Open Hatch

Archive for the ‘Film’ Category

This article at the L.A. times came to my attention.

(No, this film still is from Brigham City.  It’s just a great still of The Sheriff.)

My thoughts:

First, I didn’t find FALLING to be “spiritually disquieting” (or causing unease or anxiety). It opened some very probing questions, which, personally, only led to very assuring answers for me. And the film as a whole moved me.

Second, I don’t buy the line that Mormons are embargoed from seeing R-rated films. Bleh. Can this myth please die?

And thirdly and waxing philosophical, as for this quote of Dutcher wondering “what if it’s not true?” -

That surprises me. I don’t expect religion to leave me doubt-free. It’s clear the Savior had his profound doubts just before enacting the atonement. In my book, doubt and questioning, looking for answers – that’s the soil for faith and belief. It was certainly where Joseph Smith began his journey. Proof isn’t the point. You can no more disprove any point of religion (for example the existence of God) than anyone can prove it.

The results of living your religion are the proof. Meetings, taking the sacrament, service, study, testing the word of God. You try the experiments; and do the results make you unhappy or happy?

If you’re not trying the word of God – if you aren’t going to church, if you isolate yourself from your religious community, for starters – you won’t get results. It’s easy to conjecture there’s no merit to a theory you aren’t testing.

And much of the test is what my service or involvement can contribute. As a Bishop put it to me, he never found any ward (Mormon congregation) he liked until he stopped focusing on what others were (or weren’t) doing for him, and started focusing on what he can give.

I see friends who begin expressing doubt, mere luke-warm feelings, or even disenfranchisement, with the church, the people in their ward and the things they believe and say, and this all happens at the same time they’ve stopped attending church. Guess what? What these misguided people around you need is for you to go to church and present your take on things in a positive, non-threatening way. (And I know these friends have good and enlightening things to say.)

If others may not be seeing the light, how about shedding some of your own? The Mormon church is designed to informally acquaint us with each other’s insights. If there sometimes isn’t much insight, there’s even less if people nonplussed with that fact keep on waiting for the situation to change – without realizing they can change it. Without realizing they can never know how they positively impact others. There are many people in the LDS religious community who have no idea how they’ve positively impacted me.

Did Jesus walk the streets during his ministry visiting the sick, the poor, the social outcasts, the odd ones, the unwanted, all the while asking himself “What am I getting from these weirdos, what’s in this for me?”

Religion may not be thrilling very often, ergo the command to “endure to the end”. I’ve found that any time I give up the endurance test, again, I feel empty.

Never mind I’d tell you like many a Mormon I know it’s all true. Which I do. My doubts are about what this religion can actually do for me (the acknowledged paradox being that I shouldn’t just be in it for me). I’ll always be figuring that out – and those doubts are exactly what lead me to keep trying things out.

Here is a script for something I’m going to shoot soon – my son will star.

[Update Jun 1st: there were several inaccuracies in this article now corrected, and I've added some too - all in bold.]

I just ordered a Canon VIXIA HD30 camcorder – this is a higher end HD consumer beast. I’m excited about it. There are many things I’ll do with it.

I’ve been asking around and doing a lot of research about HD and particularly how it may transfer to film and/or project on a big screen, and I want to say I notice a fairly sharp divide between people who insist video should never imitate or copy to film vs. people who say go for it. What’s odd to me is that folks against it seem to usually describe that as the more realistic or practical approach, or that copying video to film is only “dreaming.”

Well, gee, imagine any film maker dreaming.

I’m in no mood after writing my thesis to cite the sources of facts I present and form my conclusions on. Suffice it to say I believe you could verify these facts.

My take is that in truth it is more practical to go digital if you can. We are in a digital cinema revolution, and physical film stock may always have its place, but the reality is that the blockades to shooting digital film which audiences don’t perceive as different after transfer to film – never mind the options to just distribute digitally increasing every year! – blockades to that quality break down steadily every year.

[Why am I speculating? With a ruler I drew a grid on a post-it note at the resolution of HD - 3 pixels an inch assuming a 30 foot screen - and filled it with alternating black-and-white squares, and looked at it from 40 feet back. There would really need to do be some image processing and projection magic with the way pixels transition into each other to make it look good. Fairly obvious "I am pixels" look at that resolution. But I need to know. I'm looking for sources that give a lot more detail on this, and I've also simply got to do real application visual tests on all this theory myself, somehow.]

