There is a place where great screenplays go to die. Dialogue that had been analyzed for days – three or four words that had been written and rewritten to get the feeling just right – can meet its gruesome death on the lips of an unprepared actor that wasn’t right for the role to begin with. That beautiful moment between the protagonist and his mother (a pivotal point in their relationship where they realize they can get along after all) dies in the arms of a gaffer who is also the assistant director and script supervisor and doesn’t know how to light a scene for shit. An emotional monologue meant to soften our views of a villain isn’t even given the chance to live because it seems the audio file was deleted when the stressed director/editor realizes he is out of memory and formats a hard drive prematurely.
While I’ve seen many screenplays that were terrible on their own before it hit the set of a student film, I find that even some of the best scripts I’ve read can suffer under the often stressful and hectic conditions of a student shoot.
So, when a student film comes out that was not only able to preserve the integrity of the original screenplay but goes so above and beyond that it should really no longer be labeled a student film, a nice round of applause isn’t really enough.
Adriano Valentini graduated from NYU’s undergraduate film program in 2008 – the same year he produced his short film, Clubscene, about a turning point in the life of twenty-something Montreal bartender, Gabe. I had the pleasure of reading the script before it went into production and held my breath in hopes that the shoot would do the script justice. Adriano turned out to be as good at directing as he is at writing and the movie went on to receive the Wasserman/King Finalist Award and NYU’s First Run Screenwriting Award the following year, allowing Adriano to present his film at the DGA Theater in Hollywood. He chose not to abandon the project upon graduation like many film students do and continued to work with the characters of Clubscene, releasing even shorter short films focusing on one character at a time – specifically “The Bartender” and “The Underager.” His hard work was rewarded with The Bartender becoming an official selection at the Brooklyn International Film Festival this year and becoming a finalist for The Chris Columbus/Richard Vague Fund to pursue directing a feature.
Perhaps it’s envy or perhaps it’s awe, but something was needling me and prompted me to find out what goes on in that brain of his. What set Adriano apart from the other students (myself included)? Below, we talk a little about inspiration, the writing process, cultural influences, and how the characters make the story: Read more »
When Doug Funnie wasn’t Doug Funnie, he was Smash Adams. When he wasn’t Smash Adams, he was Quailman. When he wasn’t Quailman, he was Durango Doug or Jack Bandit or Chameleon or Wafflestomper or Race Canyon.
Doug himself was the creation of Jim Jinkins who likened Doug to the middle-schoolers of the early 90s. He stated that Doug was a righteous albeit average middle-schooler and relied primarily on his imagination for entertainment. When Doug’s many alter egos were not being used for his amusement, he found that they came in handy for solving his middle-school issues. Oftentimes, he’d assign his problem or question to the alter ego most equipped to handle the situation.
Alter egos usually arise out of necessity. While Doug’s creations came mostly out of boredom, the insecure middle-schooler found he needed the guise of his more confident alter egos to execute the actions he himself was too afraid to do. Miley Stewart (Miley Cyrus’s character on her Disney TV Show, Hannah Montana) wants to live a “normal” teenaged life but makes a living as a teenybopper rock star – therefore, Hannah Montana is born. In comics, a secret identity was necessary for various superheroes to conceal their true self from evil villains and the adoring masses.
I’m willing to bet that you are at least two people. Read more »
A little over a decade ago, I was sitting in my junior high homeroom – furiously trying to finish the algebra homework I had forgotten to do the night before. As if my absolute ineptitude for mathematics wasn’t enough, I was very distracted by the cluster of kids in the corner talking about the mysterious letters they had received from a production company asking to use their homes as sets for a new HBO show called The Sopranos.
Like most suburban towns, the New Jersey suburb that I did most of my growing up in was (and arguably is) one of the most boring places to come of age. None of us understood how a television show could be entertaining if we were to be their setting. Later on we learned that The Sopranos was about Italian mobsters which was not a reality in our town at all. Our mobsters were Russian… which of course reminded us all of the day our middle school’s backyard became a helicopter landing pad when authorities learned that the body of Russian Olympic boxer, Sergei Kobozev (missing for nearly a decade) was dug up when a couple tried to put a pool in their backyard.
When I really think about it, my boring little Jersey suburb did see quite a bit of excitement over the course of the thirteen years that I lived there. However, whatever excitement existed is still diluted by a higher ratio of “reality” or days where nothing out of the ordinary occurred. Successful narrative television such as The Sopranos know not to show you the days where Tony Soprano is just chilling with a copy of The Star-Ledger in his backyard and various other narrative dramas boil down the occurrences of thirteen years into a single season to keep things compelling.
