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Thursday, November 29, 2007

Guest Blog: The Independent Pilot

You meet a lot of pretty cool people on the picket line. And one of those people I met was Shawn Thomas, the friendly, gifted and enthusiastic creator of Trailer Trash, a spec television pilot. Think that you have to play the pilot season rat race game to have even a shot at a pilot? Think again. Shawn was kind enough to take a little time out to share some of his experiences with Rouge Wavers vis a vis an interview he did recently. Read on, Wavers, and get inspired.

The following is an excerpt from an interview featured in the book
Gardner's Guide to Writing and Producing for Television
. This is a wonderful book for those trying to break into the TV writing business. The authors Dee LaDuke and Mark Alton Brown have written and produced great shows like Designing Women and Girlfriends. While Shawn doesn't necessarily recommend shooting an independent pilot as he did, he does think shooting shorts, even with no budget, is a good way to always stay creative.

Interview with Shawn Thomas

Shawn Thomas has been a writers' assistant and script coordinator for seven years on such series as Titus, In-Laws, Wanda at Large, and Girlfriends. He is one of the many talented young professionals working hard to establish themselves in the television and film industry. He went to film school at the College of Santa Fe and moved to Los Angeles permanently in 1997 with the goals of writing and directing.

Having worked with Shawn for the past three years, we have been impressed with his can-do attitude, his creative energy, and his willingness to seize the initiative and think outside the box to carve out his niche in the industry. He has, at his own expense, made several short films and written and produced a spec series pilot titled Trailer Trash.

Have the years you put in as a writers' assistant helped boost your career?

Being a writers' assistant afforded me the opportunity to be in the room with talented writers and learn the craft firsthand. I was fortunate to start off working as a writers' assistant on the FOX dark comedy, Titus. Showrunners Jack Kenny, Brian Hargrove, and Christopher Titus encouraged me, from the start, to pitch in the room. Pitching boosted my confidence and ultimately led to the opportunity to pitch and write two episodes for the series. Unfortunately, the series was cancelled before I was promoted to staff writer. I've been lucky to have the same inclusive experience on Girlfriends where I have now written a produced episode with another writers' assistant. I've been lucky to land on series where I was heard, because I have been in writers' room situations where showrunners didn't even like to hear me type, let alone breathe.

As I work towards being staffed as a writer on a show, I am also pursuing other interests I have in the business without sacrificing all the work I've put in so far.

Tell me about Trailer Trash.

Trailer Trash is an independent spec pilot aimed at cable networks and video podcasts. It is an irreverent movie trailer review show; think The Daily Show meets Ebert & Roeper. I came up with the idea with Jeff Hodsden, a production assistant at the time, while we were working on Titus. After it sat on the shelf for a few years, I took the lead in developing and producing it.

What did that involve?

In producing it, I had to surround myself with people who were willing to work for free, or nearly free, but were committed to developing a successful product that everyone believed in. It began with landing a very talented director and editor, Ric Serena. From there, we looked for a cast and crew who wanted to bolster their audition reels and resumes. Once we surrounded ourselves with all these driven, likeminded people, many began volunteering a lot of time and equipment to the production. We ended up shooting two twenty-two minute episodes.

For more of the interview, pick up Gardner's Guide to Writing and Producing for Television on amazon.com or at your local Barnes & Noble.

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Monday, November 26, 2007

Possible Winner

...and the Wave-inatrix is not prejudiced but the sheer wit, beauty and elegance of D. Montoya's haiku puts definite pressure on other Rouge Wavers:

Sweet Wave-inatrix
Threatens to go all Irish
Make mine a double

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Post Holiday Haiku Challenge

The Wave-inatrix is admittedly weird. (see red flag post below; hear them snapping in the wind?) And so, by extension, are my friends. We sometimes do haiku challenges, usually by text message and we do it at odd times. On the drive to Thanksgiving, my close friend Peter texted me this:

Arid roasted bird
Dreams of halcyon glory
Gravy gives no joy.

The mini-Wave-inatrix texted back, in all her emo-teen glory:

Poor little turkey
Bound in humiliation
Roasted in anguish.

Yes, the Mini-W is a vegetarian, in case you wondered.

I find haiku a particularly great writing exercise. Sometimes in screenwriting we get so bound up in character arcs and plot points that sometimes we forget the sheer glory and elasticity of the language we use.

If anyone feels compelled, inspired or otherwise moved to submit a post-Thanksgiving haiku to the Rouge Wave, please do so in the comments section for all to enjoy. Impress other Wavers, use writing muscles you rarely use - haiku today.

A few submissions = cupcake promises with the possibility of follow-through.

Quite a few submissions = Wave-inatrix has a cool prize. So let's just see.

Shake off the turkey-induced, overeating coma and spring back to life, Wavers. Fire in the belly, people! Don't make the Wave-inatrix go all Irish on your asses.

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Relationships, Red Flags and Characters


As the Wave-inatrix vacationed in the higher altitudes of Northern California and enjoyed a Ping Pong Open (for which I was insultingly seeded in last place) I enjoyed, as many of those joining families for the holidays do, many conversations over boxed wine about relationships, friends and life. In a strange coincidence, the term "red flag" came up at several points in various conversations both at home and at the airport on the way back to Los Angeles.

A "red flag" as most of us know, means something of a warning or precursor to trouble about either a potential love interest or friend. I heard someone describe to me a "BIG red flag" about a person and I thought - really? He's been married twice before and therefore he's not a legitimate love interest? To some - yes. Here is a person with two major failed relationships. To another - hey, third time's the charm.

Red flags are subjective. But sometimes a red flag is plainly a red flag. Let's take an easy example - oh - say the guy or gal you had dinner with last week who told you he/she was in prison once. Red. Flag.

Let us muse over red flags - don't we all have them? Is it truly fair to judge someone about theirs? Can persons with red flags - be honest, we all have them - not overcome them? Or do they forever snap in the breeze and clink the flagpole wherever they go? God knows the Wave-inatrix probably has more red flags than a used car lot.

Wavers, be proud, list your red flags and proudly join the Wave-inatrix in the used car lot. We can collectively admit that to many, being a writer is quite possibly a red flag. We don't earn money reliably. We like to be alone a lot. We are moody in a sexy way, alluring way - well, the Wave-inatrix does stand alone in that description, naturally, but surely Wavers can find some pale equivalent.

Moving away from the siren-like quality of the Wave-inatix and the appropriately named Rouge Wave - let us think about red flags with respect to writing characters. Let's look at a few examples:

This one is just too easy but what were Travis Bickle's red flags in TAXI DRIVER that Cybill Shepherd should have picked up on? Before the mohawk and bear in mind, she wasn't there when he spoke to himself in the mirror. But before that - say on their first date - what red flags were there?

How about Tim Robbins in ARLINGTON ROAD? What red flags should his neighbors have picked up on?

Another easy one - in AMERICAN BEAUTY what should Annette Bening have seen as red flags as her husband Lester was going off the deep end? Working out? Quitting his job? New car - he was a used car lot of snapping red flags too, was he not?

What should Michelle Williams seen as red flags about her husband's behavior? Did she spot them? Did she choose to ignore them? Why?

Here's my point: when writing your main character in particular, as you think about that all important character arc as it relates to the flaw of your character, think about red flags for your character. Behaviors, tendencies and attitudes that signal their interior life challenges, fears, etc.

What are your character's red flags? And at least as interestingly, what red flags is your character perhaps missing in someone close to them in your story? And - this is another blog post entirely - why is your character overlooking the red flags of others? Very often, we ignore red flags because the human drive for love, attention and security is so powerful within us.

We all have red flags and we all note red flags in others. We choose to either overlook or take them seriously. Explore. Discuss. Use your ruminations for your character work.

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Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Happy Thanksgiving!

...All right, Wavers, the packing and traveling, she must be done. So I and my evil-doers bid you goodbye for a few short days. To send you off, I thought I'd post a missive from my friend Hadrian at the Silent Movie Theater on Fairfax here in Los Angeles.

Wait - stop - I can read your mind: her friend? She always says that! What does she think we Wavers are, idiots? How insincere can she be? She can't be friends with everyone!! - Okay first of all, sit down, you there over on the left, before you get a cupcake where the sun don't shine. Remember this: whenever I refer to someone as a friend, dear friend, drinking buddy, pal or former cell mate - I mean it. No gratuitous friend-calling on the Rouge Wave. The Wave-inatrix is, as a dear friend recently said (Hi Peter) "pathologically nice". Whatever.

