David Trottier , author of The Screenwriters Bible , came to our screenwriters group meeting last night and had a short Q&A with our group.
I haven't read the Screenwriters Bible, but last Saturday I went to a screenwriters forum presented by Matt Whitaker and John Moyer . John held up The Screenwriters Bible and said it was his favorite book. I'm an avid reader of anything I think will help my craft, so I picked up a copy.
Saw two more films at Sundance last night.
First I caught "Kiss Me Not On The Eyes", a Lebanese film made by a woman director who grew up in Beirut. The story follows a young woman in Cairo that is fascinated by sensual Arabic poetry, and is training to be a champion belly dancer, but cannot relax herself sexually enough to even sleep with her new husband. Every member of the audience gasped and cringed during the scene where an older woman makes her 12-year-old granddaughter respectable by "excising" her with a razor blade (a home makeshift surgery to cut out her clitoris). It turned my stomach when the credits of the film said 97% of the women in Egypt are excised.
Then I ran at breakneck speed to the Library Theater. I was 119th in the wait list line, but I caught a ticket scalper and made it into the midnight showing of "Wristcutters: A Love Story", a wonderful film starring Patrick Fugit, Shannyn Sossamon, and Tom Waits. In the film, Patrick Fugit commits suicide and ends up in a grimy parallel universe that is the world reserved for people who "offed". When he finds out the girl who broke his heart in the live world has "offed" as well, he sets out to find her on a road trip across a strange, gloomy, nonsensical world filled with bizarre characters. After the film I stood outside and talked to Cameron Bowen, who played a supporting role. We talked for a while and he struck me as a really nice kid.
The 10-day party called Sundance has taken over Park City, Utah again. I spent the day pressing through the masses of people.
My favorite part about going to any festival is attending panels and forums, so today I saw a bit of a panel discussion with filmmakers from Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, and Egypt. I attended a gathering for festival organizers. I listened to a Q&A with the still very sexy Ally Sheedy. I met Jeff Wadlow and Beau Bauman, the director and producer of Cry Wolf.
Of course, they also show films at the festival, so at the end of the day I took in "Who Needs Sleep", a documentary about the film industry and the dangerously long hours demanded of film crews. As documentaries go, it wasn't the most perfectly executed. It made its point in the first few minutes, and then spent the rest of the time making the same point over again without much in the way of story structure. Still, I think every person involved in the film industry should see it because the point it raises is valid.
Consider this the "Special Features" section of the DVD. Here is a breakdown of the characters we each played. There's a link to watch the film in the previous posting.
We only had five people (the maximum allowed), so we each had to play multiple parts. Of course, we had to make it look like there were twelve men on the jury, so we created this composite shot of all the characters sitting at the table together.
First I played Mr. Confused. Dave did a great job making me look like I have hanging jowls.
Next I played Mr. Rushed. I cracked a joke about someone shaving their head to make their characters look different. Everybody jumped on that idea and decided the bald one should be me. They offered a cash incentive for the razor job, and the amount kept going up all night. When it got to $56 I caved.
Dave is a great makeup artist, and he's the kind of funny, creative guy everybody wants on the set because he keeps us laughing all night. He made his Mr. Foreman a wonderful Wilford Brimley-esque character.
Then Dave shaved his beard down to a goatee and took time away from doing our makeup to sit in a chair as Mr. Sleepy. That's my hairy monkey arm picking lint off his shoulder.
Murray and I co-wrote the script, then Murray directed and still put in performances as three characters, although one of those characters ended up being cut from the show (see final paragraph below). Here, he put several pounds of slimy products in his hair and turned out a great performance as the creepy Mr. Macabre.
Then, Murray shaved his moustache and sat down as the blustery, insulting Mr. Loudmouth.
The workhorse of the night, though, was Greg. Not only was he the cinematographer and the editor, but he put in four characters. Here he slicked his hair, and what started as a Vincent Price impersonation kept getting more over the top until he did nothing but squawk "yes" and "no". This character was improvised while shooting, and wasn't even in the script. Even though he says "no" more than he says "yes", we lovingly named him Mr. Sycophant after a character that had been cut from the first draft.
Greg's next character was the droning Mr. Details, our tribute to Ben Stein.
In his third role, Greg tightened a necktie until he could barely breathe, and played the stammering Mr. Nervous.
The role that took the most preparation in hair and makeup was a silent one. Greg got a large Charles Manson-esque 'X' scarred on his forehead and posed for a photo as the defendant, Mr. Psycho.
