No matter what faults the movie has, and it’s not perfect by any means, it’s certainly entertaining and it does get you going emotionally (surprisingly so at times) while still being one of the uglier views of humanity I’ve seen lately. As anybody who hasn’t been on the moon for the last year knows, it takes place in a dystopian future where two teenagers, male and female, are chosen by lottery from twelve districts to participate in a televised contest to the death as punishment for a rebellion that took play more than seventy years earlier (presided over by Donald Sutherland, one of those actors who, like Michael Caine, is good in everything he does and who does just about everything he can). The heroine here, Katniss Everdeen, comes from the poorest district, an Appalachian mining town, and volunteers to replace her barely eligible younger sister; her father died in a mining accident and her mother has a habit of checking out emotionally. To paraphrase Birdie Coonan from All About Eve, she has everything but the bloodhounds snapping at her rear end. One should resent the filmmakers for pushing the underdog button so strongly here, but no, it works, possibly due to the strong performance of Jennifer Lawrence, who is now cornering the market on backwoods teenagers. The forward momentum never really flags until we get to the money shot, the battle royale that makes up most of the second half. It’s not dull and it gets the job done, but shouldn’t it have been just a bit more exciting? Not particularly well directed, it wasn’t always easy to know who was fighting who and what was at stake during various skirmishes; Lawrence spends a lot of time up a tree (both figuratively and literally) and almost always manages to survive by having someone else do her dirty work for her. But what is perhaps really missing here is what is going on outside the competition. The battle itself is pretty much a done deal; we know what’s going to happen there, it’s only a matter of how many variations on a theme the filmmakers can come up with. But it’s the citizenry’s reaction, what the television audience is thinking; it’s what is going on behind the scenes, the politics and infighting, that is really missing. And isn’t that what it’s really all about? No matter how many teenagers kill each other, the real story is the society that created such a nightmarish reality show. There are indications that there may be a ton of stuff left on the cutting room floor (to be included in the DVD release, I’m sure). Toby Jones, who has been in the Harry Potter series and played Truman Capote in the movie that didn’t star Phillip Seymour Hoffman, is shown quite often with Stanley Tucci, who plays the commentator (you know, Jeff Probst); yet Jones has maybe one line the whole movie; to paraphrase Ronald Regan in Kings Row, where’s the rest of him? There was one moment when Lawrence is cradling a fellow doe-eyed contestant; from the movie audience’s point of view, one gets choked up; but, oh, how I wanted it to cut to Tucci who would say, “Yes, folks, that is really touching, that is really sweet—what do you think will happen when they have to kill each other”. I also wondered where all the commercials were; American Idol doesn’t exist just because people like it; it exists to make a profit. Certainly special credit must be given to the screenwriters Gary Ross (who also directed), Suzanne Collins and Billy Ray for squeezing in an incredible amount of information and characters in such a short period of time (the whole thing might have worked better as a mini-series); they can’t do much more but sketch in things, but their damn good sketchers. The Art Direction and Production Design also deserves special recognition, though, as a friend asked me, what were all the kids doing on top of the Walt Disney Concert Hall during the climactic fight scene? In the end, the set up doesn’t give the filmmakers an exit strategy. There is no way the movie can have a happy ending, no matter who survives—the Hunger Games will continue on, a reality that the movie doesn’t capitalize on enough. For a similar type story, see Series 7: The Contenders, also about a reality show fight to the death.
About Me
- Howard Casner
- PLEASE NOTE: I have moved my blog to http://howardcasner.wordpress.com/. Please follow the link for all my updated postings. Thank you.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ (1962)
A biopic about Robert Stroud, a man who, while serving a life sentence for murder, became obsessed by birds, eventually discovering cures for several avian diseases and wrote a book on ornithology (at one point, he had 400 birds in his cell). The title, as with the movie Krakatoa: East of Java, is a bit of a misnomer; Stroud never had any birds while he was interned at Alcatraz. All that happened earlier while he served time at Leavenworth (and Krakatoa is actually west of Java). It’s an earnest film; maybe a bit too earnest—the filmmakers didn’t seem to think that Stroud’s obsession was enough to make a film about, so they kept throwing in criticism of the penal industry, a tug of war that throws the film a bit out of focus. Stroud is presented here as a man with anger management problems who loves his mother a bit too much (as opposed to James Cagney in White Heat, who is a psychopath with a mother fixation); he’s more sinned against that sinning. In real life, Stroud was a sociopath who had no qualms at killing (a couple of his fellow inmates referred to the film as a comedy, Stroud’s true character was so fictionalized). Stroud was also a genius, but, hey, nobody’s perfect. In the end, the filmmakers didn’t seem to know exactly what to do with the guy or what attitude to take—how bad can we make him without losing the audience, but still be true to the original character type thing. As a result, Stroud comes across as neither fish nor fowl. This also seemed to be too much of a straight jacket for Burt Lancaster in the title role; he got an Oscar nom for it, but Stroud never really comes to life. Telly Savalas, as his next door cell neighbor who also has a bird for a pet, gives the best performance, probably because he doesn’t have to worry about the audience liking him or not; he’d sooner kill you than look at you, but is in anguish at the thought of his pet bird dying. Thelma Ritter, one of our greatest character actors, also got an Oscar nom for playing Stroud’s mom, a role that has almost no impact (she’s certainly no Margaret Wyncherly, that’s for sure); but it’s hardly her fault, there just wasn’t much there for her to work with. Guy Trosper wrote the screenplay (he also wrote Jailhouse Rock, a different kind of penal story). John Frankenheimer replaced Charles Crichton (who made his name at the famed Ealing studios) as the director. The striking black and white photography is by Burnett Guffey (also Oscar nommed). Stroud was never allowed to see the film.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
