Those Muddy Strike Waters

"You're watching this on the internet, a thing that pays us zero dollars" - this quote is from these writers from "The Office" and helps put the WGA writers' position into perspective for me. Maybe it will clear the waters for a few other people, too.

Admittedly, it's tough for many viewers to sympathize with a cause they don't understand, especially when they sit in front of their televisions and then hear that storytellers aren't going to tuck them in with another maddeningly confusing episode of "Lost" or when they hear hyped man-on-the-street remarks about selfish writers with Malibu homes motivated by greed and the need to buy matching his and her chocolate portraits from the Neiman Marcus fantasy Christmas catalog.

Yeah. That's what it's all about. Pfft. Oh, and Steve Carell has been unable to report to work for the following reason.

Musical Theme Meme

This meme is perfect for me because it blends the two things I love most (excluding the obvious kids and family, come on, people, give me a break) - music and writing. Can't even sing with the radio right now due to strep and worried about learning music for my Christmas engagements but am I going to take steroids? NO! I'm finally (very slowly thanks to cottage cheese and treadmill) shedding these pounds that made me blow up like Augustus Gloop so I'll just pop the antibiotics and leave it at that.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the meme!

Julie had to hunt down what the meme was all about so I'll plagiarize most of her explanation. IT's SO COOL! Find a song that inspires you to write something, whether it gives you an idea for a script or just puts you into a better frame of mind, peek into the lyrics and find a stanza that sums up the theme of whatever script you're working on. THEN, if you can find one, (and you can) post a video of the song to get people into the mood. Send the assignment to 5 other writers.

My current screenplay has a theme of self acceptance (funny coming from a lady killing herself to shed pounds) and my song comes from Ingrid Michaelson. I'm posting all the lyrics because they're just beautiful in their simple honesty.

If you are falling, then I would catch you
If you need a light, I'd find a match
Cuz I love the way you say good morning
And you take me the way I am

If you are chilly, here take my sweater
Your head is aching, I'll make it better
Cuz I love the way you call me baby
And you take me the way I am

I'd buy you Rogaine when you start losing all your air
And sew on patches to all you tear
Cuz I love you more than I could ever promise
And you take me the way I am.




And now, who to tag that won't hate me and knows I don't care whether they play along or not? ( you should, though, it's a good exercise) How about Lucy, Christina, Piers, Todd, and Dante?

What the Strike Means to You

My son asked me last night what the strike means to him as a movie-goer. He's convinced that we're in for nothing but bad remakes. In the effects column, here's what Chud.com says will happen when writers strike on Monday:

1. Release of bad/unpolished/unfinished films.


2. Stalled productions.


3. Established writers scabbing.


4. Unproduced/unestablished writers screwed.

I didn't say any of that to my eighteen year old when he asked me what the strike means to him. Instead, I relied on the "gee, that depends on how you look at it" answer - a skilled parent rephrase of "do you see a crystal ball in my hand?" designed to make it sound like I probably know something but would rather him figure it out for himself instead of sponging off my wisdom because how else is he going to become a man?

Don't judge me, people!

As a non-card carrying member of #4, however, I began a month or so ago converting my favorite screenplay into a novel -- ya know -- just in case and for those of you who are familiar with the poor quality of my prose writing (which is in the same category as my skill for peeing standing up), well this is not good news.

But a good screenplay can be like a detailed outline for a novel so we'll see what happens. I'll probably get fed up with my description of a cash register and go back to a partially completed screenwriting project. Or, maybe I'll bounce back and forth to keep from getting bored.

In reality, most of our newbie unproduced screenwriting careers won't be affected one way or another by the strike. We'll still be writing stuff nobody opts and few people read but we'll keep writing anyway because writing is not what we do, it's a product of who we are.

Strike Could Begin Monday?

At least that's what the WGA negotiating committee announced. According to an article in Variety, there's still a minute chance of re-launching the negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers over the weekend. But it's doubtful , given the "vitriolic rhetoric that's dominated in recent days".

Well, okay then.

I STILL don't have a grasp on the strike issues. Yeah, I'm ashamed. I've followed the trades as best I can (andCraig Mazin's blog even), but my head is shoved in the WGA toitie and I'm getting a strike info swirlie cuz people, I'm confused. Guess it's a good think I'm not an official pot sitter yet.

