MOVIES TO THE LEFT OF ME, MOVIES TO THE RIGHT OF ME and not cel to see

In spite of what a lot of people say, L.A. is a great place to see movies. At any one time, we get first run movies before other cities; we have tons of film festivals from countries one didn't even know existed; we have a second run theater or two; and we have lots and lots of film programs where you can see films that haven't even come out on Netflix. So why is it that every once in awhile, a weekend comes and it turns into cable TV--all those extra channels and you still can't find anything you want to watch.

This weekend became one of those times. Weekends are the times I especially look forward to in going to movies because the options seem endless, often frustratingly so (do I go to that Lower Slobovian film by that director whose name no one can pronounce but if I don't go see it now, it may never show up in L.A. again and without seeing it my soul may be irreparably damaged and I'll miss another gut wrenching journey into the depths of humanity, or do I see that double feature of Anthony Mann films since somehow, for reasons I can't explain or justify, I've never really seen an Anthony Mann film--believe me, from a film goer's point of view, that's a tough call) . But this was not to be one of those choice filled Friday through Sundays. Which was doubly frustrating since it was so hot and movie theaters are a great escape from the heat (see, movies have their practical side, too).

In deciding what I want to go see in a theater on the weekend, I never start with first run theaters for no other reason than the prices are much higher unless I want to go to the first show. For example, weekends immediately take out any Laemmle Theaters (like the Sunset V) because Tuesdays are $6.00 ticket days, so I usually wait until then and make a smorgasbord of it all. And I almost never go to the Arclight anymore because of the ridiculously high prices (and ofttimes many of the tent pole films open at places like the Vista, which are cheaper--especially the first shows--and just as nice). For example, I still haven't seen (500) Days of Summer and I waited until Cold Souls moved to Sunset V.

Transportation is another issue. I don't have a car so I'm one of those people who according to Joan Didion don't exist in L.A. I take public transportation. This removes from consideration places like the Landmark or theaters in Santa Monica and puts on the back burner theaters that require me to take the bus home late at night where if you miss one, you may have to wait an hour for the next one.

I also don't want to go all the way out to the Nuart unless there's also something to see at the Royal since they are so close together. The Nuart only has matinees on weekends, so I don't want to travel all the way out there just to see a 5:00 show during the week. But I'm willing to make the trip if there's something also at the Royal and I can kill two birds with one stone in the bush. In addition, the Royal has weekday matinees (and is a Laemmle, so it's also a $6.00 Tuesday theater) so I usually don't go to them on the weekend.

Stop me if this starts sounding more and more neurotic like I'm in an episode of Monk.

In addition, I only go to the Beverly Center during the week. It costs just a semi-thin quarter to take the DASH bus there (which doesn't run on Sundays) and the theater also has cheap matinees. The Beverly Center is also a great place to catch up on movies you missed since it almost, but not quite, acts like a second run theater. One has to put up with the small screens, but one can't have everything.

So there was nothing at the first run theaters that pricked my ears or that I could get to or that I was willing to spend an outrageous amount of money on. Which was fine, because I usually like going to second run or film programs anyway. I usually find the movies more interesting and I can see films I didn't even know existed, which means I can bore the shit out of my friends when I see them next and they ask me what I've seen lately (something they seemed to have stopped doing lately--I wonder why). Believe, nothing stops a conversation quicker than telling someone you saw Thirst last week while they've seen District 9.

The Fairfax is a good second run, though it's also cheaper during the week. The main problem there is that they had only one movie I wanted to see, Funny People, but they're only showing it at night. Since this means I have to take the Fairfax bus home, I usually don't like to go during that late.

Which leaves five places to see the sort of films that really turn me on. The New Beverly; the UCLA Archive at the Hammer Museum; LACMA; The Silent Movie Theater; and the American Cinemateque. I always look at the American Cinemateque schedule first since it is only a few blocks away. But this weekend, they've rented out the place to Cinecom, an organization that shows rare to see films, which would normally interest me, except that you have to buy day passes or run of the fest pass, which is too expensive.

I've seen the movies at the New Beverly (which is usually the case). Both LACMA and UCLA Hammer weren't showing anything for the Labor Day Weekend. Which left the Silent Movie Theater. But this particular weekend they were only showing one film I was interested in seeing, Joseph Losey's The Criminal. But it was showing with Get Carter, which I had already seen. Plus it has the same problem of my having to take the bus back, which can be problematic at night.

So that was that. Nothing to see, so this weekend I'm doing Netflix and On Demand. This means Catch 22 and Divine Intervention as well as a French movie about a serial killer that dresses his victims like dolls, and the second season of Dexter. All in all, the weekend turned out just fine after all, except for the heat, but you can't have everything.