THE LAST DEADLY MISSION (aka MR 73) (2008)
Also know as MR 73, ...Mission is a crime drama written and directed by one of France’s leading practitioners of the genre, Olivier Marchell, best known over here perhaps for 36th Precinct and Tell No One. It revolves around a police officer Louis Schneider who has become self-destructive ever since a traffic accident put his wife on life support and killed his child. Schneider drinks so much that in the opening scene he puts a gun to a bus driver’s head and makes him turn around because Schneider forgot to pull the cord indicating he wanted to be let off. Things go downhill for him from there. He’s taken off a serial killer case and the woman who took his wife’s place in bed for awhile has become the lover of Schneider’s chief rival (who also replaces Schneider on the serial killer investigation). Meanwhile, a psychopathic killer is being released from prison after twenty years because he has found God and is getting so old, no one thinks he’s a threat anymore, except for the little girl, now a fragile adult, who saw him viciously murder her mother. To make the plot even tidier, this was one of Schneider’s earlier cases. It all takes place is large open spaces, both interior and exterior; whoever is responsible for the locations seems to have a fetish for square feet (the police department looks like it was built in a loft). Schneider is played by Daniel Auteuil, who seems to have the perfect face to play either comedy or drama (in comedy, his visage looks doughy and cute and there’s a twinkle in his eyes; in drama it looks like it’s survived a bit too long passed its expiration date). Like Marchell’s other films, this one keeps moving. There’s ne’er a dull moment to be had and Marcehll seems to revel in how corrupt he can paint French law enforcement and politics. Schneider’s investigation into the serial killer case (like all good self-destructive cops, tiny things like alcoholism and banishment to the complaints department hardly stops him from continuing looking into things) is very clever. The direction does hit you over the head at times (it’s very much of the in your face variety) and the talk about God is a bit too on the nose not to seem forced; it feels a bit tacked on in a seeming effort to give a story meaning that probably could have stood on its own two feet just fine. But the whole thing is very entertaining in its own go for the jugular way.
JEFF, WHO LIVES AT HOME
Jeff, Who Lives at Home is a shaggy dog story with a shaggy dog performance by Jason Segel in the title role (he’s referred to as Sasquatch at one point in the film and comes across as a hairless Chewbacca). It’s a feel good movie that gives feel good movies a good name. It’s written and directed by the Duplass brothers (Jay and Mark) who are earlier practitioners of what is called “mumblecore” films (low budget indies who tend to use unknown actors who have a reputation of mumbling--since they don’t have the training not to, I suppose). The duo made their screen debut with the Puffy Chair (during which I wanted to shoot myself in order to end my agony, a reaction that’s not unusual for me when it comes to mumblecore) and ever since have been making solid strides in getting away from their origins, starting with the fun film Baghead. After that, they made a tremendous artistic leap with the romantic comedy Cyrus. I was hoping for an even bigger leap with Jeff…, but though that leap isn’t there (the movie never really tries to be any more than what it is), it’s still a charming little film that should win most people over. It has as its theme and philosophy the idea of letting destiny be your guide. Jeff (who lives at home, appropriately enough, in his mother’s basement) is told by an infomercial to pick up a phone just when said phone rings; when Jeff does, it’s a wrong number for a Kevin; subsequently while on a bus, Jeff sees a teenager with the name Kevin on his basketball shirt; Jeff follows him and thus is set off on a series of adventures that entangles him first with his estranged brother who is having a midlife crisis and thinks his wife is cheating on him (played by Ed Helms, who is doing the Edward Norton thingy of wearing a goatee so we take him more seriously that if he’s clean shaven, as in his movie Cedar Rapids) and then with his mother who feels the world is passing her by until she gets a mysterious paper airplane mash note (Jeff’s mother is played by the wonderful Susan Sarandon who has graduated from leading roles to significant supporting ones as actors these days often do once they pass a certain age, one of the unfortunate results of the studio system collapsing). The basic farce structure, in which the last person you want or expect to run into is always the person you do, grows in increasingly frenetic plot turns until it reaches the moving climax that proves Jeff’s philosophy of life is the correct one. If the movie has any sort of real flaw, and it’s probably trifling to bring it up, it’s Segel, who is perhaps just a bit too shaggy a dog and laid back in the role; one may not notice because of the strong casting around him (Helms, Sarandon and Judy Greer as the possible straying wife; if you don’t have Muppets for a supporting cast, these will more than get the job done); Segel may be a tad lethargic, but no one else is. The sweet music score is by Michael Andrews. For those of you who care, the movie also answers the burning question, whatever happened to Rae Dawn Chong, who is perhaps even lovelier now than when she was an up and comer.
