The adventures of a professional screenwriter and frequent film festival jurist, slogging through the trenches of Hollywood, writing movies that you have never heard of, and getting no respect.
Today is the day in the United States where we honor our fallen soldiers... and sailors and marines and air force folks and everyone else who has died defending this country. I grew up during an unpopular war (Viet Nam) and the mistake then was to transfer feelings about the war to those people who were fighting it - usually poor kids who had no way to avoid the draft, and were doing their best to serve their country. I think we have all learned from that mistake - no matter what we think about the war, the people fighting it are *risking their lives* to serve their country - and deserve our respect.
These are from of my favorite war movies that show the courage of our men and women in uniform...
THE BIG RED ONE (1980) written & directed by the great Sam Fuller. Unfortunately this is the trailer for the re-release...
GO FOR BROKE (1951)...
THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946) directed by William Wyler. I cried while posting this... in a Starbucks.. I'm sorry.
A clip from STEEL HELMET (1951) directed by Sam Fuller...
FIXED BAYONETTES (1951) also directed by Sam Fuller...
THE BOYS IN COMPANY C (1978) directed by Sidney Furie...
Those are some of my favorites, and if there are any that you haven't seen - check them out. And take some time today to thank and be thankful to those people who have risked their lives or gave their lives for this country.
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Too Much Research? - Don't use research to avoid writing! Dinner: Saturday: Burger the size of a whole cow BBQed up by Bamboo Killer Emily's boyfriend. Pages: No. Bicycle: Medium bike ride to Bamboo Killer HQ. Movies: HANGOVER 2 - more later!
One of the interesting parts of this series is watching Hitchcock movies I have not seen in decades, and did not own on DVD (until I had to buy ‘em to write up the blog entries). There are Hitchcock movies like last week’s STRANGERS ON A TRAIN that I probably watch once a year, because I really love them... and others like I CONFESS that end up big surprises because I haven’t seen them in ages and end up being great films. Hey - I’m glad I own I CONFESS on DVD, now, and will probably watch it several more times. Then, there are movies like STAGE FRIGHT... which I now own on DVD and may not ever see again. It’s much better than TOPAZ, but ends up in that TORN CURTAIN class of Hitchcock films that are just kind of blah. The thing of it is, STAGE FRIGHT has a good concept, it’s just poorly executed. This is the film they should be remaking instead of STRANGERS.
Nutshell: The film starts with a stage curtain opening... on real life London! RADA acting student Eve (Jane Wyman) has a mad crush on pretty boy actor Jonathan (Richard Todd) who yanks her out of class to ask a little favor - seems he’s been sleeping with big time stage star Charlotte Inwood (Marlene Dietrich) who is very married... and he's now the prime suspect in her husband’s murder. Could Eve whisk him away to her father’s boat up the coast so that he can evade the police? Eve hides Jonathan, and then uses her acting talents to infiltrate Charlotte’s life and find the evidence that will prove the big time star is the killer and the man both women love is innocent. Complications include Eve’s divorced and constantly bickering parents (a wacky Alastair Sim and Sybil Thorndike) and the detective investigating the murder, Ordinary Smith (Michael Wilding)... whom she falls in love with. The idea of an actress playing different roles to go undercover and find a killer is fantastic - but this story just squanders it. I wonder if part of the problem was Wyman - who won an Oscar for JOHNNY BELINDA - had a limited range or just didn’t want to play unglamourous characters. So one of the big problems is that she goes undercover looking like herself, which kind of kills the concept.
Experiment: MAJOR SPOILERS!!! This film has a flashback that lies. When Eve is driving Jonathan to her father’s boat, he tells her what happened - how Charlotte murdered her husband and got Jonathan to cover it up, which lead to him being discovered at the crime scene by the maid, and we see what happens as he tells the story... and his story is a complete lie! What I find interesting about this is that it shows how the visual side of our screenplays is much much much more important than the dialogue. If Jonathan had just told her the story verbally - and we just showed him in the car telling her what happened - we would be able to accept that it was all a lie later in the film. But we *see* the story as he tells it, and seeing is believing. Later when we find out it was a lie, we have trouble processing that because we *saw* what happened! Hitchcock took a major beating for this experiment from the critics, and the film flopped. Audience members could not accept *seeing* a lie - what we see is real, what a character says may be a lie.
I don’t know if this experiment would fail today - but I remember when I first saw BLOOD SIMPLE wondering how the hell Jon Getz could possibly show up at the bar after we saw photos of him shot dead. Later I realized the photos had been doctored, but I had been pulled out of the story for a moment. Though RASHAMON shows us the same story from different POVs - and each telling is very different than the others. So maybe it could work?
Great *Shot*: When Jonathan enters Charlotte’s house - the crime scene - we have a continuous take from the street outside, Jonathan opening the door and entering the house, then closing the door and we follow him upstairs. No cuts, all one shot!
Hitch Appearance: 40 minutes in - Eve is walking down the street talking to herself and trying to get into character, she passes Hitch... who looks at her like she’s crazy. Today, she might just be talking on a cell phone.
Great Scenes: The downfall of this film - no great scenes! There are even some scenes that might have been pretty good if written differently. This is not only a movie about The Theatre, it seems stagey. Lots of sit and talk and stand and talk scenes, and not much movement. No chase scenes, no suspense scenes, nothing! A thriller without the thriller scenes! Talk about rookie screenwriting mistakes! So we’re going to look at where the story goes wrong, and one interesting thing the film does right...
See Me Think! Speaking of BLOOD SIMPLE and Jon Getz, there’s a great bit in that film where you see his character *think*... and figure out a situation. In STAGE FRIGHT there are two scenes where we see people think, and both are kind of cool. When Jonathan is telling Eve his story, there comes a point where he realizes that all of the evidence points to him as the killer instead of Charlotte. This is done without dialogue. We see Jonathan’s face, and each piece of evidence superimposed (an action bit - like picking up the murder weapon and getting his fingerprints on it or being spotted leaving the crime scene by the maid). He realizes that he’s going to be blamed for the murder, without saying anything. Done visually.
The same method is used later when Eve’s Dad is trying to figure out a way to shock Charlotte into confessing while she is on stage at a garden party RADA benefit. He sees a woman in a white dress, and a blood stain is superimposed over it. (Charlotte’s dress had a big blood stain after the murder, and Jonathan destroyed it to protect her... destroying the only evidence that could have saved him.) Eve’s Dad then sees blood stains on a bunch of women’s dresses... and eventually he gets to a carnival shooting gallery and sees blood stains on the Kewpie Doll’s dresses. He then has to win a Kewpie Doll, get blood on the little Kewpie Doll dress, and has a little Cub Scout take the Kewpie Doll up to where Charlotte is on stage singing. Which completely freaks her out...
Identity Confusion: The Garden Party RADA benefit is one of a handful of scenes that should have been very tense because Eve has to be herself *plus* play the role of Charlotte’s temp maid. The problem is, none of these scenes seem to be written for suspense - with someone discovering she’s not who she claims to be, and because there is no real difference between Eve and the temp maid physically, we don’t even have a Clark Kent Without His Glasses situation.
IN *DISGUISE* AS THE MAID:
AS HERSELF:
In an earlier scene, when she is first putting together the temp maid character, she wears a pair of thick glasses swiped from her landlady... and can’t see a thing when she’s wearing them. But she never wears the glasses again - never when she’s playing the maid. This is a lost opportunity. The glasses not only made her look different, they are something she could forget or not have, creating suspense and problems when she is dealing with someone who knows her as the maid. Also a way for *us* to identify who she is supposed to be in this scene. Plus, if she can’t see when she is wearing the glasses, that would create times when she *must* take off the glasses (and potentially be caught as a fraud) and times when she makes big mistakes because she can not see with the glasses on.
Also, scenes where she is with one person who knows her as Eve and another who knows her as the maid are always too easy. In one scene the maid is supposed to walk Detective Ordinary Smith to the door, but Smith *knows* Eve and would instantly recognize her. That should have created a big suspense scene... but Smith says he can find his own way out. No suspense. This happens again and again in the film - suspense is *avoided* through some contrived situation that lets Eve off the hook. Suspense scenes are turned into ho-hum scenes where we have a moment of potential fear that if Eve has to do this, she’ll be discovered... then she doesn’t have to do it after all. Easy out.
When your story is about someone with a secret identity, you need to have some element that shows us the different identities, you need to have times where those elements are not present yet the person must become the other identity, and you need to have ways for them to be caught (and people there to catch them). Because the difference between Eve and the maid was an accent - and not even a string one - there was no threat that Eve might get caught being the maid (or vice versa).
Not My Problem: The biggest problem with the story - For 95% of the film this is a typical Hitchcock wrongly accused man story... except the wrongly accused man goes into hiding and isn’t part of the story! Instead, we focus on this woman who has a crush on the wrongly accused man. Eve is never in any real danger, because she wasn’t the one who is accused of murder. Even if she’s discovered playing the maid, what’s the worst that can happen? She gets “fired” as the maid... and the guy she has a crush on (who is not her boyfriend, and is sleeping with another woman) is still hiding. This story is not Eve’s problem - she is never in any real danger, and there are no consequences (to her) if she fails.
And to make matters worse - she falls in love with the detective! That means she isn’t even doing this for the man she loves, the man she loves is not in danger, the man she loves isn’t wrongly accused of murder... the man she loves is now the cop! She is no longer part of this story at all!
And to make matters even worse than that - half the time we are following her *Dad* around! It’s her Dad who hides Jonathan. It’s her Dad who comes up with the Kewpie Doll thing. It’s her Dad who seems to be doing all of the heavy lifting in the story!
So the story is not about the wrongly accused man, is not even about the woman who loves the wrongly accused man, half the time the story is about the father of the woman who once had a mad crush on the wrongly accused man but is now dating someone else! Do you see the problem here? The story focuses on characters who are peripheral to the conflict and are not in any danger at all!
Villain/Hero Confusion: But once we get to the last 5% of the story we run into a big problem... because the wrongly accused man is not wrongly accused at all. He done it. So all of the work Eve has been doing to prove this guy is innocent has been a complete waste of time: her time and *our time* as the viewers of the film! It never mattered whether she succeeded or failed - because she had nothing to do with the outcome. He was always guilty. Had he been innocent and had she been really in love with him, this story might have worked. But when the protagonist’s actions can not change the outcome of the story, we are just watching someone who is not in any danger wasting their time. It makes the whole film pointless.
And how are we supposed to hope she proves the guy is innocent one minute, and then hope the police catch the guy a few minutes later. Jonathan can’t be both the hero and the villain - those are two opposite roles. He can be the wrongly accused man or the real killer, but both doesn’t work.
