Three Hole Punched

Dr. King And the Unnecessary Rewrite

2011-09-02T00:31:00.013-04:00

Maya Angelou's been stirring up some controversy coming out against the wording on the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, saying it makes him look like "an arrogant twit."

Here is Dr. King's original quote, in response to people who accused him of only seeking glory for himself. It's from a sermon he gave designed to encourage people to not be afraid to take the lead.

"If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter."

Somewhere in the "development process", the quote was changed to:

"I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness."

The problem is the paraphrased quote, edited for brevity I guess, implies the exact opposite of the original's intention. It's like if you decided to defend yourself against the charge of showboating by...showboating. The impression is of a man who's puffing up himself rather than displaying Dr. King's quintessential humility.

It'll be interesting to see whether the quote gets fixed or whether we're stuck with a truly sloppy edit for all eternity.

Minority Screenwriters, or Guess Who's Not Coming to Dinner

2011-08-24T16:29:00.013-04:00

The ongoing discrimination lawsuit against WME and CAA from African American screenwriter Justin Samuels (and one little John August post to be precise) has made the issue of underrepresentation of black writers bubble up again in the blogosphere. Unsurprisingly, working and wannabe screenwriters, slaving away in the trenches on the umpteenth free rewrite, have met with a fair amount of vitriol Samuel's blithe naïveté about the long slog that is trying to write and sell the Hollywood screenplay.

According to Samuels, he is due eight million dollars in damages because he had eight screenplays (worth "one million each") that he was unable to submit to the majors because they don't accept unsolicited queries. And since the only way in for an unrepped writer is through a recommendation from an insider-- and the agents and insiders are white-- black writers are effectively locked out, in Samuels' reasoning. That leaves a black writer with much nothing else to do but launch an eight million dollar law suit.

Crazy right? Plenty black screenwriters have bucked the trend. There's Gina Prince Bythewood, Geoffrey Fletcher, and um, who'm I leaving out... Antwone Fisher? Talk about exceptions proving the rule. And while nobody expects Hollywood to be a dream factory for minority writers, we quite possibly never had it so bad.

Despite a WGA diversity department, and a number of programs designed to tackle the imbalance, the report on writers of color in the industry is the worst it's been in ten years. According to the Hollywood Reporter:

In film, minorities are underrepresented by a ratio of 7-to-1, with the share of minorities employed in writing jobs declining to its lowest level in at least 10 years (5%).

So what's at work here? John August raises the question of access. If screenwriting is to whatever degree sometimes about who you know, how do you change a writer of color's connections? UCLA's talked about increasing film school aid to writers of color, which seems solid-- not to moan, but I could certainly have benefited from it going to the exorbitantly priced one I self-paid for. But even with scholarships in place, it's a handful of writers that are going to go the film school route.

I remember when the contention was that there weren't enough African-American distributors and if distribution existed, the story of black film would be different. But now it's starting to look like the back-end problem we thought we had is in fact a front-end issue. And like John August, I'm not sure that legally forcing agencies to read queries would change the landscape much. The system of "by request only" is in place to keep out mediocre material. Good scripts win contests and attract agents, managers or influential champions. The cream rises to the top.

"Practice. Feedback. Network." That's the journey. But as hard as we work at the first two components, that last one continues to be the tough one to hurdle because it's the one most out of our control. I keep thinking more mentorships along the lines of the Cosby Fellowship might be the answer, but I'd love to hear other thoughts.

Is This Thing Still On?

2011-06-07T12:59:00.015-04:00

Hello out there. This is embarrassing.

What to say after having dropped off the grid for so long? I mean I haven't blogged in more than a year. If I was in total producing "bs" mode I would start the old canard about how things have been busy and behind the scenes we've been building relationships that will enable us to move forward, and working on the shortlist of directors for the crazy Bollywood musical and blah, blah, blah but truth is...we got stuck.

We got stuck waiting around for what looked like a good fit to direct the piece but dude ultimately passed. So we at long last got our "no", which is strangely energizing...because now we retool, adjust, brainstorm again. I love the "no." The "no" gives you fire. It's the "maybe" that sucks momentum. Plus every "no" puts you closer to the "yes".

There's also been developments on other fronts: mainly the documentary and the Little Movie I Want to Direct, so I'll post on these fitful journeys, as always from the perspective of a Carib gal trying to make good. See you around the interwebs....my babies.

Photo by visual.dichotomy

We Love It...Now Just Change Everything

2010-05-19T09:53:00.007-04:00

Crazy Bollywood project has been creeping along at such a slow pace we've had to push back our shoot dates till later in the year. The biggest hold-up has been the script which is stuck in development hell. Investors love it...they just want to change everything.

I was initially bummed by having to wrap my head around big story notes (some sound, some insane), until I came across this Vulture article on the strange evolution of the spec script "Nottingham". The article focuses on the tensions between Crowe and director Ridley Scott but more compelling is how the 2006 Ethan Reiff & Cyrus Voris script that was loved around town morphed into Russell Crowe's tepidly received "Robin Hood". Basically, the development process stripped the original spec of its hook ("Nottingham" was told from the point of view of the Sheriff of Nottingham with him being a good guy and Robin Hood kind of a jerk), a change that shifted the project's tone and humor towards a more straight, taciturn "Gladiator" style retelling. Read the full story here and marvel at the star-centered development process that takes a cute concept, attracts a star and super-director combo, and then proceeds to excise all that's original about the script in successive rewrites at a cost of $6.7 million.

Back in the Big City Blues

2010-02-21T22:20:00.008-05:00

Phooosh. That's me blowing off the cobwebs.

Um...Is anyone still there?

All of January and most of February went by with me up to my eyeballs in day job work. Shooting and editing and making industrial videos, picking up a few new clients, all the while being sustained by the fact that we (me and a tiny crew) were heading to Trinidad in February to shoot carnival for the crazy Bollywood movie.

I'm back now and having spent the last decade of my life passionately defending living in New York to skeptical Third Worlders, I'm strangely bummed to be here. It could be just the winter blahs. It could be the crummy drive from JFK airport to my Brooklyn pad, a drive lined with sidewalks of dirty snow. Man, from the time the taxi dropped us off, I was ready to chase him, flag him down and head back to the Caribbean.

Or maybe this isn't about winter. Maybe it's about the desire to get immersed in making something more creative than HR videos. At any rate, tonight when I heard Alicia Keys crooning Empire State of Mind, Part Two on the radio, spinning all that honey toned love, I did not "put one hand in the air for the big city", I yelled at her to shut the hell up and changed the damn station.

Photo by Adrian Miles

In the Midst of Battle, a Pause

2010-01-10T12:15:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I had lunch with the creative partner on the documentary project that is on hiatus right now. Lately I've been battling pessimism and doubt on the crazy Bollywood project. Our time is running out and because, in the words of Nora Ephron I'm supposed to be the bravest one in the room, though my public face is calm, inside I have raging moments of panic. But it was nice to meet with someone in the same boat, going through the financing dance, finding the money in the same diligent dog work that we're doing. It's weird. I know other writers/writer-producers going through the same thing but most of them let the panic show. Perhaps cause they're less experienced. (This is my director friend's second narrative feature...he's got a feature, and a couple of docs and shorts behind him.)

I'm often at the other end of the conversation, listening and trying to be positive. (The first time writer/producer gripes, "My director isn't getting back to me," "My producer is totally giving me the brush off", "This investor's been sitting on the pot so long it's time for him to shit or get off"), and this brief lunch in this city, this check in with someone I haven't seen in so long who can laugh off the slings and arrows and just keep doing his thing was a real tonic. A modicum of sanity. Fix the script, get the talent, get the money. These things are doable. One foot in front of the other. Onward.

The Hollywood Reporter Awards Watch

2009-11-20T13:53:00.009-05:00

The Hollywood Reporter has a roundtable with six "buzzworthy" scribes who are in contention this awards season. It's interesting to read the content, but reading the comments where editor Jay Hernandez gets all defensive about not including any women on the panel is just as compelling.

His explanation...

For the record, several high-profile women were invited to participate and could not either because of scheduling conflicts or a lack of interest. The lack of women is also a function of the industry and awards season, when historically (excepting 2008) very few women are nominated.

You can almost decode the subtext. They are too busy ("overwhelmed"). They lacked interest ("not focused enough, probably PMSing"). They aren't in contention so we didn't bother to interview them ("perennial losers so why bother...") Poor Mr. Hernandez seems surprised at the backlash in the comments section.

Look, presenting a diverse face on an industry that isn't very diverse is always going to be a challenge but that doesn't make it okay not to try. And it's naive of the editor to not at least be prepared for the criticism.

Anyone foresee a one-on-one sit down with Jane Campion talking about "Bright Star" in THR's near future?

Sympathetic Characters & the Perils of Backstory

2009-11-13T22:55:00.002-05:00

Back when I worked as a reader, when I didn't "get" a character I'd often drop a backstory note about fleshing out the guy or gal in question. The producer I worked for would sigh, like he was disappointed and mutter that I was just like the studio honchos in suits, always yearning to see "how I came to be" scenes shoehorned at the midpoint of a story. He hated backstory with a passion I didn't understand when it seemed to me, fresh out of school, that learning about a character's past was a quick way to "get" him, nay, even like him.

Flashforward a couple years, on a recent draft of the much mutating crazy Bollywood musical, and I understand where that curmudgeonly independent producer was coming from, and how much backstory can be overcredited for making a sympathetic character sympathetic. Very rarely, is a clearly laid out backstory the reason you like or root for a character. Matter of fact, backstory can cripple your otherwise pretty darn compelling main guy.

So how do you create a likable protagonist? Here are a couple ideas from Mary Lynn Mercer's "The True Nature of Sympathetic Characters" which I found on a late night Google. It's intended for fiction writers so you have to chuck the last part about internalization but the rest of it is pretty on target.

• Get rid of self-pity. Readers hate it and furthermore (my opinion now) it's not active and your protagonist needs to be active.

• Scenes of goodness, "saving the cat" scenes that are unconnected to the story

• Melodramatic backstories

• Character's that don't quit. This is connected to that active protagonist. If the character cares deeply enough to continue on the quest when all around is dark, we're going to care about that character.

• Inner weakness. Conflicted characters. They have the drive to see them through the story quest but it must not come easy. Every step is hard but they can't turn back.

• Know your genre boundaries. What's fine and "humanizing" for your hero to do in a Western might be downright death for him to do in a romantic comedy.

Crazy how much the creation of a sympathetic character can have so little to do with laying out explicitly the "ghosts"/backstory of the character's life, right?

Now excuse me while I go cut the part where my protagonist talks about the car crash her mother died in, life in the orphanage and the puppy she couldn't save when the orphanage caught afire. (I kid...kinda.)

Happy writing.

photo by Crail
Originally uploaded by AndyRob

Writing vs. Editing, An Observation

2009-10-12T21:58:00.000-04:00

I've been bogged down with the day job, which consists of lots of video editing for the industrial videos my company produces.

We've had so much work I've gained two pounds. This is what happens when I edit. In fact, if I have to keep editing, I'm convinced I will one day weigh 200 pounds, maybe more. It's possible that in the end I will need to be extracted off the editing chair with some industrial equipment and carted off to the hospital for my gastric bypass if this kind of workload keeps up.

It's my fault. I could make better choices but when I'm editing I crave junk. When I'm sitting down at a monitor watching endless footage, I turn into an eating machine. I'm grazing non-stop.

Why is that? I hardly ever want to eat anything when I'm writing. I have my cup of coffee and my laptop and I could sit for hours. Food is an inconvenience. I stop when I get hunger pangs. Editing represents the polar opposite. To some extent I enjoy it too, wrestling with the content, figuring out the sequences, building the argument, I just wish it didn't come with so many calories attached.

Photo by Patrick Swint

Rejection Energizes You (and Other Lessons from Mira Nair)

2009-09-30T15:43:00.003-04:00

So after the disappointment of getting my dink from Austin, I needed some upliftment. Luckily Mira Nair provided it in spades at the IFP's Independent Film Conference in New York last week. She described needing elephantine skin to survive the ups and downs of Hollywood. That and amazing self-belief.

With every "No thanks. Not for us," she told herself, "You're wrong. I'll show you." And it's turned out pretty well for Mira. That's the spirit I find myself trying to tap into for the much needed rocket fuel to keep the momentum on crazy Bollywood movie musical going. If making a film is like going to war, it's a mighty long campaign.

Mira's keynote also had two pieces of great advice for Third Worlders...stuff I've felt but not been able to articulate.

1) Make what you make excellently. Do not apologize for its quality by saying explicitly or not, hey this is from the Third World so cut us some slack. For her first feature "Salaam Bombay" she told the story of blowing the entire movie's budget in production, leaving nothing for post. She put all the money in the film ($800,000) and then went looking for finishing funds. She just knew it had to look great.

2) Don't "anthropoligize" or explain too much culturally. If you watch Monsoon Wedding you'll see how much you're thrust into the action. There's no expositional dialogue about why we dress this way or wear this henna, or sing this song. There's no outsider leading you through the action and the work is all the richer and more authentic for it.

There was only one thing that bugged me about the keynote. The moderator kept trying to bring the focus back to Mira as a woman director/filmmaker and she seemed determined to steer clear of that pigeonhole. "It's not like I consciously decided that I wanted to make movies about women and walk around wearing orange pants," she said sitting up on stage at an F.I.T. auditorium, wearing a rather fetching pair of said shimmery orange pants. And then she quoted from what another interviewer said of her work, "I don't make political films. I make films politically."

Perhaps making films politically speaks to her commitment to the collective collaboration involved in filmmaking. (She told a charming tale of how she and her crew would perform a ritual at the start of each day's shooting of The Namesake, breaking a coconut and blessing all the equipment, down to the dolly tracks...since every item is important. "The carpenter has to show up to build the throne for the actor to sit on," as she put it.) Or maybe it's a nod to her ultra-realistic, documentarian roots on display in "Monsoon Wedding."

Whichever it was, it didn't stop her from plugging "Amelia", her first big studio movie, starring Hilary Swank, which opens October 23rd.

New York Times on Facebook Fatigue

2009-09-05T10:48:00.003-04:00

Because I'm so contrary, I guess I'll make the leap to facebook at the precise moment interest in the social media site is beginning to flag...well according to the New York Times anyway.

Third World Girl & the Jay-Z Shoot

2009-08-21T22:50:00.001-04:00

A couple Fridays ago found Third World Girl in front of Jay-Z's 40/40 Club meeting a potential DP for the Little Movie I Want to Direct. He's interested in the script, has solid credits and a healthy cynicism for the pitfalls between excited newbie director and the money in hand that a director needs in place to shoot a feature.

Anyway, he was just back from Europe and because we hadn't got a chance to meet up all summer, he suggested I swing by the set of Jay-Z's video shoot for Rocawear and say hi.

My first instinct was to pass on the offer...I'm not sure why, apart from the fear of seeming like a fraud. In the current issue of Moviemaker magazine, Lynn Shelton ("Humpday") talks about feeling like you're living someone else's life after she got a standing ovation at Cannes. I know this is on a way smaller scale but I had a similar reaction to the DP's invite: I do not live the life where I swing onto video sets and say hi, looking all fabulous and pulled together and artist-like.

But in my quest to grow, I'm challenging myself to do the things I would not usually. That means putting my shy, hermit writer self in front of people I wouldn't usually and getting over the fame factor. So yes, dammit...I was swinging by the Jay-Z set and saying hi...if I could find it.

I didn't know where 40/40 was which shows you how sad and unglamorous my life is, but I eventually found it right by Madison Square Park with a couple teamsters and grips hanging out by a truckload of equipment. They seemed to be talking about California vs. New York, the benefits of being in the union, and the cost of the production. Which cost more: a $20,000 light or the line of video girls in front of the club whose job it was to whoop it up when Jay emerged from a yellow cab.

It was all so ordinary and dull that I instantly felt at home. I remembered that at heart, a shoot is just a shoot. Nothing was more shocking to me than my first one as a freshman at film school... up at 5 a.m. on a cold winter morning, P.Ai.ng for some grad students, bored stiff and deciding what I really wanted to excel at was pre-production.

Anyway, a wonderfully polite P.A. helped me find the DP who was shooting a rehearsal alongside director, Spike Lee (yes Spike Lee!) so I had to wait it out with the teamsters and P.A.s. who all seemed to have Caribbean roots. I almost wanted to take out a piece of paper and start taking e-mails to add to crazy Bollywood movie's fanbase.

When the DP finally got a break we had an extended conversation about the problems of film back home, the competitiveness, the cut throat nature, the fact that the gate keepers for content often don't have a coherent criteria or the level of discernment to judge projects submitted to them for funding. He stressed the importance of moxie and hustle...and not rushing.

"What's the difference between shooting this movie in 2009 and 2010?" he said. "Is the story going to be any less relevant?"

It's exactly what I needed to hear. For weeks it's been nagging me that I've been splitting focus between crazy Bollywood project that we have a tight window in which to shoot next year and this other supposedly "small movie" that was supposed to be a quickie shoot early in '09. Production companies have several movies on a slate, was the argument. But production companies have infrastructures. Third World Girl is essentially a girl with a cell phone, a laptop and a home office.

So Little Movie I Want to Direct gets pushed back to 2010 and I can really focus on making crazy Bollywood movie happen. And what you realize standing watching a crew of twenty folks light a scene for a thirty second commercial is that you better get the prep right cause you're responsible for a whole army.

I didn't stick around long after the DP went away to shoot yet another rehearsal. Jay-Z was nearly there, on the turnpike, but it was late and I'd had enough of the monotony, the awful slowness that production can be...when it's not your baby. Plus, I didn't want it to look like I had nothing to do. I had to go home and work on making a movie. Hanging with the Jiggaman, that's jello.

Oh My God. What Did They Do To "Hot Tub Time Machine"?

2009-07-29T23:57:00.000-04:00

I read "Hot Tub Time Machine" a while back in the glory days of Scriptshadow's site (when you could still read scripts) and really liked it. It's a ridiculous time-traveling comedy about a groom and his buds who, at a lame bachelor party, get into a hot tub that takes them back to 1987. So like "The Hangover", it's one of those "get the groom to the church on time" movies, except of course they're stuck in a whole different decade!

But the trailer for it they just released is terrible. Unfunny, cliche, visually bereft. I didn't laugh once and I'm not sure about the casting. The chemistry between this set feels odd...to quote the folks over at Vulture, in what universe would these four be friends?

Man, I'm worried for the movie, especially since it's already got the dubious job of proving it's not "The Hangover's" leftovers. I sincerely hope they just started shooting and had little to pull the trailer from because trailerworthy moments these are not.

An Open Letter to Netflix About Its Categorization of My Movie Tastes

2009-07-24T23:19:00.001-04:00

Dear Netflix,
I understand you feel a desire to customize my movie offerings. You want me to feel that you care with your constant inquiries about when my movies arrive and invitations to sign up my friends. But really, is this how little you know me that you'd label your special selections of movies you think I'd like: "Critically Acclaimed Dark Movies Based on Real Life?"

Oh I see you there...offering in your defense the thumbnails of Michael Moore's "Sicko" and Louis Malle's "Au Revoir Les Enfants." I hear you trying to demonstrate how you arrived at this assessment. But that's just weak, yo. Have you ever even watched these movies? "Sicko" is a social issues documentary that's a passionate indictment of the US health system...but "Rosemary's Baby" it is not. And "Au Revoir Les Enfants?" Despite a tragic ending, there's humanity and bravery and hope for the future entwined in its unsentimental vision.

At any rate, Netflix, you got me thinking about what's considered a dark film and I ended up here at this M&M's game so not only do you hardly know me, you are responsible for robbing me for about half an hour of writing time. (I only got 20 out of 50 of the movie titles in the riddle painting so I think that proves that dark movies are so NOT my sweet spot.)

Listen, we don't have to be friends, Netflix. You don't have to "get" me. Just keep sending me my movies and taking my 12 bucks a month. Continue surprising me with stuff in my mailbox I didn't even know I had in my queue and no longer feel like watching because I added them on a whim.

