire him and he gives a good performance. He’s got a bunch of low budget films and a whole bunch of TV guest star stuff on his resume...

But in DEVILS 8 he steals the film from Christopher George.

Steals it from the star.

In order to get him to work against his old gang, George tells him that it wasn’t cops who killed his brother, it was Burl. Now, we don’t know if that’s true or not at that point, and that’s a good technique to use in a script because it turns one moment into several moments. He tells Frank (Ross) that Burl killed his brother, and Frank has to deal with being betrayed by his own gang. Then Frank wonders if George lied to him in order to get him to work against his own gang - and there are some mistrust moments. Once they get to town, Frank discovers that Burl *did* kill his brother, and this confirmation takes us back to Frank feeling betrayed... and then angry... and then grabbing a weapon and going after Burl! Which will blow the whole operation!

George’s plan to take down Burl doesn’t make any sense, but here it is: The 8 are going to hijack whisky shipments until Burl comes to them and makes a deal that they should work together, and show them where the stills are, and tell them who all of the crooked cops and politicians are. Wouldn’t it be easier for Burl to just kill them all? Oddly enough, the plan works...

Frank hooks up with his old flame Cissy (Leslie Parrish - hot) and they have that tender passionate sex that people in movies who are in love have... completely under the sheets... and then we get waist up backal nudity of Cissy as she gets out of bed and looks out the door at the beautiful view of some Southern mountain area that was really Big Bear - just a few miles from Los Angeles. A couple of scenes later, Frank and George show up at Burl’s place... and guess who the gang boss is sleeping with? Cissy! And Frank has to just take it and not do anything when the man who killed his brother is also sleeping with the woman he loves! That *situation* makes Frank the most important character in the film. On a message board someone asked why we need a character arc, and I said my usual: that I like to think of it as the “emotional conflict” rather than the character arc because it covers more ground. This is a great example of an “emotional conflict” - Frank’s character doesn’t really have much of an arc. Sure, he goes from being a convict to a guy working with the feds, and he becomes more cooperative with George, but his plan is pretty much to kill the guy who killed his brother, and that plan doesn’t change. He wants revenge, he will get revenge. No real arc, there. But he goes through all kinds of emotional hell in this film. He goes back to his home town and is ostracized and has to watch Burl put his fat hands all over the woman he loves and wants to kill the sucker but can’t because it will blow the mission. Compare Ross Hagen’s role of Frank with Christopher George’s cool spy guy who has no emotional conflicts at all, and you wonder why Chris George didn’t demand to play Frank.

Oh, somewhere along here I recognized the far actor who played Burl... as 1950s pretty boy actor Ralph Meeker (who played Mike Hammer in KISS ME DEADLY) - man, he got fat!

THE OTHER 7

While Ross Hagen is stealing the film from the star, the other guys on the team kill time until the big ending by skinny dipping with hot girls from town and getting into bar room brawls. This stuff all seems like padding - and the big structure problems is that it *is* padding - the film has prison break in scene one and a big action scene at the end and the rest is mostly filler material. Some of it is entertaining filler material, but it kind of slows down the pacing because nothing *important* is happening.

One thing I should mention are the characters of the other guys, because they are much better than most low budget exploitation flicks. Singer Fabian is one of the guys, I think the mechanic, and Ron Rifkin is one of the guys - but I have no idea which one because I did not recognize him. Rifkin is on BROTHERS & SISTERS (I have never watched that show) and was the even Sloane on ALIAS (Okay, I have watched that one) and I know him as a middle aged man... and this film was made in 1969 - it was his very first film! I have no idea which one of those young guys was Rifkin. But he may or may not have been the drunk one. One of the guys has been on the chain gang for a while and the first thing he thinks of when they escape is finding himself a drink. When they hijack Burl’s runners, he swipes some bottles for himself and gets really drunk... and becomes a problem because he’s an alcoholic working undercover as a rumrunner - and keeps getting drunk and screwing up. Except - while searching for something to drink, he spots a truck full of booze and climbs in... and the truck goes to the secret stills compound. Now he is not only so drunk he can’t stand, he has the information the team needs for that big action ending.

And we get a big action ending where that throwing hand grenades from a moving car training comes in handy, and most of the 8 die glorious deaths. But the big end action scene is much simpler than the end scene in DIRTY DOZEN and shorter, too. So where DIRTY DOZEN has that big killer action end that is at least a full third of the film, DEVILS 8 has a good action ending but not good enough to make up for the padding that has come before it. Still, they blow up 3 or 4 big stills in towers and wreck any car they have not yet wrecked.

I should mention the music - there’s a theme song that’s okay, but the score was just awful. Mike Curb was to blame. It’s kind of SMOKEY & THE BANDIT funny good old boy music, when this film is not a comedy at all. There are scenes where characters are getting *hurt* and this goofy music is playing in the background. It did not work. The theme was fine - one of those ballad things.

BIKE HOME

So, now that the film was over I had to ride my bike back - but not to the subway, which closes at midnight - I had to ride to the homeless bus stop just north of Hollywood Blvd. In Los Angeles, public transportation shuts off early. If you stagger out of a bar at 10pm, there’s a good chance there is no bus to take you home so you will have to drive. Most of the busses shut down around 10pm, others shut down at midnight... leaving a handful of buses running after midnight in a danged huge city. I’ve done the bike/bus ride to the NuArt on the Westside - and when the film lets out I’ve had to haul ass to ride back to Westwood to grab the 1am bus that parallels the 405 through Sepulveda Pass and dumps you on Ventura Blvd - where there is a bus that runs every hour (I think) all night long. If you miss that 1am bus in Westwood, it will take you all night to get back to Studio City on the couple of buses that run once every hour all night long.