Around the same time that The Sopranos had begun their narrative journey, I happened to be chilling in my backyard with a copy of The Star-Ledger and noticed that their TV listings had a new genre color code. Now, among the likes of comedy, drama, news magazines, game shows and talk shows was what many of us had believed to be a passing trend: Reality TV. Read more »
I spent a lot of time on the couch and in front of the TV this past week and not because I’m unemployed (as was the case not so long ago). A week into being a happy working person again, I catch some mystery thing that “could be meningitis, could be the swine flu, or maybe pneumonia” (thanks, Doc – lots of help). As I struggled to recover what turned out to be one major asskicker of a flu, my stiff neck always managed to keep the remote just out of reach and I caught a helluva lot of commercials. Now, it’s been some time since I’ve viewed TV commercials in their natural form (despite my love for the ad world) – like most, I only ever see them because I had to catch something on Hulu or needed to YouTube an ad that was actually hilarious and needed to be watched again.
It’s not a secret or even a great observation to say that advertisers and marketers have borrowed from the art industry. Billboards, print ads, et cetera – that’s photography and graphic arts – things we can easily still call art in its most commercial form. Jingles are (let’s not forget) the work of a composer and maybe even a lyricist. And what about the snazzy slogans and zingy one-liners? Writing good copy takes a true talent with words – encompassing a product or service’s purpose and core in a single sentence is not an easy task.
So if advertising has already “taken” photography and fine arts from the art industry, is it that strange that poetry would one day find itself lurking in the ad world’s dark, dirty cells? Read more »
Who and what do you want to be in 2010 (but more importantly, why)?
Today is New Year’s Eve and like many people at this very moment, I’ve been thinking about my resolutions. I’ve shunned this tradition the past couple years because for some reason – if I clearly stated I was going to do something – the likelihood of it not happening was even higher than if I had not said anything at all.
I enjoyed a pretty successful first year out of college but like many, the recession soon found me and my hopes for steady work and monetary stability were knifed in the face. This year, I learned that “Freelancer” was just a glorified term for “Intermittently Unemployed.” Naturally, this leant me quite a bit of time to sit on my couch and stew in my own thoughts. It took awhile to boil down the carcass of my early twenty-something idealism, but at the end of 2009 I found myself with a rather flavorful confit of hope and aspirations. Since I wasn’t sure where to start, I asked a handful of friends what their personal resolutions would be. Most were pretty run-of-the-mill (you know, like “getting in shape” or “getting out of debt”) and I’m not really the biggest fan of run-of-the-mill. I was also set on making my resolutions concrete and more specific (you know, like “double the income I had in 2009” instead of “earn more money” or “master the Arabic language” instead of “learn new stuff”). My desire to prevent my resolution from being ill-defined was shot to death (wow, my writing is violent tonight) upon asking my friend Bryan what his resolution was going to be.
I examine his square face. He stands with a single arm outstretched, reaching out for something ever-changing. With his vacant eyes and through gritted teeth he inquires, “Meep?”
I am of course talking about The Lit Drift Robot who resides about a third of the way down our home page. If you’re a regular reader, you know that Robot just wants to learn how to love. “Meep?” he calls! “Meep?” he asks. “Meep?” he pleads. Though the word is unfamiliar to me, judging from his body language and the context of his statement, I can only assume meep to mean “Will you teach me? Will you take me under your wing? Is there hope for me?”
Rather than assume that I interpreted Robot’s statement correctly, I looked up the word meep online. According to Urban Dictionary, meep is a word of many meanings ranging from “an exclamation akin to ‘ouch’ or ‘uh oh’” to an exclamation that “can be used for any purpose whatsoever” or “sums up everything.” Its origins are believed to be of The Muppet Show’s Beaker.
Though a versatile word indeed, meep is not as commonly used as… let’s say, blurgh. Unlike the more flexible meep, blurgh has a negative connotation and is often used to express frustration or disdain. There is no real instance in which you can use the word in a positive manner. What’s craziest is that when you hear the word blurgh, there’s almost no question as to what it means. It’s not even really necessary to be a fan of 30 Rock to have a full understanding of its definition and application.
How is it that made-up words are sometimes so much more expressive than the real ones? Read more »
"Come over here, Sugar - and type me something sexy."
In my sophomore year at NYU, I was writing a feature screenplay that required two types of scenes that I had never written before – the fight sequence and the sex scene. Since I had less experience in the former, I decided to tackle it first (ha) and get it over with. The fight sequence turned out to be incredibly detailed. It was different, interesting and moved the story forward. I proudly brought it into class that week and we did a read-through of the scene. My predominantly red-blooded, action-movie-loving, male classmates really got into it. They physically reenacted the scenes and asked me if personal experience inspired any of it. I shared the story of the one fight I had ever been in: at thirteen, a girl slapped me across the face with a spoonful of ice cream to impress the boy she liked. Long story short, I won the fight and we were banned from our local Häagen-Dazs.
Armed with the confidence that my classmates had given me, I returned home to write what I thought was the easier half of the ordeal – the sex scene. After typing hours worth of blush-worthy, shuddery scenarios and being overly conscious that my classmates may associate what I wrote with my personal experience (or try to reenact it), I ultimately rejected it all and opted to have my characters simply enter a bedroom and shut the door. I know… I totally wussed out. I rationalized that implication and cliché was the way to go. A screenwriter or even a playwright writes with the knowledge that their work will be seen. If your actors are hot enough, who cares that the sex is clichéd?