Anyway, so this is an excerpt from the latest Cinefamily newsletter that my former cell mate Hadrian, the program director at The Silent Movie Theater sent out to his mailing list, of which, of course, the Wave-inatrix is an honorary member. All right, all right, we were never cell mates. What happens in Tonga stays in Tonga. Right Hadrian? You PROMISED!!

****

Every day on the way to work, I pass by the writers striking in front of the CBS building. I usually feel terrible that these guys are out of work, but still have to get up before me in the morning. If you don't get to sleep in when striking, when do you? I only get up that early when I'm picking someone up at the airport. I also feel terrible, cause I like writers--without whom we wouldn't have very many good movies, and I found myself thinking about them throughout my day, and how I should bring them the extra cupcakes we're gonna have to throw away, even though that's something you do for homeless people, not striking writers, who may look similar, but are actually quite different breeds. Well, I may still go down and give 'em some cupcakes, but I've got something better to offer.

Free movies.

This is for you, writers. The Cinefamily will house your huddled masses for the length of the strike, for free, at least for the length of a movie. Just show your WGA card at the door, and c'mon in to as many movies as you like. I'm sure you've got a lot of time on your hands, and you're not really working on the personal script you've been putting off, and I've got a new theatre with some extra seats. C'mon by, I say. Sit down for a minute! Use those handy sidetables to take notes. Eat a cupcake.

But you got to pay for the cupcake.

Speaking of writers, we're showing a particularly fine adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel The Cement Garden this weekend, written and directed by WGA member Andrew Birkin. This film is rarely screened, and was incredibly difficult for us to locate, and folks who've seen it scream ecstatically when they see it listed in our calendar. This is because it's so good.

You see, one thing you should understand when looking at our calendar is that the more obscure and uncommercial a film appears, the more you scratch your head and wonder why we're showing it, the more your eyes scanned past it to more familiar ground, the better it probably is. Because that means we're showing it because we love it. We're showing it for us, numbers be damned, and those that show when they're really in for a treat. The Cement Garden is a quintessential example.

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The Hyphenate

Well, Wavers, as we near the Thanksgiving Holiday, preparations for said holiday and the requisite travel involved gain more and more momentum until the Wave-inatrix shall burst forth from a plane into a strange new land. Okay, I've been to Oakland a number of times; not so strange. But that's not where the journey ends. Oh god no - that wouldn't be any fun, would it? By car we shall traverse the upper half of the state until we reach our 14,162 foot destination with a car full of candy wrappers, competing iPods and three suit cases.

So in the spirit of pre-trip laziness, or perhaps just a bit of bonhomie, I have plucked an article from the news of the day to share with Rouge Wavers. Read, enjoy, and think about it as you fold your origami turkey napkins for the holiday.

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Monday, November 19, 2007

Picket Line Update


Well Wavers, the Wave-inatrix hit the picket line again today and we had quite an adventure when two imposing black Escalades approached the CBS gate and tried to turn right into the studio while the picketers had the green "walk" light right of way. Picketers walked around the Escalade painfully slowly but they did have the light. The light was long, however, and two burly body guards got out of the crosswalk and began yelling that we had to get out of the way. One writer confronted the body guard who tried to grab his picket sign - shouts of calling the police went up - the body guard said "Do you know who is IN this car?" and informed us of his precious passenger, Celine Dion. Tempers got pretty heated there for a moment but finally the Dion Parade snaked its way past the picketers and into the studio without a backward glance.

Other picketing highlights at CBS today:

*Danny Bonaduce riding his bike past us and giving us the power salute and shouting that he was not working.

*Meeting the completely delightful David Mahony, who wrote and will be directing his first feature film FAT KID next spring (strike willing)

*Meeting the extremely humble co-writer of Beetlejuice and The Adams Family, Larry Wilson.

*Enjoying a survival snack of water, raisins, breakfast bars and cheese sticks delivered by a supporter who had stapled to each bag, a Winston Churchill quote: "...never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never - in nothing..."

*Meeting the funny, warm and friendly Shawn Thomas, executive producer of Trailer Trash, a fun and innovative television spec series that I think Wavers will quite enjoy.

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Sunday, November 18, 2007

A Time to Reflect


As the days grow darker and the smell of turkey and pine trees and burning leaves permeates your house or your memory (if you live in LA) it is the time of year when we often look inward and reflect upon the year.

It is the Wave-inatrix’s wont to say something funny about parking lots, shoppers and irritating shopping trips but not today. Today I am feeling reflective just talking about being reflective.

When my children were young they went to a Waldorf School and I came to look forward to and love the Advent Spiral – a spiral of pine boughs with candles in apples placed intermittently and a large candle in the middle. In the same way that walking a labyrinth is a meditative and contemplative experience, the children would walk the spiral and place their candle in the middle, signifying bringing light into the darkness of winter, then they return from the spiral to the welcoming arms of their parents. It’s a hero’s journey that even Joseph Campbell would love.

As you reflect this autumn, during Thanksgiving and the Christmas and Hanukah holidays, take a few moments to think about where you are as a writer. How did you do this year? Did you make the time to write that you swore you would last year? Did you make any good new habits? Break any old ones? How many scripts did you complete? How many great ideas did you generate? How well did you make use of your time and more importantly – did you feel the necessary freedom to take time for you, as a writer?

So often, if you have a family and a day job, the demands of others encroach upon us. It can be guilt-inducing to close the door and enter the necessary isolation to write. Somebody needs to go to the grocery store, wash the car, pay the bills – and yet you are sitting, alone, doing something that may never pay one red cent. It’s insane. But we need to do it.

So take stock, Wavers. Where have you been this year as a writer? Did you achieve the goals you set for yourself? Did you really spend the time writing that you said you would? How much material did you generate? Did you take the time to continue your learning curve as a writer by seeing as many movies as possible, reading screenwriting books, networking and taking classes? Be honest with yourself. Time is the only real currency we have. Use it well.

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Friday, November 16, 2007

The Evian Tour


by Dave Sparling


Hello Wavers. As the second week of the Writers Strike comes to a close there's been no shortage of info swirling around the blogosphere about the meaning of the work stoppage and how it affects writers on all strata. One sentiment felt by practically everyone is that there's absolutely no reason to stop working on spec material during this time. We've all been reminded that the big spec-script boom of the late '80s/early '90s came on the heels of the last Writers Strike, so for writers at all levels this is a great time to keep plugging on our material.

Yeah, but what does any of this have to do with bottled water, you ask. The second of my three-post series on the importance of concept invokes a phrase I first heard from friend and colleague Matt Nix, the creator and Executive Producer of USA Network's hot new series "Burn Notice." Matt wryly applies the term "Evian Tour" to a series of "meet and greets" a writer goes on after his or her spec script hits the marketplace, generates some buzz and attention, but ultimately doesn't sell or option. Ever modest, Matt doesn't take credit for coining the term, but his use of it at an industry panel I organized a couple years ago was so amusing I'll always associate it with him.

Back to the spec that didn't sell. Sharper executives and producers, while they first evaluate scripts on their merits as projects, also take notice of writers' executional skills. How many of you have received effusive praise for your abilities as a writer, or on your writing, as a result of someone in the industry reading your work, yet the person or people who read said work didn't fall all over themselves to be in business with you on that project?

In some cases that could be because the project is outside their company's mandate, or maybe is a bit too close to something they're already developing, but often it comes down to the concept just not jazzing them. Part of the "good story well told" is there, but only the latter part. Your skill as a writer is evident, though, so you'll probably be invited in for some meetings (and when you arrive for those meet/greets you're generally offered--you guessed it--bottled water). These stops on the Evian Tour let executives and producers get to know you a bit and get a sense of whether or not, personality- and disposition wise, you seem like someone they'd enjoy working with--on a future project. That could possibly be a rewrite on something they have in development, but more often than not it pertains to a future spec project of yours. The hope being, of course, that your next script will marry your solid executional skills to a stronger concept.

So make sure you're fully and effectively developing your concepts! Doing so may well mean the difference between the Evian Tour and your first post-sale development meeting.

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Inspiration All Around Us....

....isn't that the truth? Yesterday I drove by the strikers in my air-conditioned car and watched as they pounded the pavement for hours in the unseasonably warm weather we've been having in LA. It's not a lark to them - they're in it for the long haul.

...and on Done Deal there is a fascinating thread about real life stories almost too weird to be true.

...and on the corner of my street there resides Our Lady of the Chair - a homeless woman who sits in a green plastic chair surrounded by her belongings. Sun worn and grizzled, she reads the paper and watches the traffic go by all day. And I wonder - who is she? Where is her family? What is her story? When does one begin to cross the gossamer thin line that lies between a normal life and winding up on the street? Can you tell when it's happening, incrementally? How do you wake up in such a nightmare?

