I hate CEO and corporate speak especially if you’re not the CEO, but this book seems like a killer.
When people find out that I’m “into movies” it doesn’t take long before this question pops up: “okay okay… so what’s your favorite movie of all time? No, no, let me put that in another way; if you could take only three movies with you on a desert island, what would they be?”.
Then I look like I’m thinking really really hard even though I have the answer ready beforehand. I go something like this: “hmmm… that’s really hard to pinpoint only a few movies. There are so many that I like. But if I have to choose only three movie it would be; After Hours and XX and YY”.
I then replace XX and YY with some movies that would please the crowd so to speak, be that anyone of the 9 or 10 stared movies from the movie page.
Then they go something like this: “Wow, man that is so totally rad! I love XX and YY, they’re the best movies EVAR made… but what was that first movie again? ‘After’ what? ‘After Hours’?… Never heard of it.”
It’s the same result every time. Not many know Martin Scorsese‘s master piece After Hours.
I truly think it’s one of the most overlooked film of all time. It’s it without a doubt Scorsese’s most overlooked. It dark and sad and funny and heart wrenching and because of all this, very realistic. And it all takes place in one single night.
I’ve seen many compare the movie as a modern day Wizard of Oz or an urban Alice in Wonderland, where it is Paul that goes through the rabbit hole and enters then land of weird. It’s like a 10-min Groundhog Day that brings one man’s world to its knees, and he sure as hell isn’t in Kansas anymore.
And the “funny” thing about the movie is no matter how absurd it becomes, and it really does become very absurd, you always view the scenes and say “man that could happen to me” or “I know a person just like that”. That’s the brilliance of the story, it so absurd that it in a way becomes very realistic and close to home, because that’s what life is. Absurd.
The trailer below is full of spoilers so don’t watch it you haven’t seen the film already.
The story is basically about about Paul who meets a girl in a coffee shop after work and everything goes does south after that. Wikipedia has a very long and very good summery of the plot (that is also full of spoilers).
There are so many scenes in the movie that are worth showing but this one is really telling of the overall premise of the film:
On YouTube there are also a 2-part documentary about the making of the movie.
Part 1:2
Part 2:2
On researching for this post I found this quote on Wikipedia:
The film was originally to be directed by Tim Burton, but Scorsese read the script at a time when he was unable to get financial backing to complete The Last Temptation of Christ, and Burton gladly stepped aside when Scorsese expressed interest in directing.
Very interesting. I can’t seem to figure if it would have been a different movie if Burton was helming it. Visually and all it most certainly would have, but in my view the story is so strong that I think it would have remained more or less untouched. But that is just thinking about things that never happened and never will.
What remains is my favorite movie of all time. So now you know.
As mentioned I’ve bought Movie Magic Screenwriter, and uh man is that as sweet program.
It’s way above all the other screenwriting programs I’ve tried (yes, all of them, I looking at you Final Draft).
The included outlining feature is really really nice, as in super nice. And on top of that you can customize almost anything in the program you can dream of.
I know that the program doesn’t make the writer, but this program just takes the hassle out of writing, and really lets you consentrate on imagining stuff instead.
Eight rules for writing fiction:
- Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
- Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
- Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
- Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
- Start as close to the end as possible.
- Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
- Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
- Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
[via troubling.info]
I have just finished the first draft of my first screenplay.
Yes, I am indeed very proud of myself. It is very satisfying to finally to write FADE OUT. THE END.
It has been a rather long process and it have taking me around 8 weeks to write the 49 pages that the script ended up on. But I take it as much as a learning experience and it has never been the aim to produce a full-length script in the first try.
This last week or two, I have had some serious writer’s block and I tried many different approaches to battle this. The only one that seems to be working is; writing. Just writing. Writing crap and then some more crap. It is extremely difficult, but I really found that writing is the only medicine. It actually helped me to read the crap I have written and then say “man that’s bad. I can do a lot better than that!” It might sound strange but this last day I wrote almost 10 pages in one sitting and I believe that was only possible because I have kept writing the whole time.
Another great tip I found very useful was Hemmingway’s (at least I think it was Hemmingway) way of ending your day of writing in the middle of a sentence or a scene. You do it even though you know perfectly well how it ends. That way when you sit down that the computer or typewriter the next day you know what to write. You just finish that sentence or that scene and then continue. That way you always “hit the ground running” and never have to face the dreaded Blank Page.
Oh, the story. Yes, I am getting a bit ahead of myself here. It is actually an adaptation of one of Bram Stoker‘s short stories called The Judge’s House. It is a 12-page (give or take) short story and I have taken many liberties with the source material. It started out as being very close to the original. The outline process also produced a script that was very close to Stoker’s original text, but as the writing progressed, I took more and more liberties with the story. Both because I have moved the story to present day but also because there are many fundamental differences between a short story and a screenplay. I have introduced some other characters and removed others. Overall, it, at least in my view, plays better as a screenplay this way.
I will not publish the screenplay yet, as I fell that it clearly needs at least one or two thorough rewrites before anyone else than myself will be able to understand and appreciate the story. There are many scenes that I am very proud of and a lot of the dialog that is very good, but there are most certainly also some that is very close to the worst writing I have ever produced.
The next draft of the script will also be more in the agreed length of a feature film: 90-120 pages.
I have use the great open source editor Celtx to write the script. However, even though it is great, and free, it has some bugs and missing features that are rather annoying. And in one of my attempts to battle the before mentioned writer’s block I downloaded a trial version of Movie Magic Screenwriter and was very impressed. Therefore, I promised myself that when I finished this first draft I would shell out for the full version as a reward.
It really is at nice internet connection that I have at work. You can go place with a connection like that.
Why is it that iTunes need more than 400 MB RAM to run?
Compared to WinAmp:
Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy way of doing it
- Walter Chrysler
Keith Martin has written a fantastic account of the lives of R2D2 and Chewbacca.
Much of Obi-Wan’s behaviour in this film, and Yoda’s in the next, can best be understood if they are frankly scared to death of what Luke might become.
As the film ends, the three founders of the Rebellion are all gone. Bail Organa is dead, Yoda is out of contact and Obi-Wan’s ghost can only talk to other Jedi. (So that would be Yoda then.) Thus, the field leadership of the rebellion has just been turned over to the daughter of Darth Vader.
A really worthwhile read.