Next Stop Murder airs on Lifetime Movie Network

One of the movies I did a re-write on is going to start airing tomorrow (Sept 19th, 8PM EDT and additional showings later) on the Lifetime Movie Network:

Next Stop Murder

Which is not Lifetime, so we don't get the channel on our cable here and there's a fair number of other cable systems that won't carry it either.  LMN might stream it live from their website.

I saw a rough cut of the film and the performances turned out pretty nice and it has some nice noirish lighting (too noirish at times for the market -- France made them lighten it up).

P.S.  I did wind up getting a shared writing credit on this one.

L.A. Times Botches Lost Finale Review

L.A. Times botches the review.  Spoilers at the link despite many mistakes.  My own discussion follows the break and will include spoilers -- hopefully if you're reading a news feed, it doesn't include stuff after the break.

Does Hollywood Have No Geeks?

Repo Men opened to $6.15M this week.  In the future you buy your organ replacements on credit then repo men come and cut them out of you when you miss your payments.  I know it's supposed to be allegorical, maybe they thought they were making some deep comment on our overuse of credit cards and health care issues.  But how could anyone take the story even remotely serious?

It's the latest in a list of movies released over the last 6 months that just feel to me like what somebody who has never read a comic book or played a video game imagines geeks want to watch.  If they had played it satirical like RoboCop that would've worked, but trying to play it serious?  WTF?

Daybreakers -- the entire world population is vampires but not scary vampires, instead vampires who work at Wal*Mart and are accountants and such.  Then some vampires are working on a cure.

My writing partner and I actually had an idea along these lines -- world taken over by vampires and we follow the efforts of a group of rebels trying to overthrow the vampire empire, sort of RED DAWN, but with vampires instead of Soviets.

I think Daybreakers might be the result of someone thinking that a modern vampire movie MUST have vampires as the protagonists.

Gamer -- seriously, video games where you mind-control prisoners through battles by doing Wii-style cavorting in front of a plasma screen? This is what inspired my theory that the people making the decisions have never played a video game.

on the other hand, there have been a couple solid concepts that haven't done great either --

Surrogates -- didn't do that well either (though significantly better than the others on this list), but it at least had a good premise.  In the future people stay at home and mindlink into robot bodies that go out in the world and do things. Then the hero cop has a malfunction and has to go out in person to do things, which is a lot more dangerous, of course.  A) that's plausible in that if the tech existed I can see people using the hell out of it, and B) good angle for the hero since he's especially vulnerable.

Legion -- not a unique idea in geek circles. There's been I figure at least 4 roleplaying games based on the idea of angels kicking demon ass on modern earth. But it's a good genre that hasn't really been done as a feature.  Might've been better though to make Jensen Ackles the angel and try to work a Supernatural tie-in.


I saw a recent option sale on a short story the premise of which was that in the future overpopulation has gotten so bad that the government has hit teams wander around icing couples who have a second child.  As a short story it was sharp and had some nice twists.  But as a movie it sounds like another Repo Men.

Predator POV

POV shots from the monster or the slasher stalking his target are fairly common in movies. But, considering how many movies have been inspired by Halloween, I'm surprised I haven't seen more people use what was an extremely effective technique in the original:

After the opening teaser, in the first act we don't see out of the monster's eyes, but instead watch the main characters with the monster's body or his vehicle framing the scene. That creates this constant, lurking presence penning the characters in, and feels much more foreboding than just looking through his eyes.

Geek Power

Midnight Chronicles went from IMDb Moviemeter rating 6,865 to 28 last week -- up 24,417% in popularity -- putting it adjacent to other such low-budget fare like Knowing and Observe and Report.

Coincidentally, this week was also GenCon -- where I imagine the DVD was released. That's really an astronomical improvement and rating for what is an essentially indie feature with no major distributor (Epic Level Entertainment, whose only other distributed films are Xombie: Dead on Arrival and The Gamers: Dorkness Rising) and no advertising. I haven't even seen banner ads at EN World.

For nerd-friendly fare I'd think studios should pay attention to this as a booth at GenCon is practically free by studio-marketing standards. I also think studios should be more friendly to RPG adaptations of their franchises. There's no money involved, but it keeps a franchise's fan base active and you can mine the good ideas that were developed for later films, comics, or TV series.