Drat

Brett isn't a Nicholl fellow. Can't find a press release from Greg Beal or AMPAS stating which of these 2007 Don and Gee Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting finalists are:

Julian Breece, Los Angeles, California, “Ball”
Amy Garcia, Manteca, California and Cecilia Contreras, Pleasanton, California, “Amelia Earhart and the Bologna Rainbow Highway”
Lisa M. Gold, Long Beach, California, “The Poker Wars”
Michael L. Hare, Moorpark, California, “The Fly Fisher”
Sidney King, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, “Kalona”
David Mango, Japan and Syracuse, New York, “Kissing a Suicide Bomber”
John Robert Marlow, Los Angeles, California, “Nano”
Brett Nicholson, Katy, Texas, “Queen of the Sky”
Andrew Pritzker, Kansas City, Missouri, “Sweet in the Saddle”
Andrew Shearer and Nicholas J. Sherman, Los Angeles, California, “Holy Irresistible”

Some are though and since all are finalists, congrats all around.

Alas, Dear Mozart

The Meerkat with whom wayward girls identify the most is now lost to us. The lifeless body of Mozart, Jezebel of the Whiskers clan and meerkat without a country, was found in the Kalahari, presumably left there by a Jackal.

Oh, the pain. Meerkat Manor is truly the stuff great tragedies are written of and the episode in question can be seen online.

Rejected by the Whiskers clan again and again, Mozart wandered in the wilderness until she finally found a man to care for her. Wilson had been out sewing his oats and when the two hit it off, he took her home to meet the fam, which happened to be the Commandos that murdered her litter in a raid last year but let's not get petty. She needed a man and Wilson needed to become one. When they got to the homestead to see if the folks would accept her, Wilson's fam and Mozart's ex-fam were in a gang war so she skeedaddled on back to the desert alone while her man took care of business. When he went looking for her the next morning, he found her dead.

Geez. It was like watching Romeo and Juliet without the dialogue and no jester tights to cover the hairy little bulges.

I held my tongue when producers stood by and watched as Flower, the matriarch of our beloved Whiskers clan, was attacked by a Cobra, but Mozart? You just watched as-- what -- she got mauled?

How cruel can you be, Animal Planet! I'll need therapy after this!

Twelve Days in Hell

Crossing my fingers that my brother may finally be released from the hospital tomorrow. I've spent a lot of time in his Austin hospital room and sleeping on a convertible chair thingie beside his bed because, quite frankly, we didn't know what was wrong with him. Neither did doctors. The best they could do was drain his lungs and keep him drugged. Medicine is not an exact science.

So, we had plenty of time to talk about unimportant things like how Paul Winchell did the best voices in some of our favorite kids' shows like Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines and The Banana Splits and how nobody we know has ever heard of the Speed Buggy cartoon that we loved so much. We also watched old movies and new releases on a portable DVD player propped up on his serving tray while I told him about the Austin Film Festival and why I left my job and he told me what life is like working as a restaurant manager and how his ex-wife is breeding Bassett Hounds.

Often, while my brother was in a drug induced sleep, I'd sit in the recliner and write and write and write or take my laptop downstairs where there was internet access.

When families get together at holidays, it's all about who can take off work on which days and what to buy our kids and who is cooking what meal and who sleeps where. If my brother hadn't gotten so sick, there's no way we'd have ever both put our lives on hold just to hang out and be a brother and sister again.

Filming in the Lone Star State

Of all the people I talked to at the Austin Film Festival and sessions I attended, I think the one on one time I had discussing the film industry and incentives in Texas with Bob Hudgins was probably the most informative for me. When people talk about what more we can do to bring feature films, television programs, video games, commercials, music videos, infomercials and documentaries to our state, the more fired up I get.

Call it Texas pride. Whatever. I wasn't born. I was hatched with armadillos.

We have a lot of work left to do in Texas if we want to compete with what other states are doing. I know this and in some respects, we're at a disadvantage in that our legislature only meets every other year. But Texas' incentive program is improving. We now offer grants equal to 5% of in-state spending and combined with our tax abatements, we're getting close to 10%. Details on Texas incentives can be found here.