The strikers inspire us, the dearth of good television in upcoming weeks and months may annoy us, but we should continue to be inspired by the stories all around us, Wavers. They are legion. Set aside reps, specs and competitions in your mind momentarily; look around and find a story worthy of telling.

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Thursday, November 15, 2007

The Good, the Bad and the Final Polish

Jim Mercurio is more than a mentor to the Script Whisperer, he is a champion and a friend. And he has this fantastic guest blog to share with us today:

***


NA NA NA NAAAAA WAAAH WAAAH WAAAAAAH:

My life as a script consultant is pretty boring. Download script, forward it to Maziar (scriptcopier.com) to print, get it in the mail, log into Paypal, suck all of the money into my bank account except for $20 for some eBay impulse buy, email client to ask for more time, play poker at Commerce Casino from Friday til Monday, do notes on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning. Repeat as necessary.

But there was one time that my profession got me into a situation fraught with danger, when I was being called a yellow-belly coward and like the hero in Kenny Rogers’ Coward of the County, I learned sometimes you have to fight when you’re a man.

I was at an Expo networking party and I stumble into a conversation with an hombre writer and his posse and one of them recognizes me, spits some chaw on the ground (okay, that part’s made up) and quips “Mercurio, what’s up with charging a grip of cash to read a script.” I laugh it off, realizing that script consultant is an oft-vilified profession. Ask Julie.

I stand toe-to-toe to with these strangers and we end up talking about Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink. A quite educated bunch of ruffians, eh? The best-selling book details how humans have an amazing ability to “thin-slice,” to discern a surprisingly large amount of information from the first split-second they see something. Well, the rabble-rouser that I am, I tell these guys that this concept applies to screenplays. I say that 99% of the time you can tell a bad script/storyteller from the first page. They shrug it off.

And then I say, “Actually, from the first few lines.”

You could have heard a brad drop.

“Is that so?” growled the writer/ruffian (wruffian for short).

Before I could even take another swig of my diet coke, he whipped out his laptop. His posse was positioned behind him. Like the clicking of spurs, the whirring of a pistol barrel spinning around, his computer booted up, chastised him for not shutting down properly last time, displayed a cute little rocking horse icon and asked him for his password.

BAM! His screenplay was up in Final Draft and the computer was shoved in my face.

In true Blink fashion, an epiphany hit me hard: this guy hadn’t figured out how to clean his computer’s non-glare screen. Then I looked at the words…

“FADE IN” was right-justified and followed by a period. Two words, two mistakes. First sentence: passive voice and a ridiculously overly-detailed cheat in describing the main character. Second sentence: past tense, confusing use of “as” (as/while are scary words in screenwriting), an adjective and adverb that could have been eliminated with a stronger noun and more specific verb, several wasted words and a dangling widow. The first dialogue has a red-faced coach yelling, “What the hell?” with the parenthetical: (Angry). Cause, you know, it wasn’t clear. The next line of dialogue is clunky exposition and then there is even more exposition in the action description that is not only unnecessary but impossible to convey on screen. And then after more past tense and impossible-to-know information, we are told it’s raining. Crazy idea: maybe put that up front.

As I shoot down (hey, I gotta stick with gunslinger analogy) the 15-20 mistakes (some subjective, most not), I see the wruffian’s posse slowly move from behind him to behind me. One of his sidekicks said, “Looks like you got some rewriting to do, Boss.” The wruffian closed his laptop and galloped off into the horizon (the William Goldman Guest of Honor session). And he didn’t even have a horse.

Your screenplay probably doesn’t have THIS many problems, but on your last draft, pore over every word. The attention to detail feels like proofreading but it morphs into the craft of storytelling. Of the 3000 features I have read, only two have overcome the Blink test: started off sloppily but ended up being a riveting well-told story.

One of the wruffian’s sidekicks became a client and drove half-way across a state to sit down with me and his script. So if your safety’s stuck or your rewrite is jammed, consider a gunsmith like me or Julie and remember it may not be a coincidence that the Script Whisperer has the same initials as Smith and Wesson.



Jim Mercurio produced the feature film Hard Scrambled. You can see several of the filmmaking tutorials he wrote and directed for Hard Scrambled's bonus material by searching for "Jim Mercurio" at youtube.com. Stay tuned for an upcoming announcement on a James P. Mercurio/Script Whisperer alliance. "Wonder Twin Powers activate. Form of..."

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Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Conclusiveness, Controversy and Entertainment

Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father prepare to die.

Remember how great that moment is, in THE PRINCESS BRIDE? When Inigo finally meets his nemesis? How conclusive and book-ended and emotionally satisfying that was? We humans need closure. We need to see revenge wrought, passion fulfilled, heroism rise ascendant.

The Wave-inatrix loves a good movie argument and Margaux's post yesterday did seem to stir up the bee's nest. That's a good thing. Movies, like scripts, are largely subjective. Of course, one can (and has to, when reading a script) deconstruct them and examine the moving bits for story soundness, originality and artistic merit but the Wave-inatrix has more than once read a script for a production company, rated it not just PASS but GOOD GOD IS THIS A PASS and then seen stars like Hilary Swank cast and the movie produced. I have seen scripts that I thought not great do very well in competitions and scripts that I thought (and think) are outrageously good wallow for years without recognition.

Recently, a friend who was working below the line on a network top 3 mega-hit was laid off due to the strike. The show has gone dark. She has been offered production jobs on projects already bought, paid for and ready to be shot. The other day she brought me the script for a job she's up for - The Wave-inatrix is not at liberty to divulge the television entity making the project but suffice it to say you're very familiar with it. The script is abysmal by any standard. The action lines go on for miles and are written terribly. The plot is thin and unoriginal. The dialogue is awful. As my friend put it - you could have written this with mits over your hands, legs tied and in a gunny sack! - and yet, this sucker is currently going into production. Why? How can this be?

How can it be that The Wave-inatrix hates - yes, I'll admit it - hates CITIZEN KANE? Is it possible that some people disagree with The Wave-inatrix that Woody Allen is one of the top American directors in movie history and that actually, he is a whiny, neurotic and unfunny? Yes, Wavers - gasp collectively - those words have been uttered. SLEEPER - the orgasmatron - not funny?? BANANAS - coleslaw for 900 men - not funny?? PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO, BROADWAY DANNY ROSE, HANNAH AND HER SISTERS - not brilliant??

Opinions are like - embarrassing body part here - everybody has one. I personally agree with Margaux and The Other Pete - I do enjoy some bloody conclusiveness when I see a movie. Doesn't have to be happy but damn it, my own life has rarely had closure - and when I go to the movie picture show, I want an experience that takes me out of my world, transforms my thinking for just that 90 minutes and, yes, that gosh darn well sews it all up in the end so I can make some sense of it. The Wave-inatrix is a formidable cinefile and can go toe-to-toe with the most intense movie viewers out there. My tastes run far and wide - if you can name it, I've probably seen it. One of my favorite movies of all time - all right, my absolute favorite - is HAROLD AND MAUDE - would the movie have satisfied as much if we'd not known whether Harold really died after the car went off the cliff? Not me. The punctuation mark at the end of that dramatic sequence is powerful and uplifting. It could have been powerful and tragic and been just as good. But there's a punctuation mark.

The Wave-inatrix is also a literary hound and has formidable shelves and shelves of books which no, you cannot borrow - so of course there are many examples of great literature in which the ending sort of trails off and the reader is left to draw his or her own conclusions. And that can satisfy perfectly, yes, but psychologically, having read both popular and literary fiction over the years, I do prefer an ending of some sort.

It is the Wave-inatrix's observation that more and more, literary short fiction is populated by writers who seem to claim by some sort of default, a certain literary cool but simply not concluding anything at the end of the story. Balderdash, I say. Just effing entertain me.

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Tuesday, November 13, 2007

The Mean Streets of Los Angeles

At approximately 1pm this afternoon, the Wave-inatrix was on page 59 of a lovely epic script set in 10th century Scotland when a sharp rapping came at the front door. Well, more of a pank pank panking since the door is glass. Stay with me here, it gets good. I opened the door and was greeted by a young LAPD officer who succinctly informed me that I had two minutes to take my pet and valuables, exit the house, cross the street and keep walking. He seemed earnest and quite sincere so I decided to follow orders.