Midnight Chronicles is also available on iTunes and through RPGNow -- though I'd recommend the iTunes route for downloading since RPGNow doesn't have the bandwidth to handle big downloads yet.

Midnight Chronicles itself is impressive in certain aspects. Production quality is strong -- a few terrific special effects, some really nice outdoor scenes and outdoor cinematography. Many of the performances turned out quite well -- I think they benefitted from going after actors who could perform instead of actors who could help them get distribution (of course, what helps the movie likely hurts the producers). The action direction and fights scenes are, unfortunately, rather tame -- too slow and careful.

But the real problem is the story. There's some good elements here and intrigue being set up between the different factions -- at one point it felt like it could be a strong Babylon 5 kind of series. But it's not a series. It's 100 minutes and I think they introduced as many as 15 or so characters, all of whom are launching their own story. So instead of one fully developed story we get the first 5 minutes of a dozen or so stories. I had to laugh when at about minute 68 (!) they introduce the secret surviving twin brother of some high-ranking legate who helps head the resistance. Save something for season two folks!

This cripples the story as a film -- and is also way too much for even a series pilot (which is what the Midnight Chronicles was originally intended as). In a series pilot you need to cleave more closely to a film mode -- find your core couple characters and key on their stories so that we have an enjoyable episode and get a chance to know them. Roll out the extra characters and plot complications as the season unfolds -- because, unless that first episode catches, you otherwise won't have a season to tell your story.

Which leads me to my last general lesson that I've learned writing. Movies are small -- at about 22,000 words they're really equivalent to a novella. Especially in a genre piece where you've also got action set pieces and such eating up minutes, you really need to choose your story and focus on it. And pilots are even smaller -- though you can leave a few hooks in them for later exploration.

Track Record, Track Record, Track Record

If you're fortunate enough to get more than one option offer on a script you've written and are trying to figure out who to sign with, I recommend going with the producer with the best track record -- even to the point where doing so might mean foregoing a decent option payment (around $1,000) versus a negligible option payment.

In my experience, track record -- how many films they've made and how consistently they've done so recently -- has been a better indicator of whether or not they'll be able to get your film made.

Two different companies were able to get me thousands of dollars in options -- but neither were able to make the movie. They also had few to no movies made, though they did have good financing connections.

On the other hand, a $100 option led to the assignment that got me my first film, and I worked with another producer with no option at all that eventually would've gotten set up as a little indie if I hadn't optioned the script to someone else first. Both these people had consistent (though not spectacular) credits. I think the consistency counts for a lot. People who get things done, get things done.

15 Days

My dad wrote a little short story a couple weeks ago and I thought it'd make a strong short script (and be really easy to adapt -- all I did was change the formatting!)

So I spent a couple hours re-formatting, showed it to him, and then sent it off to a couple places asking for short scripts. 15 days later and a director now wants to make it.

It took me five years! I'd call my dad a bastard, but I think that might backfire on me in some way.

COP DOG at 2009 International Family Film Festival

COP DOG now has an official page at the 2009 International Film Festival.

It's showing at 12:30 PM on Sunday, March 1. I won't be making it, but I think much of the cast will be there.

Too Lazy To Type Degrees of Separation

You'll probably need to click on the image to read anything but that's the IMDBPro main page above.

Typing being the awful chore that it is has forced me to invent a game: how few mouse clicks can I use to get from whatever the current main page is to the actor, director, writer, or movie I'm looking for?

No typing into search boxes allowed.

For example, using the sample page how do I get to, let's say, Kuma -- the canine lead in Cop Dog?

We start with the #2 video rental from the left column, Death Race (1 click), from there to lead actor Jason Statham (2), then on to Crank 2: High Voltage (3) -- then to Lil Chev Chelios, Billy Unger (4 -- Billy Unger is the Rosetta Stone of Cop Dog!), then Cop Dog (5) and finally Kuma (6 clicks).

If music videos got IMDb pages it'd actually be slightly faster since Taylor Lautner (middle starmeter at #5 famous in part from Twilight, 1 click) is in the music video Caught Up In You (2):



by Cassi Thomson (3), co-star in Cop Dog (4) then Kuma (5 clicks).

On a side note, apparently tween girls all over the world hate, hate, HATE, Cassi for stealing Mr Lautner from them.

