the blog. (2013)

Revisit the 2013 edition of The Blog, where the CSSC celebrated fresh voices and cinematic risk-takers. From finalist spotlights to behind-the-scenes features, this year’s archive captures the spirit of short screenwriting excellence curated by #WW 2013 Laureate Zachary Herrmann.

The Blog > Archives > 2013

An Interview with Catherine R. Hardin – Winner of the 2013 CSSC

David Cormican

15 Aug 2013

DC: What’s your day job?
CRH: US Army Instructor

DC: Wow. So you must be a pretty disciplined writer with that kind of background. Do you have literary representation?
CRH: None, yet.

DC: Agents. Take note. And sign this writer up! So, what made you apply to the CSSC?
CRH: The Triumphant Death of Frank Bean was my first screenplay, so I wanted to float it around to a few contests and see how it did. I found the CSSC and thought it looked well run.

DC: Well thanks. Being that you are a just starting out exploring your voice, do you find that there is a theme to your writing(s) at this stage?
CRH: Not really. As a newer screenwriter I try to write everything. I may challenge myself to tell a story in a page, or if a concept scares me as a writer, I go after it and I write it. So, right now, I write everything but I tend to gravitate towards stories that show how we are all connected as people.

DC: That’s great advice to go after what scares you. I try to do that all the time. What made you write Frank Bean? Was your inspiration for writing it?
CRH: As I said, The Triumphant Death of Frank Bean was my first screenplay. I was learning the mechanics of screenplays while writing it. It started with one scene, and I more or less wrote from the inside out.

DC: Can you give the folks at home a quick synopsis of what it’s (Frank Bean) all about?
CRH: Frank (Bean) is a poor black man who lived in the South. His death affects people in three different stories. Essentially, it’s about how we are all connected as people. How we all matter, and are connected, regardless of race, gender, or wealth.

DC: What was writing it like for you? Walk us through your process, if you can.
CRH: I think it took me about three or four weeks. I wrote it while I was in Afghanistan over the Winter so I would write on my time off, wrapped in about 20 blankets, banging away on my keyboard with gloves and a hat. I was learning the format so I would write a bit, Google formatting, go back to writing, Google more, look at other scripts, and go back to writing.

DC: I find it so important to constantly be reading other people’s work and new scripts so that you can see what is being done and how it is being done. It’s curious to me to see some of the new ‘tricks’ in screenplays. I love how disciplined you were in your approach. But given your background, it’s not really all that surprizing. What has happened for you professionally, if anything, since applying to the CSSC and making it amongst the finalists and then… winning it all?
CRH: It’s given me a degree of validity among some producers and writers.

DC: That’s excellent. What is next for you?
CRH: Writing, staring at the whiteboard, writing, procrastinating, drinking enough coffee to kill a baby elephant, more writing.

DC: Ha. I hear you on that front. I know the secret to avoid writers block. And I guess I kind of did this instinctually some how already, but fellow writer Dennis Heaton (showrunning now on the CTV/ABC series Motive), that the trick is to be writing many different scripts all at the same time, so that when the writers block hits you, you can jump to one of the other scripts and pick up and have your brain and subconscious be solving the wall that you hit on the other one. And when you figure out how to get over/under/through that wall… you go back and continue writing that script. Would you enter the CSSC again? Why, or Why not?
CRH: Maybe. I like to challenge myself by writing shorts, but I’ve moved onto writing longer pieces. I’d enter the CSSC again if a short comes up that I think is right for it.

DC: Glad you’re moving on to feature length material. You’ve got a great voice and I think you write in layers that certainly lends itself to features writing. What advice do you have for other writers or for future competitors in the CSSC?
CRH: Tell a great story. First, and foremost, before anything else you have to tell a great story. Make every word count. Because in the end, nobody will care about anything else if the words don’t count.

DC: What is your favourite short film from this past year?
CRH: I don’t have one for this year but my all time favorite short is REVEILLE.

DC: I’ve seen that one. It’s an oldie but a goodie. I want to wrap things up by thanking you for sharing Frank Bean with the CSSC and for your time and answers today, but before we say goodbye to you… I like to end these intervies on an inspiring note by asking you: What is one quote that inspires you every time?

CRH: “You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true and also fierce you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. She was meant to be wooed and won by youth.” – W. Churchill

DC: Thanks Catherine!