But what happens on these handful of buses that run all night long - they fill up with homeless people and their belongings. The buses are warm, and they sleep on them. I hate the homeless bus. Imagine a bus filled with really stinky people and their really stinky stuff. They often take up 4 seats - 3 seats for their junk, one seat they are sleeping on. I have to pop my bike on the front of the bus and then find someplace to sit (or just stand) and try to only breath through my mouth. But I kind of worry about germs. At least I’m not on the bus very long - just over the hill.

So, I am waiting on the homeless bus to take me over the hill.
Outside The Powerhouse Bar just north of Hollywood Blvd.
The place stinks.
People come out of the bar and piss behind bus shelter.
Men and women.

When I was here after Duane’s films a really hot woman in tiny blue dress staggers out of the bar and tries to flag down a cab.
Falls off her heels...
and I catch her...
I try not to touch any good parts.
I’m a gentleman.
My elbow is pressed against her breast.
My elbow has no feeling... too bad.

She gets her footing and thanks me...
Then falls into the gutter.
I help her up even though she smells like pee...
Sit her down on bus bench.
That’s when bar doorman comes over and says he will take of it from here. I have no idea what that means, but I’m a little worried. Then the bus comes, and whatever happens to the hot woman so drunk she can not stand up is in the rearview mirror.

I throw my bike on front of homeless bus and try to hold my breath as we go over hill.
The bus is full of sleeping Homeless people with all of their belongings. They have not bathed recently and some smell as bad as that bus stop. Can I hold my breath the whole way over the hill? I feel sorry for bus driver. When we get to my corner, I pull the bike off the front of the bus and pedal home. I can breath again...

FRIDAY’S WITH HITCHCOCK is already up and triggered to run on Friday!

- Bill

IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: The Flow - one scene should flow into the next scene.
Dinner: Salad.
Bicycle: Short ride Monday so that I could take a longer ride Tuesday - except it rained and I did not ride.
Movies: Friday night I saw a Noir double bill at the Egyptian, was supposed to see one on Saturday night, too - but ended up seeing KICK ASS instead due to peer pressure. Damned those over 40 guys I hang out with!

Lancelot Link Thursday

Lancelot Link Thursday! For those of you who buy Playboy for the articles, here are some articles about screenwriting and the biz that may be of interest to you. Brought to you by that suave and sophisticated secret agent...




1) Development Hell - How an Adam Sandler movie becomes a Tom Cruise movie.

2) Famous Fellini film in public domain?

3) Will they send Dog The Bounty Hunter after Randy Quaid?

4) Got any lost 1913 classic films in your storage shed?

5) Some Summer Movies to get excited about.

6) And once again I invade the UK's Movies For Men Channel: 4/17 14:30 - Black Thunder - When the world's most powerful stealth jet fighter falls into enemy hands, only one man can get it back. Starring Michael Dudikoff.

I am sorry!

- Bill

IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Put A Face On It! - How to deal with tricky forces of antagonism.
Dinner: BBQ Pork Fried Rice at the strip mall restaurant across from the New Beverly Cinema.
Bicycle: Did a subway/bike combo to the New Beverly Cinema - and it was easy! I'm going to make it a regular thing - and write in the trendy Melrose cafes then see a movie afterwards.
Movies: THE WIND AND THE LION and THE DEVIL'S 8 - two from Milius' typewriter.

Movies Opening Today In France

This movie opens today in France...


I hope it also plays here.

*** TWEET DEALS - ENDS TODAY! ***

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Realistic Reactions - your characters need to behave like real people.
Dinner: Home made ham sandwich.
Bike: No - but I'm doing a bike-subway combo to get to the New Beverly Cinema today... and will have to take the homeless bus over the pass when the movie lets out. Yech!

Monsterpalooza 2

Over the weekend I went to Monsterpalooza 2 at the Burbank Marriot. Last year the event was great, and here's my report: Monsterpalooza #1 - and this year the event was *packed*. I arrived at 1pm... and there was still a line to get in! A big around-the-building line! Obviously word of mouth about how cool the event was last year created a huge crowd this year - and the place was SRO. You were crammed into the hallway and had to go in the direction everyone else went!

It was too crowded for me to take pictures with my danged phone of some of the cool exhibits - they all end up blurry because people were bumping into me constantly. At the very end of the day when most people had left I took a photo of one exhibit:


After going to Fango Weekend Of Horrors every year and seeing it slowly decline into crap (My Fango Report From Last Year) - Monsterpalooza was a pleasant surprise - it was what Fango *used to be* - about monsters and make up and cool horror and sci-fi stuff.

Monsterpalooza has this great museum of real monster make up stuff (suits) plus lots of exhibits created by make up and effects people - last year there was this amazing *lifesize* diorama of Boris Karloff sipping tea while they put on his Frankenstein make up - it was room sized! Completely amazing - it looked like real people. My pictures are blurry and bad and do not capture the realism of these pieces of art. This year there was Hannibal Lecter in his cage, Blackula, Linda Blair with her head turned back, and all kinds of amazingly realistic pieces of art. Here are some blurry pictures...