Heroes Premiere Down 25% -- Heroes fan says "Heroes was on last night?"

According to Hollywood Reporter:

The two-hour premiere of NBC's top drama "Heroes" was down 25% compared with last year's one-hour opener, taking an expected hit following a creatively middling second season and an extended nine-month hiatus prompted by the writers strike.

I found out about the Heroes premiere last night at about 10:05, which, oddly, isn't one of the factors they mention in its ratings decline -- fortunately, there's a repeat showing on the weekend that I can DVR.

This is that mystery period of the year where shows you like may or may not start running at any time. I suspect the big networks have their schedules run by people who still act like it's the 80s when there were only 3 or 4 channels and everyone knew everything that was happening on them.

Gonorrheaman beats them all!

Forget spiders and ants -- research has found the strongest creature alive: the gonorrhea bacterium.

A human with the proportional strength of gonorrhea could lift 10,000 tons -- or the naval heavy cruiser, USS New Orleans. Whereas proportionate strength of a common house spider purportedly allows lifting up to 10 tons, one tenth of 1% of what Gonorrheaman could lift -- and pathetic ant-strength would only let a 200 lb guy lift 1,000 pounds.

Marlowe

The IMDB page for Marlowe, my first produced film, is now up. Still missing a bunch of details (like me!) and we don't have cover art yet, but a few of the principal actors are listed.

Also, my scene in the film, a true gift to cinema, is apparently staying in, so before long I'll have a Bacon number of 3.

I'm in Marlowe with Billy Unger who was also in National Treasure: Book of Secrets with Ed Harris, who was in Apollo 13 with Kevin Bacon.

I'd Vote for That

It's video month at the blog. Very funny:

Thank God for NetFlix

All the movies showing within a 40 minute drive of our house:

R/C State Cinema 3

12 West Nelson Street, Lexington, VA, 24450 Theater Info | Map It 10,000 B.C. Rated PG-13, 1 hr 49 min Showtimes: 7:00 College Road Trip Rated G, 1 hr 23 min Showtimes: 7:10 Semi-Pro Rated R, 1 hr 30 min Showtimes: 7:05

Valley Cinema

2275 Beech Avenue, Buena Vista, VA, 24416 Theater Info | Map It Bucket List, The Rated PG-13, 1 hr 37 min Showtimes: 7:00 Fool's Gold Rated PG-13, 1 hr 50 min Showtimes: 7:00

A one hour drive gets the following as well:

Dixie Theatre

125 East Beverly Street, Staunton, VA, 24401 Theater Info | Map It Bucket List, The Rated PG-13, 1 hr 37 min Showtimes: (4:00), 7:10 Definitely, Maybe Rated PG-13, 1 hr 52 min Showtimes: (4:15), 7:05 Juno Rated PG-13, 1 hr 31 min Showtimes: (4:30), 7:15 Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Rated R, 1 hr 56 min Showtimes: (4:20), 7:00

Regal Staunton Mall Cinemas

90 Lee Jackson Hwy, Staunton, VA, 24401 Theater Info | Map It 10,000 B.C. Rated PG-13, 1 hr 49 min Showtimes: (4:10), 7:10 College Road Trip Rated G, 1 hr 23 min Showtimes: (4:30), 7:30 Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who Starts on Friday, Mar. 14 Click here for Showtimes Semi-Pro Rated R, 1 hr 30 min Showtimes: (4:40), 7:40 Spiderwick Chronicles, The Rated PG, 1 hr 37 min Showtimes: (4:00), 7:00 Step Up 2 the Streets Rated PG-13, 1 hr 38 min Showtimes: (4:15), 7:15 Vantage Point Rated PG-13, 1 hr 30 min Showtimes: (4:20), 7:20

Visulite Cinema

12 North Augusta St., Staunton, VA, 24401 Theater Info | Map It
2007 Academy Award-Nominated Shorts: Animated Not Rated, 1 hr 30 min Showtimes: 9:10	Kite Runner, The Rated PG-13, 2 hr 7 min Showtimes: 3:30, 6:30
No Country for Old Men Rated R, 2 hr 2 min Showtimes: 9:00	Savages, The Rated R, 1 hr 53 min Showtimes: 4:00, 7:00

Neo-Humean Epistemology

Cabinet Flunkie Who Was In Ally McBeal to President Palmer --

I know your history with Mister Bauer runs deep, but don't let that impact your judgment here. 24, Season 6, Episode 2

-- apparently advancing some new critique of inductive reasoning.

