The Walls are There to Climb

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The lyrics of Elvis Costello:


Our Little Angel

This is the place where I made my best mistakes
This is the place even angels don't understand
I've seen the disappointment in her face
And the collection of engagement rings on her right hand

She sits alone apart from the crowd
In a white dress she wears like a question mark
Friends speak of her fondly
Enemies just think out loud
You think you're man enough to please her
And you're fool enough to start

You're not going to do a thing to our little angel
There's nothing you're thinking tonight that tomorrow won't change

Now the cabaret is frozen and the laughter comes in cans
And the lonely hearts club clientele don't know what to do with their hands
You think that you'll be sweet to her but everybody knows
That you're the marshmallow valentine that got stuck on her clothes

But you're not going to do a thing to our little angel
There's nothing you're thinking tonight that tomorrow won't change

So you mix your drinks and words
You make bad jokes you make bad time
The floors are there to walk over
The walls are there to climb
You swear that you'll never go back again once you're inside
You're never the bridegroom she's always the bride

And you're not going to do a thing to our little angel
There's nothing you're thinking tonight that tomorrow won't change

You'll come in a sweetheart and you'll go out a stranger
Well you try to love her but she's so contrary
Like a chainsaw running through a dictionary
So get your mind off the sweet behind of our little angel
You're not going to do a thing
You're not going to do a thing
You're not going to do a thing to our little angel

----

Hear that sound? That's Fun Joel fainting dead away, because only five months after he tagged me with his music meme, well golly, I'm answering the call!

The song above is very special to me, perhaps because it's one of those Elvis Costello songs I feel I can decipher, which is saying something, because his songs often are like a neverending string of clues from a National Treasure movie.

This song relates very much to my last script, which I just finished and re-finished and sent out to make its way in the world.

Both the script and the song are about longing, futility, and how deceptive and purposefully fleeting the object of desire can be. In fact, a really good object of desire is one that doesn't exist, or that cannot be gotten; it can only be desired.

EC writes here about America -- and I didn't figure that out just because it's off the album "King of America." But even as an American, I share everything he feels, not only about the romantic conquering of this country, but about the conquer of screenwriting.

I have a lot of optimism for my writing efforts, but at the same time I know I'm a piece of dust on the giant's shoulder, and I'll likely as not get shrugged off in the moment of pending triumph.

And if it weren't that hopeless, that staggering a venture, would I be so possessed to try?

Probably not.

Holy Crap

Nikke Finke has posted that none other than UA is about to announce a deal with the WGA.

Others will analyze this development (apparently due to hit mainstream press tomorrow, Sunday) with more insight, but it underscores a delightful fact about this labor conflict:

The AMPTP may hate writers with all their brittle, alien hearts, but there's something they hate even more: each other.

I suspect that Tom Cruise won't stop until he's taken the fillings out of Sumner Redstone's teeth. And he's not the only player in town with deep, personal, hellfire resentment and determination to prevail. Mr. Katzenberg? Your table is ready.

Let the fur fly.

2008, hoboy

Happy New Year! I rang in the new year being annoyed at chatty cathys at the Arclight. Already this year is so drearily like 2007.

I saw several movies over the holiday, including Sweeney Todd, I Am Legend, Charlie Wilson's War, In the Valley of Elah, National Treasure 2, and checked out Ronin on DVD, which I missed in its theatrical run.

I loved pretty much everything, especially Sweeney, Charlie and Elah. Legend scared me too much, but it's awesome. National Treasure 2 was superficially fun, and Ronin was cool, although it ended on a sappy tone, and they threw away Sean Bean!! How can you throw away Sean-freaking-Bean!? Oh, and honestly, who would ever confuse Katarina Witt as a Russian ice skater? Russian poise athletes (gymnasts, skaters, etc) move like prima ballerinas, not like a stop-motion doll.

And thank god I now know how to pronounce "Elah." I've been saying it ten different ways for the last few months: Ella? EEE-luh? eee-LAH?. Being raised agnostic has some painful drawbacks.

Elah is a heartbreaker, although it wanders a bit in the second half and commits hara-kiri in the final shot of the film. Haggis just can't resist a mulchy, mushy, implausible beat. At least there's only one such ludicrously manipulative moment in the film, as opposed to about twenty-thousand in Crash.

--------------

So that was 2007. Well, see ya 2007. Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. The cab's waiting out front, so take your wagon-wheel coffeetable of disappointments, losses and mistakes and just get the hell out.

I have to say I'm jazzed about 2008 despite crippling labor unrest, recession/depression (yeah, the D word. I said it), the end of network television and 10 new pounds from my all-pumpkin pie holiday diet.

I'm ready for the new. I'm ready for this goddamn strike to be over, that's for sure. To all my friends suffering personally from this shameful union-busting attempt, hold fast. Something tells me help is on the way.

I'm desperately trying to complete the song meme-thing from Fun Joel. Hang in there, Joel! I'm just too shiftless and slow. Maybe I need one more wedge of pumpkin pie to focus my creative energies. Just one more slice. Excuse me while I slip off to the kitchen.

