FINALLY! A BOOK WHICH TEACHES SCREENWRITERS HOW TO GET LAID!
Okay, so it’s not a ‘get-laid-quick’ book; but (despite the odd choice of cover photo) it’s still a damned fine book.
More importantly than not being a ‘get-laid-quick’ book, it’s also not another ‘How to’ book which tells you all the endlessly recycled secrets of screenwriting you never needed to know but are expected to pay for when you can learn for free with a bit of effort and an internet connection.
Tim Grierson’s FilmCraft: Screenwriting is actually a really cool collection of interviews and profiles with (and of) some of the greatest screenwriters ever to put finger to keyboard. It’s kind of a coffee table book, but jam packed with interesting interviews and behind-the-scenes bits and bobs.
I got sent a copy yesterday by the (presumably) lovely Emily Owen of Ilex Press and I’ve got to say it’s an incredibly beautiful book. I’ve only had time to flick through it (and read the odd bit here and there) but it looks really interesting.
This is the press blurb:
From the Hollywood blockbuster to the American indie to the international arena, the writers in this book are the people responsible for some of our most indelible cinematic memories of the last 50 years – and most audience members don’t recognize their names, let alone know anything about them. Screenwriting aims to give these creators their much-deserved moment in the sun. A must for students, cinephiles and anyone interested in the craft of writing for the screen.
Featuring in-depth interviews with modern masters of film ranging from Billy Ray (Flightplan, The Hunger Games) to Stephen Gaghan (Traffic, Syriana) and Guillermo Arriaga (Amores Perros, Babel, 21 Grams).
Includes fascinating behind-the-scenes material from the contributors themselves, including shooting scripts, writers’ notes and unseen visuals.
Features supplementary legacy profiles of the greatest writers of cinema’s history – Woody Allen, Ingmar Bergman, Paddy Chayefsky, Ben Hecht and the famous duo of Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond.
Tim Grierson is a film and music critic whose writing has appeared in Screen International, L.A. Weekly, Backstage, The Village Voice, Revolver, Vulture, Wired and Blender, as well as on About.com, IFC.com, Yahoo Movies and Gawker.com. He is the co-author of FilmCraft: Cinematography – a profile of the world’s greatest cinematographers – and the author of the Mark Everett biography Blinking Lights and Other Revelations: The Story of Eels. Tim has served on the jury of the City of Lights, City of Angels (COL•COA) Film Festival, and is currently vice president of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
If you listen to John August and Craig Mazin’sScriptnotes Podcast (and if you don’t … really? Start now.) then you’ll have heard John describe this book as his ‘one cool thing’ for … um … well, one of the recent weeks. (I don’t always listen to the podcasts in order and tend to get confused a lot.) Anyway, John August thinks it’s cool and he wrote Big Fish, so he’s probably right.
The best part of all this is the copy I have here is not for me, it’s for you.
Yes, you!
Although … I might fight you for it. It is lovely.
No, fair’s fair – it’s a giveaway copy and give it away I must.
So … I need a competition. Something fun, something easy enough to get people entering but not so easy it’s insulting.
Hmm … I suppose I could just get you to leave comments and pick a winner at random … but that sounds a bit dull.
Damn it, I hate thinking up competitions.
Ooh! I know! That’s the competition!
If you want this fantastic book, which normally retails at £19.99, then come up with a competition which has this book as a prize and post it in the comments. You don’t have to actually enter your own competition or even be capable of winning it. You can choose “write an Oscar-winning script using only the letter Q” or ”build a matchstick model of my arse on the moon wearing oven gloves” or anything else you like.
It doesn’t have to be feasible, achievable or even pleasant – just think up something which makes me laugh and I’ll pick the one I like best.
Don’t be mean, tell all your friends to come and enter (because you’re so clever they can’t possibly compete with you) and give everyone the chance to win this lovely piece of work.
As for a time-scale, for you … I give you a week. Let’s say the closing date is the 24th May 2013.
I think we all become scriptwriters because we have lots of ideas, lots of stories to tell. It’s certainly true for me, whenever people ask me how I became a scriptwriter, my stock answer is:
“As a child I told a lot of lies. Turns out, as an adult, if you write those lies down you get paid for it!”
Which is more or less exactly how it happened.
But the thing is, as a scriptwriter, I actually spend more time writing down other people’s ideas. It seems to me the job is mainly taking other people’s thoughts or images and translating them into words. Sure, if I write a spec script (which I haven’t done for years) then they’re my ideas … but as soon as the script sells, it belongs to someone else and they want their ideas layered over the top.
And that’s when it gets difficult.
I find the hardest part of the job isn’t putting my ideas down on paper in a concise and lucid manner; but putting other people’s ideas down on paper in a concise and lucid manner. Mainly because their ideas are rarely concise or lucid to being with.
“I’m a little confused with this note, are you suggesting we replace the scene where we reveal who the murderer is with a masturbating baboon? Oh, it’s allegorical, is it? There was me just thinking you were a pretentious twat.”
But the pinnacle of hard-isity is writing a script for an idea which is already half-written (whether that half-written means a synopsis, treatment or existing script) because I have no idea what bits of this idea mean to the person who hired me.
When I’m asked to work on someone else’s idea, the first thing I try and do is work out what the story is actually about. Whose story is it? Why could it only happen to them? What do they learn? What’s the theme/point of it all? Basically, what is the story trying to say?
Asking the person doing the hiring doesn’t always help – if they’ve tried to write it themselves and got stuck, it’s usually because they have a pile of good visual ideas with no idea how they connect together. My first job then is to try and put a skeleton inside the body they’ve already created.
In theory, that doesn’t sound too bad. You’d probably imagine it would be easy, just cut it open, insert the bones and sew it up again.
Simple.
Except, no.
Because a story without a theme, the body without the skeleton isn’t a head, two arms, two legs and a torso waiting to be animated – it’s a pile of unidentifiable organs and fleshy bits. There’s frequently no way of telling which bits belong where. Sure, some bits are obviously eyes or a lung; but other bits aren’t so clear.