But seriously, in what other state can you find coasts, deserts, piney woods, canyons, lakes, dinosaurs, and Chuck Norris? Hmm? Where?

I met with Bob prepared to discuss three issues (1) there are only nine regional film commissions in Texas (2) East Texas is virtually unrepresented and (3) local government education. He didn't give me time to discuss any of them. He had a solution in progress for each of my concerns. Every last one of them!

REGIONAL FILM COMMISSIONS - While there are only nine regional film commissions at the moment, Texas is a state with 268,581 square miles which is about seven percent of the water and land area of the United States. Nine just doesn't cut it. But according to Bob, seven more film commissions are in formation as we speak, most of which are due to launch by the end of the year and the one that concerns me the most? Keep reading.

EAST TEXAS FILM COMMISSION - As of October, 2007, the East Texas Film Commission stationed in Palestine, Texas, is a go. Couldn't have timed it better. It's almost as if I said "Bob, I want an East Texas Film Commission" and he rubbed his magic lamp. Poof! There it is. East Texas is one of the most beautiful and yet under served areas of Texas as far as film commissions go. These are areas where small historic towns might feel overwhelmed by and unable to serve the needs of a film production and yet have the most to offer. Ironic.

FILM FRIENDLY TOWNS - I have long thought we were failing our small towns by not equipping them with any knowledge of the film industry and, at the same time, setting our films up for failure by sending them into cities and expecting them to figure out permits, deal with street closures, and face local government bureaucracy alone. Ever try to blow up a building in a small town? Good luck getting a permit.

It's frustrating on both sides because on the film shooting side, cost and time are critical and on the local government side, certain processes are a necessary evil. It's like sending out a foreign correspondent without an interpreter.

What the Texas Film Commission has done to address this is develop a program where towns are designated FILM FRIENDLY if they (1) assign a point person to help work out logistical details for film projects and help get them through processes - somebody who speaks both film language and government language (2) prepare information ahead of time that will help productions get through the town's processes, answer questions ahead of time, and reduce the amount of gobbledygook both on paper and in person that film personnel must decipher.

There are countless stories of productions being shut down for hours or days or even taking their toys and going home because somebody didn't know a certain kind of permit was required or that a permit had certain publication and advertising stipulations or that so-an-so approved the street closing and parade but that the Mayor had booked a craft fair on the square that day or the police officers that were going to work traffic were called away for an emergency funeral. FILM FRIENDLY towns will have a point person who knows the local officials to help circumvent these kinds of issues.

It's brilliant, I tell you.

GRANT AMOUNTS - Funding for grants is a maximum of $2 million for feature films, $2.5 million for television programs, $200,000 for commercials, and $250,000 for vido games. Keep in mind that this is in adddition to tax abatements. And yeah, rules apply so go to the Texas Film Commission production grants page and see if you qualify.

Final Lessons from AFF

There's just too much. Pages and pages of notes, I took! I'll never get all of them transcribed and posted and based on my Sitemeter stats, not too many people are actually reading them anyway. Why? Because the screenwriters who are interested in what the pros had to say AFF were THERE!

So, with the exception of one more post on what the Texas Film Commission is doing, this is it for my AFF posts. I didn't want to end without including these additional comments and info though that made a powerful impression on me but may not merit an entire post -

Daniel Petrie, Jr - Okay aside from learning that if you're going to pour shots for the whole room, bring more than one bottle, he had some good advice are REWRITES. Rewrites is where it's at, he says, so give yourself permission to write a really sh*tty first draft. He says outlines are valuable for him because there are days when the process may become so tough that he actually "hates" writing. No kidding. He really said that. Thought you were the only one?

Scott Alexander - Even though his best projects came as a result of TREATMENTS, he despises them because it's so difficult to convey a tone in a treatment. Scott reminds writers that no one script is the be all/end all and said that getting a film made doesn't mean your phone will ring. You'd better have another script and at least two pitches ready.

Aline Brosh McKenna - Says that if the story is well defined and characters have clear goals, DIALOGUE will take care of itself. But if the writer doesn't understand what the characters want, the dialogue will be dead.

