My Films Attack The UK Again

I'm sorry...

Movies 4 Men Channel:

7/31 - 16:30 - 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.

8/1 - 13:50 - 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.

8/3 - 15:30 - 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. 1997.

- Bill

Lancelot Link Thursday

Lancelot Link Thursday! For those of you who think 100 monkeys with movie cameras might make MEMENTO, 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) Uranium Ore For Sale On Amazon - Read The Comments!

2) Movie Maps - where was your favorite film shot?

3) The Modern Moustache

4) BOURNE SUPREMACY car chase:



- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Second Chapter First - and SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, and IRON MAN.
Dinner: Salmon Burger at Sitton's.
Bicycle: Short - up to Noho... to see SCOTT PILGRIM.
Pages: Yesterday - over 6 good pages and some rewrite work, today - around 4 pages.
Movies: SCOTT PILGRIM - a fun, wild, clever, video game of a rom-com. Laughed my butt off.

Jane Austen's FIGHT CLUB

Because wearing a corset is worse than working in a cubicle...



I love the shot where the blood sprays from the gal's mouth in slow-mo.

And because everyone has this clip on their blog today, my bonus clip...

Sam Peckinpah's SALAD DAYS...



- Bill

IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Sleeper Agent Information - and two movies starring two women Brad Pitt has slept with - SALT and SHALLOW HAL.
Dinner: Togo's Humus sandwich.
Bicycle: Short - up to Noho. On Saturday I had apple pie ala mode in the NoHo Dennys at midnight.
Pages: Saturday - 5 really good pages, Sunday - 3 good pages (but was trying for 7). Assignment script is almost finished!
Movies: CYRUS... and going to the movies tonight, too.

Worst Remakes?

Last week's big movie was an original (INCEPTION) and this week's big movie is also an original (SALT), but this summer we've had a bunch of remakes... including last week's big flop (SORCERER'S APPRENTICE - based on a Mickey Mouse cartoon from FANTASIA!). Though a remake is still a job for a screenwriter, I would rather tell my own stories. Originals.

So, how about using the Comments Section for this blog entry...

What do you think are the worst remakes... and why?

- Bill

M. Night's Career - Every Film Better Than The Last?

According to this graph M. Night Shyamalan's next film will earn the first ever *negative* Rotten Tomatoes score - on a scale of 1 to 100... it will be less than zero.

His current film, LAST AIRBENDER, has an amazing 8% on RT... But Night believes it is brilliant! Here he is doing press for the film in Mexico City when a reporter asks about his downward trajectory... and he explains that we have it all wrong - each film is better than the one before...



So, if you are wondering *why* the next film will have the first ever RT negative rating, there is the reason - he's got his blinders on and isn't going to try to correct any mistakes he may be making... because he just doesn't make mistakes.

- Bill

DARK HOUSE comes out July 30th.

I love it when my friends are successful! I want all of my friends, and all of you reading this, to become rich and famous... so that I can borrow a $20 from you some time way in the future when I pushing a shopping cart filled with screenplays down Hollywood Blvd.

My friend Darin who is already a successful screenwriter and producer (he wrote TALES FROM THE HOOD and some other films, produced many of Rusty Cundiff's early films, and wrote and directed a cool crime film called CAUGHT UP) has a new movie coming out on July 30th - a horror movie called DARK HOUSE about a high tech Halloween haunted house tour... that is really haunted. Here's the trailer:



Now, the cool thing about this film coming to a theater near you on July 30th is... that it's theatrical release was the result of a horror movie contest put on by Fangoria Magazine - the winning film gets a theatrical release. There were a bunch of films in the contest, and Darin's film won.

So, if you're looking for a scary movie, check it out!

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Busload Of Scripts - if you plan on writing one script and then selling it for $1.2m, think again!
Dinner: LACMA Cafe - BLT wrap... which was pretty good.
Bicycle: Not today.
Pages: 3 pages instead of 5 again... but I'll be okay.
Movies: INCEPTION on Saturday, SALT on Monday - reviews of each coming up!

Is INCEPTION just a rip off of DREAMSCAPE?

Okay, now that I have your attention...

At about 2:30pm Pacific Time I rewrote and reposted today's Script Tip - with that question as the new lead and over 1,000 words of new material.

(That tip ran, and is now back in the vault for a year and a half)

And, if you have never heard of DREAMSCAPE, here is a clip...

Snakeman nightmare:




- Bill

No Pants Friday On The NYC Subway

So, you are riding the subway to work one day, when people begin taking off their pants and underwear... *hundreds* of people!



- Bill

Ghostbusters In The NYC Library

You are in the library looking for the latest Lawrence Block novel when suddenly...



- Bill

Darth Vader & Storm Troopers On The NYC Subway

Okay, you're taking the subway to work in NYC when suddenly...