Friday, March 23, 2012
NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNICH (1941)
Directed by Carol Reed, it was released two years after Alfred Hitchcock’s classic The Lady Vanishes and is often called a kind of, sort of, but not really sequel. And one can see why. Like …Vanishes, it opens with hokey miniatures for sets; much of it takes place on a train; it’s an espionage thriller with Nazis as the bad guys; it has the same writers (the ever witty Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder—real British treasures); and both star Margaret Lockwood in a role in which she clashes with the person she eventually falls in love with (Michael Redgrave in …Vanishes, Rex Harrison here, though it feels a bit more forced with Harrison). But perhaps the most enjoyable comparison is the reappearance of the have to be seen to be believed Charters and Caldicott, one of the earliest embodiments of the British upper class twit mixed with hobbits; they’re the sort of Englishmen who have a hard time realizing there’s anything more important going on in the world than cricket (at least in The Lady Vanishes; in Night Train to Munich it’s a worry that they might not be able to retrieve a set of golf clubs now that Germany has invaded Poland); but have no fear, when it finally, finally dons on them what is really going on, they’re as game as any man, proving that there will always be an England. These two characters were so popular, they reappeared in many films, as well as spawned a television series; in addition, the two actors portraying them (Basil Radford, Charters; Naunton Wayne, Caldicott) would often pop up in movies together as well, like Dead of Night and Quartet. In Night Train to Munich, Lockwood is a daughter who got left behind after her father, a Czechoslovakian scientist, escaped to Britain (don’t you just hate when that happens to you). Lockwood is then smuggled out with the help of Paul Lukas, but finds out it’s all a trap and it’s up to Rex Harrison, super agent, to go to Germany and rescue her. The plot is rather ridiculous the closer it gets to the climax. Hitchcock was always able to disguise the somewhat absurd parts of his stories, but Reed here can do little about any of it except keep things going and try to have as much fun as possible. Perhaps the oddest twist is that Lockwood is sent to find Harrison in order to meet up with her father; he sings songs at a pier in order to sell sheet music and is described as someone everyone knows, he’s that much a part of the area. But why the British intelligence would bury as brilliant an espionage agent as Harrison at some out of the way pier is never really explained. It’s fun if you’re not expecting The Lady Vanishes, but then nobody expects The Lady Vanishes.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
THE SNOWTOWN MURDERS
The violent, unpleasant, ugly and very impressive first film by Australian director Justin Kurzel and his co-screenwriter Shaun Grant and originally called only Snowtown (the title change seemed to come about because the action really doesn’t take place in that city, but is where the murder victims were eventually found—that and maybe it just sounded like a Christmas movie otherwise). The film seems to pose an interesting question: which would you rather have in your neighborhood—pedophiles or people who kill pedophiles. By the time the movie is over, don’t be surprised if you go for the former. It’s based on the career of John Bunting, Australia’s most famous and notorious serial killer (a dubious honor, but an honor none the less), played by Daniel Henshall in a scary and captivating performance. Teenage Jamie (played by first timer Lucas Pittaway in a role that doesn’t really require much more of him than to look around blankly) is molested along with his younger brothers by a man who lives across the street and is courting his mother. When it all comes out, into Jamie’s life comes Bunting, a roly-poly teddy bear of a man who is all warmth and eagerness to become a nurturing father figure. There is a twinkle in his eye as bright as the aurora borealis (he’s the sort of character the audience instantly knows is a sociopath, while the characters on screen are always a little slow to catch on). He woos Jamie’s mother Elizabeth (whose sucked in bony cheeks and worn beauty say everything about her socio/economic background), as well as Jamie, and then uses their house as home base for he and his friends to viciously murder people he doesn’t like (at first pedophiles, but then anyone who isn’t perfect enough-a drug addict, a spastic). And he does it in a way so clever one wonders why no one else has done it this way before: he tortures them (for those who like seeing toenails removed with pliers) until they say what he wants them to into a tape recorder, a message that can be left on an answering machine in which the victims tell their nearest and dearest that they are leaving town, not coming back and don’t come looking for them. And what helps is that most of the people he kills are ones whom no one cares about anyway and are just as glad to be rid of. It’s a dark and brooding film, set among homes and lawns filled with years of accumulated junk and trivia—everything feels cluttered, choked and messy; nothing gets thrown away, just layered on top of each other. It’s the sort of art decoration (production design Fiona Crombie, art direction Chris Jobson) that never gets awards, but is just as brilliantly done as any Merchant and Ivory period piece. The faces of the characters have the same worn look; the weather is equally drab; and no one and nothing seems to have a future. Highly recommended.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Mysteries of Lisbon (2010)