One of the big problems I had with the film was casting: Not just Wyman’s inability to play different characters, but having to sit through a bunch of Dietrich musical numbers that were just there to capitalize on her, and all of the Alastair Sim quirky shtick (though I thought the bit where he uses the accordion and sings song lyrics instead of dialogue was a good idea), and Detective Ordinary Smith seems to be completely without character or charisma... yet Eve instantly falls in love with him! But Richard Todd as the wrongly accused man doesn’t work for a minute - this guy is wearing a huge sign around his neck that says “Psycho Killer In The Last Reel”. It’s like a murder mystery where all of the suspects are unknowns except for Gary Busey (see CROOKED... on second thought, don’t!). And Todd hams it up - he snarls every single line! By the time we get to the end, where all kinds of things happen in a theatre and Jonathan and Eve end up hiding in the prop room, we know he done it... and the story goes so far over the top with Jonathan suddenly becoming a mad-dog killer with a bunch of previous murders in his past who decides to kill Eve mostly for fun (but to help his insanity defense), you just wonder what was going through the writer’s head. The only way to top it off is to have Jonathan *cut in half* off camera when the fire curtains are dropped on him. The end - curtain is closed.
STAGE FRIGHT just does not work. For all of those people who think the genius of Hitchcock movies is Alfred Hitchcock, here’s proof that you can give The Master Of Suspense a crappy script and you end up with a crappy movie with some great shots and a few great cinematic concepts like the lying flashback. You give Hitchcock a great script, like STRANGERS ON A TRAIN and it becomes a classic film with all of those great shots and great cinematic concepts. You have to give the greatest director something to work with. They can make good writing even better, but they can’t do anything with bad writing... except film it.
Next week, it gets even worse! My least favorite Hitchcock film, UNDER CAPRICORN. Haven’t seen it in decades, I wonder if it will be a gem like I CONFESS or a stinker? No matter what, I will end this series owning *every* Hitchcock film on DVD.
Lancelot Link Thursday! For those of you who can't wait to see the new PLANET OF THE APES movie with James Franco, here are some articles about screenwriting and the biz plus some fun stuff that may be of interest to you. Brought to you by that suave and sophisticated secret agent...
Here are eight cool links plus this week's car chase...
Oh, and PIRATES 4 has made over $400 million in less than a week with bad reviews... So, why do they make sequels?
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Act 2 Is Quicksand! - one of reader's favorite tips - about the perils of act 2. Dinner: Subway ham & swiss before a movie. Pages: In act 3! Wrote a good scene, but needed to write 2. Bicycle: Short bike ride.
MOVIES: THE PEOPLE VS. GEORGE LUCAS - a documentary about the STAR WARS movies and the fans love and hate for them... and the absolute stupidity of medichlorians. One of the reasons why I went was my friend and fellow screenwriter Chris Valin was one of the angry fans interviewed, and his name in the closing credits *twice* - once with middle initial, once without. But the film ended up *full* of people I know, to the point that I felt left out. The main thrust of the film is that Lucas made these magical movies... sold us all of the toys and action figures... then made three crappy prequels and recut the original three films and turned them into crap. We all know that Han Solo shot first - and having him just return fire changes the very core of his character. A big part of the film were the fan films... But how can you do an movie about STAR WARS and fan films and not have a single clip from HARDWARE WARS or interview with Ernie Foss? HARDWARE WARS was the original fan film, and was a huge hit back in the late 70s. One of the weird things was that the film seemed to focus on younger fans, with very few people in the film who saw STAR WARS without the crappy A NEW HOPE subtitle. Though there are no new interviews with Lucas, they use some footage from old interviews where he laments that he always wanted to make edgy indie films and now he can’t. Dude, you have all of the money in the world, if you want to make a movie just go make it. Who cares if it flops? If you’re afraid you won’t get a fair shake because you’re George Lucas, make it under a another name and see what happens. But complaining just seems false. Lucas also seems aware that many fans do not like the prequels... and there’s a cool solution for that: In some interview in the late 70s Lucas said he had planned 3 trilogies and claimed to have synopsis for all of them. Oddly enough, the prequels are fairly close to what he described back then... I think Lucas ought to produce the last trilogy, just to make up for the prequels. Skip whatever stories he had planned and do three more kick-ass space westerns like STAR WARS and EMPIRE.
MOVIES: INCENDIES - Canadian film in French that was nominated for Best Foreign Film (and lost) - and it's quietly disturbing. Emotional puzzle with a bunch of OMG! moments. When a kind of a boring middle class woman who worked 20 years as a secretary dies, her will is just weird: her twin children (one female, one male) now in their late-20s are each given a task. One must find the father they thought was dead, the other must find a brother they never knew they had... in the Middle East where there mother was born and raised. We follow the female twin as she discover's her mother's violent hellish past (not much of a spoiler, since someone gets their brains blown out in the first ten minutes). Seems they had no idea who their mother was... and that kind of means they have no idea who they are. The story just keeps escalating - the more she finds out about her mother the more frightening the story becomes. The movie is a little confusing because it alternates between the daughter’s quest and the mother as a young woman - and the actress who plays the daughter looks like the actress who plays the mother... and as the daughter follows her mother’s path she begins to *dress* like her mother - adding to the confusion! The mother wore a distinctive crucifix, and that could have helped tell them apart... until the daughter begins wearing the crucifix! But there are some *great* bits of visual storytelling - the long lost brother is given a tattoo on his foot when he is born, and there are some great shocking moments of flashback as we see a child soldier... who has the tattoo on his foot! Sometimes you think one character might be the lost brother grown up... and then we see that tattoo and realize the guy we thought was the villain is the hero or vice versa. Lots and lots of twists! This film is brutal! The more the twins learn about their mother, the more they realize she was just pretending to be that typical middle class secretary for 20 years. After seeing this film, I'm wondering what the hell my sweet old mom did when she was young!
MOVIES: Also saw another film that I will talk about later.
My friend Danny's short film has completed its festival run and is now online. I saw it at some festival in Santa Monica and laughed my ass off. It's a 13 minute mocdoc about a Frisbee Dancing Competition...
Don Siegel's film TELEFON based on the novel by Walter Wager (DIE HARD 2) was shot in San Francisco - and we you see the underground parking garage scenes in the trailer, I was there for that!
This film (and the book - read it back then) were inspirations for my SLEEPER AGENT script.
What's amusing about the trailer is that it uses the old landline telephone as its logo... and within a few years I'm not sure many people will still have traditional land lines.
I first saw THE BIRDS on TV (probably NBC Monday Night At The Movies with Victor Bozeman) when I was a kid and it scared the crap out of me. It really messed me up. The thing about this film is that it doesn’t just give you nightmares - when you are wide awake and walking home from school - there are birds on the telephone lines on your street - waiting to attack you! Birds are everywhere! What made it even more frightening for me is that the movie takes place in Bodega Bay... and my family went camping at least once a month a few miles north of Bodega Bay - so we always drove through town, and often stopped to fill up the old Ford Econoline at the gas station and have a bowl of clam chowder at The Tides Restaurant (they make it Manhattan style and with big pieces of bacon and fried onions) - I knew all of the locations the movie took place in, so it was like the birds were attacking in my backyard! Attacking me!
I can tell you the exact part of the movie that did it to me - when they show the farmer with his eyes pecked out. Up until that point, I’d never thought about how vulnerable my eyes were... how soft they were... how easy to poke out they were... do they just pop and dribble eye-juice? Is that what those birds on the telephone wires on my street wanted? My eye-juice?
Later I read the story - maybe even in a collection “edited” by Hitchcock (probably really Joan Harrison) - and it scared me, too. In the story, the farmer gets his eyes pecked out. Man, I needed to wear goggles or something when I walked home from school!
Though I’m a big fan of novelist Evan Hunter (also known as Ed McBain), I never really thought much about the screenplay for THE BIRDS and thought Tippi Hedren was kind of stiff... until I watched the DVD again for this entry. Tippi is much looser than in MARNIE and fits the role much better this time around. And the script has some great dramatic scenes in between bird attacks. Best thing about THE BIRDS - no shortage of great scenes, great moments, and the film holds up really well. I think kids today could easily develop nightmares after seeing it.
Nutshell: Spoiled society girl Melanie Daniels (Tipppi - lacquered hair) does a meet cute in a pet store Mitch Brenner (ultra masculine Rod Taylor, who once played Travis McGee) when he pretends to think that she’s an employee and asks her about love birds as a gift for his little sister’s birthday. After she makes a fool of herself and lets some birds escape their cage, Mitch admits it was all a prank. After Mitch leaves, Melanie buys a couple of love birds and tries to deliver them to Mitch’s apartment... but his nosey neighbor tells her that Mitch has driven up the coast to Bodega Bay for the weekend.
When Melanie zooms up the coast in her convertible sports car, the love birds in their cage lean into the corners... and you know this is going to be a fun film. A little touch like that is above and beyond whatever is needed to tell the story - it’s a bonus. This film has fun and inventiveness to spare.
In Bodega Bay, Melanie finds out where the Brenners live... but no one at the general store knows the sister’s name and suggests she ask Annie Haywood the school teacher (played by Suzanne Pleshette). There’s all kinds of question and tension with Annie - does she have something going with Mitch?
Melanie rents a boat to sneak out to the Brenner house across the bay, and one of the cool things is that many of the townspeople introduced in a few seconds of film here will become major players later in the story. Melanie - completely out of place in a fur coat - zooms the outboard across the bay, breaks into the house and leaves the love birds, then gets back into the little boat to zoom back... when Mitch spots her. Again, we get a cool little scene where Mitch “races” her across the bay in his pick up truck. They could have just bumped into each other at the house and talked, but this race between boat and car is kind of a strange rom-com battle of the sexes (and transportation devices) scene - it adds to the fun of the film.
Just as Melanie is pulling into the dock, a seagull swoops down at strikes her. We are still early in the film, and so far it’s been more rom-com than when animals attack flick, so it’s kind of unexpected (yet - expected - the film is called THE BIRDS after all). Her head is bleeding, and Mitch takes care of her.
When Mitch’s mother Lydia (Jessica Tandy) and sister Cathy (Veronica Cartwright) find them, Mitch asks his mother if Melanie can come to dinner. The framing is great, here, because we focus on Lydia - and she completely hates the idea... but reluctantly says “yes”. When we have these three characters, we often get framing that shows Mitch between Lydia and Melanie. The cool thing about Jessica Tandy in this film is that her husband Hume Cronyn was in several Hitchcock films and even wrote a couple. An interesting thing about Hitchcock is that he was loyal to people who had worked with him in the past. Maybe he was just comfortable working with the same people - but he would use the same crew people and often use the same cast people.
