Stan Has Issues™

July 2, 2010

Weak Link

So I have a reason other than laziness for not updating lately. In addition to the fact that I don’t really get access to big “summer movie”-type scripts, nor do I have much desire to read them (especially after bearing witness to the travesty called Jonah Hex), I’m making a big push to launch a new site with one of my best friends from college.

“Zuh?” you’re undoubtedly saying. Well, here’s the skinny: longtime readers recall that I once “worked” for a bottom-rung film-review website. My friend Mark also wrote for the site, and both of us left with a great deal of disappointment and lessons learned. So last summer, in the midst of a Vicodin-fueled haze after my wrist surgery, I concocted the world’s greatest idea (according to my drug-addled mind): we’d create our own bottom-rung film-review website. With the myriad lessons learned from our miserable experiences, we’d attempt to carve out own niche in the online world of film criticism.

Once the drugs wore off, this seemed like a terrible idea. However, a stone-cold sober Mark loved the idea and kind of forced me to see it through, by virtue of the fact that I hate disappointing other people (and consequently end up disappointing myself). While I designed the site, Mark and I hashed out what we’d write about — what angle could we come up with to get readers who typically fall through the cracks of film sites? We came up with some ideas that may prove unsuccessful, but we’re going forward out of a combination of stupidity and bravado.

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June 6, 2010

Collaborative Effort

Here’s the problem: I’m an impatient, impulsive person. Stories come to me in two different ways: in a slow trickle, or a Niagara Falls-like gush. The slow trickle, for me, isn’t even that slow — a number of disparate ideas will enter my brain over the course of a few months, and I’ll realize these pieces form a single, cohesive story. That’s usually how stories and characters come to me, which is handy because I’ll usually be working on something else, so I’ll be jotting down notes for the next project. Maybe that’s just a short attention span working for me instead of against me.

By necessity, I’ll let that story germinate until it’s ready to be written. I hate writing things like that. Hell, I hate writing anything about my creative process because (a) everyone’s process slightly different, so there’s no real advice or insight there, and (b) every time I write something about “letting a story germinate,” I feel like such a pretentious asshole. At any rate, it’s easy to let the slow trickle story rest, because plowing headlong into a story that’s not fully formed is a recipe for disaster. The gusher is totally different — for me, it’s like trying to capture lightning in a bottle. When an idea comes to me that complete, I have to capitalize on it as quickly as possible before my aforementioned short attention span causes me to lose interest and start working on something else.

I guess you could call this “inspiration.” The story drops in my lap, and I crank out a draft in a week or two (as opposed to the story taking a few months to figure out, then taking another month on a first draft), and believe it or not, these first drafts usually turn out as good as a third or fourth draft of the “slow trickle” stories.

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Posted by Stan at 10:17 AM | Comments (2) | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Career-Based Rambling, Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em, How Not to Write a Screenplay | Digg It
Tags: Amelia, Assistant Jim, collaboration, compromise, frustration, Murdstone, Murdstone & Grinby, romantic comedies, screenwriting

June 3, 2010

Script Review: Five Killers (a.k.a., Killers) by Bob De Rosa, Ted Griffin and Michael Brandt & Derek Haas

[In lieu of actual content, for the next several weeks I will present, at least, one review of an upcoming film each week. These are scripts that I’ve been paid money to read, and many of them contain watermarking, identification numbers, password-protection, and other ways of tracking what company it was sent to; because of this and my desire to keep my job, I will not offer downloads for ANY of the scripts I review here. Don’t bother asking.]

Without having seen the movie, I speculate that everything that’s gone wrong with Five Killers can be traced to the title change: from the fairly specific (or, at least, enigmatically intriguing) Five Killers to the generic, not-at-all-compelling Killers. I say this based mainly on promos that fancy this a wacky, action-packed romance a la Date Night or Did You Hear About… God, I’m bored before I even finish the title of that piece of shit. They don’t get into what the script is actually about, which is disappointing, because it’s actually a funny story. I’ve complained a lot about the spy scripts I had to endure during the last half of 2008 and first half of 2009, but Five Killers was among the cream of the crop.