The four and a half hour film directed by the great Portuguese filmmaker Raoul Ruiz and written by Carlos Saboga. The length might terrify you, but the movie is quite possibly a masterpiece. It’s basically a series of short stories gathered together under one roof by somewhat loosely putting a boy (and later young man), the illegitimate son of an heiress and who has been hidden away in a Catholic school, as the narrator and center of much of the action. All the stories revolve around people who fall in love so passionate that it takes over their lives and dictates their actions, including a jealous countess; a pirate who has worked his way into Portuguese society; a man who runs off with another man’s wife; and the heiress and her murdered lover. The results are invariably tragic, though touched by spiritual forgiveness (with the characters often ending up joining the Church as priests and nuns). The way the various encounters interact and turn up in each others stories suggest Dickens and other Victorian writers, which makes sense since the novel, by the prolific author Camilo Castelo Branco, was written in 1854. However, the non-linear structure of the movie suggests a very modern approach, something closer to Luis Bunuel or even Quentin Tarantino; in the end, it’s what is known as a puzzle movie. The story also takes its own sweet time, not rushing any of its myriad plots. Some people might find this taxing, but I was slowly enticed into this world and the director’s style of telling his story until I had to know how it all turned out. The movie is beautiful to look at. The cinematography, by Andre Szankowski, captures the drama in a never ending series of tableau like paintings. The characters all live in mansions of captivating good taste (art director, Isabel Branco; set decorator, Paula Szabo). And the lovely costumes (Tania Franco) go a long way in helping one keep the different time periods clear. Ricardo Pereira gives the performance that stands out the most as the reformed pirate with eyes so piercing he can make people faint (he lives in a newly redecorated mansion where he constantly yells at the servants for not working hard enough and who has one servant who never stops moving—the servant runs wherever he goes, and when he stops, he bobs up and down on his legs).
Saturday, March 17, 2012
PULP (1972)
A movie that wants to have its cake and eat it too. It’s both a satire of pulp fiction while at the same time trying to produce the kind of serious thrills this sort of genre was famous for (the title comes from the magazines that were known for their lurid and exploitative short stories and were printed on cheap paper, or pulp). Caine plays Mickey King, a successful writer of, appropriately enough, pulp novels. Now living in Italy (where taxis do nothing but run into each other or get their doors taken off by reckless drivers), his publisher is contacted by Preston Gilbert (Mickey Rooney—yes, Caine and Rooney in the same movie, talk about doing the time warp), an actor who played and hung around with gangsters and who now needs a ghost writer for his life story. And with that King heads off to Gilbert’s home on the Island of Malta (yes, Virginia, there is a Maltese Falcon joke). Needless to say, pulp ensues as people start turning up dead. It never quite works, though it’s not a complete loss. The dialog is very witty, especially King’s genre dictated voiceovers (“It looked like her honor was on the missing list. So was her cash. I got the feeling it was too late to retrieve either.“). The acting is up to the task. Caine usually scores in this sort of dry, self assured character. Rooney is actually kind of fun and has some clever line readings. And it never hurts to have gravelly voiced Lionel Stander around. But though the plot has some clever turns, I was getting lost rather quickly and by the time it was over I wasn’t quite sure who killed who and why. The whole middle section has no forward momentum and the movie finally feels like it takes forever to do anything. What probably also doesn’t help is that it’s one of those movies where for reasons that are never very convincing, a character doesn’t call in the police when they find dead bodies are when someone tries to kill them. It’s also known as Lizabeth Scott’s last film, that bass voiced actress from film noirs of the 1950’s whose career never really went anywhere (and who, legend has it, was drummed out of Hollywood due to being a lesbian). The writer/director Mike Hodges has done some interesting (and at times better) work with such films as Flash Gordon, Get Carter and especially 1998’s Croupier.