I promise you, I'll still answer your e-mails.

July 4th...The Chicklet's Lesson Goes Wrong

2009-07-02T10:23:00.001-04:00

I've been reading "The Namesake" and remembering why I fell in love with Jhumpa Lahiri in the first place.

When I started out writing fiction, as a fresh off the boat landed in Washington D.C., my favorite theme was identity, the quest for belonging. But I've been in this country for a while and now it's no longer the thing that defines what I write about. In Lahiri's multi-generational coming of age story of a family's journey from India to the US, however, I'm thrown back into that old terrain, and forced to remember how much I still don't really belong.

Most resonant for me is the segment when the "first generationers" are forced into acculturation because of their children. The Ganguli parents learn to cook American meals, pizza, Hamburger Helper, mac and cheese. They celebrate American holidays, including Christmas, even though they're Hindus. And for me, there's been no quicker path to embracing things I was iffy about than wanting the Chicklet to understand and enjoy her world.

For Halloween, hubby carved her a Jack o' Lantern, and on Thanksgiving we have the turkey, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce that's miles away from what we'd think of as a special feast. But I know things have changed when the holiday I've traditionally been most ambivalent about, July 4th, finds me thinking about where we can go to watch fireworks.

In the spirit of enhancing the Chicklet's appreciation of the holiday, I tried to explain to her that July 4th was America's birthday. (We are on the subject of birthdays because hubby celebrated his birthday this week.)

I say, "It's America, the country's birthday and everybody celebrates because everybody is happy to live in America..."
I find myself mumbling the addendum, "for the most part."

Later on in the day, I decide to reinforce as we're out running errands.
"Whose birthday is it July 4th?" I ask.

The Chicklet screws up her little face, trying to remember with every fiber of her being..."The President's?"

I grin. Impressed. Wanting to give her half points.
"Close...but it's America's..." I eventually concede.

However the Chicklet is still thinking about the President as I begin to harp on once more about America's birthday. "What kind of birthday cake does the President have?"
I tell her I don't know and decide that I need to pause this civics class.

Later on in the day, I'm serving up hubby's left-over cake from the festivities the day before: a delicious red velvet from our favorite sinful bakery. This cake has been promised her from the night before when she had only a little sliver because we got to the celebrations way late.

Chicklet takes a bite of the red velvet, savoring the cream cheese icing. I swear I can hear a cosmic sigh as the sugar hits and all is well in a three year old's world. And then, after what seems like an eternity, she asks, "Is this Obama's cake?"

Oh man. Maybe next year.

A Study of Gender Bias in Theater Throws Up an Unexpected Twist

2009-06-24T23:51:00.014-04:00

The New York Times has this article on gender bias that unearths this surprise: female literary managers and artistic directors are more likely to rate as poor a female-written play than a male one, and are therefore partly responsible for the disparity between the number of male vs. female plays produced.

Other findings from the study conducted by Emily Glassberg Sands, Princeton student: men are more prolific than women and submit more work... which provides a rather more mundane assessment of why more women's work isn't produced. Interestingly enough, however, in the last ten years female written shows have performed better on Broadway. (Plays and musicals by women sold 16 percent more tickets a week and were 18 percent more profitable over all.)

Finally plays featuring women are less likely to be produced.

Any parallels over in Hollywoodland, ya think?

The Further Writers Group Adventures of Third World Girl

2009-06-23T00:01:00.008-04:00

Just like the projects in my life, my writers group has entered this weird holding pattern. Instead of the weekly, different participants every seven days, the group has gone back to the infinitely more sane bi-weekly schedule but there's the same volatility in its make up.

I have no idea who'll show week to week. Sometimes it feels like it's just me, the group leader, and a background cast. This kind of makes for vastly different chemistry session to session which I find frustrating because the quality of the feedback is unpredictable.

Last night for example, we had a new addition...let me call her The Holder-Forth. She's the one in the group who has to tell you she's read for contests, knows A-list actors, and inform you of how they do it in "the business". The thing is she was whip smart and gave good feedback and I really hope she returns but she bugged me in one particular, all too familiar way.

Allow me to illustrate.

My script, unsurprisingly, is set in my home country because it's the Little Movie I Want to Direct and I figure the only hope I have of getting it made is to call on every bit of goodwill I've managed to accumulate on the island. Holder-Forth seized on the script's concept and started to wax poetic about the kinds of conflicts I might be exploring seeing as the story involves a girl based in London returning to her island home. "I imagine there'd be quite a contrast between her life in London and on the economically depressed island of Barbados."

I bristled but I let it go. What I really should have said is tell me more about my economically depressed island, Holder-Forth. Do they have houses or does everyone still live in mud huts? It turned out I didn't have to invite her to do so, however, because later on in the feedback she expressed a level of perplexity at why all the characters in the movie didn't know each other. "They live on the same island, right?" she said.

I gently tried to explain to her that my particular island, the "economically depressed island of Barbados" actually had more than a quarter million people on it and therefore not all the characters in my movie know each other. It was possible for people to be strangers and meet for the first time. She shrugged and said, "I'm just telling you what the perception in Hollywood is."

So now I know.

Some days more than others I think I need to hurry up and write my goat racing comedy on an economically depressed island where everybody knows each other because Hollywood would totally get that and then I could sell out and go live in Cobble Hill.

The "I Must Make This Movie" Draft of the Budget

2009-06-21T00:43:00.008-04:00

Just got back from meeting with the line producer on crazy Bollywood musical.

We're in the process of doing the "I Must Make This Movie" draft of the budget, down from the optimistic, maybe this recession will go away, mid-budget draft he wrote a month ago. We're also doing this paring down because the music artist who's attached to the movie has a window next year to make this thing and so we've got to shoot for it. (He's usually booked year round.)

I've spent a lot of time waiting for permission from other people to make this movie but the thing is sometimes your story begins when YOU begin. I keep giving myself reasons not to move ahead with this project but at every turn the reasons dissolve. Just when I'm losing faith, the right people appear to push the boulder a little further up the hill.

Like a producer said at some IFP panel I went to a couple years ago, the first thing you've got to do in your capacity as producer is greenlight the freakin' movie. Sure you can have more than one plan and budget for it: the Dream Budget, the Mid-Budget and the I Must Make This Movie Budget but in the end, you've got to give yourself that start date and go for it. And that's what we've done.

Now we sink or swim.

Image by moleitau

An End of Draft(s) Mope

2009-06-17T17:37:00.012-04:00

I've just finished rewrites and a first draft on three projects in various stages of development, projects that are all terribly familiar in their own way. (The first draft for Little Movie I Want to Direct is actually an adaptation from one of my short stories.)

For the first time in a long time I have to think about what I want to work on next...and nothing comes to mind. Sure I've got ideas, titles, characters, concepts I think might be cool to explore but do I feel like dedicating months, years to whipping these little wisps into something significant that I care about? Right now....no.

Instead I sit and think about why things take so long to happen, primarily with crazy Bollywood musical... why everything just seems to be in a giant holding pattern for the summer. I'm trying my best to snap out of it and move on since too much "mope" is the enemy of the hope and resilience you need to get anything produced, especially these days.

This leaves me putting one foot in front of the other, servicing the busy day job and trying my best not to pay attention to the fact that half of 2009 is gone.

Ummm...onward?

The Death of the Adult Drama

2009-06-12T11:23:00.010-04:00

At the PGA's recent "Produced By" conference, producer Kathy Kennedy ("Diving Bell and the Butterfly", "Persepolis", "Curious Case of Benjamin Button") underscored the sad outlook for adult movies like "The Soloist", "State of Play" and "Duplicity"... all featuring bankable actors, all of which died at the box office.

What studios want more than ever is the big budget, four quadrant tentpole movie. Safe, safe, safe. This way even when a project flops execs can shrug, say "Who knew Terminator 4 wasn't going to be a juggernaut?" and keep their jobs.

In short, indies are back to being indies again.

But why have older audiences, the core audience for the subtle stuff, abandoned the Oscar bait movie? Is it a question of recent releases being underwhelming, folks looking for escapist flicks given the bleak economic times or is something else at play?

The Missing Brad & Austin

2009-06-08T23:24:00.008-04:00

It's Murphy's Law that everything that can go wrong, will, right? Well today, in between working the day job, I was planning a quick trip to the post office to toss my scripts in the ring for the Austin Screenwriting Contest. (Today was their deadline.) I've missed every other contest this year being focused on producing the crazy Bollywood movie but this year I'd love to go to Austin and it seemed like a good idea to enter something because...you never know.

I don't know why Austin is so old fashioned, but you can't do an online submission. They make you print pages, three hole punch, fasten and stand in line at a brick and mortar post office! I guess I wasn't aware of how out of practice I was at this job until today.

It's partially my fault. I doubled my workload, deciding I might as well submit a new script in addition to the old problem child screenplay that I've rewritten so much I no longer have perspective on. More than anything, I'm curious to see how "new script" fares and since Austin now offers notes on second round scripts I figured it couldn't hurt to see what their readers think... in the unlikely event that it advances.

Submitting two scripts meant more time spent collating, three hole punching, filling out application forms, attaching checks, writing synopses, but with an iron like will I did it. And then at the point when all I had to do was fasten those suckers, drop them in an envelope and send the whole hulking package to Texas... I realized a brad was missing.

Okay. Don't panic. I'm in the greatest city on earth. I'm sure I can find a box of brads/ fasteners, right? I tried a nearby Office Depot which yes! had fasteners but it was one box of the sad, tiny, one inch ones. I toyed with the idea of trying to use one of these but it looked ridiculous, didn't hold the pages properly and would probably just enrage the poor Austin reader who would be being deluged with a bunch of last minute scripts.

Having no luck with the generic office store I figured I'd try the specialty shop...the Drama Bookshop which BTW sells a great collection of books on film, theater and acting. Unfortunately when I asked about brads, the guy at the register looked at me like I was speaking in iambic pentameter. One of the old timers came out of the back eventually and said, "Yeah, I remember when we used to sell those," and then shrugged an "I have no idea who still sells those things." I felt like the last, obsolete screenwriter in New York City.

Still I became aware of the fact that I was in a shop with actors in New York! Maybe I'd find someone flipping through their "Ugly Betty" or "Law and Order" episode. I figured I could tell them my plight, appeal to their sympathy or simply, if worse came to worse, overpower them, swipe the single brad and sprint to the post office. No such luck. The shop was full of theater people.

Thinking I'd have to head all the way back to Brooklyn, I lucked out and found the missing brad on the floor of my car. Oh happy accident... I headed to a Chelsea post office figuring it might be quieter than Midtown but everyone and their mama was mailing out stuff. It felt like I stood in line forever but the relief when the lady took my envelope and gave me my delivery confirmation... joy unimaginable.

And on my way out of the post office, I saw a guy with bedhead hair in a plaid shirt and shorts, hustling to the double doors, his face streaked with a purple bruise. I looked down at the brown, padded envelope in his hand and saw the first line of the address scrawled on it...Austin Film Festival. I couldn't help but wonder what gave him the bruise...perhaps he'd taken a nasty tumble onto his three hole punch(?)

The point is even though I hardly ever enter contests, a couple of the brass rings like Austin I love, because they remind you you're part of the screenwriting community. Check out the message boards around submission and notification dates and there's kinship in commiserating and congratulating...You get a big fat reminder you're not alone in a line of work that can often be so lonesome. I think that's a pretty neat prize.

My Mac Died Yesterday...

2009-05-31T23:07:00.003-04:00

And I poured a glass of wine and toasted it because that Mac has worked hard for eight long years, on two TV shows, across two countries so it's earned its final rest.

The poor hard drive gave me plenty of warning signs (sad, wheezing noises) which allowed me to do a decent amount of back-up but you're always worried that you missed something really obvious that has now gone up in smoke.

And of course I didn't back up the latest draft of everything...I'm a tinkerer and tweaker so the draft of crazy Bollywood movie that I was going to send off to co-producer Monday for example will need to be retweaked and retinkered to pre-Mac meltdown status. And then there's the Final Draft 7 I have to get back.

But what can you do? Suck it up and keep moving and not dwell on things lost in the fire.

Photo by Amanda M. Hatfield

A Virginless New York City

2009-05-27T21:52:00.012-04:00

Virgin Megastore Union Square is going bye bye, following Virgin Times Square and all the other Virgins in the US.

Hubby and I were browsing the liquidation sale last weekend, feeling a little wistful. Before we were thirty-somethings, had kid and reprioritized, the Union Square Virgin was an iconic place in our relationship.

We'd always meet there. It was close enough to his work and my school. A Friday wind down used to be going from listening station to listening station, checking out new releases, arguing about albums, rummaging through a bargain bin. And I'd always have to go down and visit the books and magazines and pretty soon it was two hours later. (On reflection, I am the reason Virgin struggled so much. Two hours and the most I might have bought was an Orangina from the store's coffee shop...)

I guess when the Circuit City next door closed down we should have seen the writing on the wall but Virgin is/was so New York, so filled with its sense of hipness...and as I realized on Saturday finding nothing to buy, so archaic.

The idea of buying CDs from a store seems so retro. The prices are so high. The listening stations so quaint. Why buy an album when you can just buy the track, anyway? We can hear a track playing in Starbucks, identify it through whatever that I-Phone app is and download it in on the spot with the free Wi-Fi.

So goodbye trip to the city and painful quasi-alphabetical search for artist's CD that may or may not be in stock. Brick and mortar is so 1998. This is progress. This is a leveling of the playing field...so why when the sales associate cheerfully rang me up with my purchase ("Black Orpheus" and "When Harry Met Sally" DVDs) did I feel like so sad?

Two-Minute Screenwriting School

2009-05-20T20:24:00.010-04:00

Analyst and story coach Dan Calvisi of Act Four Screenplays has a new Youtube channel that features snappy two minute episodes on the craft of screenwriting. While the first couple installments are pretty basic in terms of content, I love Dan's execution and their brevity. (Even Third World Girl has an attention span of two minutes!)

If you haven't seen them yet check them out here and find out what he's about to do to that cat...depending on the state of your script.

Writers Are Doing It For Themselves

2009-05-16T11:26:00.006-04:00

The UK's Screen Daily reports that more screenwriters are being forced into writer/producer roles as development funding dries up. Sure it represents a great entrepreneurial spirit but it's not hard to imagine the trend when the alternative is unemployment.

It is a rough time to be looking for financing. Coupled with the economic downturn is the failure of the old financing model which depended on pre-sales from theatrical distributors to come up with a significant slice of the pie. But distributors are naturally tightening purse strings as well which doesn't necessarily augur well for Third World Girl's mid-budget crazy Bollywood movie...unless we can find a way to make it for a lot less.

Nevertheless, filmmakers and journalists keep trying to strike an upbeat tone, despite worrying signs that our longshot odds are longer than ever. David Pearson, director of the Screenwriter's Festival writes, "The UK industry has to find a way to make more films that make more money, but that doesn’t have to mean empty popcorn fare." That's what we all wish for: make more films that make more money-- but as a directive it rings hollow.

Fade Out.

2009-05-12T23:58:00.008-04:00

No matter how many times you write it, whether it's at the end of your first script or your fifteenth...God it feels good to reach "Fade Out", especially to someone like me who loathes a first draft.
"Little Low Budget Movie I Want To Direct" is now on the page, and officially on the back burner, which is good cause it'll give me the perspective I need for when I take that first crack at a rewrite.

What's the Story About? Let the Characters Say It in a Few Words.

2009-05-09T11:09:00.033-04:00

So I know a consultant who advises writers to use the title of the movie somewhere within the script. On one hand I think that sort of approach is too on the nose but on the other, I think she's on to something which made me think about how theme is expressed.

I've already admitted to being a big fan of The Title since it's the first marketing tool you have. Your title is the 70 point newspaper headline that draws people to your story. After that, comes another crucial element that, if absent, can make a script unsatisfying. Let's get all Freshman English and call it the lack of a "thesis sentence". In good scripts what the whole movie's about is often condensed in a few lines of character dialogue. It's where the writer says, "Hey guys, this is the idea I want to explore or have explored. Do you see how my story tests this idea?"

Why is this important? I think a good number of writers can execute plot, character, dialogue effectively, but nailing story to a theme represents a level of sophistication that sometimes eludes even the more experienced writer. I used to read several entertaining scripts for a couple production companies but at the end of the day, the scripts didn't stick with you because they didn't have a thematic point. The writer didn't hand you the lens you needed to view the story events through. I think when execs or producers talk about a story staying with them, they're really talking about how the theme resonates and the best way to achieve that resonance is through title and "thesis sentence."

There are no rules about where the dialogue that explains the heart of the movie has to fall. In the three examples below, one comes at the beginning, one at the climax and one at the end as a sort of "moral of the story."

One of the simplest execution of "thesis sentence" ever must be Richard Curtis' "Love Actually". It's probably so bare because Curtis knows he has to give the reader of the multi-stranded narrative something to hold on to before he delves into the eight story lines(!) we'll be weaving in and out of. The prologue says: this writer has a plan. It is all, at the end of the day, going to mean something.

Here's the opening voice over....

[scrippet]
PRIME MINISTER
Whenever I get gloomy about the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow airport. General opinion has started to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed but I don't see that(... )If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love is actually all around.
[/scrippet]

And we're into the movie and able to enjoy it and take meaning from it because of the "thesis sentence." (I prefer thesis sentence to theme because it's more specific. Theme makes me think of generalities like "love is everywhere" but the thesis sentence gives you a more precise road map...Curtis tells you, this is a modern, Britain in post 9/11 story and these are the specific types of love I'll be dealing with in my argument.) The opening helps a reader relax, know what to look for and settle in for the read.

The thesis sentence doesn't always have to be so obvious but it should somehow tie in to the title. Here's an example from 2008's The Visitor, a personal favorite of mine...not much of a surprise given its subject matter. In this scene, the mother of an undocumented immigrant is confessing her culpability in his detention.

[scrippet]
MOUNA
It's my fault. What happened to Tarek. I did receive the letter telling us to leave. I threw it away. I never told him. We were here for three years by the time the letter arrived. I had found a job. Tarek was in school. Everyone told me not to worry. That the government did not care. And it appeared to be true. And then, after a time, you forget. You think that you really belong.
[/scrippet]

Again here's the thesis sentence that screenwriter Tom McCarthy's been holding back until the climax of the movie. He wants to explore the question of belonging and of course ties it into the movie's title: The Visitor. (I think McCarthy wants us to question who "the visitor" is...Is it Tarek, the undocumented immigrant or is it Walter Vale, the shut-down professor who's coming alive by being introduced to a world he didn't know existed.) That's the movie boiled down to a couple sentences.

But my all time favorite thesis sentence comes from another movie about outsiders "Dirty Pretty Things." At the climax where protagonist Okwe has duped his employer and is delivering contraband to a white buyer, the buyer asks... "How come I've never seen you before?"

And here's Okwe's response which puts an exclamation mark on the idea of invisibility that writer Steven Knight has been touching on throughout.

[scrippet]
OKWE
We are the people you do not see. We are the ones who drive your cabs. We clean your rooms and suck your cocks.
[/scrippet]

...to which Juliette, his hooker pal, (beautifully played by Sophie Okonedo in the movie) raises her hand to say yeah, I'm present.

It is a powerful iteration of theme and it comes at the climax of the movie. It also ties into the title "Dirty Pretty Things": we get our hands dirty to make your life pretty. (Some day I will get into how Miramax's marketing of this movie and its giving the title an intentionally misleading spin still galls me.)

So does your script have a thesis sentence? Doesn't have to... but a couple lines of dialogue can give the reader an unmistakable lens through which to view your story.

True Confessions: It Took Me Three Years to Read One Novel

2009-05-06T23:30:00.003-04:00

Not too long ago the excellent screenwriting blog ("Rouge Wave") was hammering the importance of reading widely, not just scripts and newspaper/magazine articles, and non-fiction books but (sigh) novels.

Fifty three percent of America does no literary reading. Am I surprised? Surprised that the number isn't higher. Right around the time the Chicklet was born, books--fiction anyway-- got evicted from my life. If you want to be technical about it, I did read the last Harry Potter because I just had to know if Harry died or not before someone spoiled it for me...but I gulped it down in seven days, and it felt more like an assignment than a leisure choice.

