W2 - Wendy to the Second Power

Man, the screenwriter and story mastery workshop with Michael Hauge went off wonderfully this weekend. He can really cram a lot of education into a single day! The members of the Austin Screenwriters Group really need a hardcore course in structure, too. It's where everybody sort of flails around...

Even me! I'd assumed that my many scripts and many workshops, and, heck, teaching story structure in informal classes for UT, would make me pretty experienced. But nope. When we who'd submitted our story descriptions and first scenes got discussed during class time, I had 10 minutes of explaining and justifying, and it didn't fix my main problem.

NOW I discover a screenplay really needs a finish line/final goal. Not to achieve a final (good) state, but an actual Something. I'd had that in my 2nd screenplay (THE CUNNING MAN) that did so well in Nicholl's and other contests. But I realize now it's not that final oomph thing in many of my other scripts. Dang. So I'm working on it, and Mike was nice enough to read another pass at my story template when I took him back to the airport yesterday.

Another wonderful event this weekend was going to the home of Peggy Schatz in Spicewood for the informal potluck party with Mike Hauge. OMG, what a gorgeous home! Full of art and antigues, but with casual Texas elegance. It's landscaped and set in trees, out in the Texas Hill Country. She even has a German farmhouse they renovated as a guesthouse. That's where Mike stayed (saved us the cost of a hotel, yo). She grilled a mess of fajitas, so it was all lovely.

So for my weekend: WORKSHOP WIN! Here's Mike objecting to the camera in the room:

I have time between now and August 1 to read 100 or so screenplays. Sure I do.

That's the plan anyway. I went ahead and met with Alex, the new coordinator of the Austin Film Festival's screenplay contest, on Friday. I also want to write the first chapter of my supernatural mystery novel, PINKY BLACK AND THE BITERS, and enter it into the Hawaii Writers Conference competition. That's due August 15. That would give me a little something more to possibly network on when I'm there for 11 days in August!

But back to this summer. I am a fast script reader -- can do a 100-page script in about an hour and make the notes on it in 5-10 minutes. Alex wants me to read first round. I almost turned up my nose; I was considered by most of the previous coordinators to be one of the best 2nd-round judges they had. But then I checked myself. You only have to read 30 pages in first round if the story is crap. That can make a lot of difference and go a lot faster! And I want to earn my Producers Pass by reading, since my fond hopes of getting in free for being a finalist have hit a roadbump.

Roadbump! I learned Alex is doing categorizing differently than the past, which gave me a sinking, "Oh, I'm screwed" feeling about the CAN'T SAY NO script I killed myself to entry on the last day. I wrote it knowing the failings of comedy scripts in that contest, that often they don't have jokes, or only one every 10 pages. As a reader you think "this is supposed to be comedy?" I wrote my script to have 3 jokes on every page for like the first third of the script. Bam bam bam! Then there's at least one joke on each page there after, but the zany plot complications take over and keep the comedic tone.

As I entered it, I remembered there's a Scifi sub-contest too, where if your script is SF/F/H and gets to the finals, some high-ranking producers in Hollywood might read it as well. So I paid the extra $20 for that. In years past, you'd go into the Comedy or Drama stack. This year, Alex made a Comedy, Drama and Scifi stack. I think my script will do well for jokes, but it's only science fiction/fantasy in the way that THE ABSENT MINDED PROFESSOR or LOVE POTION NUMBER 9 are SF/F... dang. My first round reader might kill it entirely!

I worked about 25 hours on this project in the last three days, was just down at Kinko's/FedX making my copies tonight at 8pm... Worked on it until 2 am last night. Started again at 1pm today. And I've achieved a completed and fairly polished draft of CAN'T SAY NO, my first (true) comedy script! W00t!

I say first true comedy script because I've tried to write comedy before and the script turns out only funny some of the time. Humorous bits for tension relief. A True comedy script is OMG so hard! A joke or two on every page! There is something humorous on every page, and on many pages there are 2-3 jokes on this one. It reads sort of like 30ROCK crossed with BIG BANG THEORY. Here's the blah-blah.

