W2 - Wendy to the Second Power

Screenplay consultant and best-selling author Michael Hauge is coming to Austin Saturday to do a workshop on story mastery. Know why? Because I ASKED HIM TO. I coordinate these things because I get to have very cool conversations with important Hollywood people, yo!

It's gonna be very cool to workshop with Mike again (like I did in San Diego in 2007), and it was supportive of the Austin Screenwriters' Group to let me invite Mike as an official ASG workshop.

But dang, I've been project managing my head off for this. It's a bigger deal and costs more than the events we've done in the past. So there are about a dozen people all volunteering or contributing something toward the event. Very generous of us all, since nobody (but Mike) is getting paid for any of this. But you gotta admire the spirit of cooperation that's gotten us this far!

Right now I've got 5 boxes of his books and DVDs. I went to the Oak Hill Methodist Church yesterday and viewed the room and got the key. I've sent out 15-20 emails coordinating. I've promoted to all the major writing groups in Austin. I put up the Web page onto our ASG site. I just went to HEB today and bought still water, sparkling water, coffee of all types, Diet Coke and Dr. Pepper, granola bars, etc. I'll get fresh donuts on the way to the event Saturday morning. I figure, with a price of $95/$125, we should have some drinks and snacks for the folks.

The good thing is, we needed 17-18 people to break even, and we have 30 or so. Yay! It was a gamble and it paid off financially. Now looking for the day to come and all the stuff to work out... Then Saturday evening, PeggyS is hosting a potluck BYOB social at her home for all to hang out with Mike!

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!

One thing about Ron Howard (good old Opie!) is that he can direct a movie well, where the plot moves along in a snappy pace, the POV is not too arty but adds a little extra to the visuals, and everybody turns in a solid performance. That's pretty much my opinion of ANGELS AND DEMONS, the Part II of the DA VINCI CODE series. Even though it's from a book written by Dan Brown and set in character Robert Langdon's (Tom Hanks) life before the Da Vinci code stuff.

For that reason, I was a little, "Who is SHE?" about the Dr. Vittoria Vetra physicist character. Audrey Tautou was so memorable in the first movie, and surely Agent Sophie and Langdon began a long-term relationship from that adventure? But you only see her as a photo at Langdon's home...

Like many folks, I found Ewen McGregor in priest's robes as the Congomongo (or whatever; they took some Vatican term and made a fake position of power of it for the purposes of the story) to be somewhat erotically charged. Everytime he's used to play someone spiritual or sickly, nope, I don't buy it. He always seems lusty and earthy to me no matter what he plays. (Seeing him buck nekkid in THE PILLOW BOOK all those years ago imprinted me bad, maybe?)

The plot and its 4 deaths to prevent each an hour apart at certain mystical locations only sussed by doing a sort of geocaching, where the powers that be fight Langdon, but some secretly support him, all that is fine. There's a point when I realized that a character was being so purely sacrificial, and the background had been set up for that so it made sense, and I confess I leaked a few tears... It was dramatic, and the special effects were both metaphorical and fascinating.

But then it's a twisty who-done-it, and it twists so crazy much that by the end, I was like "Wait, how could that plan even work?" Meaning the whole logic underpinning the whole movie was rank suckage. It's still a fun ride! But at the end you wonder if Dan Brown and the screenwriters even knew what the underlying story was.

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.

When we get rain in Austin -- and we've been having drought conditions -- love what it does for my yard and plants. Hate what it does for the inside of my head and general health.

The mold blooms something terrible, and I get horrible sleep, pounding headaches, red eyes, sometimes tearing like I'm crying. Man. And I creep around. Barely get home from work, and I have to sleep for 2 hours! Which is bad anytime, but now it's critical I finish my CAN'T SAY NO script for the Austin Film Festival. Final deadline? Monday, June 8th!

So this morning I emailed in sick. My headache was so bad it had made me pukey. In fact, I didn't eat anything today until 6pm. And I amazingly crashed to catch up on sleep and was knocked out until 2pm today. I think it helped I turned on the ozone machine in my room, together with the HEPA filter, I was finally breathing some mold-free air.

Then from 6pm until now, I've been coordinating the Michael Hauge workshop and closing in on my final screenplay draft. Procrastination -- it's an addiction.

Spoilers ahead, so don't read if you're delayed watching TV...

GLEE - I wasn't going to get hooked on any new TV, but dang. This one had so much positive press. Entertainment Weekly raved, other major pubs did too. People kept saying it was hysterically funny... Actually no, it's only humorous. Maybe as Jane Lynch (love her!) gets more into her alpha bitch role it'll get funnier. But more than that it has heart. I didn't want to watch high school music nerds (I was a drama nerd; plus my school didn't have a glee club), but dang if this didn't really intrigue me. The teacher with the self-important, high-maintenance wife, while the perfect woman for him is the guidance counselor in the school. It reminds me more than a little of HAMLET2 from last year with Steve Coogan playing a deluded drama instructor with a baby-obsessed wife. Anyway, I have to say, when the scrappy group of kids put aside their differences, teamed up and made a performance out of a Journey (!! yuck!!) song, Don't Stop Believing, well I did wind up crying. Surprised the hell outta me, but they got the hopeful, heartfelt thing right! -- UPDATE: This is not a show starting this summer; what they did this week was just an early premiere of a fall show. I hear the YouTube replay of the song is being hugely popular too!