Even though I mostly liked the script (and The Spy Next Door, for that matter, although it turns out I read a different one than the script that actually got made), it got me thinking about the whole spy thing again. Much like changing from Five Killers to Killers, the fact that the overwhelming majority of the spy scripts I had to read were comedies — even if they’re good comedies — speaks volumes about the hackery that has slowly corroded Hollywood. I think the prevailing mentality is, “Every story’s been done, so there’s no sense in trying to engage an increasingly aloof audience with pathos and drama in a story they’ve already seen.” Writing a spy comedy is easier. Conventional (wrong) wisdom tells you the spy plot doesn’t matter, and if it gets so hole-filled it resembles John Holmes’s underwear circa 1979, you just insert a quick scene of characters trying to figure out the plot and lapping themselves. Pointing out the shortcomings of your script is way easier than fixing it.

More than that, you can hide from real emotion and suspense by undercutting anything serious with a wacky, unexpected moment. It’s sort of like Hollywood is now catering to the “nervous giggle” reaction many people have to visceral moments in horror movies. Now, the audiences don’t have to feel like depraved/confused monsters laughing at graphic depiction of murders, because the movie says it’s okay to laugh. Maybe I’m off-based on that assumption, but I do know that inserting cheap laughs just when the characters are about to feel and/or express genuine emotions like “fear” or “manimal lust,” the writers back away from it and slide in a joke. Maybe it goes back to the mentality in the previous paragraph: why bother inserting (so to speak) a genuine romantic subplot or legitimate suspense when everybody’s just going to call it hackneyed and predictable? That’s fucking lame, guys. Sac up and go for emotional truth, not ironic detachment.

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May 18, 2010

(Late Edition) Script Review: Harry Brown by Gary Young

Sometimes I get busy. Longtime readers know my comically inconsistent posting routine is one of the few charms of Stan Has Issues™. I did like the habit of posting one script review a week. That was something I figured I could handle, because even if I got busy, I could write several when things were slow and post them when I anticipated getting busy. I had it all planned, on an assembly line, with spreadsheets and dates and I’ll do this script for this week and that script for that week.

It all fell apart when (a) release dates for films whose scripts I’d already read professionally kept getting pushed back, (b) I had zero interest and negative motivation in reading different scripts to substitute my original picks, and (c) my planning went to shit, so I suddenly stopped preparing reviews in anticipation of getting busy, and instead posted pathetic rants about women. I’m okay with the pathetic rants. In fact, as you may have noticed from the disclaimer, I don’t really consider these script reviews to be actual “content.” I much prefer either ranting about general screenwriting trends or chaotic broads, idiot friends, and why nobody but me knows how to drive. I just find myself lacking the time to accomplish the feat of writing about what’s going on with me. Not to sound glib, but I’m 100% serious when I say I’m too busy living life to blog about it. I know — weird, huh?

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April 14, 2010

Signs and Signals

So I figured it’s time for a status update (only two weeks late). If you remember where we left off, I was struggling with whether or not to ask out Dentist Chick. I definitely got the “interested” vibe off of her, and she’s super-hot, so I figured, why not?

Here’s why not: I’m a pussy.

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March 27, 2010

Pizza and Count Chocula

The funniest thing I’ve read in awhile: July 16, 2006 Wikipedia revision for Count Chocula

The second-funniest thing I’ve read in awhile: The Sneeze — The Great Pizza Orientation Test

The funniest thing I’ve looked blankly at for a few seconds before realizing what I’m looking at: Special Pizza Hut Instructions

Good times!

March 25, 2010

Root Canal

Longtime readers may remember Dentist Chick, but here’s the short version for those too lazy to remember and/or click the link: a girl I went to high school with started working at my dentist’s office, and she was into me, big-time. To a shrine-in-the-closet degree that would creep me out if she weren’t so fucking hot. I flirted with the idea of asking her out, knowing full well it wouldn’t be much more than a one- or two-night stand, and then I found out she had a kid. That made things difficult for me because, well… I have what the therapeutic community calls “rescuer tendencies,” and usually a single mother with a dead-end job has the sort of emotional baggage that attracts me.

It’s difficult, though, because every six months, I have this woman throwing herself at me, desperately wishing I’d just fucking ask her out already. And she’s really fucking hot. Do you realize what a rarity this is in the curmudgeonly world of Stan? Tragically, it’s not as rare as you’d think, but it’s always unwanted attention that leaves me feeling awkward, and the end result is hilarious alienation of the other party.

