OK, so I’ve handed in the latest round of changes and Jess phones up. She and Arif have had a long chat and they think we are ignoring the elephant in the room. Basically that the structure in act one is still a bit wobbly and that the stakes are not high enough. We’re fixing all the minor stuff but we don’t seem to be making any headway with that. She has agreed with Arif that we are going to take six weeks out where I can go and try and deal with these issues. She throws out a couple of suggestions just to fire up the gray matter. One of them throws me into a blind panic – she suggests moving the midpoint to the end of the first act. For those who don’t much know, the midpoint in a movie is the point – more often than not literally halfway through the movie. Syd Field summed it up in his book Save The Cat, when he said it was "An important scene in the middle of the script, often a reversal of fortune or revelation that changes the direction of the story." At the moment, ours is occurring on page 48 – halfway through a 95 page movie – it’s the scene where hero makes the decision to allow heroine back into his life. If Jess is suggesting that we move that to page 28, then I have no idea –literally no idea, how to tell that story without changing everything - writing a completely new screenplay to the one we have been working with so far. It’s like Indiana Jones finding the arc of the Covenant on about twenty minutes in – Elliot Ness figuring out how to nail Capone on page 25. She’s saying it’s only a suggestion and making reassuring noises, but I am so full of blind panic all I hear is the voice in my own head going “OhjesusfuckorchristwhatamIgoingotwriteImscrewedomigodomigodomigod”
The next day (after Karen has convinced me to put down the toaster and get out of the bath) I phone Arif and Jess again. We have another longer conversation and I say honestly that I don’t think I can write this. This is as close as I ever come to saying “if you have a relief scribe waiting in the wings, now might be the time to produce him/her”. To me the film splits into two neat halves – hero is getting pushed and then he makes the decision to push back – and by that point (hopefully if we have all done our job well) we the audience are rooting for him to win that we might be willing to forgive him any dodgy moral gray areas that he might find himself in. If we move that decision of his forward, then I not only don’t know how to cram all that pushing into the first twenty minutes, but I also don’t know where the story goes until we get to the start of act 3 on page 70. Jess says to take a step back – forget the moving the midpoint suggestion - and look at act one again – where is the inciting incident – I tell her, and even as the words are coming out of my mouth I know that my inciting incident is a bit bobbins . And where is the act one climax into act 2. I tell her that one – slightly better, but still not quite in the same league as Marion Ravenwoods Nepalese bar burning down. So her suggestion of moving the midpoint was only to try and get the beats to that level. I digest this and sign off to go and have a think. She has insisted that in the six weeks that I have, I don’t go anywhere near a keyboard for at least two, which as it turns out is very good advice. I turn the problem over in my head – what do I want to say. Where am I trying to go? Eventually I come up with an idea and phone up Jess – what happens if we keep the same basic set up but instead this happens. It raises the stakes, it makes hero a bit stronger and it leaves the mid point where it is. Jess and Arif do their huddle and come back to me – yeah, give that a go. I do so. Karen reads it and says she thinks it is the best version yet. I send it to Jess. She knows that I am going on holiday to Greece and says she will not tell me anything about it before I get back. (Jess clearly knows that writers are a needy shower of bastards in constant want of validation)
Back in the day job, I scribble down what are possibly the worst handover notes in the history of the world for Ksenia – basically “stall on everything until I get back” and go to Greece.
Back from Greece and catch up with Jess. We finally have a draft that is ready to go out to cast? To whom I have no idea. At this point I don’t really care. I’m just delighted that it has gone out. Arif also says that Greg Coote has come on board as an executive producer, which is more good news. From a script point of view, the plan is to try and get some talent in place, and get everyone’s input and then try and have another tweak. Arif does not think act one is as funny as it was, which is a valid criticism as I was really focussing on the structure. I can spend the next six weeks trying to come up with yuks and giggles.
So for right now, I have nothing to do but get to work on the next one.
It’s only after I hang up the phone with Arif that a thought occurs to me – there is now a tiny walk on part for a ten year old girl. Maybe I’ll save that conversation for another day.
Friday, 6 November 2009
BREN AND GREG
On the subject of actors I’ll segue into a long standing dream of mine. I have a group of friends back in Ireland and when we are younger we were this wild young bunch of wannabe bohemians. Writers, actors, musicians, artists etc. My dream was that we would all become successful in our relative fields, and one day there would be a photo of us all spilling out of Lillie’s Bordello in the wee small hours having revelled in the glory of some shared project. So early on in the process, I mention to Arif that I think that some of them might have something to bring to the party and his response is “we’re trying to make the best film that we possibly can, so if you know of anyone you think might help us achieve that goal, then please let me know”. So with that in mind, I re-read the script and then phone up Bren and say that I think he might be a good fit for the part of Beach – one of the supporting roles. I tell him the same thing that I will say to everyone – namely that it’s not because we’re friends, this is my big shot and I would not float him if I did not think he would knock it out of the park, and all I am doing is putting his name in Arif’s path to see if it works. If the man from Del Monte says no, then tough titty said the proverbial kitty. Bren’s response is the same as everyones. Thanks for thinking of me, great if it plays out, if it doesn’t then no harm, no foul.
Bren after much huffing and puffing manages to get a show reel together – most of his work was in theatre so I’m a bit vexed that the best of his output was never recorded for posterity, but it’s a pretty good show reel. One of my favourites is missing though – Poem Of A Dying Man – a short film documenting the thoughts of a gangster as he is digging the hole into which he will get whacked. I think you might be able to find it on you tube if you search poem dying man. The show reel also has a bit of Fair City in there – for those not in the know – Fair City is a cheesy Irish soap, a bit like east enders shot through a filter of Wensleydale. The fact that it is known – not always affectionately – as Fairly Shitty should give you some idea of where it has set the bar for itself. In it Bren, plays some chavvy scally shaftie. It’s pretty OTT, and I mention to Jess (who has lived in Ireland and has some firsthand experience of Fair City) that this is probably not up there with The Dane. She says she is sure Arif will be able to see past it. After all Ross Kemp managed to land the East Enders gig with the Fruit N Fibre ad on his show reel, so people can read between the lines. I pack off the show reel. Arif acknowledges receipt, but says he is not even going to look at it, until he gets to casting which is down the road a bit. I hope it all plays out, but wait and see as the Zen master famously said.
