Good afternoon. It is I Gigi the Parti Poodle. This week my novelist will be releasing the first book of her Musicology book series. Things have been busy around here what with my novelist putting the final touches on her book and me supervising.

I am extremely excited too! Maltese get excited about publishing books!

Brilliant. As I was saying…

Tell them about the smores!

We are supposed to be talking about Musicology: Volume One Baby!

Smores! Smores! Smores!

Alright! Good grief! My novelist likes dark chocolate so when she makes smores she likes to use a dark chocolate cacao square of Ghirardelli instead of milk chocolate. The square fits the graham cracker dimensions well. That said look for Musicology: Volume One, Baby! Releasing this week on Amazon. Now here is my novelist.

This week’s blog is going to run a little shorter because the first book in my Musicology book series, Musicology: Volume One, Baby! will be up for sale on Amazon on Tuesday August 11^th and I am busy getting it ready for the launch. Because the book has a web site listed in it where the audience votes for the contestants, readers can also vote for who will win Musicology and I will post the web site you can do that at soon. Musicology is a comedic satirical book series about a fictional reality television show. Here is the description:

Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll and Reality TV, baby! In a desperate attempt to save his record label Master Lab Productions from bankruptcy, recently re-divorced music producer Max Buckner reluctantly signs on as a mentor on the abysmally low rated reality show Musicology hosted by his longtime colleague, sleazebag TV personality Devon Daniels. Max finds himself paired up with his old flame Ruby Diamonds, a former chart-topping diva who dumped Max over twenty years earlier. Devon strong arms the pair of has-beens into traveling the country on a desperate hunt to find the best and the brightest from a motley crew of singers including an Amish punk rocker, a psychopathic man-eater, a sexually aggressive grunge rocker, a virginal voyeur and a white guy with guitar. Along the way the two former lovebirds reignite their old romance until they return to Burbank, California where Ruby’s bombshell secret could unravel them all.

While you are waiting for the release of Musicology: Volume One, Baby! you can check out my other novel Chicane on Amazon.

This week’s ScreenwritingU Free Class Friday is What’s Missing In Your Screenplay? You can sign up for the class here.

STREAM OF THE WEEK: DOCUMENTARIES THAT ROCK: ZZ TOP: THAT LITTLE OL’ BAND FROM TEXAS-Netflix & WE ARE TWISTED F***ING SISTER!-Amazon Prime

Because my book series is about sex, drugs, rock and roll and reality television I thought this would be a good week to feature a couple of fantastic documentaries about the subject.

ZZ Top: That Little Ol’ Band from Texas is a wonderfully spirited look into the history of the band. I love the tone of this documentary. A lot of documentaries are dispiriting and unpleasant. Not this one. It is as fun as it is informative following the early days of ZZ Top sans beards to their unconventional touring show to their mega success with the album Eliminator. It’s one is a terrific ride. Just as a side note, one time I was at a Van Halen concert with Sammy Hagar and I had a seat on the far side of the stage. As I was watching the concert both Dusty Hill and Billy Gibbons came into the VIP area to watch the concert. Had I had a seat in the front of the stage I would have never known they were there. A cool memory.

We Are Twisted F***ing Sister proves there is no band that worked harder than the gentlemen from Twisted Sister. Show after show gig after gig, these guys never gave up. They did concert after concert night after night year-round. And they did it all in women’s garb and makeup. You cannot walk away from this movie not respecting these guys. A high-octane documentary that proves tenacity is the best policy.

SMART MOVIES FOR SMART KIDS: BATMAN: MASK OF THE PHANTASM (1993)-Netflix

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm is a fun one is for older kids. Lots of twists in this one. Batman once had a girlfriend named Andrea Beaumont whom he loved very much. But nasty villains got in the way including The Joker (voiced by Mark Hamill how can you beat that?) and the two got separated. What reunites the two sweethearts and where the story goes from there is the subject of this animated film which is a stand-alone story of Batman the Animated Series by Warner Bros.

Good afternoon. Gigi the parti poodle here to introduce my novelist once again. This week my novelist learned her lesson. She made the mistake of not going grocery shopping earlier in the day and was accosted by a young child (said child slapped my novelist across the derriere with the length of her arm) with a marshmallow head of a mother. Dreadful. Although children under ten do not spread the Corona Virus as efficiently as children over ten they really should not be going about in a grocery store and putting their little paws on other patrons. I know we live in an age of classlessness and abysmal manners, but we are in the middle of a pandemic. As my novelist says, “if I can see you, you’re too close”. Wise words indeed. It is a good thing I was not the one doing the shopping. Had the child touched me I would have bitten the little moppet as hard as I could. Well, enough of that nonsense. Here is my novelist.  

Since the first installment in my book series is coming out soon, I thought I would talk a little bit about writing it. Musicology, which is the name of the book series, was conceived because I wanted to write a story I could crawl into and live in. Something that would be fun and make me happy. I figured if I wrote it, it could make other people happy too. I originally penned it as one book and challenged myself to write a book with a word count on par with Atlas Shrugged or Infinite Jest in three years. And so, I did from 2012-2015. However, it is difficult to get readers to indulge in a book that long, so I thought it best to break it into a book series.

I had a couple of issues I wanted to address concerning a story of this nature. One was I wanted it to be funny. Dark and funny a satire on American television if you will. The other was I wanted to capture the entire experience of one season of a reality television show. There have been a couple of movies made about reality television: Sing, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, American Dreamz and One Chance. The problem was, as I saw it, that a movie runs too short to tell the entire story about an entire television season. Way too many details are left out. And so, I decided to write Musicology about a fictional television show and capture what goes on during the show, what goes on when the cameras go off and everything in between. And thirdly it had to be raunchy. Raunchy enough to hopefully get my book banned.

Let me tell you, I watched a lot of reality television during the three years it took me to write this book. Way more than anyone should be subjected to. There are times I love the shows and times I despise them. There is a lot of talk on these shows about having a “moment”. There are much fewer “moments” that happen than they lead you to believe. That is not to say there aren’t some but it’s usually one performer on one performance during one season. Sometimes you might get lucky and have two but the longer these shows are on the less likely it happens.

Some of these shows are better than others. The American version of the X Factor was near unwatchable and my heart goes out to those singers who competed on it. It was just a stupid show. I watched one female performer on the British version who indeed had a moment but not on the American version. And as you can see the American version was canceled.

The wackiest part about writing Musicology was after I wrote an incident sometimes the incident would happen in real life. Some of them were downright shocking. These scenes were supposed to be amusing fictional happenings. But they would occur in the reality television real-world kind of like The Simpson’s show which sometimes predicts events that come to fruition.

Musicology is not meant to be verbatim. It is a comedic satire after all not a treatise. It is not meant to be taken seriously but it doesn’t mean there wasn’t a fair amount of research that went into it and there are certainly times when things get dark and disturbing and hopefully crawl under the reader’s skin. Maybe even transgress on them and leave a bitter taste in their mouth. But then it should.

There is also a mystery/secret in the story which starts in the second book. The mystery/secret is not solved until near the end of the series. And I am hoping readers will have as much fun with that one as I did. Musicology is releasing in August 2020 and I will post its release date soon.

While you are waiting for my next post and the release of Musicology: Volume One, Baby! you can check out my other novel Chicane on Amazon.

This week there is no ScreenwritingU class.