Not so with Dentist Chick, however. It’s a little easier because we have an infrequent, business-oriented relationship. She can flirt with me all she wants, but eventually she has to get back to the billing and scheduling, and that’s my cue to run out the door before I either demand sex or try to offer protection against memories of her abusive stepfather. Yeah, it’s weird being me.

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March 24, 2010

Script Review: Hot Tub Time Machine by Josh Heald and Jarrad Paul & Andrew Mogel & Steve Pink

Is funny enough?

I’m not trying to blow your mind. I just think that’s Hot Tub Time Machine’s unintended central dramatic question. Because, honestly, it is funny…but it’s not much more. It’s filled to the brim with what I call “empty laughs.” I frequently use the pilot of How I Met Your Mother as an example. I sat there and laughed my ass off for 22 minutes, and when it ended, I shrugged and said, “That wasn’t very good.” The characters ranged from bland (Ted) to irritatingly over-the-top (Barney), the episodic story wasn’t terribly compelling, the premise seemed extremely limited (I’m amazed they’ve sustained it this long), and the “surprise ending” (Aunt Robin!) blew ass. Although it consistently made me laugh, it didn’t really make me do much else (and not for a lack of trying). Frankly, I want more than that, even in a crappy CBS sitcom. I know I’m a creepy alien in the current culture, but I like entertainment that makes me think and feel — not a string of cheap laughs predicated on ironic detachment and obvious pop-culture references. I don’t even mind cheap laughs like that as long as they’re entrenched in something with a bit of depth. Maybe I’m missing something special in How I Met Your Mother, but based on the fact that promos show they still use “suit up” (a gag that came close to getting stale before the pilot episode ended), holy shit am I glad I didn’t stick with it.

Hot Tub Time Machine is a lot like that. It’s one of the rare comedy scripts that’s actually funny on the page, but to get back to the opening question, is that enough? Unfortunately, the answer is no.

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March 3, 2010

Script Review (Odds ‘n’ Ends Edition): The Spy Next Door by Joe Ballarini

Has it been almost a month? Jeez, my combo of laziness and apathy sure make the time fly. Here’s the problem with February: with the exception of Dread and most of Frozen, I didn’t get paid to read any of those scripts. Not a single one. And honestly, I just couldn’t muster up the enthusiasm to read the copies of The Wolfman, Shutter Island, and A Couple of Dicks (a.k.a. Cop Out) that I’ve had sitting on my hard drive for months, specifically for last month. I just said, “Fuck it.” When I can’t muster up the enthusiasm to want to see these movies, imagine how hard it is to get me the scripts when you aren’t waving a check in my face. And even that bites me in the ass. (Yeah, I just finished doing my taxes — I always forget what a shit-ton I end up having to pay because I’m technically “self-employed” and, therefore, my pay isn’t taxed until I get my 1099-MISC, fill out all those stupid forms, and shout obscenities when I see the amount I owe.)

I’ll be honest: March probably won’t fare much better. The majority of scripts I planned to review got delayed. Hot Tub Time Machine is the lone exception, so those of you who are into these reviews can look forward to that in a few weeks. I also read a script that’s a lot like Brooklyn’s Finest, but it’s not Brooklyn’s Finest, so maybe I’ll toss that up for shits and giggles. Otherwise, I’ll either be dusting off odds ‘n’ ends like I am today, or I’ll actually produce real content. By that, I mean I’ll do my Andy Rooney schtick about current Hollywood conventions that I don’t like. I’ll probably also talk a little more about masturbation and/or why my friends are all idiots.

Anyway, enough of my bullshit… Let’s enjoy a review of a script you’ll probably never read, which in no way resembles the film it turned into!

Remember the basic setup to Action? (Hint: not to alienate you, gentle reader, more than usual, but if you don’t know what I’m talking about, and you’re interested in screenwriting, something in your life has gone awry.) Dorky nobody writer suddenly finds himself approaching the A list simply because one of the biggest producers in Hollywood confuses him for an established writer? I had a similar situation crop up about a year ago, when I received the screenplay for Joe Ballarini’s The Spy Next Door. I thought little of receiving it, because I’d been deluged with not just spy scripts but wacky, In-Laws-esque spy comedies. But something weird happened. As I often do, I Googled information about the movie shortly after finishing the coverage and disocvered, to my surprise, that Jackie Chan had signed on to star.

