Beating the system down

I am listening to Creative Screenwriting Magazine Podcasts. A fantastic series. It has plethora of great info.

For example: I didn’t know that 5 days before going to production with “21” a read through was such a disaster that pulling the plug seemed almost certain. Yet the last moment script changes and the power of Kevin Spacey brought the project back to life. Hmmm. The film is glossy, that’s for sure.

The card counting teams is such an awesome subject. I knew some members of a blackjack team. One of them was an aspiring screenwriter. The guy was funny and talented. Reading his scripts I was rolling on the floor with laughter. Why hasn’t he managed to produce his film? I guess it easier to be a top “winner in disguise”, to successfully rob casinos of millions, to evade wrath of furious Las Vegas types than to produce a Hollywood film.

Somebody may say that perhaps my friend's script was not so great after all. That's the matter of opinion. However one thing is absolutely certain: the guy had a fantastic concept - equal to or better than "MIT students in Vegas". He just didn't have his story described in "Wired" nor was lucky to hook up with Kevin Spacey, who deservingly, has such an enormous cloud.

So what was my friend's concept? You don't expect me to reveal it, do you? After all we compulsive gamblers of film never quit trying to beat the system down. Never.

Pastiche - storytelling about storytelling

"Inglorious Basterds",
written and directed by Quentin Tarantino

“I love rumors. Facts can be so misleading, where rumors, true or false, are often revealing.” - Col. Landa - “Inglorious Basterds”

The characters in Tarantino’s films are high on performing their own lives. They are storytellers of their own lives. They are self-aware of their own, self created NARRATIVES. That’s what makes them so cool. That’s probably why the entire planet went nuts over “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction”.

Not only the characters in these stories are high on storytelling. The storyteller himself is high on his craft. More: the story is high on itself. Through its stylization, its self awareness. The story is at the same time both sincere and self-reflective. The key is “at the same time”, because any fool can write something straight and later comment on it.

In the Internet posted (leaked way too early?) script for “Inglorious Basterds” there is so much typographical and grammatical lapses that either Tarantino uses a manual typewriter, writes very fast, is a dyslexic or just plainly fucks with some future uptight reader. Probably the latter, as per (narratively justified) “basterds”. It works, judging by the number of indignant “He’s a fraud. He can’t write, he misspells!” comments. I wish I could participate in this delicious game, but with my English I have to restrain to the most general aspects of storytelling in the script.

Let’s take the 18 page long prologue. The upcoming events are foreshadow by the four stylistic elements:

The title. “Once Upon a Time in France”. A narrative aspect of what will follow can’t be spelled out more clearly.

The context. In the Nazi occupied France when a military car drives up to a farm house it most likely announces something no good. In fact, anything Nazi is no good.

The initial info (on page 2) that something is dramatically off. “After living for a year with a sword of Damocles suspended over his head, this may very well be the end.” We don’t know what’s wrong but the sentence is clear enough. Afterwards the more time is spent on pleasantries the more suspense accumulates. Pure Hitchcock.

And finally the narrative self-consciousness of the bad guy, Col. Landa, who gets off on his act and whose “acting” drives the Proloque.

The resulting pages are a great read. Of course the proof of the pudding is in the eating so I can’t wait to see the actual film.

Genova - moving forward

“Genova” directed by Michael Winterbottom,
written by Winterbottom and Laurence Coriat

Contrary to my “Metropolis” complains about the lack of narrative progress the field evolves and it happens fast.

For example “Genova” starring Colin Firth and great Catherine Keener, the film about "moving forward", which also moves forward the narrative craft. To me "Genova" effectively reworks “Three colors: Blue.” Strange that nobody mentions it. I hope I am not going nuts! Of course I do not know if Winterbottom consciously enters into the dialog with Kieślowski. Yet, even if directing this film is more instinctual and less cerebral, we the viewers are entitled to argue and point out such (possible) connections.

The first scene is the most obvious. A car crash in both films opens the story. In “Genova” the grieving wife from “Blue” is replaced by the grieving dad and two daughters. In what follows, thematic, sequential, psychological parallels to the Kieślowski masterpiece abound.

Stylistically both films are hugely different, which is as intriguing as it is encouraging. That’s why many directorial aspects of “Genova” (and “Blue”) are worth studying.

I will add “Genova” to the list of analyzed films during my upcoming seminars (“Blue” is already there.) You need to be a SWPS student to attend. Unless I return to offering independent workshops, which may happen. So stay tuned!

Listening to Larry Gelbart

...

For weeks I have been warming up to start another script. I procrastinate so much that it is not funny. For example I re-read about writing scripts. The annoying thing about many writing gurus is that they KNOW. Yet great practitioners speak differently: with much more reverence, sensitivity and curiosity about the world.

For example: Larry Gelbart (of M*S*H and Tootsie fame) in May issue of “Written By”, in a conversation with Phil Rosenthal and facilitated by Richard Stayton, says:

“I need to write. I need to know what I think about things, and I don’t generally know until I find myself writing whatever it is that I feel.”

