Bumping Around The Blogs
Billy Mernit provides this cogent analysis of the newest rom-com release He’s Just Not That Into You:
HJNTIY’s thematic concerns are so ephemeral as to barely bear examination. There’s a stab at organization in there, reminiscent of When Harry Met Sally’s imitation of the Woody Allen oeuvre, where the title’s self-help theme is sounded in a title card (e.g. “…if he’s not calling you,”), followed by a faux “real person” interview on the topic. And certainly the spine of the thing is embodied in the story line featuring Ginnifer Goodwin and Justin Long: Goodwin is the girl who needs to be taught the meaning of the title’s lesson.
As to the grab-bag of story lines surrounding hers, the ultimate meaning of it all is pretty damn fuzzy. There’s something in here, as the various couples do or don’t work through their various romantic issues, about women needing to shed their illusions on the one hand, and stand up for themselves on the other, but it’s tough to sort out. That’s mainly because despite the many winning actors on display here, there really aren’t any characters.
Speaking of romance, Christian Toto provides his five top romantic moments just in time for Valentine’s Day. Here’s #1:
“Say Anything” — Tie: the couple’s first lovemaking scene: Lloyd’s crazy dance in the street after his first date with Diane. Utterly personal here. Wasn’t quite sure what love was truly all about until I saw a young John Cusack shaking with nerves, and anticipation, seconds before he consumated his relationship with Diane, the bookworm beauty. And does anything capture the giddiness of a spectacular first date than Lloyd’s impromptu street shuffle early in their courtship?
John August addresses a question that can prove vexing for a screenwriter: Which project should I write?, ending with this good advice:
If you have four ideas, all equally viable, I’d recommend writing the one that has the best ending. That’s the one you’ve thought through the most, and the one you’re least likely to abandon midway. But whatever you do, just pick one and write it without delay. If you have great ideas for your other projects, absolutely take some notes, but don’t switch. Finish what you’re doing, or you’ll have a folder full of first acts.
Patrick Goldstein considers a recent Slate piece in which the author (Ron Rosenbaum) puts forth the idea that The Reader is “The Worst Holocaust Film Ever Made”:
Rosenbaum was especially appalled by a recent N.Y. Times report on the state of the Oscar race that ran a glamorous photo of Winslet above the headline “Films About Personal Triumphs Resonate with Viewers During Awards Season.”
Noting that Winslet, as a death-camp guard in the film, was personally involved with the gruesome deaths of 300 Jewish women locked in a burning church, Rosenbaum asks: “What, exactly, was the Kate Winslet character’s ‘personal triumph’? That … she taught herself to read? What a heartwarming fable about the wonders of literacy and its ability to improve the life of an Auschwitz mass murderer!”
And Todd Alcott provides a Screenwriting 101 lesson on “The Pitch”:
What does one pitch? Generally speaking, what the money people want to see is the poster, and then they want to see the trailer, and then they want to hear enough about the characters to get the general dramatic shape of the narrative, and then they want to hear how it all turns out. They want to hear some killer set pieces and a handful of the jokes. If you tell them the whole story they’ll get confused and distracted by minutiae. Now then, that doesn’t mean that the writer can prepare only the broad overview — no, the writer must prepare the entire narrative, so that when Junior Executive says “wait, how does Luke get from Tatooine to the Death Star?” the writer can say “Ah! That’s the great part! There’s this smuggler guy with a broken-down ship who takes him to see the princess, but the princess’s planet has exploded!” and so forth.
The problem is, there are always politics in the room that the writer doesn’t know about. The canny writer tries to find out about the politics in the room before the meeting starts, and the excellent representative will inform the writer about the politics in the room before the meeting starts, but lots of times this isn’t possible and the writer walks into an ambush, a situation where an executive is mad at a producer, or vice versa, or an executive is trying to gain leverage over another executive, and the pitch is a pawn in some power game that the writer has no control over. And, well, that sucks, but doesn’t necessarily reflect poorly on the writer.
Blog on!