Frequently what I’ve been given, once I separate it into piles, is three arms, five legs, no head and a torso which belongs to a goat. Or maybe just one massive arm with nothing else attached. One where the skin appears to be cobbled together from six different ethnicities and the flesh is infested with maggots.
Without that clear skeleton of …
Whose story is it?
What does he want?
Why does he want it?
What’s stopping him?
What does he actually need?
Other questions I can’t be arsed to write down.
… then there’s no way I can make a coherent person out of the disparate body parts. The easiest way to make it work is to put all the bits to one side, craft the skeleton and then see if any of the bits belong to it.
This is fine if I’m dealing with a producer who’s optioned/commissioned a script from someone else, tried to get it work, can’t and has come to me to try again. Usually there’s one or two core images/concepts they want to keep; the rest is up for grabs. Here’s a spleen and an elbow, make up the rest yourself.
Fine. If I know the size/location of the spleen and elbow, I can make up a body to fit around it. That’s okay.
But what if the producer wrote the initial idea? Or worse, the director? If it’s a director then there’s usually a load of really cool images and shots and things happening which HAVE to stay in. They have to. If it’s a producer, I often get saddled with an unworkable mish-mash of characters because they’ve already promised the roles to certain actors who will guarantee financing/distribution.
If I have to throw it all out, then it’s essentially telling the person who hired me that all their ideas are crap.
Even if that’s true, it’s not very nice to hear. The person who made this random pile of body parts worked really hard on them.
Really hard.
True, they’ve worked really hard in the wrong way on things which don’t matter until late in the game; but they’ve still worked hard. They have an emotional attachment to the seven really cool ears they’ve designed or the new type of liver which is sixteen foot long – throwing them out would be a disaster!
Sometimes the bits are fine, they just need explaining. If he can explain what the spleen is and what it does (which is impossible, no one knows what a spleen’s for. No one!) then I can work it in. Frequently though, the first few drafts of a new synopsis are just me trying to understand what the intention behind all the wobbly bits was. I often find myself throwing out all the bits which aren’t needed, crafting a perfectly working body and then finding out the two spring-things were spring-loaded kneecaps which enable the body to jump really high and thus become an awesome basketball player.
Oh, right. I get it now.
So why not just make the body taller and ditch the springy bits no one is going to believe? You hadn’t thought of that? Of course not, that’s why you hired me.
Sometimes none of the bits I’ve been given belong to the idea the person who hired me had in mind, because they don’t really know what they had in mind in the first place. Sometimes all of the bits belong (albeit in a different order) but I didn’t know that because the person who hired me is incapable of articulating what their idea is. And, of course, sometimes it’s all just my fault for not listening, not understanding or simply grabbing the wrong end of the stick and running like hell in the wrong direction.
This process, this understanding of intention, is the part of the job I find the hardest. It’s a laborious, frustrating process which can result in both sides thinking the other is a fucking moron … but it’s a vital step. I’ve walked away from some projects because I couldn’t work out what the hell they were on about. I’ve been fired from others for much the same reason.
Luckily I seem to (eventually) get it right more often than not; but it doesn’t change my loathing for that bit of the process.
Hopefully the future will bring some kind of what’s-the-fucking-point telepathy which will help people understand each other; but until then I guess I’ll spend my days knee deep in unidentifiable wobbly bits, praying that last squelch wasn’t me stepping on anything important.
Occasionally I get asked to write (or re-write) a script by someone (be that producer, director, actor or anonymous other) whose idea “went down really well at Cannes”.
Sometimes they’ve shown this idea to huge celebrity x or massive producer y or ginormous studio z and the response was incredibly positive – they love the idea/treatment/script and said this person should go away and get a script (re)written. Come back and see us when you have!
This used to impress me as much as it impressed the person who wanted to hire me to work on their fabulous idea. I mean, if huge celebrity x, massive producer y and ginormous studio z think it’s a good idea then it’s got to be worth working on! At least the person I’m writing the script for has someone in power eagerly waiting to read it when it’s done! That’s got to be better than writing a script for someone who has no idea what to do with it afterwards, isn’t it? I mean … they love it! Right?
Well, yes … and no.
Yes, because the person doing the hiring has at least worked out how to get the material in front of someone who could, potentially, make it.
And no because if the idea/treatment/script were any good then said important person would have bought it.
The vital bit of the second paragraph is “go away”.
“I love it! Come back when you’ve developed it further!” means “Fuck off and take your stupid fucking ideas with you.”
But this is a polite industry staffed with “artistic” people who react badly to criticism, so no one is honest. Not really. A producer/exec/actor will rarely tell you something is truly awful because they don’t want to offend and they don’t want to risk being wrong.
Just because someone puts a god awful idea in front of you today, doesn’t mean they won’t come up with a work of genius tomorrow. It’s unlikely in most cases, but not every piece of work from a good writer is going to be perfect. Or even good.
Similarly, just because you don’t like an idea doesn’t mean it’s inherently bad – someone else may like it. Several hundred million someone else’s might like it. If they do, then it makes sense to invest in that person’s bad ideas because … well, fuck it. If the idea makes money, it doesn’t matter what your personal feelings are about it.
There are plenty of films I think are appalling which have been smash hits – if I’d been in position to commission those ideas, I’d have lost my studio untold millions. Okay, so that happens; but if you decline politely then at least you’re in a position to say yes to the film maker’s next project. If you tell them to take their talentless shit and fuck off then they’re unlikely to want to do anything other than yell “I fucking told you!” through your letterbox at three in the morning.
So no one says no. Or rather, they say no; but make it sound like “I love it … but it’s not for me.”
Which leaves me in the interesting position of dealing with people who think their idea is awesome because no one’s told them it isn’t.
And in a way that’s fine, because they hire me to fix it.
Sometimes there is a nub of a good story buried in the script/treatment/idea and there’s something to build on – those are the jobs I accept. Sometimes there really isn’t anything to it – those are the ones I politely decline, for much the same reasons listed above.
The problem comes when the hirer believes the “It’s great! Please go away.” means their idea is so amazing it doesn’t need much work. Those projects are tricky because they don’t want to be told what’s wrong with their idea – they know for a fact there’s nothing wrong with it because x, y or z loved it.
