The Jerry Springer Life

For the last two months, I have gotten little to no writing done. It's ridiculous. Inside my own house is peace, calm, normality. Normality? Is that a word? Anyway, around this sun of sanity orbits absurdity in my extended family. It's screwball nonsense at its purest minus the laughs.

It's not funny in real life.

Not at all.

Okay, maybe a little bit.

All right, yeah. A 65 year old woman in handcuffs is funny.

One of my favorite lines is from Sunset Boulevard where Joe Gillis says of Norma Desmond that you don't shout at a sleepwalker. That's what I've been doing by trying to force dysfunctional people see through a reality lens.

Can't be done.

I am not Jiminy Cricket.

Make me! Make me! Make me!

You can't make me. Ever say that as a kid? Well, I'm saying it as an adult. You can't make me. Or maybe you can. Can you?

This is one of the most difficult posts I've ever written. I'm typing on a computer the size of a mousepad and while the keyboard is about 90% the size of a regular keyboard, it gives the illusion that it's about 50%. Don't care. I want 100%.

Hence I'm already cranky as I begin my rant.

Maybe the most efficient way to illustrate my recent film pet peeves is to go to the mattresses where my oldest son engages in performance wrestling and regularly endures some of the worst story weaving imaginable. The offenses go like this:

• Too much too soon.
• Vague conflict.
• Same ol' thing again and again.
• Shouting instead of drama.
• One dimensional characters.

Obviously, through the course of a 15 minute match, we're not going to see three acts, character arcs, and plot resolution because these storylines drag on week after week. I get that and in some venues where my son wrestles, it actually works. But most places? Yikes.

The difference lies in the person who controls the storylines. Does that person consciously or instinctively understand how to make the audience take a ride?

Performance wrestling should be more like Tom and Jerry. These guys beat each other up every episode but each ride is unique. Characters are clearly defined and periodically arc. Then the Indian givers take back their arcs and it works. They make us love them.

Now. On to film.

My boys and I recently saw a much anticipated new release. My wrestler son is the quickest to point out bad exposition, cliche lines, and inconsistency. For this particular film, he simply barked in his soft voice that carries a big stick, "This sucks." Basically, the film did everything he was accustomed to enduring in poorly written matches.

• Too much too soon - The protagonist's pain is over-sold and his heroism is nothing to cheer about. Why? Because it's way too early for me to empathize. Don't rush me. Even a roller coaster gives you a few seconds to anticipate a fall. Make me realize I'm ON a roller coaster before throwing me off of it.
• Vague conflict - Don't assume the audience gets it. Don't. I may not have read the book or seen the headlines the story was ripped from or ever been to other installments of the same series. Whatever. Don't expect me to get it. Make me get it.
• Same thing - Picture the last time you saw a person running in the woods and she falls down. Big fake deal. Now the murderer is closer. Now she has a twisted ankle. Yeah. It's the same ol' thing. There was a time when it increased the tension. No more. Make me feel the tension. Scare me. Thrill me. Anger me. Whatever. But don't use the same ol' devices.
• Shouting is not drama - Making your character yell is not the same thing as giving him something to say. He can yell and say nothing. Or, he can yell and say something. Or, he can just say something without yelling. It's not the yelling. It's the line behind it. Make me hear the line behind it.
• One dimensional characters - Here's your hero. Now love him. Here's your villain. Now hate him. Really? Is that how it works? MAKE me.

So that's that. Make me. Make me love your character. Make me hate your villain. Make me understand the conflict. Make me feel the tension. Make me listen to the lines. Make me!

My original plan was to purposely fill this post with ridiculous typos and then explain my easy bake oven computer to illustrate that I needed to MAKE YOU understand what was going on - not just expect you to assume from the beginning that there was a logical reason for all the typos. Most readers would ditch this post, though, after the first paragraph and I had to make you read it.

My boys and I didn't ditch the movie. We stuck it out even after my son said "who wrote this crap, I want to punch him in the face," and I had to remind him that he wasn't inside the ropes. We stayed. But we didn't stay because the film made us want to stay. The ticket prices kept us from walking out, not the film.

The Mighty Pen

Ever get exhausted trying to be the good sister? good aunt? good daughter? Taking the high ground is painful not only on the calves but on the psyche. It's necessary and critical, however, for each of us to leave kindness, compassion and decency in the wakes of our lives. Right?