I joined the rest of the block, including the guys from Subway, the Bagel Broker (best bagels in LA, trust me) and Paisano's (Italian AND Mexican food - why?) as we gathered across the street, mildly panicked and wondering what in the hell was going on. We could hear the picketers cheering sporadically and assumed they were in no danger themselves, owing to the cheerful sounds. We were informed that there was an "unknown device" in the alley back of our block. Beverly Boulevard between Fairfax and La Brea was closed to traffic. And we knew that because approximately one trillion cars were diverted to a small street upwind of us. But we were taped off, we neighbors. No coming or going on our block. We waited for an hour. We got hot. We got thirsty. Some of us had to go potty.

More police cars came, then an ambulance and a firetruck. It was almost a merry scene. Then we heard it - BOOF - and a flock of birds scattered. The bomb squad detonated what turned out to be an empty red suitcase that had been left in the alley. Now - seriously - if you were going to leave an incendiary device somewhere and truly meant to do harm - wouldn't you choose something a little lower profile? Maybe a half-eaten bag of WonderBread or a rolled up sleeping bag with pee on it - some normal detritus of urban living?

It matters not. Ninety minutes after ordeal began, we were allowed to return to our homes, with the bagel guys cursing under their breaths that they were going to charge the LAPD for the dough that had long since risen and fallen. The pigeons returned to their phone wires, the strikers kept chanting, horns continued honking and we all got back to the business of living in Los Angeles. Like it never happened.

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That’s all I get for my $14?



By Margaux Froley Outhred

Dear Wavers,

The weekend has come and gone, and like many of you, I ventured to the movies. And like the theater snob I am, we ventured to the Arclight cinemas where tickets might cost a tad more, but you get the pleasure of a reserved seat, less people bringing their babies, and generally a better theater-going experience. (Seriously, what is up with people bringing their babies to theaters?)

So, after I forked over my (well, my husband’s hard-earned cash), we expected to get a simple evening of entertainment out of it. I am hesitant to mention this, but we saw the new Coen Bros. flick, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. Before all of you diehard Coen fans or Cormac McCarthy nuts jump down my throat, the movie was perfectly lovely. Brilliant cinematography made seeing this on the big screen very worthwhile. Javier Bardem is an Oscar shoo-in. Perfectly acted, and seamlessly written, I highly recommend this movie. BUT (you knew there was a “but” coming), we left the movie unsatisfied.

I am not a McCarthy nut, and personally, find his writing to be slow and long-winded. I know many consider him to be a genius and he’s a good match for the Coen sensibility, but it’s a style that is lost on me. This blog entry, however, is not as much about this particular movie, and frankly, I’m scared to discuss it too much since I’m bound to be against popular belief. But, for $14, I felt cheated out of any emotional satisfaction from this movie going experience. Especially for a film with a running time over 2 hours, it’s a letdown to leave an audience hanging after they bothered to get invested in the movie’s world and characters in the first place. I know there are many defenses, i.e., it’s the genre, for my complaints about the ending. But, that’s not quite the point here.

Is it our obligation as writers to give every reader and audience member a happy ending? (Insert any applicable sex joke here)

No, every movie does not have to end with a Happily Ever After. However, I expect a movie, especially one that didn’t go straight to DVD, but one that some company deems worthy enough to release in theaters, to be entertaining. I was entertained during the first 85% of NO COUNTRY, but, when you leave me with a vague non-ending, all those moments of brilliance and enjoyment get sucked away too. In the series finale of THE SOPRANOS, audiences were PISSED that David Chase left them hanging. Yes, questions are great and creative types always seem to enjoy hearing outside discussion of what occurs in a fan’s vision of the world created, but at a certain point, shouldn’t these people do the work and give us some closure?

I know, I’m dissing THE SOPRANOS and the Coen Brothers; I expect death threats tomorrow, but come on. These creative film or television gurus have the eyes and ears of so many people willing to follow their lead…and they leave us hanging? You can send any message you want out into the world through the powerful medium of TV of film, and you leave it just dangling out there? Ambiguous is almost giving that emotion too much credit. To edit for the more polite Rouge Wavers, but it’s like the Happy Ending that never culminated. The ultimate cock block.

I used to not like the film THE SQUID AND THE WHALE because it made me feel so horrible emotionally. Now I at least give it credit for making me feel something rather than just a stunted and unresolved investment that will never pan out.

I’m willing to take the hit on this one. I probably just missed the entire point of the Coen Bros. film and I never read the book it was based on. Also, maybe being a late-twenties lady doesn’t quite set the stage for me to really identify with Tommy Lee Jones and some long-winded monologue about his father and death. It truly is a country for OLD MEN. That said, I’m a reasonably intelligent individual, especially when it comes to films, so if I can’t understand your movie, you’re leaving a lot of audience in the dust.

Does every movie need to leave me with a specific emotion? I’m going to go out on a limb and say that for $14, yes, dammit, it should.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

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Monday, November 12, 2007

Walk the Line

....this just in: picketing is harder than it looks. The Wave-inatrix took two dozen cupcakes over to the CBS picket line and joined what looked to be 50 to 60 picketers and walked the line for a little over 3 hours. Passersby honked when waved at enthusiastically. Total strangers pulled their cars over and dropped off water and coffee. Writers chatted and mingled. Teamsters crossed the line and were intermittently harrassed. The Wave-inatrix met and talked to a writer from the Bill Maher show, Jimmy Neutron and - Ed Helms of The Office. He was lovely and threw in with the writers for a number of hours. The cupcakes disappeared in record time, leaving only crumbs and frosting mustaches. The strike captain handed out lollipops, powerbars and water. I met writers who'd been in the guild for years, I met a writer who'd just sold a Muppets special a week prior to the strike and had finally been admitted to the guild. The mood was upbeat though the sun was hot. The Wave-inatrix will definitely be back to support the guild in upcoming days and god forbid - weeks.

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Canadian Geese

Where the Wave-inatrix grew up - not Canada but not far - flocks of hundreds of Canadian geese flew overhead in the autumn, their arrival heralded by a forlorn honking which grew louder and louder until it was joined by the sound of their wings. Then it faded as they continued on, far overhead. Afterward, the young Wave-inatrix was left with only the sound of the wind in the tall pines and the bite of cold air on her young, rosy cheeks as she gazed after the geese and wondered about their far flung and exotic destination.

Today the Wave-inatrix notes that no one is honking for the WGA picketers. Thinking they had relocated or somesuch, I just checked - they're there. Picketing silently. Drivers have become inured. Wavers, despite my earlier silly complaints, if you live in Los Angeles, please honk when you see the picketers. Their stoic determination must be borne aloft by your support; borne up and over the fences and hedges, into the offices and ears of the studio execs who should not and cannot ignore what goes on outside the security gate.

And now, back to our previously scheduled guest blog:
The Loose-Fish Project

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Sunday, November 11, 2007

Loose Fish

Wavers, today we have a guest blog appearance by my dear friend, writer's group compatriot and appreciator of games and beer, Jay Bushman. Without further ado:

***

The Loose-Fish Project: An experiment in web storytelling


Ask yourself - am I screenwriter or a storyteller?

Are you in it to see your scripts on the big screen, or are you doing it because you have stories in your head that you need to get out into the world?

For the past several years, I've been writing screenplays, tv specs and stage plays. But I've gotten burned out on scriptwriting. I've come to see our scripts as strange little bastard creatures, at least in the straightjacketed fashion that we are made to write them in.

And make no mistake - it's only fashion. Your story doesn't care what format it's in, as long as it conveys its meaning the best way possible. Screenwriting convention has developed over the past hundred years by accident, as an industrial process, and not with any concern over the best way to tell the actually story. Mostly over the best way to sell the story.

(An aside -- conventional wisdom is that stageplays are more of a writer's medium that screenwriting, and that the respect that stage producer have for the written word is a natural outgrowth of the superior nature of the medium. This is total and complete bullshit. Playwrights have this right because their union, the Dramatists Guild, got it in a contract negotiation with theatrical producers sometime in the nineteen-teens. Think about that when somebody tells you that the WGA shouldn't be on strike.)

I've come to believe that screenplays are just not good vehicles for telling stories. They're not used as primary texts. They're blueprints for someone else to tell a story. Or in most cases, they're just used as sales documents, and treated with as much care. Now, I've never heard of anybody whose life's ambition is to write the Great American Powerpoint Deck. It's certainly not why I started writing.

How much of our discussions about screenwriting are about how to tell a better story, and how much of them are based on fear? I found I'd become less concerned with "am I telling a good tale?" and more concerned with, "how do I keep from doing anything that could make a script reader or development executive stop reading."

As a writer, I have always been drawn to adaptation. There’s something about using existing patterns to spin new ones, like a spider compelled to make its web just that specific shape, that I find incredibly satisfying. My creation process is primarily visual. Sometimes, I will read/see/hear a story, and the adaptation to another form/time/style will burst fully-formed into my head. On the truly knee-buckling ones, I’ll spend the following years trying to recreate that initial burst of vision on paper.