“Huh,” I thought. “He doesn’t seem like a very good fit for either of the main characters.” I prepared to dismiss it, assuming they’d done some rewrites to adjust the role to Chan (after all, the draft I read was dated 2002 — a lot of development may have happened since then), when I noticed something even odder: the plot described Chan as a spy who agrees to babysit his next-door neighbor’s kids.

“The fuck?” I thought. This description had virtually nothing to do with the script I’d read, other than the title. More than that, the IMDb didn’t credit Ballarini at all (nor, would I eventually learn, did the film itself) — in fact, the only reference I could find was a USC alumni magazine interview with Ballarini in which he briefly mentions selling the script. I don’t have a clue if this script went through such a long, arduous development process that it bears no resemblance to its source, or if two completely different scripts just happened to have the same title. It made me wonder if my bosses had simply requested the wrong script from the wrong people — and that’s still a possibility. I don’t know all the details, and I don’t have much interest in researching it.

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February 9, 2010

Script Review: Clive Barker’s Dread by Anthony DiBlasi

I don’t really make New Year’s resolutions, but I did tell myself, “Make an effort to blog more in 2010.” Careful readers will know how well that’s going so far. I’ve just been swamped, and unlike the last time I anticipated a swampy future, I didn’t stockpile a bunch of boring script reviews to autopost so I could ignore my blog. Instead, I’m making do with the hallmark of the blogosphere: infrequent posts of dubious quality. I’m starting with the promised script review of Clive Barker’s Dread, a movie that came out on the 29th for an extremely limited engagement as part of the fourth annual After Dark Horrorfest (as I understand it, after the theatrical engagements it’ll be shuffled onto DVD fairly quickly).

Before I get to that, though, I’d like to toss out a cautious recommendation for Adam Green’s Frozen, which opened over the weekend. As usual, I haven’t actually seen the movie. However, I did read the script awhile back and was blown away — except for the part where the third act was missing. Not like it was a complete, 120-page script that simply, structurally, lacked a third act. This was a 70-page script that ended with TO BE CONTINUED… right as it geared up for the third act. What a tease! So maybe the third act is a disaster, but the first two acts are as solid as the frozen urine that soils the characters. Might be worth checking out, despite the limited release, minimal promotion, and middling reviews.

On to Dread…

Let’s start with the twist ending that I don’t want to ruin for those of you who might actually take the time to see this (don’t worry, I’m just going to draw an analogy to a movie you’ve seen). Longtime readers know that I’m not the world’s biggest fan of twist endings. I don’t get angry at every movie that has a twist ending — but I do have a problem with twist endings that either come out of nowhere or are too telegraphed. Twist endings require a delicate balance of elements in order to achieve an “inevitable but unpredictable” moment of surprise, instead of a frustrating mindfuck or an eye-rollingly obvious moment.

Dread suffers from a twist ending that’s obvious from, I dunno, page 20 or so. See, it opens with a flashback sequence in which a family comes home, unaware a killer is in their house. The lone survivor is a young boy, who may or may not grow up to be one of the main characters. The way the script is structured, though, it’s clear early who the young boy has grown up to be, yet it wants us to believe this is a great, unsolvable mystery. Finally getting to that analogy, it’s like if Psycho opened with a scene of young Norman killing his mother. Except for that one addition, everything else is exactly the same — first trying to make us think it’s some kind of thriller about stolen money, then trying to make us think the killer is Norman’s mother before the big twist that she’s long dead and Norman is dressing up like her and murdering people. Would you be happy about a movie that reveals its own big twist in the first scene but still tries to make a suspenseful mystery around it?