Stretching for Writers

Zach Herrrmann

27 Feb 2013

Before I go any further with this post, I would like to acknowledge that my fifth grade history teacher showed the film pictured above – Roger Corman’s Pit and the Pendulum – to our class. I’d like to think it somehow tied in with a unit on the Spanish Inquisition. The guy had been teaching at the school for years and clearly had tenure, so I don’t think he really gave a shit whether or not showing a Corman film to a classroom of fifth graders had any (historical) educational value (Spoiler Alert: It doesn’t).

He had a reputation for being terribly boring (he was) and falling asleep in the back of the computer lab (he did), but in retrospect, I applaud his brazen decision to play the Corman film. Kudos sir.

Anyway, unfortunately, Corman and Edgar Allan Poe don’t really have the slightest to do with this week’s post. I wanted a picture still from a movie of someone getting stretched out on a torture rack, and sure enough, I got sucked into the black hole that is any Google Image search. The point was supposed to be “stretching,” so hold your breath folks, here comes another running analogy.

I hate to always bring back my equating of running and writing, but given that these are the two activities I pursue out of borderline-obsessive habit, it’s only natural for me to do so. However diligent I may be with regard to running (nearly) every day, ever since I stopped running competitively (high school), I’ve been terribly about stretching, before or after a run. In the balmy summer months, that’s less of an issue. But in the brittle winter months, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a little stiff. Usually I’m too tired to think on it for very long, but it takes me about a mile before I’ve adjusted the pace and motion I’m accustomed to.

Writing is not so different with respect to the idea of “stretching.” If you can come home after a long day (and/or evening or night) of work, and jump right into a draft, then hats off to you, you’re a freak… and I sincerely do mean that as a compliment. Most of us need time to decompress, or to amp our minds up, to get free and limber.

Ask any of my close friends, whether they’re writers or not, and they’ll tell you that the term “writer’s block” sets me off on a tirade, foaming at the mouth. There is so such thing as writer’s block. We all get stuck. Any project in any form – short, feature, play, prose, whatever – will present difficulties, whether you’re in the nitty gritty of writing a draft or just in the outlining or note-taking stage. This is inevitable, and again I will reiterate, we all get stuck.

The question is, what do you do when you get stuck? You have plenty of options. Anytime I’ve thrown in the towel, I know I’ve kidded myself by thinking that by reading or watching a film instead, I was somehow being productive. And of course there are worse things you could do when you get stuck (see F. Scott Fitzgerald, etc.). But one of the worst, in my book, is ascribing this moment of being stuck to a larger paralysis of the mind, i.e. writer’s block.

Lately, I’ve made a point of beginning every writing session with a bout of free-writing. I crank up the stereo (lately favoring the new My Bloody Valentine album as my go-to) and let fly the thoughts until I feel the bout leave me completely. It’s a wonderful tool for those stuck moments, you’d be shocked what nuggets you find buried in the troves of stream-of-conscious dribble. Even better, it’s a great way to stretch out the mind before diving into the material at hand.

–

Extrapolating on the idea of writing exercises, I’ve taken the exercises a step further, applying them to the rewriting of a feature film script. Without going on to much, it’s a work I’m co-writing, and after draft two, we’re at a play where we’re pulling together ideas for the next re-write.

While drafting up notes, I started to outline a few things that would be considered off-page – in other words, elements that are instrumental for the writers to better understand the characters and their motivations, but the sort of details that will probably never make it into the actual script. So far, I’ve written two brief prose pieces for two different characters; short illustrative narratives about their backgrounds.

By doing so, I think I at least helped to better define the world (and its history) in which the characters appear. I’m cheating, I’ll admit, in that we all agreed to sort of step back from the script for the week, which in obeying to the letter of the law, I’d say I have.

Even when you stray away from a writing piece – whether by choice or by feeling cornered in one of those stuck moments – there are ways to re-enter from a new angle. These short narrative pieces came from my free writing, and they add new dimensions to the story I never would have thought about.

To revisit the running metaphor, in training, the analogous scenario could be “tapering” before a race. Before a meet, usually late in a season, a runner cannot afford to be exhausted going into a race. Conversely, a runner certainly cannot afford to stop running altogether either – this would be far more detrimental.

The answer is to taper, or ease off the training a bit, while still continuing to run. I’m not suggesting a perfect analogy, because I don’t think it’s particularly beneficial for any writer to write less. But you can ease off a particular piece without ceasing to write. There are just as many outlets for writing as there are excuses not to write, to be blunt about it.