Nicholas Kazan - Says that if you start out thinking, "I'm going to write great DIALOGUE", then you're screwed. But if you write from play and have fun with your scenes, the dialogue will naturally be good.

Terry Rossio - Says that if you write characters whose inherent natures are to say interesting things -- Hannibal Lector, Jack Sparrow, etc - then DIALOGUE isn't so painful because you give your characters license to speak and yourself license to write really cool stuff for them to say.

Gregg Rounds - Says there are a million reasons why any one person may think your script is crap. Don't give up on a single person's opinion or any two or three opinions. But, if the majority say it's crap, then start evaluating what you're doing.

Robin Swicord - Says there will always be objections to the way you're doing something. Do it anyway. Have fun. If it doesn't sell, do it anyway. If people don't make movies like that, do it anyway.

John Milius - Still writes everything by hand on a yellow legal pad. No script software. The further along in the script he gets, the more minimalist his writing becomes but every bit is done by hand. I hadn't done that since high school so I wrote this post out by hand just for grins and then typed it into Blogger. Never again. Never.

Million Dollar Will

Remember a few weeks back when I mentioned that my horse finally won in respect to Will Bigham of Canyon, Texas, winning the reality television show "On the Lot"? Well, AFF afforded me an opportunity to chat with this unassuming guy. Yeah. Who'd have thought? And he sure doesn't walk around acting like he just got a million dollar development deal from Steven Spielberg. He's every bit as likable and humble in person as he projected on the program.

Even though Will wasn't in Austin as an AFF panelist (he was there for his love of film), I summoned up my inner journalist and asked him my question about screenwriting and whether "On the Lot" contestants were told upfront that the contest required writer/directors. Will had nothing negative to say about "On the Lot" but did confirm that it wasn't until contestants were well into the process that they realized the participants who had better writing skills had a clear advantage.

Will said he sent his initial application in to the competition and then was told to condense it. A month later he got a followup phone call that basically amounted to "we want you to film a three minute movie and you have one week from today -- go!" The only direction he got was that the film needed to be about something lost. At that point, he could have gotten anyone to write it so he collaborated with his wife.

Although he's quick to announce that he hasn't turned into Clay Aiken and can usually take his family out without being recognized , Will does say that shortly after he won "On the Lot" he was accused of being the last comic standing. In fact, few people at AFF actually recognized him and he was able to enjoy most of the festival in anonymity and peace.

Until he met me on the Driskill steps, that is.

Lessons From Oliver Stone

Listening to Oliver Stone at AFF was, for me, more about being enlightened than about becoming a better screenwriter. Of course, if enlightenment and understanding the reality of the politics associated with the film industry is a requirement to becoming a better writer, I suppose this session accomplished all the above.

The truth is that listening to stories about politics of filmmaking and politics in general made me shudder and wonder if I had any business in the film industry, screenwriting, or even sitting in that room. While I’ve worked in local government the majority of my adult life and am fully equipped to conduct press conferences, dissect legislation, negotiate with politicians, and deal with the politics of most situations, I thought that, as a writer, I wouldn’t have to.

According to Oliver Stone, not so.

Of course, when you consider the highly volatile subject matters he takes on and the manner in which he challenges the generally accepted status quo, resistance is to be expected. Filmmaking is about making the unexpected and the unusual. If roller coasters were predictable, they’d be merry-go-rounds.

So, what kind of advice did Oliver Stone have for screenwriters and film students? Well, among all the questions about politics and football flung at him from the audience and aside from that guy that actually stood up and tried to pimp his own work, a few people in the room did ask questions related to filmmaking.

Stone says that diary writing is good practice for staying self-aware and a natural thing for him but increasingly challenging. Fifteen years ago, he wrote daily. Now, he writes weekly but enjoys looking back at his journals to see what his thoughts were about a certain place or event. He says photographs just don’t give you what you were thinking and he planned to go back and look at what his journals said about his last visit to the Austin Film Festival.

In response to a question about improvisation, Stone said that most actors do not like to improvise and find comfort in the structure and readiness of a script. He cautioned writers, though, to be prepared to play with their scenes and be flexible. Everyone expresses themselves differently and even though, according to Stone, you rehearse and rehearse and rehearse, the director must know the strengths, skills, and weaknesses of each of his actors and be prepared to fire somebody when it doesn’t work.