Structure, The Office, and M*A*S*H

I finally started watching The Office (Americanized), which is conveniently also available in high quality streamed video at the NetFlix website.

After watching several episodes I noticed it's structural similarity to M*A*S*H, and I'm not the first. Matthew Gilbert at Boston.com said the following:

I'm working on this theory that "The Office" is "M*A*S*H" all over again. Kinda, sorta, maybe.

First of all, Dwight and Angela are updates of Frank Burns and Hot Lips. They are the goody-goody couple who have a not-so-secret but oh-so-freaky passionate life (oh, they'll get back together, just you wait). In that other theory I've been working on -- that "The Office" is a metaphor for American politics -- Dwight and Angela fill the hypocritical conservative category that Frank and Hot Lips practically invented on series TV.

Jim is Hawkeye Pierce, of course, but for a less Groucho-oriented generation. Jim's asides are generally non-verbal, but that slight rising of the eyebrows evokes Marx's cigar and the full-on eyebrows as much as Alan Alda did. Jim's partner in crime is Pam, which makes her his Trapper John McIntyre or his B.J. Hunnicut, and, well, I'm going to go for Trapper John. Jim and Pam's pranks on Dwight are genius.

And then there is Michael Scott, who is unique. Still, he has some of the farcical leadership qualities of Henry Blake, as well as the same need to be friendly with his charges. Michael is easily manipulated by Jim and Pam, just as Henry was totally played by Hawkeye and Trapper. And now that Michael is bucking Ryan, he recalls Henry's resistance to military protocol.

I'm not convinced that the similarity goes much beyond the character roles (and then mainly early M*A*S*H), but I do think that similarity is definitely there. In fact, I think the mix works even better in The Office. Having Pam/Jim as love interests gives the writers more to work with than having them merely as tent-mates and creates less of a situation where the Trapper John role is just a sidekick.

I think it also illustrates how useful it is for a writer to identify and recognize narrative structures that work well. In this case the structure is almost entirely the characters and their relations, but it's clearly a structure that provides fertile ground for comedy. I'm not sure The Office's writers even thought about M*A*S*H when they were doing their thing, which makes the structural similarity even more striking. Convergent evolution only occurs when you have something incredibly useful, like the eye in both octopuses and mammals.

Other structures must work well too, and it makes me think that if I were to try to brew up a comedy TV series I'd look at older programs, maybe the Bob Newhart shows or even back further to Mary Tyler Moore or the Dick Van Dyke show, and see if there's a structure in them that can be given a modern interpretation.

I think this is one of the reasons all those screenwriting books and seminars, all with their own favorite "this will get you sold" formula are so successful. They are selling a strong structure -- one that's been proven in multiple films or stories. However, there are a bunch of structures that work well for different kinds of stories, so each author or speaker can push their own personal one and make a tidy living off it.

Thanksgiving trip reveals why DVD sales are down

The Hollywood Reporter has an article about declining DVD sales this year and my trip last week to visit my folks offers an explanation I think.

Selling a home in Los Angeles and moving pretty much anywhere else (in their case an island near Tacoma, WA) means you move up one income class -- middle class becomes upper middle class.

That means they had a nice hi-def big screen TV to go with their house. Being the Pacific Northwest, we had plenty of excuse to sit inside and watch television. And hi-def does look sweet. I just couldn't bring myself to watch any of the non-hi-def programs on those lesser cable stations while I was there.

We also wanted to rent a few movies -- but they didn't have a hi-def DVD player yet, so we stuck mostly to the hi-def movies-on-demand offered by the cable company. It cost a bit more than a rental, but the panoramic views of mountains and rivers looked sparkling.

They were also just about to purchase Live Free or Die Hard -- because that's the kind of movie you'd like to test your nifty new hi-def TV on.

But here's why DVD sales are down. They'd need to get a new DVD player for that -- and they were more than willing to pay for one -- but which one? I was suggesting HD since it seemed that the big Wal-Mart $99 sale might mark a turning point -- but that's a bit of a gamble. And later, it occured to me that Live Free or Die Hard might not even be on HD (which I think it isn't -- only Blu-ray). That would really suck, buying a hi-def DVD player and having about half the new releases not even be available for it -- then having maybe a 50% chance two years from now of having bet wrong, and there being no new releases for it.