CAN'T SAY NO is a family comedy about a geeky, ignored engineer who invents creativity glasses to help his overworked team of product developers become more productive. Their job at a combo Ronco-type product company and Home Shopping Network is driving them all crazy since the new Assoc Producer cut their project schedules by half. But turns out the glasses have a side effect: they make the wearer so charismatic people hang on their every word and give them anything they ask for.

The immediate deadline was Austin Film Festival -- tomorrow is the final, final day to submit to their contest. I also am taking this to the Hawaii Writers Conference and working on it (or on HEAVEN & NELL? I'm still puzzling that) at the retreat. But that's not until August. Here are the reputable (and some not-so-much but I'm trying it out) contests I'll be submitting to. I missed March deadlines for some I'd planned on; catch that in 2010 I guess.

• Austin Film Festival - due 8 June - √
  
• SlamDance - due 15 June, but they take electronic submissions, top prize $5,000 - √
  
• Final Draft Big Break Screenplay Contest - due 15 June, take electronic submissions, over $30K in prizes - √
  
• ScriptShark Insider Contest - due 30 June, take electronic submissions
  
• First Glance - due 12 July, take electronic submissions - √
  
• Cynosure - due 27 June, has to have a female or minority protagonist (my main character is a geeky white guy, but his antagonist who becomes his romantic partner is a Korean-American woman) - √
  
• Writers on the Storm - due 27 July, take electronic submissions - $10K grand prize - √
  
• Zoetrope All Story - due 8 September - prize is consideration by Francis Ford Coppola

Who else? I've posted lists of reasonable contests a couple of times; I'll check to make sure I haven't left someone off. Ah, found them: Scriptapalooza, Scr(i)pt Magazine, Nicholl Fellowship, Writers Network.

The voice talent on MONSTERS VERSUS ALIENS is good. Lots of clever jokes for the characters, especially for Seth Rogen's Bob, a genial spineless creature with no brain but much empathy. The evil alien invading earth was voiced in a fun way by Rainn Wilson, who has awesome comedic timing. As Susan aka Ginormica, Reece Witherspoon is sweet and sympathetic, as you'd guess.

But the story is kinda obvious, once the premise is established. The arc of Susan, the main character, feels like a so-what? Where you got choked up in WALL-EE and THE INCREDIBLES and even an old animation, LILO AND STITCH, this didn't work the emotions much at all. ( I'll tell you why behind the cut (spoilers)... )

Ha! The "old, legendary and lost until now film from 1957," ALIEN TRESPASS, was a special event this afternoon. The producer/ director was there himself. They chose Austin as a pre-release spot so people (like me) could blog about it and get word-of-mouth going. Free movie! And Austin Film Festival, the local sponsor, was smart enough to find FACT and me, the SlugTribe coordinator, and let us know people could see for free just for RSPVing.

The theater was almost full too! Lots of convention fans, others I knew, like Matthew, were there. My buddy Deb came with me* and she loved the film. I thought it was okay. It was filmed in a mere 15 days, y'all! That's amazingly fast for a feature. And it was period, with the right clothes, hair, vehicles. It had those highly colored stagey sets from the 50's, and it was done as a horror, drama. Not a satire, and the humor came out of the 50s corniness. I always find Eric McMormack appealing, and he's good as the nerdy astronomer and then later as Urp, the astronomer's body with an alien inhabiting it. The dialog is 50s-style schlocky, and the one-eyed bad alien is so awful he's good -- kinda like a Dalek.

So obviously it's not from 1957, but from 2008, but the Alien Trespass Website is cute with the funny fake story. Plus you can win things -- the posters they made to look like old posters, and even some iPods.

According to R.W. Goodwin who was co-exec-producer of the X-FILES for its first 5 years, the movie is a cross between WAR OF THE WORLDS, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and ?IT CAME FROM SPACE?

Plus they had some aimless odd goth folks there who I think were supposed to be performers, but they just ambled nerdily -- or in the case of their large, bald leader in a cape, lumbered heavily -- around the audience giving out buttons and stickers and chatting people up. Live Evil is their group, and they are goofy folks trying to be bad-ass. I don't think they realize they're as funny as they are...!


*a free movie, perfect for a friend who's got almost nil income but is too proud to let people treat her -- we'd just had a conversation about that & my position is that people want to do special things for friends and family so they can spread the good energy (in this case, abundance, since my income is good). It's up to the treatee to accept it with grace and realize that when they are flush in the future, they can spread the good energy themselves... So I got Deb to come, then later "forced" her to get coffee and a danish, my treat.