This was a whole hotel ballroom filled with exhibits that were part of the event. No extra charge to take the tour and you could do it as many times as you wanted (though - there was always a line, and it was packed).

The other ballroom was the dealer's room, and unlike Fango's room filled with people selling horror junk and faded stars signing autographs, the focus at Monsterpalooza is on monster making supplies and special effects people showing their work. That non-blurry photo was from the *dealer's room* - that was a display of the work from some special effects house. My friend Todd works for one of the special effects houses (you've seen his work in all kinds of movies) and he had a mummy on display. Made just for the show as a sample of his work. He wasn't selling a bunch of ratty bootleg DVDs of movies he ripped that he doesn't own copyright to (Fango is full of those), he's selling his skills as a special effects artist. Want him for your next movie?



Sure, there were guys selling posters and some old stars signing autographs - but the old stars were not the usual folks trying to make a buck... there was Burt I Gordon, director of THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN and Steve Niles was there to autograph copies of 30 DAYS OF NIGHT. Not the usual people you see signing at things like this.

And the dealers were also interesting - not only were there people selling DVDs of how to do monster make up and folks with original masks and busts (the totally cool Lucifer bust was selling for $666), there were artists selling amazing books of storyboards and production art for movies they had worked on and other cool one-of-a-kind things. A couple of poster sales places, but not the grage sale atmosphere of Fango.

Another cool thing about the dealer's room was all of the sculptures used as decorations. This King Kong was about 20 feet high!


Plus all kinds of dioramas that couldn't fit in the museum, like this Leatherface...


And the displays showing some effects company's work was amazing...




Here's Lon Chaney jr's Larry Talbot before and after - if the picture wasn't so danged blurry, you'd be amazed...

Don't hire me as your DP.

On stage they had some great guests and shows. I sat through an amazing *color* slide show of behind the scenes shots of late 50s and 60s low budget monster maker Paul Blaisdell's work on films for Burt I Gordon and Roger Corman. What do you do when you have a movie called BEAST WITH 1,000 EYES and there's no money in the budget for a full-sized beast? Some amazing photos and some funny pictures as well - the giant hypodermic from AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN being use to give a crew member a shot in the butt, Paul and friends eating a monster with ketchup and forks and knives... great stuff!

I also saw a mega-panel for RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD - over a dozen cast and key crew members including Clu Gulager. The panel was funny, told great stories about how they managed to get 2 weeks of rehearsal because the producer Ken Fox (who almost bought a script from me a couple decades ago) didn't know that low budget films never have rehearsal time, some stories about writer-director Dan O'Bannon and his bullet proof home, and some great no-names-used stories about the special effects team that was fired a couple of days into production - leaving the new hires to create complicated effects work on the spot! Great stuff.

I was disappointed that I didn't catch Oscar winner Barney Burman's show the next day - the guy is my FaceBook friend - but did spot him at the event on Saturday.

One of the interesting things about an event like this is that it's the only place I see some of my friends! Some people fly in for the event, others are just so busy during the year I seldom see them... but they show up at horror movie events like this. A group of us spent a while swapping stories about an ex-friend who was not there... and how he had screwed us all over to the point that none of us talks with him anymore. Each of us tried to top the other with tales of being screwed over by this guy... then we all wondered how he could stay in the biz. We figured there are always new people for him to screw over.

There were all kinds of folks I know and kind of know there - great to chat with them. Some people I mostly know online, and may "see" online every day but only actually see once or twice a year. Oh, and I finally met (in person) fellow screenwriter Mark Sevi - who I've known online since the internet was black and green. He was standing behind me in that monster line to get in.

I had a great time and I will be going back next year.

Maybe I'll see you there next year?

*** TWEET DEALS - ENDS WEDNESDAY! ***

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Always Be Prepared - and why you should have some scripts in your trunk along with that spare tire.
Dinner: Chinese Chicken Salad.
Bike: No. Pretty much a day when everything went wrong, so I shoukld have just hopped on the bike and went somewhere. But instead I just wrote this and goofed off.

The Wind And The Lion

One of my favorite movies, and probably one you have never heard of.

Many people think that after the dark films of the 70s, STAR WARS came along and changed everything with its rousing story of adventure. But adventure was already a major component of 70s films, with John Huston’s epic adventure THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING and this fun swashbuckler which were released a couple of years before STAR WARS and written and directed by one of Lucas’ friends, John Milius. There are sword fights and romance and cliff hangers and fantastic stunts and it all takes place in a world far away and many years ago.

It is a great film for 12 year olds of all ages - filled with larger than life characters and all kinds of romance and adventure.



John Milius is one of my favorite directors, and when I met him this was the film I mentioned loving - even though many of his other films are also among my favorites. I start every day listening to the Basil Poledouris theme to CONAN THE BARBARIAN, and I thought PUBLIC ENEMIES paled big time in comparison to DILLINGER. They are remaking CONAN and RED DAWN and some of Milius’ other great films. His movies were usually about two strong people in combat - and the respect the combatants had for each other and the honor of a good fight. In RED DAWN the Cuban villain allows the Wolverines to remove their wounded in one scene - even though he could easily kill them and end his problems. But he is a man of honor - even though he is the villain. Even though Milius and I have completely different political beliefs, he never demonizes the other side. Though he may not agree with the opposing government’s goals (or maybe even the hero’s government’s goals - governments are usually corrupt), the warriors on the battlefield are not evil guys. His antagonists are not two dimensional moustache twirlers, they are real people.