Veronica Cartwright is the center of my movie universe. She was a kid actor in a few episodes of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS TV show, and here she gets one of the five lead roles in a major motion picture at *twelve*. When you’re a kid and you watch this movie, you identify with her in the school scenes and the birthday party scene. But Cartwright continued to work as an adult... in the Phil Kauffman version of INVASION OF THE BODYSNATCHERS... and then in ALIEN... plus a bunch of other movies I like. Oh, and she was a recurring character on X-FILES. There was a time in the late 70s/early 80s where it seemed like she was in every movie I saw. She’s quirky cute and has that tough-but-vulnerable thing going for her.
Okay, back to the story...
After the tense scene between Mitch and Melanie and Mitch’s Mom where it’s obvious why Mitch never married - the umbilical cord has never been cut - Melanie needs a place to stay the night and goes to school teacher Annie Haywood’s house - which had a Room For Rent sing in the window. Melanie rents the room for the night... but there’s no shortage of tension with Annie... see, she used to be Mitch’s girlfriend, until Lydia broke them apart. The cool thing with these scenes where there are no killer birds pecking out people’s eyes is that they are *dramatic* - filled with tension. The movie has two love triangle - Melanie/Mitch/Lydia and Melanie/Mitch/Annie. Both provide nice juicy scenes along the way... and allow us to have shifting alliances and sacrifices and redemptions. There is a great *people* story going on while the birds are attacking.
At dinner, Melanie agrees to stay for Cathy’s birthday party... and she’ll get stuck in Bodega Bay for the whole weekend plus a few days as the birds attack.
Before we get to the big bird attack scenes, there are birds shown on power lines and a bird that crashes into Annie’s door. While the story is setting up the characters, it doesn’t let us forget about the birds... and this creates suspense. We know the birds are going to attack, we just don’t know when.
Hitch Appearance: Walking his own pet dogs outside the pet store.
Bird Appearance: Hitchcock movies often have birds in them... this one is no exception.
Great Scenes: Lots of great scenes...
The Birthday Party: A kid’s birthday party in a big back yard overlooking the sea. Balloons everywhere, a cake. The kids are playing Blind Man’s Bluff - just like in Hitch’s YOUNG AND INNOCENT - with Cathy blindfolded... when a seagull swoops down and attacks her. She thinks it’s one of the kids... and when more gulls swoop down and attack kids, Cathy is still in the blindfold! She can’t see what’s happened - can see the danger swooping down from the sky. Melanie and Mitch have wandered away from the party for a little romance, and must run down a hill to save the kids (and blindfolded Cathy). This is a frightening scene with some great suspense because one of our leads can not see the danger and has no idea what’s going on.
The Fire Place Attack: Back at the Brenner house, Melanie and the family are trying to make sense of the attack... and Lydia is trying to break up the budding Mitch/Melanie relationship, when hundreds of birds blast out of the fireplace and attack. What’s really frightening is that this is an attack *inside the house*. The place where you feel most safe. The birds are relentless, and of course, Mitch yells, “Cover your eyes!” just to freak out the kid version of me even more back then. After they get the birds out, Lydia picks up all of her fine china - shattered by the birds. This is a great character bit - Lydia is an outdoor woman; but is a mannered, ordered person. The beautiful tea cups are symbolic of her life - shattered by the bird attack.
Fawcett’s Farm: The next morning, Lydia drives out to Fawcett’s farm when he doesn’t answer his phone. This character was cleverly introduced in a phone call - when Lydia’s chickens were acting strange and she called Fawcett, discovering that his chickens were also acting strange. At the time, you thought this phone call was just another reminder to the audience that the birds are coming... but it was also to introduce this character. When Lydia drives over to his farm, we know who he is. At the farm Lydia calls out for Fawcett - and he doesn’t answer. She enters the house, and the first thing she sees are shattered tea cups hanging in the kitchen. Okay, folks, what does that mean? No dialogue, no VO... just a set up after the birds attacked Lydia’s house and a pay off when she enters Fawcett’s house. As she creeps through the house looking for Fawcett, dread builds - we’re fairly sure we know why he isn’t answering her calls. But nothing has really prepared us for the eyes pecked out thing. This is not only a great scene, Hitchcock does a great *shot* to reveal Fawcett without eyes - really three quick shots - each one closer to Fawcett laying on the floor dead - ending with a close shot of Fawcett’s empty eye sockets dribbling blood. Yikes! As an adult who knew it was coming, it still scared me. The three shots replicate how we look closer and closer... and then wish we hadn’t. Lydia freaks, races to her pick up and roars out of there... blasting a cloud of dust in her wake.
At home, there’s a great scene where Melanie brings Lydia some tea while she is resting in bed. They have a little heart-to-heart, Lydia becomes less the controlling mother and more of a human being just trying to figure out what is right for her adult son - and afraid to let go of him.
The School Scene: This scene is so iconic, when Saturday Night Live lampooned Brian DePalma’s obsession with Hitchcock movies, they replicated this scene in THE CLAMS. Melanie goes to the school house, and has to wait for recess to talk to Cathy... so she sits on a bench near the playground and has a cigarette... the monkey bars behind her. As she smokes, we see nasty black crows landing one-by-one on the monkey bars behind Melanie... until there are hundreds of birds perched on them. She calmly smokes, unaware of the birds behind her. This is great suspense based on audience superiority - we know there is danger but she doesn’t. We want to scream at her to turn around. When she finally does turn around, there are hundreds of crows. Now she must carefully, quietly, get off the bench and move into the school house. The reason why Melanie came here in the first place was to check on Cathy for Lydia because the school house has such large unprotected windows. So once Melanie is inside, she isn’t safe. Neither are the kids. Now they have to quietly and carefully usher the kids out... past the monkey bars filled with birds... to safety. Kids have to be ultra well behaved so that the birds won’t notice them. They manage to get past all of the birds, and just when you think they’re home free... the birds attack! A black cloud of crows swoops down on the kids, pecking them like crazy. The kids run, but the birds can fly faster - and the attacks become more violent. The birds are biting the kid’s *ears* - again, something scary because it’s specific. When you see a bird beak tearing at a little kid’s ear, that’s just savage! A little girl trips, hits the pavement, glasses breaking... and now she can’t see! Cathy goes back to help her (putting one of our leads in danger) and Melanie and Annie work together to get the kids to safety. As the attacks continue, Melanie and Cathy and Annie take cover in a car parked on the side of the road. Doors unlocked, but no keys in the ignition. Birds slam down at the windows... then the birds fly away. Regrouping somewhere for the next attack. Annie takes Cathy to her house, Melanie goes to the Tides Restaurant to phone for help...
The Tides Restaurant: Another iconic scene - when I was writing the Hawaii script a few months ago I watched this scene again because it had inspired a scene in that script. Melanie enters the crowded restaurant and says that birds attacked the school kids. This provokes a big discussion about birds and man and just about everything else. My favorite guy is the drunk at the end of the bar who keeps quoting scripture and saying “It’s the end of the world!” as a toast before downing his drink. Everyone has an opinion, and there’s even a bird expert in the restaurant who rattles off all kinds of facts. We learn about birds, get some theories on why they are attacking, and have a pretty good discussion on how man constantly screws over nature... a great eco debate. It’s kind of a town hall meeting. I think one of the great things about a *good* popular movie is that the conflict can be something thought provoking, and you can explore the issue from every single side in a scene like this. We get to really discuss environmental issues... in an exciting horror movie about killer birds.
The Fire: One of the characters in The Tides is a single mother and her kids - she wants everyone to stop talking about bird attacks because it’s scaring her kids. Another character is a businessman having a few after lunch drinks before hitting the road. The mother convinces the businessman to lead her back to San Francisco before the next bird attack. He downs his drink and leaves The Tides... and the birds attack. Melanie and the other patrons move to the big picture windows and watch the attack... A man at a service station pumping gas is attacked by a gull, drops the hose as he fights off the birds. We watch the gasoline pour down the street... to where the businessman is lighting a cigarette before getting into his car. As the gasoline gets closer, closer, closer, the suspense builds. Finally Melanie yells for him to put out his cigarette... but he can’t hear her. When everyone yells, he drops the cigarette... into the gasoline! Now we get a great stylized bit alternating between shots of the fire shooting down the trail of gasoline to the service station and Melanie - in a still frame - watching the flames moving down the street. This ends with the fire reaching the service station - and a massive explosion. As the firemen arrive, they are attacked by birds - and the firehoses spin around out of control.
The Phone Booth: So far, we have had this amazing sequence of scenes - one great scene leading directly to the next... and it’s not over! Melanie ends up outside The Tides in the middle of the bird attack, and she runs for the cover of a phone booth. 4 glass walls. She can see people being pecked to death all around her. She can see people on fire from the service station explosion. She is trapped - but can see the terror around her. And then the birds start slamming into the phone booth - shattering the glass. She’s surrounded, she’s trapped, and the phone booth is claustrophobic. So many elements that create suspense and fear in one scene. As the birds begin to break in - and Melanie has no where to go, Mitch shows up to save her.
There’s a great shot before they get back inside The Tides where we see this high overhead of Bodega Bay with the fire linking two parts of the town. From way up here, it’s peaceful, serene... then a gull floats into the shot... then another... then another... and soon there are a dozen gulls obscuring our view of Bodega Bay.
The Empty Tides Restaurant: Melanie and Mitch walk into a completely deserted restaurant. Quiet. Empty. Spooky. Terror outside, quiet inside. Then they find people huddled in back, including the mother and her kids... and the mother is freaked out crazy - just completely insane - and blames Melanie for bringing on the bird attack. A big explosion of tension - ending with Melanie slapping the mother *hard* across the face.
More Monkey Bars: When the birds fly away to regroup and attack later, Mitch and Melanie go to fetch Cathy and get back to the house... but this requires them to walk past the monkey bars - filled with crows. Tension again as the quietly creep past - and one of the things that really makes this work is that the last time Melanie made it past the monkey bars, the birds attacked. So a pattern has been set, and we’re waiting for another attack the entire time. This is great suspense. They make it to Annie’s house without being attacked... but Annie is sprawled on the front porch. Dead. Eyes pecked out. This creates a great scene where Mitch covers her with his coat - and there’s a moment. This was Mitch’s ex-girlfriend. This was the woman he loved... that his mother wouldn’t allow him to love. And while Mitch has his moment with his dead ex-lover, Melanie watches... and allows the moment. This is a great emotional situation created by the story. While we were waiting for the birds to attack, this scene was secretly being set up by the Melanie/Mitch/Annie love triange.