AMERICAN IDOL - I dislike reality shows, and this one in particular. As I posted before, it's one of the yuckiest things about this world that Simon Cowell makes millions of dollars and pounds sterling and whatever else currencies from people's huge delusions that they are All That and A Winner! But still, even I noticed this odd, magnetic, attractive guy Adam Lambert. Unusual for that show, he's a musical theater actor/singer, with dyed black hair, painted fingernails and guyliner. He's pretty open about what he is, and I love flamboyant gays like that. So I have to say that America not voting him #1 last night? It's hard not to see that as homophobic. Watching his clips online, I saw that the guy turned in some incredible performances, lots of different personas and sounds, all very personalized to his outrageous style. Like many No.2 idols, I predict his name will be huge, he'll cut records, do tours, star on Broadway.

LOST - Awesome that the creators committed to two more seasons only so had to start wrapping up storylines. In this Season Six there were plenty of cliffhangers and all the while you were seeing how the power and mystique of the island came to be. Loved that it had a scifi premise of strong magnetic energy making holes in time. I did wonder how the island could have a personality too, and reward some people and eat up the bad ones with a smoke monster. Well, in the season finale, we're introduced to two eternal, enigmatic, modern-speaking characters: Jacob and anti-Jacob. So the whole plot is the work of supernatural beings??! Not fair! That's a huge no-no in plotting a novel, and I didn't like it here either. Plus it's now recast the conflict into the eternal battle between ceiling cat and basement cat. It's cheating to start that nonsense at this late date. I'm intrigued enough to watch the final season, but disappointed in the show creators. Last-minute cheezy cop-outs on TV? How unlike Hollywood!

THE OFFICE - When Greg Daniels, one of the creators of the U.S. version of this show, was in Austin last October, he showed us outtakes from the show. He showed Jim proposing to Pam, and told us he'd tried it as a long-shot and no sound. But then he wanted their dialog heard and added it, still with a long-shot. When he asked which was better, I stood up and clearly (I think, and he sort of reacted like I did) made a case for the soundless version. I said something like, "We've seen through this whole season how hard Jim and Pam worked to have some privacy from the documentary filmmakers. If this had been with no sound, it would have been clear and still powerful, and we would've felt the beloved characters got something they very much deserved." And people clapped for that! So this season finale had Jim and Pam sharing a couple milestone, and it was silent! And we still got it! And it was more lively because we had to use our imaginations! So I feel like I deserve a story consultation fee on that episode... ha!

AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL - My one reality show failing. I've been into it for the past 4 seasons, plus I do admire and get a kick out of Tyra Banks. Color me surprised when supremely odd, wacky Allison got into the final two... And like the judges and the rest of America, I worried in the final competition when she had to walk the runway, but then the girl stomped it out! And when they had the models writhe down the runway in black mud, she slimed it out! She kinda freaked people on her first interview when she revealed she was fascinated with blood. It seemed a weird (but effective!) ploy for attention. Yet once the competition started, she remained remarkably level-headed and humble and aware of her weak points. So it turns out the blood thing is real, and she's just odd. In fact, she's so odd she had a fan base on 4chan.com -- as Creepy Chan. What's funny about the gallery on her from those days is she appears to be a waifish girl. She is skinny, with big eyes. But the girl is pushing 6 feet tall!

Sleepy time for humans must be "get wild-ass" time for cats. I'm putting in another coupla hours tonite working on the Austin Screenwriters list, Website and Michael Hauge workshop. My eyes are heavy. I needs ma sleep!

But orange Manx kitty Mojo just came tearing in from the living room, whipped down the hall to my office and HA! flang a toy at my foot. It's one of those white plastic circles you pull out of the orange juice carton to unseal it. She loves those things -- will roll them around for hours.

I think it's Fetch time in her little cat brain....

Saw STAR TREK yesterday evening in Austin's only iMAX, so it was huge! A huge screen totally filled with those fights and space battles and ice you-know-whats. Man, blew my mind! I'd heard the visuals were good, and I really agree. The TV show, bless its corny heart, never did a single impressive effect. Goofy aliens, easily sussed tractor beaming, etc.

But this! Whoa Mama! The scary Romulan ship is actually scary! The space scenes are glorious. Even the dorky polyester costumes from the old days have been redone with better fitting, textured, comfy looking costumes still in the same style and colors.

The iMAX ticket is $14 ($12 + $2 service fee online, and you HAVE to buy in advance because the 400-person theater sells out every show, days in advance) compared to $8 for a regular theater. But it's totally worth it for big movies like this.

I liked lots of stuff about the movie. The origin tales could've been ho-hum, since we know so much about these characters. But they were fun, and the casting was fun. The Chekov kid didn't look like Walter Koenig, but he's truly of Russian descent and his accent was vicked gutt. (And I'd seen Anton Yelchin as a child actor and didn't realize he was Russian!) They made Uhara a real special character with top-notch hearing and linguistic abilities, which I liked, since she was so much like Kirk's executive secretary in the old TV show. Zoe Saldaba was fiery and I very much loved the sly covert relationship they put into this film that makes you look at the old TV show and think, hee, what could have been happening on the down-low!