Friday, March 16, 2012
QUADROPHENIA (1979)
The movie inspired by The Who concept album of the same name and is not a rock opera, but a coming of age story that takes place during the Mods and Rockers riots in Brighton in 1965. I first saw the movie when it was initially released and found it to be one of the most exciting films of that year. Thirty-three years later, it still retains much of its power. At the same time, some of its faults are now starting to show through (don’t you hate when that happens). The main character, Jimmy, is a Mod, a London youth who dresses in suits, ties and hats, rides a scooter and listens to Motown and the new music of upcoming artists like The Who. This is in opposition to the Rockers, youths of the same age who dress in leather, ride motorcycles and still listen to Rockabilly music like that of Elvis Presley. For some reason, mainly because they don’t have anything better to do, the two groups have become bitter enemies. Jimmy also hates his life: he works in the mailroom of a stodgy British firm and has parents who don’t understand him (do they ever in these kinds of movies). He spends his nights going to parties, taking pills, dancing and lusting after Steph, a girl who may or may not be interested in him, but is dating someone else. Jimmy is basically the same character you find played by Marlon Brando in The Wild One, James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, youth who can find no real meaning in life, who have nothing significant to do and have no goals, so as a result they spend their days and nights doing little but wandering vaguely through a soulless existence, often getting into trouble (as the dialog goes in The Wild One, “Hey, Johnny, what are you rebelling against?” “What have you got”). Quadrophenia’s strongest asset, the part of the movie that still endures after all these years, is the amazing way the filmmakers take us into the world of the Mods of the time. We go to parties and smoke filled clubs, wander the streets on scooters, watch people dance to Be My Baby and I Met Him on a Sunday. The clothes, the styles, the day to day lives of the characters, their homes are all revealed in strong, visual detail. One can almost smell the cigarette smoke and taste the liquor. And then all the Mods go down to Brighton for no other reason but to party; well, if one were totally honest, they are also go there to rough it up with the Rockers and when the riots break out, this is a stunning set piece of first the Mods attacking the Rockers, the Rockers rallying and fighting back and then police showing. It all has a visceral “you are there” feel to it. And as day follows night, Jimmy’s allusions are then shattered one by one until he’s left with nothing. As exciting as much of it is, it mainly suffers from the casting of Philip Kearns as Jimmy. He has a birdlike appearance and an awkwardness necessary to the character, but he is no James Dean or John Travolta. He often can do little but have confused, pained expressions on his face which only sometimes convince. He is surrounded by a large number of familiar faces all of whom one can see still today, only much, much older (which was rather depressing in a way), in various TV shows and movies. The two most prominent are Ray Winstone (so young he was called Raymond Winstone in the credits; he first appears totally nude in a room next to Kearns as the two get cleaned up at a local bathhouse—the nudity is pertinent; the idea is that Winstone is a Rocker, but without clothes on, everyone is the same), and Timothy Spall in a blink or you’ll miss him role as a projectionist—you’ll recognize him from his roles in both Mike Leigh and Harry Potter films (probably the only time you’ll run across a sentence like that). Sting also makes an appearance in a highly symbolic role—he’s the coolest of the cool, the one guy everyone wants to be until Jimmy finds out the truth about him. The ambiguous ending is shot at the real life location where someone killed himself, an event that inspired the movie’s finale. Directed by Franc Roddam (feature film debut) and written by Roddam, Dave Humphries and Martin Stellman.
Monday, March 12, 2012
HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT (1937)
Jean Arthur is the wonderful comedienne of the 1930’s and 40’s who always played strong women who knew what they wanted and would go after it (including men). She’s one of a series of actresses who played women who seem to come out of George Bernard Shaw’s idea of the Super Woman, the distaff side of the Super Man. For Shaw, these women may not be the equal of Super Men, but they were superior to all other men and have the same characteristics that the men did. Their main advantage is that they were usually more attuned to who would be the best person to have a relationship with; they tended to know when the life force of the universe had brought her the perfect mate and nothing was going to stop her from fulfilling her destiny. Her 19367 film, History is Made at Night, has a high reputation. I have no idea why. It’s a perfectly silly story about a man, Colin Clive, so jealous of his wife, Jean Arthur, he drives her to divorce. But he can’t let go, so when she’s in London waiting out the grace period after the divorce has been granted, he decides to make one final stab at getting her back. According to British law, if the wife has sex with another man during this grace period, the divorce is null and void, so Clive (get this) pays his chauffer to rape her and claim that the sex was consensual. Actually, it’s such an unusual idea for a story, that there is something kind of fascinating about it. Then Charles Boyer, at his romantic Frenchiest, is putting a client to bed (he’s the greatest headwaiter in London and one of his patrons got a bit too drunk) in the hotel room next door. He stops the chauffer and rescues Arthur and the two fall in love. But Clive then kills the chauffer in Arthur’s hotel room and blames Boyer (though he doesn’t know who Boyer is and therefore, neither do the police). The plot just gets more and more ridiculous after this. At the same time, it is perhaps possible that something this preposterous could work, but the main problem is Arthur. Clive is very good at channeling his neurotic acting technique from his Frankenstein films and Boyer is perfectly fine. But Arthur seems hopelessly miscast. She goes around with the same look on her face, a pained smile. In her comedies, this reaction is often funny, but in this takes-itself-too-seriously-drama, it just looks…pained. She’s just the wrong actress for the job. Director Frank Borzage (of Seventh Heaven) is known for his ability to make romantic gold out of the silliest dross, but here, there wasn’t a lot he could do. The whole thing ends with Boyer and Arthur on an ocean liner heading back to London and the ship getting struck by an iceberg in a semi-Titanic like finale. This is actually a pretty exciting sequence and the highlight of the film. While the lovers took the boat to Europe, Clive took the Hindenburg. However, the Hindenburg never made this trip back to the continent because it exploded on May 6, 1937. The movie was released on March 5, two months earlier, so the filmmakers couldn’t have known. The main screenwriters, C. Graham Baker and Gene Towne, have done better (Mary Burns, Fugitive and They Only Live Once).
PITCHING: a facebook discussion
- Awesome! Good for you. How many do you get to pitch, or are you planning to pitch?
- Howard Casner Does he do TV and features? If he does both, have a few pitches for each. If he only does one, have a few pitches for that. But there's no point pitching a pilot to someone who doesn't do TV, for example. Start with your strongest or the one you are most passionate about and then if he asks for others, be ready with those. Have at least three pitches for either features or TV, or both if he does both.