Dread even has the semi-subtle genre switch that Psycho has. Ignoring that opening scene, it starts out as a straightforward dramedy about college students struggling to move toward adulthood. Then, it shifts into a sort of bland combo of psychological thriller and torture porn fest. The story follows Stephen and Quaid, a pair of college students who form an awkward friendship in a boring ethics class. The first act isn’t much more than pretentious philosophizing from the two of them, which I bought into because the endless pretentious philosophizing I both endured and espoused during my first two years of college. It’s not terribly compelling, but at least it’s believable. We find out the most relevant information about the characters: Stephen is an introverted nerdy type who’s tethered to routine. Quaid is also pretty nerdy, but he’s more extroverted and pompous about it. Stephen is quietly in awe of Quaid’s misguided confidence, and that sets up the early conflict: Stephen wants to be more like Quaid but can’t figure out how to make it happen.

Quaid catches on to this and decides to teach him, starting with a prank. After a night of drinking, Quaid walks Stephen to his modest suburban home. While Quaid fixes himself a drink, he sends Stephen upstairs to his room to grab a DVD. In it, he finds a husband and wife sleeping. They wake, terrified to see someone in their house. They don’t know Quaid. Naturally, Stephen panics and runs. Quaid follows, amused. He explains this was a psychological experiment on both of them: when Stephen’s afraid, he simply reacts — that’s something he needs to harness to get what he wants. Meanwhile, the couple will spend years in sheer terror as a result of two harmless idiots breaking into their house. Quaid’s pleased with himself, but Stephen starts to see the cracks in his personality’s façade.

Nevertheless, they team up with Zooey (a hot girl from their ethics class) on a class project that seeks to study the long-term effects fear has on people. Stephen and Zooey just want to interview subjects about their greatest fears, but Quaid is obsessed with taking the research to the next level. He begins playing terror-inducing pranks on the other two, which escalate to horror-movie proportions in the third act. Can you guess who the little boy was in the opening scene? Can you?!

Dread has a number of third act problems beyond the twist that isn’t a twist. I don’t want to get into them with too much specificity because of spoilers, although maybe I shouldn’t care because the movie’s already on DVD in the U.K. and is out in theatres here. But I do care, so no spoilers. The main thing is that the script pusses out on completing Stephen’s character arc. Remember, he’s the one who spends most of the script afraid to go after what he wants. Stephen doesn’t overcome this — in fact, the script brings in a red-herring character to do the things Stephen is too wimpy to do himself. This really undermines the script, but it’s clear the writer was more interested in a nihilistic torture porn ending than allowing the character to finally stand up for himself.

That leads me to one of the more interesting aspects of the script, though. It portrays Stephen as the protagonist because, well, it follows him around and leaves Quaid an unmysterious mystery. And, of course, Quaid is the antagonist because he’s nuts, right? Well, think about the protagonist-antagonist relationship, which in its simplest form is defined thusly: a protagonist has a goal that he struggles to achieve, mainly because the antagonist hurls obstacles in his way. In Dread, Stephen has some weak, ineffectual goals (mainly, wanting to get laid), but it’s Quaid who has the real goal: he’s hellbent on “experimenting” on innocent people. Stephen inhibits Quaid’s goal by being a total puss.

It’s an interesting reversal of expectations that would have been made much more interesting if the writer hadn’t tried so hard to make Quaid an enigma. If the writer had laid Quaid’s backstory out in the first act, let his behavior start escalating in the second act, the trajectory from “weird, semi-depressed nerd” to “psychopath” wouldn’t feel so rushed. Building a mystery out of whether or not Quaid’s really crazy, followed by building a mystery out of why he’s crazy, doesn’t do much for the story, and it does literally nothing with the themes about how fear can either cripple a person or force them into action. As mentioned, Stephen the scaredy cat is never really compelled into action, but it’s not his fear that prevents him — it’s the machinations of the writing, which lets the character down. Maybe the writer, ironically, was too afraid to have his “hero” sac up and kill the “villain,” because that’d make him just as bad, right? (Hint: wrong.)

Because Quaid is the true protagonist of the story, it simply feels like his character doesn’t have the proper development. Whatever the protagonist/antagonist relationship, the script focuses on Stephen as the main character. Keeping the point of view with Stephen limits our understanding of Quaid, and the audience’s inability to empathize with whatever Quaid’s going through is the source of all the script’s problems. When the writer finally reveals the essential information late in the game — well, as mentioned, it’s no surprise, which makes it all the more frustrating that he spends so much time trying to hide it. Quaid will never be the true hero of the story, but his character drives the narrative. Obfuscating his personality does the script no favors — in fact, it’s the script’s fatal flaw.