So onto Greg. Mr. Kavanagh. His Kavanic majesty. I’ll choose my words carefully as I don’t want to overstate this, but in terms of a guy with a guitar, Greg is a magnificent pagan Love God walking the earth like a man. And for all those who doubt me, feel free to turn up to the Love Tailors gig in The Sugar Club, Dublin on the 19th of December. I phone him up - he now lives in New York – and we have a chat about the film. He’d love to pitch in, if there was anything going. I send him a copy of the script to read – six days later, he pings me back an MP3. This is something he has knocked together just to set out his stall. He says he will phone that night and I am not to listen to it until then. Massively tempted though I am, I comply with these instructions.
He phones and I get to play it. I think it is absolutely fantastic – it’s just perfect. It’s bluesy, gravelly, a hint of Waits, a hint of Hooker, a catchy chorus, the same narrative structure as the film, and it even contains lines of dialogue without sounding contrived.
"So, just so I understand this – you, wrote, recorded and produced this song with a band half of whom were in Dublin half of whom were in new York – in SIX days?"
"Five days, it took me one day to read the script."
"You sickeningly talented bastard."
I send a copy of the song to Arif and another copy to Jess – she won’t be involved in the music (neither will I for that matter) but it’s such a cool song, I think she will get a kick out of it. I really hope Arif decides to go for this, as I think it could get nominated for awards.
Bren after much huffing and puffing manages to get a show reel together – most of his work was in theatre so I’m a bit vexed that the best of his output was never recorded for posterity, but it’s a pretty good show reel. One of my favourites is missing though – Poem Of A Dying Man – a short film documenting the thoughts of a gangster as he is digging the hole into which he will get whacked. I think you might be able to find it on you tube if you search poem dying man. The show reel also has a bit of Fair City in there – for those not in the know – Fair City is a cheesy Irish soap, a bit like east enders shot through a filter of Wensleydale. The fact that it is known – not always affectionately – as Fairly Shitty should give you some idea of where it has set the bar for itself. In it Bren, plays some chavvy scally shaftie. It’s pretty OTT, and I mention to Jess (who has lived in Ireland and has some firsthand experience of Fair City) that this is probably not up there with The Dane. She says she is sure Arif will be able to see past it. After all Ross Kemp managed to land the East Enders gig with the Fruit N Fibre ad on his show reel, so people can read between the lines. I pack off the show reel. Arif acknowledges receipt, but says he is not even going to look at it, until he gets to casting which is down the road a bit. I hope it all plays out, but wait and see as the Zen master famously said.
So onto Greg. Mr. Kavanagh. His Kavanic majesty. I’ll choose my words carefully as I don’t want to overstate this, but in terms of a guy with a guitar, Greg is a magnificent pagan Love God walking the earth like a man. And for all those who doubt me, feel free to turn up to the Love Tailors gig in The Sugar Club, Dublin on the 19th of December. I phone him up - he now lives in New York – and we have a chat about the film. He’d love to pitch in, if there was anything going. I send him a copy of the script to read – six days later, he pings me back an MP3. This is something he has knocked together just to set out his stall. He says he will phone that night and I am not to listen to it until then. Massively tempted though I am, I comply with these instructions.
He phones and I get to play it. I think it is absolutely fantastic – it’s just perfect. It’s bluesy, gravelly, a hint of Waits, a hint of Hooker, a catchy chorus, the same narrative structure as the film, and it even contains lines of dialogue without sounding contrived.
"So, just so I understand this – you, wrote, recorded and produced this song with a band half of whom were in Dublin half of whom were in new York – in SIX days?"
"Five days, it took me one day to read the script."
"You sickeningly talented bastard."
I send a copy of the song to Arif and another copy to Jess – she won’t be involved in the music (neither will I for that matter) but it’s such a cool song, I think she will get a kick out of it. I really hope Arif decides to go for this, as I think it could get nominated for awards.
CASTING
OK, so let us talk casting. Way, way back in the day. Arif very briefly asked me who I saw in the roles. I tell him that I had originally written the part of the hero for an actor friend of mine, Brendan McDonald, but as most of his work is in the theatre, odds are Arif will never have heard of him. Arif has not, and needless to say he would like to get some names that people have heard of. So I say that for the part of the heroine, I would cast Shannyn Sossamon, who is maybe not the most well known actress in the world, but was absolutely fantastic in The Rules of Attraction and a low budget movie called Wristcutters. There are two reasons that I personally think she would be great – three if you want to count the fact that she is a really, really, really attractive woman.
One is that the female lead is a combination of mad, bad and dangerous to know and this waiflike naive quality which I think would be a tough needle to thread (I say this safe in the knowledge that I could not act my way out of a paper bag and have some cheap college shorts to prove it – hopefully none of which you will ever see)
Two is my absolute terror of what I have come to think of as the L’Oreal shot.
Picture the scene – the female lead in a film which contains a fair few motorbikes. I am therefore filled with dread that at some point, there will be a shot where a bike pulls up, the rider’s helmet comes off and stand revealed as beautiful woman – but with long tresses spilling down, her head shaking in slow mo as said hair frames her beautiful face – like we’re selling shampoo. But this bottled shit – where your hair will look like it’s spent the last five hours being pampered in a salon rather than in the sweaty confines of a bike helmet. Ms Sossamon has on occasion been known to sport this weird crop, and still look gorgeous, and it’s always been that haircut that I think of when I think of our heroine.
Arif asks me about male leads. I say that I really have not given it much thought – my train of thought usually gets to Sossamon and then derails, but Stewart Townsend would be on my list (I’m not actually sure if he is acting anymore – he was directing last I heard and his Seattle film was very good) and then just because I have to say it – I say it – Colin Farrell.
Townsend first – hero is a bit of a prickly character – he’s a guy who does not have a huge amount of friends but inspires fierce loyalty in those friends that he does have. He also starts the film at a low point in his life, on the back foot, and is a bit moody. So they guy playing him has to be almost instantly likable. And that’s a quality I think Townsend has – there is a film called About Adam which I saw years ago – where Townsend plays the eponymous Adam. He turns up and basically seduces all three sisters in a family, seduces the girlfriend of the brother, and I imagine if there is an extended directors cut floating around, he probably seduces the mother as well.
spoiler alert here for anyone who has not yet, but intends to catch it at some point in the future.