It’s really hard to explain to people what x.y or z really meant without upsetting them. I try not to get involved with people like that because … well, it’s just frustrating and pointless. Unfortunately it’s not always possible to determine how immovable people can be on ideas before you sign the contract.
I wish I could. I wish there was some kind of collaboration test I could get potential employers to fill in. Something which would let me know how open they are to new ideas and how clingy they’re going to get to the bits which don’t work.
But there isn’t. Or at least, I don’t think there is.
So instead I’m left with my fallible intuition and the annoying realisation that I will occasionally get trapped in one of these pointless arguments.
I should just tell them the truth.
If they loved it they would have bought it there and then! Money is the only yes!
But I never do. I just swear a lot in private, wait a couple of years and then change their names and genders so I can whine about it on here.
On the day it was announced HMV was going into administration, producer Jonathan Sothcott posted this on his Facebook page (reprinted here with his permission, don’t go copying and pasting it willy nilly now):
Administration doesn’t mean closure but today’s news about HMV appointing administrators makes it a dark day for the UK film industry. With 90% of physical sales made at supermarkets, HMV was the last bastion of the niche title after the fall of Virgin, Zavvi, MVC, Choices, Tower Records etc. With the supermarkets (understandably) focussing on big budget studio product and uber-commercial top 20 material it means there is nowhere left to buy independent films that don’t make the cut. As a producer, I’m fortunate that my films generally get picked up by the supermarkets. As someone who loves DVDs, I’m gutted that my choices have been so limited.
As a teenager I caught up on more cult movies in the Brighton and Croydon branches of HMV than anywhere else. I know there wasn’t an internet then so the concept of ‘rare films’ made collecting videos more exciting but it was an experience that generations to come are unlikely to have. On Christmas Eve I queued for over an hour in HMV in Croydon buying Christmas presents and it gave me a renewed hope that the rumours were not true and that HMV might live to fight another day.
Alas it was not to be. There’s a lot of silly talk about downloads replacing physical formats and how you have to ‘face up’ to it – scant comfort for the 4,300 people facing unemployment. Download might be on the horizon but I promise you it isn’t here yet. No HMV will push piracy rates up and it will be the illegal downloads that skyrocket.
Sad, sad news.
And it got me thinking.
It got me thinking about how much I enjoy the act of buying something physical, of walking into a shop with cash and walking out with a product I have to wait until I get home to watch.
It got me thinking about what it will mean for low-budget film-makers in the UK and how (apart from a select few who “qualify” for supermarket sales) HMV is the only outlet where people can buy their films; but most of all it got me thinking about how exciting it is to see your own DVD for sale in a shop.
Now, I don’t know if that means anything to you. Mainly because I don’t know who you are.
You may not think seeing a DVD of a film you’ve had a hand in creating on an actual shelf in an actual shop is particularly exciting. Maybe you’ve had so many DVDs released you no longer care? Maybe you’re far too cool to get excited about such trivial things? Maybe you’ve never made any contribution to a film, script or otherwise, and just don’t see what the fuss is about?
Me? I fucking love it.
Regardless of the quality of the film itself, I find something electrifying about seeing my work in a shop. Being able to buy it in public is part of it; but a greater thrill is anyone else can buy it too!
They might buy it in front of me!
They might even tell their mate what they’ve heard about the film. Good or bad, doesn’t matter – it would be an unfiltered opinion!
Okay, so you could argue that the internet is full of unfiltered opinions; but you could equally argue most internet opinions are written using the ‘cunt’ filter. (Yes, including the ones expressed here.)
Even better than that, maybe the guy behind the counter will make some comment on my purchase? Maybe he’ll tell me I’m wasting my money and should buy Football Fuck Ups Vol 18 instead? Maybe he’ll look me in the eye, recognise I’m in some way connected to the making of this DVD and acknowledge me with a knowing nod of the head?
None of these things have ever happened, by the way; but they could! One day, they might, who knows?
Okay, they probably won’t; but buying your own DVD in an actual shop is so exciting (to me) that it overrides all reason.
First time I saw a DVD of my work on sale was The Evolved. Annoyingly, I bought it before I’d thought of taking a pic. I had to go back into the shop (or store, for t’was in America) and ask the clerk if I could put it back on the shelf and take a photo of it (lest he saw me taking it off again afterwards and accused me of stealing).
Surely this would be the moment where he recognised my greatness!
No. He just said “Yeah, whatever. Do what you like.” and strolled off to be impossibly cool somewhere else while I giggled insanely and snapped the photo above.
Not immediately above, higher than that.
Not that one, the one above that.
Go back and look at it! Between The Exorcist and The Evil Dead! How fucking cool is that?
The photos are in chronological order, by the way. I suppose I should move them around so that one is next to this sentence; but I just can’t be fucking bothered.
Oh, I’ve just remembered! I got so excited about seeing The Evolved in store that next time I passed an FYE, some months later, I went in and bought it again. Yes, I am the guy who bought all the physical copies ever sold! Both of them, that was me!
The guy in that shop did pass comment on the DVD, he looked at the cover, looked up at me and said …
“Holy shit! What the fuck is that?”
I love seeing my work on shop shelves and I love buying them with my own cash … and it saddens me that generations of film-makers to come may not have that opportunity.
If HMV goes (as it probably will) then only those who make the kind of movies supermarkets want to sell will get to experience that buzz; and supermarkets are notoriously fickle about what they will and won’t stock.
Yes the death of HMV would have wider implications for the UK film industry (this article in The Guardian highlights most of them); but from a purely selfish level, I need that small victory at the end of the process.
Writing a film is fucking hard. Dealing with the development process is even fucking harder. Watching the final product emerge as an absolute fucking mess is just soul destroying; but being able to walk into a shop and buy a copy of the DVD, no matter how atrocious its contents … it’s a high I genuinely hope those who’ve never experienced it get to love one day.
But realistically, no HMV means you probably won’t.
You can’t see this, but I’m now doing my sad face.
I began the year seven days after everyone else because I’m fucking hardcore, despite having been teetotal for 22 years now.