About digital film projection, I’m going to speculate now. I don’t know how this actually plays out, this is theory, and I’d love to know of the real-world tests that certainly are playing out on these questions. But my speculation is that depending, digitally projected high-definition video could look not only anywhere from sufficiently as good as film to just as good, but better. Consider resolution available from the Red One. Here’s a picture of a 2006 model with some kind of super-exo-death-armature-skeleton-frame thing around it.

………………..

[This section had inaccuracies about the resolution of the Red One when I first wrote it - it's fixed now.]

It shoots 2k (just over 1080 vertical pixels). That’s a bit more resolution than George Lucas thought was good enough (snobs have turned against him after the Star Wars prequels – yes, I will make that abusive statement, anyone who derides Lucas over his Star Wars prequels is a snob – I have qualms with the stories and writing on Star Wars Episodes I, II, sorta III and totally VI, but IV and V still rock the world, and I give Lucas full faith as a technological pioneer: arguably, he has single-handedly initiated the special effects revolution, and then the digital cinema revolution. Whether he simply vanishes like a good Jedi or makes it to heaven or not, before and if you pass the pearly gates, you’ll at least have to give him a hearty “thank you”.) Never mind that the Red One looks like a Star Wars Tie Fighter or something, and has a name reminiscent of Luke Skywalker flying the Death Star trenches – they have their market down – but it can record 1152 vertical pixels (or rows) at 120 frames a second, so that if projected at the same rate, it’s showing images exactly five times the frequency of standard film. I’ve read of tests going back to the 1970s demonstrating that people see a difference between 24 frames a second vs. 60 frames a second, and 120 is twice the upper range of those tests. I’d think that would probably look brilliant. Or you can do about a five hundred more rows of pixels at 60 frames a second, or again about five hundred more than that (or 2048 rows) at 30 frames a second – still a better frame rate than film. And digital projectors that do this are steadily spreading to theaters worldwide – my dear local Wynnsong has some now

Interesting math: that highest resolution mentioned (4x) has 4,096 vertical pixels, and if you divide that into 30 feet (for the typical height of a theater screen, and that link passes those paramaters into google calculator), and express that in inches, it’s about 8 pixels an inch. The math for x1080 resolution gives 3.333… pixels an inch. How does that look when you’re sitting 30 or 40 feet back (or further) from the screen? Losing detail and size for distance, they’d likely appear a lot finer and closer together I’d think. How does the density of pixels multiply across the visual range with distance? [When I first posted this I wondered if ten inches would shrink to 1, visually, so that what used to look like 3 pixels in an inch would be 30, and whether that would be enough - but no, 300 pixels an inch (or 100 times as many as 3 per inch) would correlate with the usual baseline for digital images.] That would seem like a reasonable baseline they’d go for in apparent density for “digital film”. If the visual density multiplies by about a hundred – would it? – I haven’t done that math or looked it up – but if that were the case then x2 resolution might be effectively 600 dots per inch, and x4 resolution maybe 1200 dots per inch?]

I’ve read of cinema house worries over the fickle and perhaps difficult to manage aspects of digital media, and there may be a lot of kinks and things to figure out with digital cinema along the way – but what do we expect? – it’s a brand new medium. Besides, those kinks will probably be worked out fairly fast. It took a good 60 or 70 years or so to figure out how best to technically work film, but vast improvements with digital film are advancing over stages of years, not decades! Ten years ago nobody would have thought you could buy a camera that shot at 1080 vertical pixels for under a thousand dollars. Three years ago the same camera would have cost several thousand dollars. If the trend continues the same quality camera will be available in a few years for half the price, and a camera twice as good will be available at the same price. Expanding that trend to decades it’s easy that around, say, 2020, teenagers from middle to low income families could be armed with camcorders that shoot at a resolution you can blow up to an IMAX screen – and by then there may be some bid-to-rent digital distribution network in place so that they can show their independent film at a local theatre for costs low enough that independent filmmakers of today might gasp. You can distribute for what cost? That low?

That all sounds like a dream, and it could be, but again, given the way these specific technologies have advanced in the past decade it’s easy they may advance to that stage in another decade. In my book digital cinema has to be the way motion pictures go. (I think high definition and beyond will also radically transform home entertainment.) We’ll still use film a lot, I think, especially for long-term storage because digital storage is notoriously destructible and fickle.