One screenplay I wrote took the Shakespeare play Coriolanus and made the protagonist into a modern-day baseball player. If you ever want to blow a pitch meeting, just say the word Coriolanus. Another project I worked on for a while, to a continuous stream or rolled eyes and glassy stares, was a sci-fi adaptation of Moby-Dick.

I think these ideas are highly commercial, but alas, I seem to be the only one.

Now, it just so happens, that we live in the most revolutionary time for the transmission of information since Gutenberg smelled ink. Internet distribution has completely upended the music industry, is a major driving force behind the current strike, and has given rise to a whole host of new conditions that have changed the rules for artists across all kinds of media.

Nowadays, there are loads of artists who don't worry about offending the middlemen anymore. They're using the Internet to go directly to their audience. Novelists, short story writers, musicians, video makers are uploading their work to the web, and viewers and readers can experienced it as their creators intended.

But for screenplays, or really any form of dramatic writing, it's not quite the same. You can't really just put your script up online and expect people to read it. It's an intermediate step in the storytelling process.

So, how do screenwriters get in on some of this hot circumventing-the-gatekeepers action?

You could produce the work yourself. Video equipment has fallen in price to where it's available to just about anybody. But what if your stories are of a larger scale than you can produce with even the most hardcore group of dedicated friends? You can't really self-produce Moby-Dick with and handycam and final cut. Well, maybe Orson Welles could, but he's dead.

So what to do?

I found an answer in Alternate Reality Games, or ARGs. What the heck is an ARG? I was fortunate enough to be involved as a player during the 1st great ARG, The A.I. Game, also known as "The Beast." Those of us who played it spent years trying to explain it to others, without a lot of luck. So let me defer to the wikipedia definition, which reads: "An alternate reality game is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions."

In an ARG, every available medium online and off is used as a vehicle for story content. Emails, websites, phone calls, IMs, tv ads, menacing popup messages, live events, sculpture and skywriting are all fair game.

The main interactive component centers around players solving complex puzzles, for which they are rewarded with the next little chunk of story. But like many other players, I was rubbish at the puzzles. We'd wait for other, more cryptographically-minded people to solve them so we could follow in their wake to find out What Happened Next. In the really good ARGs, like the Al Game or I Love Bees the story was the reason to keep playing, rather than the thrill of cracking the puzzles.

I found myself wondering if you could have an ARG without the Game component. Just story. And then I wondered if I could take these classic stories I'm so fond of working with, and adapt them into that shape.

There's an explosion of new platforms, and every week, there seems to be some new channel, technology or social network. I started to see how they could be used as narrative surfaces, as carriers of story content. But I was on the fence - I'd been working for over a year on this Moby-Dick screenplay. Was I really jut going to chuck it out the window so I could go in a completely new, experimental direction?

And then I read this quote from Warren Ellis and I knew I had to do it:

“The hurdle to credible publishing on the web, now, is the nine dollars it costs to buy a domain name from GoDaddy, which can be mapped on to a free Tumblr or Blogger space.”

Nine dollars to publish my own work when and where I wanted in, in a format that wasn't weighed down by a century's worth of cruft.

Thus was born The Loose-Fish Project. It's a storytelling hub with online distribution via the medium or media that best suits the particular qualities of each given story.

This week, we unveiled out first story: The Good Captain. A science fiction mystery tale told via the service Twitter. It's based on "Benito Cereno," a novella by Herman Melville. I chose Twitter because the original story hinges on the viewpoint of its protagonist. What better way to get inside the perspective of a character than the first-person descriptions of a Twitter feed?

This is still an experiment, so things could change, but I expect this story to unfold over the course of six-to-eight weeks. We'll start with a handful of updates per day, but shortly thereafter, the pace will pick up.

While the Good Captain is playing out, I'll be starting work on the second story, adapting Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters, into a series of profiles on Facebook.

After that, I've got several more stories in development. A contemporary version of Pride and Prejudice where the Bennett Sisters run a group blog. A series of linked websites that retell the story of Dracula. We've got tons more, enough to keep me busy for the foreseeable future.

As a part of this online storytelling hub is a blog called The Fishery. It's a discussion site for brainstorming about new and developing forms of narrative. I'm also going to try to identify the works that have influenced me and pushed me in this experimental direction.

So ask yourself again - are you a screenwriter or a storyteller?

Are you in it for the money and the prestige of being part of the biz? Or are you in it to tell your stories to an audience? Because the audience is there, and you don't need anybody's approval to reach them, if you're willing to step outside the narrow bounds of what we've come to see as the scriptwriter's path.

And as long as we're talking about money - no there isn't any, not just yet. But if you believe as I do, that the Internet is the next great storytelling medium ,where we are now is analogous to the movie industry in 1905. Nobody knows yet what will work and what won't. It's the ground floor, and it's a chance to get in early and lay the groundwork for how stories will be told for the next hundred years.

Which brings me to one last thing. Why "Loose-Fish?" In Moby-Dick, there's a chapter called “Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish,” which talks about the laws that govern possession of whales on the high seas. A fast-fish is one which is claimed, or fastened to a ship. One that's been tied down. Any fish that isn’t fastened, is up for grabs, or loose.

The future of storytelling is one whopper of loose-fish.

Jay Bushman is the Producer and Story Designer for the Loose-Fish Project, a regular reader of the Rouge Wave, and a compulsive contrarian.


The Loose-Fish Project

The Good Captain

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Saturday, November 10, 2007

Weekend Update

Well, Wavers - we belly-crawled over the finish line to the weekend with a minimum of injuries, one slight hangover and just a minor case of tintinitus owing to the honking of strike supporters, but you know, it's all good Wavers. The doctor says I should regain my hearing in just a few short weeks after the honking stops.

Today Wavers are free to comment with impunity (make good choices, people!) and the Wave-inatrix will look the other way. Power to the People! It's IM's dream! Where are you by the way, IM-y?! Mama-natrix misses you.

This week the Wave-inatrix grappled with interesting, totally unrelated questions like:

*Is it just me or is Donnie Darko a super cool/weird update on Harvey? The Wave-inatrix owns it, loves it but what is UP with the ending?! I'll be honest, I adore the movie but mostly for the Halloween party sequence with Under the Milkway by the Church...Also, Grandma Death is cool. And I think I've seen that rabbit.

*Where does the expression "flip the bird" come from? I mean, yes, sure, I've seen it. I've done it. But - flip + bird - where does that phrase originate?

*Michael Jackson - "Off the Wall" - overlooked classic?

*Robert Smith of The Cure - is it me or does he look like Edward Scissorhands now?

*Howie Day - Howard Jones update? Look at that hair. Not quite Kajagoogoo but it's dangerously close.

*Cancellation of Heroes - Origins - blessing or curse?

*Nikki Finke - the new Woodward and Bernstein? The Wave-inatrix admits to a heated journalistic crush. I love you, Nikki and - who are your sources, damn, girl!

Discuss amongst yourselves.

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Thursday, November 8, 2007

WGA Strike: Up Close & Awkward

...just how is one to honk merrily as a sign of support when one passes picketers? One long blast? Several short beeps? But what if you are at a red light right next to them? Do you honk and then smile awkwardly? Or do you wait for the green light and then honk so you can be spared that embarrassing moment?

As many Wavers are aware, the Wave-inatrix lives within spitting distance of CBS, ergo two drive-on gates and dozens of WGA picketers. Oh, it was fun at first. Hearing all the honks. All day. For the fourth day in a row. Yay strikers! We love and support you! But now, I'll be honest - the thought of weeks and months of this honking - it's not sounding so good. Will motorists continue to honk in support? Will picketers continue to show up in such numbers? Only time will tell. Time and a pair of earplugs.

Don't get the Wave-inatrix wrong - we all know how much I support the writers and their cause. But I'm thinking - would a simple thumb's up be so bad? Or a peace sign? A keep rockin' Ozzy salute? How about eye contact?

Waverly yours,
The Wave-inatrix.

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Keeping it Going

by Andrew Zinnes



With football season in full swing one of the words
you hear talked about is momentum - meaning when one
team has it, they gain confidence and can seemingly do
no wrong. You can get into the same groove when
writing, too, where it feels like everything cranking
out of your word processor is gold. But then something
happens and it stops.

I say this for my writing partner and I were cruising
along with a new outline and things were going really
well. Then my child (aka the cutest Petrie dish in the
world) gets a cold and it spreads through my house
faster than those wildfires two weeks ago.

