Bumping around the blogs
Alex Epstein at Complications Ensue.com reviews the book “Small Screen, Big Picture” by TV veteran Chad Gervich:
I’ve been dipping into Chad Gervich’s book SMALL SCREEN, BIG PICTURE. It’s a really complete look at how the TV business works. There’s quite a bit on spec scripts and how to get people to read them, but it also covers things like video village, upfronts, production schedules, back nine, deficit financing and POD deals. If you want to know how the TV biz works, soup to nuts, this is a great resource. There’s almost too much information to actually use, but that’s why you keep the book on your shelf: what do I do now I’ve got a PA job again?
Mick the webmaster at Being Charlie Kaufman.com posts about an analysis of Kaufman movies entitled “Out Of His Head: Metaphysical Escape Attempts in the Screenplays of Charlie Kaufman.” Here’s a quote:
For all their elaborate whimsy and genre-defying caprice, there is one constant in Kaufman’s various film phantasmagoria: his concern with a specific type of protagonist.
[In] a way Joel is maybe a stand-in for me, you know? And maybe can be likened to Craig and Charlie in those other scripts that I wrote. . . . I do tend to write a certain kind of guy . . . . It’s the only thing I can really do kind of, um, honestly. (cited in Feld, 2004, 136)
Nebbish, cerebral, sensitive, and painfully introverted, the Kaufman surrogate is not a happy guy. His psychological trajectory is not the classical Hollywood heroic arc wherein he achieves love, knowledge, and/or worldly success.
The original essay by Colm O’Shea is here. A good read.
Christian Toto at What Would Toto Watch.com offers a good review of the recent release Taken:
Frankly, if every ’80s actioner had been this impeccably paced, the genre wouldn’t have run out of steam like it did.
Vince at Film Drunk.com tells us that Mickey Rourke’s chihuahua has died:
And yes, Mickey Rourke named his chihuahua after a mischievous norse God, which is just one of the many reasons that Mickey Rourke is f-ing awesome. Though if I’m honest, up until now the awesomeness was probably a good 30% pet chihuahua. He will be missed.
John August provides a great example of a “high concept”:
Will Clark is set to direct “Pride and Predator,” which veers from the traditional period costume drama when an alien crash lands and begins to butcher the mannered protags, who suddenly have more than marriage and inheritance to worry about.
Not every high-concept idea is a mash-up, but every mash-up is inherently high-concept: the premise is the reason it exists. That doesn’t make it good or worthy or successful, but it’s easily summarized.
Lee Goldberg at A Writer’s Life.com compares contemporary TV shows — Galactica and Terminator — to older shows and finds the new ones lacking:
I love (or, I should say, loved) GALACTICA and TERMINATOR…but Captain Adama and Starbuck, Sarah Connor and John Connor….in the end, they aren’t memorable characters. They feel like writerly constructs. Pain masquerading as character. They don’t live and breath the way Lt. Columbo, Tony Soprano, Archie Bunker, Adrian Monk, Al Swearingen, Mr. Spock, Mary Richards, Matt Dillon, George Costanza, or even Dexter Morgan do, to name a few. Because despite all of the dark, angst-ridden conflicts that the writers have created for them, the characters on GALACTICA and TERMINATOR are incessantly one-note: Miserable. And too often than not, they leave the viewer feeling the same way.
And Julie at The Rouge Wave.com reminds writers about the importance of tone:
A reader can tell when there’s problems with the tone when they suddenly realize they aren’t sure how they are suppposed to be feeling. That realization could happen on page five, it could happen on page sixty-two. But it happens. Confusion sets in. I know that sounds almost too casual a reflection to point to and yet — it is the best way I can articulate the gut-feeling a reader gets when the tone is a problem. Is this — funny? Is this — scary? Should I be laughing here? I’m not sure. Houston — we have a problem.
Blog on.
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