The opening sequence to THE MATRIX is among the most beautiful art ever done with film and computers. I just found a Windows “screensaver” (imagery that appears on your computer monitor if you leave your machine idle for so many minutes) that emulates the very thing very well - on your computer.

I first tried the official screensaver released by Warner Bros. back in 1999 (Okay, has it been that long or longer since THE MATRIX? – I’m getting old..), and after that I tried three others – this one is far and away the best. It can emulate the opening sequence to THE MATRIX tracing a program to your phone number, calling on your name .. kinda eerie. Exceedingly cool. Change the speed, speed variation, font animation, line density, and color of the scrolling code also.

Caveat: almost predictably, you have to be a geek to install this thing. 1. It runs on windows (hmmm.. the platform on which most internetworked clients in the world are run?) 2. You have to know where your Windows install places the .scr, or screensaver files, and copy the file to that directory. On my Windows XP install, that is C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 – and then 3. You have to know where to change your screensaver.

I’ve been holding off recommending this film, because ai-ai-ai, will it make a Mormon audience composed of your typical Mormon culture uncomfortable. It is ridiculous how fully Dutcher has taken on the role of The Artist Who Challenges You. If Dutcher is going around touting in his advertisements that the thing is R-rated – one of the hot-button topics in Mormon culture – I cannot see otherwise but that he has taken it upon himself to challenge culture. If that gives you brownie points among crowds that think that’s the mission of an artist (*ahem*AML-list*hem), okay. But I don’t think there’s any chart in heaven detailing how much any artist challenged culture. It’s not about that.

According to Michael Medved – who has given Dutcher some of his best reviews! – the artist as cultural or religious challenger is a mythical role that has emerged only in this last century. Medved argues that most of the artists who created our “classics” through the centuries found plenty to do – under every kind of label or adjective you could conjure: disturbed, glorious, funny, tragic – whatever- without heckling their host culture, as so many artists in our day have been taught to believe they should. It is a point given in Dutcher’s biography at his own web page that one of his teachers while in film school at BYU prophesied that the first great Mormon writer will be excommunicated. Richard, that teacher was full of crap! Without a mass of knowledge to back up my agreement with Medved, I only say that Medved’s take on artists and culture sounds to me a whole lot better than advertising your film as “The first R-Rated Mormon film!” Why don’t we just change the billboard to say “This film will shock and offend you!” What of the dopes in the narrative of this very film who claim the only way an artist will get ahead is by shocking and offending? We’re supposed to think those guys are dopes, right? They’re part of the culture that led to the lead character’s fall. So let’s not listen to them.

Now I know I’ve gone and abrasively criticized marketing. Sometime last year I abrasively criticized a marketing effort coming from Dutcher’s Main Street Movie Co. and shortly thereafter found a comment at my film blog from Dutcher’s marketing guy, abrasively criticizing my (retrospectively) amateurish concept trailer. Tit-for-tat cannon blasts among the artists in Zion. I don’t think it’s easy for artists to separate the line of personal criticism from artistic criticism. And too often we merge them – but that’s an essay for another day.

I believe Dutcher could have told the exact same story of FALLING with just slightly different directing decisions that wouldn’t ensure he turns a lot of his audience away. And his marketing of this film is way off-base. (I know, I hear the cannons blasting still.) If you don’t care about ratings (as I believe Dutcher claims not to), you don’t advertise them. If many Mormons think it wrong to ever see an R-rated film (and that thinking is in error, in my opinion), period, that’s fine for them – it is their right to risk missing out, and frankly, too many who argue against the point would seek to deny Mormons so inclined of that right, or deny them their freedom of conscience to avoid whatever they want – but the inevitable message behind “The first R-rated Mormon film!” is ironically as narrow in a different way. It actually seeks to drive the question of the appropriate to the utmost limits of tolerance – and I would argue that very approach will only produce intolerance – it isn’t going to make anyone think. Nobody thinks when they feel threatened. All they think about is either raising their fists to pummel the hell out of you or getting the hell away from the situation (Dutcher has experienced far more than his share of both, on emotional terms). Fight or Flight. It reduces us to cavemen. Where’s the love in that? Philosophical battles are one thing, but you’ve gotta know that even though there may not be a rational basis for Mormons to do so, they’re simply going to read it as an attack on their religion.