Neil Gaiman is the bomb. He's risen to be in my top 5 authors in the past few years. He combines vivid and fun plot work, unexpected and sparkling dialog, and wonderful unique tone. In my SF/F group's critique meetings, I've sometimes told people to "gaiman up" their fantasy stories -- take them from interesting but somewhat pedestrian to strong and surprising.

So his kid's book, Coraline, was made into a wonderful stop-action-puppetry-type animation movie. CORALINE is no longer available to be shown in 3D, sadly. But still worth seeing! I got such a kick out of the characterizations, especially when it came to the characters' hair. Henry Selick did a great job with character creation, movement. Every last bit of charm and whimsy is distilled from the story.

And then the scary, psychological horror aspects are frightening. You'd think, nawh, puppets? Puppets don't scare anyone. But they do! The creepiness of the Other Mother, the disquieting button eyes, then facades are ripped away, things are revealed, and OMG. It says it's a kids' movie, but there are some damn scary things.

One of the new characters, added by Selick, is Wybie. He's this talkative and odd boy, always standing with his neck twisted and head crooked. He's also vivid, and totally original to the movie. His hair is dark and sort of in curly points around his head. It's not until his grandmama comes calling him that you realize Wybie is African American. So, good, having a black kid but not making him a stereotype. He's even voiced by a young black actor.

Also recommended: Gaiman's Newberry award winning YA novel, The Graveyard Book. It's explicitly modeled around the premise "what if Mowgli, instead of being adopted by jungle animals, was adopted by graveyard ghosts?" Hence the name being so similar to The Jungle Book. Charming and creepy, inventive and surprising, it totally deserved the win. It's not a perfect book -- Gaiman threw in every fantastical element one can conceive related to ghostly graveyards plus ancient predictions plus supernatural beings of his own invention plus... It was kinda lazy and kitchen-sink-y in some places. But fun!

Plus bonus extra: Gaiman and I have been in some of the same anthologies, and I was on a panel with him one year. He's good buddies with friends of my friends, so I keep thinking at some point I'll get to hang out with him for something...

MILK, about the rise to political power and the assassination of Harvey Milk of San Francisco, the first open gay public official in America, is worth seeing. It won a best original screenplay for Dustin Lance Black -- and he was so earnest and full of emotion in his speech, bringing a message of acceptance to gay teens to offset the hate, I wept as probably did a million other people. It won best actor for Sean Penn, who amazingly captured both the odd physical appearance of Milk (a somewhat pop-eyed man who'd clipped his ponytail and returned to his stodgy 3-piece suits to get the respect of the non-gay populace) and the ferociously upbeat and sweet personality in spite of seeing the world through absolutely clear eyes.

What I didn't like in the script was the static and non-cinematic trick of having Harvey sit down alone at a tape recorder and give his own story "in case of my untimely death." We kept returning to this boring scene of him at a kitchen table, yakking. Not even with explosive or little-known facts, just the story we already were seeing. Harvey knew hate-mongers wanted to kill him, and one did, but even the prescience of him doing this was a drag on the story. Now I also have to say this was one of the best bio-pics I've seen. It made Harvey, his times and his city very clear. It took a cast of dozens and made their relationships and contributions easy to follow. Then it had some amazing and emotional crowd scenes that got everyone in the theater weeping. And hey, Black won the Oscar, so it obviously wasn't that much of drag on the story.

It's amazing how heartbreaking the scene of the assassination is, how sort of hushed and bleached of color (good job of Gus van Sant, also nominated for an Oscar). Despite knowing the sordid crazy story of Assemblyman Dan White, what he does and how Milk seemed to recognize it as it happened, boy. So sad!

With the Proposition 9 voted in by fear-mongering in California, this was a good movie to get out this year. Sean made his speech about overturning that, and good for him too. Worth seeing!