Knocked me on my ass for several days and had me coughing up
things Dr. Seuss never dreamed up. Anyway, needless to
say, the momentum of writing ground to a halt. And
trying to get back in the saddle has been tough.

So I wonder out there in Rouge Wave land, what are your
tricks for getting through rough patches? One I heard
was always leave one or two things unfinished from the
night before so you know where to pick up the next
day. Sort of a running start if you will.

So come on! Let's hear it!

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Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Guest Blog Interview: Christina Hamlett

The Wave-inatrix was recently privileged to share a repast with my lovely and considerably talented friend, playwrite Christina Hamlett, author of, among many others, Could it be a Movie?

Christina took a few moments to answer some questions for Rouge Wavers:

Wave-inatrix: I know you have written numerous produced plays but that you write books and scripts as well. How do you compare playwriting to screenwriting in terms of structure and narrative? Is it a leap?

In my opinion, playwriting is a much more challenging medium. Although theatrical scripts share a lot in common with screenplays in terms of three-act structure and page-count, a play invites more sophisticated levels of abstraction and suspension of belief on the part of an audience than that which is required to watch a movie. In workshops I’ve done on the subject, there seems to be a mystique about playwrights insofar as how we can transcend time and space within what most people perceive are the limiting parameters of a wooden stage. Therein, of course, is where the real magic lies!

Let’s say, for instance, that you’ve written a storyline that includes a flashback to a street corner conversation in 1930’s Berlin. In a screenplay, you would accomplish this through a dissolve, a match cut, a wipe or a dream sequence. You would have to not only replicate the architecture of 1930’s Berlin for the set but also incorporate period vehicles, signage and authentic costumes for dozens of non-speaking extras whose only purpose is to supply ambiance. In a theatrical script, however, you would only need to pipe in period music or sound effects, costume the 2-3 players engaged in dialogue, and shine a spotlight on them while the rest of the stage is in total darkness.

Theater also has the advantage of identifying time shifts (“three days later”) and location transitions (“Sophie’s apartment in the Bronx”) in the context of a printed program. To that end, a full production could transpire on a completely bare stage and yet if the audience has been told that it’s a forest, a ballroom, or another planet, they will readily accept this premise and allow their imaginations to fill in the missing details.

Playwriting further encourages more intimacy and immediacy with an audience than that which can be achieved in a Surround Sound movie theater with bigger-than-life faces projected on a giant screen. Whereas film calls for a lot of physical/visual action to keep it moving, a play revolves around dialogue and relationships that unfold in “real” time as opposed to “reel” time and are witnessed vicariously through an invisible fourth wall that – in smaller venues – is only a short distance from the front row. In addition, a movie audience only sees what the camera allows it to through the device of a single lens. A theatrical set, in contrast, is generally visible to the viewers all at once. This, then, takes a skilled playwright and an accomplished director to nudge the viewers’ focus via lighting and movement toward whatever they should be paying attention to at any given time.

As I always tell my clients, I probably learned more about crafting snappy dialogue, developing compelling characters, and maintaining cohesive pacing and structure from the 16 years that I spent on stage than I ever learned from any screenwriting books or classes. The most significant lesson that theater teaches you is economy of expression. Among the biggest mistakes I read in new screenplays is the tendency to rely heavily on the glitz of expensive sets, scores of irrelevant characters, and too many special effects to carry the story. When these elements are stripped away, there’s rarely a salvageable plot underneath. The physical dynamics of a stage, however, force you to rationalize the minimum number of characters, locations and props you need in order to deliver whatever it is you want to say. Interestingly, the clients I have who mention that they majored in Theater Arts and/or did stints in community theater or summer stock tend to write more tightly focused scripts, better developed characters and more plausible dialogue than anyone else.

Wave-inatrix: You were kind enough to give me a copy of your book Could it be a Movie?, which helps writers think through and develop their ideas. What do you see as the most common mistakes beginning screenwriters make?

The first is their assumption that writing a movie is easy and, therefore, anyone can do it. What they don’t realize is that what seems like such an effortless finished product on the big screen not only reflects the collaboration and cooperation of scores of talented individuals but also that the whole thing is based on a commercially viable premise that will resonate with moviegoers and be something they’ll want to see. In my work as a script consultant, I often encounter the “Soapbox Syndrome” in which writers with political rants, pet peeves and dysfunctional family issues view screenwriting as a platform to broadcast their opinions to as many people as possible. Catharsis, I tell them, is fine for the soul but not always successful at the box office, especially if there is no discernible plot or even remotely sympathetic characters.

The second is a total disregard for the rules of proper formatting and presentation. The rationale for deviating from industry standard, I’ve discovered, is the mistaken belief that if the story itself is really, really good, a reader will blithely look past the odd fonts, uneven margins, typos, fluorescent paper, and headshots cut out of People magazine and pasted onto selected pages to show who the author thinks would be great in each role. (I was once sent a theater script typed entirely in 18 point Braggadocio bold and stapled into a glossy Chippendales folder.) Reality check: If your first page suggests that you don’t think the rules should apply to your unique vision, keep in mind that we are under no obligation to turn to page 2.

Thirdly is the curse of implausible dialogue that either wastes valuable time with empty chit chat (i.e., “Hi.” “Hi.” “How are you?” “I am fine, and you?” “I am fine, too.” “That’s good.” “What shall we do today?” “I don’t know.”) or else seeks to bring the audience up to speed by explaining things the characters themselves already know (i.e., “Well, if it isn’t my brother-in-law Alan who is married to my younger sister Grace and works for a meat-packing plant in Wisconsin that is currently under investigation by a citizens action committee led by two men named Stan and Ed whom I am having lunch with tomorrow…”).

Another problem I often encounter is when writers decide to pen something they think is currently a popular theme (i.e., whatever just won an Academy Award) or something that was produced so long ago that they think audiences may have forgotten about it (i.e., unsuspecting young women impregnated by Satan for a cult, or extraterrestrials who are left behind by the Mother Ship and make friends with kids in suburbia). The strangest one I ever read was a rewrite of a romantic drama I rejected which originally involved two star-crossed stockbrokers in New York who ended up marrying partners they didn’t love. In Version #2, the screenwriter changed the female character to a man, turned them into cowboys and moved them to a dude ranch in Montana. Absolutely nothing else was changed. Including my opinion.

Wave-inatrix: What's up next for you?

In addition to several new plays in development and the upcoming launch of a humorous fiction series targeted to teen/tween girls, I am also under contract with the largest ghostwriting agency in the U.S. This allows me to interact with people from all walks of life whose dream is to one day see their name on a book, stage play or film. It’s both fun and challenging to be a chameleon and adapt my writing style to the uniqueness of each “voice”. Last but not least, my husband Mark and I are collaborating on Consumed with Passion, a collection of 12 romantic short stories in which the plots revolve around a delicious meal. I’m writing the romances and he’s supplying the gourmet recipes for each of the meals featured. His culinary skills are legendary among our circle of friends and business associates, many of whom feel that if he ever gets tired of being an insurance industry executive and general counsel, he should open a restaurant.

Wave-inatrix: If you had but one piece of advice for screenwriters trying to break in, what would it be?

If you want to be a writer, you need to make the time to write. Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? And yet at writers’ conferences, I meet hordes of people who are putting off even getting started on their screenplay, their novel, their whatever. The excuse is that they want to wait until (1) they graduate from college, (2) they retire from their job, (3) their children move out, (4) they pay off their mortgage, etc. These are the people who are likely to never write anything because they can always find excuses not to. They seem to have an expectation, I think, that the heavens will open up one day and grant them 9 unobstructed years to only work on their dream project.

Sorry, guys, but it doesn’t work that way. You have to have the discipline to create a writing schedule and firmly stick to it...even after it becomes your full-time occupation. During the early years I was working for other people, being a published author was such a consuming passion that I routinely got up earlier, went to bed later and carried a notebook and a tape recorder everywhere I went just to make time for what I really wanted to do. Like any other skill you want to master, you need to practice it diligently and consistently. For example, I’ve been teaching myself how to play the piano and have made the commitment to practice for an uninterrupted 20 minutes a day. Although this often stretches into 20-40 minutes beyond that, this doesn’t give me the excuse to skip the next two days. The very next afternoon, I’m right back at the keyboard and practicing whatever suits my mood. (Our downstairs neighbors are getting to know the music from Pirates of the Caribbean really well…)

****

Former actress/director Christina Hamlett is an award winning author and professional script consultant whose credits to date include 25 books, 125 plays and musicals, and 5 optioned feature films. For additional information, visit her website. Want to try your own hand at writing a play? Christina not only mentors aspiring playwrights around the world, but starting in Spring of 2008, she will also be offering a six-week online playwriting course in which students will work at their own pace, have their assignments critiqued, and learn how to develop new ideas for theatrical performances. For information on the class, contact her HERE

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Halloween Scene Competition - WINNER

Congratulations to Dare Kent for winning the Halloween Short Scene Competition! Your fabulous prizes will be on your doorstep in just a few short days. Congratulations from the Rouge Wave and every Rouge Waver!