The great thing about having two strong forces locked in battle is that you get to explore each character... and there’s no shortage of action.




Here we have a story loosely based on an actual historical event - the kidnaping of an American in the middle east and the quest to get them back unharmed. In real life it was 64 year old American citizen Ion Perdicaris and his son, kidnaped by Berber warrior Mulai Ahmed er Raisuli and his horsemen from his villa in Morocco to secure a ransom and political power from the Sultan... and President Teddy Roosevelt famously said: “Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead!” and moved in the Marines. As a romance between a dashing Berber warrior and some 64 year old dude probably wasn’t going to play in 1975, Milius changed the 64 year old man into an attractive young woman with her two children and has the story seen through the eyes of the boy. Not accurate history, but it’s an adventure film not a documentary. Most of the other characters and even some of the dialogue remains true.

The film is a true epic - big action, big emotions, big romance, big stars and an amazing Jerry Goldsmith score. It’s like LAWRENCE OF ARABIA meets RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Sean Connery plays the Raisuli as a handsome sheik on horseback, a young Candice Bergan played Eden Perdicaris, and Brian Keith steals the show playing Teddy Rooselvelt. The film is filled with great sword fighting scenes and some of the most amazing horse stunts you will ever see - lots of horses *indoors* on stairways and rooftop chases!




When the film came out I was a teenager and movies still opened on Wednesdays and only opened in major cities... played there for a month or two, then opened in the suburbs (which used to be called “Roadshow”). So, to see the movie on opening day, my friend Dave and I drove all the way to San Francisco and saw a matinee. Not packed. But afterwards, we pretended to sword fight all the way back to the car. I saw the film one more time in San Francisco, then once when it played “roadshow” in Concord. This was one of those movies that got me excited about making movies when I grew up. I wanted to do big, exciting, swashbucklers like this!

The film was not a big hit, nor was it a flop. It did okay. What I always find strange is how people will find fault with some movie... and then ignore the same problem in some movie they like. The two big things critics disliked about this film were Sean Connery’s Middle Eastern accent (which sounded Scottish) and that they changed the kidnaped dude to a kidnaped chick. Has Connery ever had an accent in a movie that wasn’t Scottish? Did we ever care? And how many movies based on some true event stay completely true to what happened? They all dramatize things! Were there major complaints about SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE bending the facts? No - it was a movie! I think the critics thought it was *fun* when movies had been gritty and serious for the past few years. The year WIND came out was the same year ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST and DOG DAY AFTERNOON and SHAMPOO came out. Nobody could see STAR WARS in the crystal ball. WIND AND THE LION wasn’t one of the top ten films that year, though a film Milius did some uncredited writing on called JAWS was #1.

THE WIND AND THE LION is one of those films that people fall in love with. I still love the film and watch the DVD probably once a year. I’ll be seeing it on the big screen at the New Beverly on Wednesday night, double billed with Milius’ moonshine running version of THE DIRTY DOZEN called THE DEVIL’S 8 which co-stars the great Ross Hagen (who is in a couple of films I’ve written).

Milius Interview:


If WIND AND THE LION pops up on TCM, check it out. It might make you feel like a 12 year old again, and you might sword fight with a broom... and break something.

One of my favorite films.

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: The Drama Of Inaction - and why sometimes it is more emotionally powerful for a character to do nothing.
Dinner: Panda Express across from Monsterpalooza - sweet fire chicken breast or whatever they call it.
Bike: Medium rides - I also went to the store and after carefully selecting a package of cookies with no broken ones, had the Ralph's bag on my handlebars, it got sucked between the front wheel and fork, almost knocking me off the bike and turning my bag of cookies into a bag of crumbs! Swell.

SABOTEUR... is coming soon!

It is 10pm Thursday night and I am still typing on the SABOTEUR entry of Friday's With Hitchcock... and am not going to make it. Really wanted to get 3 in a row again, but now it will either pop up over the weekend or I'll save it until next Friday (and try to get ahead by writing another entry next week).

There are two big interviews with Hitchcock floating around, this one and the Tom Synder Tomorrow Show.

Part One:


Part Two:


- Bill

Lancelot Link Thursday

Lancelot Link Thursday! For those of you who buy Playboy for the articles, here are some articles about screenwriting and the biz that may be of interest to you. Brought to you by that suave and sophisticated secret agent...




* A Three Part news story on Mexico's Narco Cinema - films *about* drug dealers:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Thanks to my friend Jeff O'Brien for finding this! Jeff is an expert in writing for global cinema - and has written at least one film made in Mexico that I've seen.

* Is 3D The New Movie Star?

* Variety Slang Dictionary.

* Movies Playing In Los Angeles...
* AMERICAN CINEMATHEQUE
* NEW BEVERLY CINEMA
* SILENT MOVIES ON FAIRFAX
* Nuart Theater
The American Cinematheque is showing Noir stuff, by the way!

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Drama Dissipation - and superhero movies that have no dramatic tension.
Dinner: City Wok - Tomato Beef
Pages: Finished an article that was due days ago!

Oh, and I invade England again...

Movies For Men Channel:
4/10 - 13:30 - Crash Dive - The crew of a nuclear submarine rescues supposed victims of a boat disaster, but the victims turn out to be terrorists intent on capturing nuclear weapons aboard the sub.