Murray's brother Tom stepped in at the last minute to fill the fifth position on the film, and he did a great job in the lead role. Murray said Tom was good at doing a Jimmy Stewart kind of character, so I wrote his part with 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' in mind. Tom nailed the part from the beginning.
With more lines in one character than the rest of us had in several characters combined, we probably didn't need to give Tom another role, but he graciously stepped in as the ever-silent Mr. Stressed, whose part was whittled down until he was nothing but background to keep the film inside the 3-minute time limit. Here you see him holding his hat to the left of Greg's Mr. Sycophant.
In the interest of time, we ended up cutting what I thought was one of the funniest bits in the film. For Murray's first character of the night we connected a smoke machine through the back of his suit and gave him a cigarette. He oozed smoke from every fold of his clothing, and sat enshrouded in a thick haze, coughing and complaining that the room was getting too stuffy. Then the silent Mr. Stressed got so irritated with the smoke he poured water on him to put him out. In the editing room we had a lot of cutting to get the film under three minutes, and the smoke machine whined through the shot, so it got the axe.
Additional postings about this film on: January 22, January 19, January 15
I spent Friday night working on a film for the 24 hour filmmaking contest. They gave everyone a theme, a prop, and a specific line of dialogue that had to be in the film. This year's theme was Mercy. The prop was a candle. The line of dialogue was "I should have." Every team is limited to five people, which must include both cast and crew. The finished film cannot be longer than three minutes.
I joined a team with Murray Triplett, Greg Johnson, Dave Larsen, and Tom Triplett. Murray and Greg had the idea to do a black and white spoof of Twelve Angry Men with each of us playing two or three parts. Murray and I talked over some plot points and some ideas for characters. Then I wrote up a quick script and Murray gave it a quick rewrite. We tried to make every character over-the-top funny.
We met in Bountiful and filmed in a conference room. Everyone took the characters and made them even crazier. Luckily, Dave is a great make-up artist, so we ended up with some funny-looking character roles. I played Mr. Confused and Mr. Rushed. To make my characters distinct, I even agreed to shave my head for one of the parts. Someday maybe I'll collect the 56 bucks people offered to entice me to put razor to scalp.
Later we edited at Greg's office. The hardest part was packing it all into three minutes. We ended up having to cut some of our favorite bits, and the pacing feels like we were on crack. The film might have been a little stronger if we hadn't been constrained by the time limit, but all in all I think it turned out great. 24 hours is not a lot of time to write, film, edit, and master a project. We had it even tougher than many others because we all worked until 5 on Friday, and Provo is an hour away from us. Still, we had the finished DVD in hand by 8 o'clock Saturday morning. For us it was a 15 hour festival.
Thursday night our film will screen along with the other contest entries at the LDS Festival.
Additional postings about this film on: January 22, January 20, January 19
I spent Thursday and Friday working as a grip. We closed off Gallivan Avenue in downtown Salt Lake and made it look like a busy street of Chicago or New York.
We started the day by having parking enforcement issue tickets to all the cars parked in front of our bagged meters. We got a late start after we finally cleared out the violators.
Director Murray Triplett explains the camera movement he wants.
The traffic disappears and is replaced by a party bus.
The highlight of my day was a shot where the camera jibbed over four lanes of gridlocked traffic. I was operating a smoker and they kept calling "Jim, we can still see you!" The solution was I finally crawled all the way under the car, but I stuck my head out just long enough to have someone take my picture.
When I left work the Friday before Christmas, I was filled with more than just the Christmas spirit. We were closed down the whole week between Christmas and New Years, and I knew this was a great chance to get ahead of my screenwriting schedule. Without the huge, daily time commitment of my job, I could spend the entire day turning the crank on the scene factory in my skull. My productivity level would soar. I might finish an entire draft.
I am back at work now, and can you guess how many words I added over the break? Yep, you got it on the first guess. Zero. I didn't even keep up with the normal page-a-day commitment I stick to when my day job is in session.
My lack of progress was not the result of an overly busy holiday schedule. The fourteen episodes of Lost I watched on DVD are more than enough evidence that I had some free time.
Lately, life seems to be screaming a principle in my direction, and I think it will keep beating me with the idea until my head absorbs the concept.
Structure. Structure. Structure.
The story has to have structure. My life has to have structure. I try to fight against following the rules. After all, I'm artistic, right?
Puh-lease.
Without structure, my story wanders aimlessly and goes nowhere. Why would I think my life would behave any differently?