He responded to a question about where research stops and fiction begins by saying, "I try to stay truthful to the spirit of it" and that research stops when he just can't take it anymore and he reminded the room that screenwriters are dramatists, not historians or journalists.

Favorite lesson from Oliver Stone? The question was asked, “Why make films that polarize and resonate so strongly in American memory?” Without hesitation, Mr. Stone said, “I don’t pick films. The passion picks me.”

Lessons from Terry Rossio

This is a tough AFF post to write because I could ramble on and on about Terry Rossio. He was spoken of again and again during AFF as the best reservoir of screenwriting information available at the conference. One film student, who was standing behind me in the overcrowded Friday Night Lights production session and expressing frustration about certain panels, commented to her friend that so far, Terry Rossio had been the only panelist she'd heard who seemed to understand what it was writers really wanted and needed to know.

Terry knows what we need to know and doesn't hesitate to share it. He's been at this mentoring thing for years and doesn't waste his breath and your time on information that won't help . Humble and genuine during the sessions, Terry has a gift for making each person in the room feel like he came just to give them the direct, sincere and personal attention they were looking for. I'll discuss three of his topics but seriously, I could babble on and on.

DIALOGUE - Terry explained a rude awakening he faced when he was working on Aladdin and realized for the first time that his dialogue, when storyboarded, often resulted in the characters just standing around doing nothing for what seemed like interminable periods of time. Animated characters not being animated? Bad. Very bad. That was a turning point for him in his on-the-job education about making films visual and expressing dialogue through action as well as speech.

I had heard this story before on a podcast or DVD commentary somewhere so it didn't surprise me when it came up but then Terry added something else - that it would be helpful for writers, regardless of whether your screenplay is animated or not, to visualize storyboards of your scenes as a sort of litmus test to see if your characters are actually doing anything. That was a Homer Simpson "Doh!" moment for me so genius in its simplicity that I was embarrassed that I hadn't thought of it myself.

SECOND CONCEPTS - This is a new (but not new) theory Terry is planning to put into a Wordplay column and when the subject came up, all I could think was "oh geez, I can barely wrap my brain around HIGH concept, now I need to do it twice?". Well, yeah. That's pretty much the idea. Except it's not necessarily high concept twice. It's just GOOD concept or STRONG concept twice.

Terry's theory is that films with more than one equally compelling concept are twice as compelling. That's about it. Pretty simple. Why have we never discussed this before? Most films have more than one concept, don't they?

For example. Men in Black is basically about an agency that manages the affairs of aliens on earth. That's the first concept. But, it has a second concept, too. The alien crime concept is not a big War of the Worlds type invasion. It's day to day investigating like in Law and Order or CSI that exposes that the world is in danger.

Another example is Terry's own film that he wrote with Bill Marsilii, Deja Vu. The first concept is the capability to fold time for a certain period and witness events while they take place in order to solve crimes. The second concept is a detective falling in love with a girl as he investigates her death.

LINES OF FORCE - This theory is another new theory and difficult to visualize. Terry plans to write a column about it but don't hold your breath. He's a busy man. Three years ago, when I met Terry at AFF for the first time, he told me he had three new columns ready to post on Wordplay. Those columns were just posted this week. He got distracted with a couple of little pirate movies.

Basically, the theory works like this: a line of force is every combination of people, motives, and actions that move a certain event forward (or any other direction) into or away from existence. For example, in Evan Almighty, everything that works toward helping Evan build his ark by September 22nd is one line of force. Everyone whose motives line up with his, all events that move it forward - the arrival of the animals, the purchase of lots so there's room to build, etc - are on a line of force making it possible to build the ark. Everything working to prevent the building of the ark- wife objections, bulldozers, events designed to embarrass Evan, everything that plants a road block- is an opposing line of force.

If we drew these two opposing lines of force, they'd crash some place in the third act. Not all lines of force crash or intersect while some films have several lines of force that all intersect.

Terry suggests that mapping out the various lines of force in a film gives the writer a more holistic understanding of the story elements, their value, and their purpose and will better help the writer convey those ideas to producers, directors, and people holding purse strings and project reins when the need arises.