I will reserve judgment, though. Producer/writer/director Anthony DiBlasi has had varying success bringing other Barker stories to the big screen (by which I mean the giant plasma TV on which you watch your favorite direct-to-video content), ranging from the meh The Plague to the pretty good Midnight Meat Train. I have no doubt DiBlasi remains faithful to the source material, which contains a lot of Barker’s trademark grim atmosphere and unsettling imagery, but like many of the adaptations I’ve reviewed, it’s the sort of thing that probably works better as a short story than a film.

January 26, 2010

Commercial Conundrum

[Note: I intended to post this last week but got busy and, per usual, forgot about the existence of this blog. There will be a new script review — of Clive Barker’s Dread — this week.]

This week’s attempt at a script review put me in an awkward position. You see, I haven’t read any of the scripts that are opening. A few weeks ago, I read some bad intelligence telling me Gavin O’Connor’s Warrior will be out this Friday. Turns out, that’s not the case. I guess it’s coming out way the fuck in September, and I really don’t want to be reviewing scripts more than a week or two in advance of their release. So, instead, I’m writing one of the many promised non-review articles that I’ve been too lazy and/or busy to get done.

Something’s been bugging me for the past few months. I got used to writing development notes, which outline a script’s strengths and weaknesses while offering suggestions for ways to improve the script. (That way, Your Boss — who, if you’re lucky, will read maybe one out of every ten scripts he or she forces you to read — will have something reasonably intelligent to say in his next meeting. It’s an elaborate charade, and everyone knows that his or her notes are coming from some borderline-retarded, caffeine-addled reader, yet nobody ever says a word.) On some level, you deal with marketability, but everywhere I’ve worked, they’re surprisingly concerned about making the script as good as possible. In other words, they’ve already convinced themselves that they can sell the product — so now, the challenge is making the product great.

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January 12, 2010

Script Review: The Book of Eli by Gary Whitta and Anthony Peckham

The Book of Eli tells a pretty straightforward western story: one taciturn man shows up in a town controlled by a power-hungry madman. Captain Taciturn (hereafter known as Eli) has something the madman wants, and the madman is confounded when Eli won’t give it up immediately. He’s not used to a fight, but a fight is exactly what Eli intends to give him. Does any of this sound familiar?

The amazing thing about The Book of Eli is that it uses genre tropes so damn effectively. It paints a startling, “a few years after The Day After” nightmare world, but aside from that, it’s your standard western plot. More than anything, it shows the importance of developing characters. Audiences are much more willing to go along with a plot they’ve seen before (and what plot haven’t they seen before?) if the characters within that well-worn storyline breathe new life into it.

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Posted by Stan at 1:54 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Reviews | Digg It
Tags: action, Anthony Peckham, Bible, characters, Denzel Washington, faith, Gary Oldman, Gary Whitta, Mila Kunis, post-Apocalyptic, religion, sci-fi, The Book of Eli, The Hughes Brothers, western

January 5, 2010

Script Review: Daybreakers by Michael & Peter Spierig

Here we are in the world of Daybreakers, in which vampires have become the majority (after some sort of viral pandemic) and the few humans left (5% of the total world population) are hunted for their delicious blood. After establishing this offbeat world and its central conflict — that vampire numbers increase while the “food” supply dwindles — the writers focus on hapless vampire hematologist Ed Dalton. He works for a pharmaceutical magnate, Bromley, who farms humans to provide blood for vampires. Ed, who’s conflicted about using humans, has the moral-balancing task of coming up with a feasible substitute that can sustain vampires without requiring them to kill humans.

One night, Ed comes upon an erratically driving car, which narrowly avoids hitting his sunlight-proofed Escalade. The car’s on the run from the police, because it’s filled with humans (including AUDREY, the de facto love interest). Ed surprises the humans by allowing them to hide in his Escalade while he lies to the police about where they ran off to. Once the police get a safe distance away, the humans leave — but not before Audrey notices Ed’s work ID badge, which identifies him as a hematologist. Ed continues home, where younger brother FRANKIE has returned from military service (in this world, the military simply hunts for human camps). It’s Ed’s birthday — which Ed deems meaningless, considering his immortality — so Frankie surprises him with a premium bottle of 100% human blood. Ed and Frankie argue about the righteousness of killing humans to feed on their blood.