At the end of the film, he is getting married to Kate Hudson (perfect Irish accent as mentioned before) and he shags the eldest sister (lovely performance from Charlotte Bradley I thought) on the same day. A mere two hours before he marries the younger sister. I think he even has to take off the pants of his wedding suit to do it. And we the audience don’t mind. It’s not a blokey thing – as in this guy is a legend, he tapped all three sisters in the one house – he actually manages to sell it that he is doing them a favour, and enriching their lives. That is a tough sell especially to a woman audience, but it appears to work. And Townsend pulled that off – quick, open the window before we all drown in charisma. Incidentally, there was a twist in the plot, where Katie Hudson, Adam’s future wife also had a quick fling with an ex – just before the marriage – presumably someone panicked and thought it would level the playing field a bit – but I always thought it would have been a much braver and more interesting decision to not include that – leave Katie as the naive innocent and see how that played out – and I bet Stuart could have pulled that one off too. To quote the great Moliere, vice in small quantities is but a sour and wretched thing, but the clamorous surfeit of a single inequity is so pure and triumphal that it beats back onlookers with the force of heroic virtue.
And I think someone with charisma needles buried in the red at the top of the scale would be great as the hero.
So why did I say Colin Farrell? How could I not? Seriously. If someone randomly came up and said “name an male Irish actor, aged about 30, preferably with a Dublin accent” if Colin is not the first name out of your mouth, you’ve been asleep in a cave for the last fifteen years, and you need to catch up on loads of cool shit like high speed broadband and ipods. The thing about Farrell is that amongst all the stuff about the drinking, and the home movies and the adventures with various young ladies, I think people sometimes forget that the guy is one seriously good actor. I first saw him in Tigerland – had never heard of him before then – and it was only about a month after that talking to Bren that I found out he was Irish. The guy who played Boz was a mick? You’re kidding me. And all the great performances after that. Intermission, Minority Report, In Bruges, take your pick. My personal favorite Farrell moment (and I would love to know if it was in the script) was in Minority Report (cool to see that they still have braces in the future too) where Tom Cruise has just gone on the run. He has ditched the flying jet pack cops, runs down an alley and almost gets run over by another cop car containing Colin. Cruise and Farrell see each other and Colin gives a little wave. Hi, how ya doin? Me again. For me, it’s a wonderful little moment of brinkmanship masked as social absurdity in the middle of a really tense scene and beats out all the flying jet packs and self driving cars for cool stuff from the year 2054. Dragging this back to our hero, as I said he starts the story, having just been kicked around a bit by life, but he doesn’t ever whinge about it. I think Colin would be great at always just giving you that little reminder that “hey, I’m carrying a lot of baggage here, and just because I’m not moaning about it does not mean it has gone away” Plus he might throw in the pizza equivalent of that little wave in the car.
So of the two of them, who would be better? I don’t know. They’re actors – this is their art. Each of them would bring their own interpretation to their role, and I’m sure either one would be fantastic. It’s like asking which version of After Midnight do you prefer – Cale or Clapton? It’s the same piece of work but each man puts his unique stamp on it. Frankly I’d be lucky beyond belief to get either one of them.
I tell Arif all of this, and he nods and makes a note of it. And we don’t speak of it again. I’m sure he has his own list, and I have no idea who is on it. It occurs to me at this point that Arif has a pretty good poker face and a high stakes game of Texas Holdem between him and Pete would be something to see.
He’s not even going to send it out to cast until I produce a draft that he is happy with, so back to flashing cursor.
One is that the female lead is a combination of mad, bad and dangerous to know and this waiflike naive quality which I think would be a tough needle to thread (I say this safe in the knowledge that I could not act my way out of a paper bag and have some cheap college shorts to prove it – hopefully none of which you will ever see)
Two is my absolute terror of what I have come to think of as the L’Oreal shot.
Picture the scene – the female lead in a film which contains a fair few motorbikes. I am therefore filled with dread that at some point, there will be a shot where a bike pulls up, the rider’s helmet comes off and stand revealed as beautiful woman – but with long tresses spilling down, her head shaking in slow mo as said hair frames her beautiful face – like we’re selling shampoo. But this bottled shit – where your hair will look like it’s spent the last five hours being pampered in a salon rather than in the sweaty confines of a bike helmet. Ms Sossamon has on occasion been known to sport this weird crop, and still look gorgeous, and it’s always been that haircut that I think of when I think of our heroine.
Arif asks me about male leads. I say that I really have not given it much thought – my train of thought usually gets to Sossamon and then derails, but Stewart Townsend would be on my list (I’m not actually sure if he is acting anymore – he was directing last I heard and his Seattle film was very good) and then just because I have to say it – I say it – Colin Farrell.
Townsend first – hero is a bit of a prickly character – he’s a guy who does not have a huge amount of friends but inspires fierce loyalty in those friends that he does have. He also starts the film at a low point in his life, on the back foot, and is a bit moody. So they guy playing him has to be almost instantly likable. And that’s a quality I think Townsend has – there is a film called About Adam which I saw years ago – where Townsend plays the eponymous Adam. He turns up and basically seduces all three sisters in a family, seduces the girlfriend of the brother, and I imagine if there is an extended directors cut floating around, he probably seduces the mother as well.
spoiler alert here for anyone who has not yet, but intends to catch it at some point in the future.
At the end of the film, he is getting married to Kate Hudson (perfect Irish accent as mentioned before) and he shags the eldest sister (lovely performance from Charlotte Bradley I thought) on the same day. A mere two hours before he marries the younger sister. I think he even has to take off the pants of his wedding suit to do it. And we the audience don’t mind. It’s not a blokey thing – as in this guy is a legend, he tapped all three sisters in the one house – he actually manages to sell it that he is doing them a favour, and enriching their lives. That is a tough sell especially to a woman audience, but it appears to work. And Townsend pulled that off – quick, open the window before we all drown in charisma. Incidentally, there was a twist in the plot, where Katie Hudson, Adam’s future wife also had a quick fling with an ex – just before the marriage – presumably someone panicked and thought it would level the playing field a bit – but I always thought it would have been a much braver and more interesting decision to not include that – leave Katie as the naive innocent and see how that played out – and I bet Stuart could have pulled that one off too. To quote the great Moliere, vice in small quantities is but a sour and wretched thing, but the clamorous surfeit of a single inequity is so pure and triumphal that it beats back onlookers with the force of heroic virtue.