Case in point: It's not enough that my laptop crashed, my washing machine is dying a slow and painful death, my sewing machine bit the dust with 29 orders on the table, and I didn't get my screenplay done in time for the Nicholl. Oh, no. Open up any rag magazine or turn on Jerry Springer episode and somebody in my extended family is having similar issues for which they expect me to assist in finding a solution. And I try.

So a couple of weeks ago I learned that my nephew has gained enough credit recovery to graduate high school a year late. I immediately set about finding out what I needed to do to get him a tassel and a stole for his borrowed cap and gown. Emailed Jostens three times. They gave me the price, told me their hours and where to go. Got there. Line around the building. Came back next day. Line still around the building. Came back a third time. Stood in line 90 minutes in the sweltering heat only to finally arrive at the counter and be told I needed my nephew's student I.D. They refused to sell the stupid things to me as if I was a student from another school trying to crash somebody's graduation.

Where the heck has customer service gone? Seriously. Instead of saying "oh I'm so sorry nobody told you about the student I.D., let me see what I can do to help", the guy says "I'm been on my feet all day, too". Really? Did you just compare a customer unnecessarily suffering outside in the heat for 90 minutes due to your error to you doing your job in the air conditioning?

Here's the kicker. I get home and read my emails from Jostens and they're from the very same guy who absolved himself from all responsibility and told me to come back Saturday and stand in line again.

So, here I am exercising my right to free speech by saying this -- BUY YOUR SENIOR RINGS FROM WALMART!!

We Have Babies

Ugly little buggers. Both nests. Surprisingly, fewer eggs hatched in the eave of the house than on the ground.

More on Procrastination

This past week, I've been holed up at home with a tooth infection that made my face swell up like a soccer ball. It's not that I don't like birds -- I do -- but I sure hated having duck lips.

During one of my breaks from the screenplay that will never end, I was attacked by swallows. They were hanging around a hollow eave that we put a brick on ten years ago to keep birds from nesting in the roof. I could barely detect a thin layer of mud and some grass on the brick. Were they really building a nest five feet from my back door? Day after day I've watched the progress and I must say that I am impressed with the craftsmanship.

Not so impressed am I with the house of straw build by field larks in my flower bed. Any ol' cat, rat, or coyote could come grab those four eggs. Last year, a similar nest on the pea gravel of my playground started out with four eggs but only one egg was around long enough to hatch.

Okay, what does this have to do with the screenplay that will never end? Nothing. Well, probably nothing. If I weren't on pain meds I might come up with a screenwriting metaphor for the well constructed bird nest with the great location and the poorly constructed nest in a poor location. Actually, that metaphor writes itself. Can't take credit for it.

Guess I'll just enjoy watching the story unfold.

Procrastination

Somebody posted this on Facebook and in the true spirit of procrastination, I'm posting on my blog instead of getting my stuff done.

A Montage Menagerie

Found a post on a board where they point us to this breakdown from scripttoolbox.com of three different ways to write montages: (1) series of shots (2) list of scene headings and short descriptions (3) one scene heading and a list of descriptions. This script tip doesn't debate the merits of using montages or discuss how to effectively use them. It basically just gives three ways to write montages IF you choose to use them.

So, when do you choose to use them?

1. To elevate an emotion. Montages are often used to show the depth of love, loss, grief, joy, or confusion.
2. Recollection. Montages can be used to show a character's memory of events.
3. Speed up the story. Montages acknowledge a part of the story that merits mentioning -- but not the time it takes to show it in a full blown story.
4. To tie seemingly random events together.
5. To tell a mini-story.
6. To show background events.
7. When the director wants it. A lot of montages aren't even written. They're added by a director because that's what he wants.
8. The writer is taking an unnecessary shortcut to storytelling.

Ouch. Number eight is going to sting a few people. But I've seen it over and over. Writers get lazy and throw a montage in to avoid sorting out a messy area of the story. You can tell when a montage is an integral part of the story telling process and when it was used as a Band-aid for an open wound in the screenplay.

A montage CAN be used to do all those things on this list but it's not the ONLY way or necessary the BEST way. It's not a deus ex machina and it's not a convenient pair of scissors for a screenplay that's twenty pages too long.