JUST BLOWING OFF SOME STEAM

I haven't added anything to my blog for some time now and I always get nervous when I don't. This probably wouldn't be that big a deal to me, but I'm suppose to be existential which basically means in this context, this is a blog, therefore I should blog. Lacking anything incredibly meaningful to say, I thought I'd just write down what's going on with me and my life. You know, the sort of thing that I find boring and makes other people want to hang themselves.

I may even try to do it on a more daily, dear diary sort of schedule. Which means in addition to being existential, I'm also a tad pathetic. But isn't that the definition of a screenwriter in LA?

I've been a little frustrated this week because I'm suppose to be doing the next installment of a screenplay that I'm writing with a partner. The reason I'm frustrated is because the screenplay is actually going very well. I think we make a good partnership and the whole thing feels right. So it's just annoyingly maddening that I'm not writing my guts out.

My main problem is that I'm busy with work, which is a good thing. The Slamdance Screenplay Competition and Regent Entertainment/Here! Networks has been keeping me pretty busy. So I'm not complaining. Well, I am complaining, that's pretty obvious, but I'm trying to do it in a noncomplaining way because with the economy the way it is, I'm happy to have money coming in.

I was also suppose to have a staged reading of my screenplay Rough Trade in New York in October to start off a reading series for OTF (Out in Television and Film), but I couldn't find a director. I found this quite mind boggling, but there it is. However, it turns out it might be for the best. One of the reasons I was going first in the series was that the one who was running the series was having difficulty finding a script to read that he liked (which made me feel pretty pleased with myself, to tell the truth). But it no longer looks like that is a problem and instead I'll be kicking off the LA staged reading series beginning in January. The stress is off.

I'm also behind at doing my reviews of movies I've seen. In many ways, this is the area where I am most frustrated with myself. If you talked to my friends, they would all tell you that I can rarely shut up about the movies I've seen. But I still haven't put my thoughts done on such flicks as Flame and Citron and Inglorious Bastards, among others.

Well, no matter what else, I got it all off my chest for a little while at least.

BACKSTAGE AT A SCREENPLAY COMPETITION QUATRE

Yet another entry in some things that go on bump in the night behind the scenes in a screenplay competition that can give some insight, maybe, who knows, into how scripts are chosen and make their way to the top.

This is my memory of something that happened during the course of a competition. I was at an office picking up scripts when one of the other readers came in. The reader was very excited about a script he had read not long ago and in fact, I had just read it. I wasn't quite as excited; I thought the script had problems.

He began his enthusiasm over the script by saying it was wonderful to finally read a script where the central character wanted something, had a clear cut goal, instead of being the more passive character that was gaining more and more popularity lately. He asked me, didn't I agree, and I replied, that when it came to passive/active characters, it all depended on the screenplay. This other reader suddnely got very upset and said basically, no, it didn't, that a screenplay with an active character was inherently superior.

For some time now, there had been a conflict arising in the screenwriting world on the idea of active versus passive central characters. Before this, ost people were telling me that books they read, courses they took, etc. said that characters had to be active. Of course, as is often the case, as soon as someone creates a rule, or codifies something, artists try to break it (and often find out that writers in the past had never paid attention to the rule in the first place). And more and more passive characters were being created. These characters became so popular, that the descriptive name had to be changed from passive to reactive as a way the earlier opponents of such characters could justify to themselves such a character's allowability.

At any rate, the reader got so tense about my statement, that the contest coordinator interfered and calmed the waters. I was taken aback by what seemed at the time to be a rather dogmatic reaction to what seemed to me to be an innocous statement.

In the end, this screenplay didn't make the top lists mainly because it's structure was sort of the traditional kind that authors who read books and takes courses write. It didn't take any real chances and it had a final third that sort of fell apart. It was one of these scripts that tended to be written according to a set of rules rather than from a vision on the part of the author. And the scripts that did make the top of the list were, more often than not, scripts that were trying new things, experimenting with structure and form, unusual in style, had a certain edge, were trying to do something different and challenging.

Of course, screenplay competitions vary and different contests have different tastes and slants. But I'm all for the ones that encourage one to be different.