- Bill

Nice OUTFIT

A couple of weeks ago I went to see a double feature of POINT BLANK and THE OUTFIT, both based on novels by Richard Stark, at the New Beverly Cinema. Did the bike & subway combo to get there and ate Chinese food at that place across the street. The POINT BLANK article is coming soon, but here’s some stuff on THE OUTFIT. Sorry it’s so long - I would have written a shorter article if I had the time.


THE OUTFIT (1973, written & directed by John Flynn) is one of those no-nonsense action films from the 1970s - kind of a studio B movie. This was the tail end of the studio system, when they were still making movies just to fill screens. Studios were like giant factories with employees, and it would cost them more to shut down between movies than to just make some “programmer” movies. Now studios are just banks and distributors, and they do not have any full time employees, but in the early 70s they had actors under contract and film crews and directors who they paid a salary to whether they were working or not... so why not keep them working making B movies? Some studios, like Universal, became big TV producers with their employees on salary. But they all made “programmers” - basic meat and potatoes genre films often starring second string stars or TV guys like James Garner. Garner starred in all kinds of programmers, from the comedy-western GET TO KNOW YOUR SHERIFF movies to some action flicks like MARLOWE. The great thing about these movies is that the studios still had all of these great character actors under contract, so you’d get a bunch of familiar faces in every film.

The “programmers” served a handful of purposes - they kept the studio employees working, they filled screens with movies to watch until the studio’s next *big* film like THE STING came out, they often played as the “A feature” at rural drive ins and big city grind houses (in “second run” - after they had already played in normal cinemas as “screen fillers”) they were kind of the farm team for actors and directors and stars - grooming them for bigger and better films, they helped “amortize” the big budget films, and every once in a while one of these little studio B movies became a big hit - and the studio made a ton of money from a very small investment.

The great thing about the action films from this period is that without Paul Newman or Steve McQueen or big budgets, they had to entice the audience with what Blockbuster video used to call “Super Action” - fist fights and car crashes and hot women. In order to get you into the cinema, they’d make the fist fights more visceral, and the shoot outs might be fewer... but more savage, and you weren’t getting the car chase from BULLITT, but they’d crash some junker cars and there would be a nice explosion. These were studio exploitation films. The quality of a studio film crew, the subject matter of some drive in action flick. This time period also gave us all of the great studio Blaxploitation films like SHAFT (also from MGM).

Part of my love for these films is that they are not about rich guys with good jobs in nice office buildings, none of these guys would be caught dead as the love interest in a rom-com. These films are about guys who work for a living, and seem to either take place in the big city or somewhere rural... Charles Bronson played a *watermelon farmer* in one of these films!

THE KILLER SET UP

So THE OUTFIT stars Robert Duvall, from those GODFATHER movies, as a version of Richard Stark’s Parker named *Macklin*, who gets out of prison and discovers his brother has been murdered by the mob and wants to get himself a little revenge. The guy who wrote the novels thought Duvall was closest to his creation, and this is Duvall playing deep fried tough guy to perfection.

Film opens with a Priest in a taxi cab driven by Felice Orlandi - who you would recognize as the low level pock-marked crook in at least a dozen films (including BULLITT!), stopping at a gas station to ask for directions. So you know something is wrong...

Orlandi isn’t just playing a taxi driver like Duvall did in BULLITT, he’s some sort of bad guy. It’s like casting Gary Busey as a waiter. When they get to this house out in the middle of nowhere (rural setting), there is a guy fixing a fence with his dog... And Orlandi and the Priest show up with guns and blow him to pieces. Violently. They just keep firing at him while to dog barks and yelps. The dog is a great touch - when it howls for its dead master, we feel its pain.

Then Duvall gets released from prison, where his ex-girlfriend Karen Black is waiting for him. She tells him she has not been at all faithful, and he says that’s okay - he was away for a while. Then she tells him that his brother was killed by some mob guys...

That night in some crappy roadside motel, a bunch of mob guys including Orlandi try to kill Duvall. But he’s one tough bastard and blasts them all and gets the name of the guy behind it. But he also knows that Black set him up by picking that particular crappy roadside motel.

SOME CASUAL VIOLENCE

Duvall braces Black, she pulls back her sleeve and there are at least a dozen big infected cigarette burns. Guy who did it to her? Same guy who hired the killers who killed his brother. Seems the bank robbery that Duvall was busted for was a mob owned bank. They killed his brother for being part of it, they tried to kill Duvall, and they tried to kill the third guy in the robbery - Joe Don Baker. So Duvall and Black drive to the big city hotel where the lead bad guy is playing a 24 hour poker game...