My readingless life, J.K. Rowling apart, wasn't for lack of trying. Several times I reopened the book that I'd been reading when Chicklet was born, only to close it after a few paragraphs. (I have a hang up about "giving up" so I couldn't give myself permission to start reading something else.) This is how it came about that since 2006, okay late 2005, I've been reading "The Fortress of Solitude" by Jonathan Lethem.

On reflection, this is not the book you want to read when you're pregnant or a new mom. It has a shifting point of view and then, just for good measure, in the final section, a shift in narrative voice altogether. It's beautifully written overall, Lethem sure can turn a phrase, but as a story it lacks narrative punch and cohesion.

I was drawn to "Fortress" because it's a Brooklyn book and as a relatively recent transplant I was curious to peel back the curtain and glimpse a Brooklyn/Boerum Heights on the cusp of gentrification in the early '90s.

Lethem also examines race and the "other" which is a favorite, thematically for me. Plus, unexpectedly, his book contains, in its final segment, a gem of a scene that has his protagonist pitching to a Dreamwork exec: a hilarious must-read for screenwriters.

I finally got through it on April 17, 2009 and though I was relieved at the milestone I was more moved by the general experience of what it meant to read again. It was like a part of my life came back. Novelists used to be rockstars for me. Colson Whitehead, Jonathan Frantzen, Caryl Phillips, Jonathan Safran Foer, J.M. Coetzee, Zadie Smith...oh how I wanted to be her, living in my Williamsburg apartment writing transcendent things. My first job interview in the "big city" was for a position with PEN America but reading a novel became such a luxury in terms of parceling out my time that in due course it fell away.

But it shouldn't have. Because as a screenwriter nothing builds your chops for appreciating character and the world of the story like a novel. I can't remember which novelist said it, but a screenplay is like a bouillon cube while a novel is the whole stew.

The big question is what I read next. Having not read anything for three years it's wide open. Maybe I'll check out Junot Diaz's "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" ( I was so tempted to cheat with it during those can't read Lethem days) or maybe I'll just pick up Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Namesake" which has been in the corner of the office since hubby stopped reading it. (I've heard mixed things about the novel but, hey, in these economic times you can't beat "free" as a price point or "already in your house" as a location.)

And apparently I'm not alone in rediscovering reading. According to a new NEA report, for the first time since 1982, there's been a rise in the number of people who picked up a book or downloaded some prose — almost 16.6 million more since its 2002 census.

Do Something About It.

2009-05-03T16:02:00.001-04:00

I am in love with this Orangebeautiful print. I need to have it above my desk.

Cause there is nothing worse than succumbing to the powerlessness and inertia you can sometimes experience on the journey of trying to get a movie made.

I got a set of notes that threw me a couple days ago, especially after the high of meeting with the music talent in LA and linking up with a couple of cool folks at the Indian Film Fest there.

Needless to say, the less than loving response to the current draft of crazy Bollywood movie filled me with buckets of self doubt. I took the big, general notes with a smile while privately stewing because they were so darn vague.

But you know what? I started thinking it through and trying to hammer down what the reader's issue was and just the act of starting to wrestle with the script again, having something to do, a problem to fix...it made me feel so much better than just staring at the note thinking about what a hack I am.

So that's my advice. Whatever it is...do something about it.

Happy writing.

Honesty as a Selling Tool?

2009-04-29T23:36:00.010-04:00

David Marlett has been blogging over at Moviemaker.com with some great articles on film financing. This week he touches on something that's the opposite of what you'd think would be a selling point in a pitch meeting: honesty.

Marlett actually considers honesty to be a key ingredient of the sales pitch. (Doesn't honesty in sales sound like a kind of oxymoron itself?)

His attitude in terms of laying out the possible return on investment scenarios for investors reminds me that "people don't want to be sold to...they want to buy." Investors don't want to be hustled or fast-talked. They know if it sounds too good to be true it is. If I had a dollar for every producer I met who said that the movie they were developing was going to snag an A-list actor, an Oscar winning director and make a boatload of cash, well I'd have nearly enough money to start shooting the crazy Bollywood movie.

We're so hardwired to sell, sell, sell it's useful to reflect on how much we stand out by acknowledging that we don't have all the answers. We lift ourselves out of the pack by simply confessing that the final fade out of a movie's run might not be all of its investors sipping champagne on private islands from the movie's theatrical and DVD sales earnings.

But hey, not too much reality. We're in the dream business... We have to pull off the balancing act that requires us exciting a prospective investor at the same time as we (ironically) build his or her confidence by acknowledging we could come up short.

Check out the post here if you're producerly inclined.

Festival Bound...And Missing Tribeca

2009-04-24T21:28:00.001-04:00

So while everyone else is descending on New York for the Tribeca Film Festival, the hubby and I are in LA for the Indian Film Festival of LA.

I find it amazing that I have always for one reason or another missed out on Tribeca...(Okay, maybe not all that amazing...I was out of New York for the first three years of the festival.)

The New York Times' preview of the festival makes me determined to catch at least some of it when I get back. "Still Walking", "Departures" and "In the Loop" are top of my list...if I can score tickets.

We'll see.

Someone's Always the Villain. Mostly It's a Thing Called Time.

2009-04-22T21:24:00.013-04:00

Last October, I got into a little tiff with our co-producer on the documentary. Frustration at the rigors of financing a project can sometimes cause you to sharpen your knives and point them at the people closest to you. I'm going through this now with the co-producer on the crazy Bollywood project but having already seen the disease before at least I know why it's happening and not to act on it.

When we have so much waiting to do, it's tempting to blame others for why things are taking so long. Throw in distance, different time zones, missed communications (both of the companies we're producing with are based outside of the US) and it's a dangerous cocktail. Especially when you've got so much waiting to do.

Anyway, today I got an e-mail from the same co-producer...a propos of nothing, just saying how much he's been thinking about the documentary, how much he wants to make the film and how sorry he is that it's taking such a long time. It was a sweet e-mail though I immediately felt guilty because I felt like it was coming because of that slightly hysterical place I was in last October when I was sick of the project going nowhere.

I e-mailed him back, essentially telling him...no worries. We'll get it done. We'll make this movie. It's just a matter of time.

How have I become so zen in a matter of six months? I am learning the value of persistence and to think not in weeks or months but years. The other thing that allows me to be so sanguine is having so many other projects on the table. Yes, I know. Some days it's overwhelming and I complain about it here, but it's also grounding and allows you to maintain perspective. Documentary going nowhere? Well this manager wants to read problem child screenplay. Stuck in the middle of new rom com? There's a new financing lead on the crazy Bollywood project. There's a whole board in play, not just a tiny corner.

When I'd just finished undergrad and was working for an eccentric, very successful Third World filmmaker, I learned the story of the making of his famous film. Despite all the accolades it eventually received, the part that stuck with me was the fact that it took nine years to get it made. Nine years! That would always stop me, because I felt I'd picked the wrong path. I was like one of those young quaking apprentices who's looking for the door in the "you kids aren't tough enough scene", because I figured I didn't have that kind of tenacity. Nine years of knocking on doors, raising money, hustling, trying to get folks to say yes...no way! It seemed like such an utter waste.

What I didn't realize then was that it wasn't nine years of waking up every day and pushing the one movie. You do other projects, make other money, do TV, teach writing, chase other dreams in between and suddenly you look up and the years have passed. It's not nearly so daunting when you're in it.

But the other point is, that to stick at something for nine years, you must love it, very very much. I try not to dwell on the fact that I wasted like almost a year on a project that I ultimately abandoned. When I look back on it, I just don't think I was ever passionate enough about the concept. There's got to be something special about a project to get you fired up, to keep you coming back to it: an itch you have to scratch. And of course, if you're not in love with your project, you're not going to get any one else to fall in love with it and go on the crazy journey with you.

And there is something a little crazy about pushing the boulder up the hill for so long. Your friends are in awe that you can still be writing something that you wrote two years ago. Still be finding money for something that you already started shooting. Sometimes they ask "How's your documentary?" and you want to report on it like a kid. "She's two years old now. Potty training. Making full sentences. Going to music class."

But that's ridiculous. For one, there's often no news...just that you're waiting on something to happen... until of course something does happen. There's no fix for it, all that waiting. And sometimes even your champions, the ones who fall in love with your project, just need to be certain that you're in it for the long haul. That you won't break their hearts. And the only way to show them that is to do the "time."

Photo by John-Morgan

Don't Mind Me. I'm Perendinating.

2009-04-20T00:58:00.006-04:00

I sign up for "Word of the Day." Mostly it's a cause of inbox clutter and a hindrance to my Inbox Zero campaign but occasionally it throws up a gem I want to slavishly start using.

Today's word is "perendinate", which means to put off till the day after tomorrow.

Or like Mark Twain said in a great dialogue reversal, "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow."

Why procrastinate when you can perendinate?

You can thank me later.

What's That Whooshing Sound? Oh Right, Contest Deadlines.

2009-04-17T09:47:00.001-04:00

This is the year that contest deadlines are just whizzing by me. At this rate I think I may only do Austin because I really want to go to check out the festival, and it would be nice to go as a second rounder or finalist. Plus it's got one of the later deadlines.

But each other contest I had in my cross hairs (yes, even the Nicholl) I'm abandoning as the due date approaches. I'm finding I just don't have the time to do the intended polish of "problem child" script in the midst of trying to get crazy movie musical made.

As recently as last year I'd have been getting my "submission" on with Withoutabox, checking my meager writing budget for how many contests I was going to enter, memorizing notification dates so I could anxiously check my e-mail around said date. Not this year. This year I'm knee-deep in a business plan. I am, however, not filled with that much remorse, though I am struck occasionally by the irony that it is a contest that gave crazy Bollywood movie musical whatever traction it has.

Pulsing through my brain is this from Scott @ Go Into the Story:

Students ask me all the time about screenplay competitions. Apart from the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, unless you really need something like that to motivate you to write, I don't recommend them. In part because some of them... are of spurious value. But the bigger thing is there is a much better screenplay competition that really pays off: It's called Hollywood! Write a great script and win that sucker!

And the thing is, about winning "Hollywood", you don't even have to write a great script. I mean it helps, but overall the project just has to be marketable and appealing to a sizable enough audience (this is where writing the good script helps) to make a bunch of important people say yes.

Oh my God, do I sound like a producer or what? Maybe next month the writer in me will fight back when I finally finish the draft of the little "doesn't fall neatly into any box" movie I want to direct.

Photo by angst

Will I Ever Write Like A Writer Again?

2009-04-13T23:47:00.000-04:00

I'm freaked out. We're currently writing a budget for the crazy Bollywood musical and I'm being forced to think like a producer. Can we afford this montage? How can I do this scene differently? Does this character need to be in the scene?

Pretty much, I will never write another EXT.- EXPENSIVE PLACE- NIGHT slug line again without thinking "how are we going to light this?"

I wonder if this happens to all writer/producers? I was meeting with a fellow producer recently and saying how I've always operated as a writer, thinking story, character, visual and then all of a sudden you sit down as the producer, look at a bunch of breakdowns or schedules and you take out your red pen and you're slashing scenes.

The producer then asked me if I'd ever thought of selling the script...a question that's come up before and I was totally passionate that the material needed to be handled right and that's why I was in it for the long haul. It was a great shot in the arm (being forced to defend the decision) because I was reminded of why I need to be doing the tedious, slightly schizophrenic work I'm doing right now. It is too easy for someone else to create something inauthentic about Third World Girl's culture, and you know how I feel about authenticity.

So I've put aside thoughts of being rescued by big moneybags studio...for now at any rate. I'm learning as much about producing as I can and secretly looking forward to the next script I want to write that I do want to sell and be done with it.

Every Draft Is A First Draft

2009-04-09T23:05:00.003-04:00

I took a short story workshop once with a hard nosed, no B.S., "but what does that mean!" type of writer. He was great and had an impatience for my overblown language that I'd never experienced anywhere else, that ultimately did me a world of good. He taught story, story, story.

But one thing he said has stuck with me for a long time, primarily because I don't understand what he meant. At our first workshop session, I prefaced what I was about to read with a "this is a first draft" disclaimer.

The short story workshop leader enigmatically replied, "Aren't they all?"

Well...huh?

I've never known anyone else to think like this. I thought we'd agreed that "writing is rewriting", which would mean that the more drafts we do, in theory the better the work gets? Nothing should be like a first draft as we reshape and polish...crack story problems, refine character, get a firmer sense of theme.

But every time I finish a rewrite I sense what he meant. You try to fix problems but in the immediate aftermath of the FADE OUT, you don't really have much perspective. Face it, you can come up with dumb ideas/fixes anywhere in the process.

I'll never wholly agree with him that all drafts are first drafts, but I'll say that I have learned you need to give yourself permission to make a mess and get it wrong regardless of what number draft it is.

Photo by mpclemens

Chicklet's Words of Wisdom on Movies and Jello

2009-04-07T12:17:00.000-04:00

The Chicklet has become obsessed with movies. I guess it's natural. It's what she hears us talking about all the time. The latest thing is she'll take a blank sheet of paper and draw tons of faces all over it, characters..."boy with curly-wurly hair", "baby with cold sneezing", "woman with hat and earrings", "man with glasses". When you ask her what she's doing, she'll say. I'm making a movie. (And it does look like some crazy detailed storyboarding, seriously.)

Anyway, the other day after dinner as she was sitting at the table, done messing with her mac & cheese and I asked her if she wanted some jello.

She looked me dead in the eye and said, "First I make a movie. Then I eat jello."

In that instant, I felt like the Chicklet was telling me, focus on what you've got to do: polish the script, make the calls, research the tax incentives, co-production deals, talent search...then engage in the time wasting, web surfing, day dreaming, film festival fantasies... i.e. the jello.

First I make a movie. Then I eat jello.
I want to put it on a T-shirt.
I want to live by it.

Photo by gifrancis

Predictable Dialogue: Examining the Dialogue Reversal

2009-04-02T11:00:00.003-04:00

I've been getting several sets of notes on the Crazy Bollywood script before I send it off to the co-producer whose readers will also run it through the mill before we go out to talent. For the most part, the feedback lines up and the coverage is pretty good...but the other day I got a note about dialogue. The reader didn't think it was bad but thought I could work it harder in terms of dialogue reversals.

My first instinct was to bristle... even if I hadn't a clue what the heck a dialogue reversal was.

I know about reversal "reversals". They're the bread and butter of any scene, the action that turns a story in an unforeseen opposite direction, but I never thought about how the same's true for dialogue...never considered how a lot of laughs we earn as writers are really about surprises in how dialogue's constructed. I went back through the script and the reader had a point. I confess to being so focused on working structure and tone that I'd missed the opportunity to punch up the dialogue.

At any rate, now I've become obsessed with studying quotes for the dialogue reversal and trying to apply it to my own writing. Here are a few of my favorites. Study exactly where the reversal happens in each line and then go write some memorable, A-list attracting dialogue for your characters.

"Marge, it takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen."
Homer Simpson

"You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take."
Wayne Gretzky

"Actually, it only takes one drink to get me loaded. Trouble is, I can't remember if it's the thirteenth or fourteenth."
George Burns

"I want a man who's kind and understanding. Is that too much to ask of a millionaire?"
Zsa Zsa Gabor.

Happy reversing!

Photo by Zevotron

Movie Night Review: "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist"

2009-03-30T22:56:00.005-04:00

I wanted to see this movie for a long time based on its title alone. I'm a sucker for a good title and this one's a great sell. It couples the right amount of story information with the right amount of intrigue. We sense its genre: romantic comedy; identify our two love interests; and get cued into its musical aspirations. Plus the use of the word "infinite" conjures up romantic ideas of the never-ending. And yet, we're left to wonder, exactly what is an infinite playlist? In my days as a reader, I would have been cracking the pages on this one first when I used to tote a bagful of scripts home.

"Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" is based on the Rachel Cohn & David Levithan novel of the same name, adapted for the screen by Lorene Scafaria and produced by Mandate Pictures. It's a lovely little romp through New York night life, full of characters that feel real, great music and modest intentions.

This is not a hilarious movie. It's a teen movie with charm and sweetness that manages to convey an adult sophistication. Its leads are so likable (Michael Cera and Kat Denning) that you root for them immediately.

The movie's ticking clock is provided by an underground band "Where's Fluffy?" that's playing a rare secret concert somewhere in the city for one night only. Though smarting from breaking up with his girlfriend, Nick gets dragged from Jersey to play a gig with his band, lured by the chance to see "Where's Fluffy?" at the end of it. At Nick's gig, smart, perennially overlooked Norah is there to be the responsible, grown up for her needy, hard drinking buddy Caroline (Ari Graynor) who manages to get separated from the gang during the course of the night. Instead of searching out "Where's Fluffy?", Nick and Norah end up scouring the city searching for the whereabouts of ditzy Caroline.

The stakes aren't particularly high, neither are the complications but in the world of high school where Nick has just broken up with Norah's queen bee, high-maintenance "frenemy" Tris (Alexis Dziena) and identities are cemented by where you head next in the dating pool, the stakes matter enough to keep you constantly engaged. Nick and Norah who share impeccable indie music tastes (she loves his plaintive mix tapes meant for the unsentimental Tris), banter and fall in love in Nick's ridiculous little yellow car which allows for some funny set pieces like the couple who slip into his car thinking it's a taxi and make out in the backseat all the way to their destination.

Equally fun are the cameos, including one from Andy Samberg as a cheerful homeless man in a church cemetery.

And the movie's beautiful to look at...gorgeously directed by Peter Sollet who helmed the edgier, more original "Raising Victor Vargas". While "Nick and Norah" could have benefited from tighter structure (a couple third act scenes seem unnecessary and meandering) the movie's episodic nature perfectly captures the spirit of a random nocturnal adventure.

"Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" gets three and a half Oscars out of five.

Script Frenzy Heads Up or Enter the Worst Scriptwriting Contest Ever

2009-03-27T18:58:00.001-04:00

Script Frenzy has the most original ad for a contest I've seen in the latest issue of Script magazine...

"TOP 5 Reasons We're The Worst Scriptwriting Contest Ever
No prizes.
No judges.
Cruel deadline.
Takes over your life
Leaves you crying for more."

In a way Script Frenzy aptly reflects what most screenplay contests do for the majority of writers--a big fat nothing apart from providing an arbitrary deadline that makes us get a draft done.

The difference with Script Frenzy is that it doesn't take your money in the form of an entry fee to do it. The disadvantage is, however, you are robbed of that cool daydream where you win the big cash prize, elicit the jealousy of your fellow writers and "make it" in Hollywood.

During Script Frenzy which takes place during the month of April, "frenzied" screenwriters dedicate themselves to writing a 100-page script.

I'm always saying one of these years I'd like to take up the mad challenge of writing 100 pages in a month but the timing's usually been bad as it is this year when I'm winding down the first draft of something and in no position to start revving up something new. Plus, for Script Frenzy to be worth it you've got to have a workable outline. I don't know what the point is of spewing out 100 pages when you could have spent the month outlining. (That's the problem with outlining. No tangible benchmarks.)

But if you're up for a challenge, aching to get started on something long-simmering and the camaraderie of hammering out a first draft alongside 7,736 writers (as of this post) appeals to you, here's where to get frenzied.

Good luck!

Overheard at the Playground

2009-03-25T10:45:00.003-04:00

Courtesy two high school kids trying to cram themselves into toddler swings on a cold playground day...

GIRL #1: I'm not a Christian. I grew up around cursing.

BOY #1: Yeah. Me neither. I was baptized. And crucified. I think they still do that in the church sometimes.

Photo by kevindooley

I Hate the 60s.

2009-03-20T23:35:00.005-04:00

I hate the 60s. Not the decade. The page numbers...That stretch of the script that comes right after the midpoint break. That's where I hit the wall.

The first 25's a piece of cake, everything's fresh and fun and I'm in love with the idea. And I can coast from about 70 onwards with a murky FADE OUT in sight but man, right now it's like a slowmo sequence.