4/12 - 18:10 - Steel Sharks - When a United States submarine is seized by terrorists, a rescue attempt by Elite Navy Seals goes awry. The submarine crew wages a silent war beneath the waves in this tense undersea thriller.

I'm sorry again!

Chess Moves

One of the techniques used in suspense stories is something I call the Chess Moves or Chess Dialogue - even though you may find it closer to Poker because it involves bluffing. I wrote about it in the Fridays With Hitchcock about I CONFESS, and it recently popped up in the film DARK PASSAGE, so I thought it would be a good “blog filler” for the day. No actual chess is involved in this technique, so don’t worry if you only know how to play checkers.

The reason why I call it the Chess Move is that, like in chess, the player is several moves ahead of the game, and what may seem like a foolish move now is actually a brilliant move. You are watching a chess game, and one of the players moves his Queen into a very vulnerable position - and the other player takes the Queen. Now, that particular move may look stupid, but when the other player made their move to capture the Queen, they created an opening that two moves from now will result in their being checkmated. Now that stupid move where the Queen was moved onto a square where they were captured doesn’t look so stupid, does it? That player was thinking moves ahead of the other player, and without sacrificing that Queen could never have won the game.

In a story this technique is usually used either to create a trap or to look innocent when the character is, in fact, guilty.

The trap version you’ve seen a hundred times and probably needs no explanation, but often a character will appear to be vulnerable in order to spring a trap. And sometimes a character will *actually* put themselves in a vulnerable position to spring a trap - they volunteer to be “bait” because it is the only way to make sure the adversary show themselves. Think of John McClane with that gun taped to his back raising his hands and giving up to Hans in DIE HARD. Or the Princess in John Woo’s RED CLIFF and her female archers fire on the enemy army even though they are outnumbered... and are chased into the desert... where the Princess’ much larger army awaits. You may think at first that it’s stupid for McClane to give up to Hans, but hiow else will he get close enough to attack him? How will he get Hans to let down his guard, thinking that McClane has lost? Though McClane *is* vulnerable - what if Hans just shoots him? - it is a calculated move where McClane is playing several moves ahead of Hans (who has no idea about that gun taped to his back). And even if the Princess in John Woo’s RED CLIFF ends up being killed by the enemy soldiers before they fall into the trap, she will have died so that the trap could be sprung on the enemy soldiers - and the plan still succeeds. Just without the Princess. Sometimes when you’re “the bait” the fish eats you - but you still hook them.



The other version of the Chess Move is also one you’ve seen a hundred times - it’s when a character does something that will make them look innocent when they are guilty. There’s a bluff involved in this - and a “poker face”. There’s a great example in DARK PASSAGE... Humphrey Bogart escapes from San Quentin Prison, and there’s a huge manhunt for him. Lauren Bacall offers him a ride - knowing that he is an escaped prisoner. She has a reason for this, that we won’t know about for several more scenes. Bogart doesn’t know her, but there are a million cops looking for him and this woman has offered to help him escape. When they come to a roadblock, Bogart hides in the back seat which is full of paining supplies, including a tarp. He’s hidden under the tarp when Bacall pulls up to the roadblock. A Policeman tells her there is an escaped prisoner, and asks if she has seen anyone on the road. She says no. The Policeman notices the tarp covering... something... in the back seat, and asks what it is. Bacall says it’s painting supplies, and if he would like to search the car that’s okay with her. That line is the Chess Move. Bogart is hiding back there, and she *encourages* the Policeman to search! Is she crazy? Is she double crossing Bogart? Does she want him to get caught? Why would she ever *encourage* the Policeman to search the exact spot where Bogart is hiding?

Well, let’s look at the alternatives...

A) She could jam on the gas, crash through the roadblock, and speed away! Okay, if that’s her chess move, what does the other player do? Well, now everyone will be chasing for her car and searching for her car and eventually she *and* Bogart will be caught.

B) She could *refuse* to let the Policeman search her back seat, tell him he needs a warrant or a court order or something. Okay, if that is her chess move, what does the other player do? Well, the Policeman will *know* she has something to hide and detain her and get that search warrant and find Bogart and then they both end up in jail.

If you can come up with a C that would fit a 1947 movie, post it in the comments section and we’ll look over what the other player would do in response. Stripping as a diversion isn’t going to work for many reasons, so skip that. I can’t think of any other good alternative that doesn’t make her look like she’s trying to hide something.

And that’s the reason why she has to make the Chess Move - she needs to look innocent, even though she’s guilty as hell of hiding an escaped convict in the back seat. She must do exactly what an innocent person would do, so that the Policeman doesn’t become suspicious, even though that puts her in potential peril. If the Policeman *did* search the backseat and find Bogart, she is in no more trouble than the other alternatives. But because she acts innocent and encourages him to search the backseat, the Policeman figures there must not be anything under that tarp. Why would she *want* him to search if there was someone hiding there? Guilty people have something to hide, innocent people do not - she isn’t trying to hide anything, therefor she must be innocent and not hiding anything. By *encouraging him* she is actually causing him to not search. Hey, still an element of chance, but this is a calculated risk.

