Happy Halloween

The Office is always thinking ahead. I mentioned to some friends of mine how you just KNOW that there are going to be millions of ‘Jokers’ out there tonight due to the success of the film. Hell, people dressed up as the Joker simply for the premiere of the movie. When people go to the extreme lengths of dressing up to sit down in their dark theater to watch a movie, you know they are busting out the make-up for Halloween. In last night’s cold opening of The Office, Creed, Kevin, and Dwight all dress up as the Joker, and provide quite the entertainment. A sure classic to remember. What am I dressing up as? How about Zac from High School Musical?! Actually not quite, I think I’ll just go as the guy who enjoyed a bunch jager-bombs, less planning involved.

Thirsty Thursday

• Joe Wurzelbacher, most famously known as ‘Joe the Plumber’ on McCain’s campaign trail, has been picked up by a PR firm, and is in talks to produce a country album. No punchline needed.
• Paris Hilton has recently traveled to London to film a British version of her MTV show, My New B.F.F. It’s comforting to know that beyond our differences in handling violence and sex, our citizens share a common interest, crap TV.
• Joaquin Phoenix has announced his retirement from Hollywood, at the young age of 34. Well crap, there goes any chances for the sequel, Signs 2: Merrill Swings Harder. I’m sure if in 6 months there would be NO chance of him returning… yeah, uh huh.
• It has been revealed that Kate Hudson is now dating Baron Davis, an NBA player who was recently transferred to the LA Clippers. It’s comforting to know that no matter how much time Kate may take away from Baron practicing, the Clippers can’t suck any harder.

America The Prude

CNN posted an interview with Kevin Smith regarding his latest flick, Zack & Miri Make a Porno. In it he discusses the challenge he had with an initial NC-17 rating, the uphill battle with advertising, and getting Seth Rogen to star in it. Kevin Smith always seems to do his best at becoming a hot topic; in the past it was Dogma for its portrayal of religious ideas. I have no kids of my own (thank god), but I still find it fascinating how mixed up the USA is as opposed to Europe. On TV we have violence, shooting, etc, which is interpreted that it has no effect on children. But if a breast is on TV people freak out, as if its the sign of the apocalypse. Just look at the whole Janet Jackson scandal, it’s as if nobody was breast fed in the world and she was waving around bombs at the crowd. Wait, scratch that, everyone would be fine with bombs, just get those nipples away from them!

Hold On Tight (to your dreams)

Sometimes when I write I listen to music that reflects the mood of the scene I’m writing, or a song that I think would work well in the movie. The experts recommend not specifying in a spec script any particular songs, as whoever helms the project will pick their own songs regardless. But I was trying to think back about certain songs that invoke memories of certain scenes in movies.

One of the major ones I remember is ‘Tell Me’ by the ‘Stones in Mean Streets, because previously it wasn’t normal to put regular music into a movie. They typically had their own soundtracks. Even today some movies have original soundtracks made, not just because pop music wouldn’t work, such as in Jurassic Park, but some film makers avoid pre-made music, because the audience may already have memories attached to those songs. Recently the trailer for “Pineapple Express” used M.I.A.’s Paper Planes song, which worked well. Of course it was to my surprise to watch the entire movie and discover that song wasn’t even in the movie… sneaky.

Sitcom's Will Never Die

I remember not long ago when there was a sudden rush of reality show’s on the networks how some people claimed that there was a waning interest in the traditional sitcom, and that perhaps we were witnessing the death of scripted 3-camera based shows.

Looking back on that today we know what really happened to the reality based movement. While some of those shows were a guilty pleasure, many didn’t make it long and only the strongest have survived. While I think there will remain a few reality shows on TV for years to come, I too think sitcom’s will never fully go away, simply because of the appealing premise sitcoms provide to their viewers - half-hour a week to visit their “friends,” laugh a bit, and see no matter what happened to the characters, everything is back to normal. It’s a premise many can appreciate. I think people in general resist change; they’re comfortable with the familiar, and being to provide entertainment where they know everyone’s name is all the more better.

Symbolism in Color

I was speaking with some people yesterday regarding the use of certain colors in society, and how in some cases they’ve almost lost the real meaning when you know the truth, (this will make sense soon). For instance in movies, red is often a representation of lust, passion, and sin. Many times when a protagonist first sees the love interest, she’s wearing something red. Its hard to forget in Schindler’s List the girl in the red dress, despite everything else in B&W. Of course back in the old days, Blonde hair represented beauty, and the woman antagonist typically had a darker hair color.