Time to apply some serious Ass On Chair to get me through draft one.

My Writers Group Is Broken... Somebody Moved My Cheese

2009-03-17T23:26:00.003-04:00

My Writers Group A, the one I chose over the surly semi-pros, is broken. It's the victim of the establishment, of resources, of change.

Some background. Last February, in keeping with one of my 2008 resolutions, I joined a professional group for women filmmakers because they had an active writers group. I did this because:
a) writer moms need the occasional trip out to converse with grown ups and...
b) there is no quicker way to tell where the work isn't working than hearing it read aloud.

About halfway into the year though the writers group wobbled. First I got a last minute e-mail from a the filmmaking organization that a writer's group meeting the following day had been canceled. Than I got an e-mail from the group leader saying that she wouldn't be leading the group anymore. She was leaving the city. On the dot org's website the status of the writers group changed to "on hiatus."

Down but not out, I joined a group of older pros but it never took. A writers group is more about chemistry than credentials and Writers Group B (they of the fancy snacks) never really worked out. Which was just as well because Writers Group A returned.

And so 2008 had a happy Hollywood ending... until 2009 began.

In January of 2009 the professional group for women filmmakers I joined announced it was being folded into a larger professional organization. Great news, in theory. The new parent org has great resources, connections, workshops but we now meet at the org's offices and there are two writers group leaders and it's weekly instead of biweekly. In short there are a smorgasbord of changes and many old familiar faces have not survived the jump. Meanwhile, some of the new faces seem a little rattled at the varying quality of the feedback.

The worst part of the change for me is meeting in the organization's office. The office reminds me of the non-profit I worked at when I first moved to New York. Carpets. Fluorescent lights. The communal printer. The Filemaker Pro. There's even a cantankerous officer who glares at us as we come in and leave, constantly eyes the clock and bitches about us not having a key. (Are we supposed to have a key? Hey, I don't know. I just write here.)

Also, there's little continuity in our new group. Participants change week to week. One day there'll be eight people with twenty pages, the next there'll be two of us, starting an hour late because...well it's an office with a computer we have access to and there's e-mail to check, coffee to make, pages to print, cantankerous chicks to appease.

Finally the organization's office is in the "officey" part of town: the pox upon the city that is Midtown. Our old meeting spot was in Columbus Circle, with Central Park just a stone's throw away, Carnegie Hall down the street, the walk to and from the subway requiring a stroll past 5th Avenue store displays. Now I stroll past... closed delis. (sigh)

What will happen in the end? I don't know. But the magic is gone. My writers group meetings have turned into the job I grudgingly tolerate, the medicine I have to take to make my sick script better.

Put Down The Gloves. Don't Fight the Story.

2009-03-13T11:30:00.001-04:00

Here's what I've learned doing the rewrite on crazy Bollywood project...
Don't decorate a plot that has no story logic. I know I'm sometimes guilty of leaving in a well-written scene that is visually exciting, lovingly crafted... but totally tacked on. You know the one. It stops the story or worse, makes the reader question the credibility of characters.

Better the imperfect, "not as visual" scene than the beautiful scene that defies logic.

Photo by mrkalhoon

The Best Explanation for How "Bad" Movies Get Made

2009-03-11T11:40:00.005-04:00

I missed the terrific Tad Friend article in the New Yorker's January 19 issue about how movie marketing now completely shapes the industry. In profiling ace movie marketer, Tim Palen, the new truth of movie-making comes home: there's no such thing as a good or bad movie anymore. The only metric that matters is whether a movie finds its audience or not.

Read it here if you missed it too. Then go have a headache about how to sell your 120 page script on a single poster.

And Now the Chapter I Didn't See Coming...The One Where We Turn Down Money

2009-03-07T22:50:00.000-05:00

Well this is weird. The crazy Third World Bollywood musical gets its first potential equity investor capable of injecting the kind of money that in itself could pay for a low-budget movie, and it looks like we'll end up refusing the money because it would make the production ineligible for some pretty cool location rebates down the line. (Our fault for not reading the fine print properly.)

I suppose on the positive side it's great to know that you have a viable commercial product that folks want to make a substantial investment in, but on the negative...I fear that we're in a tough position because we're making the kind of mid-budget picture, less than 20M but more than 1M that nobody makes anymore...

Apart from the folks that made a little movie called Slumdog Millionaire which suddenly has lots of folks looking again at our project.

Yep, I'm choosing positive.
Positive, positive, positive... but I'm really, really hoping that the next private equity offer, we can take.

A Screenplay Reading and I Came Out Alive!

2009-03-04T22:53:00.003-05:00

Last week I endured something I haven't had to endure in about ten years.

I sat in the front row of a screenplay reading and listened as an audience responded to something I'd wrote. This is major because I hate screenplay readings. They're so not the ideal way to hear the work. I hate them even more when it's my work. It's like nails on chalkboard.

To make matters worse, the reading was an excerpt of the problem child romantic comedy screenplay. As such, I had this nightmare that we'd sit in the little theater and folks would listen and watch the actors in dead silence. Zero laughs. Maybe someone would cough. That's the problem with comedy. There's nowhere to hide when it's not working.

Luckily, though, this reading experience made up for every single other bad one I've had, and there have been some bad ones. (A student play that looked about ninety minutes on the page in Microsoft Word but that ran like two and a half hours comes to mind.) And I am always the most self-conscious person. I wear my heart on my face. Anything that doesn't work, a line that clunks, a confusing turn of phrase, I slouch in my chair until I disappear.

But not last week. Last week I was a normal person sitting in a chair. Why this transformation? First off, I had a great director who seemed to really get the piece and I don't know what casting gods smiled on me, but I lucked out with the most amazing talent, cobbled together from friends and friends of friends. They sold it. They made it work. Even secondary characters came to life vividly. I've always thought that "there are no small parts only small actors" was a sort of consolation cliche, but now I see its absolutely apt.

And it was great to work with people who were coming fresh to the script with good insights on how it could work better. And man, the reception we got. Like most writers, I'm tough on my own writing and it was nice, for just a night, to sit and listen and enjoy and have people receive it so warmly. We even got a surprise blog review that praised the writer, the actor and director.

"Where can I be updated about the project? What are you plans in terms of production?" this one woman asked me at the wine and cheese after. And I had no answer for her. Because I'm the crazy, juggling girl with prioritization paralysis and too many balls in the air.

Truth is this project goes back in the drawer for now while I concentrate on finishing sucky first draft of "rom-com I want to shoot" and rewrite of "crazy Bollywood comedy romance" (that I just got some pretty good coverage on so I'm feeling pretty jazzed.)

Yes, things are looking up. I'm proud to report I can now survive listening to my own work for fifteen minutes at least. What's more, I can actually like it.

The Wrestler: A Big Dissenting "Huh?"

2009-02-28T15:50:00.002-05:00

So Third World Girl just doesn't understand what all the fuss is about "The Wrestler". In the last couple of weeks leading up to the Academy Awards, several folks I really respect touted this movie as the best of the year. So I saw it and was alarmed. Because I don't think "The Wrestler" is a great movie, I don't even think it's a very good movie...why such a disparity between me and such smart, discerning people?

Perhaps "The Wrestler" was a victim of over-praise. Maybe if I'd just gone into it with normal expectations, I might have been satisfied, but it all felt a little shopworn to me. Down and out performer, faded glory, estranged family, stripper with a heart of gold? I won't deny that Mickey Rourke's performance was incredible, so was Marisa Tomei's for that matter (and she has considerably less to work with) but the material... Call me a backstory addict, but without screenwriter Robert Siegel placing the character relationship in context, I just couldn't connect to the estranged daughter subplot. Without details, hints of what caused the breakdown, it seemed generic. Was that rage really all about his missing her birthday?

And to touch on the Siegel script once again, there is a line in the movie that made me cringe. The bit Marisa Tomei's character, Cassidy, delivers about Ram being the sacrificial Ram. It's the sort of thing that you write in a first draft because you think it's cool that you have a "hero as Christ metaphor" but it seemed totally out of character for Cassidy, and heavy handed to boot. It sits up there in the movie, begging to be cut.

Luckily I watched this movie with the hubby so I could ask him, was I crazy to think this movie was only average? He shrugged. He couldn't get over that all it took to get back into Evan Rachel Wood's life was a peacoat jacket.

There is no doubt that Mickey Rourke's performance as Ram is extraordinary, and I quite like Darren Aronofsky's naturalistic direction but I have to wonder to what extent the emotional response this movie evokes in an audience is tied into the emotional Rourke comeback tale...that tale that was shortchanged just a little by Sean Penn's upset win at the Oscars. Now why'd they have to go and spoil a really good story?

Favorite Screenwriters: The Wisdom of Nora Ephron

2009-02-25T23:04:00.005-05:00

I went to hear Nora Ephron last week. She is funny, as you'd expect from the writer of When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail and the upcoming Julie & Julia and terrific on the subject of age and balancing kids and life...the "stuff that interests you in this room," she said to the dozens of women drawing on her every word, "but that is of absolutely no interest to the guys outside."

But she had little patience for victimhood, the sort of "tell us how hard it is for women writer/directors" questions. She just shrugged. It's hard for anybody to get a movie made, she said...but then conceded that yeah, maybe it was a little tougher for women, but so what? Tough cookies. This is the job you signed up for.

She told a lot of great stories, many of them anecdotes relating to directing rather than writing, but I enjoyed the focus because I've decided I want to direct the little personal movie I'm writing now. My favorite part was when someone asked a question about conquering fears and she just gave the smallest sigh. She couldn't speak much to fear, not being familiar with it too much (and I believed her), but she did note that everyone in Hollywood is afraid. She said when the titles come up at the very opening of a movie and it has the studio's logo, she'd add underneath "20th Century Fox did everything in its power not to make this movie." People are afraid of making bad decisions, greenlighting flops, losing money. Far easier to sit on your butt, drink Diet Coke from your personal fridge, putter around your projection room and say no all day.

Your job, then, brave director is to be the bravest one in the room...to continually have the confidence and skill and knowledge to convince the cowardly that this "risk" is the closest thing to a sure shot. Storyboard. Shotlist. Crew up with the best. Overprepare. Be confident.

This bravery isn't limited to directing, though. It's a part of producing as well...that element of building something solid enough that others feel comfortable, that the movie that screens at the end seems like the result of a most natural evolution. And yes, it is the worst possible time financially to be out here doing what we're doing but if it was easy, everyone would do it.

Onward.

Movie Night Review: "Pineapple Express"

2009-02-21T23:26:00.006-05:00

I have to believe at some point there's going to be a backlash against these Seth Rogen-Judd Apatow brand bromances. I mean, I liked "Superbad" okay, I loved "Forgetting Sarah Marshall", but "Pineapple Express" while funny in parts, made me long for this era to be over.

In all fairness, I'm not the target market. There are, I presume, guys who find all the gay subtext jokes hilarious. (You know the "Ha! Ha! They're trying to free themselves but if you didn't know it it looks like they're doing it!") I also grew impatient with the movie's rambling dialogue after the first act, imploring the story to get a move on. It did, to some extent, when its basic plot kicked in. It goes like this...

Pothead Dale Denton witnesses a murder, dropping his roach at the scene of the crime as he flees. The roach is full of a rare blend of weed called Pineapple Express that only one dealer in town sells. Making things worse, the dealer's only sold it to Dale so the murderer knows who the witness is and stoner and dealer have to hit the road and run for their lives.

The revelation in this movie for me was James Franco. In playing Saul Silver, the kind-hearted, simple minded dope-dealer he shines. This movie has a great central pairing in Rogen and Franco...too bad there's so little plot to keep things going once the guys go on the run.

Hubby tried to watch this movie three times and fell asleep on each attempt. I think it boils down to that lack of tension. Every scene in this movie is too long and saps the story's focus. The stakes don't escalate and the story's saddled with bad guys who are too bumbling to inspire much jeopardy. Also, its introduction of a drug war at the end of Act II feels hurried and there were too few reversals and surprises.

But as always, there are things to admire in the writing. It's hard to not feel affected by some of the movie's fuzzy charm, comic characters and the occasional hilarious exchange. Plus, I enjoyed the "wink, wink" ending where the band of brothers make fun of what is supposed to happen in a movie, i.e "hijinks ensue as we all learn a lesson." Ultimately, however, the movie's so unstructured and breezy that it floats away.

"Pineapple Express" gets three Oscars out of five.

Screenwriting & The Genius Bar

2009-02-18T23:39:00.003-05:00

The other day our iPod nano died. Less than a year and it stopped powering on.

And this is how I found myself sitting in Soho's Apple Store, walking up to the Genius Bar, marveling at the house that Steve Jobs built. The brand that is Apple.

The Genius Bar is Apple's repair shop. Sleek, professional, hip, full of smart, diverse, welcoming folks in cool blue T-shirts that declare in tiny print: Not all heroes wear capes.

There was a concierge milling about with his laptop on his arm, checking your appointment, oozing people skills. "I love your name!" he said, as he looked up the roster and told me I was next. I didn't bother to tell him that the appointment was under hubby's name.

As I sat waiting and watching the store's video loop on a row of plasmas, I thought about how so much of business is building the brand. It represents why folks make the purchasing decisions they do...why they choose to do business with some and not others. Hiring a writer, too, is a business decision and it's based not entirely on the cold, hard facts of the product for sale, i.e. the script. They're buying into the brand of the writer.

So what can we learn from Apple? How can we force our way onto the other side of the Screenwriting Genius Bar?

1) Knowledge
I had a chance to listen to the staff talk to numerous customers, from the guy whose Macbook hard drive died to the one with the busted fan. Each "genius" was articulate, able to talk about the evolution of the product, the trends, where things were headed next. Are you articulate about the game? Can you talk the talk? Do you sound like a pro? This isn't to say that you substitute writing for reading how-to books. Hell, if you're talented, brilliant or lucky enough you can not have a clue about trends, never use a common "industry" phrase and have plain lousy communication skills but in a competitive market, these things matter. Sound like you know what you're talking about...or, even better, *know* what you're talking about.

2) Confidence
Knowledge inspires confidence. You know your stuff and you like the opportunity to show it. My genius guy was decisive and assured. He knew the warranty procedure without checking. He anticipated questions I had. He methodically pursued one strategy, then another. Talking you through to the intended goal. He didn't waffle around. Perhaps we should zap the P-Ram...no maybe we should do a hard reboot, no...maybe I should delete preferences. Your customers (producers) are reassured when you have a plan and follow through with precision.

3) Appearance
The geniuses looked the part...in perfect sync with Apple's brand. What is your unique selling position? What makes you and your script special? How you convey who you are matters.

4) Listening Skills
The folks at the Genius Bar had great listening skills. They were super-empathetic. I watched the concierge lead up a guy to the bar and in hushed tones say, "This is Pete. Pete had a really bad day yesterday. A cab ran over his I-Phone." Pete sat and nodded as the Genius bar felt his pain. Gently his genius offered, after the moment of silence, "Can I see it...what were you able to salvage?" And then they brainstormed what they could do for poor Pete.

You'll need these listening skills when you take a producer's notes. What are they really saying when they suggest changes...what's motivating the response.
.
.
.
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By way of contrast, I had the opposite experience recently at Ikea Brooklyn: a contentious customer service person in returns who seemed to wear her ability to ignore you like a badge of honor. When hubby suggested to the non-genius that she should open the flat-packed box on a table rather than leaning against her register to avoid furniture parts falling to the floor, she pretty much rolled her eyes...whatever.

When she did open the box, of course, the wood pieces did tumble, though in all fairness, she caught them before they hit the floor. But there wasn't a single sympathetic word about how frustrating it can be to put together Ikea's stuff, not a sad shake of the head about the fact that it was our second trip to customer service in two days, that the whole problem had originated at Ikea itself with the parts in the wrong bin. Nope. They were gonna do whatever they were gonna do. And they weren't going to tell you what that was. And they were gonna take their damn time about it.

In short, don't be this screenwriter. Or if you're determined to be, have an amazing, must-have product/script that can survive you acting like an ass.

There are More Hours in The Day. They Just Exist When You Don't Want To Be Up.

2009-02-13T22:48:00.002-05:00

I've been known to say "There's just not enough hours in a day..." and I've been known to say it lots. Recently, however, I've discovered, there are enough hours. They just exist when you don't want to be up.

I've been trying with mixed success to get up at 6.00 AM to do a couple hours of writing before the rest of the house wakes up. The first couple of days was heaven. Contrary to my thinking that it would be tough to get out of bed, it was a cinch...at least in the beginning. I had that starting a new draft buzz, that high you get in the first 15 or so pages before the self-doubt kicks in.

But then I had to put said first draft on the backburner to get a rewrite done on the crazy Bollywood musical and the momentum dipped. Slowly but surely I've fallen back into my old writing pattern of trying to get a little done at night after Chicklet goes to bed. But it's sporadic and by that time of the night the brain's a little frazzled so I'm desperately trying to go back to getting the most important item of my day,writing, on the agenda when I'm fresh.

Problem is the Chicklet seems to adjust to my earlier wake-up time and just gets out of bed earlier. (I still love hearing her feet hit the floor and come pitter-pattering into the office to ask "What you doing on the computer?".) But that first morning when I got up at 6.15 and wrote for three hours was like falling into a time warp, like being in a writing program again. It was so good to be so focused, to have the leisure of some quiet time to think. I long to experience it again, even with the trade off: me being so tired towards sundown I feel nauseous.

Photo by twob

Why Am I So Confusing?

2009-02-10T23:58:00.003-05:00

Some days I hate myself as a writer.

I try to be too cute, too subtle, too layered and end up confusing everyone. (Tonight at writer's group I swear I heard a scene collapse under all that weight.)

I guess it's just part of the process. It's been a while since I wrote a God's honest first draft and in the immortal words of Hemingway "the first draft of anything is shit."

More On the Subject of Fairy Tales

2009-02-06T11:00:00.004-05:00

David Denby in the New Yorker magazine and online gives his take on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire as fairy tales for adults in writing about this year's Oscar movies.

The Fairy Tale Business

2009-02-05T23:32:00.000-05:00

I had a professor at film school who used to tell us we're in the dream business, which was a nice antithesis to all the curmudgeonly folks telling us that we stood a better chance of winning the lottery than selling a spec.

He would then go on to say that every movie begins with "once upon a time" and that our craft stretches back to the cave dwellers who told stories around campfires to explain the world around them and the values they held.

Sometimes I find it helpful to frame everything I'm writing in this way. I'm able to see the big story beats from the minutiae of the details, to separate the forest from the trees. It can also help underscore the archetypal characters in your story and press you to kick your conflict up several notches. Thinking of your obstacles as dragons, your antagonist as the evil villain, I'm reminded that a story runs on conflict, on BIG problems.

(Also, doing this exercise helps later on when you come to the pitch stage so you don't get bogged down explaining cool asides that aren't essential to the story.)

I like to do this with current movies too to see how they mirror these ancient stories. Take Slumdog Millionaire for example.

It might go a little something like this.

Once upon a time, there was a lowly young pauper who fell in love with a beautiful girl but the two were separated by a rich evil prince who built a fortress for the girl and put her in it. But the pauper refused to give up faith in his first love and decided to enter a dangerous joust in the hopes that fame would lead him back to his lost love. But when the pauper improbably progresses to the final stages of the contest, the king's dragons descend on him, convinced he is a trickster who must be punished. Can he stay the course despite ever decreasing odds that he'll win the joust and be reunited with his love?

Ta-da. There's the heart of the story without getting sidetracked into our hero's relationship with his boyhood friend or mean gangsters, the funky soundtrack, or the dance scene at the end in the train station. Viewed this way, it's clear that the "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire" stuff is merely an easy tool to ratchet up tension, not nearly the heart of the story.

What I find interesting about "Slumdog" is how the first decision screenwriter Simon Beaufoy took to depart from the novel completely changed the film. Recently the novelist Vikas Swarup has been complaining about not being given more deference this awards season because he wrote "Q&A" the source material behind "Slumdog Millionaire"... But the Swarup novel was all about a pauper's rise to the top on India's version of "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire." End of story. It was a successful and sought after literary property, a fairy tale in its own right, but for Beaufoy it lacked heart. And so he introduced a love story and put a princess in a castle. Fable upon fable makes it truly resonate.