And I think someone with charisma needles buried in the red at the top of the scale would be great as the hero.
So why did I say Colin Farrell? How could I not? Seriously. If someone randomly came up and said “name an male Irish actor, aged about 30, preferably with a Dublin accent” if Colin is not the first name out of your mouth, you’ve been asleep in a cave for the last fifteen years, and you need to catch up on loads of cool shit like high speed broadband and ipods. The thing about Farrell is that amongst all the stuff about the drinking, and the home movies and the adventures with various young ladies, I think people sometimes forget that the guy is one seriously good actor. I first saw him in Tigerland – had never heard of him before then – and it was only about a month after that talking to Bren that I found out he was Irish. The guy who played Boz was a mick? You’re kidding me. And all the great performances after that. Intermission, Minority Report, In Bruges, take your pick. My personal favorite Farrell moment (and I would love to know if it was in the script) was in Minority Report (cool to see that they still have braces in the future too) where Tom Cruise has just gone on the run. He has ditched the flying jet pack cops, runs down an alley and almost gets run over by another cop car containing Colin. Cruise and Farrell see each other and Colin gives a little wave. Hi, how ya doin? Me again. For me, it’s a wonderful little moment of brinkmanship masked as social absurdity in the middle of a really tense scene and beats out all the flying jet packs and self driving cars for cool stuff from the year 2054. Dragging this back to our hero, as I said he starts the story, having just been kicked around a bit by life, but he doesn’t ever whinge about it. I think Colin would be great at always just giving you that little reminder that “hey, I’m carrying a lot of baggage here, and just because I’m not moaning about it does not mean it has gone away” Plus he might throw in the pizza equivalent of that little wave in the car.
So of the two of them, who would be better? I don’t know. They’re actors – this is their art. Each of them would bring their own interpretation to their role, and I’m sure either one would be fantastic. It’s like asking which version of After Midnight do you prefer – Cale or Clapton? It’s the same piece of work but each man puts his unique stamp on it. Frankly I’d be lucky beyond belief to get either one of them.
I tell Arif all of this, and he nods and makes a note of it. And we don’t speak of it again. I’m sure he has his own list, and I have no idea who is on it. It occurs to me at this point that Arif has a pretty good poker face and a high stakes game of Texas Holdem between him and Pete would be something to see.
He’s not even going to send it out to cast until I produce a draft that he is happy with, so back to flashing cursor.
FLAT LAKE
I take a break and go home for a couple of days. My sister is one of the organisers of the Flat Lake, a literary festival. My best friend Billy is picking me up from the airport - he too has been press ganged by the sister into attending. It’s good to be home for a few days as Peter is about to head off to Korea to teach English -assuming Kim Jong Il does not blow the shit out of it before then. Bill and I agree that we’ll do the Saturday night so Saturday afternoon, we load up on tins of beer and then make our way out to Flat lake. Imagine a big field, with a collection of big tops, yurts, tepees, a pyramid of books about forty feet high , a couple of stages, a double decker bus and a couple of goats and a couple of thousand people and that’s roughly the picture. So I’m doing my Nobel Prize Winner impression (old joke – outstanding in his field – geddit?) and wondering where to go, when my cousin James wanders over and drags me over to Clones Film Festival tent. Clones is my home town and some friends and relations have been running a really cool film festival there for the last eight years. They even have an award ceremony to rival the Oscars – The Francies – named after the lead character in The Butcher Boy – a novel written by another Clones man, Pat McCabe. At least I assume it is the Clones Film Festival tent – someone has re-arranged the letters so that it now reads MONET IS ALIVE. I have a chat with James and Harry Cleary about the festival and the possibility of getting to show Pizza in the Festival the following year, and I say I will have a chat to Arif about it when we are nearer the end.
Bill and I eventually run out of tins, so we have to resort to getting pints from the bar tent – this is precisely what we have been trying to avoid as they’re usually ropey as all buggery but they actually turn out to be okay – better than okay – pretty damn fine. Somehow we end up in a conversation with some wild young Bohemians about Leonard Cohen, Suzanne Verdal and Armand Vaillancourt. I wander outside for a smoke – I don’t have a light so I wander over to the first group of people I see and say “can I have a light?” A guy gives me one and I realize the bloke stand opposite me is Dominic West. We’re chatting a bit, I say I really liked him in The Wire, thanks very much, chat a bit about Harold Pinter, Robert McNamara, whatever really, when Pete comes over. Pete is bombed, and he wants to bum a smoke. So I hand him the ciggie and he says “...cheers man, really apprec....HOLY FUCK, IT’S MCNULTY, HEY EVERYBODY LOOK, IT’S JIMMY MCNULTY” He then shakes his hand, and says how much he loved The Wire, ya feel me, no doubt and as far as I can recall it, he calls him McNulty fifteen billion times. (I would mock except this is Cowardesque wit compared to the time I met Steven King – an experience I won’t detail here except to say so starstruck was I, I was literally having an out of body experience, watching myself make a complete dick of myself and powerless to do anything about it.) Dominic’s clearly had enough of this as he’s backing away slowly and trying not to make eye contact. I steer Pete in the other direction. A bit later I briefly meet Cillian Murphy but slip off when I see Pete coming as I can’t face “HEY EVERYBODY, LOOK IT’S THAT WEIRD SCARECROW LADYBOY FROM GOTHAM CITY, PLUTO”
I get back to Wiltshire a couple of days later. Jess’ husband has finally read the script. She says when reading it, he pictured Dominic West in the role of Hobbes. I don’t have the heart to tell her, I have pretty much insured that he is the one guy we will never get.