STREAM OF THE WEEK: MOVIES TO CREEP YOU OUT: THE STEPFORD WIVES (1975) & THE TENNANT-Amazon Prime

The Stepford Wives (1975) is still as disturbing today as it was in 1975. That isn’t to say we haven’t come a long way, baby but one must wonder how much have men really changed? It’s the story of Joanna (played by the wonderful Katherine Ross), who is uprooted by her husband from 1970’s New York where she has been working on a career as a photographer and transported along with her two young daughters (one is played by a very young Mary Stewart Masterson) to the suburbs. The town they move into is called Stepford and right away Joanna realizes something is amiss. She makes friends with two other newcomers to the neighborhood Bobbie (Paula Prentiss) and Charmaine (Tina Louise). As the women try to organize a women’s lib group in the neighborhood, they begin to realize something sinister is at play.

The Tennant (1976) also called Le loctaire is a wonderfully weird film directed and co-written (adapted from the novel by Roland Topor) by Roman Polanski. It is the third installment in Polanski’s landmark apartment trilogy following Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby.  Polanski also stars in the title role of Trelkovsky a young quiet white-collar bachelor who rents an apartment which was just left vacant by the previous tenant a young woman named Simone who threw herself out a window. Concerned for the woman he visits her in the hospital where he meets Simone’s friend Stella. Trelkovsky and Stella have a connection and he starts to see her on and off. In the meantime, he finds himself dealing with his annoying and demanding neighbors in his new digs who seem to become more and more peculiar with each run in. The original script was penned by playwright great Edward Albee but relations between Albee and the studio went south and so Polanski ended up making the film.

SMART FILMS FOR SMART KIDS-THE ADVETURES OF TINTIN-Amazon Prime

The Adventures of Tintin is a swashbuckling 3-D animation film about the famous Tintin character and his wire fox terrier Snowy who tend to be more popular abroad than in the United States. Brilliantly directed by Steven Spielberg (don’t miss the opening scene) The Adventures of Tintin finds young whip smart reporter Tintin stumbling upon a mystery surrounding a sunken ship. He meets up with heavy drinker Captain Haddock whose ancestor was onboard with in the unusual cargo when things went awry. This gorgeous looking film is well paced and full of fun and thrills.

 

Good afternoon. It is I Gigi the parti poodle and let me tell you it has been a harrowing week. We were out for our usual stroll my novelist and I…and the Maltese.

That’s right! I was there! I was there.

I am telling this story.

Are you going to tell them about the wolf?

Are you going to let me tell this or not?

Yes, yes! Tell them about the wolf!

It was not a wolf. It was a coyote. We were out walking on Sunday and we ran into a coyote. It was dreadful. My novelist thought it was a small deer at first and then realized it was a creature of the canine sort. It looked at us with those cold evil eyes like we were dishes served on a buffet. I hardly think of myself as a crumpet. My novelist scooped us up in her arms one in the right and the other in the left and yelled at this monstrous beast, “What are you?! Get out of here!” The coyote turned and walked away. But my novelist carried us all the way to safety. And now without further ado here is my hero and novelist.

This week I have been working on my website for my book series coming out in August. I had to create one just for this book because there is a site mentioned in my book series several times, so it became imperative to make one so that readers didn’t go to look up the site and yell “Where’s the site?!” I have owned the domain for some time now but never set it up and went live with it. I am going to add a couple of bells and whistles to it as well which I will go into more detail about later.

Beautifully written films about female friends are rare. Thelma & Louise comes to mind. Bridesmaids. 9 to 5. And maybe even Pitch Perfect. But good female buddy films do not come along often. I have read that stories with a male lead make more money or are preferred over stories with a female lead.

This is only one reason why Hustlers is a must see. The trailer is mediocre at best. The story however is fantastic and manages to walk that great tightrope of being both entertaining and thought provoking at the same time. Based on a true story covered in the article The Hustlers at Scores written by Jessica Pressler and published in New York Magazine on December 27th 2015, Hustlers is the story of Roselyn Keo (played brilliantly by Constance Wu) a whip smart former dancer at the famous Scores strip club in New York City who over the course of the film recalls her early days at the high end New York “gentleman’s club” and how she met Samantha Barbash (Jennifer Lopez who is excellent here) one of the clubs top dancers.

Both women are street smart, but their strengths lie in different areas. Samantha is the people person. Roselyn has the business mind. Together they are a powerful team. They perform for Wall Street hotshots and psychopaths alike looking for a fantasy, a vacation away from the wife. And the ladies deliver. In the early to mid-2000’s Scores was often touted on The Howard Stern show and many celebrities liked to get their pictures taken with the dancers. People were throwing a lot of money at these women. It would not be unheard of for the ladies to take home ten grand in a night. It was almost like a modern stripper’s version of the courtesans of Venice (see Dangerous Beauty). The problem was that much like the waiters in Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London cash in hand was often spent quickly. And when the housing bubble burst in late 2007 the money train left the station.

At this point Roselyn had become pregnant with her on again off again boyfriend who stuck around for a while and then a couple of years later left her and their daughter. Desperate for money she made a list of men who had been patrons of Scores her “money list” as it were and started calling around but to no avail. Serendipitously, she ran into Samantha again and found she had a brand-new bag: cooking up roofies and rolling guys through their former club. And with that the two ladies once again joined forces albeit on the other side of the law.

It is so often we see stories about men victimizing women that the ones about women victimizing men seem to pop out more. What makes this bizarre story so compelling is it is true and follows the magazine article well. Even the detectives at the police department who got calls from men saying they had thousands of dollars stolen from them by a pack of women didn’t believe them. I mean, after all, how could they expect women to cook up a scam like that? But they did and to great effect.

While you’re waiting for my next post and the release of my book series you can check out my novel Chicane on Amazon.

This week’s FREE FRIDAY MOVIE CLASS from SCREENWRITINGU is called How to Write a Contained Movie. You can sign up for the class here.

STREAM OF THE WEEK-UNBELIEVABLE-Netflix

In keeping with the theme of female buddy stories I want to highlight one of Netflix best miniseries. Unbelievable is the true story of a very competent serial rapist who appears to have started his multi-state rampage here in the great northwest. It stars Kaitlyn Dever in a phenomenal performance as the young Marie Adler who was accused of making up the brutal rape she endured. Later we meet Detective Karen Duvall (Merritt Weaver who gives an outstanding performance as well) who after coming across a few rape cases in her jurisdiction in Colorado starts to see a peculiar pattern. She enlists the help of hard-hitting Detective Grace Rasmussen (Toni Collette who is equally outstanding and should be racking up awards) who is skeptical at first but teams up with Karen to figure out who this psychopath really is. The series shows how shockingly behind the justice system still is even after Ted Bundy’s reign of terror in the 1970’s. Riveting from start to finish and giving away nothing this is a taunt enthralling true crime thriller.

SMART FILMS FOR SMART KIDS: RACE FOR YOUR LIFE, CHARLIE BROWN

A few weeks ago, I recommended the Peanuts film Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown and Don’t Come Back. This week I am going to recommend one that is even better. Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown is one of the top three Peanuts movies and it is a whole lot of fun. The kids get shipped off to summer camp where they run into a trio of nasty boys and their ill-tempered cat. In order to triumph over the bullies, the gang enlists in a raft race only to find the villains have a few unsavory tricks up their sleeves. A classic kid’s film.

 

 

 

 

Good afternoon. It is I Gigi the parti poodle and I am proud to announce I have joined a timed writing group and am busily working on my memoir…
I’m in it! I’m in it!
Introduce yourself, imbecilic cur!
I am Tucker the Maltese and I am in Gigi’s memoir!
Okay, yes, yes. Tucker the Maltese is in my memoir. I must tell you I got the idea to write my memoir when my novelist decided to become active in an online timed writing group. I therefore have joined as well. My rational on composing my great work is simply I have lived a rich and fulfilling life and my experiences need to be shared with the masses. My exquisite prose will thus make the world a more cultured place. That announcement out of the way, here is my novelist.