While Black sits in the car with the motor running, Duvall walks into the hotel, goes up the elevator, pokes his gun in the face of the guard at the hotel room door, takes him out to the balcony and SLAMS him with his gun, then goes back to the hotel room, kicks open the door, slams the inside guard in the face without even slowing down, and robs the poker game - taking guns and cash. The great thing about this sequence is that it’s *suddenly violent* and the film never makes a big deal about it. If this film had been made today, they would make it a big deal... and it wouldn’t be nearly as cool. By downplaying the importance of the violence without downplaying the level of violence, it makes it seem like it is all in a day’s work for Duvall. Before Duvall slams the outside guard with his gun they have a casual conversation and the outdoor guard requests to be slammed with the pistol on his right side because of a previous injury to the left said of his head. These guys get hit with guns and shoot people for a living - no big deal.

The lead bad guy at the poker table is played by the great Timothy Carey - from THE KILLING - who is a big fat a-hole. Timothy Carey is one of those guys who shows up, gives a great sneering performance that gives you nightmares, and collects his check. There are actors who you can see working, Carey isn’t one of them. Hard to believe that this complete a-hole is the same actor who was so sympathetic in THE KILLING.

Carey taunts Duvall as he robs them - he’s got a gun pointed at him, and he’s still spouting crap. Duvall tells him that the mob has to pay $250k for the death of his uninsured brother... who leaves a widow behind.

Then, just when you think the whole thing is over and Duvall is about to leave, he calmly shoots Carey through the hand for using Black’s arm as an ashtray. Danged brutal!

Duvall connects with Joe Don Baker in some rural cabins that are owned by an ex-whore played by Marie Windsor from THE NARROW MARGIN, one of many great bit parts played by actors and actresses from classic noir and action flicks. This film is a who’s who of Noir actors... Elisha Cook Jr from THE MALTESE FALCON pops up in a bit part and Jane Greer from OUT OF THE PAST is the widow! Over some beers they decide to take the mob for $250k - even if it means they get killed. They are already on the mob hit list, right? What’s the worst that could happen? The plan is to rob every mob place they can find until they get $250k or they mob pays them. Then the $250k goes to his brother’s window.

DANGEROUS ADAPTATION

One of the interesting things about this film is how they turned what was book #3 in the Parker series into a stand alone movie. Unfortunately, THE OUTFIT is too much like POINT BLANK to be a good double bill. In the books, after Parker gets his money back from the mob there is one mobster left alive - Bronson. Bronson wants Parker dead, so in book #2 Parker gets plastic surgery. In book #3, Bronson tries to kill Parker... and Parker decides to show the mob who has more power by getting the word out to all of his armed robber friends across the USA that robbing the mob is now okay - as long as they mention Parker’s name. So in the novel THE OUTFIT, all across the USA robbery teams are knocking over mob businesses (casinos, drugs, prostitution, loan sharking, etc) and eventually Bronson decides to leave Parker alone.

The film manages to stay faithful to the book and still change the core story. One scene that’s lifted right from the book - but they completely change the location: When Duvall and Baker go to buy weapons, in the book the characters go to a hobby shop and the guns and rifles are hidden in model car kit boxes. In the movie they pick up a salesman with a sample case on the side of the road, and the sample case is filled with guns - kind of like the gun salesman in TAXI DRIVER. They drive around the highway and do siome shopping at the same time.

The dead brother thing is how they make THE OUTFIT work as a stand alone, and this gets used in a great scene from the book where Parker shows up at these redneck brothers rural chop shop, and they don’t recognize him because of the plastic surgery... and there’s some tension where they may kill Parker because with that new face he’s a stranger to them. Same scene in the film, but it was Duvall’s *brother* who knew the redneck brothers, so he must convince them he’s trustworthy. In this scene there also an angry dog that’s a threat throughout the scene - I have no idea how much a growling dog costs compared to an explosion, but the dog turns even the quiet moments in the scene into potential danger... And there aren’t many quiet moments.

I love the redneck brothers in both the book and the film. These guys are moonshine hot-rodders who know more about cars and how to make them go fast than all of those NASCAR mechanics combined. They build getaway cars for a living. The idea that people like this exist as peripheral occupations in the world of professional armed robbers is really cool - it’s like being taken into the armed robber’s world and shown details that you never knew existed. One of the cool things in this scene (both book and movie) is the VW Bug getaway car with the hidden V8 - looks like it would have trouble going up hills, but can do over 120 mph. Only problem? It doesn’t *sound* like a VW... and the brothers are trying to find the right muffler combination to get the sound right.

This part is *great* in both book and film, because while Duvall is off with the brothers (played by Richard Jaeckel and Bill McKinney - the hillbilly rapist from DELIVERANCE) looking at cars, Joe Don Baker is left with McKinney’s superhot wife played by Sheree North (who was kind of a Suzanne Sarandon earthy type) who tells him they have time for some luvin’ before her husband comes back. And she does everything possible to get him interested. And it gets *us* interested too (at least, the male target audience for this film).