Maybe I just forgot the new year had begun?
Either way, I began with an explanation of one of my favourite writing techniques, THE BOX.
This technique is so awesome and so useful, not only have I not used it since; but I have no recollection of ever using it in the first place. I’m assuming I just made it up.
You know, lied.
Then I had a moment of genius. I know it was genius because Steven Moffat said it was. On Twitter. This is as close to a fact as you can possibly get without using things like set-squares and alphabet-heavy theorems.
This post garnered more views than my arse did that time I accidentally left it in Trafalgar Square. What’s more, people seemed to like it. It wasn’t really anything much to do with writing and had more to do with my inability to repair a car … but it’s quite funny.
Essentially, I explained How to beat procrastination and was generally awesome while I was doing it. Assuming ‘awesome’ is a synonym for ‘a bit sad’.
You should read it.
I’ll wait.
I immediately failed to capitalise on this massive new following by bloging about some confused Thundercats and rounded off January by having a film I had almost nothing to do with, Stalker, released on DVD.
Ten days later, I was still pretty upset about people charging writers for bad advice and gave my own bad advice for free. This time about dual time-period script writing. I have since ignored every single one of these ‘rules’ … with catastrophic results.
Explained the difference between a character being likeable and people fucking right off with their stupid fucking notes about kittens and fucking rainbows. Or something.
Swore I’d fucking show you all by explaining why script format was important. This would be it, the definitive guide to every aspect of script format explaining why I’m right and you’re all fucking wrong.
Which isn’t egotistical at all, it’s just the way of the world.
And then there was the Strippers vs. Werewolves première.
This post is well worth reading. It’s a master-class in how to blog about the première of your own film when you think it’s shit, without mentioning how shit you think the film is; but instead mentioning sausages. A lot.
Seriously, go read it. See if you can find any mention of how shit the film is.
I began May by making good on my promise to explain every aspect of script format. I started with the title page … and then gave up. For ever. I mean … what’s the fucking point?
The 7th of May was Me Day when the whole world revolved around me for 24 hours.
It wasn’t my birthday or anything, it was just a day when the whole world gathered round to worship me and celebrate how amazing I am. Or was. You may not remember it because I think you were temporarily dead that day.
Ooh, this post on Script Trajectory was quite good. Must have been ill that day.
The papers in May did a mighty fine job of promoting the BluRay/DVD release of Strippers vs. Werewolves by pretending not to know something they patently do and being all sniffy about it in a headline grabbing way.
I can’t be fucked with this, I’m knackered. I’ll finish it off tomorrow.
July was the month I was recruited by a clandestine organisation to invade a nation of pixie warmongers who live in an old forgotten tea cup behind my garden shed. I was given a spud gun, a nifty secret hat and a licence to break wind in public and sent off to murder pixies. After a series of, frankly, quite dull adventures involving grit and teaspoons, I found myself in Yakatang (the capital of the pixie nation, it looks a bit like Harlow only not quite so grim and with a few extra pixies). I was all set to assassinate King Ian (Yakatang’s chief biscuit maker and all round bastard) when I realised the whole incident was merely the result of a dodgy kipper that morning and I had actually invaded Lakeland, naked save for a pink Santa’s hat and brandishing a small clockwork frog.
Come to think of it, that might not have happened either.
I can’t really remember July, can you?
Oh wait, yes I can. In July I …
Went to the BBC TV Writers’ Festival, met all sorts of splendid people and burbled insanely about The Dukes of Hazzard at every opportunity.
Slipped off to the secret writing island for interesting conversations about ‘the first ever genital piercing’ and ‘how to wake someone up with a spoon’ before proclaiming I had a new regime … and then failing to do anything about it.
And then promoted a festival because someone asked me to and it was easier than thinking of anything new to write.
And really, that was it. That was the whole year.
Fuck me.
I did do quite a lot of proper writing too, I just didn’t really talk about it much. I script edited hours and fucking hours of Persona, wrote far too much of it and worked on multiple drafts of seven features … so not too bad.
But not good enough.
I will do better next year.
Which is in about five hours’ time.
If you want proper stats and all kinds of flashy animation about all the stuff I blogged about this year, then you need help.
If you can’t be arsed to click the link, then the gist of it is female superheroes always get drawn in anatomically improbable positions, thrusting breasts, bums and crotches at the reader … often all at the same time. In order to ensure they get the maximum sexy-fect from the thrusting, they usually choose to fight crime in as little clothing as possible, preferably with only their nipples and crevices covered and all else on display. Male superheroes, by contrast, like to cover themselves up and sensibly protect their genitals from supervillain attack.
In order to demonstrate how stupid this is, people have taken to drawing Hawkeye in the same poses as the women.
It seems to have started with this cover:
… and spiralled off into mass-hilarity.
Some people think it’s highlighting something stupid and/or offensive about the way women are portrayed in comics.
Some people think it’s just a giggle.
Others think it’s not a problem because female comic readers want to see strong muscular men flexing their strong muscles while male readers want to see women being all flexible and improbable.
Me?
Well, kind of bits of all of the above really.
I’m not a fan of semi-naked superheroes. Possibly because, no matter how sexy semi-nudity can be, I find it’s completely cancelled out by a lack of common fucking sense.
If you’re going to be crawling over the rooftops, getting shot at and climbing up walls then surely, for the love of fuck, you’d want to wear something unrippable and a little bit padded? Imagine climbing up a granite building, reaching over the ledge at the top and hauling yourself onto the roof.
Now imagine doing that with a bare midriff, dragging your naked stomach over rough stone as your entire bodyweight presses down on it.
Ow.
I have a similar opinion on reality.
Attractive woman on a night out, wearing practically a nightie in the summer = sexy.
Same woman wearing the same (nigh)nightie in the winter?
PUT SOME FUCKING CLOTHES ON.
Blue is my favourite colour, but not for skin. What the fuck has gone wrong in your head that you think no clothes are the best clothes to wear in the winter? You’re showing a basic lack of survival instincts and if attraction is mostly a primal urge to do with finding a mate with strong genes, then the primal bits of my brain are telling me you’d be an appalling genetic match – you couldn’t look after my offspring, you’re unlikely to survive the winter for fuck’s sake.