Modern Romance – The Sweet Smell of Psychosis

Zach Herrmann

20 Feb 2013

“You ever heard of a no-win situation?… You know, Vietnam, this.” – Albert Brooks (Modern Romance, from the opening break-up scene depicted above).

Piggybacking off of last week’s post on Blue Collar, I decided to go with another “How did they ever get this made/They’d never make this today” pick. This past Sunday, I caught a screening of Albert Brooks’ Modern Romance (1981), a delightfully cynical spin on the boilerplate love-conquers-all Hollywood comedy.

With little context provided (or needed), Brooks opens the film cold, leading into a break-up between Hollywood film editor Robert Cole (Brooks) and Fidelity banker Mary Harvard (Kathryn Harold). Cole’s equating of their relationship to the not-so-distant-then Vietnam War is, of course, hilariously overblown. The comparison is completely incongruous and, it would seem, unwarranted. But as Cole’s borderline psychotic behavior unfolds in the self-inflicted fallout – he instigates the break-up – the casual reference to Vietnam hints at a fitting (if still comically over-the-top) analogy: As the atrocities of Vietnam redefined the concept of war for the American public, the insanities in Cole’s admissions of “love” in Modern Romance re-contextualize the idea of courtship for the moviegoers.

Two large contributing factors shape Robert Cole as a character, and both are significant and not at all incidental. First, Cole’s occupation as a film editor. At one point, Mary suggests that Cole has gone through so many blips of Hollywood’s idealized (read: perverted) notions of romantic love, he can’t help but try (and fail) to apply these misguided notions to real life. There’s absolutely something to Mary’s suggestion, but it goes beyond that. Cole is an editor, and by nature, he obsessives over perfection. Whether or not Cole agrees with David, his hack director (played spot-on by James L. Brooks), the two men share a heightened sense for details. Cole doesn’t see the need for tweaking George Kennedy’s footsteps in post-production – the laughably bad space picture has so many apparent issues beyond the minute, fine cuts, what could the difference in footsteps make?

The irony, though, is Cole’s inability to apply this balance of detail v. larger picture to his relationship. He rationalizes every last bit of crazy behavior under the banner of his professed “love” – I use quotation marks, because Brooks depicts this “love” as an outgrowth of Cole’s ego and neuroses.

Which brings me back on track to the second aforementioned factor contributing to the development of Robert Cole: Brooks’ experience drawn from his work on the Taxi Driver set.* Cole quickly reveals himself to be something not so horribly far off from Taxi Driver‘s Travis Bickle. Though far more verbose than Bickle, Cole is no less disturbed in his thought process. His tendency hinges more toward mania, Bickle’s closer to depression.

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*Brooks has a relatively small role in Taxi Driver, but has spoken in interviews about hanging around set, soaking up whatever he could from Scorsese and cinematographer Michael Chapman.

Blue Collar – Anger and Clarity

Zach Herrmann

13 Feb 2013

This past Sunday, I cut into my designated writing time with the very noble cause of venturing out into the melting Brooklyn streets to catch Paul Schrader’s directorial debut, Blue Collar, as part of the current Richard Pryor retrospective at BAM Cinemas.

Getting to see the film at all (it doesn’t seem to be available on Netflix), in an excellent-looking archival 35mm print no less, was an incredible treat. Almost exactly four years ago, I read Patton Oswalt’s appreciation of the film for Ain’t It Cool News, and I’ve been hankering to see it ever since. After having seen Oswalt’s performance in Big Fan, it comes as no real surprise the actor/comedian holds Blue Collar in such high regard*.

As I was watching Blue Collar, I was immediately struck, as I am by the best of Schrader’s work, at the enviable dialogue. Schrader (along with his brother, co-writer Leonard) has such an incredible ear for the variety of working class dialects. Even up against (Paul) Schrader’s more widely-recognized scripts (I’m thinking specifically of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull), Blue Collar seems to me his most focused, his least showy.

There’s an air of anger hanging over the entire production – the visible Detroit smog appears to shrink the frame, closing in on the assembly line workers. Anger sings through, from the opening theme song, Captain Beefheart growling over the sampled factory sounds, guitars and metal plates, smashing together.

I’d hate to point fingers, but I remember a certain recent best picture winner that happens to share a name with a David Cronenberg film (and J.G. Ballard novel of the same name), that had an awkwardly stated thesis that went something like this:

“It’s the sense of touch… Any real city, you walk, you’re bumped, brush past people. In LA, no one touches you…. We’re always behind metal and glass. Think we miss that touch so much, we crash into each other just to feel something.”