The Non-Attack Attack: Once they collect Cathy, they go back to the house and fortify it. Storm shutters, every single window and door boarded up. They collect fire wood so that they can keep a fire going and prevent birds from flying down the flue again. Then, the sky turns black with birds and they go inside to wait out the attack. This is one of the greatest, scariest, scenes in the movie... and there are no birds in it (until later). The *sounds* of the birds attacking the house - slamming into the walls, breaking windows, shrieking - surround them and trap them in the living room. They huddle on the sofa in fear. As the sounds get louder the tension becomes unbearable. This scene is similar to the suspense and terror in the original version of THE HAUNTING (made the same year) where *unseen* elements create terror. Because we can not see the birds they become even more frightening. The front door gets hit again and again - and begins to splinter. Mitch nails a piece of furniture over the door. The attack continues - but the most we see of the birds are a few beaks as they splinter the door or break through a boarded window and Mitch has to push them out and resecure the window. There’s a great action gag here where Mitch fights with a bird as he tries to get a shutter closed and locked again - and the back-and-forth reversals keep the scene exciting for several minutes. But the thing that really makes this scene work are the people huddled in fear in the sofa as the *sounds* of the birds attacking surround them.
The Attic Attack: When the attack seems to be over, Melanie hears a noise from upstairs and - cool PSYCHO suspense stairway climb - goes to find out what it is. She opens the door to the attic and sees that the birds have ripped a hole in the roof... and there are a hundred birds perched around the room. Melanie tries to ease her way out... when the birds attack her. This is an all out attack - a hundred birds against Melanie. She can’t get the door open to escape - too many birds. She uses her flashlight to fight them off - but they keep attacking. This scene kind of plays like the end of PSYCHO - with her swinging flashlight like the swinging light as Mother attacks Lila Crane. The birds peck away at Melanie - ripping flesh off her - leaving her a bloody mess huddled on the floor... blocking the door. Mitch is outside, and can’t get in to save her! Eventually he gets in, pulls her out, and Lydia bandages her. Another great scene - since the jealous mother now must care for the woman she is losing her son to. The *situation* is packed with emotions, so the characters don’t have to say anything. Lydia bandages Melanie - and that action is a big emotional character scene that shows us how each character has changed. Find the great situations!
End Of The World: Once Melanie is bandaged - practically catatonic from shock - the four decide to get in Melanie’s car and drive to San Francisco... to safety. Or so they think. The San Francisco radio stations are still broadcasting - but Santa Rosa radio is just gone. When they open the door - every square inch of the Earth is covered with birds. They are perched on the roof, on the power lines, and they are ankle deep on the ground. They carefully creep out to the car, get Melanie into the car... which is a *convertible* - cloth top - not exactly bird proof! Mitch gets behind the wheel, and carefully drives through the birds to the rising sun... and maybe safety.
And that is where the film ends! With the car driving through an ocean of birds. Did they make it? Was San Francisco next? Not exactly a happy ending!
Sound Track: Really strange Bernard Herrmann score made up of electronic bird noises. Probably the first synthesized “score” - though it’s bird noises. No traditional music in the film.
THE BIRDS holds up really well, and Tippi Hedren's spoiled society girl character is perfect casting - it works within her limits. The film has so many great scenes - both scary and dramatic - that there's always something for a screenwriter to study. Evan Hunter's script is great! And those pecked out eyes still give me nightmares!
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Story By Force and VANTAGE POINT. Yesterday’s Dinner: Del Taco. Pages: Between this *long* blog entry and some other work - 9,000 words! Since a page of typewritten stuff (like a story or article) averages about 250 words - that is *36* pages.
Actors on talk shows always say that they do their own stunts... which makes me wonder why there aren't more unemployed stunt men in Hollywood. But there are some actors who really do their own stunts - watch any Hong Kong Jackie Chan film - that guy does *crazy* things on camera! And I think the thrill of watching a Jackie Chan film is that it really is him risking his life doing amazing stunts without CGI and without a net and usually without safety wires. He's just amazing!
I was cruising around YouTube, looking for some clips from a French film called THE BURGLARS made in 1971, based on a novel by David Goodis (DARK PASSAGE with Bogart, SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER directed by Truffaut, lots of other noir stuff) and starring Jean Paul Belmondo... who did his own stunts, like Jackie Chan. And this film is filled with amazing stunts. Saw it decades ago at some Berkeley art house. Own the Ennio Morricone sountrack on vinyl... and on CD... it's on my iPod and I probably hear it three times a week. Danged if I didn't find both a car chase from the film and this amazing chase - 9 minutes - starts a little slow but then gets crazy! Stick around for the end - and *insane* stunt that Belmondo does.
And, as with all action scenes - somebody wrote that.
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Ten Things You Need To Know About Writing A Screenplay That YOU Will Film - DIY. Dinner: Terrible Burger King sourdough burger - bread was mushy, fries were not good... I was feeling not great and thought food that is bad for me would make me feel better... nope. Bicycle: Medium ride.
Last Saturday was Showbiz Expo... which is not the same things as Screenwriting Expo (which still hasn’t paid me from last year’s classes)... *Showbiz* Expo was the original.
It began sometime in the late 80's or early 90s as a trade show for entertainment computer equipment, and quickly grew to a huge annual event that took over most of the Los Angeles Convention Center with every single element of the entertainment industry - from the latest in cameras and lighting and lenses and camera cranes and cast trailers and catering and everything else you would ever need to make a movie. I began going when I first came to Los Angeles in the early 90s, because it was *free*. It was two days, and there was so much stuff that you couldn’t see it all in a single day. Every single camera company was there.... every light company... and what was really fun were all of the peripheral companies you’d never think of.
You’ve seen movies like TERMINATOR 2 where a whole city gets nuked? Well, in those pre-CGI days those were models, and there was always a company who specialized in building model cities for movies... plus, if there’s one company that does it, there’s at least one other company that does the same thing and competes with them (usually two). So there’d be three companies that make model cities. And two companies that make radio controlled model planes for film - really detailed models that look like the real thing on camera. And a dozen guys who do storyboards. And five companies that make custom swords and weapons. And four people who train animals. And... well, think of every single thing you need to make a film, and all of those people were there! If you were interested in the biz, it was like Disneyland. Plus, there were always a bunch of catering companies with food samples - like a free lunch!
The parking lot of the Convention Center was filled with all of the big equipment - at least a couple of helicopters with camera mounts, plus trucks and generators and big camera cranes and all kinds of other stuff. It was fantastic.
But by the beginning of the 2000s, the show began shrinking - people could see demonstrations of the latest equipment online... and by 2003 it was gone. Then, in 2009, a new company bought the name and trademark and brought it back to Los Angeles... On the same exact weekend as Screenwriting Expo! Talk about confusion! It was a much much much smaller event, barely filling a small hall at the Convention Center, and focusing on *actors* - so it was a bunch of acting classes and no equipment. Only one day... but you can do the whole event in an hour and still have time left over. This is the third time for the show, and not that much has changed from 2009...
REGISTRATION NIGHTMARE
Just like in the old days, registration is free until the event. But unlike the old days, you now register online by filling out this seemingly never-ending form. The big problem is, you think it’ll just take a minute... but then it ends up being pages and pages and pages! You see, they also had a zillion add ons that cost money, and that free online registration is really a hard sell for the paid add ons. They have classes and webinars and an after party and networking tables (you pay to sit at a table with other people who paid to sit at that table), and focus groups (I don’t know what that’s all about) and a place an actor can leave a stack of headshots and a place a film maker canm shoiw their movie and maybe you want to put your flyer in the gimme-bag and maybe you want to sign up for a booth next year and maybe you want to run an advert in the program or...? Anyway, you have to check or uncheck a million boxes on a dozen pages as part of registration - and they have these great annoying pop up boxes that ask “Are you SURE you don’t want to take a webinar on Hand Gestures For Actors?” So, after going through all of this crap, instead of sending you a badge that you can put in their plastic holder when you show up (like the old show used to do, and other shows do), they just send you a page with a bar code so that you can complete registration at the event...
Complete registration.
What this means is - you show up, stand in a huge line, when you get to the front of the line they send you to one of a dozen or so laptops... when you enter your e-mail address and then have to go through all of those pages where you check and uncheck boxes for all of the add ons and then deal with the pop ups “Are you SURE you don’t want to take a webinar on Defining Your Character’s Walk For Actors?” (Click Yes or No.) About twenty minutes to half an hour of this stuff, in the event that you changed your mind from the day you registered until today. Um, not likely. I think part of the deal is they hope you miss something and they automatically charge you for the after party or that webinar on Eyebrow Movement For Actors. And you can’t skip ahead - you must go through every single check box and pop up in order to get to the page where you print your badge.
When I got to the front of the line, and they sent me to the computer... the wifif system crashed and we had to wait for at least a half an hour to do a half hour of checking and unchecking boxes... as the line grew longer and longer!
After clicking Print Badge I went to the printer station where a guy gave me the paper badge and a plastic badge holder... and I had to put the badge in the holder myself. Except the badge was about an eight of an inch too big! I had to fold part of it to get the thing to fit! This is the kind of silly stuff that makes you angry.
ONCE INSIDE..
Still a small hall, but at least this year there were a few pieces of equipment in display - a jib-arm company, a company that sells remote-control camera helicopters, a rental company that specializes in Red cameras, and a hybrid honeywagon company. Nothing like the old days of Expo, but maybe getting there. The rest of the stuff was mostly aimed at actors like last year, but I wandered around even though I don’t think I may turn thespian any time soon. Last year they had a whole aisle of TV/DVD combos playing people’s backyard movies in search of distribution. You could put on a headset and watch for 90 minutes. This seemed weird to me, because I don’t imagine any distribs showing up at this event and signing some film after standing there with a headset on for 90 minutes. This is one of those strange things I see people doing sometimes - even screenwriters - finding the post passive and least likely way for their work to be discovered. “Well, I have all of my scripts posted on my website, so producers can find them and buy them...” - what are the odds of a producer stumbling on your website in the first place? Wouldn’t the odds be better if you tried contacting producers with query letters? Well, same deal with that movie you made - there are distributors out there, why not send them a DVD and query? Or try to meet them at film festivals? Or some other *active* method of getting your film sold? Hoping someone is going to walk down an aisle and watch the movie is the long shot of all long shots... but Showbiz Expo makes money on these people. This year: No TV/DVD combos... instead those little portable DVD players laid out on a table. Not impressive at all. There were also some CD players on the table with music composer samples. Fewer than last year - maybe half a dozen movies instead of a whole aisle.
But there was still the whole aisle of headshots with little boxes for business cards. “Hey, I saw your headshot and want to hire you for PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 5! More passive methods to stardom. I did look at whatever credits these folks had (usually student films) to see if one of them might have been in one of my films. I remember going to an IFP screening once and the star of the indie movie was a guy who had a small role in CRASH DIVE... that was kind of cool. Because I show up on sets of my films for the free meal, I end up hanging out with the crew and the supporting actors - sometimes buying them drinks at the wrap party or the last day of shooting. So I knew this guy, and it was cool to see him play a lead in this little indie flick. But none of the headshots were actors who had ever been in anything I wrote. So, the next thing I did was look at hot actress headshots for a potential girlfriend. None of the damned headshots mentioned marital status... but they had mostly been in student films. I’m looking for a *rich and famous* hot actress, who can help *my* career.