I’m as much attracted to the way people think as the way they look. Attraction for me is physical and mental. I can talk to someone I consider plain and end up fancying them. I can talk to someone stunningly good looking and end up thinking they’re a complete and utter twat.
Wearing the wrong clothes for the situation is not attractive. It’s fucking stupid.
I did this survival course once where we had to climb out of the water and into liferafts. Climbing into a liferaft is fucking hard and takes a lot of effort. Liferafts are not comfortable against the skin, plus water is cold. There were some women who turned up in bikinis, froze, scraped their stomachs and generally fell out of their bikinis.
Don’t get me wrong, I like tits. If someone falls out of their bikini under warmer, less stupid circumstances I consider it a good day. In this situation I just felt these women were remarkably stupid. Or at the very least, stylistically misguided.
If you’re a costumed vigilante and you want to fight crime, wear some fucking trousers and a decent top. Preferably one with bits of armour and spikes in it.
But what if you have super powers? What if scraping over rough brick isn’t really a consideration because you have titanium-strength skin? You don’t feel bullets, let alone cold so why bother with anything other than the skimpiest of costumes?
I don’t know about you, but every time Wonder Woman twats someone with an uppercut, I worry she’ll pop out of that corset. If Supergirl turns too quickly or takes a fairly longish stride she’d probably have to stop and tuck her clitoris back into her costume – is this sensible?
Maybe these women are completely comfortable with nudity and feel they have nothing to be ashamed of? Maybe they could happily fight naked and only wear the briefest of costumes in public as a sop to humanity’s weird prudishness?
Maybe.
Just seems fucking moronic to me.
As for frequently drawing characters getting changed or taking a shower or lounging around the house in their thongs … I kind of … hmm. I like it, sometimes; but maybe less is more?
The worst offender for me was a Batgirl vs Catwoman book where Catwoman stripped off and ran into a nudist party and Batgirl stripped off to follow her.
What the fuck?
Okay, Catwoman … yeah, maybe; but Batgirl should have just stormed in and beat the fuck out of anyone who tried to stop or strip her. Batman wouldn’t have taken his clothes off in the same situation – it’s hard (tee hee) to be menacing when your cock and balls are on display – so why the fuck would Batgirl do it? It just makes her look like a twat.
As for the majority of female crime fighters being able to stand with their tits and arses pointing the same way … why is that sexy? Women are sexy because I am a straight man and programmed by evolution to find that specific shape sexy. Changing that shape into something with a front-arse or back-tits is just weird. If it’s not woman-shaped, it’s not a sexy woman.
The sexy-posing I waver on. I think it depends on the character in question. Batgirl, Huntress, Wonder Woman, Supergirl … no. I just don’t think it suits their characters. Catwoman, fuck yes. She’s absolutely a character who uses her sexuality to unnerve her opponents – male and female. She should always be draped over stuff or thrusting curvy bits at people … just not when she’s angry. I reckon it’s something she practises … but forgets when she loses her temper. Then it’s just arse-kicking time.
The legs-akimbo backflipping shit … again, I think it depends on the character – male and female. I’m quite happy to see Dick Grayson or Spiderman hurling themselves through the air doing the splits … but not Batman. Harley Quinn – yes. Poison Ivy – no.
Although I think Poison Ivy would be very sexy-posy most of the time.
So as a male, heterosexual comic reader who genuinely believes most situations in life can be improved with either full or partial nudity … can we just tone it down a bit? Or a lot?
Try and be anatomically possible; try not to have every female character capable of doing mid-air crotch-thrusting splits; try to limit the showering/changing scenes to every now and then and for fuck’s sake give these women some proper clothes to wear.
If for no other reason, consider this – I’m covertly training my four year old daughter in a variety of martial arts, partly for her own protection/fun/fitness; but mostly so she can, if she chooses, be a costumed vigilante when she grows up. Part of that training covers standing with her spine facing the right way, adopting a stance which protects sensitive areas from attack and not wasting time draping herself sexily over things when she can just punch the gun-toting maniac in the throat and be done with it.
But most of all, she’s my daughter and I can fucking guarantee that if she wants to fight crime she’ll be doing it in sensible fucking clothes.
Recently I apologised and admitted The Thing never really made an impression on me and then apologised again. Lots of people I like said it was their favourite movie, one of them gave me the script to read.
I won’t name him here, because he’s … you know, distributing copyrighted materials and that’s naughty. But we all do it. He’s welcome to name himself, if he wants; I’ll just say thank you (again) and leave it at that.
So I read the script and … well, actually, I didn’t. I read about two thirds of it, went to bed and never bothered picking it up again.
Please, don’t come round my house in a large mob and burn me. Not again. The neighbours are getting fed up.
I know I’m wrong here. I know it’s an acknowledged classic and a masterpiece of the genre, if not several genres, if not just all genres in general; I don’t care. Or rather, I didn’t care, whilst reading it. About anyone.
My experience reading it was this:
There are some people.
One of them is Kurt Russell*, can’t remember which one.
There’s a mystery involving a similar group of anonymous people (these ones are Norwegian). I know the answer to the mystery because I vaguely remember seeing the film; but for the purposes of reading the script, I’m pretending I don’t know.
It’s working, because I am that stupid.
The mystery is engaging and mysterious. I want to keep reading.
Halfway through, the mystery is solved!
Characters are starting to die!
Not sure which ones because I can’t tell them apart!
Why can’t I tell them apart? Well, I guess it’s because I don’t care about any of them.
I reckon one of them will survive, but I don’t care which one. Whichever one is Kurt Russell; but it’s kind of hard to tell from the script. Maybe he hasn’t turned up yet?
Okay, tired now. Think I’ll go to bed.
zzzzzzzz … BADGERS! BADGERS! … zzzzzz … little furry bastards … zzzzzz … NO! NOT THE BICYCLE! … zzzzzz
*Yawn* Morning! Shall I finish the script?
No, I don’t really care who lives or dies. Wonder what’s on telly?