Bill and I eventually run out of tins, so we have to resort to getting pints from the bar tent – this is precisely what we have been trying to avoid as they’re usually ropey as all buggery but they actually turn out to be okay – better than okay – pretty damn fine. Somehow we end up in a conversation with some wild young Bohemians about Leonard Cohen, Suzanne Verdal and Armand Vaillancourt. I wander outside for a smoke – I don’t have a light so I wander over to the first group of people I see and say “can I have a light?” A guy gives me one and I realize the bloke stand opposite me is Dominic West. We’re chatting a bit, I say I really liked him in The Wire, thanks very much, chat a bit about Harold Pinter, Robert McNamara, whatever really, when Pete comes over. Pete is bombed, and he wants to bum a smoke. So I hand him the ciggie and he says “...cheers man, really apprec....HOLY FUCK, IT’S MCNULTY, HEY EVERYBODY LOOK, IT’S JIMMY MCNULTY” He then shakes his hand, and says how much he loved The Wire, ya feel me, no doubt and as far as I can recall it, he calls him McNulty fifteen billion times. (I would mock except this is Cowardesque wit compared to the time I met Steven King – an experience I won’t detail here except to say so starstruck was I, I was literally having an out of body experience, watching myself make a complete dick of myself and powerless to do anything about it.) Dominic’s clearly had enough of this as he’s backing away slowly and trying not to make eye contact. I steer Pete in the other direction. A bit later I briefly meet Cillian Murphy but slip off when I see Pete coming as I can’t face “HEY EVERYBODY, LOOK IT’S THAT WEIRD SCARECROW LADYBOY FROM GOTHAM CITY, PLUTO”
I get back to Wiltshire a couple of days later. Jess’ husband has finally read the script. She says when reading it, he pictured Dominic West in the role of Hobbes. I don’t have the heart to tell her, I have pretty much insured that he is the one guy we will never get.
DEVELOPMENT
From here it descends into a flurry of emails and phonecalls back and forth with Jess with Arif standing on the sidelines ready to chuck in another thought grenade as they say inside the Borg cube that is corporate America.
So these are the edited highlights of the various drafts that are produced in this period.
Arif says he would like to get an American actress for the lead and would I have a problem with that. I say not a problem, but shall we just make the heroine American? I (along with most Irish people) have a bit of a thing about Irish accents. It’s not that most attempts are bad (at least you can recognise that it is an Irish accent), it’s just that there is no such thing as an Irish accent in the same way that there is no such thing as an English accent. You have a Cockney accent, a Geordie accent, a Scouse accent, an Oxbridge accent, a Sloane accent, a Welsh accent etc, etc. In Ireland you could have a Belfast accent (that’s the really slow one), a Cork accent (that’s the really fast one) and within Dublin where the film is set you would have to change your accent depending on whether your character came from Donnybrook or Phibsborough. However many actors when faced with the brogue that is Irish , seem to opt for this generic, one size fits all “begorrah, bejaysus top o the mornin’ to ya, twas himself to be sure...” lilt that comes straight out of Darby O’Gill. Not all of them of course, there are some great efforts - my all time favourite goes to Katie Hudson in the film About Adam where she got the southside Dub accent note perfect. But overall, I think it is a stick that people would be waiting to beat our poor actress with, so why make her job harder. Besides, thinking about it, it would be quite cool if the character was American. It’s gives her a “stranger in a strange land” mystique.
Suggestion that we are suffering from a surfeit of villains – what we shall call the Spider Man 3 problem. Easy enough to understand – we have a limited amount of screen time and we should focus on one antagonistic relationship. I can see the logic of this, although it will lose me my favourite scene in the movie (which is the minor villains scene) It also gives me a problem as the last act hinges on an action by the same minor villain. I can wallpaper over that, but it’s a pain.
Another suggestion in step with that is instead of losing the minor villain make him a woman. Shave her legs and then he was a she. And the coloured girls go do, do do, do-do-do, do do. Interesting one from Arif this. Again, simple enough. We have not many women characters – one really strong one but she does not turn up until page 33 (another simple change – get her onscreen on page 3 if only for ten seconds so the audience can get to know her) and the rest are okay, but minor. I have a long think about this one and then have a chat with Jess. My mail below sums up my thoughts.
‘Man, he lives in jerks – baby born an’ a man dies, an’ that’s a jerk – gets a farm an’ loses his farm, an that’s a jerk. Woman, it’s all one flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river it goes right on. Woman looks at it like that.”
John Steinbeck – The Grapes Of Wrath.
Hi Jess,
OK, so been having a think about the Vittorio as a woman idea – and while I am not opposed to it – I am a little concerned about it, and think we need to think it through carefully. Initially I thought it was a fairly easy change, but the more I think about it the more, I think we would need some fairly extensive rewrites. I think certain scenes would have to be completely overhauled – the “Godfather” scene at the start would probably need to go – that’s a man talking – and while the stuff in the middle could probably stay – I am having trouble with the bike scene at the end – as I think that is a very stupid male response to a problem – see above quote by Steinbeck (no expense spared in whipping out the literary big guns to make my point) I am not saying that it is beyond a woman to do that – I am just wondering if a woman character did it, an audience would be less forgiving of her than a man (unfair I know) – I’m not even sure if that is important or not since we can ask how much sympathy we want an audience to have with Vit. (or whatever we end up calling her). I’m not even sure if this is a valid concern, but it’s the one I currently have. If you think this is unfounded, then I will stick in the changes, but would like to have your thoughts on it.
Incidentally, I don’t know if you are aware of the Bechdel Test of Women in film.
To pass the Bechdel rule, a film must have
1. At least two women in it
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something other than a man
Surprisingly few films pass that test – we currently don’t. But I was thinking of our motivation for this change, and if it really is to redress the balance of gender equality, I am unsure if that is a good enough reason. Put it like this. There aren’t a lot of women here. Heroine I think is a cool character – although I suspect Pauline Kael would have gone to town on us, that she is naught but a male fantasy. Caroline needs work, but I think I can economically round her off to make her a bit more real, Lou has almost no screen time, but I still think she is a strong woman, and Dympna again has almost no screen time, but is pivotal and in one sense is the strongest woman of the lot. So despite limited numbers, I think the women we have are okay. Or will be by the time we are done.
