Writing the Ethical Dilemma

“Based on a true story that was based on a lie.” I haven’t seen Resurrecting the Champ so I don't know if it delivers the ethical dilemma it promises but that one line sums up a quagmire of conscience better than any eleven words I could pound out. It's a great line. First it's white ( based on a true story) and then it's black (based on a lie). But from what I've read, the story is supposed to be about shades of gray.

Shades of gray. We amateurs often have a hard time writing convincing moral and ethical dilemmas. The situations feel pale and the stakes unrealistic. The problem? Shades of gray. There's more than one shade of gray in our ethical crayon boxes but many of us new writers use only one shade so our dilemmas are unconvincing, stagnant or downright boring. Dilemmas need hues, tints, and contrast. They're multi-dimensional and there's always more than one perspective or version even if there's seemingly only one solution.

Issues of the conscience are inherently difficult to film because they occur in the heart and soul and mind. This flies in the face of the "films are visual so action is king" rule. You can't film thoughts (unless you get Tom Hanks in the starring role) so you need action to demonstrate a story and portray character. But action is not THE dilemma. We only use action scenes to set up, carry along, demonstrate, complicate, and perpetuate the dilemma.

A note of caution about using gray crayons. Remember how my grandmother used to say that you only show a man a little ankle? While we need to demonstrate the dilemma to the audience VERY CLEARLY, we don't need to give them every nuance and possible retribution of the dilemma. We must give the audience room to feel for themselves. Give them enough information to empathize with the character, feel his dilemma, and feel the full impact of the weight of the situation but there must be some "what if" that the audience can fill in with their personal feelings or knowledge or experience to make it more meaningful for them. I'll come back to this in a minute.

What kinds of ethical dilemmas are we talking about? Let's take lying for example. Everyone has had experience with liars. Liars are occur when three things happen:

1. a person knows that a fact or circumstance is false, illegal, wrong, or a risk to somebody



2. that person represents the circumstance as truth, legal, right, or safe



3. that person allows others to believe the misrepresented information

Ta da! Introducing one of the most frequently confronted ethical issues in the corporate and personal lives of people today. A liar.

This may seem overly simplistic and not enough to build a story around (Liar, Liar anyone?) but remember that the cheese doesn't usually stand alone. When you've got an ethical dilemma going on in a film, there's more to the story. Somebody has a career in trouble, a strained relationship, a broken down business, etc. But let's put it to the test in a business situation.

The fact is that every business environment eventually develops a system of morality and ethics acceptable within itself that may or may not differ from societal standards and that three step "liar litmus test" would fail in many corporate "greater good" scenarios. Not only that, it would be okay! What the??

Basically, the ends justify the means in business. Businesses exist for the end, not the means so if the means are not hurting anyone in the short term and we're doing something beneficial for the corporation, a fudge on the rules (which we all know are bad anyway) or a lie here and there is only going to help our stockholders, readers, public, or whomever it is our corporation is held accountable to. Why not stretch the truth and bend the reality just a little for the benefit of the greater good? Guess what? You're a hero for it! Furthermore, anyone who would OPPOSE such a plan for the greater good is an enemy of the company. Hence the honest person becomes the villain and the liar becomes the savior.

How did I get all that out of a simple lie? Well, it's not just a lie. It's a moral dilemma if the character has a standard of right and wrong in his life and it's an ethical dilemma if the character has a standard of right and wrong in his business dealings.

The important thing is to make sure we identify what our characters' standards are. If we don't establish what a character's moral or ethical standards are in our stories, how can the reader understand the full impact of a dilemma on that character? In Chariots of Fire, a Christian athlete will not compromise his beliefs to achieve his goals. If that concept had not been clearly established in this film, the character could have easily been blurred into a zealous guy who just refused to run on Sunday.

Now, let's go back to what I said earlier about leaving room for the audience to feel something personal. Using Chariots of Fire as an example again, one of the brilliant things about this film is the wiggle room for people of other religions to relate to being asked to do something that contradicts a core belief or risk losing a once in a lifetime an opportunity.

But it's not just about religion. Economic, political, social, religious and cultural forces are competing in our lives and any combination of these forces may lead our characters to feel powerless to oppose them. Going along with group is troublesome. Speaking up may be even more troublesome. Yet, each person must face a mirror every day and weigh the cost to their own personal lives, professional lives, and personal values while balancing whatever their organizational obligations are. As writers, we've got to find a way to convey that feeling of powerlessness without weighing down our stories, robbing the scenes of their action, or turning our screenplays into 120 pages of preachy soliloquies.

By the way, whistleblowing is a cop-out answer. It may sound like the easy way to resolve your corporate issues but come on. If the corporate world was that elementary, somebody could have tattled on Enron from a bottom rung in the early stages, my uncle would have been spared about $4 million in retirement, and who knows how many lives would be changed. Whistleblowing is complex and comes with a set of retributions that may be worse than looking in the mirror and knowing that you're party to something dishonest. Keep that in mind before you make whistleblowing your silver bullet.

Remember, too, that more than one person may be struggling with the same dilemma or even opposite sides of the same ethical dilemma. There may not be a right and wrong. It may be a right and right or a wrong and wrong. Master and Commander uses a powerful "lesser of two evils" dilemma that affects every person on board the ship when Captain Aubrey has to let a sailor drown to keep the whole ship from going under. That's a very dark gray crayon. Time after time, the Captain makes decisions that are neither black nor white, but variations of gray as he breaks a promise to a friend to pursue a nemesis in service to the British Navy and then postpones that service by breaking off chase in order to save that same friend's life.

I'm curious to see whether the ethical dilemma in Resurrecting the Champ is "black and white", "shades of gray", or "one shade of gray". But I've heard the Creative Screenwriting podcast with co-writer Michael Bortman and director Rod Lurie so I'm looking forward to the film. But the podcast got me thinking about the vast array of crayons at our disposal to use in our ethical coloring books. Steel gray. Mousy gray. Iron gray. Pearl gray. There's no need to choose a single shade and stick with it.

Moviegoers aren't afraid to think. Let's give them a kaleidoscope.

Films Without Romance

Still waiting for suggestions of really good films (yeah, I know that's subjective) where there's no romantic plot or sub-plot. Documentaries and horror films don't count. Just as I did with dead protagonists, I'm searching for common denominators. Yes, such films do exist. Master and Commander, for example, has no romance except the love of Captain Aubrey for his ship and the sea and his service to the Navy.

So, please help by pointing me to films without primary or secondary romantic storylines. Ready, GO!

My Horse Finally Won

Say what you will about On The Lot, production value, host's cleavage, contestant talent or lack of it, or whatever, but for the first time in reality show history, my favorite finished first.

Of course, I don't watch any reality shows except American Idol so that's not saying much.

But don't tell me Will wasn't the best. I don't care. He's a Texan. That right there ought to be enough for me. But his films had charm and heart (does that make him a director with charm and heart or a good writer?) and Will himself is such a cutie patootie with a receding hairline that I was hooked from the beginning. Oh, and my son's name is Will so there ya go.

My biggest complaint about the show? Uh, these contestants are DIRECTORS, not writers. Either judge them SOLELY on directing skills or give them writers next year to help them execute their ideas if your gonna slam them for story development.

Wait. If you give them writers, then one director will, by luck of the draw, be assigned a better writer than another so there's no real way to level the field, is there? But then, do real directors have a level playing field when it comes to working with writers?

An Uninvited Role

Producer John Singleton was just driving along, probably listening to some tunes and thumping on his steering wheel, when bam! Life ended. Right there. On his car! Not his life, but the life of a stranger.

A jaywalker stepped in front of John Singleton's car yesterday and there was nothing he could do. She died. Singleton did everything he was supposed to do. He called an ambulance and waited for police. He wasn't under the influence of anything but geez, the poor guy has to live with that movie playing in his mind for the rest of his life and know he played an uninvited role in ending the life of a woman.

Most of us have accepted that we're probably not going to control the manner of our own deaths but being unable to prevent participating in the death of another? Seems like we should be able to do that. We fence our pools, install smoke detectors, inspect our food, fasten our seatbelts, label poisons, sign our roads, test our cars, tie up our dogs, lock up the guns, child proof our medicine bottles, put flame retardant pajamas on our kids, bolt, tag, inoculate, latch, inspect, ticket, legislate, and STILL somebody's granny wanders off in the middle of the night and freezes to death in a ditch and STILL some poor mother wakes up every morning to realize she forgot to take a stuffed animal out of the crib and her infant suffocated on it.