- Howard Casner It's best to check a few books or others who are more expert, but start with log lines. If he wants to hear more, he'll start asking questions. He'll probably start with some variation on "What do you have for me" and you give him a log line. You might want to try to find some people who have done this and see if you can practice on them.
- The Memphis Filmfest had a little pitchfest contest in front of four produced screenplay authors, who then critiqued your pitched and gave a prize for the best. For it there was a logline then a two minute synopsis and then Q&A. But that was a more of a practice for one of those cold pitchefest scenarios. I assume you have an interested party so that might make it a different animal. Just don't get in a hurry to sign anything until an agent and lawyer look it over... your agent or lawyer. Excited though you may be, this is a business transaction. Let all of us be excited for you... and envious as hell.
- I've been in L.A. this week doing just that. I would suggest (humbly) chit-chatting...finding a common bond, getting to know the person a little and ease into it. Don't make it feel like a sales meeting, but make sure you get your ideas out there. You'll know quickly if the idea is anything they want/need/are interested in. And then slide out of that and onto the next. Make sure you know what they've produced, ask what they are developing, it gives a real sense of what to lead off with, what may not be in their wheelhouse. Pitch just the log line or general idea and if they are interested more, they'll ask. But overall, ENJOY IT! It's a very social business and if the person likes you, it won't be a one time meeting and you'll have an open door for a long time.
- Pitching is something that’s a bit artform, a bit technique, and a bit “What was that???”. Mostly that last part.
But just a few quick things to put in the back of your mind:
Make sure your pitches give him what he wants and needs to know. Don’t get bogged down in details, don’t try to explain things that can be better served with a quick analogy or metaphor.
Understand he wants reasons to sell your projects. Get a feel for what he is more disposed toward and use it as a selling point. As cynical as this sounds, your fascination with the glass ceiling in the field of Women’s Swim Competition coaching might not be as interesting as the idea of athletic women in wet speedos. (and, by the way, selling on one point doesn’t preclude the other).
As has been stated, rehearse your pitches. They need to be fairly quick, definitely concise, absolutely intriguing and leave with a feeling of wanting to know more.
Don’t argue or be defensive. If he has suggestions or other ways he would do it, listen and nod your head. You can always say “I didn’t think about that, let me give it some thought”.
At the same time, your rehearsed pitch still has to be presented in a casual, spontaneous conversational manner. He knows you’re pitching, but how you pitch will indicate your ease with it.
The second hardest thing for people to come up with is the opening sentence. Come up with a killer way to open the pitch. Rehearse it.
The hardest thing to come up with? The way to end it. Too many people get to the end and don’t feel they’ve said enough to sell their idea (HINT: you never will, no one ever feels that way). The result is that, unless stopped, they will keep rambling, hoping for that “ah HAH” spark from their listener. Don’t count on it. Rehearse your pitch end, hit it, and STOP.
When you do finish, there are going to be a lot of questions.... or not. Either way, you need to answer in a positive proactive manner. Even if you don't know the answer, embrace it as something you are eager to explore.
Make sure you know what your audience is hearing in your pitch. What you think you are pitching might not be what’s getting across. I don’t know if you have time, but here’s a good practice for you:
Take a friend to lunch. Someone who doesn’t know your pitch. When the waiter takes your drink order and heads off, launch into your pitch. When the waiter comes back with the drinks, STOP. No matter where you are, wrap it up and finish. Then ask your friend to tell you what your series/story is about. Listen carefully, because that’s what you got across under pressure. Do this often enough and I can guarantee you, pitching to execs will be a relief.
And, of course, HAVE FUN. The world does not rest on this pitch. Someone wants to hear you tell stories: how cool is that? Enjoy it.
No, seriously... enjoy it.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
THE ENTERTAINER (1960)
An example of the “angry young man” films, movies (and plays) made in the late fifties and sixties that focused on discontent among Britain’s working class and the political situations of the day with an approach that was far more “kitchen sink” (i.e. realistic) in its approach than of theaters past. The theater of angry men was in many ways a response to the more genteel and middle brow approach of such previous writers as Terrance Rattigan and Somerset Maughm, both of whom were in many ways angry young men of their days, but were finding their style to be a bit dated. The Entertainer is a story about a song and dance hall singer/actor who isn’t even good enough to be second rate. According to playwright Arthur Miller, he had gone to London to accompany his wife Marilyn Monroe as she was filming The Prince and the Showgirl, co-starring and directed by Lawrence Olivier (that’s for those of you who have seen the recent movie My Week With Marilyn). Olivier took Miller to see a Somerset Maughm farce with Vivien Leigh. When Olivier asked what Miller thought of it, he was dismissive, not realizing Olivier had directed it. When Olivier asked him what he wanted to see, Miller said that John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger had an interesting title. Olivier was as dismissive as Miller had been about his show, but they went. Afterwards, Olivier asked Osborne to write a play for him and thus we got The Entertainer. With this moment, Olivier, who was beginning to be identified with the dusty theater of yore, aligned himself with the new generation and by doing so invigorated his career and gave himself validity in the eyes of a younger audience (and in turn gave validity to the rising new turks). In many ways, one might wonder at Olivier taking the role of the barely talented Archie Rice—it’s almost as if Osborne said, you want me to write a play for you, I’ll write a play that is about you and everything you represent and I will make it was ugly as I can. But Olivier tackled it with gusto, almost as if there was something inside him that agreed with Osborne; he plays it as if it’s not just another role, but is an autobiography of his life (and Olivier often called it his favorite role). As a screenplay, it’s very much of it’s time, though the idea of making the broken down music hall of by-gone generations a metaphor for Great Britain is fun. Except for the character of Archie Rice, who is too self-loathing a character and too brilliant a portrayal to look away from, it’s hard to say that the movie rises above what it is, a fine example of the “angry” genre. It’s also s a lot of fun seeing a group of rising young stars in the supporting roles (Alan Bates, Albert Finney, Daniel Massey and Joan Plowright—who plays Rice’s daughter, later to become Olivier’s wife, but don’t worry, it’s not creepy or anything). Brenda De Banzie goes for broke playing Rice’s long-suffering wife. The veteran actor (even more veteran than Olivier) Roger Livesey plays Rice’s father, who for some reason Osborne treats with dignity and who is suppose to have all the talent Rice doesn’t have—though at the same time, the character is never allowed to prove it. As a museum piece, it’s highly entertaining (pardon the pun).