After the headshots was a bulletin board where you could post crew and cast needs, and then the aisles of acting classes and head shot photogs and other mostly actor related stuff. Last year there were a bunch of start up “social networking for the film biz” places, and they were all back this year. Though the social networking thing may be a good idea, I wonder how many people are on some film specific place? Would you be able to interact with people higher up the food chain than you, like on FaceBook? Or would it mostly be other people at your level? Who signs up for these things?
Hey - there was a vegan catering company with free samples... a snack!
I walked past the Write Brothers booth - and the guys said hello. They make Movie Magic Screenwriter, which I’ve used forever, and for whatever reason they know who I am. I suspect they have flashcards of pro writers so that they can spot us in a crowd. They had a show sale for MMS, and I forgot to ask about it... I have a brand new laptop, still in the box, that I need to get all my stuff on eventually. The laptop I’m using now only holds an hour charge on the battery, and when I looked at replacement batteries they cost enough that it made more sense to just buy a new laptop... even though this one is only a couple of years old. A couple of years in Computer is a lifetime! So when laptops hit giveaway price a couple of months ago I bought a new one to cut my film on... and still haven’t set it up. Guess I missed my chance for the show price on Movie Magic...
The Writers Store was there, which was great. Smaller booth than usual and Jesse wasn’t there, but great that they had a presence. I bought that old version of Movie Magic Screenwriter, back when it was Script Thing, at the old Writers Store on Santa Monica - back when the idea of a specific program for writing screenplays was something new and exciting. Since then, I’ve shopped at Writers Store for screenwriting books and whatever else when they moved to Westwood... and bought a book a couple of months ago at their new Burbank location. It’s a great place!
On the very last aisle, facing the wall, I found the Scriptwriter’s Network Booth... and was recognized again. Now here’s the strange part - one of the members volunteering at the booth recognized me... from London! He took my class at the Raindance Film Festival once. Small world. Well, the Network is closing in on their 25th anniversary, and I’ve been a member for something like 20 years - since I first moved to Los Angeles. I talked to Joe about doing a class or something for the Network, and that’ll happen sometime in the future. The last time I did a class for them, afterwards some people wanted to buy Blue Books or CDs... and I didn’t bring any. I guess when people usually do classes for them they bring stuff to sell... I was just doing a class. This time, I guess I’ll bring stuff. We talked about how the organization is doing these days, etc. There was a demonstration stage in the center of the room - with no one doing any demonstrations - and I told Joe that next year if they did this I’d be happy to do a class or two on that stage to drum up some new members for the Network. I would probably be at the Expo anyway, and bored out of my skull after seeing everything in an hour... so why not?
Hey, and maybe some producer wandering through will hear me talk and want to buy a screenplay?
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Emotion Pictures - What do you want the audience to feel? Dinner: Panera - sandwich. Pages: Two great scenes (4 pages). Still behind, but getting there! Bicycle: Rode all over the place.
Movies: EXPORTING RAYMOND - Documentary (sort of) about producer Phil Rosenthal (EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND) having one hissy-fit after another as Russian TV makes their own version of RAYMOND. The guy can not just sit back and watch, and can not let go - he must be the boss even though the show is in Russia. He wants to keep the show 100% the way it was in the USA, even though this is a different culture and many things just don't work. Though there are some actual problems with the Russian version (the costume designer and her dogs in cute outfits, and the actor the network wants to star) much of this film is Rosenthal nit-picking everything. At one point his driver/bodyguard claims to have a several week hospital appointment, I suspect just to get away from him. What was interesting to me is the number of successful US sitcoms adapted for Russia - and when they show clips from them you realize they are all heavily concept based... and then there's RAYMOND which is just about a guy and his family. One of the Russian network guys says the key to THE NANNY's success is that it's a Cinderella story, and that fits the crazy costume woman's theory that Russians want to see upscale people in nice clothes. Other things in RAYMOND seemed to not translate at all - Raymond gives his parents a subscription to the "Fruit Of The Month Club", but in Russia no such thing exists. While watching the movie, I wondered how many of the other little things about life that made RAYMOND funny just don't exist in Russia... and whether Rosenthal's nit-picking about how a line is supposed to be delivered makes any sense to the Russians. The film seems to be cut to show that Rosenthal was right all along - the Russian director gets tired of his constant notes about every single line and begins ignoring him... then in a later scene agrees with something Rosenthal says and fixes it and the scene works better... but I'm not sure that makes Rosenthal always right. He may have been completely wrong with his other notes. And it isn't until Rosenthal flies back to the USA that the show actually gets retooled and becomes successful. So it's hard to know if he was right all along... or just a major irritation. A few laughs in the doc, but mostly I was cringing and wanted to just slap Rosenthal and tell him that he's the problem. I ran a tip a few days ago on how the reader/audience can see your attitude between the lines, and this doc showed us more about Rosenthal than he probably wanted us to know.
Lancelot Link Thursday! For those of you who read Vonnegut's Welcome To The Monkey House in High School, here are some articles about screenwriting and the biz plus some fun stuff that may be of interest to you. Brought to you by that suave and sophisticated secret agent...
Here are seven cool links plus this week's car chase...
8) This week's car chase: Luc Besson's TAXI 3, with the French Sylvester Stallone... and a cool bicycle vs. motorcycle chase!
That guy looks just like Stallone, doesn't he - but the voice is higher.
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Sledge Hammer - if you want to send a message, call Western Union. Dinner: Philly Cheese Steak. Pages: A couple of good pages, still behind. Bicycle: Short bike ride.
Movies: BRIDESMAIDS - about a half an hour too long, a scattershot plot (what's up with the roommate scenes?), and rated R only for language... but funny and Kristen Wiig is great. Show stolen by Melissa McCarthy. It's Apatow produced - so where's the nudity? In the sex scene Wiig wears this bra that looks bullet-proof! Come on! At least give her some lace! I would have loved to have the gal from RENO 911 nekkid (and her character was sex starved, so it would have worked), but aren't Apatow movies usually filled with male full frontal nudity? Here - the film is PG (except for language and really crude humor). They seriously should have focused the script before they filmed it and cut at least 20 minutes. It meanders all over the place and needs some more jokes. I want Wiig (and the women) to have a huge hit like HANGOVER, but am afraid this isn't it.
Friday 2/13 M4M2 - 14:10 - 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.
Here's my entry on THE BEAVER screenplay written on 12/30/08. Now that the film has come out, I thought I'd re-run it.
Thought about running this on May 20, when the film was scheduled to open wider... but now it looks like that will not happen. According to the LA Times, THE BEAVER has flopped big time - so they have scaled back the "wide release" to only 30 cinemas after the film got mixed reviews and failed to sell any tickets.
Between writing new script tips and an article for Script Magazine and poking around on a spec about Country Western Bars, I’m reading some of the Black List scripts. First up was THE BEAVER, which got the most votes. Now, as someone who has been on a film fest jury or two, I know that just because something gets the most votes doesn’t mean it’s the best - often it means it’s the one more people agree on... and that is often the “most average” of the group. But I did go in with pretty high expectations - these are supposed to be the best scripts out there.
I should also mention that I have a huge problem with reading scripts (and this may even extend to writing them) - I am a real world, production oriented person. You may read a script for the beauty of a description - and I can appreciate that, too, but for me what is more important is: how will this look on screen? How will an actor deliver this line? How will this scene make the audience feel? Will there be enough donuts on set with sprinkles that I can snag one before the Teamsters get to them? So something that is pretty and practical is great, something that is pretty and not practical is just wasting my time and making me angry. When I read a script I’m looking at how it will translate to the screen... and then how it will translate to the audience.
The Black List "experiment" is an interesting one - the idea of finding the screenplays that development people think are the best. I think the weird thing from looking at the list is that it is skewed towards strange and quirky and arty and sometimes even "this is not a movie" screenplays. Instead of being great material that could easily be a *great* mainstream movie, it seems as if part of the criteria is that the scripts must be something no studio would ever touch... and THE BEAVER kind of fits into that theory. This is not a really clever genre script - the kind of great movie I wish Hollywood was still making - it's a weird non-genre story that I can not imagine ever selling... though I guess I'm wrong on that one, since it's now going to be a Steve Carrell movie. The Black List is like a rebel list: development people purposely picking projects their producer bosses would probably hate. At times it seems more like a "Fuck you!" list than a list of great scripts that need to be made. It'll be interesting to see how well THE BEAVER works as a movie... and any of the other strange scripts that made the list and now seems to be hot stuff in Hollywood.
THE BEAVER - the story is basically AMERICAN BEAUTY meets Triumph The Insult Comic Dog, about a upper middle class guy who comes to realize that his life is crap... but when he puts on a hand puppet, the puppet takes over in a strange version of Tourettes and he takes control of his life again. That’s a great idea for a comedy, though this is a drama - and the execution has some problems, but by the end the script has some solid emotional scenes that make it almost work.
If I’d had this idea, the problem I would see going in would be that the hand puppet could easily slide into becoming an exposition device that just blurts out what the character was thinking or feeling... and that is one of the big problems of the script. Much of the story is *told* instead of shown through the hand puppet... and on top of that, the writer decided to have the hand puppet narrate! Yikes! This results in long blocks of speeches by a hand puppet that tell us what is happening or what the protag is thinking or wants or needs. Much of the hand puppet interaction rings completely false - there is an endless speech to a board of directors (at our hero’s job) where not a single board member interrupts - even though the speech is major policy change and given by a talking beaver hand puppet. Everyone allows this hand puppet to drone on and on without interruption - which creates a pile of expositional speeches that litter the script.
The other thing about the hand puppet - it’s not funny or clever. There is *one* line about the CEO’s death by hooker, and all of the rest is just kind of bland stuff in a British accent. No great cutting remarks, nothing that you really wish you had said but couldn’t - because you didn’t have a hand puppet doing the talking for you. Since “sock puppet” is an online term for a false identity that says all of the things that you can not, I believed this sock puppet would say all of the things Walter could not. You know, the clever, cutting things that will get you fired or punched if you say them yourself. A couple of weeks ago I saw GRAN TORINO, which has got to have the most un-PC dialogue of any film in the past few years. Eastwood’s character is constantly saying things that are completely inappropriate - and that produces laughter. He calls people names to their faces! But here, the Beaver mostly just makes speeches or says something that is not clever or cutting... something that Walter might have easily said himself without fear. And, when you compare the Beaver’s dialogue to Triumph’s? Seriously - watch that first Triumph clip where he goes to the dog show and try not to hurt yourself laughing. That puppet says things you wouldn’t even think of thinking! Triumph is too honest... and you wish that the Beaver had been more honest and more funny.