Art isn’t a culture or religion test. Life is a culture and religion test – the way we live. Art is a huge part of life (and for artists, it is literally the subsistence of their life – how they get by) – but as the Indigo Girls penned, “..there’s just no medium for life”. Life is life, art is story (where this film is concerned). And this story should be advertised for what it is – a very powerful morality tale – not for what it isn’t (G-rated).

The unfortunate irony of that advertising is that the film is, in my opinion, powerfully Mormon, but while the advertising raises a question entirely irrelevant to the film, it only invites those whose minds are closed to the question – and I have tried opening many minds to the question, and the steel trap set on that question does not respond to crow bars – it only invites them to keep the trap shut, indeed the trap may only close tighter.

I had to decide whether I think Dutcher himself or his actors went against good principle in their performances. I’ve decided I don’t think they did. The directing decisions over that question are so distracting it could not only tear down the proscenium for many (it nearly did for me, but I’d gone into the film with a lot of forethought and preparation) – it could make them want to burn down the theater. Nevertheless, to those willing to explore them, the questions are so gripping it may not matter. The context and the story, the presentation, the direction, what happens – it all very clearly paints the disturbances the film explores as just that: disturbances which are not wanted in a good life. The obvious implication is that we like good, not evil. Hallejuhah. One more film striking against evil.

This also may not be a film for the squeamish.

This film wallops the bloodthirsty with divine guilt.

Last of all, this film probes deeper into the mystery of the Atonement than any work of art I have encountered. If the story it presents is deeply disturbed, the power is in the questions the story poses of whether those disturbances could be overcome. The ending presents situations on questions of innocence and very powerful symbolic reversals – leading to Christ – which I found deeply affecting.

I strongly recommend seeing this film (and here is the official web site for it). I saw it at the LDS film festival last night. It is playing again in the Grand Theater at the Scera Center in Orem (Utah), on Saturday night at 9:45 (why they don’t have a better show time for this singularly great film I don’t know).

It is a documentary that follows the lives of several drug addicts in Utah Valley (a.k.a. “Happy Valley”) seeking recovery, and some families who have lost children to drug overdoses. It explores the harrowing reality of the prevalence of drug abuse in Utah Valley.

What transpires in the life of one family in the documentary, similarly to events reported in NEW YORK DOLL (which is also strongly recommended), is so breathtakingly perfect (and I will get your expectations up) that if it was a narrative film it would be dismissed by America’s deeply cynical culture as contrived and unrealistic. As Susan Jeffers said, “We have been taught to believe that negative equals realistic and positive equals unrealistic.” May this film give the world pause to reconsider that fallacy.

This film has sold out screenings everywhere it shows, and proceeds from the film go to aid addicts seeking rehabilitation, which can be very expensive for drug addiction. Those two marvelous points aside, the very potent spiritual substance communicated by the film is, in my opinion, a serious blow against evil.

I’m wondering about the environment the film seems to invite of broadcasted honesty. Before the film, two completely unaqcuainted men seated behind me audibly shared how sober they were, who in their family was hooked, and who died – now on that last, I wouldn’t hesitate to share. Death by overdose is a public warning and anything less dishonors the death. But if these men felt safe with each other, should they broadcast their secrets audibly through a theatre? If the full disclosure of the interviewees in the film inspires, the whole audience would do this. Let’s be wise. If a few “fall guys” wake the rest of us up, let’s keep our secrets in helpful circles and not parade them.

So, you fellows behind me broadcasting your addictions – as interesting as it makes you, if I would favorably compare you to any celebrity or artist, I’m not going to pay you great notice until you’re dead.

I didn’t ask the film maker afterward, but wanted to ask what his plans are for exposing the many other kinds of addiction that run rampantly through Utah Valley, some of which find love and acceptance easier to come by, and some of which don’t.

One thing in the film disturbed me a lot. Prescription pill abuse is twice as common in Utah Valley as the national average, and is often deadlier than illegal drugs. And a Police Officer interviewed in the film reported a large group of teenagers he had been with, apparently all of them members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints (LDS or “Mormon”), who in discussing such use (abuse) among themselves, said “It’s not against the Word of Wisdom. It’s just a pill. It’s nothing.” (For clarification, the Word of Wisdom is an LDS doctrine regarding careful use of good foods and avoidance of bad foods and abusive substances.) Okay, kids. A careful (and recommended!) read of the Bible renders a picture of Jesus which baffled and enraged the powers of his day by using his head; by dodging rules where they could not apply, in favor of principle. We need rules, but the Lord broadly spoke of all situations where we need to use our heads when He stated in Doctrine and Covenants that “..it is not meet that I should command in all things; for he that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant; wherefore he receiveth no reward.” Use your heads, kids. Do you need the Lord or anyone else to tell you this crap is ruining your body, your self-control, your spirituality, and your life, and that that is bad? You’re smarter than that.