Before the argument can get too heated (though it does get heated enough for Frankie to smash the bottle against the wall), they’re attacked by a “subsider” — a freakish sort of vampire who feeds on other vampires (and/or themselves). This is the sort of world they live in. Frankie and Ed dispatch the subsider. After the police sweep the scene, they discover the subsider was actually a neighbor who disappeared. Ed is incredibly disturbs and feels increased pressure to come up with a substitute. Later that night, Audrey sneaks into Ed’s house, announces that the vampire world is falling apart (citing, among other things, the opening scene — a child vampire committing suicide after deeming an ageless body pointless). Ed tells Audrey he can’t help her, but she gives him a note with a meeting place and time. After Audrey leaves, Frankie hears the commotion and wonders who it was. Ed says it was nobody, but Frankie is quietly suspicious.

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January 1, 2010

Your Money Where My Big Fat Mouth Is

Well, the New Year is upon us, and I’ve decided to finally go ahead with two things I’ve wanted to do for awhile now: a donations page and a script coverage service.

See, the thing is, I’m poor. I have two mostly dead-end jobs, and I paid way too much to go to college. You might think I’m irresponsible, and you’re right. But in my defense, I didn’t take on more student loans to go to law school. (Okay, arguably, that’s a bad decision, because there may be a bigger payday at the end of that road, but who knows? All I’m hearing from that community is that attorneys keep taking bottom-rung administrative jobs because there are too many of them. So I might as well stick with the bottom-rung administrative job I have and not take on more debt. Especially since I’m more interested in the education than practicing law.)

Huh, that turned into a rant. Anyway, I’ve received more e-mails than you’d expect (that’s right, more than zero) from people requesting to “give back,” because apparently I’ve helped them with my half-cocked rants and acerbic wit. I never really thought that was necessary, but then I realized I both like and need money. So if you want to donate, I’ve set it up so you can…

If you don’t like getting nothing for something, I’m also offering some of my writing for sale. It’s all explained here.

As for the coverage service… Well, I’ve received many more requests from people wanting me to read scripts than wanting to hand me money. Honestly, I love reading scripts, and I love helping people (or trying to), but it’s gotten to the point where I just can’t keep doing it for free. So, if you like my reviews or my musings on craft and you’d like me to look at one of your scripts, check out the new coverage service.

December 25, 2009

Black List 2009 – Black Christmas Wrap-Up

To recap:

The Muppet Man — A dreadful script that manages to dramatize much of Jim Henson’s life without ever providing any insight into what drove him to create.

The Social Network — A quick, compelling read thanks to Sorkin’s ease with generating conflict and suspense almost entirely through well-written dialogue. The script also wisely focuses on Mark Zuckerberg and the other people involved in the foundation of Facebook more than the story of its founding.

The Voices — A flat-out great script — funny, insightful, tragic, and brilliant. One of the best scripts I’ve ever read. If it can make it through development unscathed, it’ll be one hell of a movie.

Prisoners — Too much intricately plotted story, too little anything else.

Cedar Rapids — A mild-mannered but genuinely funny comedy. As a frequent visitor of Cedar Rapids, it’s nice to see a story set there that doesn’t condescend to what idiots assume “flyover country” responds to.

Londongrad — One hell of a dull docudrama, telling an interesting story in a remarkably lifeless way.

L.A. Rex — A convoluted yet hackneyed look at policing in South Central L.A. Full of everything you’d expect and little you wouldn’t (I didn’t see the pit sequence coming, so they have that going for them): gangsters with ties to celebrities, dirty cops, a veteran partnered with a rookie.

Desperados — A bland but genial comedy that suffers from an overdose of Idiot Plot.

The Gunslinger — Dull Country for Old Men

By Way of Helena — An historical drama that manages to combine three of my favorite subjects (religious battles, post-Civil War America, and hunting men for sport) without making any effort to make the subjects compelling

The Days Before — A sci-fi comedy that gets off on its own cleverness, which is particularly irksome because the script is not as clever as it thinks it is. It’s pretty much just Independence Day with a darker edge and time travel.

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