Despite our best efforts to avoid it, death happens. And, every time it does, somebody wishes they had done something different to prevent it. I'm in no way saying that we shouldn't legislate safety standards. We should and we do. And yeah, drunks belong in jail. But death is not always preventable. Neither, apparently, is our participation in somebody else's.

Maybe the woman who stepped out in front of John Singleton was ill or distraught or distracted. I dunno. But she is culpable. Yet I bet Singleton wishes he'd taken a different road that day.

Sooner or later, every one of us finds ourselves in a situation where we wish we had taken a different road. But the cruel truth is that often, the roles we play in life and in death are forced upon us.

Interesting Nicholl Note

Greg Beal posted this on Zoetrope August 2nd --

"As we ran out of time this year, I was not able to place all of the notes on the bottom of letters that I normally do. Only the 'next 100 scripts' received notes. We are going to follow up with e-mails to the top 10% and top 15% groups, probably next week."

Haven't heard of anyone getting such email yet.

A Fraud in the Room

Sometimes, as a screenwriter, I feel like a poser, like I'm pretending my Winnie the Pooh pajamas are an expensive negligee. Other days, I pity the person who thinks a scratchy lace nightie is better than a sports bra and flannel Tigger shorts. But now that I'm on a brief hiatus from screenwriting, I'm finding my inner writer to be a bit problematic while doing my coursework.

For example --

Describe Maslow's "hierarchy of needs" and explain what is meant by the term self-actualization.

Wonder if "go to http://www.unknownscreenwriter.com/" will suffice as an answer?

Must focus. Next question.

Of the ten principles advanced by authors Osborne and Gaebler to reinvent government, name and briefly explain the three human based types of government that call for the empowerment of comm unties/neighborhoods, citizens, and government workers.

Three. Hmm. Three types of government. Three. Three. Three acts. It's begging me to write it. Hear it? It's saying, "Please, write me, crazy government lady. I'm a mind numbingly lame evolutionary municipal screenplay that nobody will produce or even read and you should have 'nerd' carved on your forehead for even thinking of me but you are compelled to outline me anyway because you're a sad little person who needs a nap -- and likes Smurfs."

Yeah. I'm a fraud.

But not in my pajamas.

I Who Have Nothing

...but raw disappointment this year will be taking a little time off writing to work on some stuff I have to do professionally. When I get back to it, we'll take a look at successful films WITHOUT a romantic secondary story line or subplot and figure out what makes them work. Meanwhile, congratulations to the 254 quarterfinalists in the Don and Gee Nicholl Screenwriting fellowship. I am not one of you.

By way of explanation: Books arrived today from the University of North Texas for a three year program I need to take due to a technicality. I wouldn't mind except I've already graduated from this program and even assisted in teaching the program. But not retaking the entire three years is causing me a credibility problem at work. It's a long story but basically, this is pretty much graduate study material and is going to put serious demands on my time.

When it rains, it comes a stinkin' torrent. Will fit as much writing in as I can, but the job pays the electricity so this other thing has to be done. Meanwhile, I need film titles where there is NO ROMANTIC subplot. I'm making a list. Ready . . . GO!

And Todd, you realize, of course, this means no autographed shoes.

Not Getting in a Hurry

My Nicholl letter arrived on July 29th in 2005 and on August 3rd in 2006. (Yes, I remember the dates) Not stalking my mail lady this year because what's done is done and whatever happens happens but hoping every last one of your fingers and toes are crossed. I don't really believe in luck. I just like the mental image of 6,000 people out there with all their fingers and toes crossed.

UPDATE 10:00 p.m.: Several screenwriters got their dink and congrats letters today so while I'm still collected and patient and whatever will be will still be and there's nothing I can do about it either way, my mail lady is now fair game.

Duck, Duck, Me

Unk tagged me with this randomness thing where you have to tell eight things about yourself and yeah, I did this not too long ago but maybe somebody will need these additional flaky (but ever so boring) facts one day for trivia about famous screenwriters. Or, you know, not-so-famous ones who tried really hard ---

I'm addicted to antique books. I collect readers, novels, and children's books from the early 1900's but I have a few music and history books too. It's like reading a museum artifact every time I open one. I still have a few of my own childhood books. When I'm gone, I hope whoever winds up with my books treats them like treasures a little girl loved and cherished her whole life.

While we're on books, some of my favorite authors are Alexandre Dumas, Raphael Sabatini, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Victor Hugo. Oh, and I got hooked on those Lemony Snicket books, too.

I am a musophobic - no joke. Outdoors, if a mouse is being batted around by my cat, I'm cool. Kill it, kitty. No biggie. But indoors, I see a rodent and get chest pains like a heart attack and I actually believe I'll die if the vile thing touches me. No, I'm not talking about the lady standing in a chair kind of scared. I'm talking flashbacks to rats crawling in my hair when I was a kid and biting my arms and legs while I collected eggs in the wrecked out cars my great grandmother used as chicken coops. It's an illness. I almost lost my mind a few months ago when Norway rats invaded my office and took up residence in my printer.

My mother's father wrote Wasted Days and Wasted Nights for Freddy Fender on a cocktail napkin in a bar. My mother still has the napkin. But Freddy Fender now has sole credit for most of the music written with or by Wayne Duncan. If you get into any music business, make sure you have an entertainment attorney and don't' marry a sixteen year old girl in Honduras when you're a seventy year old man about to die of cirrhosis of the liver.

My other grandfather would make trips to Canada and type all his postcards to me. I still have every card. I also have his typewriter. His name for me was Bluebell. My brother was Tadpole. My sister was Daisy. He never used our given names. That was just his way. So was telling stories. I'm embarrassed to admit how old I was before I figured out miniature monkeys do not sit inside traffic signals changing the lights. Sorry to spoil it for you if you didn't know. He also rolled his own cigarettes, blew smoke rings, did a strange alternating rhythmic thing with his pectoral muscles, and could suck a radish up his nose from across the table. Good times.

My mother was a teenage beauty queen in Harlingen but was disqualified for lying about her age. She wasn't old enough to enter. She got married and began having babies shortly after that so she never entered again. She had three children before she was twenty. We now look the same age.

Sunday is chocolate covered cherries day. Or Snickers day. And, Big Red. Big Red is God's soda, you know. At least, that's what I always believed as a little girl in San Antonio. God probably also eats chocolate covered cherries and Snickers although I doubt He only eats them on Sunday. He also doesn't have to work out at the gym the rest of the week to burn off His excess calories.

If you ever send me flowers, make them white daisies. I love roses but I have a yard full of my own and cut roses don't live very long. White daisies are just so darn happy! Oh, and I like bluebells but tadpoles don't make a very nice bouquet. They do, however, show up by the thousands when your backyard is flooded and they conjure up fond memories of a radish sniffing grandfather.

Silk Purses and Sows' Ears

Fans of Animaniacs will remember the Good Idea/Bad Idea segments which featured variations of the same idea where one works and one doesn't work.

Good Idea: Drinking fresh milk from the carton.
Bad Idea: Drinking fresh milk from the cow.

Regardless of how well the bad idea is executed, it's predestined for failure by its very essence (as the mental image of getting your milk straight from the cow would suggest).

We're often guilty in screenwriting of doing such an excellent job of executing characters, scenes, and story elements that when they don't work, we fail to recognize them for what they really are -- bad ideas -- albeit well developed and well executed bad ideas, they're basically sows' ears or deadwood or some other negative analogy for an albatross around our screenwriting necks.

Excellent execution does not negate a poor idea.

We writers are a possessive bunch of wordsmiths. Once we thread a few words together, we hate to yank out our own stitches even if we're left with a superfluous character or a misplaced scene. Sometimes we think if we just keep our beloved string of words long enough, everything else will come join them. Maybe. But one of two things needs to happen: (1) the rest of the story must change to accommodate the bad idea or (2) the bad idea must be disguised to go with the rest of the story. Rewriting a whole screenplay is, of course, at the writer's discretion but disguising a bad idea to make it work doesn't change the bad idea.

Okay, let's go someplace else for a minute. For those of us whose middle age weight gain keeps Lean Cuisine in business and who fork out cash for gym memberships only to sweat next to pencil sized hot girls in push up bras wearing size 3 exercise outfits, this big fat lie exposed is a victory for ordinary women who have thought, "I could look like that if they airbrushed my stretch marks and photo-shopped my back fat".

Come on, Redbook. You let me down. And, you got caught doing it.

I expect fashion magazines, swimsuit calendars, and those literary masterpieces in my brother's bathroom cabinet (guess what? he doesn't keep the extra toilet paper in there) to slenderize, buff, bleach, and erase female flaws but Redbook? Those women are supposed to look more like me.

Kind of.

