Say your writing The Next Big Thing. A sci-fi story. It takes place in space. Maybe a creature feature on some enormo space-liner that whips around the galaxy at speeds faster than light pushed and pulled by an energy bubble of dark light. Maybe this beauty:
(FYI: That beauty is ’The Cygnus’ from Disney’s ‘The Black Hole’)
So away you go.
You know that, since it’s in space, and it’s sci-fi, there’s gotta be some sort of future-tech gobbledygook. Some things you can just make up — pseudo-nonsense words like “the posigravitron analyzer” and “the negative nano drive.” But you’re going to come to this sticky wicket: What about gravity? Continue Reading »
Do you wonder what’s under the surface? Or is the picture enough. You know it’s a shark, right? Could you watch the entire movie seeing just the fin? Or do you need to see this:
By the third act, I’ve had enough of the fin, I better see the damn monster in all its glory. Continue Reading »
I saw about 15 minutes of ‘The Lost Tribe.’ It looks excellent! Hopefully there will be some news in the next couple of months about the release. Maybe a trailer, even.
I met a lot of people that I had only spoken with on the phone face-to-face, and met some new folks as well.
A frustrating week brought on by a change in schedule, new computer equipment and… don don don! A bad outline!!!
The good news is, ”11 Days” is still a solid idea and I’ve have a new appreciation for stream-of-consciousness-no-real-plot Clerks-esque type films.
The bad news is, my crappy outline just wasn’t going to get it done. At least not by me and not now. So into the trunk it goes to be dusted off for another day.
You have to admire Kevin Smith putting together scripts that lack conflict but, by God, pushing through to the end by sort of compensating for lack of plot with non-sequitur observations on life. Writing 101 tells you no conflict, no story. Kudos to you, Mr. Smith, kudos to you!
I watched 3 movies last week: Rambo and Cloverfield on Blu Ray, and Botched on regular ole’ DVD. It was a second view for Cloverfield and Rambo, but the first for Botched. Here’s a R-rated gore-filled trailer for Botched:
So with the re-write schedule scraped clear, I moved on to some new ideas. Two percolated to the top: one an idea about a sickly boy who saves his small town from a threat after an enormous sinkhole opens; the other about two guys that run a Texas fireworks stand for 11 days in the summer just after they graduate high school.
After about 20 pages of notes on both, and feeling pretty good about ‘em, I decided to go with the fireworks idea first, and onto the sinkhole idea next. Continue Reading »
There was a movie that came out called “The Lookout.” It was about a popular kid (Joseph Gordon-Levitt as “Chris Pratt”) who has severe memory problems after an auto accident. He has to put post-it notes everywhere to remind him to do basic day-to-day duties like “wash your hair.” You might remember Gordon-Levitt as “Tommy” from the TV show ”Third Rock from the Sun.”
Chris becomes a janitor at a bank and a band of ne’er-do-wells recruit him to be the lookout as they rob the bank. Chaos ensues.
The movie didn’t do very well at the box-office (budget of 16M, USA gross of 4.59M) , but received a lot of critical acclaim. Richard Roeper and Leonard Maltin called it “the best film of 2007″ and it appeared on quite a few “10 best” lists. Personally, I thought it was OK. Jeff Daniels is in it. He’s sort of over-the-top. But Gordon-Levitt was good and the story was interesting (perhaps a little too Memento-esque).
So, for one reason or another, not too long ago, I was looking at the script for The Lookout. Continue Reading »