Simon Pegg played Scotty as wild and briliant; though he didn't look like James Doohan, he was fun. "Capt'n, I'm givin' it all I got!" got cheers. Oh, they made Pegg wear dark contacts and dye his blond hair brown, but still... Chris Pine, the kid playing Kirk, was a big, arrogant, brawly mess, which fit pretty well with both the series and how William Shatner played the captain. Pine didn't... Pause! ... for... Dramatic!... effect in his speaking, and that was okay with me. Nobody can do that anymore ever without making it come off like a shout-out to Shatner. Loved Karl Urban (who I remember mostly as the main bad guy in CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK) getting the squint and dyspeptic dialogue of Dr. Leonard McCoy right.

And Zachary Quinto has that unusual face and dark hair, so he was a fun Spock in some ways. I'd heard he felt he was born to play the role, and indeed, they didn't consider anyone but him. Still, his performance was not as faithful as it needed to be. He didn't work very hard on the voice, I felt like. There's a clipped and dry way that Leonard Nimoy did his dialog, and Quinto was Vulcan-like but not Nimoy-like. And there were only two times he lifted one brow and it seemed like it strained him. Plus he's taller than Nimoy, and they weirdly let the two actors stand side-by-side in some scenes to show the discrepancy.

The origin plot was fun, but the contemporary menace was only so-so. We had a Romulan named Nero (?! too much baggage in human history!) who looked like the shave-headed tattooed bikers written up in INK magazine. He had a standard sort of sob story in his history that was driving him to do a series of obvious, even banal, acts in revenge for something he blamed unreasonably on one person, thus driving the plot. Plus there's a magical element used they don't even attempt to sci-fi up... Luckily for the fun of the movie, this stuff is secondary and you really get into how the characters interact to form the Enterprise we know and love.

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)... )

As I posted earlier, in happy squee-age, Andrew Davies came to the University of Texas to be interviewed, a free event for the Plan II students and anyone else who wanted to attend. J4 was very accommodating to me -- I insisted we be there an hour early because I was SURE the line would be around the building.

But we were the first two there. Ha! Got to sit right down near Davies, however, so, kewl. And by the time 7:30 rolled around, there were about 280 people in the 300-seat theater, so I wasn't far off on the numbers, just on the timing. Some random statements from this charming, enthusiastic, extremely capable adapter (my personal favorite for his PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, BLEAK HOUSE, LITTLE DORRIT, ROOM WITH A VIEW, etc.):

• He didn't start writing screenplays until he was 50 (!). He'd written fiction and children's books before then. Now he's 72. Or as he says it, "Seventy-two some of the time."
  
• He gets a sort of personal relationship in his head with the authors he's adapting, and would love to meet them. He remarked about Mr. Darcy's first proposal in P&P that the speech is given in its details at first. Then Austen launches into expository summation. And he said aloud, "Oh Jane!"
  
• He finds himself deeply immersed in the POV of young women. He sometimes feels like he is a young woman ("and what that can say about me certainly can't be good"). When the unfairness of life for a young woman of the Regency period becomes all personal to him, he has to remind himself that he's NOT indeed a young woman seeking a good husband.
  
• He knows he has a sweet deal when he writes the BBC mini-series because, unlike the 90-120 minutes of a movie, he gets 6 to 8 hours. LITTLE DORRIT was an 8-hour event.
  
• He has a list of authors he wishes he could adapt. Many are American that he named: Edith Wharton, for one.
  
• He realized once he started adapting DR ZHIVAGO that he hadn't actually read the book, but had only seen the movie. This impacted him first when he went looking for the scene where Laura loses her virginity to her mother's lover, in a crass bid by her mother for keeping the man's favor. Pasternack skipped that and other difficult (read: sexy) scenes. Robert Bolt, the screenwriter, had figured out the drama required them and added them.
  
• Which brings up one of Davies favorite things: when someone quotes a scene as being a favorite from the novel, but Davies made it up entirely. That, he said, proves he got the spirit of the prior media right.
  
• He doesn't do a lot of historical research for the period dramas (btw, not his favorite term for them). He's written so much about Regency and Victorian eras, etc., that all that background has seeped into his consciousness. Plus he works with the awesome (love her books myself!) Jenny Uglow in getting the period details right.
  
• His description of his home (Warwick? London?) which has a home-office in the attached flat next door that he also bought is fascinating. They broke the wall out of the back of the built-in closet in his bedroom to get him to the closet of the room on the other side. Most of the time he swims through the clothes to "go to work" and then swims through the clothes to come back "home" again. Much like a magical wardrobe!
  
• One of the things he will do, especially with adapting Dickens and his casts of dozens, is find the person who mostly carries the plot. He'll focus more scenes on them than on others. Like for LITTLE DORRIT, instead of starting with 60 pages of intrigue between two criminals in French jail, he starts with Amy Dorrit leaving the debtor's prison to interview for a job.