You see, I don't JUST have crow's feet. I have crow's ankles and thighs and they have freckles. There are even freckles on that big Witchy Poo mole next to the Kirk Douglas cleft on my masculine square chin. Oh, and gravity is not my friend either. Duct tape and super glue are important wardrobe staples. So are staples.

Wait. Where was I?

Oh yeah. Story development. That Redbook cover is a well executed work of art. Somebody painstakingly removed Faith Hill's back fat, slenderized her arms, erased her skin flaws, and corrected her posture. But the original photo is still out there and so is the person who posed for it. No amount of photo-shopping will change that. The reality of who she is hasn't changed. Only the execution of perception has changed.

Yeah, yeah, I know plenty of bad ideas have been made into movies. But imagine spray painting a dry dead lawn. It's still dead. It may be green but would you put a sign in the yard announcing yourself as the landscaper? Now, picture Michaelangelo painting the nine scenes from the book of Genesis right there on that lawn as if it was the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The quality of the mural is not the question. The lawn will still go up in flames if somebody drops a cigarette butt. The execution is genius but it's still a very bad idea.

My grandmother used to say that you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. You can, however, carrying around handbags made of sows' ears. If you have a legitimate place in your story for a sow's ear, then by all means, write a sow's ear. But how many sows' ears are in your screenplay masquerading as silk purses?

A professional writer once told me that the most important key to becoming a better writer is knowing that you don't know it all and being GENUINELY willing to learn. He stressed GENUINELY but didn't elaborate. I think his subtext was that I would, over the years, witness people faking a willingness to learn but that fooling everyone else wouldn't help me one little bit.

If I have learned anything about screenwriting, it's that you must learn as much on your own by discovery and by trial and error as you do by allowing somebody to spoon feed you what THEY learned by discovery and trial and error. How else will you ever be able to discern good advice from hogwash? Wisdom from rubbish?

And, if you can't discern treasures from trash while you have the luxury of being univested, how can you possibly make the separation in your own work when you are personally involved?

Objectivity becomes paradoxical.

One of my favorite Good Idea/Bad Idea segments sums up our struggle with figuring out when ideas don't work:

Good Idea: Playing the accordion at a polka festival.
Bad Idea: Playing the accordion anywhere else.

The assumption here is that an accordion player's love of the instrument blinds him to what we all know: the accordion isn't the kind of instrument that works in mainstream entertainment regardless of how well the guy plays. How many of us share that kind of devotion to our craft?

We all struggle with certain characters and write scenes that just don't feel like they're working. That doesn't mean they're automatically bad ideas. They could be brilliant ideas that simply need a whole lot of silk before they can become a purse. The burden is on the writer to figure it out before the screenplay crosses a reader's desk.

Readers are adept at differentiating silk purses from sows' ears. Writers need those same skills, especially when they visit screenwriting blogs that post about the best execution of bad ideas. How else will they know if the post itself isn't a very bad idea?

That Would Never Happen

We've all done this. We're watching a film or reading a screenplay, rockin' happily along in our la-la land, when "No way! That would never happen!" We're brutally yanked out of story land because our brain refuses to accept some fractured piece of logic the film tried to feed us.

Welcome to the land of broken magic.

Often, in the course of reviewing screenplays and critiquing films, reviewers comment about how a situation was too much of a suspension of reality to work for them or that it simply could never happen at all. Suspending reality is a good thing. That's what we do in screenwriting. Suspending it beyond recognition is something else. The trick is to to create an orderly and logical suspension of reality that can be followed and understood. That's, I suppose, what separates the masters from the apprentice writers.

In storytelling, reality is a product of the author's pen, not the reader's existence. One of my complaints about online peer review forums is that while writers certainly have a burden to create a reality that works in the imagination of the reader, too many of these reviewers, I think, are subjecting stories to litmus tests based on their own environments. That's not to say that there's no merit in arguing that something would never happen. But the argument has to be based in the story world, not in the reader's world.

That would never happen moments, for me, fall into three categories: legitimate screwups, spoofs, and misinterpretations.

LEGITIMATE SCREWUPS - These are genuinely messed up moments where somebody blew it and the magic was lost. In Swimfan, a male arresting police officer gets in the back seat of a squad car with a handcuffed female prisoner about to be transported. That would never happen. Sorry. It just doesn't. Officers don't ride in the back seat with dangerous criminals and they certainly don't ride with females. They call in their beginning and ending mileages when they transport women. Departure and arrival times are then recorded so if they're accused of something inappropriate, a time line can be established. Oh, and as for prisoners being cuffed in the front? Yeah, that happens when cuffing is a formality or the officer is really stupid.

SPOOFS AND COMEDIC BEATS - These moments aren't supposed to really happen. They're just there to make us laugh but some people have no sense of humor and take them entirely too literally. The result is a that would never happen moment. Of course, that would never happen! That's what makes it funny! Or, not if it the timing is off or it's poorly written.

MISINTERPRETATIONS - These moments are the ones that actually would happen in another time or place or culture or religion but maybe the filmmaker didn't do his job well enough to convey this to the audience. Or, maybe the reader or viewer has such a narrow outlook on the world that he wouldn't find the magic no matter how well the filmmaker did his job. But if the majority doesn't get it, the problem is probably not with the recipient.

SCREW-UPS, SPOOFS, MISINTERPRETATIONS, So, how do we keep our readers and viewers from doing that annoying Homer Simpson "DOH!" thingie when they look at our work? For you sophisticated non-Simpsons viewers (Mom), that "DOH!" is like the "Wow, I could have had a V-8" forehead thump but from a beer bellied bald guy who would only have a V-8 if he confused it with a teeny tiny Duff beer can. But to answer the question -- there is one back there some place -- I have a few self imposed rules.

The Roller Coaster Rule - Reality is organized chaos. Roller coasters look like a looping, twisting, mess but every turn, climb, and drop has been carefully designed and engineered. Whatever reality we create in our story worlds has to be planned, purposeful, and organized even if it looks like chaos and feels like chaos to passengers along for the ride.

The Pluto Rule - Reality isn't for Indian givers. Don't establish a reality and then yank it away (unless that's the story itself). There are still a few questions left unanswered and a place or two left to explore in this universe. But the boundaries of the unknown are shrinking with every book published and every film released. Whatever I create, readers and viewers will probably still accept regardless of how fantastic it may be but they have little patience for situations where it's obvious the writer didn't establish a cause and effect that's logical within itself. Once a story contradicts itself, even commonplace facts lose credibility among the suspect ones.

Huh? What did she just say?

Okay, try this. I've never been in outer space. I've been accused of it, but alas, no. However, for as long as I can remember, nine planets have orbited the sun. Nine. I accepted this because there was scientific proof. My teachers said so. My text books said so. Plus, I made a mobile out of Styrofoam balls and tempera paint so it had to be true. If you had told me two years ago that one day in my lifetime, there would only be eight planets orbiting the sun, I'd have said that would never happen because Pluto isn't just going to disappear or get blown to bits by a meteor. But it happened. There are only eight planets now. Pluto has been voted off the island. Reality as I once knew it has been yanked away from me and now all astronomy is suspect in my mind. They're Indian givers. They can't take that away from me. I will ALWAYS think of Pluto as a planet. Always. Pluto has to be a planet. Come on. We named a beloved Disney character after it. It's a planet -- the people's planet.

I digress.

The point is - don't do that to your viewer mid-movie. Don't establish a reality in your story and then contradict it or erase it. Or, if you MUST for artistic reasons, then make sure you're a genius and can craft the story so that your reader/viewer doesn't cling to the original reality the way I cling to Pluto.

I've mentioned before that one of the most annoying suspensions of reality in film for me is the "disturbance of nature" theme in Failure to Launch. The film sets up a certain romantic comedy kind of reality. We get comfortable in it and settle in for a light hearted Nora Ephon-esque romantic story. Suddenly, we're jerked into various Chevy Chase-ish skits where animals attack the main character. In this case, it's because he's is a freak of nature still living at home and it just doesn't work with the reality already set forth in the film. If this was Caddyshack, it would work. If this was Mr. Deeds, it would work. But the reality established by Failure to Launch doesn't support angry chipmunks.

The Equator Rule - Reality is because I said so. My pen is the final answer. How much inaccurate information did we all learn about dinosaurs from Jurassic Park? I'm sure more than one paleontologist said "that would never happen" during that film but does that make it a flawed film? Or, does that make it a film that established a reality that viewers could feel engaged in even if it took liberties with prehistoric animal behavior? The important thing about Jurassic Park is that most viewers didn't sit there thinking "that would never happen". They were too busy marveling, screaming, laughing, and enjoying the ride in an open jeep while experiencing the terror of being pursued by a T-Rex.