Ooh, The A-Team! Cool.
And that was that.
And that was what got me thinking about horror in general and why I’m not really that fussed about it.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike horror. I just don’t go out of my way to watch it very often. I don’t think it’s rubbish or people are fools for watching or liking it. I just don’t really care for it. Mostly.
For someone so apathetic about the genre, I’ve actually written a surprising amount of it. Not a massive amount, just surprising. Or at least, surprising for someone who isn’t really that bothered about it.
Nineteen feature projects and a TV series at last count.
Hmm … that’s a lot.
For someone who doesn’t care.
Thing is, people keep asking me to write them a horror and, you know, I hate to say no. Especially if they’re paying.
So I write these things and I never think they’re any good, but in the main people seem to be exceptionally happy. This is a very confusing situation – I’m writing scripts I don’t like for a genre I don’t really understand and everyone seems to thing they’re brilliant.
Well, with one notable exception. I wrote a script I thought was fairly poor, the producer asked to read the horribly rough first draft and told me it was amazing. GENIUS, was his one-word critique … until he took it back to show his partners, who (rightfully) recognised it as a massive pile of shit and “went in another direction”~
Where are the other scripts now? Hopefully, dead and buried. I do have this small, nagging fear they’ll all rise up from the dead one day and march into production at the same time. Imagine a dozen or more of the buggers slopping all over the DVD racks of HMV and stinking up the place.
*shudder* Now that’s horror.
I’m thinking now that part of the new regime is NO MORE HORROR. I’m just not very good at it and don’t really enjoy it. In the main.
But why not? What’s not to enjoy?
I’ve been thinking about that in manageable chunks and come to a vague (and probably inaccurate) opinion about a subsection of the horror genre, of which The Thing is one, basically the films whose loglines start with:
A group of …
See? See my problem? It’s right there! Can you see?
A group of teens go into the woods …
A group of marines invade a tea party …
A group of … um … ice people (?) sit around at the North (or possibly South) Pole …
Always a group, rarely a person who has a specific need tied to the theme of the film. Just … some people. Randomers.
Okay, so quick test – some people are in a room, they might die!
Or:
Your best friend is in a room, (s)he might die!
Which one’s preferable? Which one’s scarier?
A lot of horror films seem to involve a random group of people involved in a scary situation. The choice of the random group is, well, random. They’re not important. It could be any group of teens or marines or … mineralogists? Ice scientists? Fuck it, I’ve only just read the script and I can’t remember. Was it a weather station?
A day or a week or a month later and it would have been a different group of teens or marines or whatever and you’d have exactly the same film. These people are not important. Except they are important, because they’re dying and I’m supposed to care about them … but I don’t. Not really.
I read a horror script for a producer once and told him what I thought, he passed that back to the writer (who may or may not have known I said them) and the writer responded with something along the lines of:
I don’t care, this character development bullshit doesn’t belong in horror movies.
Which might well be true. It certainly doesn’t seem to affect people’s enjoyment of them.
But why? Why isn’t character development important? Why shouldn’t horror films follow the more usual movie conventions of having a single protagonist who has a goal uniquely tied into the plot?
Maybe it’s because of the nature of the film? Maybe if these people were people you genuinely cared about and rooted for, then the horrible things happening to them would be too horrific to watch?
But I don’t think that’s it.
Maybe it’s because you need a body count and the only way to achieve that is to have a group of people you can winnow down to the single survivor? Perhaps if there was a clear protagonist for everyone to latch onto, with a goal they need to achieve before the film is done then it would be too obvious who was going to survive and the ‘scare’ is lost.#
Although, that doesn’t sound right to me either. It’s usually fairly obvious from the trailer who’s going to survive (not always mind) and I manage to suspend my disbelief in most other films to pretend the hero might just die this time.
Maybe it’s just that horror films aren’t for me? Maybe I’m supposed to JUST CARE because these are human beings being ripped apart in nasty ways and I’m a sociopathic monster for feeling indifferent about the whole thing?
Yes, that sounds plausible.
Either way, I know I don’t really write any more horror films.^ I’m done with that now, and it’s for the best. The question now is what do I want to write? Horror is pretty much all that gets made in the UK, apart from gangster and hooligan films and I’m buggered if I’m getting involved in them. So what’s the path? What’s next?
I have no idea.
Well, I do, sort of. What’s next, as soon as I’ve had lunch, is the outline for a Time-Travel-Head-Fuck film.
But after that … your guess is as good as mine.
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* I once got fired from a job for tearing Kurt Russell’s head off. This is 100% true story and not a metaphor or an idiom or euphemism for anything filthy. I tore the man’s head clean off, dumped it in a bin and got fired. I may have told this story before. If I haven’t, I really should one day.
~ Sacked me. As well they should have.
# Okay, so I know every character in (almost) every horror film has the same goal – survive; but that’s not what I mean. Anyway, if I don’t care about the character, I don’t care whether they live or die … so I’m not going to hang around to find out if there’s something better to do.
I think most of you will have answered a firm and assertive ‘no’.
It’s not okay. It’s lazy, it’s unimaginative, it’s not what writing is about. There’s nothing creative in taking something someone else has written and regurgitating it. Anyone who even considers it is intrinsically a wrong ‘un and should be drummed out of the business.
Okay, fair enough.
And I’m not talking about clams here. I’m not talking about the ‘He’s behind me, isn’t he?’s of comedy. Re-using something that’s massively overused is obviously wrong. Although, sometimes excusable. Maybe the ten things you’ve seen the clam of your choice in were all written at the same time, went through production at the same … but then suffered various production delays and came out sequentially. Maybe that line wasn’t in the script, but the actor improvised it and the director let it slide because he’d never heard it before.#
There are extenuating circumstances, but it’s unacceptable to intentionally re-use jokes.
But what if it’s unintentional?
What if you think of something really funny … later to discover it was in the first Season of Blackadder, the season you’ve only seen once and didn’t really like, let alone remember any of?
Is it okay then? Or if you’re a comedy writer should you be well versed in ‘the classics’ and have an encyclopaedic memory of ‘jokes to avoid’?