THOSE BRA-LESS BABES

Now, I have no idea what was going on in 1973, but bras seemed to be completely out of fashion. No woman in this film is wearing a bra. Karen Black is wiggling around, even Marie Windsor was braless. Heck, the old waitress in the coffee shop is wiggling around! That’s actually kind of gross, but I guess it’s a small price to pay because a bra-less Sheree North? Yikes! She is already a mega-busty woman (real ones, too - this was made back when all big breasts were the real thing), add the lack of bra and the tight tops and... well, um, it’s easy to forget what the plot is. Anyway, she offers Joe Don Baker a little luvin’ and he decides that is a good way to get killed and refuses...

But when Duvall and Jaeckel and McKinney return with the car, North tells her husband that Joe Don tried to screw her. McKinney goes crazy and tries to kill Baker, and there’s a big fight, and Duvall and Baker dive in the car and barely get out of there alive. One of the great throw away lines in this bit is that brother Jaeckel *did* sleep with her! These people are all sleeping with each other - it’s Tennessee Williams country!

CONFLICT ON THE SIDE

Now, the cool part about this scene is that it isn’t one of the scenes where Duvall and Baker are taking on the mob... this is a scene where they *prepare* to take on the mob, and it is filled with tension and conflict and excitement. The great thing about lots of these meat and potato action films is that they make sure that even the scenes between the action scenes are exciting. They find the conflict in the little scenes - there’s a great bit where Black and Duvall are hiding out in a another crappy roadside motel and Black goes out to call her mom from a payphone and tell her that she’s okay... and there is a man watching her the whole time. Some mob flunky posted at that motel to look out for them. So the great character scene where Black talks with her mother and we get a glimpse of her white trash past and the way she hooked up with Duvall to try and climb out of it... is an incredibly tense scene. And there’s no shoot out or car chase or giant fireball or someone outrunning an explosion... it’s just some creepy guy watching her.

So, Duvall and Baker decide to talk to the local mob guy headquartered in a bar/restaurant who hired the hitmen, with Black as their getaway driver... and it’s a really cool scene filled with all kinds of side conflicts and one kick ass line of dialogue, “I don’t talk to guys who wear aprons.” Duvall gets in to the mobster’s office pretending to be a mob guy from Timothy Carey’s crew... accompanied by the guy in an apron - the bartender, and has this conversation with the mob guy about those hit men who got killed... and the mobster just looks at him and says - you’re Macklin. Knows it right away. And that’s when the bartender attacks. Sudden violence. One moment they’re talking, the next moment the bartender is trying to club Duvall in the head.

After Duvall slams them to the floor, he robs the mob safe - this is like a regional headquarters, so there’s a bunch of money. As Duvall and Baker escape there’s this big muscular cook with a huge meat cleaver in the kitchen who tries to stop them. That cook character was established when Duvall and the guy in the apron walk past the kitchen... using that cleaver. And you just know that cleaver is gonna be used on him later... or, at least the guy will try. That’s the kind of cool thing that happens in these films - instead of being some cook frying eggs, you get a guy with a giant meat cleaver.

BAD ASS HEROES

Another thing that comes directly from the book, with a bit of a change, is Baker’s character owning a diner... it’s in Maine in the books and in Oregon... but the town name remains the same. Baker and Duvall have this great conversation in the car about the shelf life on being an armed robber... and how getting old makes it more difficult. A very realistic version of the “I’m getting too old for this shit” conversation.

Black has gone home to her mom, and Duvall and Baker just start kicking major ass. They rob a sports betting place - and Baker savagely slugs a woman at the front desk. When they get inside, they can’t get anyone to open the safe and Duvall grabs the guy in charge and says he’s gonna blow off a toe for every minute the guy doesn’t give him the combination... then has one of the other hostages take off the guy’s shoe!

The Macklin character is what I call a Bad Ass Hero - not that there’s anything defective about his hindquarters. There are two basic types of action heroes: Superman and Every Man. The Every Man type is a normal guy who ends up fighting bad guys - like John McClane in DIE HARD. The Super Man is like James Bond - someone who is our fantasy figure. This has nothing to do with spandex or capes or super powers - Tony Stark is an Every Man, as is Peter Parker. And most roles played by Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris are Super Man types - tough guy fantasies. We wish we were that guy!

Duvall’s character is a Super Man type - kind of a blue collar James Bond. He’s tough, he says clever things we wish we could think of (“Die somewhere else!”), he’s ultra-confident, he is never afraid (or never shows his fear), he never shows any sign of weakness and never shows pain. He’s the kind of guy who gets shot and takes it like a man. He’s a man of violence, who *hurts people*. Seagal swiped his character from BILLY JACK, but does a great job with it. Seagal *breaks people’s bones* in fight scenes - he’s savage. He also does the great Bad Ass Hero speech thing - where he gives his super confident warning about how, exactly, he will beat the crap out of the ten guys surrounding him. No fear - he has it all planned out. He’s a Bad Ass. He’s gonna eff those ten guys up. Duvall’s Macklin has some similar Bad Ass moments - in Act 3 he’s *way* out numbered and tells the mob henchmen that they don’t have to die, they can just walk away. Um, that takes some major cajones! Shooting Carey’s hand and clubbing guys in the head with his gun without even slowing down - all of these are Bad Ass Hero moments. This guy kicks ass!