I knew a girl in high school who wore an elastic belt with everything. She even wore one with her wrap around dresses and skirts. Why would you wear a belt with a wrap around? To look stylish? Those things tie! One Friday night while we were gathering on the sidelines, she grabbed her waist and said "oh my gosh, I forgot my belt". Um, yeah. I reminded her that our little blue skirts and vests didn't have belts. She told me that she always wore one under her uniform because it made her waist look skinnier. In her defence, the 80's were another era. Weight discrimination was rampant. At 118 pounds, I was terrified every week at weigh-in that I'd go over the 120 pound limit. But I was smart enough to know that a belt would ADD ounces on the scale, even if it made my waist appear thinner.

To some degree, a montage can tighten a story but there are times when using a montage is a lot like wearing an elastic belt with a wrap-around skirt. Maybe it looks stylish, but it's not necessary.

Neither should a montage be a collection of scenes that all say and do the same thing. If every scene demonstrates the same thing, why not use a single scene?

A montage should move. I like montages that have a beginning, middle and end. Scenes can progress or regress but the montage should be fluid. For example, a jilted lover could remember the beginning, middle and deterioration of a relationship. A mini-story montage should probably have three mini-acts. If the purpose of the montage is to elevate emotion, let's see a progression or regression of that emotion - good, better, best or bad, worse, worst.

Using montages is not just about knowing how to use them. It is first knowing why we use them. That's the difference between wearing a belt that holds your pants up or wearing one that is actually weighing you down.

A Time for Every Purpose

My older brother performed this past weekend as part of SXSW in Austin at Hickory Street Bar & Grill. By the time he sang Hey Jude (his only cover) in honor of his son, Jude, who was named for the Beatles song, the guy was exhausted and his voice was going. Nobody cared. The audience had already heard his brilliant set of self written songs and they loved him. Just a man and his guitar.

A year and a half earlier at the Austin Film Festival, thirty something of us screenwriters (who frequent Wordplay) sat on that same deck chewing over each other's screenwriting journeys more than we did our food. My table, my very chair, was right where my brother is standing. He, however, was in the hospital recovering from a puzzling brush with death. Was it pneumonia? Sars? Bird flu? The doctors only knew that it was serious and met me with grave and sympathetic faces as I darted in and out, trying to make as much of AFF as I could without being away from my brother too long.

As poignantly ironic as it was to see one brother using a voice almost silenced, so was being seated beside another brother whom I once thought was lost to me forever.

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time for every purpose, under heaven
A time to build up,a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones
A time to gather stones together

Written into a Corner

Much to my chagrin, I doubt I'll be ready to submit anything to the Nicholl this year. (cue the waaaahmbulance) My online business (going well, by the way), family stuff (mother moved here from Michigan, needed help house hunting, needed me to put a wedding together for her), and misc bizarre things (father's house burning down, locating my long lost brother) seem to keep getting taking priority over the career I refuse to accept will never be.

Is my minimal writing time some form of kismet? Naw. Just poor time management and a laptop that's suffering a slow and painful death.

Writing today. By hand. Laptop taking a sick day and screenwriting software not on my desktop. Phone off. Not answering the door. Not running errands (hope the water bill is paid cuz my boys flush a LOT of toilets) and not braving the Walmart crowd to put food in the house (there's peanut butter, boys, you are NOT starving). I can't go to the store. CAN'T, I tell you. I'd run into a dozen people I know, it would take an hour and forty five minutes to buy bread and those Girl Scouts are stalking me with their doe eyes and overpriced cookies!

Not going.

You can't make me.

How do you spell "famelicose"? No, I didn't mean "fallaciloquence".

They are TOO real words! Look them up. I dare ya.

It Started With a Phone Call

"My friend, Hannah, says there's a fire by our house," my sister said about my father's house in Bastrop County. I've talked about my sister before. She's 26 in years but about half that mentally and half of even that emotionally. Shame on her friend for scaring her. It's just a brush fire. No biggie. Still, maybe I should call my brother and check. After all, my father and sister had only just driven up this morning. They couldn't very well turn around and go back to Smithville, now could they?

Then my brother called back. He had grabbed the dog and cat and was overcome with smoke before he could get anything else. He barely escaped before the flames charged the hilltop and consumed the house and his patrol car.

Just like that. My father's house is gone. 650 acres and counting.