Now, I’ve promised myself numerous times I wouldn’t waste time (and my blood pressure) going off on the film to which the above quote belongs (it’s Crash, if you haven’t figured that one out yet). But, in retrospect, more than the preachy, cloying script or the film’s terribly… hm, let’s say… over-simplified ideas on race relations, what bothers me most about Crash is that it’s all polite outrage and zero anger.

Blue Collar is anything but polite. The film starts out ugly and ends up a whole lot uglier. The angry energy is infectious, starting at the script level and exploding onto the screen, much thanks to a knockout performance from Richard Pryor.

Though the soundtrack largely favors the blues, I’ve been thinking of the film’s rhythms in terms of jazz. This probably has less to do with the film and more to do with the fact I can’t stop playing the Miles Davis Live in Europe 1969 set. Try and stick with me though, because I think it’s relevant.

By the end of 1968, moving into 1969, Davis and his Second Quintet (and the “Lost Quintet” featured on the 1969 set) were exploring new musical territory, experimenting with free jazz. My knowledge of jazz – despite a college internship with JazzTimes – is, unfortunately, limited. However I know what I like, and I believe my enjoyment for free jazz is not unlike my tolerance for noise rock. I can appreciate the free jazz or the noise only based on what comes before and after these stretches – the richness comes from the juxtaposition.

That’s what I see as the greatest success of the rhythms of Blue Collar – the quieter stretches are devastating in juxtaposition to the louder, angrier whole. Pyror’s performance is bottled lightening, but the actor’s finest moment comes in a lull.

After an orgiastic night of partying, Pyror, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto’s characters sit back in the aftershock of their excesses. Pyror covers his face, groaning in the cocaine come down as reaches a defining moment of clarity:

Sometimes I get so depressed. I start thinking about the shit I promised Carolyn and shit I ain’t never going to be able to do. And I know, a man is supposed to take care of his family… I never was good with money, man. I just fuckin’… always broke man. I just can’t fuckin’ get the knack of that shit. God knows I try to be…

Taken at face value, the prose isn’t nearly as grand as Travis Bickle’s “I am God’s lonely man” or Jake LaMotta’s recycling of On The Waterfront or his opening, rhyming monologue (“Give me a stage, where this bull here can rage”). It’s simpler, more honest and completely despairing. Pryor nails the read, a mix of self-realization and self-loathing.

His quiet is chilling, and more so than the explosive ending, it’s the bit that’s sticking with me.

–

*I can only assume Big Fan writer/director Robert D. Siegel has similar feelings for Blue Collar.

Fun and Games

Zach Herrmann

6 Feb 2013

Let’s have some fun.

One of my favorite classes in college was my first semester freshman year Intro to Poetry workshop. Lucky duck that I was*, I had placed out of the heinous English 101 requirement, and therefore, was free to take en elective instead.

My time in that class (and outside, reading and writing) has definitely aided me in screenwriting. Shaping the action of a screenplay or an exchange of dialogue is not unlike crafting a stanza, watching the interaction from line to line, transition to transition. Just as the cinematographers can learn a great deal from the painter, the screenwriter can learn from the poet.

Some of the best lessons I took from that poetry class weren’t even contained within the poems, or for that matter, the writing of my poems. Our teacher had us do a lot of free writing exercises. My favorite prompts were the guided writing exercises.

For example, a starting phrase: “Black cherry.” Each writer had to begin his or her poem with the prompted phrase. There was a time limit (five or ten minutes maybe?), and then time to share. It’s the sort of game (or exercise, if you prefer) I wish I did more often in relation to my screenwriting. Ideas don’t materialize out of nothing. Our best stories and plots, at least in theory, emanate from desires, concerns, preoccupations, obsessions, dreams, etc. Sometimes all you need is the entry point, which is exactly the sort of opening you hope to gain from juggling around your free-written ideas.

*I owe this “luck” entirely to my high school English curriculum and its wonderful teachers, who tore me down and built me up to be the writer I am today. No joke, I took my English composition education for granted until I went away to college and saw how privileged I had been.

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On an especially torturous round-trip on the subway, my brother taught me a game. And it’s a great one. Come up with a screenplay title, and then, let your collaborator work backwards and come out with the (extended) logline.

Once Around the Block

Up, Down or Weird?