I am closing in on the publication of the first installment of my book series and things are getting exciting! There’s going to be a couple of extra bells and whistles surrounding it that are going to be a hoot and I’ll be sharing them with you in the coming weeks. This series is the most fun I’ve ever had writing anything and I hope it will be entertaining for the reader as well. I wrote it for the audience to have a blast. Who can’t have a blast with a comedy about sex, drugs, rock and roll and television?

That said let’s talk about a book every writer should own. I never thought I would ever say this…ever. But Stephen King’s On Writing is one of the best books I’ve ever read. I chose it as one of my books for the library’s reading challenge this year where you must read ten books in one year each one fulfilling a different category. I was apprehensive at first because I am not a big pop fiction fan and even less of a horror fan. However, On Writing is one of the most insightful writing books I’ve come across. Maybe the most insightful.

I agree with just about everything Mr. King had to say in the book from writing and reading books being your best teacher to taking out adverbs and finding more concise ways to make your sentences pop. Writers can be indulgent. That is not to say they are all narcissistic. However, they can get wrapped up in their own world and lost in a sea of overwritten schlock. Writers can forget we are not here to just write about our own little worlds. Our main goal is to entertain (and occasionally inform) an audience. The smoother and more accessible the story the better. I am not certain however, how Mr. King is able to do his writing sessions listening to heavy metal (I work better with near silence). But hey, obviously it works for him and who am I to judge? The man is worth half a billion dollars.

I appreciated (like many writers will probably appreciate) him saying that writing groups and writing classes are not as useful as one would like to believe. I agree wholeheartedly with him. My only exception would be timed writing groups and getting up and reading your work in front of an audience where you are not critiqued. For myself I think those can and do help writers. But those groups where you read and listen to other writers and everyone critiques one another I find those to be daunting if not dispiriting and I do believe one should steer clear. They are just social clubs and they suck. I’ve been in them and never got anything positive out of them. I didn’t even like who I was in them.

However, this does not include universities. If you want to be a writer, you should go to and graduate from a university. That said I think colleges should take note of the comments in the paragraph above. From my own experience (and maybe things have changed, or other colleges do it differently) there is way too much reading your writing to other students and the professor and having your work torn to shreds. Who does this help really? No one. It’s just a cesspool for covert narcissism. Providing positive feedback for what does work in a writer’s story is more useful to the writer than constantly focusing on what doesn’t. Because now you know what is working and you have a springboard to go forward. Or just having the writer read their work out loud to an audience helps the writer hear what is working and what is kafuffle.

On Writing is also beautifully written and accessible to non-writers. Whether or not you are a Stephen King fan or whether you are a writer this is a book worth having on your e-reader or bookshelf.

While you are waiting for my next blog post and the release of the first book of my new book series you can check out my novel Chicane available on Amazon.

Tomorrow’s Free Class Friday offering from ScreenwritingU is Analysis of The Godfather. You can register for the class here.

STREAM OF THE WEEK: MOVIES ABOUT NEVADA-HARD EIGHT & LEAVING LAS VEGAS-Amazon Prime

I am proud to recommend both these incredible films as this week’s streaming choices. I thought films about Reno and Las Vegas would be great summer film choices.

Hard Eight (1996) is Paul Thomas Andersons first full-length feature film and it is my all-time favorite of his. Set in Reno it is the story of Sydney (brilliantly played by Philip Baker Hall) an aging professional gambler who “stumbles” upon young John (the wonderful John C. Reilly) whose mother has recently died. John needs six thousand dollars to pay for her funeral and went to Reno to try and win the money gambling but ended up losing instead. Sydney offers him his assistance as a gambler. At first John is reluctant but having nothing to lose takes Sydney’s proposal and learns the tricks of the trade. But after a couple of years they meet a cocktail waitress named Clementine (Gwyneth Paltrow) forcing Sydney’s sketchy past to be revealed.

Leaving Las Vegas (1995) is one of the most beautiful love stories ever filmed. Set first in Hollywood and then in Las Vegas it is the story of Ben Sanderson (Nicholas Cage in his much-deserved Oscar winning role) who is a Hollywood writer and a drunk. Ben’s wife has left him, and he is spiraling out of control. When he is fired from his job, he decides to move out to Las Vegas…and drink himself to death. Watch how beautifully Cage makes the decision to commit suicide by shifting his final check from one hand to the other. He throws out and burns most everything he owns including a child’s bike. Pay close attention to the bike which is both in the book and the film because it is the reason Ben has decided to kill himself. Most people miss it. Ben reaches Las Vegas ready to complete his mission when by chance meets a prostitute named Sera (Elizabeth Shue in the role that should have won her the Oscar. I am extremely bitter about this by the way. Susan Sarandon won for her role in Dead Man Walking that year but should have won for Lorenzo’s Oil  (1992). Elizabeth should have won here for her brave and flawless performance) and unexpectedly falls in love. John O’Brien who wrote the novel Leaving Las Vegas (one of my favorite books) committed suicide by gunshot wound two weeks after he found out the book was going to be made into a movie. His father said the novel was his suicide note.

SMART MOVIES FOR SMART KIDS: THE KARATE KID (1984)-Netflix

The Karate Kid was Elizabeth Shue’s second major motion picture and it is a classic. It was directed by Academy Award winning director John G. Avildsen (Rocky (1976)). Daniel (Ralph Macchio) and his mother Lucille move to California to start life anew. They move into an apartment building with an eccentric Okinawan handyman named Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita in his Oscar nominated performance). Daniel starts attending the local high school and finds himself smitten with a cheerleader named Ali (Elizabeth Shue) who happens to be the ex-girlfriend of wavy blond-haired Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka). Johnny, as it turns out has a black belt in karate and is the star pupil at the brutal Cobra Kai dojo. Johnny is none too pleased with this scrawny new guy sniffing around his former squeeze. So, and he and his karate buddies start beating him up on Halloween…until Mr. Miyagi sees the fight and hands the Cobras their asses. Impressed with Mr. Miyagi’s extraordinary skills Daniel attempts to employ him as his Karate Master. Mr. Miyagi in turn puts Daniel to work painting fences and cleaning windows.

Greetings. It is I Gigi the Parti Poodle returning to introduce my writer’s blog. I am pleased to announce my novelist will be publishing the first volume of her satirical book series in August. As I am a Canis Lupus Familiaris of champagne taste I have chosen the cover for her book and it is utterly exquisite. Its magnificence will be enjoyed by all. I must say it has been a daunting week as the Maltese attempted to sneak away to a barbeque (gauche I know) at one of the fraternities at the local university. Luckily, I stopped him in time because they have been having a dilly of a time dealing with a Corona outbreak there. I am flummoxed as to what we are going to do in the fall. I am terrified they will open the schools again and then I will be stuck playing nursemaid to that foolish little lummox. Cannot stay away from those sorority girls you see. And they think he is so cute with his brown lipid eyes and silky white hair. The way they pick him up and put him in their laps. Absolutely scandalous. Without further ado here is my novelist.