Jess comes back and we agree to drop the Vtt. as a woman and go back to looking at dropping him altogether.
**
Peter phones up – he thinks he has spotted a Star Wars size plot hole. Our conversation goes something like this.
Pete: “Why doe the hero walk into the trap at the end?”
Me: “What..??”
Pete: “At the end of the film, when the hero knows that guy is going to mess him up, why does he go anyway...??”
Me: “Well that would be.....because...ehm...well you see earlier when they had that conversation......and the hippie bloke....oh fuck off!!!”
I call this the Star Wars plot hole because it’s something that you can sit through on repeated viewings and all of a sudden it hits you. You’ve all seen Star Wars, right? I’m guessing more than once. Search you feelings, you know it to be true. So at the end the Rebel Alliance are on the planet on the far side of Yavin. The Death Star is on it’s way and the Alliance go out in X wings and Y wings, they have big scrap, Han Solo turns up, gets Luke’s back, they blow up the Death Star – shiny medals all round in that dodgy Leni Riefenstahl rip off scene at the end. The plot hole is “instead of going around the moon, why didn’t the Death Star just blow up the planet that was in the way and wipe out the Alliance straight away instead of giving them a chance to attack?” Kevin Smith also has a great one for the end of Superman Returns which I won't go into here, but is on one of his "An Evening With..." DVDs.
I phone Jess about it – she doesn’t think it’s a huge plot hole, but does think that we could do with strengthening up the motivation. We know what the heroes motivation is because we’ve talked about it endlessly for the last three weeks, but it’s still might not be obvious enough to anyone sitting in a darkened theatre – that enigmatic bullshit might play in Yojimbo or A Fistful Of Dollars but it will get us killed. Currently the hero is falling on his sword for his friends. Her suggestion is that maybe the villian beats up the heroine. I am appalled by this suggestion. It solves our problem for sure, but it is a massive sudden shift in tone right at the end and I think the audience will again kill us for it. We have our lovely heroine that the audience hopefully will think is cool and funny and sexy and brave and we give her a pasting ten minutes before the credits. The credits where she is supposed to be shiny and happy, whereas in reality, after the hypothetical duffing we’re about to give her she would probably never leave the house again. Jess insists that for motivational purposes I should stick with that thought.
I stick with it – thoroughly depressed now.
Two days later I’m in the Borg cube at work when it hits me – how to fix it. Jess was right – we need to tie the heroine in at the end. I knew she was right, but trouble was I did not know how to do it. Suddenly, it’s all there in my head. We have a change a couple of other scenes earlier on, but it will tie up the plot hole – sort the motivation out, link out to earlier character arcs for a whole host of other characters too. I text Jess. Then I phone her and leave a voicemail. Then I mail her. Then I leave another voice mail. This is the single best bit of development yet and I want to talk about it. Fifteen years later in subjective time I get a hold of Jess. She thinks it’s a great move, so I sit down and hammer it out. It’s a farly big change, but I boot through it in jig time. Really happy now. I’m starting to see a trend in the way this is working. Jess or Arif suggest something – sometimes it’s just a suggestion that is obviously good. I’ll do it. Other times it will be something that I will be resistant to for whatever reason I can come up with. They’ll roll out the mantra of “well try it anyway, we can always go back to an earlier version” I’ll moan and grumble, but then their suggestion will give me an idea or we’ll come up with a third way between us that works.
Example – Jess phones me up saying that the film is called The Legend of New York Pizza” but we’re not seeing anything of how the hero becomes an urban legend. She makes a suggestion that I think is a bit meh, but acknowledge that she has a good point. The next meeting we come up with the same idea but in a way that is much more visual and possibly a bit cooler. This is what we go with.
When everyone is in the zone spitballing can be loads of fun. And I still have not gotten over the giddy thrill of having an hour long conversation where the only topic is something I’ve written.
**
There is a scene in the middle of the film where the hero meets the heroine for the first time in two years. Arif thinks it could do with some work to ramp up the sexual tension and highlight their competitive nature. In his words, it should be more like the chess scene in The Thomas Crown Affair. I’ve not seen the original Thomas Crown in a while although there was a while a couple of months ago, when I couldn’t turn on the TV without happening upon the remake. "Oh sinnerman, where you gonna run to?" Sky Movies gold apparently. I get a hold of Thomas Crown 1 and have a look at the chess scene. I’m horrified – it’s almost like a seedy porn parody of itself – soft focus, sucking on fingers, lip licking, stroking of chess pieces etc. And I thought that scene at the end of Written On the Wind with Marylee and the miniature oil derrick was bad? I phone Arif up and whatever reasoned argument I had in my mind, I think I end up saying “are you fucking kidding me?” Arif in unrepentant and insists that OK, the scene is hokey and dated, but at the time it was daring and provocative, and there’s no denying it’s charged with tension, so that dreaded line that all writers fear – “the same thing, only different”. We eventually get it done, but just for future reference if you ever see the final film, that 45 second scene in the middle took longer to write than anything else.
So these are the edited highlights of the various drafts that are produced in this period.
Arif says he would like to get an American actress for the lead and would I have a problem with that. I say not a problem, but shall we just make the heroine American? I (along with most Irish people) have a bit of a thing about Irish accents. It’s not that most attempts are bad (at least you can recognise that it is an Irish accent), it’s just that there is no such thing as an Irish accent in the same way that there is no such thing as an English accent. You have a Cockney accent, a Geordie accent, a Scouse accent, an Oxbridge accent, a Sloane accent, a Welsh accent etc, etc. In Ireland you could have a Belfast accent (that’s the really slow one), a Cork accent (that’s the really fast one) and within Dublin where the film is set you would have to change your accent depending on whether your character came from Donnybrook or Phibsborough. However many actors when faced with the brogue that is Irish , seem to opt for this generic, one size fits all “begorrah, bejaysus top o the mornin’ to ya, twas himself to be sure...” lilt that comes straight out of Darby O’Gill. Not all of them of course, there are some great efforts - my all time favourite goes to Katie Hudson in the film About Adam where she got the southside Dub accent note perfect. But overall, I think it is a stick that people would be waiting to beat our poor actress with, so why make her job harder. Besides, thinking about it, it would be quite cool if the character was American. It’s gives her a “stranger in a strange land” mystique.