And that may be because this script falls into no genre - it is not a Steve Carrel comedy and even says in the script at one point that it is not a Jim Carrey comedy. So maybe they weren’t trying for humor (in a script about a talking beaver hand puppet)... But if this script was supposed to be more dramatic, like AMERICAN BEAUTY, it still doesn’t measure up. Not only is AMERICAN BEAUTY *funnier* - Lester does say many of those fantasy things you’ve always wanted to say but would get fired or punched - it’s not as *dramatic*. When Lester snaps, he does all of the things he has always fantasized about... and basically relives the time in his life where he was most happy - he becomes a teen again. He buys the car he wanted as a teen, lives life as if there is no tomorrow, and even ends up working a teen type job at a drive through. He completely changes his life after the snap...
But once Walter finds The Beaver, he changes *nothing* - he has the same job, tries to get back to his old life with his wife and kids. He has this potential power to change - the Beaver hand puppet - and doesn’t use it. Once he has the beaver hand puppet - he does nothing differently, except talk in long speeches in a British accent (why doesn’t anybody ever interrupt him?). He just lives his old life, and more or less does it the way he used to. The changes - he takes his wife out to dinner and teaches his youngest son woodworking - are things he could have easily done without the puppet... and not really any big deal.
The great comedy idea of a guy possessed by a talking beaver hand puppet is also completely at odds with the serious tone of the script. I don't see how this is going to play on screen at all. When I imagine the serious scenes with dialogue coming from a hand puppet, it just becomes silly. The puppet undercuts the drama - and is going to create unintentional laughs no matter who directs it. On the page this may work, on screen I can't imagine it working at all.
The script also has these story cheats, like the woodworking. The youngest son is given a hunk of wood and many sharp and dangerous tools... and the kid is instantly happy! No actual dramatic scenes needed! And Walter’s failing company? Hey, they sell hunks of wood and sharp and dangerous tools to children - and they are back in the black! Like by magic! And everybody loves Walter! Walter writes a book... and it’s a best seller! He’s instantly on Oprah! Yes, I know it’s only a movie - but I like to see a little work done on things like this... even if it’s just a line about how kids are tired of passive toys and games, which give them nothing when they are done playing. They want something to show for the time spent playing other than a high score on some computer screen. Some *justification* for the woodworking set to become this massive hit. Though the Beaver says he did focus groups - we never see them, so I do not believe they existed.
These story cheats are most prevalent in the older son’s story track - from the cliche portion of wall where he bashes his head regularly to the cliche rubber band on his wrist he snaps when he catches himself acting like his father to the hot cheerleader who is secretly an artist and has murals hidden in her brother’s room... yet she never acts like an artist at all. We never see her as an artist pretending to be a cheerleader - she isn’t drawing on her peechee folders (or whatever they use these days). I drew on *everything* and was drawing in class when I was supposed to be listening - and still got good grades. And I’m not an artist - I was a bored kid with some basic drawing talent and lots of imagination. I wanted to believe she was an artist because she said she was, but the *evidence* didn’t support it... so I was always waiting for the twist that her brother was the real artist and she was just a silly cheerleader. By the way, she didn’t seem particularly bright, either... nor did Porter (oldest son). We get no *demonstration* - only what is told to us by the characters... and that might all be lies.
The script takes a strange, bloody turn at one point - that makes no sense.. But kind of reminds me of the Jim Carrey movie THE MASK - and, again, that’s a film with a similar premise that explores that premise much much better than this script does. The problem with this bloody scene is that it is so out of place in this tame story that you wonder if it will survive all of the way to the screen. Basic tone issues. If you think about the violence in AMERICAN BEAUTY, it is just as big as the other events in the story so it fits. When you are doing sound editing, you may get different volume levels from different sources, and there is a filter-gizmo that goes through the entire sound track and makes it all the same volume level, so that it doesn’t suddenly BLAST at you - like those loud commercials in the middle of a TV show. I think stories need something similar - sort of a tone adjustment - that makes sure you don’t have some scene so shocking and different than anything else we have seen so far that seems to belong in some other script. I am all for pushing the envelope, and even having that one scene in your script that you know will be cut because it goes too far... but you want that scene to fit the script that has come before. The violence in AMERICAN BEAUTY was completely within the world of that story... the scene in THE BEAVER just seems to come out of left field. Hard to imagine that violence working on screen at all.
But here’s the thing - a movie and a screenplay can be saved by their ending... and as a story continues, we tend to become invested in the characters... so by the time I reached the end of THE BEAVER I wasn’t thinking about all of the problems as much as I was thinking about all of the things it did well... and that end (which oddly uses the narration I disliked from the beginning) had me liking the script despite its flaws... even though the ending was also kind of a cheat. Instead of solving Walter's problems, he's kind of pushed aside in the story in favor of the older son and cheerleader subplot. It's the old switcheroo - which is not what you expect from a script that's #1 on the Black List, but at least gives us a big emotional resolution on the page. I can see why it got a bunch of votes - but still can’t see how it will work on screen as a Steve Carrell movie without some heavy rewrites. I'm wondering if that end that made me tear up on the page will just seem like some completely out of left field tack on when it hits the screen. Reading a script takes more time than watching a movie, and what seems like a gradual change from Walter's story to the oldest son and cheerleader story on the page might really seem like a cheat on screen. You have to read past the language in a script and see what ends up on screen... but maybe they'll fix the flaws and this will be Carrell's biggest hit since 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN?
Next, I think I’ll read Scott Frank’s script... which was at the bottom of the Black List.
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Holiday Block older tips that need a rewrite and haven't run for a while. Yesterday’s Dinner: Mom's home cooking. Pages: Poking around on this old thriller script that takes place in a Country Western Bar - I hope to kick off the new year by finishing this sucker.
MOVIES: GRAN TORINO - The Clint squint is back! The second Eastwood movie to come out this season is completely different than THE CHANGELING in almost every way. From the trailer, it looks like GRUMPY OLD DEATH WISH - and it is - but the film is also much more. It’s a comedy. Now, when you think Clint Eastwood and comedy, you instantly think of orangutans or chimpanzees... but Clint is the closest to a lower primate in this film. He plays an old, racist, foul mouthed and really grump retired auto worker named Walt who lives in the same house in the same neighborhood he has always lived in... only the world has changed around him. What was a great neighborhood in the 40s or 50s is now broken down slums filled with immigrants. Hmongs - from Laos and Viet Nam. He hates ‘em. He has a dozen names for ‘em, each one more outrageous (and funny) than the one before.
Walter is a guy who is too old for the bullshit of being polite - maybe he always was - so he has an insult for everybody. The movie opens with the death of his wife, making Walter all alone in his old neighborhood... and when people try to comfort him, he snaps at them. He calls his Priest a virgin, and then goes on to trash him and all of the BS parts of religion. When his sons try to get him into a home for “active seniors” he tells them off - saying things that no one would ever really say... they might think them, but they’d never actually say them. That is Walter’s charm - he says what we think but would never say. All of the terrible things, all of the impolite things, all of the funny things. He’s like the late, great, stand up comic Sam Kineson.
This character of Walter says so many evil, racist, impolite, and downright mean things - you wonder what would have happened if another actor had been cast in the role. We know Eastwood, we like him... and Eastwood has a way of saying all of these terrible things so that they are more comedy than derogatory. Instead of hating Walter - which we might have done if another actor had played the role - we grow to like him because he says exactly what he thinks without any filters. Eastwood makes him not evil, just cranky. But some other actor - even a well liked star of Eastwood’s caliber - might not have been able to pull off this character. This is about the most unlikeable lead character I've ever seen on screen. I can just imagine all of the development notes this thing might have gotten about making Walter "more likeable"... probably from the save Devos who voted for THE BEAVER!
The trailer might make you think this will be wall-to-wall kick ass, but the film does something different. It takes this grumpy old man who is set in his ways and hates the immigrants who surround him, and through the story, forces him to deal with the world around him and become a member of his new neighborhood. After the kid next door tries to steal his prized Gran Torino, Walter has to deal with the kid and his family - he can’t just hurl insults at them from his porch - and discovers that these people who look very different than him are actually more like him than his own family. He takes the boy under his wing and teaches him to become a man... and that’s the meat of the story. Sure, there are kick ass scenes and Clint does an interesting variation on DEATH WISH, but most of the film is the growing relationship between Walter and the family next door... and how he becomes so involved with them that their problems become his problems (then there’s that ass-kicking portion of our show).
I believe the Hmong actors are civilians, but they give really good performances for non-actors in a film shot at Clint-speed (he shoots really fast, few takes, usually no rehearsals). Sue, the girl next door, comes off really well - she has a great personality and you believe this old fart might be talked into coming over for a big family dinner (and free beer) by her. Tao, the boy, gets to act sullen and introverted - much easier for a non-actor, but the kid also pulls it off. You believe every single one of these characters. I think the Priest needed a little rewriting - he’s okay, but the character comes off very passive and kind of bland. I’ve been rewatching a bunch of Noir films, and one of the great things about casting someone like Robert Mitchum or Burt Lancaster in the lead in those films is that they brought personality to the roles. Both of those actors were incredibly versatile, even though you might not notice it from only seeing a couple of films, but when you cast someone like Lancaster he could make low key characters interesting with a line reading or a gesture or some other character thing he would bring to the role. If the Priest role had been played by one of those old school actors, it might have been more interesting.... but he comes off kind of flat in the film.
POTENTIAL END SPOILERS
Okay, I always try to disguise things so that I don’t completely spoil the movie, but I thought I should warn you anyway. The big problem I had with GRAN TORINO was the end. Eastwood’s revenge plan requires that the ultra close-lipped Hmongs who would never rat on even the most evil member of their community actually talk to the police... or the whole revenge plan falls apart. It is clearly set up that the Hmongs would *never* go to the police - yet Clint’s plan requires it... so the whole revenge plan kind of folds in on itself. For Clint’s revenge plan to work, a Hmong must do what they never do and go to the police... but if the Hmong would go to the police we wouldn’t really need Clint’s revenge plan - the cops would take care of it. It wouldn’t be as exciting as Clint’s plan, but it would be a potential resolution. Oh, and for the Clint revenge plan to work, the Hmong character must talk to the police at a specific time in order for the police to act in a specific way at the specific time that all fits in Clint’s revenge plan. In other words - it’s all up to chance and coincidence. A *better* method would have been to use the Priest character (who has a silly scene at the end already) and have him be the one who brings in the police at the right place and at the right time for Clint’s revenge plan to work. Clint might have given the Priest some information about his revenge plan, knowing that he would go to the police, but also lied about time or place so that the police wouldn’t get there too soon and prevent him from kicking a bunch of low-life ass. The Cavalry would show up in time to see that it was a fair fight and not Clint going psycho (so we can have a happy ending), but Clint could still kick enough ass to give us the movie we paid to see. Those of you who have seen the movie know what I am talking about, those of you who haven’t hopefully won’t guess the details of the end from that.