I like to think that awareness of addiction among Mormons is spreading. A few weeks ago at my chapel, they had a joint men’s/women’s meeting with someone from LDS Social Services about the topic, and what leaders are doing and can do about it. Only one thing disappointed me: in introduction he said that while he is sure many here know someone who needs this information, nobody here is in these kinds of situations. No, sir. First, you can’t know that, and second it may be falsely flattering, and a disservice to truth and culture. A strongly repeated point in the documentary HAPPY VALLEY is the entrenched denial aspect of the valley’s culture.

The safest guess is that every ward in every stake in the church has addicts, many of whom have not yet even recognized or confessed to themselves or anyone that they are out of control, and if or when sad circumstance arrives them at that point of total desperation, they may have no idea how to get help or that it is even available. Hopefully on the point that help is available they would be comforted, if our pretension that people in their situation are very rare doesn’t open them to Satan’s lie that their case is so rare, and so extreme, and so terrible, and that they are so far down the scale of hopeless that there is no hope. Please assume that wherever you go, there are people in the congregation who need help.

Dear Richard,

I will give this film a shot. It may surprise you to hear me speaking of going to this film as taking a risk, and you deserve the respect of hearing why I do.

show

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (30.6KB)

[UPDATE: the original of this post suggested using the "Dean Scream" in entertainment projects, and failed also to credit and link to a fellow from whose page I obtained a copy of the "Wilhelm Scream". I've learned that the "Dean Scream" most probably is not necessarily in the clear for use in entertainment projects - which is too bad ]

(Close your eyes when it turns black and white with Uma Thurman slashing a sword, and when someone pulls out a knife. Unless you aren’t squeamish or don’t hate gratuitous violence.)

This is another of at least a few videos posted at YouTube showcasing the myriad uses in films of a stock sound originating at Warner Bros. in 1951, eventually dubbed by Ben Burtt the “Wilhelm Scream”.

Yes, it is actually used in all those shows and films. This isn’t some weird dub-over of them (I was really surprised and amused to learn it was used in THE LORD OF THE RINGS films two and three).

I found a wave file of the “classic” Wilhelm Scream apparently directly copied from the original take Here it is. Click. Click. Click.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(That’s an mp3 burn of the sound)

You can also hear the sound at sound designer Steve Lee’s web site, hollywoodlostandfound.net (this is where I grabbed the sound from), and read a detailed history of it there.

At that page and in an interview with a director (in addition to Steve Lee) in this YouTube video, I’ve learned that the man who popularized the sound, Designer Ben Burtt, will no longer be using the sound (he used it in all six Star Wars films). My blunt take: the public has caught on to the “secret” of its use – previously, mostly an in-joke between many sound designers – so now, it’s, like, popular. And the first rule of hard-core Nerddom is that if it’s popular, it isn’t “cool” anymore.

I think that’s a silly decision on Ben Burtt’s part (I only speculate, perhaps unfairly, on his reasons).

I emailed Steve Lee about the legality of using the Wilhelm Scream – in a nutshell no one knows for sure who the original artist is, and while technically it is owned by Warner Bros., it has been used very abundantly (by people from all kinds of other studios and networks, etc.), and no known squabbles or legal issues have been raised over it.

Lee also added:

By the way, Ben is indeed working on “Indy 4″ and I
would be very surprised if there isn’t a Wilhelm in it.

An interesting aside – I’ve noticed a certain recording of a hawk cry appears almost pedantically in many desert and wilderness scenes in films, and it turns out it is in fact an often used recording – it’s mentioned in this Wikipedia page as “..a certain recording of the cry of the Red-tailed Hawk.”

A tradition of people who know the in-joke of the Wilhelm Scream is to shout “Wilhelm!” whenever they hear the sound effect in a movie. But if it isn’t cool to use the Wilhelm Scream anymore, how about something else?

This scream of Howard Dean, the “Dean Scream”, famously baffled and alienated the public to Howard Dean (arguably in part because the press replayed the “Scream” a lot – which.. I dunno.. it’s pretty funny and may deserve press).