For me, this sort of Chess Move often results in a note from a Development Executive asking me why the character would be so stupid as to invite the Policeman to look in the back seat. Is she stupid? Heard that dozens of times, and I wonder if they actually think through their notes? Here we have a character - a fictional person - who is more intelligent than the Development Executive. The character is several moves ahead, the Devo is several moves behind. And if they looked at the alternatives, they would see that there are not any. The only way scenes like this can play is if the character makes that Chess Move. Because everything in a screenplay (and in life) is cause and effect, you need to be able to see all the way down the line - several moves ahead - and understand that the *best* possible move at this point might be one that seems stupid on the surface - sacrificing that Queen - but is clever when you see a few moves ahead.

There’s a great scene in THE GRIFTERS where the master con man played by the late great J. T. Walsh *insists* that a reluctant investor follow him to the back room to look at all of the expensive computer equipment... which does not exist! The back room is empty. But Walsh must make it clear that he has nothing to hide and that the computer equipment does exist - and no one would ever *insist* that someone look at it unless it were actually there, right? Again, calculated risk - what if the guy went back there to look? - but the worst case scenario remains the same no matter what Walsh does... but only by making the Chess Move does he have a chance at success. Often, the only smart move a character has is something that may seem like a dumb move at the time it is made... but the character is a few Chess Moves ahead and this is really a clever move.

When Devos are unable to see that it is a clever move is when those Devos should be replaced. Unfortunately in my experience, instead it is when the clever move is removed and the script gets dumber.

Pisser.

- Bill

IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Revealing - not to make something veal again.
Dinner: Carls Jr Apple Cranberry Chicken salad. Not bad.
Pages: Some... but still behind!

Oh, and I invade England again...

Movies For Men Channel:
4/10 - 13:30 - Crash Dive - The crew of a nuclear submarine rescues supposed victims of a boat disaster, but the victims turn out to be terrorists intent on capturing nuclear weapons aboard the sub.

4/12 - 18:10 - Steel Sharks - When a United States submarine is seized by terrorists, a rescue attempt by Elite Navy Seals goes awry. The submarine crew wages a silent war beneath the waves in this tense undersea thriller.

I'm sorry again!

What Am I Reading?

What am I reading? CARPE DEMON by Julie Kenner.

Imagine Buffy The Vampire Slayer grown up, retired from slaying, living as a soccer mom in suburbia. Her husband and 2 kids don't know about her past... and she'd like to keep it that way. Then the demons find her, and she must add one more thing to her multi-tasking. Optioned for the big screen by Chris Columbus and Warner Bros.




So far, lots of fun!

- Bill

IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Story From Character - and from OFFICE SPACE to THE MATRIX.
Dinner: Something.
Movies: Plan is to see a couple of the Noir films at the Egyptian.

Movies: EDDIE PRESLEY and TOGETHER & ALONE.

Last Wednesday I rode my bike to the subway station, took the subway to Hollywood, rode the bike a couple of blocks to the Egyptian Theater and literally parked ten feet from the doors to see a couple of films written by my friend Duane. Duane is a character actor, best known for playing the pawn shop owner from PULP FICTION. He’s played tow truck drivers and bikers and cops and just about any other role for a beefy guy from Texas. The American Cinematheque was showing EDDIE PRESLEY and TOGETHER & ALONE with a bunch of the cast and crew talking in between.

Though the cinema was not crowded, there were more people than for EYEWITNESS and FOUR FRIENDS a week earlier. Before the show I hung out in the lobby with the filmmakers, I know most of the people involved in the films. Someone told me Jeff the director was not going to be there - he's making a movie somewhere. Then I grabbed a seat right under the scarab in the cinema, and the big gates closed and the house light dimmed.




EDDIE PRESLEY looked great on the big screen. I think I’ve seen it once before on in the cinema, the others times on video. To me, what is strange about the film is that it's based on Duane's one man stage show... but that's the last third of the film - about 40 minutes of screen time. I think the hour of material Duane wrote to more-or-less pad it out is more entertaining than the play material - it's kind of Duane's artistic sweet spot. Hmm, maybe some background...

Duane’s one man show was about this Elvis impersonator whose performance goes wrong and ends up having a complete nervous breakdown on stage and tells his life story and sings a couple of songs. It’s this crazy, funny monologue. Well, my friend Jeff, who directed the movie, had just gone through absolute hell on TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 3 - New Line had micro-managed the film, wanted him to tone the horror way down so that they could get a more favorable rating and play to a wider audience, then took the film away from him in editing and the film they released bombed because it was wimpy and the horror was tame. The CHAINSAW movies are about a guy with a chainsaw who chainsaws people - you can’t exactly make the PG-13 version of that and have it work. So Jeff was pissed off at the studio system and wanted to make his own movie his own way... and Duane, who had played a role in TCM3 had this one man show, and Jeff saw it and thought they could expand it into a feature. Because this was an indie film, they found the money completely outside the system - private investors. They made the film and it was released on video by a really small distrib (which also released John Lee Hancock’s first film) and that was basically that. Oh, the big coup for EDDIE PRESLEY was that it was the first movie bought by The Sundance Channel.

The 60 minutes that is not Eddie Presley on stage having a complete breakdown are about the days leading up to that performance, plus some great flashbacks in black & white to Eddie’s life before he ended up in Hollywood. Eddie lives in his van parked on the street in Hollywood - inside the van is a shrine to his past, when he used to make a living touring small-to-medium venues as Eddie Presley. He picks up his messages on a pay phone and works as a security guard at night. The Back Door Club is the location for the end of the film, the Van is a location, the Security Job is another location, and there’s also the Greasy Spoon Diner - that’s about it for locations.