So, is there a fairy tale in your script...aside from the part where you sell it for a million dollars?

Illustration by artista blog

A Third World Moment

2009-02-01T22:56:00.000-05:00

Yesterday morning as I channel-surfed over breakfast I heard a familiar sounding accent that made me stop on BBC World where they were having a roundtable on the economy.

The accent was Guyanese. The man responsible for its thick flat timbre was none other than the President of Guyana, Bharat Jagdeo, who I learned from the moderator's introduction once sat on the boards of the IMF and the World Bank.

I didn't listen long. I'm currently buried under a ton of work...the non-creative business stuff that pays the bills...but there was one great moment in all the handwringing about the current economic crisis. Bharat Jagdeo found a silver lining.

He said the thing that struck him was that if this economic crisis had happened in the developing world there would have been lecture after lecture in forums like this (i.e. the BBC's slick studio) about cronyism and inefficiency in the developing world. The one good thing about the crash to his mind... no more lectures from the West about how the developing world should run their economies.

He said this to stony-faced silence from Sweden's minister of finance and a former A.I.G. bigwig but to warm applause from the studio audience.

Sweet.

Movie Night Review: "Eagle Eye"

2009-01-30T17:50:00.003-05:00

I read the script for "Eagle Eye" a couple months ago and was surprisingly engaged by it... so much so that I had to see the movie. I'm glad I did because it's a window into the development process of any project. In some ways development came up with ways to solve the problems of the script and in other ways (more ways I think) they made it more confusing, leaving "Eagle Eye" a bit of a mess.

Let me say first of all that there are a couple of really cool action sequences in "Eagle Eye". There's Shia Lebeouf dangling from a suspended car in a wrecking yard, and then there's a great, nimble cat and mouse chase behind the scenes of an airport's luggage conveyor belt. Those two sequences deliver on genre well, and you can see why a director would be drawn to the material, but in many other aspects "Eagle Eye" is plain colorless.

At the center of "Eagle Eye" is Jerry Shaw, a copy boy at a copy shop who's never amounted to much but who, when his twin brother dies mysteriously, gets a call from a "voice" who forces him to carry out dangerous, criminal acts under the threat of death. Joining him on the insane ride is Rachel, the mother of a music student en route to Washington, who the "voice" has also singled out to be part of some larger plan.

Both Jerry and Rachel have no idea why they've been chosen and what they're being called on to do but the voice can track their every move, using technology to force them to bend to her will. It's a terrific expressionistic thriller concept. Problem is it has no second act. (One of the things that got annoying for me was that there were often no consequences to disobeying the "voice." She'd just sigh and say something along the lines of, guess I got to do this myself.)

Making things even tougher, the characters are all stock and their motivations aren't credible. Take Jerry. He's got no close family, friends, nothing really to live for and yet the "voice" is able to get him to go along with her plan. Like hubby said, as soon as he entered the apartment and he saw the ammonium nitrate sitting on his table, he would have been calling the cops. Seems strange that Jerry goes along. It's a leap of faith that is hard to buy.

In the script, there was the seed of an interesting reason that's been excised from the movie, which leaves Jerry's character all the more vague. And in cutting large parts of the subplot, the FBI folk seem like caricatures. Poor Anthony Mackie has nothing to do in this movie besides wear camouflage and rip out hard drives from the source of "the voice": the agency's massive surveillance A.I. known as ARIA.

Development did come up with a few better ideas in terms of how to execute clunky things in the script...a character's S.O.S. winking with his eyes becomes the rapid shutting on and off of a cell phone screen which fits in well with the movie's theme, and a saggy middle hotel scene where the action just stops to inject some romance and necessary exposition gets transposed to a Circuit City store with its giant projector screens. On the whole though, I'm not impressed by D.J. Caruso's depiction of an oppressive technology-saturated world. In this regard, I think he failed the script.

Couple this with some questionable casting (Michelle Monaghan is pretty vacant as Rachel and I love Rosario Dawson but had a hard time buying her as the tough-as-nails government appointee) and I'm convinced this movie could have been better executed. Still, as is, there are worst things to watch while munching on a bowl of popcorn.

"Eagle Eye" gets two and a half Oscars out of five.

The F-Word

2009-01-28T12:29:00.009-05:00

Can a production company of two people really have a "slate?"

Even at the festival when I told people about the documentary, I know they thought...but then is she serious about getting the other movie produced.

I go giddy sometimes thinking about the amount of things I want to do and that's not with the little romantic comedy I want to get done by the middle of next year. Or the new kids project we want to develop for the UK market.

Is "focus", systematically detailing the tasks to lead you to your goals, really enough to pull you through, or does "prioritization paralysis" just sink in?

Comic by ravenyoung

Nothing's Too Precious to Lose

2009-01-26T19:08:00.001-05:00

I heard back from the ex-boss with feedback on the "problem child" screenplay.

He's a writer as well as a producer and whereas most people giving notes attack specifics in the given plot or characterization, he came at it from a premise angle. When I first wrote this script I was very attached to the idea of putting on screen a character and a field of work that's not often seen (an immigration officer) but the more I work it, the more I realize why it's not on screen. It's not very sexy and it doesn't work that well with the other elements I've got.

So he came up with an idea that opens up the screenplay a whole lot more, makes it more comedic and probably fixes some tone and stakes issues the piece has. It's big picture stuff that I feel story consultants and even writer friends might be wary to touch because they figure they've got to work within the parameters of the story you've sent them. In fact, I've been in situations where I've had big premise-changing thoughts about other people's scripts but bit my tongue because you figure, oh but that's an entirely different story.

But the question should be...is it a better story? For me, nothing's precious and I find throwing out things that work and that I love, liberating. What I learned crafting a specific scene or sequence doesn't change just because I have to jettison it.

All this is a lesson too that you've got to get the story of the script working before you prune and polish. I'm glad I showed it to Mr. Ex-Boss but now I kind of wish I'd plucked up the courage and showed it to him earlier.

In Praise of Richard Jenkins & Other Thoughts on the Oscar '09 Noms

2009-01-23T21:55:00.012-05:00

When I heard Richard Jenkins had been nominated for Best Actor for "The Visitor" I screamed so hard I scared hubby. I was on my way to story time at this cool coffee shop with the Chicklet and was listening to the radio where some guy was bemoaning the fact that Leonardo DiCaprio was "snubbed" for Revolutionary Road. (At least someone's fired up about that movie.) Then he read the Best Actor nominees and that's when I had that moment of unbridled glee.

The "Visitor" was released way back in the Spring of 2008. The role for Jenkins wasn't showy, apart from one scene at a detention center where his frustration boils over. And yet his ability to create a real character on scene was superlative. Of course he'll just sit there Oscar night and watch Mickey Rourke walk up to the podium, but I sure am glad they found a "fifth slot" for the "TV actor" from Six Feet Under. And it's a wonderful way to reward a brilliant, small gem of a movie.

I have to admit to being a little underwhelmed by the rest of the nominations. In adapted screenplay, all I've seen is "Slumdog Millionaire"...everything else seems to require so much of me. I just can't get fired up about seeing "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" no matter how many nominations it nets. When I watch it I feel that it'll be out of a sense of duty.

In originals, I'm thrilled by the recognition for "In Bruges " and "Wall-E" and will probably eventually see everything in this category. I'm looking forward to seeing "Happy Go Lucky" but it's interesting that Mike Leigh gets nominated for a screenwriting award when his process is improvisational.

Finally, it's a trip to see Robert Downey nominated for "Tropic Thunder" given the comedy poked at the Oscars in the movie. It's great to see the academy break convention and honor a terrific comedic performance...although, "Tropic Thunder" for me is a triumph of an acting ensemble and I feel it's weird when one guy gets singled out. (I really did agree with Colin Farrell when he won the Golden Globe and said half the award was co-star Brendon Gleeson's.)

At any rate, it'll be interesting to see whether the Oscars can halt its ratings decline but early signs aren't good. No blockbusters. No big duels between best pics. No controversial host, just hunky if slightly dull, Hugh Jackman coming off a flop. Maybe they can recover next year by letting the controversial Aussie host it. I know I'd tune in.

Screenwriting Book Review: "Writing A Great Movie"

2009-01-21T21:50:00.000-05:00

A while back, I promised to share the occasional screenwriting book review. When I was starting out, I'd view these books with skepticism but now I find that a good, well thought out guide can introduce a new tool, sharpen your skills or allow you to better analyze a script's problems ...it's just a matter of separating the dross from the gold. Yes, Third World Girl's age of cynicism with regard to books on screenwriting is dead. It died right around the time I discovered Jeff Kitchen's “Writing a Great Movie: Key Tools for Successful Screenwriting.”

“Writing a Great Movie: Key Tools for Successful Screenwriting” targets the experienced, adventurous writer willing to go outside the usual starter-kit when it comes to crafting the salable screenplay.

Kitchen brings forth a mishmash of approaches that defy easy categorization but are exceptional at refreshing a stalled script. Using six hit movies—“Training Day,” “What Women Want,” “Minority Report,” “The Godfather,” “Tootsie” and “Blade Runner”, “Writing a Great Movie” brings to light seven approaches, or tools, to turn mere story into drama. In addition, once Kitchen explains how to use these tools, he mimics the writer’s creative process, building an original story from scratch using the methods presented.

Many screenwriters will already be familiar with some of Kitchen’s kit like “The 36 Dramatic Situations” and the “Enneagram,” a blend of tradition and psychology that comes together in a personality profile of nine behavioral character types. Other familiar concepts have been recast as tools in surprisingly effective ways. Kitchen shows, for example, how writers can use dilemma to shape an entire plot and how theme is the lens that brings drama and clarity to an unfocused story.

Rounding out these tools are “The Central Proposition” and “Sequence, Proposition, Plot” which both use the power of logic to help bring order to the chaotic creative process. The Central Proposition strips the script down to three sentences. “Sequence, Proposition, Plot” extends this approach to outlining the entire script working backwards from the final outcome of the story.

Kitchen makes this all much more entertaining than it should be with his easy style, practical strategies and continuous check-in with his chosen movies. Though “Writing a Great Movie” sometimes feels like several different books because of the lack of a cogent theme, and because any of the tools could spawn two hundred pages in their own right, Kitchen does an admirable job of showing writers the “road less taken” when it comes to ratcheting up drama.

Shelf or Toss: Shelf. I turn to this book as a diagnostic tool to help solve script problems at the end of a draft or to brainstorm upping the conflict on a rewrite.

A Pretty Compelling Argument for Facebook...So Why'm I Still Holding Out?

2009-01-19T16:00:00.001-05:00

I am pretty bad at trying to articulate why I'm not on Facebook. I don't even think I've worked it out myself... Some days it gets as crazy as my theory that the F in Facebook is for fat and everyone just gets on there to see how Fat everyone else has got.

Anyway, just when I'm happily wallowing in my ambivalence, a third worlder on Slate makes a pretty compelling argument for signing up. But he doesn't touch on Third World Girl's neurotic angst over rejecting people even though I'm sure said people won't agonize over it the way I do ignoring them. (Ah, the irony.)

So for now, I'll keep facebooking vicariously through hubby. Though in the end, I may just get on there to make communications with my real life friends & family easier. I mean, didn't I just write a post on "keeping in touch?"

I'm Not Reading, I'm Staring

2009-01-16T10:10:00.000-05:00

I recently did a rewrite on a comedy I've been working on for a while... you know, the one you no longer have perspective on because you've been chipping away at it for so long?

Anyway, I promised myself I would at last send it out to an old boss at production company I used to read for. I would usually have printed it out, given it a read to make sure all was in order, and then sent it off, but instead of the usual "last read" I made a PDF and did *not* read the script.

Instead, I just gave each page the once-over like I was checking out a spring catalogue. I stared at it for about ten seconds. How did it look? Too dense in the action lines? Enough white space? Any weird thing happening with the MOREs and CONT'Ds?

I was just amazed at how many of the little gremlins you catch this way: dialogue blocks given to the wrong character, paragraphs that accidentally repeat themselves, "widows", i.e. words hanging by themselves taking up valuable "page real estate" in the script.

I've now become an instant believer in the stare test. We so often read our scripts from beginning to end our brains compensate for errors on the page and read the version in our heads. The stare test shakes up that dynamic and allows you to look at things in isolation, giving you a better chance of catching errors. (Naturally, you can print and read too, but I wanted to save some trees.)

The stare test is such a quick way to make sure your "slip isn't showing" before you & your script step out into the world, I don't know how I ever lived without it.

Photo by pimpexposure

Keeping in Touch Does Not Have to Be Desperate and Stalkery

2009-01-14T10:10:00.001-05:00

Ah networking. The necessary evil. Scratch that. These days I don't think of networking as evil at all. It's fun getting to meet new people.

I was genuinely surprised at how at the recent festival, I lit up at the idea of every get together and hang out. Yes, I wanted to make contacts, but I also genuinely enjoyed the company of the folks I met. I was a networking queen. I was my own "Sasha Fierce."

Since coming back, though, people keep asking... are you staying in touch with the people you met. And that question always gives me pause, because the people I met are not in my league at all. I am not going to run into them on the street where I live while I'm taking the Chicklet to the playground. How do I cultivate a relationship in a natural way when it's the most unnatural thing?

Here are a few ideas that I've been working on to keep relationships going after you come home from that summer camp environment, without you feeling like a stalker or hanger-on.

1. Find a reason to stay in touch. Note their script sales, distribution deals, festival acceptances and send your kudos. (Set up a Google alert for them so you don't miss any big developments.) And keep them abreast of your news. Contest wins. Screenplay readings. Significant project updates, like attachments or distribution deals or other financing success.

2. Be a resource. If you're in touch with a contact for any period of time you'll have a sense of what might be of use to them. Did they mention their production company's looking for a great urban comedy and you know someone that has one? Did they complain about the lack of quality tea lounges in your neck of the wood and you know a spot that serves the perfect Darjeeling? Forward stuff. Share info. Become known as the kind of person who's interested in solving their problems magnanimously, without wanting anything in return.

3. Invite them to stuff. Maybe they want to check out a festival screening or play opening. Make a specific offer to see something they might actually be interested in. (Research, research, research.) This is the mother lode if you can hit it. There is nothing like going on an actual date.

4. If they are members of professional associations or charities, join and support those charities. A caveat on this one...it's got to be something that you would naturally be a part of, otherwise it is stalker-y, i.e. Don't just show up at the Knitting Circle with your yarn of wool and beginner needles.

5. If you freelance write for any medium, interview them. It's free promotion for them and it builds the relationship. Boy do I regret now that I didn't do more of this when I was writing for the screenwriting magazine.

6. Send handwritten thank you notes. You are bound to stand out in the ultra-cyber age. Show that you value the gift of their time.

So go forth and meet. You never know who you'll find. Just remember to smile and enjoy it. No one wants to be around a sourpuss. Happy friend-making, people.

Yay Slumdog!

2009-01-12T09:10:00.002-05:00

I'm not, like Danny Boyle put it, "full of pulsating affection" for this movie but I am happy for its success. I love its optimism and its color and its Dickensian feel. The narrative is epic, winding from place to place and it's really a coming of age love story. And yet I suppose it's a little melodramatic for my taste and I found the acting uneven in spots.

Why then am I celebrating its good night at the Globes? I love the pride that India (Mumbai in particular) feels for this movie. I love when other filmmaking cultures get their due and I love that Boyle and co. succeeded in making something authentic and commercial. And it's a great template for the project I'm producing. I met with a very experienced producer-manager recently who said soak up everything about this movie. Figure out how to market and position yours along the same lines.

I was also happy for "The Wrestler" which I haven't seen but whose Cinderella story I'm aware of. It just makes me so happy that a director was willing to go to the mat for his talent. Darren Aronofsky's money for the movie fell through once he decided to make it with Mickey Rourke, so did he buckle and use Nicholas Cage? Nope. He went to France where Rourke remains loved. How awesome for the filmmakers on "The Wrestler" to have their faith so thoroughly vindicated.

The Co-Director Explains It All

2009-01-10T11:44:00.008-05:00

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Loveleen Tanden explains what her co-directing credit on "Slumdog Millionaire" really means and why she's embarrassed by all the brouhaha over her awards "snub".

At least she's getting some overdue press. Check it out for yourself.

"The Co-Pilot of 'Slumdog': How a little-known Indian filmmaker helped shape the acclaimed movie"
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123146019434866263.html

I Concede. One of My Favorite Screenwriters Does Write Some Clunkers.

2009-01-08T10:06:00.001-05:00

Hey! I know! Let's forgo dialogue altogether.

I've always loved the work of Richard Curtis, the man responsible for "Four Weddings and A Funeral", "Notting Hill," and "Bridget Jones' Diary." He writes memorable comic scenes and great characters and his most ambitious film "Love Actually" is our Christmas movie...the one hubby and I watch every holiday season because it's just so damn hopeful, feel-good and filled with wonderful performances and music. So I was a little surprised to see Richard Curtis turn up twice on Entertainment Weekly's 15 Nominees for Worst Movie Dialogue Ever, once for the line "I'm just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her," ("Notting Hill") and "Is it raining? I hadn't noticed" (from "Four Weddings and A Funeral").

His labeling as purveyor of the hokey dialogue made me watch this year's Christmas night screening of "Love Actually" with a more critical eye and what I realized is that although Curtis writes some hilarious dialogue, he also writes more than his share of on the nose, speaking the subtext dialogue that no one ever says in real life. In several scenes he slips in a line that is the "just for dummies line" that ensures that you get what's happening, if you say, got distracted for a moment thinking about Hugh Grant's hair.

Curtis is also fond of having his characters talk to themselves to show us what they're thinking, which is of course, a bit of a cheat and sometimes tough for an actor to pull off because he's got no one to play off of. The Colin Firth character in "Love Actually" for example sits down in front of his typewriter to work and instead of a dramatization of his loneliness, the character says to no one, "Alone again. Naturally." The dude in love with Keira Knightley says "Enough. Enough now," to himself as he walks away down cobblestoned streets to finish off that subplot. And the shy porn stand-in in an example of blatantly speaking subtext in a way that's out of character for her says to her guy on the first date, "All I want for Christmas is you."

It's interesting to me that the really good and the cringe-worthy can co-exist together. It's comforting to me. It's like a screenwriter I really adore sometimes doesn't get it right. He's capable of great brilliance and considerable mawkishness.

Perhaps it's just a question too of the genre. Of the 15 nominees for bad movie dialogue, more than half of them were from romantic comedies. Guess sometimes it's hard to make love's lines fly.

Fake It Until You Make It

2009-01-06T10:00:00.000-05:00

I just came back from a pitch coaching session and it was so not what I thought it would be. The idea of pitching is for me nerve-racking. It's sales and glib and fast talk and so not what Third World Girl, and it turns out, most girls are drawn to. No surprise... we are by nature taught to think that modesty's a virtue and people will just sense our awesomeness telepathically as we blend into the wallpaper and wait to be asked to dance.

But I digress.

After the session with this entertainment coach I realized that the pitch is really a first date and the best way to get the second date is to assure the guy or gal across the table that you're solid, know what you're doing and won't break their heart and wallet in to a million little pieces. Having the great, succinct one-line is important but equally important are the connectors, the small (big) talk, having folks in common, being professional, and, if you're producing, getting an impressive package together because the more inexperienced you are, the more experienced the people around you need to be.

By the end of the session I know I'm not ready to pitch a major studio. I've got to keep my head down and keep building, building, building till the dream project solidifies into budgets (I'm hiring a line producer), casting reels, a casting director and my romantic leads. Then I get to start thinking about a director. Yep, a ways to go yet.

Here are a couple points I thought were priceless:

• Drop names. Make the exec feel secure...you're one of them. You move in his/her circles.

• Don't leave anything behind (send it via e-mail which allows you to tweak your material based on the session) and don't hand anything out in a pitch. You want the attention on you not a piece of paper.