If my story establishes that the temperature is twenty degrees below zero at the equator and the abominable snowman lives there, then that's the reality of the story. It's as much the reality of that story as a talking droid in Star Wars or a hobbit living in middle earth in Lord of the Rings.

Somebody mentioned on this blog that the wedding scene during Pirates of the Caribbean At World's End was too much of a suspension of reality to accept. I found that odd considering the myriad of outlandish characters and inconceivable events taking place in the film. We've got dead people in boats, ghosts floating under water, barnacley and shell-headed fish people, a titanic squid, an undead monkey, a live heart beating in a chest, a tentacle-faced guy walking around with a gaping hole in his chest, a sea goddess who turns into a hundred thousand crabs, and a pirate licking the brain he just removed from his own skull but it's a wedding amid a swordfight that bugs ya?

Still, most men I've asked said they didn't like the wedding part in this film. The reality established in this film wasn't stretched or suspended for a swordfight wedding on a ship in a spinning vortex. I think the problem with these guys is the REALITY of marriage. Period. A wedding is still a wedding and men in the audience don't want the cold, hard reality of marriage to momentarily wreck the adventure. They aren't annoyed because that would never happen. They're annoyed because they know darned good and well it could.

The Aunt Lizzie Rule - Reality isn't stagnant. It changes with time and culture and continents. My Aunt Lizzie cleaned house in a dress and apron every day. She got out of bed an hour before my uncle to put her make-up on so he wouldn't see her without it. Even when she was in the hospital dying of Cancer, she begged my cousin to help her with her face and hair before my uncle arrived to visit. If I was writing a devoted immigrant housewife from Austria, my Aunt Lizzie would be it. A modern 2007 woman wouldn't do any of those things but Aunt Lizzie's characteristics would work in a spoof, a period piece, or a 2007 story if my character is old and set in her ways, daft, senile, caught in a time warp or suffering from Alzheimer's.

Events that happened twenty, thirty, or fifty years ago may not happen today but they work in stories if set in the proper time and context. Too many writers put today's behavior, statutes, standards, and environments in their period pieces and vice-versa and then wonder why people say that would never happen. They might even point to my equator rule and say if they write it that way, it must be so. True. But that doesn't mean it's logical or that it will work. Remember the roller coaster rule.

My high school journalism teacher, Mrs. Hooper, who went by Hoop because it was more newsroomy than "Mrs. Hooper" and less masculine than "Boss" or "Chief", took me aside one day for what I assumed would be her customary "go get 'em, Tiger" speech before a writing competition. She pointed out a young honor student from Highland Park High School who had transferred from Austin and said he was a brilliant mind by all accounts, the son of a former press secretary to Lyndon B. Johnson himself. A press secretary's son! Oh, my gosh! She was surely about to warn me that he was my toughest competition. Nope. She told me not to talk to him or make him angry in any way. He was a killer.

No way. That would never happen! I was in competition with a killer? It was all very hush hush. The teachers weren't allowed to talk about it. He was a minor. But they were terrified of him so the teachers secretly talked about it anyway.

Hardly two and a half years had passed since John Christian had walked into a Murchison Junior High School English classroom and shot his teacher three times with his father's .22-caliber rifle in front of 30 students. He had been only thirteen at the time. Now here he was, barely sixteen, and his slate was technically clean even though he had supposedly been found schizophrenic and suicidal and even though a judge (Hume Coker) had ordered him to a Dallas psychiatric hospital until he was 18 years old.

Whether it was privilege or family ties or his age or his father's connections, I don't know. Nor do I have all the facts. But John Christian appears to have spent a short time at Timberlawn Psychiatric Hospital and then lived under the foster care of a Dallas physician while he finished public high school and went on to graduate with a law degree from the University of Texas.

Can you even BEGIN to imagine a child today strolling into school and killing his teacher and then going on to graduate from a public school as if nothing had happened? That would never happen today but I was there. I sat in a desk three feet away from him as if he was just any other student because he WAS just any other student even after killing Wilbur (Rod) Grayson, Jr., a 29 year old first year teacher, in front of his entire class.

If I wrote a character in a 1981 story who had been a teacher killer and for whatever reason managed to get back in public schools and graduate, who is going to read my screenplay and NOT say that would never happen? The cruel reality of our daily existence with recurring violence in schools will certainly affect the way anyone receives a story like that one.

So, if people are going to draw conclusions based on their own lives anyway, is there really anything we can do?

Reality is organized chaos
Reality isn't for Indian givers
Reality is because I said so
Reality isn't stagnant

Okay, okay already, so I'm not McKee. But the reality of story reality is that even with our best effort, there's a limit to what we can do to prevent the that would never happen moments. No amount of engineering prevents roller coasters from breaking down, Pluto really isn't a planet anymore and charming aunts who once vacuumed in checkered dresses will eventually lose their battles with Cancer.

Unless somebody finds a cure.

That may never happen.

But it doesn't stop us from making the effort.

What to Wear to the Oscars

For the woman that wants to look sexy AND professional while escaping from a sinkhole in the middle of a flooded Main Street. But things are drying up around here. Mowed the half of my grass today that isn't still under water so maybe I'll just save these little darlings for the premier of that Aquawoman film I now have to write.

Speaking of Oscar contenders, is it too soon to start counting down the arrival of Nicholl letters? Twenty two days. Wait. Was that a yes? Never mind. Can't you just picture Greg Beal and all those deputy Beals scrambling to rank screenplays while waiting for those last minute readers to turn in their scores? Poor guy.

B-A-T-C-H-E-L-L-O-R. Mail that letter first, Greg. For pity's sake. If you have any kind of heart at all, mail that one first. Or, you know, text my cell about how my screenplay changed your life and that it was a contemplative kind of greatness that made you call your mother and get a tribal tattoo and that as soon as this little competition thingie is over you'll be off to junket around the globe digging sanitary sewer systems in underprivileged countries -- in which case, you may actually want a pair of these. Black would look best with business casual but I'd go with orange if you're a Bermuda shorts kind of guy.

This Is Not a Water Park

Okay, so now it's a water park.

Troubling is the number of parents who would actually allow their kids to play here. Oh sure, it looks harmless enough but are there power lines beneath that slide? Is there a hidden undercurrent?

Children are being swept away while they play in flooded streets, rising creeks, and rushing culverts. Many are rescued. Many are not. Many parents are watching from from ten feet away because they didn't realize they gave little Johnny permission to go drown himself.

Thirteen people dead. Four still missing.

STOP PLAYING IN THE WATER!!!

The storm impacted areas include 48,000 square miles from North Texas to the Rio Grande Valley, a section roughly the size of the state of Mississippi. We've got State disaster declarations on 44 Texas counties and Federal disaster declarations on six North Texas counties so far but still counting as we await word on five others.

The good news is that clear skies are supposedly on the way as are the National Guard. According to the Dallas Morning News, Governor Rick Perry has activated more than 250 Texas National Guard soldiers to help in emergency response efforts. Whee. More than 250, he says? For the size of Mississippi?

Yeah. That'll help.

Independence Day Poem

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."
– Ray Bradbury

Ain't it the truth? The problem with creativity though is that sometimes our footprints are too allegorical or symbolic for just anyone to follow. Case in point. This very odd poetic argument written by me, NOT Ray Bradbury--

Swollen words of vanity, of artistry, and skill,
Cannot persuade a mountain that its consciousness is ill
Or that its mass does sway and shudder, never standing still.
Denial.
Denial.
Denial.
No turmoil, angst, or peril lurks amid my vision blurred
Though warning cries bear witness to a whirlwind you have spurred
By gossip born of malcontent, not ripples that occurred.
Denial.
Denial.
Denial.
So servile is the valley as it winds about your heels.
Once your pride, it held your side and now, see how it kneels,
Collecting flesh and bone you shed. Imagine how that feels.
Denial.
Denial.
Denial.
Oh, howling wind of futile breath, why must we bandy more
The merits of my grandeur and the envy of the shore?
These breezy jealous protests are a vain transparent bore.
Denial.
Denial.
Denial.
You curse all nature's elements but reign without a shield,
Too ignorant to tremble at your destiny to yield
And fall before a stalwart power that blindness has concealed.
Denial.
Denial.
Denial.
Yet I prevail against you still, your gusts, cloudbursts, and sleet
While all your efforts flow in brooks and rivers at my feet.
Who shall we say, then, of us two, must now admit defeat?
Denial.
Denial.
Pathetic denial.
A gale is free to blast and grind with nothing to impede
Erosion of immobile peaks left standing there to bleed.
Defeat, you ask? Which one of us? Which one of us, indeed.