Again, most writers would probably say re-using a Blackadder joke is unacceptable.
But what if you’re 18 and Blackadder finished before you were born? Is it acceptable then? There’s a tendency, particularly among the young, not to watch anything which is older than you. A lot of 18 year olds would struggle to name more than a dozen films which came out the year before they were born*. Should they be expected to watch EVERYTHING so they never, ever repeat the work of the ‘old’ masters?
Hmm … maybe. I mean, if they want a career in this industry then they should do their homework. Watching a classic comedy series or film should be part of their self-education.
Okay. But what if it’s an obscure comedy?
Lazarus and Dingwall. Hands up anyone who’s seen that?
Anyone?
Maybe you have. Maybe you all have. I don’t know. All I know is at my school there were only four people who watched it and that’s because I forced them to watch it. At knife point.
If I was dismissive of your carefully crafted joke on the grounds I’d seen it before, 20 years ago in a comedy show you’ve never even heard of, let alone seen … am I right to be dismissive? Or am I being a cunt?
What if the joke was from an obscure, French film from 1932? One you’ve never seen and never even dreamt existed? Is it okay to unintentionally use a gag from there?
Maybe? Yes?
What about intentionally?
If a joke is hilarious; but hasn’t been used since last millennium and only then in a different language on a different continent … is it okay to give it a new lease of life?
Should jokes be told once and then die? Or should they be part of our culture? Told and re-told in new formats and new situations for all time? An 80 year old writer will probably have heard/seen more gags than an 18 year old one. Why shouldn’t the 18 year old be allowed to re-use classic jokes in a show aimed at people his own age?
Is there a statute of limitations on comedy? Does it become acceptable after a certain period of time? Or should writers always strive to be new and inventive all the time, at all costs?
It doesn’t happen with music. I’m perfectly capable of listening to a pop song and appreciating it as a cover version … provided it’s different enough to not be a straight copy. This rap/”soul”^ thing of taking a song and just changing the lyrics annoys the piss out of me.
Except when it doesn’t.
So if it’s okay to cover a pop song, why is it not okay to cover a joke? It doesn’t take away from the original. The original version is still there and can still be enjoyed. If anything, covering a song or remaking a film helps draw attention to the original because there’s always a wide cross-section of the population who are desperate to prove they LOVED the original before you even knew it existed, because they’re awesome and you’re not. They will go miles out of their way to ‘casually’ drop their superior knowledge into any conversation.%
“Of course, ‘Sloop John B’ wasn’t written by ANY of The Beach Boys. I much prefer the 1911 jaws-harp and kazoo version.”
“That’s great; but do you want fries or not?”
I suppose the difference with pop songs is the original writer gets the credit and financial reward, if you re-use a joke, you’re stealing it. But is that okay or not? Is the original writer still using that joke? Are you taking their work illegally? Or once a joke is out there, are you merely keeping it in the public consciousness as is right and proper?
Is there a line in the sand? Is it about quantity? Can you liberate and rejuvenate one joke after a set period of time (10 years? 20? 50?) without needing to pay the original writer? Obviously copying the whole film verbatim without compensating the writer is wrong. Totally and utterly.
But the odd joke or two? Is that wrong? Where’s the cross over between acceptable and “I’m suing you, you thieving cunt”?
What about if something was a clam 50 years ago, is it okay to recycle it today? Now that everyone’s forgotten? Does that okay depend on your age? Can an 18 year old recycle a 10 year old clam because to them (and maybe their target, BBC 3 audience) it’s fresh?
I don’t have any answers to this. Genuinely. I ask because I don’t know and would love to hear your thoughts. Please enlighten me, either in the comments or by email … but not megaphone outside my house, you’ll disturb the cat.
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*Based on a cross-section of three terrified teenagers I cornered in the local Tesco this morning and quizzed intently on movies from 1993. They were shit.
#Nothing drives me to shouty-rage-time more than reading a (often deservedly) bad review of a film based on a script I’ve written, where the reviewer singles out a line the actor improvised as an example of how bad the script is. If you were a gardener and after you’d cut the grass, someone else came along, dug a big fucking hole in the middle of the lawn and took a shit in it … is that your fault? For fuck’s sake, please – review the film you’ve seen, not the script you haven’t read.
^“Soul” is in quotation marks because I find modern “soul” generally doesn’t have any. To my mind, if it doesn’t make your spleen quiver and your feet move involuntarily, it isn’t soul. Similarly, Rhythm & Blues should have both rhythm AND blues in it; and rock and roll should contain both rock AND roll. But then I have stupid opinions like that.
There’s an odd practice in film making of hurling multiple writers at a project as if quantity and quality are interchangeable.
And to be fair, sometimes it’s necessary.
Sometimes a writer may not have the skills to take a project from inception to production. Sometimes they just can’t do it on this occasion because of an unfamiliarity with the genre or style. Sometimes it’s a personality clash with the producer or director. Sometimes each new addition to the team brings with them a preference for a specific writer and it’s all change.
But for whatever reason it happens, it’s not always a good idea.
Part of the problem is development is a long process of trial and error and scripts have a history. New writers, even if they’ve read all the previous versions of the scripts, aren’t privy to that history.
They don’t know why certain decisions were or weren’t taken or what obstacles prevented the script from taking certain routes.
I’ve joined projects halfway through, replacing someone else, and made suggestions which have previously been considered and discarded. It’s a frustrating and difficult process, trying to work out what has or hasn’t been tried before and why it was deemed to have been unsuccessful or unwanted. Frequently I can’t help feeling they’d have been better off keeping the last writer and just giving him more specific notes on the next draft, as opposed to spouting phrases like:
“This script feels yellow, can we make it more orange?”
or
“Can we add a dog, but not a real one. Maybe something else which smells like a dog?”
or
“I think this can be more.”
More what? That’s not a fucking sentence!
Thought for today: producers, if you don’t know what you want and can’t articulate it, a string of new writers hired and fired in rapid succession may well accidentally stumble on a solution for you … but they probably won’t.