BIG BAD GUYS

The reason why this was “too much of a good thing” when doubled with POINT BLANK is that eventually it becomes Duvall and Baker climbing the ladder of mobsters to get the $250k for the widow... and that’s not that much different. In the book they were just robbing mob places until Bronson took the price off the Duvall character’s head. When they changed it into money, they ended up in POINT BLANK territory. Robert Ryan plays a version of Bronson named Mailer - the head of the mob... and a very young Joanna Cassidy as his hot (braless) trophy wife. Ryan is one of the film’s secret weapons - he’s not only one of those guys who has been in a bunch of old noir and crime films, he’s tough as nails. He’s a bad ass, too.

At a horse auction, Duvall and Baker brace Ryan - a very public scene with Ryan’s bodyguards right there and everyone trying to be on best behavior... but seconds away from shooting each other. Duvall and Ryan have a nice little chat that is all about the world of organized crime vs the world of independents - Ryan thinks Duvall is nothing more than a stick up artist... but Duvall has been hitting them hard. It’s a good hero and villain scene - and the little guy being smarter than the big guy... just not as strong. It’s what the film is all about - the theme in a tense scene with guns and the chance for a bunch of innocent bystanders to get killed. This idea of the little guy going up against the big guy is part of the appeal of these films. They are about underdogs who kick some ass that we wish we could kick. In a strange way, THE OUTFIT is kind of a Tea Party movie - normal people standing up and taking down The Man. I don’t think it’s an accident that the bad guys in lots of these 70s films end up being big time mobsters who live in giant mansions, or big business guys who live in giant mansions, or crooked politicians who live in giant mansions. It’s blue collar workers against rich a-holes.

Where POINT BLANK turns organized crime into glass and chrome skyscrapers and the 60s version of big business with junior executives in charge, OUTFIT makes it layers of sleazy mobsters with a John Gotti type at the top. Not as interesting, but works well for a straight action flick like this. A lot of the pulp paperbacks at the time, like the EXECUTIONER series, were about Viet Nam vets who take on the mob. Ryan, as usual, is brilliant playing Mailer: barking orders and always on the verge of exploding. He’s one of my favorite tough guy actors because he always had a trace of vulnerability.

After Duvall and Ryan have their little chat, the film becomes a series of action scenes setting one against the other until we get to Act 3 where Duvall and Baker buy additional weapons and bombs and anything else they can get their hands on and storm Ryan’s country estate for an Act 3 of wall-to-wall action. Dozens of mobsters guarding Ryan means dozens of shoot outs and fight scenes... and then all kinds of ground taken and lost once they get inside the house. Though big studio films often have wall-to-wall action in Act 3, in these 70s films it tends to be more personal and visceral - shoot outs with people in the next room... close enough to smell. In one scene, a character looks in a mirror and can see something happening in the next room... and uses his gun. It’s close fighting, rather than the big explosions of today’s blockbusters. And the close fighting ends up being more personal and more emotional. Though, um, there are some explosions. And I forgot to mention the car explosions that happen before the house raid - there’s a great country road car chase and shoot out ending with an explosion when Ryan sets Tim Carey after Duvall and Baker.

ACT THREE ACTION

The Duvall & Baker team seem like a predecessor for writer-director John Flynn’s next film - ROLLING THUNDER (written by the great Paul Schrader) where William Devane & Tommy Lee Jones team up to take down some scumbags in Mexico. That’s another great B action flick that I don’t think is on DVD. The shoot out in the whorehouse in THUNDER is much like the end shootout in OUTFIT. Two guys with guns take on a house full of trouble... and stay standing even after they have been shot multiple times. One of the great things about seeing THE OUTFIT on the big screen is that you don’t get that crappy TV print where they changed the end. Somewhere along the line, some network’s Standards & Practices (censors) decided that having Duvall and Baker get away at the end was immoral. They are armed robbers! They kill a whole lotta people! The people they do not kill, they aren’t very nice to! So the network cut the end where they escape, and end with the two laying wounded on the stairs of the country estate after all of the bad guys are dead, listening to the police sirens getting closer - seemingly resigned to do prison time. The great print the New Beverly showed had them cleverly slipping past the police, laughing.

THE OUTFIT isn’t a great film, but it’s a *fun* one. It seems like real people in real situations really hurting people. Not like the fake action flicks we get these days. I miss these meat and potatoes flicks - just meant to fill some screens and provide some great little action stories. The B movies today all seem to be chasing the A movies - trying to be big event films made for a nickle. The only time we get films like this seems to be those flicks that are either almost parodies of 70s action films or *actual* parodies of B action films. It’s too bad. Some studio should start making some little no-nonsense action films on low enough budgets that they can’t lose money. Just some guys kicking ass for 90 minutes. I’d watch that...