Suggestion that we are suffering from a surfeit of villains – what we shall call the Spider Man 3 problem. Easy enough to understand – we have a limited amount of screen time and we should focus on one antagonistic relationship. I can see the logic of this, although it will lose me my favourite scene in the movie (which is the minor villains scene) It also gives me a problem as the last act hinges on an action by the same minor villain. I can wallpaper over that, but it’s a pain.
Another suggestion in step with that is instead of losing the minor villain make him a woman. Shave her legs and then he was a she. And the coloured girls go do, do do, do-do-do, do do. Interesting one from Arif this. Again, simple enough. We have not many women characters – one really strong one but she does not turn up until page 33 (another simple change – get her onscreen on page 3 if only for ten seconds so the audience can get to know her) and the rest are okay, but minor. I have a long think about this one and then have a chat with Jess. My mail below sums up my thoughts.
‘Man, he lives in jerks – baby born an’ a man dies, an’ that’s a jerk – gets a farm an’ loses his farm, an that’s a jerk. Woman, it’s all one flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river it goes right on. Woman looks at it like that.”
John Steinbeck – The Grapes Of Wrath.
Hi Jess,
OK, so been having a think about the Vittorio as a woman idea – and while I am not opposed to it – I am a little concerned about it, and think we need to think it through carefully. Initially I thought it was a fairly easy change, but the more I think about it the more, I think we would need some fairly extensive rewrites. I think certain scenes would have to be completely overhauled – the “Godfather” scene at the start would probably need to go – that’s a man talking – and while the stuff in the middle could probably stay – I am having trouble with the bike scene at the end – as I think that is a very stupid male response to a problem – see above quote by Steinbeck (no expense spared in whipping out the literary big guns to make my point) I am not saying that it is beyond a woman to do that – I am just wondering if a woman character did it, an audience would be less forgiving of her than a man (unfair I know) – I’m not even sure if that is important or not since we can ask how much sympathy we want an audience to have with Vit. (or whatever we end up calling her). I’m not even sure if this is a valid concern, but it’s the one I currently have. If you think this is unfounded, then I will stick in the changes, but would like to have your thoughts on it.
Incidentally, I don’t know if you are aware of the Bechdel Test of Women in film.
To pass the Bechdel rule, a film must have
1. At least two women in it
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something other than a man
Surprisingly few films pass that test – we currently don’t. But I was thinking of our motivation for this change, and if it really is to redress the balance of gender equality, I am unsure if that is a good enough reason. Put it like this. There aren’t a lot of women here. Heroine I think is a cool character – although I suspect Pauline Kael would have gone to town on us, that she is naught but a male fantasy. Caroline needs work, but I think I can economically round her off to make her a bit more real, Lou has almost no screen time, but I still think she is a strong woman, and Dympna again has almost no screen time, but is pivotal and in one sense is the strongest woman of the lot. So despite limited numbers, I think the women we have are okay. Or will be by the time we are done.
Jess comes back and we agree to drop the Vtt. as a woman and go back to looking at dropping him altogether.
**
Peter phones up – he thinks he has spotted a Star Wars size plot hole. Our conversation goes something like this.
Pete: “Why doe the hero walk into the trap at the end?”
Me: “What..??”
Pete: “At the end of the film, when the hero knows that guy is going to mess him up, why does he go anyway...??”
Me: “Well that would be.....because...ehm...well you see earlier when they had that conversation......and the hippie bloke....oh fuck off!!!”
I call this the Star Wars plot hole because it’s something that you can sit through on repeated viewings and all of a sudden it hits you. You’ve all seen Star Wars, right? I’m guessing more than once. Search you feelings, you know it to be true. So at the end the Rebel Alliance are on the planet on the far side of Yavin. The Death Star is on it’s way and the Alliance go out in X wings and Y wings, they have big scrap, Han Solo turns up, gets Luke’s back, they blow up the Death Star – shiny medals all round in that dodgy Leni Riefenstahl rip off scene at the end. The plot hole is “instead of going around the moon, why didn’t the Death Star just blow up the planet that was in the way and wipe out the Alliance straight away instead of giving them a chance to attack?” Kevin Smith also has a great one for the end of Superman Returns which I won't go into here, but is on one of his "An Evening With..." DVDs.
I phone Jess about it – she doesn’t think it’s a huge plot hole, but does think that we could do with strengthening up the motivation. We know what the heroes motivation is because we’ve talked about it endlessly for the last three weeks, but it’s still might not be obvious enough to anyone sitting in a darkened theatre – that enigmatic bullshit might play in Yojimbo or A Fistful Of Dollars but it will get us killed. Currently the hero is falling on his sword for his friends. Her suggestion is that maybe the villian beats up the heroine. I am appalled by this suggestion. It solves our problem for sure, but it is a massive sudden shift in tone right at the end and I think the audience will again kill us for it. We have our lovely heroine that the audience hopefully will think is cool and funny and sexy and brave and we give her a pasting ten minutes before the credits. The credits where she is supposed to be shiny and happy, whereas in reality, after the hypothetical duffing we’re about to give her she would probably never leave the house again. Jess insists that for motivational purposes I should stick with that thought.
I stick with it – thoroughly depressed now.
Two days later I’m in the Borg cube at work when it hits me – how to fix it. Jess was right – we need to tie the heroine in at the end. I knew she was right, but trouble was I did not know how to do it. Suddenly, it’s all there in my head. We have a change a couple of other scenes earlier on, but it will tie up the plot hole – sort the motivation out, link out to earlier character arcs for a whole host of other characters too. I text Jess. Then I phone her and leave a voicemail. Then I mail her. Then I leave another voice mail. This is the single best bit of development yet and I want to talk about it. Fifteen years later in subjective time I get a hold of Jess. She thinks it’s a great move, so I sit down and hammer it out. It’s a farly big change, but I boot through it in jig time. Really happy now. I’m starting to see a trend in the way this is working. Jess or Arif suggest something – sometimes it’s just a suggestion that is obviously good. I’ll do it. Other times it will be something that I will be resistant to for whatever reason I can come up with. They’ll roll out the mantra of “well try it anyway, we can always go back to an earlier version” I’ll moan and grumble, but then their suggestion will give me an idea or we’ll come up with a third way between us that works.