Chrysanthemum Rex

Groping for Grayson

The Man from Sicklerville

Yes, some of these titles are awful and the movies we dreamed up were even worse. I refuse to give you any of the loglines, because let’s be honest, it’s much more interesting to imagine your own. We played the game for a while (there were quite a few delays going downtown), but at least one or two of the ideas we joked about could be further developed, if not into full blown features, then certainly into short film scripts.

I had someone ask me recently what I thought was my greatest strength as a writer – dialogue? Action? Scene description? Since that conversation, I’ve had more than plenty of time to come up with a well-reasoned answer… and, well, I still don’t have one. I do, however, know which part of the writing process gives me the most joy.

It’s the brainstorming, the kicking around of ideas until, there’s a shred. Then the shred becomes a character, or an inciting incident and, after months or years of work, the whole thing snowballs into the larger story. And to be honest, I’m not sure how much actual enjoyment I have by the time the “final” product sits on my desktop.**

The hashing-out process (we can agree “spit-balling” is sort of gross sounding) is the fun and games, and I’ve found the inverse to be true as well.

** Stray observation – when I wrote the word “desktop,” I definitely intended the word as a reference to saving the digital script file to my computer. Now that I go back over the word, I realize that when I do print out a script – especially a feature-length – the sense of accomplishment is far greater than when I simply export a .pdf file from Final Draft or Celtx. Obviously, that’s a lot of paper, so I try not to make a point of printing out a 95 – 120 page script to often.

On “Deserving” Subjects

Zach Herrmann

30 Jan 2013

Try as I might to move on from the topic, I keep using this space to come back to the idea of the sympathetic protagonist. This week is no exception.

One of the most useful pieces of writing advice I ever received was actually offered with respect to photography. My college photojournalism teacher reminded us that, no matter what the scenario, the photojournalist had a moral obligation to allow people (their subjects) to retain their dignity. To disregard this “moral obligation” would be one of the greatest failings imaginable for a writer.

Obviously the stakes are considerably higher when your “characters” are real people, as in journalism or documentary. I’ve thought a lot on this recently, and I think that’s why I end up disproportionately outraged and disgusted by the worst offerings of reality-TV, as opposed to whatever the equally awful scripted-TV equivalent would be.

Here Comes Honey Boo Boo (I confess, I’ve only seen snippets), or something of that nature, wouldn’t bother me nearly as much if it were just another lowest-common-denominator pleasing sitcom. Bresson* never re-used his non-actors (or “models” as he termed them) – he reasoned after they had gone in front of the camera once, any future appearance would designate them actors. So, the argument could certainly be made that reality-TV stars are, in fact, actors. I’ll stop myself before I get into some seriously self-righteous territory about the loss of innocence. Even as the lines blur between what is “unscripted” versus “scripted,” there’s something extra reprehensible to me about the mistreatment of the “characters” in the latter.

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I felt the above dashes were necessary to chop-up an unfortunately placed segue into Dragonslayer, a documentary film I still haven’t completely made up my mind on but certainly do not find morally bankrupt in any sense. Quite the opposite actually, as director Tristan Patterson is nothing if not gracious to his subject, skateboarder Josh “Skreech” Sandoval. I wouldn’t go as far as to call Dragonslayer a sympathetic portrait of Sandoval – a burned out prodigy, who spends his days partying and skating (but more often, partying) rather than caring for his newborn son.**

Slant Magazine‘s Nick Schager – a critic whose writing and opinions I hold in the highest regard – opened his review of Dragonslayer with the damning rhetorical, “Is Josh “Skreech” Sandoval the least deserving documentary subject ever?” Now, I don’t particularly agree with the hyperbolic opening, or Schager’s overall assessment of the film even. In fact, it’s not so much the question Schager asks that caught my attention, as it wasas the idea behind whether or not a subject is “deserving” of a documentary, or in the larger sense, a film of any sort.

I’ve twisted Schager’s initial question, since I’m sure the “deserving” part hinges on the “documentary” part. While watching Dragonslayer, I wondered whether I would have felt any differently if the film had been fictional, or at least partially fictionalized. Some of the skater characters brought me back to Matthew Porterfield’s Putty Hill, an ostensibly fictional/narrative film shot with non-professional actors in a style hemmed closely to a documentary. Porterfield even goes as far as to play the part of (off screen) interviewer, prompting his characters with questions.