Curious Case of Benjamin Gump

Let me be plain. Posting this video is not a criticism of Eric Roth on my part. It's a funny observation and it makes a point. Artists have signatures. Even writers.

When my son and I went to see Legend of Zorro, I knew Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman had the screenplay credit and Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio received story credit. Still, I was expecting to see T&T's fingerprints all over the film.

I didn't.

First act came and went. Hmm. Nothing struck me as T&T's work.

Second act. Odd. Nothing stood out there either.

Finally, toward the end of the film, there's a horse on a train. A horse on train! Now, THAT is something T&T would write!

As soon as I got home, I emailed Terry and told him the film just didn't feel like something he'd touched except for the horse on the train. Terry replied that he hadn't seen the film but had recently received his obligatory copy of the screenplay and flipped through it. He really didn't see anything of his own except -- you guessed it -- the horse on the train.

You see, once you get to know an artist's work, it's relatively simple to feel the familiarity. You'd be surprised how much Pirates of the Caribbean has in common with Mask of Zorro and Shrek and Road to El Dorado or how much National Treasure has in common with Aladdin. They all have the same writers' fingerprints.

James Horner, one of my all time favorite film score composers, almost always uses some kind of haunting oboe solo in his soundtracks. You wouldn't think Cocoon and An American Tale would be similar enough films to have common denominators in the soundtracks. They aren't. But, they do. Danny Elfman has a genius for weaving darkness with whimsy. That's his signature. Just listen to Nightmare Before Christmas, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Batman, and the theme from the Simpsons. The similarity is there even though the music is decidedly different.

Producers have signatures, too. Is there any mistaking Ridley Scott's herky jerky camera-on-a-tether ball scene transitions?

So yeah, filmmakers have signatures. Now watch this -- good stuff.

The Curious Case of Forrest Gump - watch more funny videos

To Clue or Not to Clue

A post on a forum not too long ago discussed how important it is to give the audience a hint ahead of time to show how it's possible for a protagonist to extricate himself from a crisis or dangerous situation. He/she/it (can't remember) suggested that it's critically important that, even if only for a second or two, the audience sees that there's a way out or at least the potential.

I think this was specifically aimed at action writing but I'm not sure. Doesn't matter. I wholeheartedly disagreed with this premise regardless of the genre and, after a month or so of watching action films and reading scripts to explore the idea, I still wholeheartedly disagree.

It's not that I oppose giving the audience a hint that Richard Kimball might escape through a storm drain or jump off of a damn or viaduct or whatever that was, I just don't think it's critical or required in every escape scenario.

In some cases, sure, give the audience a hint. IF IT WORKS. The word "escape" reminds me of a scene in Finding Nemo where Dory and Marlin are fleeing from a shark who fell off the "fish are friends" wagon. In that scene, we do get a clue, a hint, a jab in the rib right before they escape. Dory's inability to read the word "escape" was both a comic element and a message to the audience that there is a way out. That may be particularly important in this case considering the young age of much of the audience and the need to keep it scary but not too scary.

But in film, we like to surprise the audience and the audience likes to be surprised. If we aren't careful about things like this, we'll get the ol' "it was so predictable" slap. None of us likes to be told what we wrote was predictable. That's like saying we wrote something flat or prosaic. One or two scenes where we see "it" coming could spoil the whole film experience for the audience.

That's not saying that it WILL. I'm saying that it COULD. There are some crisis situations where if we DON'T give the audience a hint, it may not make sense to them later or it will feel like a contrived deus ex machina.

I'm taken back to what my grandmother said about showing only a little ankle to make the eye want more. She wasn't saying we should always show a little ankle or never show more than an ankle. She said that IF you're gonna flash skin, don't show too much. I'm not saying we should never give the audience a clue, just that it is not always necessary.

Of course my grandmother also said "never show your cellulite until you're wearing a wedding band". I don't know how to translate that into film...

Verbal Viagra

I have finally accepted that I am a member of that not-so-exclusive club of writers I loathe. You know who we are. Deluded that we're brilliant minds stifled by life and held back by a terminally ill industry, we tap out dreck on our computers and then raise our fists at the door nobody knocks on. We're peddling piss in a bottle and calling it penicillin.

Well, I've recently looked over all the piss I've written in the past five years and it's pretty clear to me now that while I have potential, I've never written a drop of penicillin.