Stupid mountain. He really thinks he doesn't have to bow before the howling wind. This is a rare political commentary from an author who usually avoids writing about such things. It seemed like a fitting Independence Day tribute.

Water, Water, Everywhere

Since elevation is on my side, my home won't be swept away any time soon but the water is inches from my back door due to ground saturation and substandard engineering in my unincorporated area. I may lose my carpet at this rate. Funny. We're still under drought restrictions due to three years of record low rainfalls and bone dry reservoirs last year that are now several feet above normal.

Do You Feel What I Feel?

"What sells scripts in Hollywood these days is emotions."

This is a comment from a set of notes that Patrick received from a competition he advanced in. While I thought it sounded like the reviewer wanted Rocky instead of Rocky and Bullwinkle, the writer took the comment well and didn't find it nearly as amusing or patronizing as I did.

Of course films are emotional and these days aren't any different than any other days, are they? Well, are they?

Films are about the human experience and since we who walk upright are emotional creatures, films are also about an emotional experience. Regardless of what the emotion is and whether it's associated with the birth of a new nation or the death of a salesman, viewers need characters they can relate to and they do that at an emotional level.

Screenplays must meet the reader at an emotional level because films must meet the viewer at that same spot. How do you do that? In this post about character empathy, I steal Karl Iglesias' theory that the key is to create emotions that all readers (and viewers) recognize by exploiting three basic truths about human nature and empathy:

(1) We care about individuals we feel sorry for
(2) We care about individuals who display humanistic traits
(3) We care about individuals who have traits we all admire

Using this formula, films yank our emotional chains in the most intimate and personal ways and compel us to feel what our characters feel so we can identify with the story. What parent can't identify with a man willing to endure any hardship and go to any extremes to find his missing son? Finding Nemo isn't about animated sea creatures. It's about a parent's worst nightmare -- an Amber alert -- only it happens on a twelve foot screen to a Clownfish aided by a Regal Blue Tang with short term memory loss. That's why it works for adults. The father overcomes his fear for the love of his son and finds joy in a new bond and new relationships.

Love, joy, fear . . . powerful emotions and certainly not our only ones. If we only witness emotions as casual observers, then the film has not done its job. But when a film drags us on board and we either laugh at or agonize through those feelings with the characters as they suffer, celebrate, and tremble, then a film, as Iglesias' points out, has successfully exploited our emotions.

DEFINING LOVE, JOY, AND FEAR

To those who saw it in the theater, Jaws may very well define FEAR in film. They remember the first time they saw that pair of willowy legs swimming in ignorant peril and simply hearing John Williams' chromatic rumblings of a double bass as the shark approaches its first victim epitomizes the ultimate film terror experience. For me, ultimate film fear is an early childhood memory of King Kong , the Jurassic Park T-Rex crushing those children in the jeep, and David Hasselhoff using his pectoral muscles for rocket propulsion in the SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. Sheer terror.

Victory moments where the protagonist comes out on top and we get to cheer, pound our chests, and throw our popcorn are what I like to think of as Mighty Ducks moments because I still have a movie theater memory of a half dozen screaming eight year olds jumping for JOY and punching the air at a tie breaking penalty shot in overtime. For some, I guess JOY is a Chariots of Fire moment or a Father of the Bride moment. Not me. JOY in film for me is defined by quacking hockey players.

Titanic is the quintessential LOVE story to many while to others it's Ghost or An Affair to Remember. Me? I get choked up watching Meatballs. Can't help it. My kids are runners and the story is about a little runner and a counselor who changes that kid's life by nurturing in him a sense of self worth and teaching him the value of a (sort of) moral victory because "it just doesn't matter! It just doesn't matter!" They LOVE him, man! LOVE him! And, for the first time in that kid's life, he understands what it means to feel like HE matters.

That's real LOVE, people.

Kids matter.

Gets me every time.

. . .

. . .

Too much.

I'm gonna need a minute.

Something in my eye.

. . .

. . .

Whew.

Okay, moving on.

While love, joy and fear are likely the most frequently exploited emotions in screenwriting, a veritable buffet of human emotion combinations in varying degrees and limitless shades is at the mercy of our pens.

Write a story with characters in love and that's sweet. Some viewers will relate. Some won't. It might depend on how hot the girl is or what kind of car the guy drives.

Write a story with characters in love and throw in a dash of anger, a touch of grief, a hint of shame, a bunch of jealousy, a little insecurity, and a whole lot of curiosity and you've got yourself characters with dimension. They've got more than one emotion going on so there's a good chance most people out there can relate to them. Everyone will be sucked into SOMETHING these people are feeling that they, too, have felt at one time or another.

Are there films that epitomize certain emotions for you the way King Kong defines fear for me, Mighty Ducks defines joy for me, and Meatballs defines the perfect love story for me? It IS perfect, you know. It's a beautiful thing to teach a kid to love himself. Beautiful. Just beautiful. The way he calls that kid Rudy the rabbit. . . it gets me. Right here. It gets me.

Excuse me. Something in my eye again.

Sorry, Wrong Number

For those of you who Googled "Nicholl Fellowship results" or some derivative thereof and wound up here, to answer your question, you must wait 43 days (or slightly fewer) to get your coveted Greg Beal letter. Letters should appear in mailboxes around August 1.

For all your future Nicholl needs, THIS is the link to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences official page for information on the Don and Gee Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting.

I am not a Nicholl aficionado. I just play one on the internet. Greg Beal is the grand imperial Nicholl poobah and he has been known to pop in on Zoetrope and Wordplay so best to try to get your questions answered from him.

Do come back in August and find out if I advanced to the quarterfinals. Er, I mean, celebrate with me WHEN I ADVANCE. Yeah, that's it. Then, we'll talk.

Pimping Our Unknown Neighbor

While many of us may have thought The Unknown Screenwriter's transformational character arc series would never end, we've finally been told to stick a fork in it - a charming invitation as only Unk could extend one - but instead of finding closure, he's thrown open the floodgates of opportunity with an ingenious suggestion for mapping your protagonist's transformation -- the Kubler Ross Model as it address the five stages of grief or the "grief cycle".

We typically think of the grief cycle as it relates to coping with death, but people grieve in just about any situation where they feel like the rug has been pulled out from under them. Whether your protagonist is fired from his job, betrayed by a friend, filing bankruptcy, or just learned he was adopted from the planet Remulak, he probably experiences these stages --

• Shock, Denial, Confusion


• Anger, Embarrassment, Shame


• Depression, Blahs, Detachment


• Bargaining, Dialogue, Attempt to Find Meaning


• Acceptance, Exploring Options, A New Plan in Place

Toodle next door to Unk's blog and read the entire post, Transformational Character Arc, Part 14 and any other parts if you've fallen behind. He's working on making the series available as a handy dandy download but the whole thing smacks of a pocket reference book to me.

You Are What You Eat

What we know about screenwriting is a cumulative digestion of experience and knowledge but since we aspiring screenwriters are usually lean on experience, our diet consists mostly of books, seminars, DVD's, film school classes, and the miscellaneous other means by which we follow the teachings of gurus such as tracking them in the trades and stalking their screenwriting advice on the internet like starving dogs rooting through garbage cans.

They are the gurus. We hunger for what they know to the point of trying to eat their very brains! Poor things. No wonder they avoid us at parties.

But are there theories that should be excluded from a newbie diet or do the tidbits of every guru brain merit being gobbled up by wannabe screenwriters?

Maybe that depends on whether or not the person feeding you is actually a guru and whether or not you really know exactly what it is you're being fed.

Philippe Falardeau, a Quebecois screenwriter and director, is quoted on another site as saying to "never have contempt for your characters". That's all. No lead up. No context. Nothing to tell us whether this quote was from an article, conference, or seminar. No explanation of what he meant. Somebody just regurgitated that quote and said "discuss" as if the quote held such self explanatory genius that every reader with any degree of recognition for such ecclesiarchal aptitude would seize the opportunity to "discuss".

Consider it seized. Let's "discuss".

Contempt for your characters. Let's see . . . does this EVER happen? When would a writer have contempt for their own characters? Writers cannot write compelling dialogue for characters they don't value and find critical to their story.

Maybe he meant contemptible characters.

No. Can't be.

We must write contemptible characters. They are the fuel that ignites conflict and their demise brings about restoration and reconciliation.

Perhaps he meant that we shouldn't feel contempt for our shallow and one dimensional characters.

That can't be it. We SHOULD have contempt for those characters. Kill them! Kill them, now! Sorry. I get carried away. Just rewrite them.

Here's the point. As with any diet, there is no magic pill that will absolve you of doing the work and not all authors on any subject are experts. That doesn't mean a person has to be an expert to have something valuable to say. But I do think people occasionally throw out accidental placebos.