Both films immerse themselves in their respective tight-knit communities, though each filmmaker takes a very different structural approach. The thought never occurred to me, while watching Putty Hill, whether or not these characters “deserved” to be subjects of the film in which they appeared. That’s not a backhanded knock on Schager, it’s an honest admission. Whether or not a character deserves to have his or her own film is a line of questioning that should be applied at the earliest stages of developing a script (or any piece of writing for that matter).

Putty Hill revolves around the characters connected to a deceased young man who died of a drug overdose. He’s already dead when the film begins – Putty Hill, therefore, is not about the deceased but about the community assembled around the funeral and how the death affects them. This particular deceased character may not have “deserved” his or her own film. Those around him certainly do, and so rather than focusing on a story of another trouble addict wasting away, Porterfield hyper-focuses Putty Hill on a place and the people who inhabit this place – those who left, those who yearn to leave and those who, by choice or by resignation, will always remain.

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*I’m going to hazard to say that I am the first (and god-willing, the last) writer to evoke the name of Robert Bresson in the same paragraph mentioning Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. If there’s such a thing as Blogger Heaven, surely I will not be permitted so much as a glimpse of its pearly gates.

**Sandoval does, on several documented occasions, take his son, Sid, out on day trips. The affection is genuine. And by the end of the film, Sandoval appears to be more of a presence in Sid’s life. However, the overall picture is not of a father stepping up to the occasion, so to speak.

Be Human, Be Merciless

Zach Herrmann

23 Jan 2013

With foolish prejudice (and no HBO subscription), I had avoided Lena Dunham’s Girls for too long.

I wrongfully assumed the series would be irksome, all the more so given my Brooklyn residence. This sort of Brooklyn-based geographical self-inflation mixed in with self-loathing (I’m guilty as anyone), it turns out, is actually a prevalent undercurrent to Girls; it’s one of the many reasons I instantly connected to the show, once I finally give in and binged on the entire first season.

I am very clearly the show’s demographic, and a not-so-distant neighbor to many of the show’s real-life iterations. These types sometimes get lumped in under the umbrella term “hipster,” but Girls locks into a very specific, Brooklyn cast of characters. I’ve heard the argument that despite the show’s obvious New York location, Girls lacks a true New Yorkness – essentially, the show could take place anywhere. It’s not an argument I buy into, though, given that anytime I venture out in the city, I find myself subjected myself to the Girls set.

Dunham’s wit and insight is razor sharp, not to mention her eye for simple, pleasing compositions and spot-on casting. Her real triumph, though, is her close attention (and contortion) of language. Her character Hannah Horvoth jokes about being “the voice of [her] generation” or, at least, “a voice of a generation.” However the joke may have been intended, Dunham does have legitimate claim to this “voice,” limited though it may be in its focus on struggling, urban-dwelling twentysomethings.

In her characterizations, Dunham is equally human and merciless in her depiction of the post-millennial graduating masses, who move from job to job, lover to lover, always looking for something. Though not as abrasive as The Comedy or as probing as Sophia Takal’s Green, Girls comes down hard on its subjects.

Dunham’s perception of her own generation (and mine) is incredible, given she doesn’t have the benefit of hindsight. Her gut reaction is to be, any critical writer should, both human and merciless to her characters.

–

The Color Wheel – the sophomore effort of writer/director/actor Alex Ross Perry and co-writer/co-star Carlen Altman – goes even further into the abyss of its characters’ faults. The co-writers star as brother and sister, respectively, and though the casting decision may very well have been pragmatic in terms of budgetary concerns, it lends a note of credibility.

Not unlike The Comedy, Girls and Green, The Color Wheel manages a competing pull-and-tag between compassion and disgust for its characters. These works all deal in the suffocating nature of a closed off urban existence.*

What all this amounts to, I’m not quite sure. As an urban-dweller living a somewhat admittedly closed off existence, these are ideas I’ve mused with and written about. It’s no easy task to look inward at how you are currently living your life, and strip it apart, bit by bit, rewarding though it may be if done with critical insight.**

*In Green, Takal transfers the suffocation of the cityscape to the country, so to speak (somewhere in Appalachia, I believe). It’s more about the mindset than the location, and it’s no coincidence that Takal opens the film in a stuffy New York party. ]

**I have no idea what sort of lives these filmmakers/actors are leading, but I imagine that either they have experienced these modern urban-anxieties, or know people close to them who have.

Django Unchained and “TV in public”

Zach Herrmann

9 Jan 2013

Without getting preachy and exhaustive in the same breath, I’m no big fan of “awards season.” As a kid (let’s say ballpark eight-to-twelve years old), I used to stay up and watch or listen to the awards shows.* Then I got older, and realized, there wasn’t much of a reason to put stock in this, or any other, awards show. Call it cynicism, or the product of a mildly-jaded upbringing, or hey, maybe we could call it maturation?