What appears to have happened is that I spent so much time studying the craft that I didn't actually write anything worth producing.

I remember reading my first screenplay a year after I wrote it and shuddering in embarrassment. Well, I'm no longer embarrassed by that piece of garbage or anything else I've written over the past five years. They're exercises in screenwriting. One is a thesis on character development and dialogue while others focus on structure, foreshadowing, or conflict.

But, they're not screenplays. They're homework.

If I believed in resolutions, mine for 2009 would be to write nothing that isn't great. My own opinion, though, is that resolutions are frequently little more than admissions of failures and shortcomings disguised as noble goals in order to help us cope with our deficiencies. Well, no need. I readily admit that I am deficient. That's the first step in any recovery process:

Hi, my name is Mary Anita Batchellor and I am an impotent writer.

Step one. Done. On to step two.

Parallel Storylines

Give me titles! I'm looking for screenplays where the structure is of parallel or multiple storylines. Babel and Crash work but I'd like to read screenplays with fewer stories running consecutively. Holes has a present tense story and breaks away to a past tense story to enhance the present. Recently saw Sliding Doors which was fascinating because the two stories are truly parallel in that they are both in the present playing out alternate results from a chance opportunity by the protagonist. I'm not looking for flashbacks or Kate and Leopold type time travel. I'd like to see two or more separate stories that may or may not intersect at the end.

So, help me, writers. Whatdya got?

Turning Up The Heat

That blog title could refer to the stinkin' freezing temps that forced me to bring my son's equally stinkin' Corgi in the house overnight, but no. It means cranking up the pressure on our protagonists and making their conflicts, challenges, defeats, and victories more effective.

A friend of mine gave me permission to refer to his screenplay in vague terms for the purpose of this post. He liked my comments and said I should share my diagnosis with posterity. Yeah, okay. I'll give it a shot but I'm no expert.

Here's the deal. He has a good story that would, if I were the protagonist, be full of adventure, angst, and nail biting scenarios. I'm a wimp. So, if I were living out the story, the drama and uncertainty would be intense and the viewer would be doubting that my chubby legs (I've been working to shrink them for over a year now) could actually sprint across that wobbly rope bridge, much less stay on a horse or leap from a moving train. The threat of my sudden demise would be real.

But I'm not in the story. His character is. And, that character is more than qualified to run across a wobbly bridge, stay on a horse, and leap from a train.

Instead of helping the story, the character's invincibility hurts it. There's no tension. No fear. No anxiety. We know from the beginning that this character is a conqueror and the sky is the limit.

No fun. He can't fail. We need the threat of failure.

What to do.

The way I see it, this writer has a few options and this works for all genres, not just action films. This writer must find a way to turn the heat up on his character. That means either finding his character's Achilles tendon and exploiting it, amping up the challenges to fit the character, or making the character more vulnerable and human so the challenges feel greater and the viewer can relate to them. Or, all of the above. We need to know the character can fail at something.

Find his weakness. Turn up the pressure. Make him human.

John McClane (Diehard) could swing from a skyscraper on a fire hose. He's invincible. How the heck do we turn up the heat on a guy like that? Find his weakness. It's his wife and kids. Put the pressure on him. He's already fighting international terrorists so make him do something more personal like save his wife and hundreds of people from an exploding building. Then make him human so the viewer can relate to him. Let him walk barefoot through broken glass. We can all squirm in our shoes watching his feet bleed.

Indiana Jones is one of the most vulnerable action heroes ever written. That's why we love him. We love that he's terrified of snakes - weakness. We love that he's an ordinary professor saving humanity from a cursed Ark - pressure. And, we love that he's intimidated by his father but fearless in the face of Nazis - human.

Find his weakness. Turn up the pressure. Make him human.

One. Two. Three. Simple to diagnose. Much harder to go back and rewrite. Good luck, writer friend. You'll get there.

Joy in the Journey

My latest outline is healthy and whole in my head but starving and co-dependent on paper. It's a mess. Nothing on paper plays out like it should. Weird. If sit in the dark and watch the movie in my mind, I can say without hesitation. "that's the best thing I've ever written" and it's absolutely true except for the part about it being written.

