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 »

What happened to patient 67? An abstract plot twist, that's what.

I don’t know if anyone really noticed, but the advertising campaign for Scorsese’s latest joint, the misty Shutter Island, was built around the film’s “shocking twist ending.” This was interesting to me — instead of advertising the cast or the director, or flashing a bunch of positive reviews, most of the ads for this flick I saw seemed to hint at some genius plot twist, something so mind-bending that I had to go experience it for my self. So I did. And although I thought the ending was actually kind of obvious, it did get me thinking about other famous plot twists that screenwriters have employed over the years.

First though, what separates a good twist ending from a gimmicky or contrived deus ex machina? Not much really. I think a good twist ending should illuminate everything that we’ve seen so far not only in a new way, but also in a way that resonates with the theme of what we’re watching. We should want to mentally race through what we’ve just seen, ascribing new significance to everything. We should be Totally. Freaked. Out. But the ending should also never, ever feel forced or non-sensical; then, the emotion the viewer is left with is not surprise or amazement but anger, anger that they’ve just wasted two hours of their life. (The Wikipedia entry on plot twists is actually really interesting, in that it classifies the different official names for each iteration.) Anyways, here are some of my favorite plot twists: Read more »

How do you turn a ten sentence book into a 94 minute movie?

So, at this point I’m sure that many of you have checked out Spike Jonzes’ Where The Wild Things Are. While this film has certainly polarized audiences, I hope that at least one thing we can all agree on is that adapting a ten-sentence book into a feature length film would be incredibly hard. And while I think that the team of David Eggers and Spike Jones ultimately did a good job in preserving the feel of the original Where the Wild Things Are, their movie got me thinking about the challenges implicit in turning unconventional books into successful films. Here are, in my mind, some successful adaptations of incredibly challenging source material:

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