Places to see great old movies:
* NEW BEVERLY CINEMA
* AMERICAN CINEMATHEQUE
* SILENT MOVIES ON FAIRFAX
* Nuart Theater

- Bill

IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Unlikeable Leads - from Harvey Pekar in AMERICAN SPLENDOR to BAD SANTA.
Dinner: City Wok.
Bicycle: Short - up to Noho.
Pages: Rewrote all of yesterday's pages, and a couple of today's.

Evil Dr. Klan Hires Deadly Ninjas

In KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE the Evil Dr. Klan says, "We are building a fighting force of extraordinary magnitude. We forge our tradition in the spirit of our ancestors. You have our gratitude."

These are the audition tapes for the fighting force...



- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Writing a one paghe synopsis - example.
Dinner: Denny's (which must have been first date HQ) - fish, mashed potatoes, slaw.
Bicycle: Both Saturday and Sunday were long rides, so took it easy on Monday - short ride into NoHo.
Pages: 3 pages instead of 5, but I'll make my deadline without problem.

The Men I Love

It would be wrong for me not to post this trailer, even though by now you have all seen it...



I'll be there.

This is a great idea - turning this film into SEX AND THE CITY for men. We'll all go out and have a beer in our steel-toed work boots then head to the cinema.

- Bill

Script Magazine - July/August 2010

Script Magazine - July/August 2010 - in book stores now!



Meeting With Giants: Great Directors
by Ray Morton
Script sits down with first-time filmmaker Angela Ismailos to discuss her new documentary Great Directors and the legendary helmers it celebrates.

Script Secrets: A Dozen Simple Mistakes
by William Martell
As a teacher and professional scribe himself, columnist William Martell identifies 12 common screenwriting mistakes ... and presents his solutions for each.

Behind the Camera: From Static Words to Moving Pictures
by Robert Piluso
Recent first-time writer-directors discuss the valuable insights they gained into the pragmatics and economics of filmmaking, directing actors, and conveying tone.

The Producer/Screenwriter Relationship
by Todd Garner
Industry veteran Todd Garner has produced many successful films during his time in Hollywood. However, he admits none of them could have been accomplished unless someone was willing, and able, to write a compelling story with characters an audience would care about.

The Agony of the Silent No
by Dwayne Alexander Smith
Professional screenwriter Dwayne Smith gives his first-person account of a recent phenomenon he'd never experienced before when dealing with film executives -- the peculiar and agonizing "Silent No."

From Script to Screen: The Tillman Story
by David S. Cohen
Amir Bar-Lev and Mark Monroe, creators of The Tillman Story, unexpectedly found themselves demythologizing a martyred American hero -- and liking him better as they did it.

Writers on Writing: Predators
by Michael Finch & Alex Litvak
First-time screenwriters Michael Finch and Alex Litvak were chosen by Robert Rodriguez and presented with the daunting task of re-imagining 1987's beloved horror-science-fiction film, Predator. To do so, they had to overcome their initial fear of failure, dust off the franchise they grew up loving, and, come hell or high water, give die-hard fans of the original movie something they'd enjoy.

Live From New York, It's Saturday Night Live
By Zack Gutin
The writers of Saturday Night Live are a fraternity of the greatest known comedy minds working in television today. Script got a rare chance to spend a production week with head writer Seth Meyers and the other men and women who bring you the late-night sketches and jokes that have America still talking Monday morning. Join us for this rare look inside one of TV's greatest comedy institutions.

Interview: The Kids Are All Right
by Bob Verini
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- Bill

Bikini Lebowski

Does this really need an introduction?



- Bill

You Can't Handle The Truth!

So I’m cycling from one coffee shop to another and this car *runs a red light* and almost hits me. The driver hits their horn and screams something at me. I’m kind of shook up, and just kind of pause for a moment to reflect on my life up until this point... when it almost ended. Then I get back in motion... and due to traffic, end up at the next stop light right next to the driver. Now there have been times when my common sense got misplaced somewhere and I yelled at someone in two tons of steel that can travel at 120 miles per hour - kind of like arguing with a guy pointing a gun at you - but this was not one of those times. Instead, the guy started screaming at *me* for getting in the way of him running the red light... though he didn’t phrase it that way. Actually, he spoke in a code made up of profanity. I just let him scream, and when the light changed, I flipped him off (okay, maybe I misplaced some of my common sense) then zoomed away. Again, thanks to traffic, I was far ahead of him and did not see him for the rest of my ride. He was probably on his way to his anger management session.

But this is one of those strange things about human beings that we need to work on: when we are wrong, instead of admitting it, we attack the person who is right! I’m sure it’s all a basic survival thing left over from when we were cavemen cutting each other off on the jungle trail - when our vulnerability is exposed, we attack to protect that vulnerability. And we are vulnerable when we are obviously wrong. In fact, the more wrong we are, the more vulnerable we are, the stronger our attack seems to be. We just *react* when we should probably think and then react.