Of course, I could have taken poor notes and have every bit of this all wrong. You'll just have to wait for the Wordplay columns to find out.

FAVORITE LESSON FROM TERRY ROSSIO - There's no possible way I can list everything this writer has taught me over the years, but at AFF, we can count lessons about dialogue, second concepts, and lines of force among my school-of-Rossio education. However my favorite lesson is one he didn't verbalize but taught by example - that writing tools, methods, and theories are not finite. There's always another way to look at something.

Lessons From Robin Swicord

This is the first of my posts about what I learned from panelists at AFF. Since my notes are unique to my particular needs, my pen is subjective and it ignored much information that would probably be highly valuable to somebody else. Such is the way these things go.

Robin Swicord, who was most familiar to me for Memoirs of a Geisha and Matilda, keeps story note journals with fascinating drawings of her ideas. The drawings don't need to be good or artistic sketches, she says, or even recognizable to anyone but the writer who draws them. The pictures serve to refresh the writer's memory of the visual that went along with a thought, joke, anecdote, or story idea.

Her reply to the standard "how do you deal with writers' block?" question was associated with another response about multiple drafts of screenplays. Until Robin, the only discussion about writers' block that hadn't bored me was Ted Elliott's "writers' block is for amateurs" remark to Jeff Goldsmith on a Creative Screenwriting podcast.

Robin says that in order for the child to play in the benign presence of the parent, the writer must disengage the inner critic and get to a place where he loves what he's doing. Otherwise, the result will be painful to the reader. The writer must give himself permission to play. Write that bad draft. Experiment and explore. All of this is based on other comments about having an outline so you'll know where you're going and can take those side streets all the while realizing that you may re-outline based on new discovery.

Do you have a favorite scene? Robin suggests that you should but that you might also want to write a few scenes that you have no intention of keeping. Write them for play, to get to know the characters better, or to help you recapture the freshness of the story and prep for or transition to the scene you really need to write.

Something Robin said about adaptations also struck a chord with me. Any two people can take away vastly different impressions of a book right down to the basic core of what the book is about. The basics? Really? How is that possible? Isn't a book about a duck always a book about a duck?

No.

One person may think Little Women is about sisters growing up in poverty while another may focus on a theme of virtue and morality. For this reason, adaptations require compromise particularly if everyone is familiar with the work being adapted. She used Memoirs of a Geisha as an example. Robin had a certain theme in mind but was being asked to focus on the issue of overcoming slavery. She had to find away to do both.

Not only did that discussion bring home the point that writers like me can take different information away from panelists like her, but it reminded me how subjective all readers can be based on the reader's education, experience, and whether or not they had just caught their spouse in bed with the cable guy.

Okay, so from Robin Swicord, I got a cool idea to add sketches to my notebooks, advice about writing for play in the presence of the benign parent, and a reminder about the subjectivity of all readers. But, my favorite lesson from Robin Swicord? Don't suppose that because you don't plan to write adaptations any time soon, there's nothing to be learned from somebody who already has.

AFF Aftermath

Despite negative forces and all the screenwriting demons of the world uniting in a "must stop MaryAn from going to AFF" sabotage campaign this year, a series of miracles got me there. Thank goodness. AFF saved my sanity but more on that in another post.

Check the pic closely and you'll see me on the left. Okay, half of me and no, I'm not drunk. I'm in a black and green fringe jacket NOT getting the shots of Jack Daniels that Dan Petrie, Jr. distributes until the bottle empties. The title of the session was "A Shot of Inspiration" and he took it literally.

Why did I almost not make it to AFF? Well, I had to hop between the AFF and the hospital a couple of times a day where my brother is still recovering from who knows what kind of as yet unidentified illness and yeah, cost was an issue since I left my job seven weeks ago and have a kid in college and did I mention the weight I'm dealing with as a result of steroids I've taken to combat shingles and Bells' Palsy, illnesses brought on by dealing with overwhelming stress induced by fulfilling my role as family problem solver and packhorse of everyone else's stress and did you know that six months of dieting and going to the gym at 5:30 in the morning will not prevent steroids from inflating you?

But hey, the good news is - no migraines!

Where was I?