If you attended last week’s ScreenwritingU’s Free Class Friday, you would know the subject was writing parts that actors want to play. Having studied both acting and writing I can tell you the first thing an actor does when he or she gets a part is take the script, go through it, and count how many lines they have. The second is count how many monologues they have. Actors are notoriously narcissistic. Dr. Drew’s Narcissism Test showed the average score of a celebrity being 18. The average American scores around 15. I scored 12. As you can see celebrity actors have big fat hairy egos.

When I write novels, I try to have all the characters no matter how big or small jump off the page. I try to write with the thought that my book could be made into a play or a film whether it ever would or not. And if it is, it needs to be actor proof. Because I spent many years studying theatre and writing, my stories tend to flow down the page with a fair amount of dialogue. That does not mean I don’t write description. It simply means my style of writing tends to be more dialogue centric. Being as I am introverted to a fault this is of course ironic. I hate talking to people and I imagine they hate talking to me. However, I like smart, sharp dialogue and I enjoy weaving it into my stories.

I also try to give actors things they might need like props and costumes. I also like to make sure each character has a unique voice they bring to the story. This became important while writing my book series which I will be releasing in August. The series is made up of an ensemble cast and each of these individuals had to have a voice that was all their own. Not just by what they said but by how they said it. They also each needed a flaw. Why? Because actors love playing characters who are flawed. This gives them something to work with, something to stand out with.

A good example is Ratso Rizzo from Midnight Cowboy. He’s a short little con artist who limps. Or perhaps Deadpool, a malformed, smarty pants, mentally unstable mercenary. Or Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction who has a serious problem with being ignored. Or Alyssa and James from The End of the F***ing World. I mean where do I even start with their issues? Actors eat this stuff up.

The first season of 13 Reasons Why did an excellent job defining the different personalities and flaws of each of the students. Each episode focused on one of the characters who had some level of involvement in the suicide of the female protagonist. Each one had a well-defined personality, a secret, and a flaw. The show also did a good job weaving in clues about the character who turns out to be the villain. I cannot in good conscience recommend the dreary disheartening second season. But I can recommend the first which is outstanding. And the novel by Jay Asher.

While you’re waiting for my next post and the release of my book series you can check out my novel Chicane on Amazon.

This Friday’s ScreenwritingU Free Friday Class is Want To Write Fascinating Scenes?. You can register for the class here.

STREAM OF THE WEEK: ESCAPE MOVIES: ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK & ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ-Amazon Prime Video

This week because it is summer, I thought it would be fun to choose a couple of movies about escaping…from prison that is. And because stream of the week choices should not always be stuffy.

Escape From New York (1981) is a gleeful tongue in cheek romp. And it has a fantastic lead character named Snake Plisskin played brilliantly by Kurt Russell. Snake is a problem child who in the future (1997 which is the future in the movie) has gotten himself incarcerated in the worst maximum-security prison in the country: Manhattan. Luckily for Snake the President of the United States has crash landed in Manhattan and has been taken prisoner by The Duke. Snake is given an option: rescue the president and help him escape or die within 24 hours. Loads of fun!

Escape from Alcatraz is based on a true story about the one and only daring escape from Alcatraz. Brilliant bank robber Frank Morris (Clint Eastwood) has been sent to the most ruthless prison in the United States where he discovers the prison is not as solid as people think. Teaming up with brothers Clarence and John Anglin and young Charlie Butts Morris slowly but surely begins to plan a fool proof escape from a place deemed to be impossible to break out of. The film is wonderfully written and offers no easy answers to the success or failure of Morris’s plan. A true classic.

SMART MOVIES FOR SMART KIDS: Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don’t Come Back!) (1980)-Amazon Prime Video

Bon Voyagae, Charlie Brown (and Don’t Come Back!) like many Peanuts movies is a sweet little story and a great travel movie to boot. Charlie Brown, Linus, Peppermint Patty, Marcie, Snoopy and Woodstock all fly to France to be exchange students. On route Charlie Brown shows he has received his first ever letter in the mail…but it is written in French. Marcie who has recently been studying French helps to decipher it. The kids first land in England and Snoopy partakes of tennis at Wimbledon but they are soon onto France where Marcie and Peppermint Patty stay at a chalet with their new friend Pierre. But Charlie Brown, Linus, Snoopy and Woodstock travel on to the place Charlies’ letter was sent from, the Maison du Mauvais Voisin (house of the bad neighbor) where a mystery begins to form.

 

 

Tell them what you did!
Okay…well…
And who you are!
Okay…my name is Tucker and I’m a Maltese.
And I am Gigi parti poodle extraordinaire. Good Afternoon. Now tell them what you did!
My name is Tucker and I got invited to a Corona party at a fraternity in Alabama. I got invited because I have a relative who was a fraternity member and I am legacy. And I thought it would be fun. My favorite movie is Animal House and my other favorite movie is Old School and if you are the first person to get Corona from going to the fraternity party you get all the money everyone throws into the pot. I thought it would be fun to go to the party and see if I could get the Corona. But Gigi…
I am Gigi.
Tattled on me and told our novelist what I was up to so my novelist scolded me and said I could not go to the fraternity party in Alabama and get the Corona and win the money. Now I am grounded.
As you should be. Without any further ado here is our novelist.

Sometimes you wonder what Oscar voters are thinking. And modern movie critics are no better. I long for the days when it was just Siskel and Ebert and not a large pool of critics, would-be critics, and an average score. Firstly, many of the critics are not as good as Siskel or Ebert and secondly, I miss the At the Movies passionate heated discussions. I doubt many critics today have as much passion about movies as Siskel and Ebert did. Although to be fair Hollywood is grinding out more and more dreck so it’s harder and harder to be passionate about film. Whether I agreed with the two Chicago film aficionados or not (and I most often agreed with them) I always respected them. I rarely respect critics now. And I respect Oscar voters even less.

Which leads me to the question what were they thinking when they screened 1917? Did they not see the same movie I did? Were they high on mescaline? Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope is a fantastic film done in one take and that was shot primarily on one set. 1917 was done in one take over an expansive amount of war-torn territory. Did they think this was easy? Did they think Sam Mendes got up one morning and said I am going to shoot a World War One film in one take, and it will be a walk in the park?

And why was George MacKay not nominated for best actor? Are you kidding me?! What more did they want this kid to do? He was amazing. His performance reminded me of Leonardo Dicaprio’s tour de force work in The Revenant. Oscars can be jackasses when it comes to the Best Actor category. They have a difficult time nominating male actors who are not pushing forty. Look at last year’s category. The youngest nomination was Adam Driver who is thirty-six.

One of the major complaints critics had of the film was it seemed like a video game. Okay, let’s think differently for a moment. Let’s just give that a try shall we. Where do you think war time video games get their inspiration? Probably from the same place Sam Mendes got his inspiration for the film: people who were in said war, and books written by people who either interviewed people who were soldiers or were soldiers themselves. So, by that rational Sam Mendes who co-wrote the script based on tales his grandfather who fought in WWI told him, really wrote out the story a video game would copy. In a sense Sam Mendes did not copy video games but rather video games copy stories like his. War is not rational. It is not a Jane Austin novel. It is unpredictable and frenetic. Telling a war story which takes place during battle therefore can be unpredictable and frenetic as well.

I do encourage you to watch 1917 if you have not already. It is a wholly different experience than a lot of films out there and that is good. Should all war films be made in the same fashion as this one? Not necessarily. There is plenty of room for Bridge on the River Kwai, Patton, The Deer Hunter, whatever. But there’s also room for films like 1917 that are not made to dive deep into a character’s psyche. Sometimes a film is about what happens in the moment and the propulsion driving it to the next moment and the one after that keeping the audience on the edge of its seat and still saying something profound about the horrors of war.