Regardless, the Oscars (and Golden Globes and Spirit Awards and various Guild awards, etc. etc. etc.) don’t do much for me.Having said that, I try to at least feign indifference. These dog-and-pony shows are what they are: a way for the industry to prop itself up.

However, I do not try nearly as hard to mask my distaste for the surrounding torrents of “For Your Consideration” type fanfare. High up on my shit-list would have to be The Hollywood Reporter, the trade publication that manages to advertise, cover and yes, review the products of the industry.

I generally avoid the awards season video roundtables like the plague – they’re not detestable, they’re just terribly innocuous. But occasionally, there’s an exception to prove the rule and this year Quentin Tarantino came forwardwith a substantive contribution to the ongoing discussion regarding (physical) film versus digital, and perhaps, something more even.

The pull quote THR selected from the link above pretty much says it all, in case you’re not in the mood for clicking around. Direct from Mr. QT:

I’ll probably just be a writer, write novels and write film literature and write film books and subtext film criticism. Part of the reason I’m feeling this way is because I can’t stand all of this digital stuff, this is not what I signed up for…

Now, in the past, I’ve made it a rule to never believe a word out of Tarantino’s mouth with regards to anything he’s developing. So, it should stand to reason, that I won’t hold him to his plans of retirement. The guy has a knack for hyperbole, and actually, it’s one of the qualities I most respect and enjoy in his work.

Like many children of the 1990s, my mind was blown when I first watched Pulp Fiction as a kid. Though I wasn’t as young as some – I had plenty of friends who caught Pulp Fiction while still in elementary school – at age 13, it made quite an impression. I’ll concede (or boast) that I was a fairly mature middle-schooler, but I honestly believe in the pell-mell violence and insanity of Pulp Fiction, children find something familiar. Pulp Fiction is, quite self-consciously, an adult’s cartoon of sorts – or a block of interrelated cartoons, really.

When I say that, as I grew older, Jackie Brown replaced Pulp Fiction as my favorite QT film, I don’t mean to suggest that happened out of a matured sensibility. I have not, and probably never will, outgrow Pulp Fiction. But tastes change, and when it comes down to it, I have a real affinity for the more traditional, classic Hollywood narrative style.

I forget where, exactly, QT first referred to Jackie Brown as his “Howard Hawks movie,” but the assessment rings true. And given the relative subtlety of the material within Tarantino oeuvre, it comes as no great shock that QT regards the film as his weakest effort.

Wherever I go, I find myself in the minority of QT fans when I voice my support for Jackie Brown as the crown jewel in his filmography. With that in mind, I wholly expected to be a bit turned off by QT’s latest, Django Unchained.

I can’t say I was disappointed, nor could I say I wasn’t entertained. My initial, gut reaction, though, was when of dismay. I turned to my brother, and said something to the effect of, “He just can’t help himself.” The word “self-indulgence” came up many times in the conversation. Though my brother didn’t completely agree – I’d say he enjoyed himself slightly more than I did – we both came to the conclusion that Tarantino’s best work was behind him.

In words far more eloquent than my own, Bilge Ebiri places Django in a far more constructive context, within the wider scope of Tarantino’s films. That a writer/critic appreciated what I could not didn’t surprise me. I felt myself in the minority on Inglorious Basterds, which I felt was sloppy, despite Tarantino’s irreverent gusto.

Ebiri’s reading of Tarantino’s work — Jackie Brown excepted, films of “fragmented” narrative that largely shirk feature-length story structure — helped me re-read what I had seen and not quite appreciated in Death Proof, Basterds and Django.

What I wrote off as sloppy editing in Django, Ebiri sees (correctly, I’d say) as a clash of Tarantino’s strengths (fragmented and/or episode storytelling) against his weaknesses (traditional feature-length storytelling, Jackie Brown being the exception). Especially with the financial success of Basterds and Django under his belt, Tarantino is in a position almost unparalleled in modern, popular cinema. He can do anything, it would seem, so long as he reigns in his running time – though it would appear he’s pushing closer and closer to the three-hour mark.

However I feel/felt about QT’s previous three films — all three I’m eager to re-watch and re-evaluate — I can’t help but feel what a horrible blow it would be to lose Tarantino as a film director. Even if that does mean his giving into what he deems “TV in public.”