• Master the art of authentic bragging. State what you've done in the "a little bit about my background" section

• Do your homework on who you're meeting with. IMDB is your friend. IMDBPro is your BFF.

• If you're a producer, make your package perfect. Know your audience, your budget range, attach a casting director/key talent. Make it feel so real, so credible, that the exec can feel comfortable enough to give you their enormous piles of money.

• ...But know your worth. Don't be desperate. You're not begging. You're talking about why you think your project is an amazing idea and why it would be a good fit for the exec. But if they think it's not right for them, respect that. Let it go. Build a relationship that leaves the door open for other projects.

Hopefully all this means no more clammy hands and panic attacks when I get into a room and someone asks those four terrifying words..."So what's it about?"

2008: The Highlights Reel

2008-12-31T19:03:00.009-05:00

By Third World Girl's standards, 2008 was a pretty good year.

January 08: The Chicklet turned two. Cake, ice cream, party hats, family and the look of wonder on her face at a living room full of Dora decorations.

February 08: Join writer's group, fulfilling 08 resolution. Soon find myself in two groups, but that's another story.

March 08: Travel to South Africa to start filming documentary on a story that I've wanted to tackle for close to eight years. Hubby and I experience some of the complexity of South Africa and make new friends.

June 08: A wedding in picturesque Wales. Fun times with good friends. Zero work gets done re our big film plans, but am reminded of how good it is to get away and change perspective.

July 08: Shoot more of the documentary in the Caribbean, unearthing more of the story. Fall more in love with it.

October 08: Another wedding. Another chance to renew bonds with good peeps I see too little of.

November 08: Monologue published in collection of monologues from international women playwrights and Obama reminds us of the power of dreams.

December 08: Crazy Bollywood-style musical screenplay wins best project at film festival.

January 1, 2009: ???
The journey continues.

Happy New Year everybody.

Photo by fxr

Movie Night Review: "Rachel Getting Married"

2008-12-29T17:20:00.003-05:00

We did our traditional Thanksgiving movie a while back and saw "Rachel Getting Married." This movie is so organic, natural and verite I felt like I was at the three-day celebration. It was kind of like watching a home movie of the most fun, multi-ethnic wedding ever, except the young activist rhapsodizing about the transformational power of Obama's victory wasn't there.

"Rachel Getting Married" is not a particularly ambitious drama and I found its ending unsatisfying but it's got other worthwhile charms.

It'll come as no surprise that Anne Hathaway's good in this. Movie audiences and critics are always impressed by the cute girl slumming it, whether it's physical in the case of Charlize Theron and Halle Berry playing unattractive leads or psychological--an unattractive character in the case of Kym, the protagonist here, who's a recovering junkie.

Kym is proof that you don't have to write a sympathetic protagonist for a movie to work. Kym is self-absorbed, destructive and needy, but she's also fascinating to study in the way tornadoes are. She's the dark force of a juicy family drama, the kind with secrets and ghosts that all comes to a head at her sister Rachel's wedding.

The movie is shot with a variety of HD cameras, often hand-held, which initially I found distracting but it soon settles down. Weirdly enough, there's something of a romantic comedy structure in play at the opening of "Rachel Getting Married", which sets up romantic tension between Rachel and the groom's best man, Kieran (Mather Zickel) and I kept thinking how I would have also liked to watch that movie, the dysfunctional romantic comedy about the junkie and the ex-alcoholic but oh well...

Instead we have the battle between the two sisters Rachel (Rosemarie Dewitt) who always feels she's had to play second to the neuroses of her sister Kym who feels like she's the black sheep of the family, constantly under a microscope as folks wait for her next meltdown. The conflict makes for top-notch drama and the ghost of their brother who died under mysterious, tragic circumstances works perfectly to ratchet up suspense. And Kym plows through it all, getting into trouble, making things worse. It's divine to watch.

Unfortunately the movie's ending doesn't really deliver. There's a marvelous showdown between the protagonist and a major secondary character that just peters out and the filmmakers hint that the guilt for the death of the brother may not be Rachel's but it's all frustratingly vague.

I left the movie theater looking for signs of how the ending played with other folks (For the record, hubby was distinctly underwhelmed.) I overheard a couple in the lobby...

MAN: Well that was good.
WOMAN: You think? What did you like?
MAN: Well, I don't know...I have sort of low expectations when it comes to movies.

And while Man in Lobby Theater is a great audience member I'd like at my movie premiere, I think "Rachel Getting Married" fails to give the ending most story lovers crave. Sure, it's true to life and things don't have neat endings, but stories are artificial by their nature. Call me a sucker for form and function, but I like that something happens in a movie, that there's some kind of change, that I've gone on this journey for a reason.

For me "Rachel Getting Married" was interesting, brilliant in parts, but ultimately a let down, although it was kind of neat getting to know a slew of characters, hearing pitch perfect wedding toasts I will someday steal from, and being a fly on the wall for such colorful/chaotic nuptials.

"Rachel Getting Married" gets three and a half Oscars out of five.

My Writers Christmas List

2008-12-24T22:00:00.000-05:00

1. A heavy duty hole punch like this. It just takes me way too long to print and punch a script...like an entire day. If I had half a brain I could buy the three-hole punched paper from the store (if they still sell it) but I can never remember which way it goes in the printer and then I have to reprint and that's more time wasted.
So please, a decent puncher that lines up and bores holes, does more than a pathetic 12 pages at a clip and takes care of its own mess. Is that too much to ask for?

2. Subscription to Script magazine. I'm always planning to do this but never going through with it. I'm on the fence about Creative Screenwriting. Script seems less academic and more to the point and I love the improved look with Final Draft's takeover.

3. I have been wanting Pilar Alessandra's On the Page DVD. If you haven't checked out her free weekly podcasts you should. They are informative, funny, charming and now the episodes even come with a catchy theme song that I can't get out of my head.

4. When I get fully set up I want a photocopier in my office. Maybe it's from working in production company offices but I love nothing so much as reading a photocopied script: the font's always darker and thicker than anything that comes out of your printer. Plus I love the hypnotic rhythm of a machine at work.

5. A writer's desk and chair. I hate my uncomfortable Ikea chair that I've had for about eight years and the huge surface area desk that has no drawers and encourages clutter. I dream of something more grown up like this.

Okay Santa. That's it. Hope you've got lots of room on your sleigh!

All that's left is for Third World Girl to say Merry Christmas fellow scribes with visions of spec sales dancing in your heads...

And to all a good night.

Photo by hunterjumper

One More Time With Feeling...

2008-12-22T11:05:00.003-05:00

No real news on the documentary except that we've now decided that the financing and distribution route that seemed like it might work...might not. We're going to submit the project to a different department of the Network because it seems to have stalled on the current path it's traveling.

Strangely, though, I'm not frustrated. While having several irons in the fire can get tough, I'm learning it's a blessing too because there's always something to do while you wait. And there's a lot of "hurry up and wait" involved in producing.

When I was in undergrad I listened to actors talk about how frustrating it is to wait to get cast in the right piece and it was odd because writers, we don't have to wait. We can always begin that next project. On any given day we can sit down and type FADE IN.

So yes I'm writing, and rewriting and continuing to work on the documentary. We're re-editing the trailer (which is essentially rewriting). We got quite a bit of feedback on it and now we're starting over. In short, people need a guide to lead them through the material.

I bristled at the idea of voice-over because it seemed like cheating and because it feels like an additional layer a viewer has to overcome to get to the real story, but now that we've started I think that we should have been doing this from the get go. We're not doing a straight voice-over...the kind I shudder when I think about...the "In 1983 blah, blah, blah, blah. This is their story" type stuff. It's more personal and a way to infuse the subject with the emotion that's missing.

So no frustration right now with the length of time financing is taking...not when there's work to be done. All frustration will set back in once the new trailer is cut.

Photo by silverlily

Movie Night Review: "Forgetting Sarah Marshall"

2008-12-19T10:42:00.002-05:00

"Forgetting Sarah Marshall" is one funny movie...my favorite dick-flick from the Judd Apatow gang so far, and yep, that is with the inclusion of "The 40 Year Old Virgin" which felt at times to me like an extended character sketch.

Jason Segel, actor/screenwriter here, is such a lovable doofus as Peter Bretter, a music composer for a one hour TV crime drama and Russell Brand steals the show as the raunchy Brit-pop star and new object of affection for the eponymous Sarah Marshall.

I'm amazed at how Segel managed to make a passive goal ("forgetting Sarah") into something so active and engaging. Plus, you have to see this film as an example of how to write strong, memorable secondary characters. The surfing instructor, the bartender, the obsequious fan/waiter, the nervous newlywed, they all come together in an epic tapestry that forms the perfect background to a comic tale about modern love and sex.

I liked too that the romantic lead, Rachel (Mila Kunis) held so many surprises. She was a character I hadn't seen before on screen. Introduced as the sweet front desk concierge, we soon see she's got edge and a colorful past. She's miles more interesting than the bland Apatow female lead of "Knocked Up." And the setting...they get as much comic mileage out of the setting as is humanly possible.

When a movie works this well, it's easy to understand why the studio's hot for a sequel, even if it's hard to figure out what exactly it'd be about.

"Forgetting Sarah Marshall" gets four and a half Oscars out of five.

Back to Being a One Group Woman

2008-12-17T00:55:00.002-05:00

So after months of agonizing, of trying to decide if and how to break it off with Writers Group B, I did it by phone.

Originally I joined two writers groups in order to get twice as much feedback but it's just too hard, too much commitment. And while Writers Group B came with great credentials, its spirit wasn't right...or perhaps I should say its spirit wasn't right for me.

It was too regimented and yet, strangely, too social. Lots of structure in the ordering of the meetings, exercises and chit chat. The Writers Group A leader once mentioned the perils of meeting in a group member's home and I got to see them up close as the sessions sometimes devolved into the "thank you so much for opening up your home to us, Madame Group Leader" patter. And Madame Group Leader is incredibly generous, giving and successful so it is kind of a thrill (you look up while you're blabbing on about your script and her Emmy shines down upon you), but I never felt totally comfortable.

Anyway, I thought about going on the break up date. Showing up for the last meeting, offering incredible feedback, being the life and soul of the party before mentioning to Madame Group Leader that I wouldn't be coming back but I couldn't rouse myself to that level of artifice. Instead, I called and unable to get her left a message on her voice mail. I know it's the coward's way out but I made the call as fulsome as I could cause it would be dumb not to leave the door open for the future.

Writers Group A might disintegrate again.

The weird thing though is I'm still on her e-mail list so I get word of all the meetings and holiday parties. It's like seeing the ex when you go out all the time and thinking, hmmm....he still looks pretty good.

"Adulthood": An Exercise in Target Market

2008-12-15T11:00:00.000-05:00

"Kidulthood" is a 2006 movie that gained attention as a grim slice of life depiction of teenagers in a tough London school. Four years later comes "Adulthood", this time directed by the original's screenwriter Noel Clarke, who's also, for good measure, the lead.

"Adulthood" is what happens when a decent little movie overachieves and becomes a success by grabbing its target audience by the throat. The cheap little movie gives birth to the cheap, underdone sequel...but does it matter? "Adulthood" made £1.2 million its opening weekend and looks like it cost peanuts to make.

"Adulthood" was originally going to be a movie night review, but about forty minutes in, reviewing it started to seem like a waste of time. The quality of "Adulthood" is kind of irrelevant. The movie is engaging enough with a likable main character and something of a ticking clock in that the protagonist's trying to protect his family from forces who wish him harm. But the story is all over the map: the main character doesn't have much of a dilemma (the repentant criminal's too good all the time) and the drama doesn't have much build.

I know people complained about "Kidulthood" having too much sprawl but I liked the epic nature of the thing, the myriad teenagery problems. In this one, old characters from the original seem shoehorned and merely introduced for interchangeable "shouty" talking head scenes.

But forget flaws for a moment. Why are people so passionate about these two movies? Yes there's violence and sex but it's pretty tame, and there are no stars. No big production budget. No great thrills or turns in the story. Could it be that the star in these movies is simply the authenticity of the setting, an authenticity that resonates with a lot of people who feel the fakeness of what Hollywood offers up as their lives?

This movie is not for American audiences. This movie is not made to travel. It is not Guy Ritchie/Danny Boyle cool. This movie is made squarely for a target audience of young urban teens from Ladbroke Grove and Hackney who soak up movies and live lives something akin to the characters on screen.

I feel a bond with these kids because what Hollywood offers up as life in my Third World country is often pretty embarrassing. For that reason we are underserved and hungry. I was blown away recently when I was in London by the success of "The Harder They Come" on the West End. The quality of the production didn't do justice to the Perry Henzell movie or the Jimmy Cliff music but throngs of all sorts of people from all walks of life turned out night after night for that celebration of "the real." Real Jamaican music. Real Jamaican accents. And real Jamaican nostalgia. We've got one friend who's seen it five times and I bet that's the tip of the iceberg.

All of this gives me so much heart when I look at the slate of movies that our little company has. We're hobbled in some ways...there's no money, there's no people, we get stuck, we're not commercial enough ...but if we can find a way to build something genuine and attractive for a reasonable price, I know the market is there.

When Is A Co-Director Not A Co-Director? When It's Awards Season and She's Female & Foreign.

2008-12-12T14:38:00.013-05:00

So this is interesting. Yesterday the Golden Globes nominees were announced and Slumdog Millionaire gets four noms, including one for its direction.

Turns out though that the nod is only for Danny Boyle. His co-director on the flick Loveleen Tandan isn't included.

Now I don't get how co-directors work but the two-headed monster's been around for a while. The Coen Brothers won double Oscars last year for No Country for Old Men. Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton were nominated for Little Miss Sunshine. Luke Wilson and Andrew Wilson co-directed "The Wendell Baker Story." While unusual, the creature exists.

It's a little weird to me, then, that if the directors are listed together as they are on IMDB and credited as such at the end of the movie that only one name has as shot at being in the envelope. Is it because Tandan's only credited as "co-director (India)"?

At any rate, looks like the Hollywood Foreign Press has some explaining to do.

Here's where to go if you don't get their logic and would like to make your voice heard.

And The Winner Is...

2008-12-10T22:01:00.012-05:00

I just got back from an absolutely amazing experience at the Film Festival.

The festival had this emerging filmmaker's program that provided just the tonic Third World Girl's crazy Bollywood-style comedy romance movie needed. After a weekend of in-depth notes on the screenplay and producing strategies to advance the project, there was an awards ceremony to announce the festival winners. The award for best screenplay, or best resident filmmaker project as they called it, capped the night.

I pretended not to be nervous but I'd never been through anything like it. The whole weekend I tried to keep my mind off of it... and off of the cash prize. It wasn't that hard. There were tons of meetings plus I kept thinking all this is subjective. What does it matter what a jury of six people thinks? The real prize is getting the movie made and there were plenty of meetings focused on just that. And the feedback was great. And I kept saying, I don't have to win.

So there we are awards night in a dark theater. The festival founder announces the top three of the five projects so they do put you through some squirming. As soon as they introduce us I'm busy thinking of how I'll have to mask my disappointment at being a runner-up. I practice my huge, wide-eyed grin but then they call someone else, then someone else and it's down to one and I just know...I know.

They announce the winner and it's me and my script and I'm so proud of it, as though it's completely separate from me. What sticks for me is the beauty of the project description, more luscious than anything I've managed in my marketing package...and they go on to say this...

"Our first prize goes to a young writer who has showcased a community rarely seen on the screen, and done it with humor and color and and great style and who impressed us with her talent and discipline."

Oh my God...I'm framing that...cause it sounds foreign to me. Is that me and my script they're talking about? I fairly rush to the stage before they can change their mind, trying not to trip over the film critic Jeffrey Lyons at the end of my row as he looks up at me with a blank stare as if to say, Please Third World Girl, my bones are brittle so spare me the full-on collision.

Then it's all over and everyone's congratulating and it's a blur but there is one person who stands out for me. The morning before the ceremony I had a long meeting with a film guy with lots of international contacts. He's got Third World roots in my Third World country and kept reiterating all through our session just how tough it will be to get this project made, how many people I'll have to talk to till someone says yes.

And I know our odds are long but I pretty much told him line them up and I'll talk to them, because this movie's got to be made. It's time.

As I'm shaking his hand that night there's no warnings, no demurring, no cold water. He just leaves it at "Congratulations."

So it's left to me to shout louder than intended, "Now let's make the damn thing!"

And that's what it feels like...a win for me and the hubby. A launch party for our big hairy audacious project as it sets out into the world.

It may take a while folks, but we're going to go all out... leaving everything on the track.

You Read it Wrong! (Dialogue vs. Delivery)

2008-12-09T13:41:00.002-05:00

One of the big markers of professionalism as a writer is the ability to take feedback of all types, from the inane to the absolutely brilliant. This "thick-skindedness" isn't something that comes to us easily. You have to graduate from Defensive Writers 101. I mean show me the writer who LOVES hearing "I just didn't understand..." and "This didn't make any sense" and "You lost me on page 8" and I'll show you a disingenuous writer. We're doing this because we like to think we have a future as professionals or because we're already getting paid to do this.

In the beginning we are all naturally defensive. The reasons why the reader doesn't understand vary from "This isn't your genre..." "If you lived it you'd get it"..."When it's shot and you see it visually it'll work." One of my personal favorites which you sometimes hear at readings is "The actor read it wrong."

It's one of my favorites because I remember using it when I was starting out. I wrote a monologue and an actress went in a completely different direction than I'd intended. I'm embarrassed to admit it now but I think I said in my defense something like, she didn't read it the way I wrote it.

But as a writer you can't rely on the actress to sell dialogue that's underwritten, vague or unclear. We as writers have no control over how an actor or actress ultimately creates the character. Our job is to give them enough ammunition in the text that they create the character that serves the objective of the piece. My monologue failed because the intention of the monologue wasn't clear.

When you're really green you say, well can't you just write a parenthetical that tells the actor how to read the line. Sure you could write a parenthetical but any actor worth his/her salt is going to cross it out as soon as they see it. It is, after all, their job to create the character with the text as a guide. And quite often, the good actor, has a better idea than you could have ever imagined.

One of the better examples I can think of on this topic is Dan Evan's monologue in 3:10 to Yuma. At about about 50 minutes in Dan (played by Christian Bale) explains to his wife, Alice (Gretchen Moll) just why he's going off on the foolhardy mission.

[scrippet]
DAN
If I don't go we got to pack up and leave, heading God knows where without a prayer, dirt poor. Now I'm tired Alice...I'm tired of watching my boys go hungry. I'm tired of the way that they look at me. I'm tired of the way that you don't. I been standing here on one leg for three damn years, waiting for God to do me a favor, and he ain't listening.
[/scrippet]

You can imagine the temptation as an actor to go for the big swing, the meaty, shouty diatribe but Bale (or could be director James Mangold) goes in the opposite direction. He whispers it to his wife and it is coated in desperation. It is an unexpected choice and a hundred times more powerful than the barnstorming. It is a man at the end of his rope, trying to hold it all in. And yet, my bet is any choice Bale made would have worked because the material is that clear. The dramatic purpose of the monologue is not ambiguous.

Christian Bale is what you hope you'll get...Immensely talented "talent" who can make good material soar and salvage average material. But never defensively assume that a piece doesn't work cause it was "read wrong." Don't dismiss a note as..."it's just the delivery" because, more likely than not, there's an underlying issue with the material. Can you look at the Bale monologue and think it wouldn't have worked if he'd have done it differently?

Put it on the page, then let the actor play.

How Do I Hate Outlining? Enough to Send Myself Crazy Trying to Make It Fun!

2008-12-04T08:30:00.003-05:00

I hate outlining so much it's a miracle I ever get anything written. To get through the outlining phase I have to perform all sorts of extravagant mind tricks to keep the tedium of plotting a story out beat by beat at bay. My process is chaotic. I jump around from strategy to strategy in order to keep myself going. If there's a method of outlining, I've tried it.

