Enough Notes

I finally reached a breaking point with my notes yesterday. Normally, when I start a script, I feel like I have to write everything out and lay out all of the scenes just right in order to start it up. Well, last night, I just had my fill of writing notes because they became spread out over four or five different notebooks and became about five different Word documents. I figured, the notes were beginning to become all consuming, it was time to shut up and write.


And it felt great...

Now, let me summarize, I started a screenplay about six years ago about a third shift hospital transporter. At the time, I thought I had the story laid out exactly the way I wanted it to be. It would play out over the course of one night and over the course of the main character's third shift in the hospital, no flashbacks. I thought keeping it tight like that would increase the tension. Well, the tension worked, but the story didn't. You see, I wanted to get inside of his head and show a complete mental break that would show what would drive someone to want to commit suicide, but the course of one night just wasn't working. After letting a friend of mine read it, it became clear to me that it needed a breadth of more than one night.

So, I began to expand the time span that the story covered and soon, I found that I was free to portray the character's mental status with more vivid detail. Also, I was able to change his backstory and make the character not only something that would work for an actor that I have worked with recently, but something that became more personal.

In other words, I finally made the story personal...which is probably why it got lost in notes.

I wanted everything to be perfect, so I began laying the scenes out, trying to get a good flow for them. I had a good beginning, a good end and parts of a good middle. I knew where I needed to go, but for some reason, I couldn't make all of the parts fit in my notes. That's when it hit me, that I had reached the limit of how far my notes could take me. It was time to write out all of the thoughts I had formed in my head and let them play out as they needed. Besides, even though this is a re-write, it's still a rough draft and my old playwriting teacher used to say that good writing is in the re-writing. Finally feeling confident, I jumped into the old Movie Magic Screenwriting software last night and wrote. Wrote like crazy. In fact, I think this is the first time that I wrote a script where the first page only has one line of spoken dialog.

That gave me hope.

I was finally telling stories with visuals and not just dialog. I think I'm finally ready for this one to be seen. :)

Top 25 Guily Pleasure Movies Part I

As I write this first entry, I am introducing my wife to The Remains of the Day. Now, for those of you who completely read over that first line as just another movie, let me explain what type of movie The Remains of the Day is. It’s a British Costume Drama romance about a butler who must decide between his duties as a butler and his affections towards a new housekeeper. So, that means a LOT of talking and a LOT of fancy costumes. Hardly the type of film that most men would watch without kicking and screaming, let alone be one of my favorite movies, which is precisely what I want to address: those type of movies that we are ashamed to admit that we love, the guilty pleasures.

Now, I freely admit to loving costume dramas, especially well made ones. The type of movies that I have a hard time admitting to enjoying are the ones that, no matter how much I try to justify them, I cannot escape the fact that they are, how can I put this delicately, put together by rhesus monkeys. I’ll do my best to be as open and honest about my choices as I try to justify, er, explain my liking of these movies. So, feel free to laugh as I open up to everyone about my choices for my Top 25 Biggest Guilty Pleasures of All Time.

25. Jurassic Park III: After the second movie, the notion of continuing this franchise as a series seemed bloated and unnecessary…and it was. Let’s face it, The Lost World was a dark, mean-spirited diatribe against all humanity and the thought of continuing that franchise was pretty daunting. So, naturally, when I saw this movie, it was a much less dark film, even if it was a simple and bloated B-movie on par with the old 50s monster movies. In fact, that’s probably what I liked about it. Sure, it’s not as much fun as the first part, but then again, there are few movies that are. So, there it is, I liked Jurassic Park III, much better than I liked The Lost World.

24. Elvira: Mistress of the Dark: Okay, this is a movie that is just low-brow, goofy and all around corny as Kansas…and yet, I enjoy it. Perhaps it’s the side of me that grew up with cheesy midnight drive in movies like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes or the movies featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000, but something about the cornball nature of those movies just speaks to me. As does the host, who is like a heavy metal party girl that enjoys schlock films…and happens to have enormous breasts. What’s not to love?

23. Showgirls: Believe it or not, but the excessive amounts of nudity aren’t what draws me to this train wreck of a movie. Sure, it’s alluring at first, but after about half an hour of women running by the camera naked, you start to get bored and desensitized to it. So, what are you left with? Some of the worst dialog and worst acting ever to have been captured on celluloid and that’s where the enjoyment begins! Elizabeth Berkley’s career killing performance alone is enough to make this train wreck one of the most unintentionally entertaining movies you’ll be embarrassed to watch.

22. Superman IV: This is one that goes way back into my childhood. In fact, I think it was the second or first Superman movie that I had ever seen. At the time, I enjoyed the effects, the fights and the fun. Only now, when I got older, did I realize how incredibly goofy the movie really was. Gravity in space, strange uses of Superman’s powers, incredibly goofy rear projection screen shots, this is truly one stupidly put together movie. Still, it’s not quite as stupid as that Bryan Singer version that came out a couple of years ago, which didn’t have a single redeeming moment in its pretentiousness. That’s why this version is more enjoyable in my eyes because it doesn’t take itself quite as seriously, which makes I think makes movies like these more enjoyable.

21. War of the Worlds: Okay, maybe it’s because I saw this movie before I saw the Tom Cruise couch jumping incident or before all of that crazy Tom stuff started coming out, but all that aside, this is one cleverly put together scary popcorn summer film. The effects are top notch and some moments are so genuinely terrifying that it is actually very entertaining, despite an otherwise cop out ending that it seems like Spielberg left the set that day to start work on Munich. And, yes, Tom Cruise may be bat-guano crazy, but damn it, he keeps making good movies! I want to hate you, but you keep making good movies!

Well, that's what I wrote out for now, I'll update the next five tomorrow. :)

Welcome Everyone!!

Well, my friends have asked me to make one of these so I can stop flooding facebook with all of my youtube video links and lists. I figured, why stop there? Why not use this as a use to get out all of my thoughts on movies and any and all developments of current and future movie projects. And that could be just for starters. I may even start up a podcast or something like that just to have some fun. So, who's to say where this will go? It could be a new forum for me to voice my thoughts...or it could end here. :)