AFF is awesome, amazing, and every superlative you can think of. This is the first year that I haven't attended as volunteer so I took pages and pages and pages of notes. Weird, too. I didn't see ANYONE ELSE taking notes except the guy from the Austin Chronicle. Oh, that annoying clacking on his laptop. I wanted to beat him with my shoe! But, seriously. In a room full of film students, I'm the only one taking notes? And, seriously. Chronicle guy, don't sit anywhere near me next year. Ever.

Sessions are over but films continue and there are still some I MUST fit in. I must.

I met dozens of people and finally put a few voices and faces with blogs and nom de plumes.

Helpful sessions. Not so helpful sessions. Wordplay dinner. Socials. Learned a lot about what the Texas Film Commission is doing. Exciting news. Seven more regional film commissions starting up including, FINALLY, one in East Texas. Lots more to tell about all this.

But AFF is not all about learning this and learning that. Yes, from almost every person I met and every session I attended, I gleaned at least one very valuable piece of information or one new idea. But I was also given a new way to look at or think about something or I was inspired by a comment or story and that inspiration made me want to breathe new life into one of my own ideas. Sometimes, just shaking a hand and realizing that you aren't an idiot for loving screenwriting was enough.

No single post can cover everything I absorbed at AFF and I collected a lot of good information that might be helpful to other screenwriters so I smell a series. How long? I dunno. One? Two? Ten? As long as it takes.

It's AFF Time!

Who's Going to the AFF?

Congratulations, Brett, on making the Nicholl top ten. I'm so excited, I could spit in my ten gallon hat and then dance around it. But, it's not ladylike to spit. Congrats, Brett! Hot damn and pass the picante sauce! It's a proud day in Texas!!

Who else is going to the Austin Film Festival?

How Would the Writer Strike Thing Work?

Okay, so it's like watching a tunnel up ahead and knowing that, not being a truck over the maximum height and not hauling anything that anyone finds particularly valuable at the moment, the height limit doesn't apply to me so my path doesn't need to change. But where do the tall trucks go carrying the really important cargo?

Exactly what does the detour mean to Guild members? What CAN they legally pen and what can they NOT during this strike period? Or, do they simply write specs and sit on them until somebody fixes the tunnel?

Cliche' Dismay

My son once asked me what a cliche was to which I quickly responded that it was a dead horse - a shamefully abused dead horse that people refuse to bury. They just keep beating it and beating it and beating it and have parties where they block off traffic, rent bounce houses, and invite their friends and neighbors and even strangers to come beat that horse like a verbal piñata.

Shame the kid didn't tell me he needed a real definition for a school paper. His teacher did not accept "dead horse" as a definition for "cliche". Perhaps, if he'd written "verbal piñata"?

Two cliche lines in film chap me more than others: one is "bingo" when a character finds an answer, prize, trigger, puzzle piece, blue wire or whatever else it is he needs in order to move him on his way and the other "fingernails on a chalkboard" moment for me is any derivative of "I don't even know who you are anymore" usually spoken by the disenchanted friend, lover, relative or co-worker of the protagonist when he's let them down.

By the way, these two nauseating lines were used in two of the most highly anticipated and highly grossing films last year. Seriously. They were. (Hint: One used the word "Returns" and the other "Begins" in the title.)

I thought I was off the hook this year. I really did. I made it almost through the entire summer without hearing either one of those cliche'd lines in a new release but then I started catching up on my films. But then I went to the theater every weekend, sometimes twice if I went to the dollar movies. But then, I also took full advantage of missed new releases by using my Netflix!

BUT THEN!

ACCCCKKK!

It's too painful to talk about. . .

Austin Film Festival

According to the lastest email from AFF --

You only have 5 more days to get the best deal on your Producers Badge or Conference badge by purchasing before September 17th. The Producers Badge gives the holder access to all of the panels and films during the Festival and all of the Festival parties. The 2007 Conference Badge gives the holder access to all panels and films during the Festival, Welcome Party, Pitch Finale and Conference Wrap Party. If you have any questions please contact linnea@austinfilmfestival.com or for general questions, contact Marisa Melendez, Conference Assistant at conference@austinfilmfestival.com.

Badges and Passes can be purchased here or by calling 512-478-4795.

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.