Was the Falardeau remark a placebo? Beats me. We only got a regurgitated portion of it. He may have said something weighty and penetrating that will echo through eternity and forever change the way screenwriters craft their characters. But we only got scraps of what he fed his audience. Was it sirloin or was it Puppy Chow?

Unqualified screenwriting advice is food poisoning of epidemic proportions and people like me are blogging, posting, commenting and questioning based on our limited knowledge. Writers better be prepared to evaluate and discern based on their own knowledge, experience, writing styles, and needs because in many writing situations, there is no one size fits all. Don't trust me. Verify and research anything I say. I may not know what I'm talking about.

Furthermore, mentors and gurus will even contradict each other now and then although they usually DO know precisely what they're talking about. Why do they contradict? Go back to my lead in. What we know is a cumulative digestion and each person's own experiences and knowledge are the foundation for their creative fingerprints.

Don't depend on somebody else to bottle feed comprehension to you. Life doesn't work that way. Neither can you simply regurgitate something you hear and expect your mentors to grind it into mashed bananas and spoon it to you. Writers don't work that way.

Terry Rossio Confirmed for AFF

So now you simply must attend the Austin Film Festival. You can buy your badge online or by calling the AFF office at 1-800-310-FEST. Missed AFF last year because of new job and other commitments. Moving mountains this year if I have to.

Plenty of Reason to Fear

Took my niece to the movies last night and got a look at the trailer for the new Underdog live action film. You heard me. Underdog. Live. Action.

There's no need to fear! Underdog is here!

Wrong.

I'm a HUGE Underdog fan. Huge. He's Dudley Do-right with fleas. Hip, but nerdy. His dialogue is so corny and lyrically lame that it's brilliant. But this caped canine doesn't have the widespread instant recognition of Garfield. He's unknown to young audiences so why does he have to be a live action character?

Maybe that's why.

Voiced by Jason Lee, Underdog is really a beagle named Shoeshine Boy who owes his crime fighting superpowers to a lab accident. How original. A lab accident. Just don't make him angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry.

While Amy Adams can easily pull off Sweet Polly Purebred, the dog she's voicing is woefully miscast. Please. Polly Purebred is a classy dog. Not just any spaniel will do. Did nobody have a breed list for the Westminster Kennel Club?

The opposite may be true with Peter Dinklage as Simon Bar Sinister. Thin his hair, paint him green and he's spot on as the mad scientist but does he have the voice? Let's practice, Peter. Can you say "Simon says that the literal translation of my name is 'Simon, the Evil Bastard' but nobody researched it even though this is a family friendly film?"

Guess fourth graders won't catch that.

Whatever happens with this film, one thing is ironically clear to me. Once again, Underdog has the odds against him.

Life Lessons and Surface Water Systems

While I'm frequently convinced that God is trying to get my attention in peculiar and unconventional ways (He's God, He doesn't post on my blog), my source of inspiration today comes from Chris Soth who actually quotes a Simpsons episode and says “Maybe there isn’t any lesson. Maybe this is just a bunch of stuff that happened.”

Chris gives us the benefit of his three years of therapy and reminds us that sometimes things just happen. It doesn't define you. In his case, a television left on too loud and one time too many. In mine, one too many careless remarks that I don't even recall making but cost me and made me look like a gossipy, mean-spirited person.

The thing is, Chris says, not to let these things send you into a downward spiral of rumination, moping and dark thoughts and shame. He's facing eviction and says "I'll move or work it out." Acting like you deserve it is a recipe for depression and who deserves to feel shame because they forgot to turn a television off?

That's good advice. Move or work it out.

In my job, I'm bombarded with complaints, problems and ethical dilemmas. There is nobody I can vent to and no direction in which I can blow off steam without looking like a bad person. Yet, there's only so much stress and anxiety the human mind can contain before spillage occurs just as there's only so much water the ground can absorb in a thunderstorm before runoff occurs.

Storm drains prevent floods.

I don't have a storm drain. Everyone needs storm drains. But, with my proclivity for talking, more than most people, I desperately need a storm drain.

Pop over and give Dave and Chris a word of encouragement.

They're experiencing some runoff.

Another Blog Bites the Dust

Ran across another farewell message on a screenwriting blog yesterday. Shame. Sort of. It didn't really have much to offer in the way of screenwriting, but it fed my air of superiority in a "crap-plus-one" kind of way.

I'm such a snot.

Blogging isn't for everyone as it consumes so much precious screenwriting time and takes away from little league games and jobs that pay the light bills and, let's face it, some people simply run out of stuff to talk about it. I'm apparently not one of those people. This is my 375th post.

Several defunct links on my blogroll are about to get the ax but I'll keep a few DOA's around for their archived gems. Christopher Lockhart tired of blogging after a year but he's got great stuff worth repeat reads. Don't miss his Wet T-Shirt Contest post. It will change your life.

Julie was absent for a few months and while I somewhat grieve that her reappearance is an indication of a pothole on her yellow brick road, Julie has one of those few blogs that you read and immediately know that the author's fingers are destined for something greater. The English language is her servant. It submits to her like little Stepford words that just obediently carry her thoughts from noodle to keyboard.

I want to write like that.

Sometimes, I read a screenwriting blog and wonder if the author is really a writer at all. Arrogant, I know. A blog is not a literary barometer. But, I get so vexed at the abundance of botched verb conjugations and mis-placed modifiers that I wish I had a "delete" key for the blogs that make the rest of us amateur screenwriters look like schmucks.

But, wait.

What if mine is one of those that makes the rest of YOU look like schmucks?

Speaking of ...

A line from Music and Lyrics made me shiver when I heard it. Or, maybe that was just chills from the ice that mysteriously kept falling down my cleavage even though I didn't have a drink in my hand. I'd have gotten angry at those punks behind me who were chunking ice, but any time guys who still have their teeth pay attention to me, it's a good thing, even if they're wearing a dog collar and black eyeliner.

Anyway, the line says something like "She's a brilliant mimic and can ape Dorothy Parker or Emily Dickenson, but stripped of somebody else's literary clothing, she's an empty, vacant, imitation of a writer."

Not only did I wish I had written that line, but I wanted to run out of the movie theater screaming, "That's not me! That's not me! I swear to Don and Gee Nicholl! It's not me!"

Then there was Unk's post about theme. I mentioned that theme is what separates the pointed writers with something to say from the pointless ones who just want to say something. Somehow we got from that to Clive's remark about "the endless struggle of many people to validate themselves as human beings by achieving success in what they perceive to be a glamorous industry".

Validation. Interesting.

Blogs die for various reasons - lack of time or interest, newfound success or industry work- but I wonder if some of them don't die for lack of validation. Maybe some bloggers figure out how few people are actually coming to their blog party or the replies they get aren't very reassuring. I know a little something about wanting validation. Most days at work, I feel like Superman forced to pretend I'm Shoeshine Boy. No, I don't mean Clark Kent. That would be a step up.

When in this world the headlines read
Of those whose hearts are filled with greed
Who rob and steal from those who need
To right this wrong with blinding speed
Goes Underdog! Underdog! Underdog! Underdog!

I digress.

The point is that I'm disappointed when blogs disappear . But, not that much. I'm still blogging and so are countless other writers -- a dozen or so that I've come to depend on for inspiration and wisdom. It's like a screenwriting community that feeds each other's ...

Hello?

Hmm. I could have sworn somebody was out there.

Access Characters

First of all, who decided “abstruse” is even a word? Did somebody merge “abstract” with “obtuse” and then slip the editors at Websters a few hundred bucks to stick it in the dictionary?

I can make up words, too, ya’ know.

Stupidiotic.

How’s that?

Let’s go with it, shall we?

Some of my favorite characters in film are deceptively stupidiotic.

I’m talking about certain "access characters". For some reason, my favorite access characters are buffoons who save the day. Accidental heroes. But whether nincompoops or brainiacs, access characters exist to ask questions that we would ask if the film could talk back to us. These characters open doors, pry, call attention, snoop, interfere, assist, get in the way, and often launch the entire story. To the untrained eye, access characters often look superfluous when, in fact, they are essential to the story.

Access characters serve a function. They aren't a particular character role or personality type. They have a job to do and the writer decides where, when, and how well or poorly that job is performed. Access characters are facilitators of a sort. Conduits.

The R2D2 and C3PO droids in Star Wars are frequently compared to Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Star Wars doesn't work unless the droids are there to provide everyone access to the information about the princess in the first place and, ultimately, the death star plans. These characters are critical to the story and to the other characters. But they're critical to the viewer, too, because they also ask our questions.