Probably because I am slowly becoming an old fogey (kids get off my lawn!) it seems to me that there is more of this reaction-when-wrong thing than ever before. People seem to be more self centered and more combative and less polite. They also seem to have lost those mental checks and balances that have us think before we speak. Hey, maybe I’m wrong and it’s always been this way but my tolerance has eroded over the years. Whatever, people who are wrong seem determined to fight everyone else to the death... especially the people who are right.

The problem with this is that it just escalates the conflict, and in the end - the person who was wrong is *still wrong*... only now they are even *more* wrong and look *much* worse because they have fought so damned hard *against* what is right.

But people continue to fight when they are wrong and do all that they can to cover it up and blame the other guy, and even try to convince us that right-is-wrong and wrong-is-right. Instead of just deflating the whole problem with the truth and a *sincere* admission of being wrong, they escalate the problem by covering it up and insisting they are in the right.

You see this stuff in politics all the time - and it never ends well. Someone who is head of a group that is strongly anti-Gay, gets caught hiring a male prostitute from a place called “RentBoy.com” to be his companion on a business trip. Now, after being caught red handed (difficult to avoid puns with a subject like this) instead of just saying, “Okay, I’m Gay. Sorry for all of the previous Gay-hatred, but I was actually hating myself and lashing out at others who reflected the part of me I most hated”, the guy escalates the conflict by saying he’s completely not-Gay and had only hired the male prostitute to carry his luggage... and when people don’t buy that, he claims that he did not know that a website called “RentBoy” was an escort service... and when people don’t buy that, he changes his story to say he was trying to show the poor male prostitute the error of his ways while they shared a hotel room on a business trip... and when people didn’t buy that... and on and on it goes, staying in the news cycle instead of being forgotten because they guy just won’t admit that he’s Gay.

Big deal - he’s Gay. A week ago there were millions of Gay people marching in parades all across the country - he’d have just been one in those millions. But instead of being lost in a crowd, he kept himself in the news by denying what just about everyone else in the world figured was the truth... And the end result is always the same: that male prostitute talks to a major metropolitan newspaper and says they had all kinds of sex. Um, if someone rents a male prostitute for a couple of weeks I *hope* they have lots of sex and get their money’s worth. That’s probably not cheap. Wait... did he charge it off on his expense account, too?

By the way - I try to keep politics off the blog, and used this as an illustration of my point because it was recently in the news and went on for a long time due to the guy just continuing to try and cover it all up. Please, no political rants in the comments section. If you want to image some President who said “I did not have sexual intercourse with that woman” when that was not entirely true, be my guest. Politics is *full* of examples on every side of extending the conflict by covering it up and denying it instead of just admitting the truth. There’s a great scene in one of the Tom Clancy movies where Jack Ryan advises the President that distancing himself from some friends who did the wrong thing would be a mistake - the press would easily connect the President to them and that would extend the scandal. Instead, say they were not just friends but good friends. Defuse the scandal by admitting the truth. Once you have said the truth, the news story is over. Nothing to dig up.

HOLLYWOOD, LOOK IN THE MIRROR!

(No, you do not look “Mahvelous!”... look closer)

M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie has been getting a lot of press lately... all the wrong kind. THE LAST AIRBENDER is running at 7% on Rotten Tomatoes, and audiences also seem not to like it much - only a C from the CinemaScore poll. When he was asked about the critics disliking his film he said something along the lines of, If the critics hate it I must be on the right track. Of course, this from a guy who made a film critic the villain in LADY IN THE WATER. Not all film critics make sense and some probably are villains, but film reviews are a lot like script notes: they may not all be right, but sometimes they point out real problems that can be addresses to improve your work. And if many people give you the same script note, that’s a real problem that needs to be looked into. Some notes you might look at and see the point being made, but you disagree with it... so you ignore it. You are the one writing the script or making the movies at the end of the day.

But when Night looks at the problems the critics are pointing out and decides that he is right and all of them are wrong... well, that’s a bit arrogant and a bit self destructive. Also, it’s self delusional - he refuses to see that his career seems to be hurtling in a downward direction. Quickly. Every film seems worse than the one before - and often kind of dopey. And his roles seem to be getting bigger in every film. THE SIXTH SENSE was a really good film (his third as director) and I did not like UNBREAKABLE when it first came out, but it was *interesting* and in retrospective it was much better than LADY IN THE WATER and THE VILLAGE and THE HAPPENING. Though SIGNS was well directed, it had a laughable screenplay that seemed to get sillier as it went on. But instead of Night looking in the mirror, seeing his faults, and trying to correct them and make better films; he *rejects* that he even has faults!

It’s *our* fault for not loving his movies.

The first step is admitting there is a problem, and that it is your problem not everyone else's. Anything else is just making things worse...