The freedom (budgetary and creative) of powerhouses like HBO and Netflix have pulled in a great many filmmakers: Michael Mann, David Fincher, Todd Haynes and Jonathan Demme to spout off a few. I’m as curious as anyone to see what an unfettered six-hour Tarantino mini-series might look like.

Part of me wonders though, how much would his work lose in the translation from cinema to TV? There is no one quite like QT working in film. His writing breaks about every so-called rule in the book. His reverence for film history – equal bits high and lowbrow – is unparalleled. As Ebiri points out, his different films feel at times, like a condensed TV series (Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2), one-act plays (Reservoir Dogs), a mini-franchise (Death Proof) or a series of related episodic stories (Pulp Fiction and Inglorious Basterds).

I may not always love what he does, but I know we’re richer for having someone working in film with the critical and popular success constantly experimenting with form. Tarantino is as important to me now as he was years ago, when I was first discovering movie. For different reasons, but every bit as inspiring.

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*I never had a TV in my bedroom until I went away to college. However, I did have a clock-radio. So, as all the world did before the Academy Awards went televised in 1953, I often listened to (the final stretch of) the show in bed. On a radio. True story.

The 2013 Writers Resolution Pledge

Zach Herrmann

2 Jan 2013

Tuesday night, 2012 came and went – and along with it, the passing of the Canadian Short Screenplay’s “Final Deadline.” Lucky for any of you potential submitters who may have been holding for last second edits… or just plumb forgot amidst your merry-making, there is one last, “I-Missed-The-Deadline” deadline looking at the end of the month (January 31 at 11:59 PM PST).

With the quickly approaching deadline and the new year in mind, I decided to do what I told myself I wouldn’t do, and write up a new year’s writers resolution pledge. To be frank, I usually find this sort of thing hokey and wasteful. Those of us who are driven to write generally don’t need to remind ourselves to do so. It’s a compulsion.

But I can’t pretend that, sometimes, I do feel as if all that writing is being done in a vacuum – with little impact or consequence. It’s easy to be discouraged, and even easier to lose track of why we started writing in the first place.

Especially in the dead of winter – walking home in the dark, calculating how long I’ll be able to stay sharp enough to write after dinner that night.

So as always, this isn’t about you, the reader, so much as it’s about me and my need to re-state my purposes. Whether you’re eyeing that CSSC absolutely final deadline, or just writing for the sake of doing so, maybe there will be something to grasp onto.

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A Writer’s Pledge, New Year’s Day 2013

Be ruthless. Not in your dealings with other people, or your dealings with characters within a script or story. But be ruthless in the scrutiny of your own writing. Step away from each draft, and come back to it as if looking at the work of a stranger. As a journalism professor told me once, “It’s not your job to be cynical; it’s your job to be skeptical. There’s a great difference.” It may sound pessimistic, but identifying what you’re doing wrong in a script is far more important that what you’re doing right.

Be adventurous. Try different mediums (plays, poetry, essays, short prose). Learn to incorporate these different mediums and writing styles into your scriptwriting. Write without budget restraints or practicality in mind. Get weird, veer off into the nonsensical & absurd. Write monologues that cover a full script page. Break the three act structure. Meld genres. Defy convention, so long as the action can be rationalized by character. And then, probably, go back and realize how much you did utterly wrong, and recognize that’s okay. You’ll re-write everything 100 times anyway.

Be collaborative. Sooner or later, a screenwriter must collaborate, or else (s)he is not really writing for the screen at all. You need to decide who you are writing for – if the answer is “yourself,” then the editing process will be torturous and aimless. Though your own sensibilities and tastes should always guide you, feedback is essential. Expose your work to constructive criticism, and when necessary, work with a co-writer who complements what you do best. Personally, I’m always worried about structure & momentum. It’s a great relief to share the writing load with someone who is especially in-tune with those elements.

Be more thorough, less prolific. I don’t recommend this as “advice” for anyone other than myself. I know that nine times out of ten, I would be happier to abandon a feature-length script after the first draft to write another, new feature-length script. What happens? A hard drive full of first drafts – partially developed ideas in 95 – 110 page scripts. I occasionally go back and revise, sometimes a year or more later, but at this point, I know well enough that’s not the way to do things. If a script is worth laboring over 90-some odd pages and months of development, then it should be worth the time to properly edit and re-write.

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Wishing everyone a happy & productive 2013!

SHORT. IS. BETTER.

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