C-3PO: Master Luke, sir. Pardon me for asking, but what should R2 and I do if we're discovered here?
Luke: Lock the door.
Han Solo: And hope they don't have blasters.
C-3PO: That isn't very reassuring.

They want to know what we want to know. What are they supposed to do being left behind like that?

Similarly, the Murtogg and Mullroy characters in the Pirates of the Caribbean films, while clown-like and bumbling, give us access to story information (history of the Black Pearl) and they ask the very questions, we're asking.

Murtogg: What we doin' 'ere?
Mullroy: The pirates come out, unprepared and unawares. We catch 'em in a crossfire... send 'em down to see Old Hob.
Murtogg: I know *why* we're here. I mean, why aren't we doin' what - what Mr. Sparrow said? With the cannons and all?
Norrington: Because it was Mr. Sparrow who said it.

But access characters don't necessarily come in pairs and they aren't always fools who accidentally save the day. Those just happen to be my favorite ones to watch.

I have a list of access characters that I had planned to discuss in this post - some more clever than others and some better executed than others - but to "get them" requires the reader to have seen the film and still retain substantial memory of the character.

Or, I would need to write a very long post.

Not gonna happen.

Instead, I challenge you to look for characters serving as conduits in the next few films you watch. What access are they providing between you and the story? Who would you compare them to? They can't all be Rosencrantz and Guildenstern so who are they? What investigating are they doing on your behalf and would the story work without them?

One last example and then you're on your own. This one is from National Treasure:

Powell: How do a bunch of people with hand tools build all this?
Ben Gates: The same way they built the pyramids and the Great Wall of China.
Riley Poole: Yeah. The aliens helped them.

Okay, maybe that one was too abstruse.

Writing from Angst

Some of the most disturbed minds have achieved immortality through the written word. How do they get so disburbed?

I know one way -- We live in a world where we're forced to put our faith in people and people who put their faith in other people are setting themselves up for disappointment.

It's a sick rule. We must trust people. They will disappoint us.

This is true of all relationships - work, family, neighbors, church, politics, school - yet the ant colony structure of society demands that we trust somebody with our money, our health decisions, and even the care of our children.

Deny it though we may, we cannot go through a single day of our lives without putting our faith in somebody for something - even strangers. No wonder we're whacked. Who can remain sane when -

• We trust that the guy in the car next to us will stay in his lane?
• We trust that the chef didn't spit in our meal?
• We trust that the payroll lady will cut our checks on time?

Hmm? Who? It's maddening.

We may not even realize a bond exists until it is broken. Somebody swerves into our lane or we find a foreign object in our food or our paycheck is late and suddenly, the bond is broken. We feel cheated. It's not fair. That person had an obligation and didn't fulfil it.

But what happens when we KNOWINGLY and PURPOSELY put our faith in another person or system of some kind and they fail us?

Ouch.

In my profession, several odd things have taken place this month and most of us are doing the best we can to maintain the public trust. That's a very good thing. We owe the public that. The problem is that, in the process, something was overlooked. Me. The obvious and normal route that most every other city in the State of Texas would have taken under this circumstance isn't being taken. It's weird. Not illegal. But weird. In this instance, that path was me.

The people who should speak up, aren't. Speaking up on my own behalf is unethical and remaining silent hurts like hell. Such is the way these situations work now and then.

It's not personal. It's just politics.

We exist in a twisted society where the lazy are frequently rewarded and the self absorbed are exalted while the driven and sincere are often overlooked. Why? Because decent, hard working people are too busy taking care of their responsibilities to advertise and role play.

It's no wonder so many masterpieces are written in frustration.

I'm disturbed. Give me a pen.

The End is Here

Prepare yourself, people. The tips of my fingers may burn right off as I type these words -- I just wasn't that inspired by At World's End.

Among many flickers of brilliance are Jack Sparrow's preoccupation with size and a cameo by his mum. But for all Jack's prancing and Barbossa's nostril flaring, the film lacks the charm and tempo and adrenaline that I've come to expect.

The cinematography can't compare to the artistic mastery of the second film and many portions actually feel like rough cuts. I'm guessing that editors fell victim to a cruel and merciless taskmaster - the release date.

The story complexities and character nuances that compelled me to watch the first two Pirates of the Caribbean films over and over seem to be missing from this one and with all the side changing and betrayal going on, I frequently felt like I was watching a Homer's Odyssey version of Deal or No Deal.

I was predisposed to love At World's End but basically, my heart didn't flutter. I think I even heard it snore a time or two and for such disloyalty to my favorite writers, I should cut the treacherous thing out and lock it into a chest.

But I was warned. The foreshadowing was there.

Early in the film, we actually cross through hell frozen over.

Maybe I'd better watch the movie again just to be sure . . .

Pimping Storytellers

WRITERS GUILD FOUNDATION
Spring Storytellers Series
Writers Guild Theater
135 S. Doheny Drive
Beverly Hills, CA

TED ELLIOTT and TERRY ROSSIO
Thursday, May 24, 7:30pm

NANCY MEYERS
Thursday, June 21, 7:30pm

TICKETS
$20 - gen. admission
$15 - WGA members and faculty
$10 - Full-time students

Messed Up Reality

Ever watched a film and bought the situational reality only to suddenly be jerked out into some other reality? Life can be like that.

Insane month. Prom. Graduation. Career decisions. Relatives. House to clean. A crisis or two at work and then the unspeakable. Near disaster for my family and horror for somebody else's.

No details. We move on.

Or, try.

But even when the bad guy loses, the fear lingers. Reality doesn't exist anymore. There's only the nightmare. People are still mowing their lawns and buying cappuccino as if nothing happened. But that's not reality. The nightmare is reality. I'm still readying my house for guests and ordering food for graduation. It's not real. Only the nightmare is real.

Weird. In time, it will be the other way around.

But let's use this.

When I get back to it, I'll study situational reality in film that doesn't work. I'm taking movie suggestions where the reality is disjointed, contradicts itself, or is not credible. The first one that comes to mind is Failure to Launch where an "out of harmony with nature" theme causes animals to bite. What have you got?

I think the study will be useful because while I was copycatting Unknown Screenwriter to find the most popular ways readers arrive here, I found that serious screenwriters often drop by. Most use bookmarks or links, arrive looking for information on battle speeches and protagonist deaths, or are researching character development. That is uber-cool. U-B-E-R. People are getting something they can use (and probably plagiarize on their term papers) from this blog so I'm inspired to put the time and work into writing better articles.

Plus, I get to feel important, puff out my chest, and pretend I actually know something.

However --

Now and then, a search engine answers a question by picking one word or phrase from multiple posts and sends some poor schmuck to my door where I deliver squat. No oasis of knowledge here. Today's goose chase is courtesy of a Yahoo search for "Does anyone in Amarillo, Texas do penile implants?" - Yeah. Good luck with that.

My Date With Chris Daughtry

... and my boys and several thousand other people Saturday night reminded me that I'm really not so old after all. Then the woman my age-ish in front of us was about to take her shirt off and I had to point out that my youngest was only twelve and gravity was not her friend. She might get grass burns. Suddenly I was old again.

Who's Your Audience?

While squealing girls, Jack-o-holics, and pirate fans worldwide are waiting for Captain Jack to stagger back onscreen May 25th, rumors of his confusing storyline are already burning up keyboards. At World's End is sure to be dissed by critics for not dumbing down to audiences in the same way Dead Man's Chest was criticized for being too complex to follow. But the wallet of the viewer is louder than the voice of the critic and the reason this franchise works is because Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio know exactly who they are writing for.

Okay, there are a whole lot of other reasons the POTC films work -- Depp, Bloom, Verbinski, Bruckheimer, Rick Heinrichs, Penny Rose, Hans Zimmer... it goes on and on.

The point here is that all of these guys know there's a great packhorse made up of POTC fans carrying this trilogy on its back into mind-numbing legendary explosiveness and it's that beast that has to be fed -- not the critics.

Whatever the genre, don't write for somebody else's audience. You aren't Stan Lee. You aren't Nora Ephron. You aren't J. K. Rowling. You aren't Steve Martin. You aren't even Ted Elliott or Terry Rossio. Don't write for their audiences.

Who's your audience?

It's not the critics.

Oh, my aching back.

Withdrawals

This loss of purpose and vacancy we writers feel if we aren't a perpetual sally port of our otherwise stifled creativity is a twisted addiction to the written word.

Or, just plain insanity.

Scarcely three weeks have passed since I ended a six month marathon rewrite and while my personal and professional commitments demand that I breathe, regroup, think about some immediate career issues, and get through all the preparations and bombardment of superfluous chaos that accompany the middle son's high school graduation, I find myself sketching character notes in the middle of the night.