Saturday, March 10, 2012
8 1/2 (1963)
Federico Fellini’s phantasmagoric exploration of a filmmaker’s mind. Guido Anselmi, one of Italy’s top directors (i.e., Fellini—like anyone’s fooled), has a nervous breakdown due to having writer’s block and doubts about his current film (and when you find out it’s a sci-fi movie with a spaceship, a movie one could never imagine Fellini making, it does sort of make sense). Some people think this is the greatest movie about making movies, but I think that ranking goes to Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night. I’ve seen 8 ½ a couple of times before and though I know it’s considered one of Fellini’s finest film (up there with La Dolce Vita and La Strada) it was always difficult for me to become emotionally involved in the story. This time I think I figured out why; the inciting incident, the thing that causes everything to happen, takes place mainly off screen, and that is the filmmaker’s nervous breakdown and his decision to flee to a spa (the breakdown itself, a dream sequence in which the filmmaker feels trapped in a car being filled with gas is shown, but there’s no context for it to really mean anything). Because of this, for most of the first half of the film I’m playing catch up just trying to figure out what is going on. It’s not that the movie doesn’t have it joys. It’s wonderfully neo-surrealistic with many actors chosen for how they look (or how just off they look). There’s also the very large woman, La Saraghina, a prostitute from the filmmakers childhood, who would dance on the beach; a screenwriter who keeps telling Guido that the script is hopeless and that there is nothing he can do about it and he doesn’t even know why he’s there; and that gigantic skeleton of a spaceship. The cast is wonderful. Guido is played by Fellini alter ego Marcello Mastroianni (who is very irritating in his attitude toward his wife’s unhappiness with his playing around—he takes it as just the way the world is, men cheat and women get unhappy about it; he can’t conceive that he may be the least little bit at fault); his long suffering wife is played by Anouk Aimee; and Claudia Cardinale makes an appearance as Guido’s ideal woman. The whole thing ends with Guido bringing all the characters down a staircase to dance around a circus ring while some clowns play music. It’s a wonderful scene that feels you with great joy; everyone is happy, all is right with the world. And Fellini does do this in his next films, takes the characters from his past (and even farther than that with Fellini Satyricon and Cassanova) and makes that the subjects of his films. What else can he do? He can’t come up with an original idea; he’s run out of those. Now it’s time to go into the past.
Friday, March 9, 2012
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT: a discussion on facebook
- I don't stringently outline my characters either. But the main character will have a defined dissatisfaction of some sort. Other than that, I depend on the enneagram system to help me structure qualities and faults within a character. I like the enneagram theory as a character tool. It outlines 9 basic personalities that change according to whether a person is in a state of stress or comfort. The whole system just seems to work well in terms of character and conflict.
- I have tried developing my characters indepth before hand but it always changes as I write. Not a bad thing necessarily. I have had more success in just having a fragment of a character idea in mind and then as he / she meets each conflict, ask what would my character do. Not what I would do but what would my character do. That question gets me thinking about my character. The decisions that my character makes under stress is what actually builds my character for me. But just as everything else, something may work for me but it may not work for you.
- Marty, I develop my characters, but not that much before I start writing. For the central ones, I have a general idea as to their personality and what they want, but I discover things about them as I go along. And I have to make up characters as I go along in order to fill out the plot. It's like doing an outline or treatment, etc., if I did that I would never get to writing the screenplay. For characters, if I worked too much on them before I started writing, I would never write the screenplay. I don't have a specific criteria before I put them in a script. But characters and dialog seem to be the easiest thing for me to write, it's structure I have issues with.