Keep your eyes out for our holiday short scene competition coming up in December, Wavers. The Writer's Store has caught wind of our competitions and along with some other impressive types will be donating some fabulous prizes to the winner.

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Tuesday, November 6, 2007

American Film Market

....the latter part of that title should be "For Dummies" but I don't mean Wavers, I mean the Wave-inatrix. Yesterday I was introduced to a strata of the film world that I had never before been exposed to on such a scale. The American Film Market is essentially a marketplace for film makers to find buyers and distribution for their films. It's way not as fun as the Public Market in Seattle - nobody actually throws film cannisters or shouts or haggles loudly. No, to the Wave-inatrix's disappointment, it's all much more hip than that.

In one hotel there were multitudinous teeny tiny screening rooms with stern security/ushers sitting in the hallway sternly reviewing i.d. passes and directing viewers (buyers) to the correct teeny tiny screening room. Once you get in your seat, the producer of the movie we saw made a short speech about the nature of what we were about to see, and why he thought it would make a terrific movie for foreign distribution. In the dim screening room, the Wave-inatrix surveyed the group of about eight stony-faced potential buyers. Nobody clapped, smiled or really, moved and then the movie commenced. Afterward (we saw the first thirty five minutes of the completed movie) again, nobody clapped - apparently one maintains one's poker face in those teeny tiny screening rooms. This is not a popcorn and red vine situation, Wavers. No, it's very serious. The Wave-inatrix of course broke ranks and hugged the producer enthusiastically but then left him to discuss serious business with the stony-faced buyers. And this goes on all day.

The other hotel was where the real party was. A beautiful atrium was filled with huge posters for many of the movies being represented - most you've never heard of but a few you have and you will. AFM-goers were a relatively hip-looking crowd, all swirling around exchanging cards and waiting for their chance to discuss their movie in one of the ad hoc offices that the distributors had set up in the hotel rooms upstairs. There was a floor of "locations" meaning foreign countries with booths set up to persuade you that you can get big tax breaks and other incentives to film in say, Papua, New Guinea. Then there were the distributor rooms. There must have been a hundred.

On the 8th floor were the companies that the Wave-inatrix adores: Focus Features, Regency, Hyde Park and the Weinstein Brothers. And yes - gasp - the Wave-inatrix saw Harvey Weinstein. My partner and co-AFMer Dave was more excited to see Malcolm MacDowell downstairs dressed all in black sipping wine but - Harvey Weinstein!

What does the AFM mean for Rouge Wavers? Well, two things, one tangible, one a bit less so. Tangibly, the Wave-inatrix, Queen of the Networking Realm, did discuss with at least 3 producers, scripts and writers that I work with. Producers are looking for material. Always. Less tangibly, Wavers, it is probably good to know that there are lot more buyers out there than the big five studios. The film business, particularly the foreign market, is far, far larger and influential than you may have realized.

Most Wavers are probably like the Wave-inatrix (well, perhaps someday, dears) and imagine selling a script to a major studio and having major stars win major awards. We picture walking the red carpet and graciously posing for photos before accepting our Academy Award. But Wavers- there's another world out there and it's far more accessible. If you really want to make a living writing movies, check out the independents.

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Monday, November 5, 2007

You Say You Want a Revolution...


By Margaux Froley Outhred

Well, Rouge Wavers, the revolution has arrived. And today, it arrived at the corner of my street. Yes, the WGA writers are striking as I type this. And at the end of my block a bevy of red-shirted soldiers are striking in front of Paramount studios. Right now I can hear car horns blaring as they drive past and a megaphone voice is shouting, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, where did our residuals go?” News vans have taken up precious parking spaces on my street. I’ve offered up my bathroom to nearby strikers who can’t hold it for their entire four-hour picket shift. It’s Strikeland USA, folks.

I was nervous about reporting to work at a studio lot this morning, so I choose to spend the day working from home. But with these sights and sounds nearby I took it one step further. I joined the picketing writers and walked the line this afternoon with them.

I’m not a member of the Writers Guild of America, yet, but I hope to be one day sooner than later. History is happening right now and I can’t just be comfortable watching it from my front steps. What these writers are fighting for are contract issues that will affect me one day. I don’t just hope the writers get their New Media residuals….I need them to. I hope to write for a TV show someday (hopefully in the coming season), and when my network replays an episode that I wrote on the Internet for “promotional” purposes, yet they still profit from running commercials during online replays….I expect to see a payment from that. And when DVDs are gone the way of the VHS tape and movies are directly ordered to my television set (which is happening sooner than you think, people), my friends who write those movies should be paid for that.

It was a thrill to walk with these writers. These aren’t writers who are already out of work and figure a strike might be an entertaining way to pass the time, most of the folks I met today are working writers. The people next to me and other writers I’ve been reading about are sacrificing pay, job security, and the ability to be involved with the physical production of their words. We all know how what you write can become your baby; imagine walking away from that and hoping your story gets told properly? That might not seem as dire to some of you as say, getting behind in your house mortgage, but the point is the same. These writers don’t want to strike; but they do want fair contracts.

I won’t pull out my soapbox and give you too much to swallow, but I think for Rouge Wavers, whether we are WGA or not, it’s important to support these writers any way we can. Honk your horn when you drive by, donate extra sunscreen, or a few hours of your time to walk the picket lines. Make the writers some cookies; bring them water. Don’t scab work; this is not a time for new writers to break into Hollywood. Support your guild. Whatever you do, let them know their sacrifice is appreciated. We will all benefit from the sweat off of these writers backs.

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Strike MUST HAVES:

...Well, today's the day, dear Wavers. The day when the pencil meets the road. Writers all over Los Angeles, New York and who-knows-where shall be picketing their former employers as they demand fair treatment from the AMPTP. Strikers, you have the full, unconditional support of the Wave-inatrix and I'm just guessing 98.5% of the Rouge Wavers. To make today a pleasant and effective one please don't forget:

*Comfy shoes. Hours walking in circles in bad shoes, as all women know = ouch!

*Sunscreen. Sure, it's a little foggy this morning but this is LA, people. The Wave-inatrix recommends spf 30, minimum; writers seldom see the actual sun. Be prepared.

*Sunhats or baseball caps (you hear me, IM?) to both shield from the damaging affects of the sun and make you look cool and writery. Fedoras also accepted. Wacky hippy/summer of love hats...not so much. We need to be taken seriously, folks.

*Water. Don't forget to hydrate. No, coffee does not count although yes, you will need that first bucketful.

*Picket-Partner for potty breaks. Find your partner today - bond for life.

*Index cards - you know you're going to come up with like, a thousand funny or sad ideas today.

*Strike signs and sharpie markers - get creative, people! You're writers for chrissakes! Think: Norma Rae. Simple yet memorable + universally resonant!

*When you get tired, summon the will of Bette Davis, the fire of Dorothy Parker and the determination of Cesar Chavez. Think: Grapes of Wrath.

The Wave-inatrix shall be attending the AFM later today with a colleague; we shall duly report on our findings.

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Sunday, November 4, 2007

P-r-o-c-r-a-s-t-i-n-a-t-i-o-n

Lucky, lucky Wavers, today we have yet another guest blog. Well, not really guest, per se - today's blog is written by one of my associates, the inimitable Dave Sparling, my charming, intellectually gifted and erudite friend and colleague without whom the Wave-inatrix's grasp on sanity would be seriously challenged. What's that? You over on the left? Third row back? I heard that snicker. No cupcake for you! FINE, we'll go with "more challenged than it is." Happy?

Ahem. Where were we? To learn more about Dave, check out his bio on The Script Department. And for now, enjoy his musings on our favorite topic we love to hate: procrastination.

***

Hello, Wavers! Over the next couple of weeks I plan a short series of Rouge Wave posts around the topic of concept. One analogously invoking real estate, another Evian water. And this one kicks off the series.