Idiot.

The clock says 4:00 a.m. It's flashing at me. Shut up, clock. I know I need to sleep. It's reminding me that tomorrow is a busy day. I have a couple of job related things to do, gotta go vote in the local elections, got a lawn to mow, housecleaning to do , miscellaneous repairs to make, birthday gifts to buy, and a list of stuff to make sure the boys get done. What's the use of having sons if you don't make them clean the shed and paint the front door?

Stupid clock.

Shut up, already.

It doesn't know there's no rehab for writers.

Not a Love Connection

An old high school friend found my blog the other day and dissed me for wasting my time chasing rainbows and for not having a real writing career anymore. He wanted to know when I was going to do the world a favor and get real again.

Hmph.

Glad I skipped that last reunion. Can you imagine making chit chat with that pompous windbag over punch?

Still, he has a point. I may never amount to anything. But I make more money than he does and I haven't been divorced five times. I'd have said so, too, except Terry Rossio prepared me with a better reply in his somewhat now infamous Throw in the Towel column which says:

Once you've satisfied yourself that you've given every effort, and failed, and it's no longer fun to you, then it is, truly, time to find a new challenge and move on. Something else that will bring more satisfaction.

So, when my former chum asked when I was going to quit chasing rainbows, I told him I'd quit when I didn't like rainbows anymore -- or whenever screenwriting got in the way of my exceptional income. Government work is good and writing on my yacht is therapeutic. Wanna meet me for golf Monday? Oh wait. You gotta work.

The moron.

He deserved it.

Newbie Reality Check

I almost didn't write this post because I know somebody will misconstrue it as an attack on indy films. It's not. I love indy films. Some of the greatest films ever made are indy films. What this post is meant to be is a warning to newbie writers, like myself, that an indy filmmaker can be anyone from Clint Eastwood to the guy who delivers your dry cleaning. That guy who delivers your dry cleaning may be making a rockin' good little film. It doesn't have to be huge to be good. But, know what you're getting yourself into.

Making an independent film requires taking certain risks. Getting involved with an independent filmmaker also requires taking risks. So far, those risks have never paid off for me. That doesn't mean I shouldn't take risks at all. It just means that I haven't been very smart so far about the risks I've chosen to take.

Hence, I impart my wisdom (or decided lack of it) to other writers.

It's not a game of chance. I hate that analogy. Sure, there's always a little bit of luck involved in most aspects of every day life. I'm lucky to find a good avocado in the produce aisle and I'll be very lucky to find flowers for my son's date to the prom because she hates roses and lucky me, orchids don't match her dress.

What kind of girl hates roses? The sicko.

What I'm talking about is, when choosing to work with an indy filmmaker, making a decision that requires processing calculated liability and effort against estimated benefits and gain.

Sounds like math.

I'm terrible at math.

Since this post has nothing to do with algebraic geometry, homological algebra, or functional analysis, I ought to be able to scribble out some kind of payoff in the next few paragraphs. If not, well, you know, I shouldn't have made the math comparison.

Almost anyone can be a filmmaker these days. Technology is increasingly accessible and affordable and even the high school kids in my small town are buying cameras and making their own films. I didn't say you can buy a camera at Walmart and make Star Wars in the garage, but you can probably make something like Thumb Wars in the garage with a camera, computer, a few friends and some good software.

I often hear that new writers need to become producers. I understand this advice. I do. I also understand and admire the commitment to film that drives a writer to undertake the enormous task of making his own film. But I don't want to make my own film. Orchestrating a film requires all those management and public relations things that take me away from writing and I want to write.

However, if a writer doesn't want to make his own film, there may be an indy filmmaker out there willing to make it for him. Did you see that word "may" and that other word "willing"? Those are very iffy words. Still, if the studios aren't parking private jets in your backyard and you don't want to make your own film, indy might be the way for you to go. They're more likely to read your spec and return your call.

The numbers of indy filmmakers out there are inestimable. Some are brilliant. Others aren't. Some have budgets. Others are honest about their lack of budgets. Many indies are recruiting writers with their tales of Hollywood contacts and millionaire financiers in foreign countries. Sometimes, these filmmakers want us to give away our specs for an executive producer credit. They may offer small options or purchases but often, it's all talk and that talk is paid for on our own phone bills. Some of these deals are worth it. Some are a joke. Not literally, but yeah, literally.

We newbies are easy to persuade. We want so much to believe that we're finally about to be recognized as the great artists that we surely must be that we're willing to give away a year or two of work for a shaky promise.

How shaky is too shaky for you? Too shaky for me might be just fine for you. It all depends on how much risk YOU are willing to take.

I've never seen anyone detail their indy disappointments online and I don't intend to detail mine but what I say here is from personal experience. I'm not taking this from a magazine or anyone else's blog. I've done some incredibly stupid things. I've also made some amazing contacts and really good friends by going down some indy paths. But, because I was given a reality check early on by a professional writer, I wasn't surprised when the disappointments came. I didn't like it, but I wasn't surprised.

So, if you are a newbie, this is your reality check. While you're weighing your options and calculating your risks, there are a few things you should know:

(1) Not all Hollywood contacts are valuable. I'm sorry. They aren't. Some of them are schmucks and liars and people living in Mommy's garage and using a borrowed cell phone. A single indy film credit on IMDB does not necessarily mean this person talking to you is a contact you must nurture. Have you seen the film? Is it something you would make? Is this a controlling, manipulative, or patronizing person that makes you cringe? Burning bridges is bad. Very bad. But you aren't a doormat either. You still have the right to say 'no'.

(2) There is no billionaire looking for a script to finance. There never is. What you will encounter are salespeople. Like you, they're looking for a break and they need you. You see, you're a writer and they aren't (stole that line from Joe Eszterhas). They're trying to make money off you. That's not necessarily a bad thing as long as you know that's what they're doing and as long as you realize that there's no financier in love with your work. Somebody is chasing a financial lead. That's it. That's all. If, even that much.

(3) People will try to get you to work for free. Trust me on this one. It will come in all kinds of disguises. It may come to you in the guise of a collaboration where you wind up doing all the work. It may even arrive as a big name Hollywood star looking for that perfect script and all you need to do is write a treatment. Hurry up. She's waiting for it! My foot. What you've got is a guy who knows a lawn man who knows somebody who is sleeping with a lady who knows where said A lister gets her hair extensions. I'm not saying you shouldn't collaborate with a writer you already know. Some of the most successful writers in the world are collaborators. I'm saying don't get buffalo'd into giving your work away. Even the smallest indy can pony up $250 for an option. (please don't take this as advice to opt for $250 - talk to your attorney or agent)

There are truly great indy films out there and somebody, somewhere, had to take a chance on them.

Be smart about which indy paths you take and KNOW now that you WILL take some wrong ones. Each day that passes, you have more research and resources available to you than the day before. That puts you at an advantage over people who had nobody to warn them. Every indy path I've gone down so far has been wanky. Every single one. But that doesn't mean I regret taking them. Okay, I do regret some of them. But it's kind of like math. I made sorry grades in every math subject I ever took in school. But, I couldn't get through life right now if I hadn't taken them.

Oh, and as for my son's date to the prom, these pics are from my yard. Last count, I had about fifty five rose bushes. Not smart, boy. Not smart at all. Talk about a risk taker. Dating a girl who hates roses? But, he's good in math.

The Perpetual Apprentice

My notes, drafts, and collection of screenplays and screenwriting books are out of control. I hate clutter. Tough trait for a writer. Time to shred bad writing and move a few books from the rolling wire bins under the bed to cedar foot lockers in the garage.

Why shred bad drafts? Because if they aren't good enough to be produced while I'm alive, I sure don't want anyone reading them when I'm dead. I save the portions worth saving, clearly mark them as rough drafts, and ditch the rest.

Of course, a person only has to scan the web for bad writing I've left etched into eternity online. Not much I can do about that unless I have early warning and time to delete my blog before I die. Even then, my footprints will still be all over the place. Still, there's much to be learned from the good, the bad, and the ugly so I refuse to delete the post about my first grade singing serpent with the British accent and Davy Jones haircut.

The other day my son noticed that I had bought the paperback screenplay for a film that I loathe and he marveled that I had even dog-eared pages and highlighted certain passages. While I'm not going to waste my breath explaining to a teenager how my whole "learning from other screenwriters" thing works, it merits mentioning here because it's probably true of all of us.

So, here goes --

True, I have very few "favorite" screenwriters but I can appreciate a writer's skills without being particularly fond of the results. While I may be a fan of very few, I'm a student to all.