While you are waiting for my next post you can check out my novel Chicane on Amazon. Also look for more information coming up about the release of the first novel in my book series I will be publishing this summer.

The ScreenwritingU Free Friday Class tomorrow 7/3/2020 is called Want Movie Stars to Play Your Characters? You can sign up for the class here.

STREAM OF THE WEEK: RUNAWAY TRAIN & THE TRAIN-Amazon Prime

As it is traveling season and but not a good time to travel, I thought it would be fun to feature a couple of films about trains.

Runaway Train (1985) is one of my favorite action adventure films of all time that unfortunately often gets overlooked. It is also an existential film to boot. Jon Voight is sensational as Manny a bank robber and longtime prisoner who after serving three years in solitary confinement devises a plan to break out of a maximum-security prison in Alaska and escape his psychopathic warden (John P. Ryan). He recruits a younger prisoner named Buck played wonderfully by Eric Roberts to help him escape. They manage to head across brutal snowy terrain and hop a train. Though they think they are bound for freedom they aren’t counting on what happens to their ride. Both men earned much deserved Oscar nominations for their outstanding work. Rebecca De Mornay is also fantastic as a railroad worker. Look for Danny Trejo as a boxer and Dennis Franz as a Cop. Don’t miss this one. The screenplay was co-written by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Paul Zindel. It is based on an original screenplay by the brilliant director Akira Kurosawa. Kurosawa had planned to direct the film himself but never got to because of difficulties with his American financial backers.

The Train (1964) is an American French War film starring Burt Lancaster and directed by one of the most under appreciated directors of all time John Frankenheimer. The film takes place in August of 1944 where a German Colonel Franz Von Waldeim (Paul Scofield) who has a deep appreciation of art and a keen understanding of its financial value decides to load a train with hords of France’s finest artistic masterpieces and ship them to Germany. But the curator of the museum he takes them from will have none of it and calls upon French Resistance members led by Paul Labiche (Lancaster) to stop the train and return the paintings to France without damage. This of course makes the rescue more dangerous and Labiche is reluctant to take the job. But when one of his elderly engineers sacrifices his life to sabotage the train all bets are off and Labiche and his ragtag crew brew up an elaborate plan to reroute the train.

SMART MOVIES FOR SMART KIDS: Rango-Amazon Prime
Rango is Chinatown for kids. Set in the Nevada desert, Rango is a pet chameleon who gets lost when his terrarium gets separated from his adoptive family. While trying to find his way home Rango stumbles into an old western town and by happenstance destroys the towns enemy a large nasty hawk. The mayor appoints him to the position of sheriff. However, the former hawk served a purpose which was to keep a nasty gun slinging rattlesnake at bay. They mayor Rango finds out is in cahoots with the notorious rattler involving the disappearance of the town’s water supply. The movie won the Oscar for Best Animated Film in 2011.

 

 

Good afternoon. Gigi the parti poodle here once again. My novelist is half-way through polishing the last book in her series for publication. We have been working hard to power through till the end. Many iced coffees have been drunk. My novelist has partaken of some as well. It is tough lying on a pillow and barking at strangers while she writes. I am exhausted. But the end of the tunnel is near, and the book release is drawing nigh. Without further ado here is my novelist.

Because extroverts have proven to be utterly brilliant at staying away from other human beings, wearing masks and not spreading disease during a pandemic, (ha!) I thought I would offer up one more acting exercise that is useful for writers called…The Waiting Exercise. Yes, genius this one is for you.

The beauty of this acting challenge is it is really two exercises in one. The first part is…waiting. The second part is having a secret prop on your person while you…wait. Essentially the character carries around an object no one else knows about except the actor or the character the writer creates. The writer’s choice to eventually reveal the object to the audience/reader is completely up to them. Here is how it works.

The actor picks a prop and gives it a history like the prop exercise from last week. The actor then picks a setting in which his character will…wait for someone or something such as a train station, a bus stop, an office, a drug store, a line at a post office, a movie theatre. It really does not matter. When the actor walks into the scene, they carry the secret prop with them on their person hidden from view, so it must be something relatively small unlike a 2020 ARGO FRONTIER 700 SCOUT 6X6 STK 19537 for example. Without using dialogue, the actor moves about the space and…waits.

Now, the actor needs to have a motive to…wait. It could be perhaps the secret prop in their pocket has something to do with it or not. The secret prop’s purpose is essentially to give the actor a way to gain access to the inner workings of the character. Something they can feel against their body or put in their pocket and move it around with their hand.

Let’s say your character is a college student. He lives in the dorm and he wants to score some Adderall from a baseball player on scholarship. The baseball player has a prescription because he was misdiagnosed with ADHD as a kid. And he is quite a con artist skilled at faking ADHD thus his ability to continue filling his prescription and selling off his meds to suckers like our hero for exorbitant prices. Our college student must go over to the baseball player’s fraternity and meet the guy there. Let’s say our hero has an inside track about the history of said fraternity and the place gives him the creeps. But he wants the Adderall because he is struggling in his physics class and he thinks he needs drugs in order to pass his midterms. So, there he is in the foyer of this notorious oversized house…waiting for the baseball player who is supposed to be there at four o’clock. Fraternity brothers who live in the house go in and out the door and make our hero uncomfortable threatened even. As he…waits, he looks around the place where he might see a neon beer sign, the fraternity’s coat of arms, a half-deflated blowup doll in the corner etc.

Now, in his pocket is his secret prop which no one knows about but him. The audience does not know either. But it should be something interesting. Let’s say it’s a flash drive and on said flash drive is something incriminating about our drug dealing baseball player. Incriminating enough the baseball player could get his scholarship taken away and possibly expelled. But the audience does not know this. Only the college student knows about the flash drive he keeps in his pocket as he…waits for the baseball player. The flash drive in our hero’s pocket may be the one thing keeping him in the room. Perhaps it gives him confidence or possibly something to bargain with should this nefarious drug deal go bad. Or perhaps it is an object which is painful for him to have. Maybe what is on the drive personally affects him or someone he cares about. Whatever it is, it affects the motivation for the college student to be in that fraternity foyer.

And that is the…waiting exercise.

I post every Thursday. That is the schedule. While you are waiting for my next blog post you can check out my novel Chicane on Amazon. Just as an update I am going to be publishing my book series on Amazon this summer. Look for information on my blog in the coming weeks for the release of the first book.

This week’s ScreenwritingU Friday Free Class (tomorrow) is Writing Scary As Hell Horror Scenes. You can sign up for it here.

 

SCREEN OF THE WEEK-UNCONVENTIONAL LOVE STORIES-BLUE VELVET & BUFFALO ’66-Amazon Prime

Blue Velvet (1986) is one of my favorite films and as a writer one of the most influential. Maybe because I grew up in the same area as David Lynch. Maybe because it accurately depicts the way it really is here in the northwest or at least how it was, even if the story is set in North Carolina. Since it is going off Amazon Prime on June 30, which is this coming Tuesday, I thought I had better feature it this week. It is the story of a college student named Jeffrey who has returned home after his father has a heart attack and finds a human ear in a field. Thus, begins Jeffrey’s odyssey through the strange underworld of his seemingly normal hometown. It would be sacrilege for me to tell you anything more.