But what does concept have to do with procrastination, you ask? Well, frankly, a lot. Those of us who are writers (as opposed to those of us who write), are characterized by the constant need to express ourselves via the written word. It's the creative undertaking that gives us the most pleasure. Yet oftentimes it can be downright difficult to muster up the enthusiasm to boot the laptop and dig in for an hours-long writing session. The excuses for procrastination are myriad. Oh, excellent: the series finale of "The Sopranos" is on again in a few minutes. Sure I've seen it four times already, but with one more viewing I think I'll finally be absolutely, positively certain that Tony does get rubbed out in the end. Or--cool, the new issue of Creative Screenwriting arrived today, featuring an interview with James L. Brooks, my favorite writer, to boot! Well, it's not actually writing but it's writing-related, so... And so on and so forth.

So is it that things just distract us, preventing us from making incremental progress toward our goals (both project- and career related)? Without a doubt there are plenty of distractions in our lives these days. But in my studied opinion, having observed my own process and the processes of countless writers over the years, one of the chief sources of procrastination comes from within. It's uncertainty. While a high percentage of writers have doubts about their own abilities either to sustain success or to realize it in the first place, and while that certainly can factor into procrastination, the uncertainty I'm more specifically alluding to here is related to whatever it is we happen to be working on at any given time.

Here's the catch: for a lot of us, project-related questions like...

o am I truly wringing all of the potential out of this story?
o is my protagonist's trajectory through the story expressive of a very specific theme?
o am I certain I'm approaching specific aspects of my project, be they character- or plot related, in uniquely entertaining and appealing ways?

...can actually dog us more on subconscious- or unconscious levels. They're often the unknown unknowns, in other words. If we're aware of them, then they're known, and therefore conscious. Certainly, the known unknowns also play a role in procrastination.

So what to do? Well, it's simple: writer, know thy concept. Be--or get--crystal clear on the composition of your project's narrative building blocks. Ideally before you fire up Final Draft and start working at the most-detailed level of a script's development: execution. That way, when you are in draft mode, you're focused much, much less on determining the actual content, and more on choosing the specific words to express that content on the page. An approach extremely helpful in reducing those procrastination-inducing uncertainties.

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Friday, November 2, 2007

The Wave-inatrix Must Chastise

...of the hundreds of readers who visit the Rouge Wave each day, a scant few have taken a moment to read and vote on the Halloween Short Scene top 3. C'mon people! Those writers worked hard and they deserve a brief few moments of your time. Won't you please take a moment and vote?

The scenes can be found HERE.

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One Sheets and Strikes



by Andrew Zinnes

Well, Wavers - there's a strike. It's official. The walk out is tentatively scheduled for Monday. What does this mean to most of us? Not much in the short and medium term. It means that we need to keep writing.

In fact, while manning The Script Whisperer booth at the
Creative Screenwriting Expo a few writers came up to
us and asked a really good question. They wanted to
know what a good one sheet synopsis of your script
should contain and how it differs from other things
like loglines and coverage synopsis.

Coverage synopsis, the kind that production companies
generate, are more or less a beat by beat description
of your plot. There is generally nothing very creative
about them and they are not supposed to elicit a tone
or mood. It is merely so that someone could read it
and know your plot.

Loglines are a two to three sentence summary of your
plot that convey the genre, basic story line and
what's at stake. This has sometimes been referred to
as an "elevator pitch" meaning you can get on an
elevator with someone on the first floor and by the
time they get off the elevator you have told them your
pitch and they solicit the script.

A one-sheet synopsis is more akin to what is referred
to as a "cocktail party pitch." The idea being that
you would be at a party and be able to bend their ear
for 3-5 minutes about your project. Funnily, if you
read one page of single spaced text on a letter sized
piece of paper, it would take you about 3-5 minutes to
get through it. But what should it contain?

The one sheet should be a big tease. It should whet an
executive's appetite for your script and have them
begging to take it. A good way to structure it is by
acts so three paragraphs long. The first paragraph
should introduce the world, the main characters and
what's at stake and take you to the Act 1 break - a
tease in itself! Paragraph two is Act 2 so mention the
obstacles that your lead character will face
especially if there are any big trailer moments or set
pieces - execs love that stuff. And then give them the
Act 2 break where all seems lost for our hero. The
last paragraph, Act 3, is where you really wink at
them. Tell them how your lead will get off the floor
and try to make things work. But never, ever, ever,
tell them the ending. Hopefully, by this time they
will be so intrigued they will have to know what
happened and want your script.

The other thing to remember is your genre. If your
script is a horror project, then you want to write the
one sheet with as many creepy and eerie things as
possible. And also use scary words to describe things.
If it's a romantic comedy, play up the big lovey dovey
moments. Action - make it exciting. But don't dwell on
too many details for that will slow down the pace of
the read and that is not what you want here. Speed is
everything.

Now on the business side, if someone solicits your
script you can get this huge rush of adrenaline and at
the same time, fear. It's exciting to think that
something might happen but at the same time you might
start wondering if your script is good enough. By all
means, take a look through your project and see if you
can polish it a bit, but don't take any longer than
two weeks or so to get it to them. It's unprofessional
otherwise. And also producers have a huge pile of
scripts to get through and they will forgot yours
quickly. When you do send it off, you are more than
within your right to follow up with them to see that
they got it and after a few weeks whether they read
it. If they haven't, keep following up. Strike or no strike,
you want your material on top of the pile when it ends. Gotta be a
squeaky wheel in this business. Good luck, everyone!

****
Rouge Wave faithful in the Seattle/Vancouver
area: Script Whisperer Andrew Zinnes is taking his
Documentary Film Makers Course north of the border for
the first time in Vancouver at the FTX West
conference. He's also doing a seminar on screenwriting
in Hollywood for those outside of la-la land. Dates
are November 15-16, 2007 for the doc course, November
17 for the screenwriting seminar. Go to FTX West
for more info or to sign up. See you
there!

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Thursday, November 1, 2007

Guest Blog: Word on the Strike

We are extraordinarily lucky today, Rouge Wavers, because we have some inside perspective from a respected industry professional, my friend Philippa Burgess who was kind enough to take a little time out to give us her thoughts on the impending writer's strike. Enjoy:

***

You really are in the business when you have some history in it. Stay tuned, and you'll be able to look back on this and say to your fellow industry colleagues you were there. It was the five-month strike of 1988 that created the spec script market. It was the strike that never was in 2001 that launched reality TV. The issues on the table are reminding us that it is indeed a brave new world. There will no doubt be a transition in the business as a result of this negotiation.
Whether you are a current or future member of the WGA these issues
are your issues and it's important that you educate yourself on their
impact on the industry as a whole. This is Hollywood history in the
making and despite some fear of the unknown; it is also a very
exciting time in this business.

As you've probably been tracking, the current WGA contract expired
last night at midnight, October 31st. To date, not a lot of progress has been reported in the three months at the bargaining table with the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers). The members of the WGA have voted to call a strike should negotiations fail. It's being reported that the WGA will hold off on calling a strike for at least a week after the contract expires, but may go so far as to
extend the threat of a through the holidays. A few of key issues on
the table are 1) home video residuals, 2) New-media jurisdiction and
residuals, 3) Reality TV jurisdiction, and 4) length of the agreement.
If they do strike, there is no predicting how long it will last. The
DGA and SAG contracts come up in June 30, 2008 so part of the battle
is that any precedents that are set in this negotiation extends to the
other Guilds.

Many industry writers are writing around the clock to get their drafts
in before the possible strike when they would be barred for further
work for any struck company. Agents, managers, producers, and
executives are particularly busy trying to push as much through as
they can before a possible strike. Those in process of deals have seen
things move very quickly or get completely tabled until things are
decided about a strike. The Guild has issued a statement of rules for
members and non-members alike should a strike be ordered. For the
latest visit the WGA website.

A writer should certainly be patient with everyone they're dealing
with in the industry at this time. It's pretty consuming as whatever
happens directly affects many people's livelihood. If the threat of
a strike passes it shouldn't take to long for things to get back to
some degree of normalcy. It's important to keep in mind that many
companies overbought or accelerated their development so that they may not be as hungry for new projects right away. If the union does
strike writers can still write their own projects, socialize with
other industry professionals, and consult with representation. What
they can't (or certainly shouldn't do) is perform or solicit work or a
deal from any struck company. Agents and managers should be keen to consider new clients again once a decision is made one way or the
other. If there is a strike, we'll have more time on our hands. When
it all shakes out, we'll be as anxious as anyone else to get clients
back to work.

***
Philippa Burgess is an entertainment professional and partner at Creative Convergence. Don't miss her upcoming Million Dollar Screenwriting & Content Career course. This
popular 5 session weekend intensive teleclass starts again November
4th - 18th for 90 minutes each Sundays at 3PM Pacific; Saturdays at
10AM Pacific (Live Nationwide). Learn more
.

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