In the Security Guard story thread, Ted Raimi is one of the other guards, and Lawrence Tierney is the hardass supervisor with a photo album of sleeping guard Poloroids. Willard Pugh plays another security guard and there's a nervous female security guard (Harri James) who has a major crush on Eddie. Raimi and Pugh and James’ characters and Eddie are best friends - and they would do anything to see him succeed. When he finally gets his gig at the Back Door Club, they take the night off from work so they can see him... and pull some favors from friends and friends-of-friends to get him a cut-rate limo to take him to the gig.

In order to stay awake on these night shifts so that he doesn’t get fired, Eddie fills his thermos at a greasy spoon cafe filled with Hollywood losers of all types... plus his girlfriend works there as a waitress. She’ll fill the thermos if the boss isn’t looking, and maybe get him a free breakfast. She wants to actually go out on a real date - but Eddie’s always broke. She’s a wanna-be actress, but has had no luck so far landing a role in anything. These characters in the Diner Thread are Duane’s forte - the struggling artists who litter the streets of Hollywood trying to hang onto their dreams but knowing that they are only dreams... and the reality is that they're a waitress. When Eddie’s not in the diner, there’s a skanky female porn star trying to make the moves on his waitress with promises of leading roles in adult entertainment... is a part a part? Will she do porn?

The other diner regulars are a colorful group, from the toll-taker guy who requires a cigarette from everyone who passes by his seat at the counter, to my favorite character in the film - Clu Gulager's sleazy agent. Hair badly dyed jet black, he tells prospective clients (all gals fresh off the bus) that he has major connections and can make them into stars... and when the pay phone on the wall behind him rings, he answers it with his talent agency name. I've had this agent!

The last thread are the Flashbacks in beautiful black & white of Eddie’s pre-Hollywood life in Texas, with Joe Estevez as his strict father and Barbara Patrick (Robert’s wife) as his soon-to-be-ex-wife. Eddie was a successful pizza store owner (take out only) who sells his business to live his dream of being an Elvis impersonator. Father thinks he’s an idiot, wife divorces him and takes the kid... and Eddie and his band go out of the road. Jeff’s cuts from present to past and back are great - match cut stuff with a character from the present drinking a cup of coffee to one in the past drinking a cup of coffee. There is a great flow to the story which makes it seem less episodic. Because the black and white stuff was shot later, Jeff would end a scene with some action that could be duplicated months later when Duane had lost a bunch of weight and looked like a younger version of himself. Eventually the flashbacks get darker and darker (in tone, not lighting) and Eddie flips out in a burger joint and ends up sent to an insane asylum, where the guards include Quentin Tarantino (before he was famous) and Bruce Campbell and director Rusty Cundiff.

The last third of the film at the Back Door Club is filled with some great characters - the late great Roscoe Lee Brown plays the club owner, Tim Thomerson does a great cameo as an angry comedian, stand up comic Puppy Thomas is the world’s worst ventriloquist, and practically stealing the show is Danny Roebuck as Eddie’s warm up act - the world’s most unlucky magician: when he tries to pull the rabbit out of his hat, it bites him and he bleeds all over the place for the rest of his performance... which includes him accidentally catching fire and unable to put himself out. Then Eddie gets up on stage, everything goes wrong, and he has his big break down right in front of us.

Though that ending was the whole reason they made the film, I really like the parts of the film that come before that. You get a real feel for people on the fringes in Hollywood, the hopefuls without hope...

And that's what TOGETHER & ALONE is all about.

Between the movies a Q&A with Duane, Danny Roebuck (who read Jeff's letter), Jay Woelfel, Tom Callaway, Harri James, Clu Gulager, Chuck Williams, and probably some folks I'm forgetting.

The cameo folks like Tarantino and Bruce Campbell and Tim Thomerson must have been busy. Joe Estevez wandered in after the Q&A was over, but in time to watch himself in...



TOGETHER & ALONE - I had seen it once on DVD or VHS, but never on the big screen. This film is the bridge between Robert Altman and Mumblecore. When I'd seen it earlier, I got a little teary at the end. This time, other parts got to me as well. Big ensemble cast playing people living on the fringe in Hollywood who know they are not going to make it. The hope has been pounded out of them. Like in EDDIE, they all hang at the same greasy spoon diner - and that is where their lives intersect. Very funny, very sad - this is one of those films that some critic somewhere needs to discover and champion. Duane wrote the script, directed, and plays one of the roles. The film was made for pocket change, and I suspect some of the stuff shot on the streets of Hollywood was done without permits (there’s a bit at the end where an unsuspecting person ends up part of a scene where a character goes crazy and starts yelling). The one problem with the film is that it does not have the flow of EDDIE PRESLEY and there are abrupt and jarring cuts between scenes... but that kind of fits right into the whole Mumblecore thing, so we’ll just say this film was ahead of its time.

Here are the story threads in this tale of one day in the life of Hollywood hopefuls who lose all hope...

Billy (Casey Siemaszko) is a guitar player with real talent in some garage band that plays all kinds of low rent clubs. He’s dating a rich girl from a wealthy Texas family, and is about to be introduced to her father (Tim Thomerson) for the first time, and is a little nervous. So nervous that he misses a sound check with his band - who are about to cut a demo record. That demo record might be Billy’s big break...