Buffalo ’66 is a fantastic indie film. I remember seeing another movie written and directed by Vincent Gallo The Brown Bunny in the theatre and thinking it was is a superb meditation on its subject matter and I still do. Buffalo ’66 was his first full length feature as a writer/director and it is wonderfully funny, strange and tender. It is the story of Billy Brown who after serving five years in prison, not for a crime he committed but to pay off a bet he lost betting on the Buffalo Bills to a bookie (Mickey Rouke) is compelled to visit his parents (Ben Gazzara and Anjelica Houston). Along the way he wonders into a dance studio where he “meets” a girl named Layla. That is where things start to get wonderfully out of hand. Christina Ricci is magical as a powder blue tap dancer. Jan-Michael Vincent makes an appearance in a bowling alley. The film is uniquely shot in order to fill the audience in on some additional information and it works great. An absolute must see.

SMART FILMS FOR SMART KIDS-BENJI (Original 1974)-Amazon Prime

Benji is also an unconventional love story. In fact, there is a lot of love to go around in this heart warmer. Benji is a homeless mutt who goes about a small-town charming its inhabitants and surviving on both his wits and their hospitality. Along the way he meets a young brother and sister who want to adopt him. But their single father refuses to let them adopt the little guy. Benji however is not easily deterred. And when things turn dark it is up to the plucky pint-sized cocker spaniel/poodle/schnauzer to risk life and paw to set things right.

 

Good afternoon. It is I Gigi the parti poodle. Things are amiss you see because my novelist has given me another bath. And this mind you after I saw her coming and hid under the bed and refused to come out. Some novelists cannot take a hint. Making me take a bath this soon after suffering through the last one means she is planning to give me a haircut with that retched trimmer she attacked the malty with last week. Apparently, one must have a bath before one is groomed. I am not going to stand by and be attacked by that vulgar machine. You should have seen the pile of perfectly good hair my novelist shaved off the malty. Dreadful I tell you. Absolutely dreadful. I simply do not understand what she has against fluffiness. Oh, dear. My novelist is coming so you must excuse me so I can go hide. Haircut indeed!

Another acting exercise that can be beneficial to writers is the prop exercise. Props can be a great way to push a story along when used effectively. The way to make a prop effective is to give it a history. The prop exercise for actors works like this. The actor goes home and picks out an object, any object. Preferably something they can bring into class so probably not a refrigerator. The actor’s job then is to come up with a story about what the object is, how they came to acquire it and what has happened to the object since it became theirs. The story should be fictional.

Let us say I look through my things and choose a pair of sunglasses. And I decide in my story that I purchased the sunglasses at a brick and mortar store as opposed to online. And I decide I purchased them at a deep discount. And I decide I bought them with cash I earned working at a store where I did not make much money and a good chunk of my income went to pay for food and rent. And because they were normally pricey glasses, I treasured them so much I locked them up in my footlocker so no one would know I had them. Now I am starting to get a history of how the sunglasses were acquired.

After I complete my story which would essentially be a monologue, I would practice performing it while holding the prop in order to get an idea of the feel of the object and its subtle tactile characteristics as I spoke. When I go to class I head onstage with my prop and perform my monologue. Holding the prop and how I hold the prop gives me sense memory. The monologue might theoretically go something like this:

“Every day after work I would stop at this discount sporting store where they sold Ray-ban sunglasses. I was especially fond of a pair of Wayfarers that had frosty clear frames. The glasses were in a locked case on top of a glass counter at the back of the store and I would always check to see that the one and only pair of frosty framed Wayfarers was still there. They were a bit rich for my budget because I had just graduated from college, I did not yet have a decent paying job and my reserves were tapped dry. Most of my money went to paying for the rent and food and a bus pass to get to and from my job. Whatever I little I had left I squirreled away in savings. But I really wanted the glasses because I had never had a pair of Ray-bans before. When I was in college, I saw people in my classes set them on their head or put them on when they walked outside into the sunshine. I thought I would like to get rid of these beaten up Foster Grants that looked strange on me and get myself something with a fashionable durable frame. But I could never afford them. I did not want charge them on my credit card because I wanted to be able to pay the balance in full every month and not accrue debt.

“One day I went into the sporting store, walked back to the sunglasses case as usual and found there was a sale sign on top of the case: Clearance. I rushed to see if my glasses were still there and they were. But I had one more day till my credit card flipped for the month to the next statement. Tomorrow, I thought. I will come back and buy them tomorrow.

“The next day after work I hurried into the sporting store to buy the Ray-bans. As I drew near the case, I saw another customer there…holding the frosty framed glasses. I overheard the customer tell the clerk they were buying them for a gift. My heart broke as I watched the clerk ring up the sale, put the glasses in their case, the case into a bag and hand the bag to the customer. I watched helplessly as the customer went whistling out the door with the glasses I had waited so long to buy. Slowly, I turned away from the counter and slogged out to the bus stop to go home.

“As I stood there in the rain waiting for my bus, I thought about all the times I waited too long to make a decision. And here was another time I had failed to go after what I wanted. As I bemoaned my plight under my weathered umbrella, it occurred to me perhaps it would be wise to return to the store, hat in hand, and see if there was a different pair of Ray-bans in that sale case. They would not be the frosty clear framed ones, but they might be a good price anyway.

“So, I walked back into the store and headed towards the case, my wet umbrella dripping behind me. I began perusing the glasses but there were very few Ray-bans inside. After a moment I asked the clerk if there were any more Ray-bans besides the ones in the case. The clerk said no but there might be something in the stock room. I waited and the clerk returned with one pair of glasses: a wayfarer style in tortoise shell. I asked how much they were, and the clerk told me the price which happened to be lower than the price of the frosted crystal framed ones. I purchased the glasses immediately and the clerk put them in a case and put the case in a bag and handed it to me. I had to wait for the next bus to come along and was an hour late getting back to my apartment. But as you can see, I now have a pair of Ray-bans Wayfarers of my own.”

And that is the prop exercise. While you are waiting for my next post here you can check out my novel Chicane on Amazon.

You can sign up for week’s free class Creating an Income from Screenwriting from ScreenwritingU here.

STREAM OF THE WEEK-MOVIES FEATURING PROPS-THE RED VIOLIN & THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER-Amazon
Here are a couple of films where a prop plays a large part in the telling of the story.

The Night of the Hunter from 1955 is one of the finest films ever made. It is based on the book by Davis Grub (published in 1953) screenplay by James Agee and was the only film ever directed by actor great Charles Laughton. Shot in glorious black and white it is the story of a psychopathic would-be preacher named Harry Powell (based on real-life serial killer Harry F. Powers) played by Robert Mitchum who during the depression hunts for young widows, charms them, marries them, kills them and steals their money. But one day he makes the mistake of steeling one of his victim’s cars which gets him thrown in prison for grand theft auto. While he is in the clink, he happens to share a cell with another murderer who killed a couple of people and stole a fortune in the form of American currency. The cell mate who is a clever guy, happens to have two children and a young wife (Shelly Winters). Knowing his wife is a sweet but stupid woman he enlists his young son John to handle the stolen goods instead. Taking the ragdoll of John’s younger sister Pearl, the cell mate stuffs the doll with the bills and swears both John and Pearl to secrecy also telling John he must absolutely protect his sister. After the cell mate is executed the would-be preacher sets out on a quest to marry his cell mate’s widow and figure out where the money is hidden. Silent film star Lillian Gish is outstanding in the roll one of my all-time favorite characters Rachel Cooper.