END OF SPOILERS
So GRAN TORINO manages to be two movies in one - a heartwarming story of an old guy who is alone in the world and finds friendship and community... and a badass GRUMPY OLD DEATH WISH flick about an old Korean War vet who is completely underestimated by the gangs and drug dealers and scumbags who are ruining his old neighborhood. While watching, I wondered if this whole script was sparked by the line “Get off my lawn”. And no one growls like Clint!
PS: My interview continues on the Writer's Bloc Show on Virtual TV Network, with the LAST part, about the postponed movie #20 and VOLATILE:
PPS: More of my damned movies showing on Sky in the UK! I'm sorry...
M4M2 (UK): Friday Jan 2 - 15:10 - 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.
ROPE is another one of the Hitchcock movies that had been pulled from distribution along with REAR WINDOW, so I knew the legend of the film long before ever seeing it. After seeing the film on the big screen, it kind of slipped through the cracks for me - I didn’t own it on DVD until I decided to write this series. So, it was almost like seeing the movie for the first time - and it’s an amazing experiment that actually works.
Once the party gets into full swing, everyone wonders where the guest of honor is - they try calling him, but this is a pre-cell phone and pre-answering machine world where sometimes you just can’t reach people. Eventually, the mother and father become worried. Throughout all of this, Brandon keeps supplying hints of what they have done, while Philip tries to change the subject or shut him up. Oh, and dinner is served on the trunk where the body is hidden! By the end of the party, everyone is very concerned about the victim, and they all leave... except for Professor Cadell who returns, confronts the two killers, and when they discover that he doesn’t approve of their little experiment in murder - they decide to use Cadell as the subject of a new experiment.
Experiment: Speaking of experiments... ROPE features an amazing experiment... that works. In REAR WINDOW Hitchcock experimented with the Kuleshov Effect - where audiences believe they have seen things that are *not* on the film through editing - the juxtaposition of images. Telling a story on film is all about the juxtaposition of images, and the ability to cut together different pieces of film to tell a story. Suspense relies on editing - whether you are cross-cutting between two trains on the same track hurtling towards each other or cutting between Vera Clouzot in DIABOLIQUE walking down that dark hallway towards the sound of her dead husband’s typewriter typing... and her POV as she gets closer and closer to her dead husband’s office. Without editing there is no suspense... or is there?
Hitchcock decided to try to create suspense through angle and image and movement *without any edits*. ROPE is shot in long, continuous takes. An entire reel of film is a single shot... and when they change reels, one of the characters passes in front of the camera at the end of one reel and the beginning of the next creating a “human wipe” so that it seems as if the shot continues without any edit at all. There *are* two times when there is no “human wipe” and we get a cut for effect - both times to Jimmy Stewart’s face as he begins to figure out what has happened. But it’s amazing to see how Hitchcock takes his best tool for creating suspense, throws it away, and finds new tools that work just as well. This is a major challenge that few filmmakers could pull off.
Logistically, shooting the film was a nightmare. The constantly moving camera required walls and furniture that could glide out of the way without a sound. Behind the camera there’s a huge crew moving things back and forth. Hitchcock told the story of one ruined take where after a particularly tricky camera move, a grip was left standing on the set in the middle of the scene! In addition to this, the story takes place in a penthouse apartment with a huge picture window overlooking New York. New York not only had to be created in miniature outside the window, but as the night goes on, the sun needs to slowly set and clouds need to roll past. Not only was there a huge crew moving things around behind the camera, there was a crew moving *clouds* around in front of the camera... more things to go wrong and ruin a take! And they did - a couple of days of filming were thrown out because the sunset was wrong.
But here’s where the experiment works brilliantly - because Hitchcock removed the tool of editing, he had to find other methods to generate suspense... and he did. One of the reasons why furnishings had to be removed silently in the middle of a shot is because Hitch uses camera movement, the angles, the composition of shots, panning and tilting the camera, and combinations of all of these to create suspense. Instead of cutting to a shot, the camera moves from one shot to another, and *more* emphasis is placed on the emotional effects on the audience of the movement, angle and composition. Each of these massive takes had to be precise to the centimeter in order to get the perfect shot within the take... and do this again and again and again. Imagine all of the carefully planned shots in a sequence, now have all of those shots be part on one long continuous take! It’s no wonder that they had to do each take again and again until all of the pieces came together!
Hitch Appearance: An hour into the film, there's a lighted red billboard for "Reduco" weight loss products featuring Hitchcock - this is the same product he seems to be endorsing in the newspaper advert in LIFEBOAT.
Great Scenes: Scenes? How can you have scenes in a script that takes place at a single location and is basically one long take? Well, scenes are a dramatic unit, and have nothing to do with the number of locations or shots or anything else. Though ROPE all takes place in the apartment, the story is divided into things that happen in that apartment - scenes.
The film opens with an overhead shot of the street below - a normal afternoon, kids playing, a mother pushing a stroller... then tilts up and pans to a penthouse window... in time for us to hear a scream. Inside Brandon and Philip are strangling David. When they’re sure that he is dead, they dump him in the trunk and then Brandon has a post-murder cigarette as they discuss how they feel.
The next scene goes to the dining room, where Brandon tries to pop the cork on a bottle of champagne... but can’t. Philip has to pop it (just as he had to actually strangle David) and admits that Brandon frightens him sometimes. They toast David... and talk about David. They discuss the party they are throwing for the dead guest of honor - Philip thinks it’s a bad idea, Brandon thinks it’s brilliant.
There’s some great subtle character work in having Brandon unable to pop the champagne cork and earlier unable to strangle David - we get to see that Philip is the character who can actually do things, while Brandon just thinks of things to do. Brandon believes he is the dominant one in the relationship, but he would be nowhere without Philip. Brandon is all talk... he has no occupation in the story, but Philip is a concert pianist. The relationship between the characters is shown by who can pop the champagne cork.
The next scene: Brandon decides to serve dinner off the trunk Dead David is in, and they move the plates and table cloth and candles from dining room to living room.
When their maid Mrs. Wilson (Edith Evanson) arrives, they have a discussion with her about serving off the trunk - and that’s a scene. Mrs. Wilson is like a mother to them, and I thought it was interesting how she refers to them as a couple in conversation. Later in the film she tells someone that “They both got up on the wrong side of the bed” today... yes, they are sleeping in the same bed in this 1948 film.
As each guest arrives for the party, there is a scene where the boys talk to them and David is discussed. The guests all come individually (except David’s Father and Mrs. Atwater) so each of these scenes is an individual conversation. And throughout the film, the story is broken up into scenes where certain things happen or are discussed or pairs of characters end up in a corner of the room having a couple of pages of private conversation. Janet pulls Brandon aside early on, wondering why he invited her ex-boyfriend Kenneth, who was also a friend of David’s before the engagement - awkward! That’s a scene. Later Kenneth and Janet have a conversation about David and about *their* past relationship, where they become friends again. That’s a scene.
Even though it is all one long take in one location, the story is still a collection of individual scenes. Scenes have nothing to do with sluglines... one scene may have a number of sluglines if it involves a single conversation or event that travels from one place to another... or one slugline may cover all of the scenes in a movie. I don’t have the script to ROPE but what I would have done in this case is use mini-slugs to break out each scene, or maybe even use sluglines for parts of the apartment in order to make it easier to discuss (and number for production). Each scene is a building block, building story and tension. But how do you build tension without the tool of editing?
Poking The Tiger:
Tension is a caged tiger looking for a way out... angry and ready to attack. To keep the tension alive you have to keep poking at that tiger to keep him angry. Last thing you want is a sleeping tiger... and a sleeping audience.
The tension (and suspense) in ROPE comes from that dead dinner guest in the trunk. Will the body be discovered? Somewhere early in his career, Hitchcock realized that suspense can work for both hero and villain. In SABOTAGE there are scenes where suspense is generated by our fear that Verlock, the villain, will be discovered by the police... Wait! Don’t we *want* the villain to be discovered by the police? Whether it’s because our brains are hard-wired to only want the *Hero* to discover and vanquish the Villain (rather than some random policeman) or when the Hero is not on screen we’re in the Villain’s skin or some fiendish desire to see the Villain suffer as he is almost caught; suspense can be built around the Villain’s problems as well as the Hero’s. In STRANGERS ON A TRAIN we worry that Bruno won’t be able to retrieve the cigarette lighter and won’t be able to frame Guy... even though Bruno is the villain! Most of the suspense in ROPE comes from our fear that someone will discover the dead body in the trunk.
We don’t want the audience to forget that body is in there - that will remove the suspense and tension - so we need to constantly remind the audience that Dead David is in that trunk, and constantly have him *almost* being discovered. We need to keep poking that caged tiger with pointed sticks to keep it growling! So let’s take a look at the way they keep poking that tiger to create tension and suspense.
Thought the main reason why the body is in the trunk during the party is that Brandon is playing a game against Cadell - and believes all of the other guests are complete idiots who will never figure it out, the other reason is that they have killed David in broad daylight and must wait until nightfall to get the body out of the apartment and into the trunk of their car. So the dead guy in the trunk makes sense - it’s not some artificial thing to create suspense. But the story is designed to create the most “pokes” possible with that pointed stick.
The party itself is a “poke” - Brandon’s idea of being more clever than anyone else, and part of the thrill in the thrill kill. But all of those people will be wondering where David is, and any of them may poke around and open that trunk and find the body.
Using the trunk as the buffet table is a poke. It makes the trunk into the center of the party - where everyone will congregate.
After Brandon and Philip have set out the plates on the trunk, Philip notices the murder rope hanging out from under the trunk lid. Brandon yanks out the rope (we can only imagine what this is doing to Dead David’s neck inside the trunk).
Brandon doesn’t hide the murder rope, he has it in his hands when their Maid arrives... and to add to this poke, he discusses putting the rope in the kitchen drawer with the Maid.
As each of the guests arrive, they ask about David - a poke - and Brandon keeps wondering aloud where David might be throughout the film.
When Kenneth asks, “Is David going to be here?” Brandon answers, “Of course” and glances at the trunk.
Before Cadell arrives, Brandon mentions to the others Cadell’s belief that murder may be a crime for most men, but it is a privilege for the few intelligent enough to get away with it... in a way, Brandon is a walking, talking, poke - because part of his little game is to see how many clues he can drop in front of the guests without them ever figuring it out. He gets his thrills by skating close to the edge again and again. Just as we don’t want a passive protagonist, we also don’t want a passive antagonist - and since the murder takes place in the first minute of the movie, the antagonist must do *something* to keep the conflict active. Brandon needs to prove he is superior to the guests by poking them with clues to what he and Philip have done again and again. Every time he drops some clue and they don’t even catch on that it’s a clue, his ego is stroked. He’s a genius, and all of the party guests are idiots. And is Cadell doesn’t catch on? Well, he’s more intelligent than his idol!