In all fairness, it's kind of tough to write when Bob Hope keeps singing "Buttons and Bows" in your head. Oh, he's not singing The Paleface version that Dinah Shore later turned into a chartbuster in 1947. No, sirree, Bob. He's singing the Sunset Boulevard version where Joe Gillis goes to a New Years shindig populated by "writers without a job, composers without a publisher, and actresses so young, they still believe the guys in casting offices". They're sharing a yuk around the piano and singing --

Hollywood, for us, ain't been so good,
Got no swimmin' pool, very few clothes,
All we earn are buttons and bows.

Man, I love that movie.

I know a lot of writers who think they'll be cashing $100,000 checks some day and, who knows, maybe they will. Plenty of writers do. But even so, John Logan posted something somewhere a few years back (wish I could find it) where he breaks down that $100,000 minus the necessaries and divided by the years it took to write the screenplay. Basically, he says the writer actually earns about as much as the guy who pulls the slushie machine at your local 7-Eleven.

We know the odds. They're more stacked than the bras my sister used to stuff with chicken cutlets. Still, we write. But here's my question. If you could see into the future and knew for certain that nothing you're writing will ever be produced, opted, sold or even seen by anyone who won't use it as shavings in a gerbil cage, would you still write it?

Such is the soul of the writer -- even one whose story is penned up in her head with Bob Hope. Sure, a pig on the plate is worth two in the pen but those two in the pen will wind up on a plate sooner or later. Mmmmmmm. Bacon.

Ollie, Ollie, Oxen Free!!

Or --- Alle, alle auch sind frei - the suspected source of the hide and seek safety phrase which was used in Nazi Germany as a monstrous way to lure Holocaust victims to their deaths. Crazy, isn't it, how horrific words and phrases can evolve into something harmless?

Example: the N-word. It still makes my flesh crawl when my son and his black friend call each other the N-word as a salutation or a jest. I forbid them to use the N-word in my house. They laugh at me. Apparently, it's okay if you've been best friends your whole life.

Words morph.

My grandmother often sang this from West Side Story:

I feel pretty
Oh so pretty
I feel pretty and witty and gay
And I pity
Any girl who isn't me today

...much to the snickers of my cousin, who was, in fact, GAY! Oh sure. She knew he and his long term roommate were intimate partners but "gay" meant giddy, not homosexual, and nobody could convince her otherwise. Plus, as she frequently jibed, if they were REALLY homosexual (not gay), they would enjoy her showtunes. My grandmother was a hoot.

Point. Point. Oh, yes. Me.

Ollie, Ollie, Oxen Free! I have resumed my life after a long and nasty case of --- get this --- MONO!!! Oh yeah. That myth that you can't get Mono after your twenties was started by those guys that found Big Foot.

The doctor said I should have made out with more boys when I was a teenager and gotten this over with early like the other 95% of the population. He's right, of course. While I was in bed with a swollen spleen and every bone in my body crushing from the inside out, my fourteen year old, who came down with Mono at the same time, was out playing laser tag.

Stupid spleen.

How did I get Mono, you may ask? My son's nineteen year old friend moved in with us while he's going to college. With him came his Mono and an inability to remember which bottle of water is his.

The first few days of Mono are kind fuzzy now. I remember pain and fever. I remember hearing the "I Dream of Jeanie" theme song and thinking my Chihuahua was the mail lady. I remember feeling the cauliflower growing in my throat and I remember my four boys hanging around my bed talking about me.

D: You have Mono? Serious?
W: Stephen, you douchebag!
M: I have it, too and I'm not that sick.
S: Yeah well you're a tool.

Ah. The evolution of language.

Get Well, Morgan Freeman!

I'm a self proclaimed "fan of few" but have loved Morgan Freeman since his early days on The Electric Company. The Easy Reader was airlifted to Regional Medical Center in Tennessee after his car rolled several times somewhere in a Tallahatchie County, Mississippi where he has a home.

He's in serious condition.

Around here, when friends are hurt or undergo surgery, we bring them food, sew a personalized blankie or pillowcase for their hospital room, sneak them some goodies and sit next to the bed and read, sing, or pray. But with strangers admired from afar? There's nothing to do but pray.

Suspension of Disbelief

One of the very few negative comments I've heard (and read) about The Dark Knight is that it stretched the suspension of disbelief just a little too far. This puzzles me. Batman is a comic book. That's what comic books do. Suspend disbelief.