The Red Violin is five stories in one. The movie won the Oscar for Best Original Score and the Genie for Best Picture. It is a gorgeous film which revolves around an acoustically perfect violin painted with an unusual varnish applied by its creator Nicolò Bussotti in 1681. The violin travels through the centuries from its origin in Cremona to a prodigy orphan in Vienna in 1793 to premier violinist and composer Lord Frederick Pope in Oxford around 1890 ending up in the hands of Pope’s Chinese servant who brings it to Shanghai where it ends up in the possession of political officer Xiang Pei in the 1960’s and finally arriving in Montreal in 1997 where it is put up for auction. Each of the five places provides an unusual part of the violin’s history. It is one of those rare movies where the prop takes center stage. The film is interestingly told and well worth the watch.

SMART MOVIES FOR SMART KIDS: WILLIE WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (1971)-Netflix

The original film Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory from 1971 is an absolute must see for children and adults alike is the whimsical film from the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by legendary writer Roald Dahl who also penned the script. The prop here, of course, is the much sought-after golden ticket of which there are only five hidden in the mysterious Wille Wonka’s chocolate bars. Mr. Wonka (perfectly played by Gene Wilder) who was based on an eccentric well to do chocolate maker from Dahl’s childhood has shut up his factory for years and though chocolate bars and other confections goes out for sale no one is allowed in. Charlie is a likeable idealistic child from a poor family who can barely afford a bar of chocolate as it is much less have a chance at one of those precious golden tickets. But sometimes serendipity slips in and so begins the tale of one of the greatest children’s movies of all time.

 

Hello. I am Tucker and I am a Maltese. The poodle known as Gigi is taking a nap, so I have snuck on the computer. This week our novelist got rechargeable pet clippers in the mail and gave me a haircut. My haircut took two days. I had to stand on a chair while my novelist shaved off most of my hair and then she got out the scissors and cut off more. I do not feel as warm now, because I do not have most of my hair. My novelist says she is going to do the same thing to the poodle known as Gigi and to keep it a secret. She told me in order to pull it off she might have to give the poodle the funny pills she has for Fourth of July fireworks. Anyway, here is our novelist.

When I was taking screenwriting classes at the university, we had a project where we brought in a scene from a film and played it for the class. It could be any scene from any part of any movie. What I started to notice was a lot of students put their film in and played their movie but did not seem to know where their scene began and where it ended. Some of these celluloid moments would go on with no end in sight. We would see the student’s favorite section of a film but not necessarily a scene.

When I think of a story, I think of it as a war. And every scene is a battle. Sometimes the protagonist wins the battle and sometimes the antagonist wins the battle. How the war ends which is often shown in the final scene supports the author’s premise. The origin of the word actor comes from the 14th century and it means an accuser who pleads a case or a plaintiff at law. In other words, the origin of the word actor essentially means a lawyer. The problem with the movies the students brought into class was they did not start with someone entering the scene with an argument, putting that argument in conflict with another character and have that battle finish with a resolve thus ending the scene.

One of the best acting exercises I learned was called The Letter Exercise and it shows how a scene begins changes course and ends. Here is how it works. An actor is given an assignment to come up with a scenario, write a letter to their character and seal it in an envelope. When the student comes into class to perform their scene they place their envelope somewhere on stage. The actor could use whatever costume, props or even minimal scenery they wanted in order create the setting where the scene takes place.

When they perform the exercise, the actor walks into the scene with a plan and motivation. As they are the only the actor in the scene there is little if any dialogue. The actor goes about carrying out their plan until about halfway through their scene. That is when they  find the envelope. They then open the envelope and read the letter. Whatever the letter says changes the actor’s motivation. The actor is then forced to pursue a different motivation due to the new information the letter provides. In order to carry out their new motivation, their character must exit the stage. It does not matter if the actor chooses the letter to be good news or bad as long as it alters their characters motivation.

Here is how I did my scene. I chose the setting to be a hotel room where my character was having a tryst. I brought in a bag carrying various items you might see in an adult toy store: handcuffs, lotion, feathers, a riding crop, provocative lingerie, etc. I used what set pieces the school had on hand to create a bed and nightstands. When my character walks in her motivation is to gleefully lay out the items and prepare for her boyfriend to arrive. When she finds the letter sitting somewhat hidden on the nightstand and opens it, she finds out it is from her boyfriend. He arrived ahead of her and left it for her. In the letter he has written he can no longer carry on their affair because…he has found out he is her brother. My character’s motivation to prepare a room to have sex with her boyfriend is sharply changed. There is no longer a reason for her to stay in the room. She must now leave with the motivation to either find her boyfriend/brother and discuss the situation and their future or leave to grieve over the loss of their love affair.

The letter exercise provides an arc. The character has a motivation when they enter the room, the motivation is altered by the information in the letter from an antagonist we never see, and the scene ends with the character being forced to leave.

While you are waiting for my next post you can check out my novel Chicane available at Amazon.

Tomorrow’s Free Friday ScreenwritingU class is Selling Scripts During a Pandemic. You can sign up for it here.

STREAM OF THE WEEK: THREE LITTLE FILMS ABOUT DECEPTION:
PROOF-Amazon Prime, THE CONVERSATION-Amazon Prime & THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE-HBO

Proof is a 1991 Australian movie starring Hugo Weaving, Geneviève Picot and a young Russell Crowe. Weaving plays Martin (which means warlike) a man who has been blind since youth. In his youth his mother gave him a camera to take pictures of things even though he cannot see them. His mother died young and left him some money and he has employed for the past three years an attractive housekeeper named Celia (which means heavenly). Martin despises Celia who does everything in her power to torture him. She moves the furniture around so he will trip. She throws his keys into the dishwater in the sink. She sits on a bench at the park where he walks his dog, waits for the dog to come over so she can grab it by the collar while Martin wanders around looking for his pet. Celia is a photographer in her own right and takes a compromising picture of Martin and threatens to circulate it if he does not go out on a date with her for her thirtieth birthday. Then one night as Martin is leaving a restaurant, he accidentally injures an alley cat who hangs around the restaurant. This is brought to his attention by Andy (which means masculine). He and Andy take the cat to a vet and strike up a friendship. Martin decides to trust Andy to look at the photos he takes and describe them to him, a turn of events which Celia does not take kindly to.

The Conversation from 1974 written, directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola is the story of a highly skilled but introverted and socially inept surveillance expert named Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) who on his birthday is hired to tape a conversation between a young couple in Union Square in San Francisco (Frederic Forrest and Cindy Williams). Take note of the irony of the famous mime Robert Shields performing in the opening shot. Harry is obsessed with privacy having several locks on his apartment door…which does not prevent him from getting a birthday gift from his landlady. Harry immediately calls her to ask that he have the only key to the apartment and changes his mail to be delivered to a post office box with a dial and no keys. Harry’s one pleasure in life is playing the saxophone but only by himself. When Harry begins looking over the photos his crew took and the audio tape he made of the couple’s conversation, he begins to realize something is amiss. What did Harry tape actually? What is the conversation he is listening to? As Harry tries to put the pieces together, the audience must decide if anyone, even an expert, can trust what they record.

The Manchurian Candidate from 1962. If I were to make a list of my ten favorite films of all time this one would be on it. Major Bennett Marco is going nuts. He has a reoccurring nightmare where while he was a captain in the Korean War his Staff Sergeant Raymond Shaw killed two of his men. But that just cannot be true. Because Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest warmest most wonderful human being he’s ever known in his life…right? Unable to stop the dream from haunting him Marco tries to hunt down  Raymond and investigate if his dream is just a nightmare or if something more sinister is afoot. Beautifully shot in black and white and skillfully directed by John Frankenheimer this wildly original film penned by Richard Condon (who wrote the novel) and George Axelrod sports one of the best adapted screenplays of all time. An absolute must see classic. Look for Angela Lansbury in her brilliant Oscar nominated performance as Raymond Shaw’s ambitious mother.