I like this thought. I read it as justification of my own huge narrative shortcomings. It is OK not to know. The saying points to writing as a process of clarifying intent. As a research into nature of things. It makes me more relaxed about approaching a new story, not fully knowing where it is going. Not knowing “what it is all about” and gradually discovering it in the process is (to me) the best part of writing. Or film editing. Both can be close to each other, just done with different tools. Particularly when one edits an essayistic documentary, where often the structure and the meaning are born during the editing process (I tend to do this a lot.)

Another aspect of the quote is that it specifies the direction for writing process: from feeling to understanding. Feeling is enough to justify embarking on a writing search. I don’t have to know the arrival point. Actually, I better not know it if I am honestly committed to solving a problem. It opens the search for discovery, allows to see unexpected. Otherwise I just try to justify my already formulated opinion. Because, if there is a solution already, why bother to honestly seek it? In reality a true search often brings unexpected results. Don’t transformative journeys reinvent their objectives?

The audience senses sincerity (or its lack) in a storyteller. The struggle and search “along the way” validates the story, makes the communication more real. This way the audience is not preached to but invited to participate in something they probably would also experience themselves, should they try.

On the other hand, precision is necessity. Otherwise we get self indulging, unclear stories. Isn’t “Tootsie? so satisfying because it is so logically put together? So well designed? Don’t all great films work this way?

The conclusion seems to be the hardest one to implement: keep the middle ground, follow the golden rule, be mindful of both processes (discovering and designing). No shortcuts. No single technique. It is relatively easy to follow either “the writing technology” or “the inner search.” Yet, the screen requires both clarity and mystery.

The sincere “I know that I don’t know” seems in this process to be the most priceless and the most difficult to bring forth. So, enough of being a smart ass, Pawel. Put your paws on the keyboard and just do it.

Metropolis

"Metropolis", 1927 directed by Fritz Lang,
written by Lang and Thea von Harbou

...

You cheats! You untalented and lazy bastards,

who elbowed your dull selves onto the silver screen

after 1927, the year “Metropolis” appeared,

you were not original whatsoever.

Nor did you offered anything significant or inspiring.

Instead were just rehashing the Lang's vision.

All those “milestone achievements” in film-making

in reality were just stolen. From Fritz.

Is it possible that most of the film history

has been hijacked by mediocrity?

That the warning tale of the tragic connection

between technology and the masses

fell upon deaf ears for almost a century?

That what appeared to be a sentimental message

of “reason and hand needing a heart to connect”

was in fact a true warning of the utmost importance?

Completely disregarded.

All the years following “Metropolis”

whether in film or politics

or in self awareness of the masses

proved the film’s call to be true.

Yet nobody has listened.

So we continue this terrifying “progress”

backward. Straight to our own doom.

Look around:

There is nothing to make a connection

between ideas and technology.

There are only dumb and easy swayed crowds.

Only bland and shallow stories.

Originating from bland and shallow minds.

Delivered to bland and shallow viewers.

Consumed by them in obnoxious and mindless stupor.

All heartless.

No change in sight.

Metropolis.

The melted screen

“Po-lin, Silvers of Memory”, by Jolanta Dylewska

This documentary (Po-lin in Hebrew - “You will rest here”, “A place of safe refuge”, “Poland”) consists mostly of home movies taken during the 30s by American Jews visiting their home villages and towns in Poland. Something happened during its screening:

The melted screen

The screen has melted

the borders between the past and the now have disappeared

and the space have became one.

You wake up and for a while

do not know what’s more real:

the events in this very moment

or those that have been so real just seconds ago,

and are still lingering in your mind,

afterimages of the soul, hints of the real, keys to the mystery

disappearing with your every conscious blink,

every move, every breath.

Who are you?

the dreamer or the dreamed?

The remembered or the rememberer?

An image on the screen of your mind

or your mind that watches it?

Do you live now

or perhaps in a shtetl

somewhere in Poland of 1932

and have been catapulted into the future

by a wise rabbi

or some strange person with

an even stranger machine

(cinematograph it is called)

to skip the horrors,

to see that the healing

can be achieved after all,

that dead and living

can coexist in the present?

United and peaceful.

Afterwards you

(returned to the now or just visiting from the past)

find yourself sitting still,

enveloped in wonder.

Rested and safe?

In Po-lin?

Explosion

...

“It will change when you’re rich and old,”

I’ve heard him saying.

She responded immediately:

“I’ll never be rich,”

then she hesitated for a short but somehow powerful moment.

This moment jumped out of the conversation

and exploded above the summer street like a glass grenade.

Was I the only one to notice it?

After its shinny flying splinters melted into the air,

she added, “nor will I be old.”

I turned around to see who’s taking.

She was maybe 19, slender, vibrant and pretty.

Tight jeans, light blouse, fast walk.

He was a year or two older, taller, bland.

They stopped, kissed passionately

and resumed their stride.

What was she really telling him?

Was it: “With you I have no chance to strike it rich”?

Or perhaps: “I’ll never get to the old age with you.”

Or maybe “We’re doomed, but together.”

Was it a commitment from a woman in love,

or a way of saying - “goodbye looser.”

Or maybe she was saying:

“Careful, these are the best moments of our lives?”

Neither of these possibilities I would like for her to be true.

The way she looked, she deserved better.

But I wasn’t sure what to wish for her

Because I didn’t know what was

inside the explosion.