So, I pose this question - how far is too far? Where is the line? Is the line Stretch Armstrong far for animated films and slashers but only to the edge of your elbow for every other genre?

Perhaps it's an occupational hazard that screenwriters must analyze everything we watch, but really, this comment about the suspension of disbelief has never made sense to me - ever - because it's one of those things that writers control by the reality they establish in the story. As a screenwriter, I decide what the reality of my story is. You don't get to choose reality. I do.

What I really think is that when people talk about stretching the suspension of disbelief too far, they're really saying one two things: either the reality of the story doesn't sustain certain story elements which means somebody didn't do their job well enough OR a circumstance in the story would never happen in real life which is just plain silly.

• The reality of the story doesn't support certain elements of the story. That doesn't mean the film suspended disbelief too far. It means the film didn't clearly establish its reality. It's still a development flaw but from the ground up. We wouldn't expect to see a duck lay golden eggs in a film like Liar Liar but we have no trouble believing that a little boy can make a birthday wish that supernaturally comes true. Why is that? Because the film firmly establishes the whimsical reality that the protagonist lives in.


• That would never happen in real life. Of course, it wouldn't. We go to films to escape real life. I've never seen a single person laugh hysterically in the cemetery after burying a daughter but that's my favorite scene in Steel Magnolias. I doubt many people could get away with stealing their dead father from a hospital but Little Miss Sunshine pulled it off.

There may be a third possibility here, too. Maybe a role was miscast. The actor or actress gave a performance that was too subtle, too over the top, or they just didn't get their character at all and that weakened the credibility of the suspect story element.

Asking an audience to suspend disbelief is kind of what we're all about, isn't it? You've heard what I have to say so now I ask you -- how far is too far?

Cruel, Cruel, Nature

Dramas and documentaries that depict crime scene investigations turn shock value into intrigue and intrigue into ratings. I've long been a follower of some of these programs, shows like City Confidential and Forensic Files, and wondered what it would be like to write for such shows. It creeps out a lot of people but there's a certain element of comfort for me in knowing that science can catch bad guys.

But, not all of them.

Yesterday, not fifty feet from my bedroom window, something (coyotes or pit bulls) tore my nine year old cat limb from limb while I slept. I heard nothing while they ripped Lucy's little body to shreds and painted my lawn with her blood. They played tug-o-war with her and dragged her twenty feet this way and fifteen feet that way, leaving pieces of her flesh and fur in the wake of what must have been unspeakable suffering. There are no words for how gruesome and sickening the morning scene was or for my own grief as I bagged my little kitty's very few remains and hosed down the blood that looked more like it came from a slaughtered cow than a house cat.

I've seen enough crime scene shows to piece the evidence together, though. My cat never left my yard. Never. She usually slept in the house at night but for some reason she was outside, probably chasing mice and trying to do the same thing to them that was done to her. Irony? Or, circle of life? Either way, the dagger I feel in my chest is the same.

Recently, I've noticed the bunnies missing from the field behind my house. I thought they had gone underground because of the heat but now I wonder if they didn't fall prey to coyotes. When the bunnies ran out, the coyotes probably began feeding on backyard pets.

Or, it was the neighbor's pit bulls. There's no animal control to speak of out here and these dogs tried to shake a puppy to death a couple of months ago. My next door neighbor rescued the puppy and earned stitches for her trouble. But dogs kill for sport. This killing was about food. Lucy was a meal - or so the horror of the crime scene suggests.

Terrifying is the midnight potty break my Chihuahua often takes. She didn't appreciate it last night when I stood over her with a flashlight while she was doing her business. But I couldn't chance the cat murderers coming back for Mexican food.

Yeah, I make light of it, but don't let me fool you. I'm devastated. I jumped at every noise last night and even got up to let the cat in. She wasn't there. When the train went by and the coyotes yipped, I fell to pieces.

Coyotes have become increasingly brazen about boundaries. They've been urbanized out of their homes and in dry seasons, they starve when rodents go underground. Coyotes jump fences, creep into garages and make a meal out of anything wild or domestic that's smaller or slower than they are. Years ago, a little girl across town was playing in the yard with her new puppy when a coyote jumped her fence and snatched the puppy right out of her hand without ever breaking its stride.

Whether it was coyotes or pit bulls that took my Lucy matters not.

I own a shotgun.