AMPTP Powders its Nose

During labor strife it's easy to demonize one side or the other, but I heartily recommend reserving judgement until you give each side a good listen.

The WGA's side has been well-expressed on the internet. Now, up steps the AMPTP:

www.amptp.com

JUNO

JUNO opens soon. It's the buzz right now, and hopefully will carry over the sparkle from last year's indy-that-could LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE.

I read JUNO way back when. It was a buzzy script, and I was very curious about the newbie wunderkind writer.

Well, it was rough -- the strong point was the bold dialogue, at least that's what everyone seemed to feel. It read very much like someone's first script, and it was Diablo Cody's first script, so there you go.

What I saw in it was the creation of a world, one wherein a teen's casual pregnancy was so unblinkingly accepted that, instead of being a movie about her struggle for acceptance, it was about her struggle for solid ground when a Very Big Mistake is treated like a bad haircut by her family and society. As a result she goes looking for love and meaning in all the wrong places.

Maybe the script changed a bit before filming, but that's kind of how it was. It also had a real soul to it -- it wasn't just frothy fun, it was ABOUT something. A script can be slick and flip and stylish, but without a soul, you can't make a great movie out of it.

So yay JUNO. Yay Diablo.

But if the script created a world, had a soul and signature dialogue, can SOMEBODY tell me WHY all anyone can lead with on the promotion is:

STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER PUSSY RANCH STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER PUSSY RANCH STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPERSTRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPERSTRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER PUSSY RANCH STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER PUSSY RANCH STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPERSTRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER PUSSY RANCH STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER STRIPPER????????

Jesus, people. I know it's a marketing hook. I get it. A hook makes it easier to brand and to get the news out there. But for the love of hot buttered toast can we maybe celebrate a new female writer without slobbering over her **naughty-naughty-wink-sleaze** past?

Especially when the script wasn't about "ooh look how naughty/sleazy I am." The woman isn't talentless. Why is she being marketed as if she was? Like some playboy bunny endorsing an endangered species calendar?

Maybe her reps can convince her to change her name to STRIPPER STRIPPER. Just to condense things. Just a thought.

Everybody Hates The Writers

I got hit with a meme blog thing from Fun Joel and I promise-promise-promise I will respond to it shortly. It's just that the strike has interrupted everything, infected everything. Even my sad little neglected blog.

Can someone tell me why I keep reading strike blog comments? Why?? With few exceptions the commenters are all the same nasty, shitty, anonymous bozos spewing bile on all the other blogs. I mean, sometimes I just hate the Internet. I know it's our future and everything, but I wish it didn't summon the worst out of so many. I wish I didn't know how crappy people could be.

That's not to say that I have pure thoughts either way about this strike. Most people are neither for nor against either side -- they just want everything to go on the way it has. People in the industry are very upset to find their livelihoods in jeopardy and they want someone to blame.

And, of course, writers are to blame for EVERYTHING. They are the most reviled group in the industry -- the impotence of the writer is a universal cliché. Yet when something's wrong, it's the writer's fault. When a movie is great, the director and actors are praised. When it's bad, the writer sucks.

Writers bent over last time to appease everyone. They shut up and took it and kept the wheels rolling and the green coming, and now that they've drawn a line, howls rise from the industry as from bewildered, feral wolves deprived of meat.

Fact is, most of the people spitting on the strike would be thrilled if their young child came home with straight A's on their English papers and earnest praise from teachers. "Wow," they'd think. "My kid is going to have a shot in life, in school, college, perhaps a great high-paying job that keeps them comfortable and protected from a tough life of low-level work."

But grow those kids up, make them writers and give them some achievement, and now they're the greedy ELITE. Because, you know, unless you're digging out of trashcans for your supper, you have no right to ask for anything, ever.

When did socialism sweep the land? Everybody wants to be rich, but not as much as they want to HATE the rich, or the perceived rich. And we all know that anyone who (you think) makes more money than you do is RICH. Especially if they earned it with their sneaky, tricky CREATIVITY and EDUCATION and INTELLECTUAL ENDEAVOR.

Don't get me wrong -- the WGA negotiations were botched. I'm not on the inside, but you can smell it. At the very least, I wish the strike had been delayed so that there wasn't this industry-wide sense of disbelief and despair. Yeah, the WGA is unified, but it could be a whole hell of a lot more unified, if you know what I mean.

Now that the strike has started, though, there's only one thing to do, and that is to support the writers. Anything else will just make the strike go on longer. Busting the union will not get your job back and yes, you will go to hell for that.

The only thing the AMPTP understands is pain -- financial pain. In the fine words of Kyle Reese: “It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.”

Don't be Nick Counter's sock puppet. Stop shining Murdoch's shoes. The AMPTP is doing the firing, the cutting back, the suspending. Writers don't have that power. Don't be a chump and blame people trying to fight the good fight. You're smarter than that.