But Night is not the only one in Hollywood who thinks this way (duh). When a film flops, studios are quick to blame it on poor marketing or a change in audience tastes or a trend that ended or a star who has faded or something other than THE FILM STINKS! We see the film, and it’s just awful... and the CinemaScore audience poll gives it a bad grade, and critics hate it, but with better marketing people would have liked it. That makes no sense at all to anyone but Hollywood suits. If this were any other product and an entire product line failed, they would be all over that line trying to figure out what went wrong so that they won’t make that expensive mistake again. But movies are *creative* and *subjective*, so you can’t really know why a film fails... except for all of the critics pointing out the awful dialogue and dreadful acting. How many times have we seen films with friends and everyone has the exact same complaints? That’s not subjective, that’s a problem!

But Hollywood doesn’t think it’s *their* problem... or at least, refuses to admit that it is their problem. It’s marketing department or that fickle audience who loved the last movie with a donkey in it, so why didn’t they love *this* movie with a donkey in it?

Those danged suits!

But what about *us*? You know, screenwriters... we get notes on our scripts and react. “They don’t know what they are talking about! They are wrong! They just didn’t get it!” We can easily blame “them” and close our eyes to the screenplay’s problems. We all do it. I do it. Your first reaction is that they are wrong. Hey, sometimes they are wrong... and sometimes we are wrong. When you get that note, and you want to *fight it* and fight it to the death, just take a deep breath and step back and calm down. Let that reaction pass before you say or do anything. Then, when you are in a calmer state of mind, look at the note objectively. At least, as objectively as you can. Do they have a point? Really be open to the possibility that you might be wrong, that your script may be flawed. The thing about a note is that you still get to decide what to do. But part of that decision involves being able to think clearly and not be so caught up in defending your script that you end up defending a guilty party. The reason why we ask for notes, and the reason why getting some feedback is important, is to improve your screenplay.

Now, you may hear all of the notes, give them serious consideration, and change nothing. I have a script that always gets the exact same note: people don’t like the point of the story. It makes them uncomfortable. Well, that was my *intent*, so I am not going to change it. The script was always a hard sell, and making it an easier sell by removing its soul and purpose isn’t going to make it better... just worse in a different way. But other notes on that script were considered and used to improve the script... after I calmed down.

If I were to fight every note because my script is right and everyone else is wrong, I would be expending a lot of energy defending a bad script. And one of the reasons why I would fight so hard to defend it is that I would *know* that it is bad. You defend your weaknesses, not your strengths. But defending your weaknesses does not make them stronger - it may even weaken them more. Instead of defending your weaknesses, acknowledge them and work to improve them. Once they are no longer weaknesses, they no longer need to be defended.

Oh, and your screenplay gets better!

The first step is admitting there is a problem, and that it is your problem not everyone else's. Anything else is just making things worse...

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Unexpected Answers - Why does every rom com end with Hugh Grant running somewhere?
Dinner: Subway Black Forest Ham
Bicycle: Short.
Pages: Below the quota again - but I can get back on for the week tomorrow.

Happy Birthday America!

Below you will find the SABOTEUR edition of Fridays With Hitchcock, and below that a suspense scene from THE AMERICAN FRIEND...

- Bill

The American Friend (1977)

Happy Birthday America! (a little early)

Though I would love to post something about the Constitution and our freedoms, these things seem to be controversial these days - and I don't want an out of control message board argument.

So I am posting something from one of my favorite European directors whose films are often valentines to America. He can take a 9 year old girl and turn her into the tour guide for America - seeing our world through her eyes... or show us small town life in Texas, or give us a Hollywood full of conspiracies and crime, or the great America road trip... in Germany! But I first discovered him with this Hitchcockian film based on a Patricia Highsmith Ripley novel about a normal dad and husband who discovers he is dying of a rare disease and is offered a fortune to leave for his family... all he has to do is kill a guy. A total stranger. A mobster the world would be better off without. Could you kill someone to help your family?

Here is that murder - a longish clip, but intense.



- Bill

The Avengers

Summer.

When I was a kid, TV shows went on summer vacation, too. So just when I didn't have school the next morning and could maybe talk my parents into letting me stay up late to watch some cool adult show... those shows were not on!

But summer wasn't all test patterns or screen snow, they had these things called "Summer Replacement Shows". They were whatever the network could get cheap that was in english, and usually that meant British shows. These were the TV shows I fell in love with, because they were the only adult shows I ever saw (until I was old enough to stay up later). So my childhood was all about SECRET AGENT MAN and THE AVENGERS and THE CHAMPIONS and several others.

Here's the opening for THE AVENGERS, with it's great Laurie Johnson score:



The awful movie version seemed to miss why the show worked in the first place, and traded class for crass.

- Bill

IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Are We There Yet? - And Tom Cruise comes to visit me!
Dinner: Togo Humus sandwich.
Bicycle: Medium again - up to NoHo, then back.
Pages: Damned 6:30am phone call ruined my day... but I did a couple of pages anyway.