So, unless you want to throw away cash on two high-end DVD players, you don't buy any. And even people who can afford to do so won't simply out of principle.

Then you think of buying the plain old DVD and watching Bruce kick ass. But you've seen the promised land; you're ruined for the old stuff. So you catch a rental of hi-def on-demand when it comes around -

- and don't buy any DVDs at all, since you know you're just going to want the HD version when there's finally a standard. I don't even have an HD TV and I'm not going to buy any more DVDs because I too have seen the promised land.

Thus, DVD rentals doing well, maybe even up, and DVD sales tanking.

And Wal-Mart knows this. They're seeing this vast sum of HD DVD money being left on the table this holiday season because there's no standard -- that's why they're trying to force a standard by selling HD players at cost.

Simpsons Movie Collateral Benefits

The hope I held out in my earlier post about The Simpsons Movie has come true -- our local CW affiliate is now running syndicated Simpsons episodes at 10 on weeknights. Not quite the 2 hours of Simpsons we used to get in New Jersey, but better than 30 minutes a week.


The director told me that November 3 will be the start date for shooting on our little G-rated D2DVD picture. I'll visit L.A. for a couple days while they're shooting, to meet the various people involved and see what's up.

This one looks pretty locked in, unlike the continuing death throes of The Sound. Marvista, the company financing the film, would like shooting to start immediately, but the director wants to spend a little extra time getting things set up right since extra planning really helps when you're working with a lower budget. Marvista's already talking to him about turning right around and doing a thriller -- so this might work out to be a busy year.

When we get closer or when I'm told it's okay, I'll try to share more info about what kind of story it is, maybe who some of the actors are (anyone remotely famous is in it as a sole result of the director having a lot of friends!), and so on.

!!!

Slate has an article on the use of exclamation points in email -- a recent email style guide suggests that we be more liberal with their use and proper writing education suggests that we keep them to a minimum.

One thing I noticed once I started actually having Hollywood types communicate with me (instead of just the other way around), was how enthusiastic they were. Everything's always great and terrific -- or GREAT and TERRIFIC!!! Your script is either "not for them" or they LOVE IT!! Even when it needs some work they still love it.

And that enthusiasm starts to infect you. I use more exclamation points than ever in emails nowadays. And I have a concern that if I use my normal method of saying that I thought a script worked well, or a movie was good, that such restrained praise will, relative to Hollywood terms, come off as damning condemnation. They'll be thinking, "damn, this guy hates everything".


That said, I do think it's worthwhile to throw a few more exclamation points in your emails. Not because, as the Slate article suggests --

Like 24-hour cable newscasters, we compensate for the unworthiness of our meanings by being emphatic!

-- that emails are unworthy of being written. But because emails are so often terse little functional things, a simple little "got it" to note that you received a package or "see you there" to say that you will show up at a function. These notes are often needed, and would just blend into a phone conversation, but in an email they can come off as cold and perhaps even hostile (my wife frets terribly when she reads a brief and functional email from a colleague, has she made them angry?!) By adding in a little ! you help clarify that you're enthusiastic, but are just keeping the email brief.

Why South Park is better than The Simpsons

The Simpsons Movie is coming out this week and that gives me hope -- hope that it'll finally get back into syndication 2 to 4 episodes per day on various channels like it used to back in Jersey.

After moving to Florida we were dropped to having The Simpsons in syndication on only one channel, and that maybe once per day. As of right now the only Simpsons is what comes on Sunday night -- this despite there being 19 years of Simpsons available, five years of which where we haven't even seen any new episodes.

That's why South Park is better than The Simpsons. I can watch 2 or more episodes of South Park every night.

Moreover, this points to a problem endemic to network TV. If I miss an episode of Lost I've missed it, whereas if I miss an episode of John from Cincinnati I can catch it late on the Pacific Coast feed, or a couple other times during the week. That means that I simply don't watch Lost or Heroes or Battlestar Galactica, and instead studiously avoid all mentions of the programs until they come out on DVD a year later.

Anyway, despite the movie coming out this week, I'll have to wait until late August to see it since part of being married is that you go to see The Simpsons together and Jaru flies to Taiwan this Friday.