I pulled that flash video out of YouTube, dumped its audio to a .wav file, made a sample of the audience cheering noise in the background of it, and then used that noise in a noise removal tool to isolate a very good approximation of Dean’s Scream without the audience cheering in the background.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(There are technical reasons this sound may not be “perfect”, but I doubt I’d hear much or any difference without those factors – also that’s an mp3 burn of the .wav file).

I wish, oh how I wish, that the “Dean Scream” was legally a for-sure “in the clear” sound to use in any entertainment project. For informational / educational / news use (such as this post), it’s in the clear under “Fair Use” – but it isn’t necessarily in the clear for use in entertainment media.

If another actor imitated the Dean Scream however, and released it to the Public Domain – hey, we could have us the basis of something new.

Wait a bit – I think I’ll do just that.

While looking for images for my computer desktop from My Neighbor Totoro, I ran across this description page of an Anime based on short stories Ursula K. Leguin set in Earthsea.  I also found this YouTube post of a trailer for it (embedded below) – this looks great (especially the art).  You can find a UK trailer on YouTube that has a more dramatic punch but unbearable, typically pious unctuous "I am the voice of Wonder" American English announcing.

If my local libraries or video rental stores don't have this in, I think I'll just get it – lower prices for it found by froogle are less than or not much more than rental (the first one it finds has a description of it from an entirely different film, though – what the.. !?).

I think Rhapsidiom’s comments in his post here are right on target.  We exchange comments after his post.

This is the finished product from this script.

I went to look for Movie Magic Screenwriter and typed in the wrong URL. I found this page. Something it says is so good I’m going to reference it in Google’s cache in case the page changes.

They’ve got these blurbs from guest speakers who are very successful screenwriters. I believe the one, Paul Haggis, is the type that a certain book I’m reading sneeringly refers to as a “Creative Protectionist” type; one who makes art for art’s sake, and who happened to be one of the one in fifty thousand who made it big doing so. Because such successes are rare (or are they just a matter of lining up the right business plan behind the art?), folks on the purely business, pragmatic side of the spectrum (who are in the habit of deluding themselves that they can “eliminate” risk) advocate going with what is tried and true – in other words, what has been done before and made money. That approach by definition demands formulaic, unoriginal, and therefore to the audience, drab films.

Which is what Haggis’ comments get at. And whatever else I might be – I think my film ambition may demand more pragmatic people at my side – I think I’m a “Creative Protectionist”. Now mind, though I counter-sneer at that term, the book from which it comes (THE PRODUCER’S BUSINESS HANDBOOK) has some absolutely indespensable loads of details on the actual operational and organizational procedures of the most successful independent film production businesses. I will not ignore the loads of wisdom and business know-how in that book. It’s just a matter of deciding what of it to take for granted and what to question, if your insticts ever tell you otherwise on anything. Because film is a business of risk, and I would think that sometimes you have to know when to knowingly take a risk, do something “untried” and “unproven”. The same kind of thing goes for listening to what folks on the fiercely independent creative artist side of things have to say; decide what to take for granted and decide what to challenge. And I don’t mean to say make rules out of any of your conclusions; I mean feel it out for every work of art you want to put forward.

To get back to where I was going, I find myself more inclined to first listen to the “creative protectionists” for creating stories, and then use the business side of things to decide what to do with my art.

So here are three excellent answers to questions by Paul Haggiss via screenwriter.com, referenced in google’s cache:

QUESTION:
Sometimes I go to sleep at night and say to myself that this isn’t working and I don’t know what I’m doing and I’m not going to write anymore. The next morning I get up and my characters are yapping again. At this point in your career, do you ever have such insecure thoughts?
ANSWER:
Every single day. You deal with it by writing. You just sit your ass in the chair and write through it. It’s the only way to solve your problems. When you come upon a problem, write directly into it. Embracing the problem is often the way to find a really interesting scene. My other trick is to say, ‘What awful thing could happen to them right now?’ Because sometimes, things are going too well for your characters and you have to give them the worst possible thing that could happen to them. [Ah ha ha! This sounds like God meddling with his lazy children who are too comfortable. "Let's give them a trial!" - RAH]

–

QUESTION:
What type of scripts are hot in Hollywood right now?
ANSWER:
Never ever ever ever ever ever think that way. That is the road to failure and hackdom. I just met with Linda Obst this afternoon, and she bemoaned the fact that all young writers are looking for a payday and therefore are writing what they think she wants to see rather than writing what is in their gut, something they have to say. I cannot stress this enough.