In modern day, white is often a representation of purity. Greek pledges are often wearing white before their initiation, and of course, brides dresses are white. Knowing some people getting married these days, I chuckle when I think of certain women wearing a dress of “purity,” when I know that’s far from the truth. Heck the groom typically wears black, he isn’t trying to hide anything. So I’ve devised a new color system for brides. Virgins can wear white, they’ve earned it. If she’s had 1-3 partners she can wear a cream - light yellow, 4-9 get darker shades, 10-12 wear black, and if she’s had 13+ partners, well she’ll be naked, since she’s like that half the time anyways.

Edit: The following day CNN posted an article about the color red potentially boosting your sex appeal.

Killing Your Darlings

One of the toughest things for beginning writers is not taking comments or criticisms personally. I mean, so what if all your ideas are terrible and nobody wants to ever read your stuff again. You still rock! Woo. Part of fixing your scripts is making cuts, yes, deleting all the fluff, garbage, the jokes you thought were clever but no longer fit. It’s tough at first. On my first spec, I created a separate file, a script “graveyard” to put all those scenes that I thought were so clever but no longer had any use for. In the beginning I kept adding to it, last time I looked it was at around 40 something pages. But soon after multiple re-writes on my script, I stopped contributing to the graveyard, and haven’t needed it since. I just hit delete and move on. Still, its a good tactic for the writers who still have deletophobia.

Lessons from "Dreams on Spec"

I recently watched the documentary ‘Dreams on Spec,’ which follows a few screenwriters as they go from almost finished scripts to trying to sell their vision. With the exception of 1 person, the rest were not able to do anything with their scripts, and one woman just stopped doing interviews for the film. Definitely not a good sign. But I learned a few things from watching the documentary, which had interviews with successful screenwriters woven throughout. A lot of the novice screenwriter’s concepts that were presented during the film sounded boring, or at least something I’ve already heard before. Larry Karaszewski, one of the screenwriters behind ‘Ed Wood’ & ‘The People vs. Larry Flynt’ said to write something original, kinda off the wall, to help get recognized. Not necessarily some artsy, french new wave film, but something that’ll catch peoples eye and differentiate yourself from the thousands of other writers. After all, everyone is looking for your unique “voice.”

Ed Solomen, screenwriter behind Men In Black, was at a Starbucks in LA with a girlfriend, and they saw many people in the coffee shop busy writing things out on their laptops. They went around and asked 10 complete strangers, “how is your screenplay going?” 7 of them gave them a yay or nay, only 3 said they weren’t writing a screenplay. Food for thought.

Thirsty Thursday

• A beauty queen lost her title this week when she dine-and-dashed and forgot her purse, which contained weed inside. When she went back to get it, police arrested her and her friends. Hmm she forgot her purse. One has to ask, is there a pattern of forgetfulness lately? I’m sure its just the tiara and sash…
• Elisabeth Hasselbeck, a co-host on The View, has agreed to help out Sarah Palin on the campaign trail in Florida. Apparently Palin was impressed with Elisabeth’s views and felt that she had the credentials to speak in favor of her ticket. And why not, when a former contestant of SURVIVOR speaks, you listen!
• This is from Imdb because I thought it was fitting: “NBC “accidentally” deleted the second half of the title of the film Zack and Miri Make a Porno during an ad that ran on Saturday Night Live. Kevin Smith said the words “Make a Porno” had originally been removed in preparation for an NFL telecast, after the NFL objected to them. Smith pointedly noted that while the NFL demands “family-friendly” ads, it has no problems with erectile dysfunction ads.
• Tobey Maguire has signed up for Spider-man 4 & 5. His enemies will be the green greedy CEO and the two-girls-one-cup gremlin.
• A page out of the ‘I can’t believe it’ file, 20th Century Fox is making the video game ‘The Sims‘ into a movie. The producer’s plan on giving the film a much more authentic feel, by removing the blur when the characters use the bathroom!

Title Hunting

Picking an original, unique and clever title is tough work. Sometimes when you hear a title, you think, brilliant! Wedding Crashers, Legally Blonde, even Made of Honor I think are pretty good. Then you hear awful ones and go, what were they thinking? Meet Dave? College? ‘College’ is about as generic as you can get next to ‘For Love or Money.’ Sometimes I think it may be easier to do things the other way around. Instead of writing a movie then try to pick a perfect title, pick your title then build your movie around it. Of course, some movies may be easier to do that than others. ‘Rumor has it’ may instead have been a modern ‘Clue.’