SMART FILMS FOR SMART KIDS: WALLACE AND GROMIT: CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT-HBO
Aardman puts out great kids’ content and this one is a true delight. Based on the award-winning Wallace and Gromit shorts Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were Rabbit finds Wallace and his whip smart dog Gromit running a pest control service as the prestigious annual biggest vegetable competition nears. The two fast friends believe in treating the bunnies they catch humanely and provide them a place to live where they cannot harm the locals’ gardens. But alas Wallace must try out his newest invention the Mind Manipulation-O-Matic which theoretically brainwashes the rabbits into no longer wanting to eat vegetables. Things go horrifically wrong and before you know it there is a giant cottontail on the loose demolishing gardens.

 

 

 

 

Good Afternoon. Gigi the parti poodle here. Today my novelist has decided to write about the importance of research. Even if the book you are penning is fiction it is important to  understand the subject you are writing about as best as you possibly can so you can tell a more convincing tale. I myself have been looking up information on ducks. We saw a mother duck and her ten ducklings cross in front of us not long ago and since I had not seen many ducks before I thought I would take the time to learn about them. So while I’m doing that, here is my novelist.

The worst advice I was ever given as a writer was “don’t write what you know”. The second worst advice was “make something up”. The third was “you can write a good book in a month”. None of these are true in fact they are quite misguiding.

There was an quite an uproar when Anthony Bourdain wrote Kitchen Confidential, a non-fiction autobiographical book about the world of restaurants. And it was a world he knew very well. I worked in restaurants for six years on and off and if you believe there is not drug use, alcoholism and sex going on in every single restaurant out there you are an idiot.

I have never been a drinker so when I worked at this one establishment where they would hand me a couple of old poker chips at the end of a shift, each one for a free drink in the bar, I always gave them away to a cook or another waitress who would have also been given a couple of chips. They never turned the extra chips down. I remember walking in one morning to find a cook and a waitress had huffed all the gas out of the only case of whipping cream. I remember one cook carried around a portable illegal pharmacy with him. I remember a waitress walking in with a black eye because her boyfriend beat the crap out of her. I remember one cook suddenly bolting out the back door to avoid jail. I had one chef who tried to get me to stand up against a wall so he could throw knives at me. At a fast food restaurant I worked with a guy who sold drugs through the drive thru window. And I saw all sorts of restaurant workers hook up. Point is you need to intimately know the subject you are writing about or you will not know the truth about it.

There is a world of difference between the movie Outsourced and Mike Judge’s Office Space and Silicon Valley. One insightful hint to how badly researched Outsourced is, is the writers do not make it a technical call center. That way they don’t have to rely on actual computer knowledge to write the script. This indicates they knew nothing or extraordinarily little about computer science. Instead they set the story in a call center where people call up and buy useless garbage. I do not know if it was laziness on the part of the writers or plain stupidity but because of inane scenes like moving the computers to the roof the film comes off as painfully amateur.

Office Space by contrast was a huge favorite in the computer world when the film first came out. This was because the characters in the movie were accurately drawn and experienced the same myriad of frustrating situations computer techs did. Silicon Valley also does a solid job of weaving savvy technology and the stupidity of management together. I worked on different technical helpdesks for five years. I also had to earn an MCSE and an A+ certification for my jobs. I was surrounded by these guys all the time and they are exactly like the characters in both of Mike Judge’s efforts. Not to mention Mike Judge has a degree in physics. So, yeah, at some point or another he has been around guys like this.

Another great show about help desk and deskside techs is the British television series The IT Crowd. Brilliantly created and penned by Graham Linehan this hilarious show does a phenomenal job depicting a couple of brilliant but socially inept techs and the abysmal situations they tolerate while working for a crackpot corporation. Just as in Office Space and Silicon Valley computer techs Roy and Moss are accurately depicted as is Jen their manager who often must act as a buffer between the two eggheads and the bizarre lunatics who run the company.

Now then, what do you do if you want to write a book where you are fascinated with a subject you know nothing about. Well, you get to work researching. You read a lot of books on the subject. You watch documentaries on the subject. You read research papers on the subject written by legitimate professors. You interview people who are knowledgeable in that field and work in the field. And you do it because you want to write a great book.

I have another book I am going to publish after I finish releasing my book series and it required months research. There were times I would be writing along and came to a point where I had to stop for a couple of weeks just to study one small element of the story in depth. So, when someone tells you it is possible to crank out a book in a month, sure you could do that. And it will probably be a disappointment to both you and your readers. But if you want to write a quality piece of work you have to put in the time to build the best most accurate story you possibly can.

That is why I keep repeating you need to write what you love. Because if you are going to be spending a lot of time immersing yourself in a story you better be willing to immerse yourself in twice as much research. The book series I am releasing this summer required me watching hours and hours and hours of footage to get the feel of the characters and the world they inhabit. It is only after knowing your subject well that you can write a solid book.

While you are waiting for my next post you can check out my book Chicane on Amazon.

If you are interested in taking ScreenwritingU’s free class on profound movies and television this Friday you can click here.
STREAM OF THE WEEK: HOUSE OF GAMES-Amazon Prime & THE SPANISH PRISONER-Showtime

David Mamet is a smart writer who puts a great deal of thinking into his plays and film scripts. This week I thought I would feature two of his films which focus on con artists made ten years apart: House of Games from 1987 and The Spanish Prisoner from 1997.

House of Games stars Lindsey Crouse as a psychiatrist and published author who leads a strait-laced life. She has a young patient named Billy Hahn who confides in her he owes twenty-five thousand to a charismatic bookie named Mike played by Joe Mantegna. Billy also tells her he is going to kill himself before Mike does for not paying his debt. The psychiatrist whose name is Margret, goes to a seedy bar called House of Games and confronts Mike who is in the middle of a poker game. Mike tells Margret Billy only owes him eight hundred dollars and makes a deal with her: if she pretends to be his girlfriend and lets him know if one of the guys at the table plays with his gold ring while he steps out for a moment. Thus, begins the clever path of twists and turns through this excellent crime thriller shot in Seattle, Washington.

The Spanish Prisoner stars Campbell Scott as Joe Ross an engineer who has developed a sophisticated and lucrative formula for a company run by a man named Mr. Klein played by Ben Gazzara. The formula is written in a large red book on uncopiable paper and stored in a safe for which only both men have a key. The movie starts out on the island of St. Estèphe where the engineer and other members of his company including new company secretary Susan played by Rebecca Pidgeon are taking a retreat. There Joe meets a wealthy man named Jimmy Dell played by Steve Martin. Dell asks Joe to do him a favor when he gets back to New York: give his sister a package. Shot primarily in New York, City the movie keeps the audience wonderfully paranoid as Joe attempts to protect his complex formula while he struggles to figure out who he can trust and who he cannot.

SMART MOVIES FOR SMART KIDS: CHARLOTTE’S WEB (1973)-Amazon Prime
E.B. White’s heartbreaking classic Charlotte’s Web is beautifully brought to life in this animated gem from 1973. Lending to the magic are the voices of Debbie Reynolds as Charlotte, Henry Gibson as Wilber, Paul Lynd as Templeton, Pamelyn Ferdin as Fern, Danny Bonaduce as Avery and Agnes Moorhead as The Goose. A gentler looking film than most 3-D films the movie captures the wonderful story of a friendship between a would-be doomed pig and the selfless spider who saves him.