I wrote two spec scripts that I was absolutely sure no one would ever buy: Million Dollar Baby and Crash. They both sold within a couple of years of me writing them, which is very fast.

If you try and second guess what people want and then provide it, YOU WILL FAIL.
Guaranteed.
And never listen to any agent who tells you any different.
You want to write something unique, something only you know.

–

QUESTION:
How does an unknown make it to Hollywood?
ANSWER:
You have to understand that for all intents and purposes, I was “unknown” to the film business four years ago. I had no more advantage or disadvantage than you have. You may not think that truth, but it absolutely is because I had no “heat” coming off any great television show. It was all about the script. If you write a great script and put it in your drawer at your cottage in Muskoka Lake, someone will track it down and find it. If you write a bad script and send 100,000 copies out, it still ain’t gonna sell. The trick is really simple: write a great script. And I don’t mean to be flip. That’s just the truth. Write something that’s in your heart, and if you have your craft down and if you’re really honest with the characters, it will sell. It just may take some time. I guess that’s what you should ask yourself. Not how to sell or market something, but have I written enough and experienced enough to write a good screenplay? You write, you research, you write, you research… What makes a good writer is thousands of pages written.

Where I am dubious of these comments: excuse me Haggis, but at some point someone picked up your work and put a lot of money behind it. And then audiences loved it and got more money behind it. Don’t discount that. Your success was not all pure art. It was pure art with filthy money behind it.

Other than that, he sounds just like the writers in this “ZEN” book I constantly refer to, which Richard Dutcher recommended to me – and I like what I hear. Haggis doesn’t say it’s easy, he says it’s a lot of work, but he says to go with your gut. I should also say, though, that the whole premise of sharing ideas before they are even written in first draft form – sharing them in schools and for example this online-organized writer’s workshop – that goes against what I read in ZEN. There are ideas I’d share with others, and there are ideas I won’t until I’ve got a first draft written.

One more against “doing what has been done before” – what is one of the major complaints about films? That too many of them are FORMULAIC. What does this imdb reviewer of Napolean Dynamite have to say positively about it?

I think where the film ultimately succeeds, aside from the casting of Heder, is that it doesn’t fall into the traps of predictability and stereotyping.

Whatever the writer’s gut tells them to do will be original. Actually, that could mean doing something that has been done before. Maybe in a different way, but still.

Oy. So, a first draft.. oh yeah. That’s why I went to get a program that will output screenwriting format (right now there’s Haggis again at that page: he’s hot, he’s everywhere, he’s the Indie Hero); ZEN recommended writing 120-ish pages of pure rubbish in screenwriting format to defeat the fear of the written page. That’s what I need to do, and that’s what I’m going to do.

I am also reading another indespensable book on independent film marketing: THE COMPLETE INDEPENDENT MOVIE MARKETING HANDBOOK. Though I have the same singular criticism for it that I have for the (afore-linked) PRODUCER’S BUSINESS HANDBOOK – it takes formula way too seriously – I emphasise that it is indespensable.

Lastly, I haven’t forgotten the other two books I mention here (though I haven’t finished reading them), one of which an anonymous commenter mentioned helped him get his first film off the ground, picked up by Fox Searchlight. Who left that comment? One of the folks who made Napolean Dynamite?

Look at this! Look at this entry! LONG! This is my contract with the world.

It’s worth it.

I think.

I found this animated image (1.4 MB download – you’ll have to wait on a slow connection). I don’t know where it’s from. I think it’s very funny.

As I’ve noted here, Richard Dutcher recommended the ZEN AND THE ART OF SCREENWRITING books to me.

I devoured the first book when it arrived (via Barnes and Noble order) and it’s been back on my bookshelf for some time now. Unfortunately I forgot some of its particulars of advice (which I’ll show), but the general advice I remember. I may skim back through it and post more detailed notes later.

The book interviews many very successful screenwriters, interspersed with short chapters of advice from the author, William (Bill) Froug, who founded and headed a reorganization of the screenwriting program at UCLA. It goes through the art and craft, and the business, and also morality, which encouraged me the most, and I’ll address it first.
Read the rest of this entry »