Zevo (Duane) is the leader of the band - all of them have really big hair - and gets pissed off when Billy’s a no show, and tries to turn the rest of the band against Billy and vote him out of the band. Problem is, the rest of the band are idiots, and Billy is a good guitar player, and Billy also brings beer to rehearsals sometimes. Zevo is so cheap that he goes into a strip bar to borrow the phone when there’s a perfectly good payphone outside. After the band stops being distracted by strippers, they decide to vote Billy out of the band - leaving them without their most talented member and leaving Billy adrift and without hope. There’s a nice scene where Billy and his girlfriend end up at the base of the Capitol Records Building, and he talks about his dreams of a recording deal... and how they are probably never going to happen.

In the Greasy Spoon Diner where their lives intersect...

Chad the screenwriter (Tom Denolf) lays out his pens in a specific pattern on the counter and opens his legal pad to write... when a pair of pests sit on either side of him. An older dude who keeps asking him what he’s doing... and eventually starts to hit on him with the weirdest pick up lines you’ve ever heard, and Dougie Westa (Danny Roebuck) the worst actor in the world - his car is plastered with his headshots in a parody of Dennis Woodfruff’s car - sits on the other side of Chad and asks if there’s a role in the script for him. These three guys provide some great comedy bits throughout the film.

At another table are burned out actor Roscoe (Joe Unger in an Oscar calibre performance - really, this is one amazing piece of acting) and just out of film school young director Gene (Thomas Draper) who is buttering up Roscoe to be in his short film about a door-to-door bible salesman who kills people. Though I have no idea what % of the film this story thread is, it *dominates* the film due to Unger’s performance as a guy who knows he’s a has-been without ever really being somebody. He’s spent his life being a bit part player with his best roles on the cutting room floor (in real life, Unger’s big break-out role in ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK ended up on the cutting room floor). He has this great rant about how Hollywood just screwed him over, and how lesser talents went farther. Unger manages to be angry and vulnerable and sad all at the same time... and Gene has to put up with all of this in order to get Roscoe in his short film. Gene has a girlfriend, who is an actress....

Laura (Stacie Randall) is taking an acting class from blowhard acting teacher Blaine (Joe Estevez - Martin Sheen’s brother) who has a big showcase for his acting class coming up where big time agents and big time talent scouts are supposed to be in the audience. There will be wine and cheese after the showcase, but only if the acting students bring the wine and cheese, because Blaine sure as hell isn’t paying for it. When Roscoe talks bout those guys who got undeserved breaks, he mentions Blaine’s name - Blaine was once in an episode of LASSIE in a featured role. Blaine has a photo of him and Lassie in his scrap book... that he shows to Laura after class... just before trying to rape her. See, she’s the only one in his class with any talent, so obviously they were meant to be together, right? Laura kicks him in the nuts - hard - and splits for the diner and Gene.

The part that made my eyes damp the first time I saw it was Janet (Harri James) the female comedian who goes to open mike night and bombs. Bombs big time. And realizes that she is not funny at all, and her dream is never going to happen. After being booed off stage, she gets in her beat up old car... which blows up! Now she has no car, no dreams, no nothing. She wanders to a bus stop where she meets Rusty (John Bishop) a shaggy guitar player who hasn't really made it, but sold some songs. As they wait for the bus - which never comes - they tentatively hit it off... and decide to take a cab to her place, where they do not have sex... but share some powerful moments where they talk about their failure to crack Hollywood. Then, as she sleeps, he writes a song about her. A sad song. The funny part about this is that I started getting misty eyed at the friggin’ bus stop scene! I knew that song was coming, and it was already working on me! Anyway, that is one great scene.

There are two “glue characters” who also connect these story threads... Buffy the free-spirit waitress at the greasy spoon café (Mariah O’Brien) and the chatty philosopher / taxi driver (Larry Lyles) who picks up Rusty and Janet and a few of the other characters and transports them from one location to another. Chad the screenwriter works up the nerve to flirt with Buffy, and eventually asks her out. This is a great little scene. Afterwards, there’s a funny scene where Gene and Laura are talking and he jokes about a 3-way with another woman. Laura puts him on the spot by calling over Buffy and asking why she thinks men want that kind of stuff. Buffy thinks it’s just because they’re dogs, thinks the whole 3-way thing is gross... except for the time she did it, oh, and the other time she did it, oh, and the time before that when she did it, and...

The taxi driver guy talks a mile a minute and has a theory about everything and is funny as hell - he practically steals the show! You keep wanting one of the other characters to flag down a taxi! He has this crazy story he tells about how his ex-wife ran away with some clown... a real clown. Guy who does kids birthday parties. Worst thing was that she got custody of his little girl, and he wasn’t around to be a father to her... some clown was. When Buffy flags down the taxi, and it’s his cab, we can’t wait to hear whatever rambling monologue he’s going to do while he drives her home after her shift. Along the way, they pass Roscoe - who has flipped out and is wandering the streets of Hollywood screaming, then when he pulls up in front of her apartment she kisses him and it’s revealed that she is his daughter. Cool moment that brings all of the story threads together.

This is a pocket change movie that I enjoyed much more than any of the Mumblecore films I've seen - some critic needs to discover and champion this film so that it can find a larger audience.

- Bill

PS: Hope I didn't get any of the cast names wrong - tried to match character names to IMDB cast in the case of folks I wasn't familiar with.