Then a new friend in my Writergrrls group, an older woman named Seja (and her sister Atari -- joke!) who'd lived outside San Francisco in those days running a chicken farm but dreaming with her boyfriend of being guerilla filmmakers, talked about when she'd met Harvey Milk. They came into town with boxes of eggs and tried to get someone to barter with them for film. Everyone laughed at them until they went to Castro Camera, Harvey's shop, such an important hub of activity in the film. He was delighted and dramatic at the offer. "Fresh eggs! How fabulous! What a deal, of course we'll do it!" She described him as overflowing with joy for life.

Saw a mess of movies in the past two days to prepare me for the Oscars. This afternoon, I saw DOUBT, the movie based on the play by John Patrick Shanley with a script by John Patrick Shanley and directed by John Patrick Shanley. He got a nomination for the script, and I do give him props for reining in the big theater moments for different kinds of confrontations. But the guy likes sermons. Long speeches by one priest, and that's a problem in a movie. Makes the story feel stuck and static, and I don't believe this movie fixed that problem.

Meryl Streep had an awesome accent and scary faith in her own assumptions. She deserved an Oscar nod. Amy Adams played a nun version of her JUNE BUG character, with a higher IQ. Not so much with a deserved supporting actress nod, IMO. Philip Seymour Hoffman played smart, sensitive, possibly corrupt but I think we're shown he's more humanly warm than a pedophile. Viola Davis does pull off an incredible acting job as the black mother of the one African-American kid in this 1960s Catholic school. She takes what seems a terrible position on the situation and makes it something reasonable or empatheticable (?) for her time and place.

Not my favorite movie because of the slowness and the writer's insistence that a key plot point only be known to him and the actor playing the priest. Writers who do that weasel stuff... we need to spank 'em!

Also, this movie makes me so very glad I never had a Catholic education. Which reminds me of a quote from Harvey Milk (in the 3rd movie I saw) when he was defending against a California proposition to remove gay people as teachers and to fire anyone who supported them as well. The creepy politician who proposed it and defended it in debate said it was the only way to prevent paedophilia, because gays used teaching to convert children to their lifestyle since they couldn't make children of their own. Milk noted that he was the son of heterosexual parents, raised in heterosexual schools, but that if the politician's premise was true that children emulated their teachers, the country should now be composed of thousands of nuns. hee!

Supposedly the Sophie Kinsella books are sweet and shallow, but the movie CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC is pretty much a bust, in my opinion. I'm glad I saw it, but that's mostly because I am becoming a huge Hugh Dancy fan. (Remember seeing him first in DAVID DERONDA, and thought, ehhh; but after his immensely engaging Grigg in JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB, I search his stuff out now.)

So a character is shallow and acquisitive and deceitful. But we're told she's vibrant and spunky and (by accident) writes vivid articles that make people fall in love with her. However, the movie did a lame-o job of showing that. The article bits quoted were pedestrian and shallow. Her vividness was mostly relayed in her hideous outfits of orange with red and purple and green and yellow. She looked sometimes like she was wearing the pelts of five different muppets! Plus she was wearing this huge, plastic jewelry all the time and high-heeled pumps that looked two sizes too big so she boot-scooted her way down New York streets a lot. And her shallowness lets her demur only a little when her best friend pays her rent.

Reviewers have raved that Isla Fisher is a gifted physical comedienne and makes the movie. I'm not such an Eye-lah fan. I give her props for mostly covering up her Australian accent to play Americans. And she sure was slim enough you couldn't tell she had just had Borat's baby. But she comes off as a brainless giggle monster in all the parts I've seen, this included. And her hairline is so odd and low; I focus on it and keep wondering what the stylist was thinking to give her that hairstyle...

The story is dumb. The dialog is dumb. The magazine articles we hear are dumb. The main character finally solves her financial problem with a solution you see within the first 5 minutes. What a stinker of a screenplay!

Now Hugh was lovely. Great reaction shots and double-takes. A really fun and funny Spanish dance. He really rose above the material. Another person who rises above the material is the elegant but off (on purpose; high fashion taken to silly extremes) Kristen Scott Thomas. She mugs and reacts with lots of aplomb, yay, Kristen!

Not sure what I'll do this Sunday for the Oscars... Probably not the overpriced Alamo Drafthouse thing again... It'll be a busy Sunday with multiple group events that day anyway. I might just curl up at home. But on to the predictions! I do this publicly to keep me honest. ( Behind the cut, my Oscar predictions... )