Example – Jess phones me up saying that the film is called The Legend of New York Pizza” but we’re not seeing anything of how the hero becomes an urban legend. She makes a suggestion that I think is a bit meh, but acknowledge that she has a good point. The next meeting we come up with the same idea but in a way that is much more visual and possibly a bit cooler. This is what we go with.
When everyone is in the zone spitballing can be loads of fun. And I still have not gotten over the giddy thrill of having an hour long conversation where the only topic is something I’ve written.
**
There is a scene in the middle of the film where the hero meets the heroine for the first time in two years. Arif thinks it could do with some work to ramp up the sexual tension and highlight their competitive nature. In his words, it should be more like the chess scene in The Thomas Crown Affair. I’ve not seen the original Thomas Crown in a while although there was a while a couple of months ago, when I couldn’t turn on the TV without happening upon the remake. "Oh sinnerman, where you gonna run to?" Sky Movies gold apparently. I get a hold of Thomas Crown 1 and have a look at the chess scene. I’m horrified – it’s almost like a seedy porn parody of itself – soft focus, sucking on fingers, lip licking, stroking of chess pieces etc. And I thought that scene at the end of Written On the Wind with Marylee and the miniature oil derrick was bad? I phone Arif up and whatever reasoned argument I had in my mind, I think I end up saying “are you fucking kidding me?” Arif in unrepentant and insists that OK, the scene is hokey and dated, but at the time it was daring and provocative, and there’s no denying it’s charged with tension, so that dreaded line that all writers fear – “the same thing, only different”. We eventually get it done, but just for future reference if you ever see the final film, that 45 second scene in the middle took longer to write than anything else.
MEETING IN PERSON
August 2009
We agree to meet at Arif’s house rather than Pinewood because it will save a trawl across London to Buckinghamshire. I am the only Irish person in the history of the world who ever turns up for anything on time, so I loiter on the corner lowering the tone of the neighbourhood and probably real estate prices as well. It’s good to meet Arif in person – in the great move if life, he would be played by Art Malik I think. Jess (Jessica has long ago become Jess) has not arrived, so we have a coffee and a wander around the garden. Apropos of nothing at all – am delighted to see that Arif’s garden has a “Winnie the Pooh’s thinking spot” something I would love to have in my own garden. Jess arrives. She would be played by Naomi Watts circa Mulholland Drive, I think.
We have the original draft of the script and the rewrites version. We go through the reworked version of the script, occasionally referring back to the first one.
There is a lot of spitballing back and forth. Both Jess and Arif have a great habit of not saying “I hate that, it has to go” but rather asking you what you think it’s purpose is, and forcing you to defend the choices you have made? What does this character get us? What does this scene get us? Let’s just take it as read that we were working on the heroes motivation (I had made him a Byronic hero – but perhaps he might be too Byronic – I should be making his character if not faster, certainly better and stronger) The heroine everyone seems okay with. Structure – act one still needs work. I write about five pages of notes, and then head back to the altar of the flashing cursor.
We agree to meet at Arif’s house rather than Pinewood because it will save a trawl across London to Buckinghamshire. I am the only Irish person in the history of the world who ever turns up for anything on time, so I loiter on the corner lowering the tone of the neighbourhood and probably real estate prices as well. It’s good to meet Arif in person – in the great move if life, he would be played by Art Malik I think. Jess (Jessica has long ago become Jess) has not arrived, so we have a coffee and a wander around the garden. Apropos of nothing at all – am delighted to see that Arif’s garden has a “Winnie the Pooh’s thinking spot” something I would love to have in my own garden. Jess arrives. She would be played by Naomi Watts circa Mulholland Drive, I think.
We have the original draft of the script and the rewrites version. We go through the reworked version of the script, occasionally referring back to the first one.
There is a lot of spitballing back and forth. Both Jess and Arif have a great habit of not saying “I hate that, it has to go” but rather asking you what you think it’s purpose is, and forcing you to defend the choices you have made? What does this character get us? What does this scene get us? Let’s just take it as read that we were working on the heroes motivation (I had made him a Byronic hero – but perhaps he might be too Byronic – I should be making his character if not faster, certainly better and stronger) The heroine everyone seems okay with. Structure – act one still needs work. I write about five pages of notes, and then head back to the altar of the flashing cursor.
FIRST REWRITE
August 2009.
I’ve sent over the redraft to Jessica and Arif.
In order to make this have any sense, I suppose I’d better give you a one line capsule summary of the film.
The adventures of a guy trying to make his pizza business a success.
Does that make you want to shell out eight quid at your local multiplex? Probably not, but I suck at loglines and I’m trying not to give away all the good stuff as Arif doesn’t want me to blow the whole plot on the Internet. I suppose he is imagining what would happen if Neil Jordan had a blog that said “and then it turns out that the chick in The Crying Game is really a man.”
OK, so have just spoken with Jess and Draft II was not quite the masterful revision that I hoped it was. Arif and Jess suggest that we have a meeting in person to go through everything line by line. She also sends me a scene breakdown which is basically a list of every scene, who is in it, what happens with a handy column for me to justify it’s inclusion. I take some time over this, but in some cases I can see where my arguments will be a tad wobbly.
I’ve sent over the redraft to Jessica and Arif.
In order to make this have any sense, I suppose I’d better give you a one line capsule summary of the film.
The adventures of a guy trying to make his pizza business a success.
Does that make you want to shell out eight quid at your local multiplex? Probably not, but I suck at loglines and I’m trying not to give away all the good stuff as Arif doesn’t want me to blow the whole plot on the Internet. I suppose he is imagining what would happen if Neil Jordan had a blog that said “and then it turns out that the chick in The Crying Game is really a man.”
OK, so have just spoken with Jess and Draft II was not quite the masterful revision that I hoped it was. Arif and Jess suggest that we have a meeting in person to go through everything line by line. She also sends me a scene breakdown which is basically a list of every scene, who is in it, what happens with a handy column for me to justify it’s inclusion. I take some time over this, but in some cases I can see where my arguments will be a tad wobbly.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