So what does sex look like as a novelist? Read more »
Have zombies taught us nothing? Resurrection is just… never a good idea (unless of course you’re that guy whose resurrection resulted in the celebration of Easter).
Case in point: the musical television drama. If you didn’t know such a genre existed, it’s for good reason – these shows have incredibly short life spans and it really takes a very special person to stomach a single episode. In fact, I had pushed everything I’ve viewed of this genre into the same dark little closet in my brain that I keep bad break-ups and embarrassing moments. It wasn’t until a recent conversation I had with Julia that I remembered such a genre existed. Julia has quite a taste for the cop show genre. She (like many others these days) is also really into Glee, Fox network’s musical comedy. As a business school alumna, Julia understands the value of her time and doing things efficiently, thus pitched the idea of a musical cop drama so she and others with similar taste could save time by watching these two genres in one place. To her shock/horror/dismay/amusement, I told her that like most things in TV – it’s been done before.
Cop Rock. Yes, Cop Rock. If you’ve never heard of it before – it’s exactly what the title suggests. Hailed as one of the worst television shows of all time, Cop Rock’s greenlight continues to baffle us nearly two decades later (unless of course, you’re Peter Bowker and erroneously thought resurrecting the genre with Hugh Jackman may mean a better shot at success).
When Julia and I parted ways that night, we left the conversation with a lot of unanswered questions. Below is our iChat transcript of our attempt to wrap our minds around the existence of Cop Rock (with embedded videos for your viewing pleasure) and if or how this genre could succeed today: Read more »
I wore his shirt – crisp and fresh from the laundry basket as I hung my own rain-soaked clothes to dry. The conversation was sparse but the air was gravid with an intangible emotion. By the end of the day, we had not touched once and he saw me off at the door, wearing my own clothes again.
He was merely an acquaintance but years after that moment he still represents the most romantic day of my life. Those who know me know that I have trouble accepting traditional notions of romance and the labeling of anything as “romantic” is kind of a big deal for me. Guys I’ve dated can tell you that I have wrinkled my nose at their many attempts to be romantic. Guys I’ve dated can also tell you that my response to the first “I love you” is usually shoving something in my mouth that takes a really long time to chew. It’s something that I’ve always felt really bad about – especially as a writer. Falling in love is such a common theme in storytelling that the Anti-Romantic can really feel left out.
Over coffee with a friend earlier this week, we discussed the impracticality and inconvenience of falling in love. Science has found falling in love akin to mental illness so… yikes – what do I need that for? My friend and I conceded to the fact that like any common virus, lovesickness will find its way to us one day regardless of how ready we are for it. He added that the only thing we really have to fear regarding falling in love is if it were unrequited. Read more »
Fry finally finds the words to express himself to Leela via conversation heart
In my first semester of college, Facebook was known as The Facebook and was restricted to only a handful of universities. It had yet to include any of the schools my friends attended and was not at all the Facebook that we know today. There were no status updates, no photos, no wall and looking back now – I wonder how we made any use of it at all.
Because of this, my high school friends and I were forced to keep in touch via what is now kind of the old-fashioned way – mass email. I would come home from a full day of class to find a couple new emails in my inbox and I’d sit there scrolling through them one by one. Though I was filled with the frenetic energy that comes with that first year of freedom, these emails were soothing in its familiarity. My high school friends were almost all writers and/or actors so they had no trouble eloquently expressing themselves with their own distinct voices. I never really had to look at the email address or signature to know whose email I was reading.
However, there was one very extreme exception to the rule. One of these friends (let’s call him Frank) was our token quiet kid. Among the boisterous theatre geeks, he stood out with his reserved, buttoned-up demeanor. Frank spoke only when spoken to and he replied with the maximum of three squeaky words at a time. Strangely enough, Frank’s emails were solid pages of witty, lyrical compositions. Read more »
There is a place where great screenplays go to die. Dialogue that had been analyzed for days – three or four words that had been written and rewritten to get the feeling just right – can meet its gruesome death on the lips of an unprepared actor that wasn’t right for the role to begin with. That beautiful moment between the protagonist and his mother (a pivotal point in their relationship where they realize they can get along after all) dies in the arms of a gaffer who is also the assistant director and script supervisor and doesn’t know how to light a scene for shit. An emotional monologue meant to soften our views of a villain isn’t even given the chance to live because it seems the audio file was deleted when the stressed director/editor realizes he is out of memory and formats a hard drive prematurely.
When Doug Funnie wasn’t Doug Funnie, he was Smash Adams. When he wasn’t Smash Adams, he was Quailman. When he wasn’t Quailman, he was Durango Doug or Jack Bandit or Chameleon or Wafflestomper or Race Canyon.
Have zombies taught us nothing? Resurrection is just… never a good idea (unless of course you’re that guy whose resurrection resulted in the celebration of Easter).
I wore his shirt – crisp and fresh from the laundry basket as I hung my own rain-soaked clothes to dry. The conversation was sparse but the air was gravid with an intangible emotion. By the end of the day, we had not touched once and he saw me off at the door, wearing my own clothes again.