And it’s not only changing writers which can be disastrous; changing producers or directors can throw a project of the cliffs of insanity and into the sea of ‘what the fuck?’ It’s really tedious having to patiently explain to the new director why he can’t have all the really cool-but-nonsensical images the old director was fired for insisting on.
You have to dredge up all the sensible and well thought out reasons you’ve already gone through, sometimes years ago, just to get back to the point where you can go forward. It’s like running a relay race by going back to the beginning with each pass of the baton.
Changing producers is a fucking minefield. If you had a good one before, you can guarantee the next one will have no fucking clue what they’re doing, embezzle most of the budget and insist you fill the script with roles for women they’re trying to penetrate.
If, on the other hand, you start with one of those, then the next one in will probably sack you for writing a script they can no longer afford full of pointless characters who stand around in skimpy outfits.
And that’s before you get to the thorny issue of extras’ dialogue.
Different producers have different views on this.
Some subscribe to the point of view that the only people who should be talking in scenes are the main characters, so you don’t have to pay much for people who wander in for a scene and are never seen again.
Others believe it’s better to give every minor character a line, bung a vaguely recognisable face a few quid to deliver the line and hence increase the profile of the film by a handful of Internet forums.
Needless to say, both camps think the other is fucking mental; but tend to agree it’s the writer’s fault for putting either option in the script.
In all of this, I can’t help thinking it would be simpler to just start with three competent people who can work together and let them meander through however many drafts are necessary to reach the goal.
Sadly, it appears that kind of attitude is just not acceptable.
When I first embarked on my writing career, I had a notion. A plan, if you will. It was a simple plan which seemed largely foolproof and went thusly:
Find a small group of hungry young producers and directors to work with.
Make small films for next to nothing.
Repeat with more money.
In theory, we’ll all grow together and rise up the ranks until we weren’t just part of the British film industry; but effectively were the British film industry.
Like I said, foolproof.
Apart from all the fools masquerading as hungry young producers and directors.
And one other, slight flaw …
Not everyone wants to make bigger and more expensive films.
From a writer’s point of view, this seems crazy. Okay, so we don’t all want to write $300 million US movies … but surely everyone wants to make films which are expensive enough to give you a reasonable pay day?
Yes?
That’s kind of the goal, isn’t it?
Well, no. Not for everyone.
From a production company’s point of view, a better business model is to grow horizontally, not vertically. Why take the profit from one film and sink it all into a more expensive film when you can fund two smaller films for the same price?
Films are a risky investment and frequently make no money whatsoever. In fact, if you ever get the chance to browse the film market of Cannes or AFM, you’ll be forgiven for thinking most films never make a single penny.
So if it’s so risky, why chuck both eggs in the one celluloid basket? Why not make two, cheaper (and therefore less risky) films? Best case scenario, you make twice as much profit as you would otherwise. On the other hand, if one tanks, at least you’ve got a second iron in the fire.
If both of those make a modest profit, then you invest in three or four cheap films … and so on. Growing your business horizontally makes sound financial sense – if you do a good job, these films have as much potential to be a runaway, mega box office success as a hugely expensive one … but with less risk. In most cases, even if the film’s awful, it’ll make you your money back plus a little bit extra.
Lots of little bits extra make an extra swimming pool for your mum much more likely than gambling all your savings on one cash cow.
The problem with this approach is it works for a company, but it’s not sustainable for a writer. A production company can make six, eight or twelve tiny films a year because they can hire six, eight or twelve writers and directors and pay them each a tiny fee.
There’s nothing wrong with the tiny fee, if the budget itself is tiny and everyone gets paid accordingly. It’s only unethical when some people are getting big fat cheques and some aren’t.
As a writer, you’d struggle to write four features in a year. I mean, it’s not impossible and it can be done … but if each script needs six or eight or ten drafts then it could be equivalent to writing up to forty scripts (depending on how much changes in each draft). If you add on the thinking time and the meetings and the procrastination and the masturbation … you wouldn’t have time to do much except die of malnutrition and sleep deprivation.
Producers may want a vertical career, but a horizontal one is a valid choice. It’s not for a writer – writers either have to aim high to begin with or start at the bottom with a view to rising through the ranks.
But then there’s another problem.
The traditional view of the industry is a walled garden. Once you’ve broken in, you’re free to play with all the toys. Um … garden toys, presumably.
The problem is, that view is wrong. In fact it’s complete and utter bullshit.
There is no single, unified industry. It’s not a club you enter for life. Beyond the wall is another wall. Lots of walls. It’s all fucking walls and no one behind one wall knows anyone behind any of the others. In some cases they haven’t even heard of them. Or you.
You can be very successful in one area and completely unheard of elsewhere.
Okay, so some people transcend that; but they do so by being awesome at a variety of things. A writer with a hit TV series can”t just wander into the film garden and start picking the flowers. Hell, he probably can’t even wander into a different TV garden (you know, like the kids’ TV garden or the crime garden) or sometimes even the same garden. Writers with a hit TV or film can still find a surprising lack of interest in their next project or at least have to work equally as hard as they did to break in in the first place.
Personally I managed to get a lot of repeat work and recommendations in the same garden, which is, I guess horizontally; but am completely unknown anywhere else. I’ve accidentally ended up with a horizontal career instead of the intended vertical.
I have no idea how to end this post or even what I’m trying to say, beyond not everyone has the same goals and there are more walls than you might first think.
I'm a UK scriptwriter who's had nine feature films produced. I've also had some bits and bobs on TV and co-created the first smartphone broadcast, app-drama series, PERSONA.
Now in its seventh year, this blog is mostly a chronicle of my career; but it's also an insight into the grubby bits of writing no one really tells you about.
Reality here has been stretched, altered, bent and completely ignored to make my life funnier, more interesting or just different for the sake of it.
Tim Grierson’s FilmCraft: Screenwriting is actually a really cool collection of interviews and profiles with (and of) some of the greatest screenwriters ever to put finger to keyboard. It’s kind of a coffee table book, but jam packed with interesting interviews and behind-the-scenes bits and bobs.
And there are more details here: http://www.ilex-press.com/books/filmcraft-screenwriting/