WHERE IS ROBERT TOWNE WHEN YOU NEED HIM: Review of Tetro

At the climactic revelation scene in Tetro I was so hoping for a tribute to Chinatown where the character of Bennie, played here by Alden Ehrenreich (in a good performance only hampered perhaps by his somewhat uncanny resemblance to Leonardo DiCaprio), would slap his older brother Tetro (played by Vincent Gallo) and Tetro would say “I’m your father, I’m your brother, I’m your father, I’m your brother and your father”. But alas, it didn’t happen. Tetro is written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and is supposed to be his return to his filmmaking roots, i.e., actually making a film he wants and making it his way. And it’s great to have him back. Unfortunately, it’s with a film that doesn’t work as well as one would like. It’s certainly a beautiful movie to look at with film nourish black and white cinematography by Mihai Malanimare, Jr. The basis to the story (a brother looks up his estranged older brother in Buenos Aires and finds out the family secret, though he finds it out about fifteen or twenty minutes after the audience figures it out) is solid. But it never really connects the way it should for two reasons. The first is Vincent Gallo, who is, to say the least, not that strong in this part and tends to drag the film down with him (there are some scenes where he seems to be improvising, weakening the whole emotional impact of what is going on). The second reason is that when all is said and done, Coppola so wants the big secret to have potentially tragic consequences; and it doesn’t. Bennie finds out Tetro’s really his father and decides to kill himself because of it. The reaction is not that believable and a tad over the top. The movie then tends to get muddled plot wise as Coppola doesn’t quite seem to know where to go from there. There are some other oddities, especially scenes from two plays that don’t resemble plays in the least and the appearance by Carmen Maura, one of my favorite actresses, in a role that doesn’t seem fully explored or thought out. There’s no indication that Coppola has fully lost his touch; this one just comes across as a film by someone who made a couple of boo boos while making it. Hopefully, the next film will work better.

Five Favorite Farces

Playtime


The Miracle at
Morgan's Creek


To Be or Not To Be








Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Some Like it Hot

THE DANCE OF DEATH: A Review of Departures

Departures, a movie about a man who loses his job, is that movie that got a bad rap before it was even released because it won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film when other films like Gomorrah didn’t even get nominated. The nomination, and win, seemed to come as a surprise to everyone except, obviously, the branch of the Academy that voted for it. It also got a bad rap because it was released after the release of Tokyo Story, also a film about a man who loses his job. This latter bad rap was a bit more justified because Tokyo Story, perhaps the best film of the year, is a better movie than Departures, but Departures is still a haunting, often beautiful film about living in the midst of dying. In Departures, a cello player, played with appropriate moroseness by Masahiro Motoki, loses his job with a symphony and returns home where he drifts into a job preparing bodies for burial, under the watchful eye of the not to be said no to Tsutomu Yamazaki (an excellent performance). It’s a terrifyingly lovely ritual, carefully and lovingly explained by the characters. Our hero learns to undress, dress, wash, etc. a body with the grace of Fred Astaire dancing. One might not think that playing a musical instrument would prepare one for the funeral business, but here the cross over skills are obvious. The screenplay, by Kundo Koyama, is strong with vibrant characters and engaging plot. It only falters toward the end when the story becomes a bit too formulaic in a twist that could be seen coming an hour earlier.

BACKSTAGE AT A SCREENPLAY CONTEST TROIS: Still more tales from behind the scenes

At an awards get together once for a contest, I was approached by a writer whose script I thought was very good and a script that I thought should have made the finals, but didn't because other readers didn't agree with me. The author did make the list just before finals, which is a pretty good place to end up considering the number of entries. But he asked me if there was a reason he didn't make the top ten.

Usually there is a very definite reason, though one doesn't want to necessarily tell a person that. But often there really isn't a good, solid reason why. Often when a script gets so close to the top, but doesn't make it, it's almost impossible to say why. And that's what I told him. That at that point there really was no reason one could give for it happening. For his script, there were all sorts of factors (some of which I didn't know or understand) that happened to happen to stop him from crossing that last barrier.

In relation to this, I've been asked before whether someone should reenter the same contest. It actually happens a lot, authors reentering their scripts. Probably for three reasons, the first being that they don't keep good records and forgot that they already entered the contest with this particular script the previous year. A second is that they hope that this time around they'll be read by a different reader or sets of readers who might like the script better and thereby make it further than before.

The third reason is that they have substantially rewritten the script. This is actually the only good reason for reentering the same script in a contest. And I've known scripts that have done better because of it.

But when it comes to entering the exact same script hoping to do better, I suggest it's not a wise idea. True, if one didn't even make the lowest group of say, quarter finalists (or whatever they call the first cut), then it is possible you might do a bit better if one gets a different reader. But beyond that, it's unlikely the script will go any farther, if for no other reason than the script will hit the same reader or readers as before (contests tend to use many of the same readers year after year) and they will recognize the script and will probably have the same reaction to it.

In addition, if one made the next to last cut, yes, it is possible that another go round just might get you into that top ten. But what I told the person is that the likelihood of the stars being in a slightly different alignment that year is so unlikely that the person should reconsider spending the enormous amount of money (and screenplay competitions are expensive) to enter. It would make much more sense to just enter a different contest.