I started out with the "just write the story down on one page" method. I come from a short story background so thinking of the screenplay in prose form wasn't hard but I had to scrap the one page approach because once I started writing the screenplay, I'd write myself into corners. I needed a more detailed road map: a scene by scene that would help me get pacing right.

I tried the index card approach. Forty-five scenes tacked up to the wall, easily shuffled...but I got bored. Being a software sap who never met a new interface that didn't at least inspire some brief burst of productivity, I tried Power Structure. I'd got this when I worked at The Magazine as a freebie. I think it's important to mention this because I hated it and at the time it was kind of hokey. (There's been many updates since I had it.) I remember it being more complex than I needed. It had a couple views that I didn't even know what they did. (What's a Gestalt view?) It had graphs and color coding and I glazed over when I read about it in the way I often do when people talk about Dramatica. Third World Girl is too simple to get all this stuff.

So I went back to the index cards but, in time, I found a template that you download so you can type onto the index cards. It means the outline looks neater on the cork board and you waste some more time fiddling around which is pretty important to my "process." I also used Post-It index cards to do away with the thumbtacks. However, no sooner did I lay out Act One to the midpoint but an index card came loose and went missing and made me think, it is ridiculous to be agonizing about a lost scene because I can't figure out how to save the story in a single document format.

So I gave in to the temptation of working in Final Draft and a simple scene by scene outline. I did this with slug lines because it fooled my brain into thinking that I was writing the script and not outlining which is, did I mention, the part I really hate?

But going into Final Draft meant I got much more detailed than I needed to be. I got taken in by the moments in the individual scene and dialog ideas and in no time at all I was writing the damn scene and losing sight of the forest from the trees.

So I tried Movie Outline which is software I bought back on a job where I was outlining a docudrama. I rationalized it as a business expense and used it sporadically since. ( I'm using it on the current screenplay.) It's got its weaknesses and sometimes it feels no different than typing your scenes into a box and hitting enter, but I like that it's intuitive and that I can make a mess someplace else before I bring everything into Final Draft.

Because that's how I view the outline stage: making a mess. The idea that I'm in love with on Monday is hurled out the window by Wednesday as I search for the best elements to tell the story. I used to think of outlining as a necessary evil, something to be endured like a bad hair day. Once I found a way to get the story from the beginning to the end, that'd be my cue to type FADE IN. But the more scripts you write, the more you realize how crucial it is to go in with the best possible outline...because it's far easier to edit an outline than an entire script. And an entire script disguises things. Once you've written the dialog of your very funny mid-point scene and people really like it, it's harder to see that it doesn't convey the story point you're trying to make.

So this time, with this screenplay, while I can't say I don't still hate outlining, I'm surrendering to the process of it. I've done my time at the reading desk of a couple production companies and I'd say that ninety percent of scripts by new writers fall down in the area of storytelling. Sometimes you'll be lucky enough to find an executive who sparks to a character or story world but more often than not if the story doesn't work, the whole screenplay becomes moot because the script doesn't satisfy that primal human need we have for "once upon a time"...y'know someone goes on a journey, faces tough, increasingly dangerous dragons and returns to his world a better person with the magical elixir in hand.

Stories are our religion, guiding us how to live and outlining, figuring out how the order goes, is at the root of the task. It's not just the pre-writing duties that have to be dispensed with before the real writing begins. A few days ago in my Writers Group, I handed out my beat sheet and experienced a surreal moment, cause I never thought of myself as the kind of girl who'd be workshopping an outline but that's just the kind of girl I'm turning out to be.

Good Writing/Bad Writing... Potayto/Potahto

2008-12-02T09:49:00.000-05:00

I read this article the other day about the difficulty that people have discerning between good and bad writing. I've seen some of this in my home country where a couple journalists by dint of their enthusiastic vocabulary have pulled of this trick. In general, I didn't give this lack of discernment much thought until I came across someone complaining about the dishwasher scene in "Rachel Getting Married". I thought this scene was seriously one of the most brilliant, memorable movie moments I've experienced but this person argued that it was pointless. ("Take it out. Demme needs an editor to tell him what to cut.")

But to me the scene was layered, subtle and mesmerizing...in writing and execution. Too subtle for some I guess but a real gift for me. When you start learning craft folks warn you you'll never be able to appreciate a movie again. You're paying so much attention to the different ticking parts and how they all work together. You're distracted when they don't work, thinking of how they could work better. You slip out of the magic of the movie.

But then, every once in a while, you get lost in a sequence like the "Rachel Getting Married" dish washing sequence and when it's done you just go "wow" because there is no way you could ever come up with something that creative, that organic, that dramatic, that simple. And you're happy at the capacity of art... that in the middle of the tragic (and this last week was pretty grim), you get little things to marvel at.

If Chicklet Wrote the J.Crew Catalogue

2008-11-28T11:01:00.000-05:00

In the spirit of "Black Friday"--the day after Thanksgiving named because it's a cash-cow for store owners (in the black vs. in the red)-- I've been imaginary shopping with my imaginary cash and the real catalogs that clutter our mailbox.

The Chicklet thinks of these catalogs as storybooks...so much so that for an entire month when J. Crew was doing its fancy theme catalog in Morocco I amused the Chicklet with a story about a blond girl who goes to Morocco by herself and then meets up with her friends for coffee, goes to the market, saves a camel and then sits in a tent in the desert sands waiting for her plane to pick her up. Naturally she also insisted on dialog. It was like I was forced to write "The English Patient" just in order to see what J. Crew's summer line was.

It was worth it though. I like living vicariously through the J. Crew catalog. I get a special kick from the color options on the Ts and knits: citron, cerise, bright berry, light blade, spearmint, peacock. Doesn't it make you want to dance around or eat something?

Chicklet loves the colors too. She's at the age where she's so over the basic blue, yellow, red. She distinguishes light blue, dark blue, silver, cream, gray. She delights in the gradation of color. Her favorite question these days is "what kind of brown are you?" followed by "what kind of brown am I?"

One day when she was on her color binge, she started pointing to things in the house and identifying their color: gray, green, dark blue. Then she turned to the puff jacket I was wearing and gave me the look, the look she lays on me when she's about to deliver a verbal gem.

"Brown poo," she said. And I looked at my jacket because it is the exact shade of the brown poo she is always so interested in checking out, in her Pamper and in her potty.

"Brown poo," I said in agreement...though I doubt J.Crew will be using that one as a swatch option any time soon.

Tattoo Craving

2008-11-25T18:24:00.001-05:00

So yesterday after dodging a financial bullet, I felt the urge to get a tattoo. A little one, right on the nape of my neck. I have no idea what it would say or what shape it would take but I'm all of a sudden feeling the need to shake things up.

A writer friend a couple years back got a tattoo to remind her to have the courage to create. I guess mine, if I found the courage to get a tattoo, would be along those lines. It would be some kind of rallying call to get out of my comfort zone and take chances and make things happen.

And then a fellow writer-mom was talking about the need you have, once in a while, to forget you're a mom even if it's just for a couple hours. I can't think of a better way to remind yourself of the outrageous person you used to be before pancakes, play dough, princess tea parties and playgrounds than getting a tattoo on your neck.

Of course the tattoo route might not be a good investment in terms of the business. Apart from the little creative shingle I'm always on about, the hubby and I do organizational/industrial videos. A tattoo on the neck might prove a little too rockstar for that clientele... but then again, I could always develop a penchant for scarves.

Great Screenwriting Advice: "A is Better Than A+B"

2008-11-20T15:42:00.003-05:00

I've never seen this expression written down in any book but it's one of the best pieces of advice I've ever gotten from a screenwriter with regard to character motivation.

"A is Better Than A+B" means that one motivation for a given action is better than two motivations. It's a counterintuitive maxim because in real life where we make pro and con lists all the time, the more reasons we have for doing something the better.

But economy is the name of the game in screenwriting so the idea is that you'll go for one strong, consistent motivation rather than muddling the character by giving him/her more than one reason for taking action.

For example, you've got a cop and you figure he wants to avenge the death of his partner but in your heart of hearts you think, that's not strong enough...he barely knew the guy. I know, I'll make it that he wants to avenge the death of his partner and that he also wants to make detective and further his stalled career. Now you've got motivation A+B. That's a whole lot better right? Uh...no. One motivation. If it's weak, raise the stakes and obstacles. Take it from an emotional Richter scale of a 2.0 to an 8. Resist the temptation to add other motivations, no matter how "connected" they might be.

I tend to fall into this trap from time to time. For example, at a recent writers group meeting I found myself explaining the action of my protagonist in terms of his backstory and realized that I was saddling the character with the dreaded "extra" motivation. So I lost the line of dialogue, problem solved.

In short: less is more, even when it comes to motive.

Open Letter to the High School Kids in Barnes & Noble's Film/TV/Radio Section

2008-11-18T10:10:00.006-05:00

Dear High School Kids in the Barnes & Noble Film/TV/ Radio Section:

Yes, reading is important. I understand that keeping up with the latest book on "High School Musical 3: Senior Year" or browsing the "Inside Guide To The Hills" is crucial for your status at the top of the social food chain but other people, us thirty-something year-old fogies, would like to maybe grab a screenwriting book from the bottom bookshelf or check out the"Guide to Lost's Buried Secrets" where your torso is currently residing and giving you the lung capacity to have that interminable conversation on your cell phone.

Barnes & Noble seems reluctant to tell you but the shelves are not your lounge to drape yourselves over, nor is the carpeted aisle your bunk bed. I know, I know. I can step over you. Or jump. Or twist. Or shimmy under your coolly outstretched hand...but I didn't sign up for an obstacle course. I just want to buy a book ...maybe.

Also, I don't need to know who you fucked and why and what your boyfriend said when he found out. You really don't need to talk that loud.

A suggestion: why not go form your bottle neck in Self-Improvement or Grooming?

Best,
Third World Girl

Movie Night Review: "The Secret Life of Bees"

2008-11-14T23:08:00.007-05:00

This week movie night was actually at a theater (God bless sister-in-laws who babysit) but in a certain time slot and geographical radius which meant that we had a limited choice of what we could see.

"The Secret Life of Bees" rose to the top by process of elimination. Have to say I was a little surprised that hubby wasn't more averse to it. This is generally the kind of movie he would have to be dragged into the theater and tied to the seat to sit through.

"The Secret Life of Bees" stars Dakota Fanning and a high-wattage cast-- Queen Latifah, Jennifer Hudson, Alicia Keys and Sophie Okonedo. It's directed by Gina Price Bythewood who made "Love and Basketball."

The movie opens with a bang. At age four Lily accidentally shoots her mother as she's trying to protect her from a violent domestic row. Immediately following the prologue comes a sense of the time period and the thematic water we're gonna be treading. We see Lyndon Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act and moments later, Lily's servant Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson) setting off to register to vote with Lily at her side. However, on the way to registering, Lily and Rosaleen meet up with a couple of bigoted whites who insult Rosaleen. Rosaleen's not one to hold her tongue and violence breaks out. Police step in and Rosaleen is carted away.

Later that night, Lily provokes her mean, sad sack father (wonderfully played by the underrated Paul Bettany) who tells her that her mother abandoned her. Crushed, Lily runs away, but not before she busts Rosaleen out of the hospital where she's in custody, recovering from a severe beat-down. They run away to a town called Tiburon where Lily's mother once lived and because there's no hotel that will take in a white girl and a colored woman, they try their luck with a well off black family in the area, the Boatwrights, who make the best honey in all of South Carolina.

Our set-up over, thirty minutes in, Lily's knocking on the door of the grand pink Boatwright manor and asking the matriarch, eldest sister August (Queen Latifah) for a place to stay. And so Lily finds a loving family and relishes lots of sage bee metaphors from August.

Meanwhile relationships ebb and flow between the other two Boatwright sisters, the uptight, political June (Alicia Keys) and the sensitive soul May (Sophie Okonedo) and Zach, a good-looking black teen who helps out with August's bees. Inexplicably, no one seems in the least bit concerned about the development of a taboo relationship between Lily and Zach in segregated South Carolina where Rosaleen not too many movie minutes ago got her head beat in by some racist white folk.

It's this short sightedness of the family to the relationship between Lily and Zach that was my biggest problem...that and the wonderful hospitality and forgiveness of the Boatwrights which doesn't help create the kind of conflict internally (within the walls of the house) that would really lift the movie.

By the time the story peters out with a tame resolution for our protagonist, the journey felt derailed and slight. The movie is blessed with strong acting performances but only flirts with darkness underpinning it. As such, "The Secret Life of Bees" is determined to retain the golden hue of its honey to its detriment.

"The Secret Life of Bees" gets 3 Oscars out of 5.

The Word on the Street (Overheard Dialogue at Duane Reade)

2008-11-12T13:00:00.004-05:00

In line at Duane Reade. Two women hold magazines waiting to be rung up.

Woman A: How old are you?

Woman B: I'm an old fart. I'm turning 29.

Woman A: That's okay. Don't have a breakdown about it. Neil is 29.

Woman B: I know... Y'know, they say you shouldn't date someone who's 29.

Woman A: I've heard that too! And it totally makes sense. (inaudible) But I think it's okay if you start dating them before they turn 29.

Woman B: I started dating Neil like three months before he turned 29.

Woman A: That's okay then. That's enough time to make an impression.

Woman B: Dave was 31. You shouldn't date guys who're 31.

Woman A: 31 is the new 29.

.
.
.
.

And to think I had no idea of this seminal rule of dating. No guys who're 29.

Seriously though, you can't beat eavesdropping as a way to sharpen your dialogue skills. So feel better about being plain, damn nosy.

Shelf or Toss? An Ongoing Guide to Screenwriting Books

2008-11-10T12:32:00.001-05:00

I used to write articles for a screenwriting magazine that's since gone under. And for a while I thought I wanted to keep writing about screenwriters and screenwriting because I guess like via osmosis it was going to make me a better writer. (The jury's still out on that one.)

On the plus side, I did get to do some cool things, bag some free software, and go to a couple conferences and screenings on their dime so it wasn't all bad. And I did get paid which is always good. I also ended up with quite a few screenwriting books that you are possibly thinking of buying, have already bought and never since picked up, or are thinking of trashing to your wannabe friends even though you've no idea what they're about!

So...here's your cheat sheet to a couple that landed on my review desk. I'll be sharing my 0.02 on a few from time to time.

PRACTICAL SCREENWRITING
Charles Deemer/Portland State University

It’s not just an analogy. According to the laws of probability, by way of a California math professor, it’s easier to win a million dollar jackpot than sell a humble screenplay. That’s the dose of cold reality dispensed on the opening pages of “Practical Screenwriting”, a book aimed at redressing those odds in favor of the unsold scribe.

Written by playwright turned screenwriter Charles Deemer, “Practical Screenwriting” is designed to teach the novice writer craft. Specifically, Deemer seeks to prune the young writer’s enthusiasm for setting down overblown rhetoric, a symptom he traces to the recent trend of publisher’s publishing screenplays that has made today's hopefuls think of screenwriting as literature. Deemer believes just the opposite. He believes for a screenplay to stand out in the crowded contemporary marketplace it must be clean, crisp and clear: an architect’s blueprint that invites a collaborative builder’s vision.

As such, economy, both structural and rhetorical, tops Deemer’s list of new screenwriting essentials. “Practical Screenwriting” also highlights the usual suspects: character development, structure, format, collaboration and concept. Not all of these are given equal screen time, however, with the book delving into three-act structure a great deal more than characterization, for example.

This skewed perspective is part of the reason “Practical Screenwriting” isn’t a traditional textbook. For one, it’s more casual, but that’s part of its appeal. The matter of fact tone is pitch perfect for the overwhelmed beginner as are the do’s and don'ts of screenwriting, illustrated by excerpts from produced and student scripts.

The Bottom Line: If you're looking for a solid beginning primer or you're one of those "outline, schmoutline" types, this might be your cup of tea. If not, move along. There's not much new here, though I guess Deemer's appeal (It's the economy, stupid) could prove useful even for older hands.

Shelf or Toss: Toss. As the Chicklet says "not for me." I need a little more meat on my screenwriting how-to bones.

"From a Powerful Antagonist, Boundless Energy Flows"

2008-11-07T12:05:00.004-05:00

That's the quote this writing professor used to lay on us about the importance of creating a strong antagonist to keep a script from flatlining.

Yet I just outlined the first half of the new rom com and it feels flat as a pancake with...(you guessed it) no real antagonist. In thinking about this script, I read an old draft of a wedding romcom I haven't seen "Made of Honor" where they made the "Bellamy" (the name given to the Mr./Miss Wrong in a romantic comedy) a real jerk but, for me, that approach didn't work. It just made the whole question of whether the hero would win the girl so much more inevitable. ( I guess in production they went entirely the other way cause one of the Rotten Tomato reviewers complained that the Bellamy was too likable and he couldn't see why the romantic lead would choose Patrick Dempsey.)

Another obvious antagonist in wedding romcoms is the mother-in-law but that feels too easy, though perhaps I shouldn't fight it. It's universal and credible. Also Craig Mazin at "Artful Writer" has this great post about how whenever you write to avoid something rather than write towards something you're asking for trouble. So in reworking the outline, I'll probably be looking for a new twist on the mother-in-law from hell, looking to raise the stakes, and putting my two leads in more direct competition. Because a romantic comedy is primarily the battle between two people who could be perfect for each other but are unwilling to admit it.

Back to the drawing board.

Good Morning

2008-11-05T15:55:00.005-05:00

It may be 3.55 PM.

Still feels like morning in America.

Like the POTUS Elect is always fond of saying, his story could only happen in America. And that's why Third World Girl loves this place and this American city she lives in.

One of the MSNBC folk said this morning, "We are a nation of dreamers" and that Obama spoke to a dream in many of us. For sure, that spirit of "can do" he calls on when he talks about immigrants setting out for a distant shore, it makes my eyes mist up.

Hail to the new and the power of dreams.

Question of the Week

2008-11-03T15:00:00.002-05:00

Looking at a poster for the imminent James Bond, I have one more question about the clumsy title...

How much is a "quantum of solace" and will it be enough to get me through a McCain-Palin administration if that's what the country chooses tomorrow?

Movie Night... Okay make that Movie Week Review: "Fanaa"

2008-10-31T23:17:00.003-04:00

"Fanaa", a Bollywood hit from 2006, had been sitting on our bookshelf for just short of two years but thanks to Movie Night, hubby and I decided its time had arrived.

We're working on this Bollywood-styled Third World musical comedy and a while back hubby went into a Jackson Heights movie store and asked for recommendations. The guy brought out Parineeta which we loved and has become a focal point of the DVD collection and Fanaa which became the stepchild we never watched.

It took us two years to get in the mood for Fanaa but we put it in a couple nights ago and it was um...a revelatory movie-watching experience. I am not kidding when I say I've never seen anything like it.

"Fanaa" is about a blind Kashmiri girl, Zooni, who sets off with her friends to perform as part of a dance troupe to commemorate India's independence at a palace in Delhi. In Delhi, Zooni meets Rehan, a charming tour guide who's a Casanova. They flirt with each other openly, and their clever repartee back and forth shows what a great match these two are for each other, despite all the disapproving tut tutting of Zooni's overprotective friends.

I glanced down at my watch about forty minutes in, thinking, while this is cute, there's not exactly any conflict. Stakes don't seem all that high. Guy loves her though worried about his ability to commit but he's going along and she thinks he's the bees knees. I'm still waiting for something to happen.

It sort of does when Zooni implores Rehan to meet her for a final day of fun in Delhi before she returns home and he stands her up, unable to deal with his attachment to her. She's upset and seeks him out. He tries to give her the brush off with groaners like "Women are like cities. I spend a little time in one and then I move on" but Zooni is adamant that she's met her true love. She throws out the line her mother said she ought to save for her true love...a line that equates with the movie's title "Fanaa: Destroyed in Love"...but Rehan appears not to be taken in by it.

Heartbroken, Zooni sets out on the train back home only to have Rehan stop the train, clamber aboard and declare his love. He takes her back to Delhi and you can be forgiven for thinking they live happily ever after the way the movie's going.