- Characters and dialogue come easily for me,too. Structure jyst comes naturally to me at this point. It's a coming up with a good story that's worth writing that I find the most challanging. When I do find one I beat out the whole story so I know where it's going, and having developed characters with depth helps along the way with intertwining with the plot. I think we all have our favorite parts of writing, and our less than faves. I don't particularly like all the preperation, but when I sit down to write, it's fast and I'm at my best.
- I know I'll need characters who demonstrate some sort of extremes of the same flaws the leads (protag, antag, love interest) possess, as well as attacking Theme from different angles and extremes...
I don't always have a list of those flaws or angles on theme, but, upon completing a first draft, I use those two things as markers when I go back to flesh out the conflicts that occur between my characters.
I beat the story out 'for story' first, then go back and detail thematic elements and flaws/character growth elements, and incorporate those into each interaction between all my various characters. - Once I have a good idea as to how the script is forming, which usually includes named characters, I do character biographies that will start with basics but will venture into detail to the point where they start to assume their own voice and identity based on questions that I literally ask the character. I'm amazed at some of the answers I end up getting. Probably not new to anyone here but it works for me.
GETTING THE READER'S ATTENTION: Facebook discussion
- I think there's got to be some kind of strong hook to entice the reader to keep going. But that hook depends on the type of story. Tim and Wilton have defined it well. The best I can do is describe it as a 'moment' when the reader might say to himself, 'what the hell is that about?' And that moment keeps the reader interested in finding out more.
- Howard Casner Great characters. Readers will give the writer a great deal of leeway come plot and structure if the characters are so interesting or believable or realistic, that they want to find out what happens to them. People often won't believe me, but characters are far more important than structure and plot to keep a reader reading in the first ten pages. I assert that no matter how strong the hook or rapid twist of events there are in the opening, if the characters aren't there, it won't matter. But if the characters are there, the reader will go along with openings that are hookless and don't have a rapid twist of events. Sorry to disagree so strongly. That's just been my experience.
- Howard's right about engaging characters, but they need a strong plot line as well. So in the first seven to ten pages, there needs to be what I call a first scene reversal.
The script opens with the protagonist after a goal. But somewhere in those first pages there is an incident, occurance, or event that nudges or sometimes pushes the protagonist off the path of pursuing the original goal and onto a new path going after a new goal.
IE: Mrs. Mulray walks in and asks Jake to find out who the blond haired woman is that her husband has been with. Clarise Starling is given an "interesting errand" to interview Hannibal Lecture. In my favorite film for this centruy Winter's Bone, Ree learns that if she doesn't locate her father and get him to trial, she will lose her house and she and her family will have no place to live.
It doesn't have to be a Indiana Jones or James Bond opening, but it must have enough of a reversal that we as readers and audience want to stay around to find out how what will happen next and how the new goal might be achieved. - Although I agree with what most of you have been saying about strong characters, I have to say that stating a solid theme, whether it be through characters or visually, will suck in a reader.
Have a couple of cool characters chatting with some quick sharp dialogue and you'll definitely get some attention. Take the same characters, or even less interesting ones, and throw in a solid theme and I bet every time a reader will prefer the latter.
Take the opening to the movie Schindler's List for instance. - A strong, innately dramatic character demonstrating a forceful personality factor in an intense situation. That creates a character to care about and makes the audience wonder what he/she is going to do next in this time and place. I have yet to see a really good movie or read a solid script that those two factors didn't immediately bring to mind the story theme, Marty. Doesn't matter if it's comedy, drama or a juvenile cartoon. Gotta deliver the three-way punch up front.
- Sorry, I had to bail right in the middle of my last comment. My point was to raise a topic, a point, an argument- state an interesting theme that someone is dying to sink their teeth into, and you'll have a reader "interested". It's not just a character that talks cool, but what the character is saying or doing. Or what you're showing the audience.
A shark attack, and a cop responding to the call. He's not interesting yet, it's too early in the story for us to know much about Brody (Jaws).
Or a man getting dressed up and pinning a Nazi pin on his suit and going out to impress some Nazi brass, then Jews being rounded up and hearded off. We don't know that Schindler is a great character yet that is going to have an epic character curve. But the theme comes right at us and compells us to continue readin/ watching.
A hobbit, who wants nothing to do with "adventure", but is drawn into one by some dwarves and a wizard. Sure, it's interesting to hear about a hobbit, probably because we've never seen one in real life, but it's when the hobbit is drawn in to doing something that up until then would be unspeakable that it really becomes interesting (The Hobbit).
I have to say theme. It has to be there, with or without characters, to get a readers attention. Of course we all have different opinions, and that's what helps us to improve on our craft. - A combination of Tim and Howard's point... Strong opening scenes is what builds your protag and characters. Through strong visuals you draw in the reader and help them to better understand and connect with your character. I also agree with Marty, some of the best movies I've seen reveal theme from the very beginning. I especially like how the Artist portrayed strong scenes, characters and theme without any dialog. Unless the dialog is superb, too much of it in the first ten minutes and no action, risks boring the audience. That's just my opinion, we're all different.
- Howard Casner As the dialog goes: "But with a little bit of sex." "Yes, with a little bit of sex. But I don't want to overemphasize it".
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