Now that I’ve geeked out and quoted The Terminator I might as well go all the way: Remember in The Empire Strikes Back when Darth Vader uses the force via hologram to strangle Admiral Ozzel for coming out of light speed too close to Hoth?

Ok… well… I do. It was to keep the other Imperial soldiers in line. If this struggle were Star Wars ESB everyone would blame the Rebels for Ozzel’s death. Imperial Tie Fighter squadrons would be crossing their fingers and toes hoping to blow up the Rebel base, ‘cause, gee, good pilot jobs are hard to find!

That’s bullsh*t. You're Americans, and you're supposed to be tougher than that. You're supposed to find a way to do the right thing. That's what all these movies and TV shows we make are about, right? You know, all that junk you give lip service to around your kids? Like fortitude. Fair play. The idea that when you see a man standing up for what's right, you stand with him, because A Man Stands Up.

Yeah, this strike is a disaster. But let's wrap it up, hit a number and get it over with. We all have one thing in common: we love show business. We can't imagine working anywhere else. Let's fight for that.

Don't worry -- as soon as it's over you can go back to despising the writers. They'll still be here, and frankly, they can take it.

A Spooky Halloween

Could any more fun and frivolity be sucked out of Halloween in Los Angeles this year? The town's in flames, both literally in several wildfires, and figuratively in strike tensions. Although, some of the nasty rhetoric between AMPTP and WGA has died down as people's homes and neighborhoods turn to ash. Rampaging wildfires have a way of reorganizing your priorities.

As far as the strike goes, things are tepidly moving forward. I don't know what the outcome will be on November 1, but I will tell you that studios are INDEED commencing people. So all that tough talk about lockouts is just chest-rattling. Or sabre-pounding; one of those.

It's funny to hear collective statements on behalf of any group in Hollywood, because Hollywood is all about the deal. Everyone is really out for themselves, and all the group-talk in the world doesn't change that. Writers will hurry to finish drafts for the studios because their careers depend upon their obedience. Studio execs will commence projects before the 10/31 deadline because their future careers depend upon a future pipeline. There's precious little room for high horse-riding.

Strike or no, most in-process drafts are due by Halloween. After that, watch as a number of hastily-assembled projects start to un-assemble in light of inadequate drafts, over-committed stars and under-equipped budgets.

-----

I was talking to a pal the other day, talking about the spec boom that occured after the last strike. I posited that although everyone talks about all the specs that will crowd the marketplace at the end of the current strike/slowdown, things are actually quite different now.

First of all, there's a lot less development money these days. In the 80s-90s, there were tons of vanity deals and all the prodcos had rich, creamy development budgets. There was a lot of cash around, and it fed a lot of activity in the spec market.

That is not the case now. There's been a strong contraction and the budgets for purchasing specs and paying for multi-step rewrite deals have shrunk.

Additionally, the appetite for material has changed. Big budget ensemble dramas are struggling (Tyler Perry notwithstanding) and the Rom-Com field has just dried up and blown away. "Women's" pictures in general have suffered a horrible dropoff and no one has yet figured a way to reverse the tide.

But most significantly, the Action genre has really shifted. In the 80s and early 90s, the heroic Western hero was still in good health, but Ahnold, Bruce, Tom, Mel, Sylvester and the movies they made are no longer easily palatable to movie-goers. Everybody still wants action movies, but not the plug-and-play kind.

The 80s-90s hero and his action format were pretty formulaic -- they're what we call "B" movies now. The US felt pretty good about itself and we liked traditional, untroubled heroes who weren't overly conflicted about who were the good guys and who were the bad guys.

Writing breezy, fun, witty specs for that old action hero was a lot easier. I don't think we're going to see a hailstorm of perfectly-tuned, post-heroic action specs this year. Sure, pre-existing franchises like the Bourne series and well-known comic heroes can pull the coin in, but those aren't specs. 300 wasn't a spec. Harry Potter movies aren't specs. Transformers wasn't a spec. Neither was Die Hard 4, Fantastic Four 2, etc. etc. All these movies are well worth studying as examples of what *can* work now, but they don't technically set precedent for your spec concept.

So what should writers spec? That's the big question. If you're an action writer at heart, I think science fiction is the way to go. Think of The Matrix. The Terminator. Poppy, intellectually stimulating sci-fi action is a strong category.

Horror will get you there too, but it has to be high-quality. That market is saturated now.

Crime specs are fun -- if you can capture lightning in a bottle like The Usual Suspects. But that wasn't a whopping spec sale, so I'd marry the crime genre to something else and write the hell out of it.

I am going to take my own damn advice and proceed with a sci-fi/supernatural piece. It's low-budget but high-concept and I'm confident that this script will either get me someplace or discourage me entirely -- this idea feels so cool to me that either I'm a shoo-in or a complete moron who can't tell good from bad.

Oh -- and don't assume that you won't need to produce your spec in the springtime. You *don't* have 8 months to write your brilliant spec. You have 3 or 4.

Consider yourself commenced.