But "Fanaa" has something else up it's sleeve. Rehan gets news of a new surgical operation that can bring Zooni back her sight. This is something he's always dreamed of for her. At long last she'll see the world. Zooni goes in for this operation but Rehan, on the way to the airport to pick up Zooni's parents who are to meet him for the first time, is presumed killed in a terrorist attack.

Meanwhile Zooni wakes up, and she can see! She greets her family who tell her Rehan's died in the bombing. Perversely, Zooni's first sighted act is to identify the remains of her husband...remains which turn out to be his clothing and a scarf she knitted.

***HUGE SPOILERS AHEAD***
At this point as a viewer I sit right up because I think... where is this movie going? It's about seventy minutes in and I just can't figure out the road map. While Zooni wails, and rescue crews descend into flames there is I think one of the coolest but weirdest reversals I've ever seen on screen. We learn that the bombing is the act of a dangerous terrorist who's targeted many other Indian sites. (We see the terrorist looking at all these other tourist sites.) We switch perspective to a "24"-style counter terrorism unit that is tracking the rogue terrorist. We tilt up from the shoes of the rogue terrorist as he strides through an airport. And we learn that the terrorist is...Rehan!

And then the slate tells us it's intermission. Now that's what I call an act break!

The second part of the movie is an entirely new film, like the directors said, we made a romantic comedy, now we feel like making a thriller. In "Fanaa part 2" as I call it, operatives try to track down Rehan and locate the dangerous trigger he wants to secure to launch some diabolical attack. However, when Rehan gets shot down in the middle of the snowy Kashmir mountains, he drags himself on the point of death, to a cabin. The door opens and it just "happens" to be the home of Zooni, who of course doesn't recognize Rehan since she was blind for all of their relationship. Further complicating matters, crowding around the door is the son Rehan never knew he had...an adorable kid who dotes on the mysterious stranger.

The soap opera continues as Zooni and her father nurse Rehan back to health. Zooni gradually learns Rehan's identity (as her former lover) and they get married only for her to discover, as the dragnet for the terrorist tightens, that the man they're searching for, the dangerous renegade, is Rehan. Now Zooni has a totally compelling choice, except it's all so over the top and not treated in any genuine way. Scenes continue to be laughably unrealistic, especially the big finale where a woman agent in an airborne helicopter shoots a pistol into another helicopter and hits the enemy!!! Yes indeed, "Fanaa" will make you shake your head many, many times.

At a running time of 168 minutes, it took me almost a week to watch "Fanaa" but I was so fascinated by it that it made me think of the ability of other non-traditional, non-Hollywood, filmmakers to straddle genres. Is there a comparison here to Tyler Perry and the whole subgenre of gospel plays that confound straight genre types by blending comedy and melodrama so effortlessly? Is there something about us Third Worlders that makes us understand that things don't come in neat boxes? Or is such genre-bending simply amateurish?

Because at the end of the day I'd pick the straight romance of "Parineeta" over the interesting but ultimately unsuccessful hybrid of "Fanaa" any day.

One other quibble that makes me mark down "Fanaa", the music isn't memorable. There's nothing you'll go away humming...which is also a completely new experience for me, fledgling Bollywood movie watcher that I am.

"Fanaa" gets 2 and a half Oscars out of 5.

Third World Girl & The Golden Ticket

2008-10-29T13:31:00.006-04:00

I got a call from a festival. The script for this musical comedy I have got accepted to a residency program. The festival accepts five projects into its program every year and I'll bet I was the last successful applicant to know.

My acceptance e-mail went to my spam. I had to get a call from the programming assistant who said, didn't you receive my e-mail? My first instinct when people say of e-mail....didn't you get it? is to go, yeah, right...you never sent it, mainly because I've tried this ruse myself. But checking my spam folder and going through all the offers of penis enhancement pills and free luxury watches, there was the e-mail. All this fixation on the e-mail that changes my life and it goes directly to my spam. Of course I immediately wondered what other wonderful missives of success had got diverted to my spam, but there was nothing...though there was a very nice letter from a Nigerian prince. (I kid, I kid.)

Anyway, on my first phone call with the festival programmers, I was a little dotty. I entered the contest, but since it was so long ago, I didn't remember the prize. When the guy told me the script was accepted there was a pause before I asked... Exactly what does that mean?

Also, though I hope to win every contest I enter, I never expect to. Plus, I think of these things as marketing tools to create buzz for the script, not as offering meaningful prizes. But as I learn more about this prize and more about the festival and the residency, I can't believe my luck. It sounds like it will be awesome and exactly what I need. Advisors I will be crazy honored to meet, will be working with us, trying to make these projects happen. And luckily enough, they're about building careers which is good, because it's where I am as a writer. Build me baby. Build.

So now I got to go polish up my arsenal (and add to it with the cute, new Third World rom com), and count down the days of course. Wish me luck!

Another Thing I Love About My Group A Writers Group

2008-10-27T23:48:00.007-04:00

So another thing I love about my Group A, Monday night writers group...

When we finish our sessions, I walk past Carnegie Hall to get to the subway. And because of the time it is, more often than not, a show's letting out. The sidewalk is buzzing, mostly with young kids all dressed up in their fancy dresses and bow ties, giddily snapping loads of photos out in front.

And all I can think of is that old joke.
"How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Practice, practice, practice."

And I feel good about the hours I've just spent taking apart the script and bouncing ideas around with some pretty cool, very generous women.

We're In Business

2008-10-23T23:11:00.007-04:00

Since the bottom dropped out of the market, the documentary that we've been slaving away on has gone into a state of inertia. Oh, I'm sending out the hopeful e-mails and piling up the leads but I can't say I've been kicking down any doors in our effort to get back into production. The fundraising attempts have *that* disheartening. (We keep being teased by interested parties though. There's no shortage of folks who want to kill us with kind words without opening their wallets.)

Lately, too, there's been this weird disconnect between us and our production partners halfway across the world. For the last couple of months in our almost two year relationship we've been having communication issues. It's like how marriages get some time. One party becomes convinced they're doing all the work, and that the other party's just slacking off. This dynamic is magnified when you never see the other. You read all sorts of things into the silence. As you'll remember for example a couple months back we got word that we'd got some distribution interest but since then, a big fat nothing.

Without that money, we've been looking at what individual donors we might be able to target. We thought about having a fundraising party but decided it's too much work for too little. We've moved to identifying philanthropists who might have an interest in the documentary's subject matter and following them up. In our quest to do just this, three well-connected guys, who incidentally are producers too (who isn't, right?) have taken a shine to the project. The problem is our co-producer thinks targeting individuals for fundraising is a waste, a total cock tease. "Get the money from your distributor no matter how long it takes" is his mantra. In his mind, this is how a movie gets made.

But here in the Big City, what we've been doing in the last couple of months is pursuing folks with resources and trying to get their cash. Seemed logical. It's in Morrie's book...but our co-producer saw in this strategy of going after individual donors some sort of black mark against his own diligence. What I viewed as us trying to push our little project along by getting individual donations using the carrot of an "exec producer" title, he saw as frustration with him, our production partner. According to him, we should be in the boat together, mad about what rages around us, not pointing daggers at each other.

It was only during this conversation, our first fight I suppose, that I realized something. This really cool production company is working on this awesome doc with us. Now, that'll sound strange to you. I'm a producer. I've made TV. I'm not a total slouch. I've gone to a good film school and yet on a level, I still sort of thought that this guy was just trying to help me out, humoring me. See, I first approached him with the project because we had a friend in common and part of me always feels that the people who are working with me are doing so because they haven't figured out a way to gently let me down.

And so in the middle of this conversation that it took us two days to get to, I say to him, point blank... because we are friends, because I believe him when he says we can dissolve this business relationship and still be cool...I say, "Do you really want to do this?" I walk him to the edge of the plank and he pauses what seems like an eternity and he says..."Third World Girl, we're in business."

And I feel like a doof because it's my problem that it took me so long to get that. It's my problem that I can't believe my luck. Cause this producer isn't Paramount or anything, but he's a star to me. And there are days I look at my little company's development slate and I think, man, it's just a matter of time before we find the folks who're looking for exactly what we've got... but those days are interspersed with the weeks of waiting to hear something, anything, the brutal loop of no feedback and of self-doubt.

Once in a while, however, this funk is broken by the epiphany that there is someone else on the boat with you, pulling for you, rowing in sync, even if you can't always see them.

Onward.

Backwards is Better

2008-10-21T19:31:00.001-04:00

So my new favorite trick is the backwards write.

I've done this before with other scripts, usually to make sure scenes worked in isolation and to read them with a fresh eye. (You'll be amazed what jumps out at you when you start from the back of the script where your eye usually tires.) I'd also done this to check for excess flab and to make sure every scene had a story purpose, moving the action forward.

But it's only within the last couple of weeks that I used the backwards write to solve an ending that was just not working.

The backwards write is a method that story consultant Jeffrey Kitchen advocates. I like it because it focuses so exclusively on cause and effect.

It all starts with the ending of the movie. What is the image that dramatizes the object of the story? This question makes you zero in on the "moral" of the tale. Then working from the dramatization of that final object, you go back through the chain of cause and effect for each action until you arrive at your beginning.

What I find is that this really focuses the story. The question becomes less what preceded an event in the story, but more specifically, what happens in your script that causes the subsequent event to happen. For me, the backwards-write method took actions that arose to facilitate the plot and put them in the hands of the protagonist or the antagonist. I can't tell you how much more satisfying these new drafts feel.

Check out Kitchen's method here...

My Little Voice Speaks Up.

2008-10-17T23:22:00.000-04:00

A couple years ago I took a short story workshop with a great, warm, no b.s. novelist. The first draft I brought in of a story that had won a contest was in his opinion way too precious, going nowhere. I got hammered at the roundtable and I went back and reworked it.

What I remember of the reception of the rewrite a couple weeks later is the workshop leader being taken aback at how I'd taken a note and ran with it. I can do this to the extreme which I've learned is both a weakness and a strength. I just don't have any sentimental attachment to how things are on the page. In fact, I never met a rewrite I didn't like. If I'm honest, I have a problem realizing the point at which I'm not making things better, only different.

After the workshop I ran into the workshop leader and his editor at a writer's festival and he sat me down and said, Third World Girl, you've got to know what you're doing. To paraphrase, he thought my voice and style was chick lit but that I kind of copped out on it by trying to be too highbrow. There's a place for your little, quirky, small stories...don't be bummed if they're not going to win a Booker Prize.

This is years ago and it's something I've been thinking about recently in light of the fact that I'd been struggling with this social drama. The story's an important one, based on a true, heartbreaking story but the other day when I started to re-outline it I thought...why am I telling this story? Why me?

On reflection, I realized I had fallen into a trap. See, to some extent film in Third World Girl's native country is an academic exercise. It must be "deep." It must say something profound about our post-colonial condition but looking at my work, the best of what I have... and what I've managed to make... is nothing like that.

Once upon a time, I had a mentor from my country who looked at a simple story I wanted to write about a group of Third World students living in a house, doing crazy things to make the rent. The mentor tore into me. "What are you doing? Write the story of your grandmother," he said. Being an impressionable, desperate for validation sophomore at the time, I felt like I had been correctly chastised. I felt like a big dumb sell-out, and cried big dumb sell out tears. Now, however, I think...screw that. You write the story of your grandmother. I'll write what I like.

I guess what I'm trying to say is last night I finally realized, my Third World film doesn't have to be like your Third World film and let the social drama go. Here, now, officially I'm setting it free to the universe to let somebody else write it.

I've got to go grapple with a small little Third World love story that I've been thinking about for a while.

How Do I Turn This Thing Off?

2008-10-15T16:22:00.000-04:00

I keep being hit by all these ideas at 2 AM in the morning, just after I've crawled into bed after doing whatever writing I can. My mind is on fire when I'm supposed to be drifting off to dreamland. I can feel the synapses crackling, exploding while the rest of the house sleeps: the perfect line of dialogue, the great title, the best characterization, the best edit, the reason the opening doesn't work...

I wish somebody would write something in one of these writer's magazines about how to switch off the creative impulse so you can get at least five hours sleep. As a parent, there's a kind of desperation that sets in as you lie on the pillow and watch the time tick away, cause you know your very precious alarm clock is going to be up at 8 AM ready and rearing to go.

Of course I shouldn't be writing at night. I should be getting up at 5 AM and writing for three hours before the babe wakes up. But waking up early to write has never worked for me. It takes a tractor to get me out of bed in the morning and I am the original night owl. What this means is that I generally have to wait for her to fall asleep before I write...so my work days start at 10:30 PM, after the usual decompression that consists of surfing the web and watching MSNBC.

So...anybody got any non-pharmaceutical ideas about how to fall asleep fast, other than the great advice below?

Cheating Updated...Is it Still Good For You?

2008-10-13T10:03:00.003-04:00

After an absence of two sessions, I made a return to the writer's group I'm cheating with. I had planned to go to prove to myself that I can "keep options open" but the decision was cemented thanks to an e-mail from the group leader who pretty much said, "Do you still want to be a part of this... because I've found a couple new people." It sounded to me like emotional blackmail so of course I shot off an e-mail saying "see you later tonight!"

But doggone it, this outside group is so high-maintenance, man. I kept thinking that my other writers group, Writers Group A, they of the laid-back, meet in public, "I scribbled out my synopsis during my lunchbreak" writers, don't have a fit if you miss two sessions. Also, you don't have to RSVP a day in advance...or bring snacks. Though you are welcome to share gum. There are none of those exercises and that free-write crap I loathe.

But I'm doing this thing now where I'm trying to say yes to things I would usually say no to. I mean, I don't need to be part of two writers groups but the theory behind it is that I'll write twice as much and get feedback on two scripts instead of one. Also, Writers Group B savaged the opening pages of the social drama screenplay I'm working on so although it would be easy to slink away convinced they don't get my "genius", I like to think tough criticism of something that clearly doesn't work is exactly what I'm looking for. Plus, I don't want to be that "writers group parasite" that hangs in there long enough to get their work thoroughly workshopped and then disappears off the face of the earth.

Anyway, I show up to Madame Group Leader's loft about ten minutes late and a very strange thing has happened to Writers Group B. It is an entirely new group. The only familiar face is Madame Group Leader. She explains to me that one of the regulars can't make it this week but that the other three have flaked completely. She makes a face as she says flaked, as though she can tell that I am a higher caliber of human being serious about my writing. But instead I panic...did I miss my window to flee?

However, thanks to the housecleaning, the sessions have become less social...which I like. I want my writers group to run like clockwork, allowing me to dive into work, get done and trek back to Brooklyn prontissimo. But unfortunately there's still too much stuffing in the bird. When we finish the opening exercise and go directly to reading pages I grin inwardly because I think, ah, at last they've finally dumped the sucky free-writing. However, a few minutes into the table read, Madame Group Leader says, "Oh no...I forgot the format. We'll do the free-writing after. Remind me if I skip it in the future."

Next thing you know we'll print an agenda. Yep, I chafe against all this structure. I hate writing exercises. What is this pretentious writers block thing? I don't understand people who don't know what to write about. I understand procrastination. I am the queen of that country but I'm not going to be helped by writing with an egg timer. I will be helped by the total annihilation of the internet... but that's another story.

Also, the new problem is, the group is now populated by different types of writers...two or three fiction chicks. This week, I'm just in time for a novelist to read the first two chapters of a book she's working on. It's got some charm and I suddenly hanker after the short stories currently languishing on my flash drive, but I don't want to be tempted into them right now. I want to work on screenplays. I want to learn from other screenwriters. I want a community of people struggling with exactly what I'm going through.

Still, I guess I'll return next time. I feel bad about being the last of the original generation left standing... but my heart just isn't in this anymore.

Movie Night Review: "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"

2008-10-10T09:30:00.006-04:00

The weakest and longest of the J.K. Rowling books makes a pretty entertaining movie that reminds Third World Girl of this really annoying deputy headmistress who once came into her high school and wreaked havoc via totalitarian rules as does the movie's Deputy Minister of Magic Dorothy Umbridge. (Our deputy head was, however, never driven away by a herd of angry centaurs as much as our school population might have enjoyed it.)

But back to "Order of the Phoenix". The installment is directed by David Yates who must have satisfied the studio alright since they've handed off the rest of the franchise to him. (I will perhaps always be partial to the grit of Alfonso Cuaron's "Prisoner of Azkaban" with its cool magical realism though Mike Newell did a pretty bang-up job too with Goblet of Fire. I love it when producers open up novels as diverse as Rowling's to different directors though the first two done by Christopher Columbus now seem dull and slavish to the source material.)

"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", like the book it's based on, is a whole lot of exposition...a bridge between the high jinx of the earlier series with its quaint Quidditch matches and house rivalries and the moody, deeper apocalypse of the later books. For that reason it's kind of hamstrung as a movie. (The entire thing, in fact, exists to deliver one really important piece of exposition.) In fact, hubby seemed distinctly unimpressed as he was measuring the movie up against Goblet of Fire.

I won't provide a synopsis here apart from saying Harry's pursued by dementors, uses magic in front of a Muggle while school's out, gets into major trouble for it, gets hauled before the Ministry of Magic who in a very unlikely scene lets him go his way after a Dumbledore speech, heads off to Hogwarts, kisses an Asian girl, gets heat from students who think he's lying about the Dark Lord's return, has really bad dreams that he realizes are Voldemort's visions and seeks to find out exactly what is the relationship between him and said Voldemort, a.k.a. He Who Must Not Be Named. (Go read it in 870 pages. I'm always amazed that people understand the movies as stand-alones.)

It's good character stuff that sets up a lot of information we'll need for the later novels--oops movies--but "Order of the Phoenix" doesn't really set any fires on its own.

Still a few largely redeeming observations...

1. J.K. Rowling has employed so many top notch seasoned British actors who are so good in these cameos she should get some major damehood.

2. Daniel Radcliffe is really short but he's a pretty decent actor as is the Ron Weasley dude. Emma Watson I just don't get.

3. Rowling's books translate so well to the screen. The dizzying visual landscapes of her carefully created worlds (the Ministry of Magic, the Hall of Prophecies, the Weasley Wizard Wheezes) are all meant to be experienced on the big screen...which is somewhat unfortunate because movie night currently takes place on a humble, old TV that hubby and I bought ten years ago.

"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" gets three Oscars out of five.

Buzz, Buzz, Buzz

2008-10-08T17:55:00.000-04:00

So there's this interesting article in this month's Script magazine about networking. What caught my eye is the advice on the 15-second intro that you always have to give when you meet a new contact who asks what you do. Their advice on how to cut through the clutter and connect? Use buzzwords.

I immediately turned to the profiles of new writers in the spec sale market at the front of the issue to see how those bios matched up on the buzz-o-meter and sure enough, they did. I went off obsessively reading bios for a little while and came up with a few from the copy in no particular order...

AFI film school grad
Nicholl finalist
Dreamworks scriptreader
executive producer turned writer
former model
repped by Circle of Confusion

Then I thought about what my usual stammering introductions are usually like. Short, like a ramble about my commute coupled with something embarassingly generic like "I write and produce videos." (I produce videos has earned me the occasional odd look like...did you just say you make porn?) All this happens because I haven't done the preparation. I haven't sat down and culled the buzzwords of my life.

And so I'm taking the plunge, though it's a pretty short list.

Brooklyn-based
prestigious film school
romantic comedy spec
work screened at festivals
former scriptreader at Tribeca-based prodco

And then the well's pretty much dry. And when you look at the buzz list from two down, they are only quasi-buzzy.

I now understand this crazy desire I used to have to come from some place "in the news." In a sense, it gives you a free buzz word. It's a plus before your level of skill even comes in to play. "Wow. You're a filmmaker from Iran? Tell me more."

Unfortunately, Third World Girl is from a very stable little island not torn apart by war or drugs...therefore no buzz. Not even a kilowatt.

I'm toying with the idea of introducing "London-born" onto my list. If there's a foreign country people in entertainment here love it's the Brits. However, this would be a stretch for me. All told, I probably spent three years in London. Two of them before I was a cognitive being. I'd have to do that Madonna thing and cultivate the accent out of nowhere, which I think might be pretty alarming to the husband and friends...not to mention the Chicklet.