When David’s father and Mrs. Atwater arrive, she thinks Kenneth is David and yells, “David!” - which causes Philip to freak out and break a champagne glass in his hand... and one poke creates another as Philip must explain what happened to his hand in a way that doesn’t make anyone suspicious. Where Brandon keeps trying to see how far he can push things, Philip wants to cover it all up and make sure no one even *thinks* about the trunk. The dynamic between the two characters also creates a series of pokes, as Philip keeps trying to shut Brandon up - but can’t just come out and say why because there are party guests around them.
Mrs. Atwater reads Philip’s palm... and says his hands will bring him great fame. Calling attention to the very hands Philip used to strangle David with. Poke.
Throughout the party, again and again, people wonder where David is. It’s so unlike him to be late. Each of these is a poke.
When Cadell arrives - he’s let in off screen so he just seems to appear - Brandon gets a little nervous. When *Cadell* starts asking Brandon where David is, Brandon gets *really* nervous, and we can see Cadell noticing this. Poke.
Everyone wonders why they are serving dinner off the trunk, which requires them to come up with a reason - they have some first edition books for David’s father to look at, and thought it would be easier for him to examine them on the dining room table. But it also gets the guests examining the trunk and asking about it. It’s an antique, and (as Philip tries not to completely freak out) the guests lift the table cloth to look at the trunk. Poke.
Hey, and this brings up a story Brandon read in college... which David’s father has also read, and shares with the group. About a Bride who hides in a trunk, gets accidentally locked inside, and dies on her wedding day... discovered 50 years later when someone opens the trunk. This is a great poke, because it makes everyone want to open the trunk to make sure no one is inside!
Dinner is chicken, and Philip says he doesn’t eat chicken, which makes everyone ask why... and Brandon jumps in with the story about how, once when the couple was vacationing at Philip’s mother’s farm, Philip was *strangling* chickens - killing them for dinner - when one strangled chicken was not quite dead yet, got up and ran away, startling Philip. As Brandon tells the story, focusing on Philip’s strangling abilities, Philip freaks out and yells for him to stop. “I never strangled a chicken in my life!” Hey, if the whole chicken strangling story wasn’t enough of a poke, Philip’s reaction was. Now everyone is wondering why Philip is so freaked out over killing chickens for dinner on his mother’s farm. Isn’t that a fairly normal thing on a farm?
Brandon brings up Professor’s Cadell’s views on murder, and Cadell does a funny bit about how the frustrations of everyday life could all be solved by the simple art of murder - people talking in the theatre during the performance - quieted, the fellow on the red velvet rope in front of the trendy night spot who might not let you in - removed. There should be certain days where murder is permitted, just so that we could solve some of these problems. Cadell goes through a list of clever “Murder Holidays” ending on... “Strangulation Day”. Poke.
Cadell has Mrs. Atwater laughing, but Brandon takes it all very seriously and makes a little speech on how the superior should be able to kill the inferior... which prompts David’s Father to ask who decides who the superior are? Who the inferior are? And Brandon says that he and Philip are superior... and maybe Professor Cadell.
And this is when Professor Cadell begins noticing things - and wondering if Brandon is behind the reason David is not at the party. He begins asking questions. He asks the Maid why dinner was served off the trunk rather than the dining room table... and Philip watches the exchange from across the room and tries not to freak out. Now Cadell becomes the pointed stick - poking again and again. Getting closer and closer to the truth.
When Philip is playing the piano, Cadell asks him some probing questions... finally asking, “Where’s David?” “I don’t know.” “But Brandon knows.” And asking what is going on, and why Philip became so agitated during the chicken strangling story - Cadell knows that Philip *has* killed chickens for dinner at his mother’s farm, so why the reaction to the story? Philip becomes more and more evasive - and Cadell knows he’s on to something.
Brandon gives David’s Father several of the first edition books, and to make them easy to carry... ties them together with the murder rope. Philip sees the rope and freaks. Major poke.
As Cadell starts to put things together, Philip starts some serious drinking...
And there are phone calls throughout the film to David’s Mother (or from her) wondering about the whereabouts of David. Each one is a poke... and eventually David’s Mother suggests calling the police, which freaks out a drunken Philip.
No Edits, No Moving Camera!
There’s a great suspense scene that is not only all one shot (as is the whole movie) but completely *stationary*. In a film filled with moving camera - the camera stops as the Maid removes the food and plates and candles and table cloth from the trunk in a series of trips back and forth between the trunk and the kitchen - foreground and background. Each trip is part of a “ticking clock” bringing us closer and closer to a trunk that can be easily opened (nothing on the lid). But when she finishes clearing the top of the trunk, she begins bringing the rest of the books from the dining room table to the trunk in a series of trips, before she will open the trunk and put the books inside. Suspense builds and builds and builds until she has all of the books ready to put in the trunk and *starts to open the trunk*. At this point Professor Cadell offers to help her! And that’s when Brandon and Philip swoop down and push the trunk lid closed, telling the Maid she can put the books away tomorrow. But, tomorrow is her day off!
Now Brandon must explain (in front of everyone) why it makes more sense for the Maid to come in on her day off to put the books in the trunk than just do it now, while she has the books in her hand and the trunk in front of her. Though this is a great poke, Brandon manages to come up with a reason that makes enough sense that all of the guests except Cadell believe it, and the audience can understand why how it could be believed. You don’t think the guests are all idiots, instead you think Brandon is so clever he just may get away with murder. You never want to have a character succeed by the stupidity of everyone else, you want them to succeed because they are amazingly intelligent and clever. Heroes who catch dumb villains are dumb heroes.
And the party comes to an end, without David ever showing up. Brandon sees everyone to the door as Philip continues drinking... and even though Cadell has suspicions, he leaves as well. The couple has gotten away with murder! Now that it’s dark, they can move the body from the old trunk to the car trunk and bury David at Philip’s mother’s farm in Connecticut. But then the doorbell rings, and Act 3 begins...
The Chess Match:
Jimmy Stewart’s character Professor Cadell is a predecessor of Columbo - he’s sly and clever and puts things together. There’s a great completely visual bit in the film where Cadell goes from talking to Philip about strangling chickens on his mother’s farm, to the books bound with the rope murder weapon, to Philip’s expression... and figures it all out.
Just like Columbo turning around and saying, “Just one more thing...” Cadell is at the door, claiming that he forgot his cigarette case. Can he come in and look for it? Philip is sure Cadell has figured it all out. Before Brandon lets him in, he grabs a gun and hides it in his coat pocket. Now we have a great game of cat and mouse (but who is the cat and who is the mouse) between Brandon and Cadell while Philip looks on in horror between drinks. Both tigers get to poke each other for a while... and the gun in Brandon’s pocket becomes a great suspense “focus object” - when Cadell gets in a particularly good poke, Brandon puts his hand in his pocket. Will he draw the gun and kill Cadell?
As the “chess match” goes on, Brandon *insists* that Cadell look in the trunk...
And this is where I always get the development note that asks if Brandon is an idiot - why would he *want* Cadell to look in the trunk? In just about every script I’ve had filmed which has a suspense scene like this, and a bunch of scripts that went through development and never got made, they always think the killer would have to be stupid to let the cops look in the trunk (or some variation of this scenario). But what are the alternatives? “Get a warrant!” just screams that you have something to hide... and you don’t want the police to *suspect* you. You want to act *innocent* rather than guilty. If you *insist* they search the house, the police will figure you don’t have anything hidden in there. If you *refuse* to let them search the house, they know you have something to hide. So the clever suspect has to “poke themselves” and *insist* that the police search their house - open the door wide (when the evidence that will convict them is in the next room) and invite the police in. They must act innocent, even though they are guilty. They must act as if they have nothing to hide, even though there’s a dead body just a few inches away. To the non-clever development people, that seems stupid - but it’s really just being a couple of moves ahead of the opponent. Ah, if there was only a “murder holiday” for dumb development folks! Eventually we would have a world where only the *superior* development folks have survived and all script notes would be great script notes...
Eventually in ROPE’s act 3, as Cadell exposes the couple as killers, he realizes he is stuck in a room... in a single shot... with two killers, one who has a gun. He goes from hero to potential victim... and now must find a way out.
Farley Granger:
I want to call attention to Farley Granger’s acting in this film. He plays the lead in Hitchcock’s STRANGERS ON A TRAIN as well, but here he gives an amazing performance as a man imploding from the weight of guilt and fear. Watch him in the background of shots as he crumbles or tries to stay calm while anything that can go wrong does. Granger, who died a month ago, was an underused actor - and this film is a real tour de force for him. While John Dall gets the charming and in-control role, Granger manages to show a complete range of emotions and often in layers - on the surface he’s calm, underneath he’s in an absolute panic, and underneath that he’s angry... and maybe violent. Just like with the champagne cork, though it’s Dall’s character who grabs the gun... it’s Granger’s character who ends up using it. For some reason most people don’t think of Hitchcock as an actor’s director - but some actors have done their best work in Hitchcock films. Suspense films are naturally dramatic, and a good actor can shine in a film like ROPE or PSYCHO.
Sound Track: Poulenc’s “Perpetual Movement #1” - and since the Philip character is an up and coming concert pianist, he is the source of most of the music. Much like REAR WINDOW’s use of music in front of the camera - the composer in that film trying to write a song - in ROPE most of the music comes from Philip playing the piano at the party.
ROPE is not only an interesting experiment, it’s an experiment that works. The single shot and moving camera trap us in the situation - we can never leave the tension by cutting to some other location or even just to some other character. Though removing the tool of editing for suspense, Hitchcock turns the liability into an asset because we can not look away from what he shows us - there is no escape from this shot! There are a few times in the film where the moving camera wobbles a little - I’m sure off camera a huge crew of guys was moving furniture and walls silently, but at the expense of a smooth camera movie.
I have decided to look at these wobbles as the predecessor and maybe inspiration for Paul Greengass’s directing style - or maybe it was done on purpose to give us the feeling of someone walking? I excuse the wobbles because this film was made long before the invention of the SteadyCam, and when movie cameras were huge heavy monstrosities that were difficult to move under the best circumstances.
I think it’s interesting, now that we have lightweight cameras and SteadyCam, that no one has really tried to replicate this experiment. There are films like RUSSIAN ARK that are all one shot, but the shot is bland and basically static (even though it moves) - the angle, movement and composition were not used to tell the story and build emotions as they were in ROPE. We now have the technology... but have we lost the talent?
