Category: writing

So someone wrote to the Observer suggesting–in the nicest, possible way, really. really–that maybe it’s your “yucky” outfit. Maybe the expensively groomed people you’re covering aren’t recoiling at your little tape recorders, dear Observers, but at your obvious lack of style. Why not dress like the people you report on? It can only help loosen their finely lined lips. “Or, you know, you could bring back Candace B. :)”
Whoever wrote that, I hope you meet George Gurley after too many mojitos. Because in Choire’s now-Daily Transom, not only have they brought back Candace B., but this time, she can actually write.

Used to be when Roger Avary was the only screenwriter with a weblog. No more. Here are three other screenwriters’ blogs that are well worth reading:

JohnAugust.com: In addition to film credits such as Go, Big Fish, and the upcoming remake of Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, August answered script-related questions for years on imdb’s message forums. His weblog consolidates all these resources into one, happy spot.

The Artful Writer, by co-authors Craig Mazin and Ted Elliott, strikes a very serious-sounding note by focusing on “information, theory, and debate for the professional television and film writer.” One recent post, though, is an insightful and entertaining glossary of comedy writing terms [part I, part II], developed by the Zucker brothers and Jim Abraham to help “explain to each other why we’re wrong.”

Meanwhile, John Rogers (from Cosby to Catwoman has been assembling an excellent collection of comedy writing jargon, too, at his blog, Kung Fu Monkey.

Venezuelan president (who’s working on the “for-life” part)Hugo Chavez is distributing 1 million free copies of Don Quixote to his countrymen as part of a nationwide literacy campaign based on a Cuban model.
According to the BBC, Chavez called for his pueblos to, “feed ourselves once again with that spirit of a fighter who went out to undo injustices and fix the world.” And who was bat-guano crazy. Good luck with that.

Venezuela celebrates Quixote book [BBC via robotwisdom]

First Jim Taylor and his writing partner Alexander Payne spoke at MoMA as part of the museum’s Great Collaborations series, then Jim Taylor and his wifing partner Tamara Jenkins spoke at MoMA about their collaborative, parallel screenwriting/moviemaking as part of Leonard Lopate’s 20th Anniversary show for WNYC.
From now until the end of the year, Jim Taylor will be appearing weekdays from 2-5pm at MoMA in the Titus Theatre. Which will now be renamed the Taylor Theater. He will become MoMA’s answer to Celine Dion or Siegfried & Roy. He will read your scripts and give you helpful coverage. He will not, however, introduce you to Amanda Peet, no matter how nicely you ask. His act involves no tigers.
All this is just a rambling excuse for posting about a show I heard repeated on the radio this afternoon, but for which I can’t find an archived audio link. Hope you were duly entertained.
Behind the Screen, The Leonard Lopate Show [wnyc.org]
Previously: Night of a thousand film geeks [greg.org]

[John Patrick] Shanley, whose screenplay for Moonstruck won an Oscar in 1988, received the drama Pulitzer for “Doubt,” his Broadway debut. “I have been trawling around for a long time before they let me come up out of the muck.”

Other credits include: the adaptation of Michael Crichton’s Congo; another Frank Marshall film, Alive!; and 1990 writer/director gig he cashed in his Oscar for, Joe Versus the Volcano*.
Shanley, Robinson Win Pulitzers in Writing [yahoo news, via waxy]
* Which is a classic, I’m sure, and would we ever have had Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan together in Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail if it weren’t for JvtV? I don’t even want to think.

What with all the access preserving, the source stroking and the advertiser cultivating going on, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at the utter lack of real context or actual reporting when it comes to fashion.
Stories about Helmut Lang’s split with Prada dutifully transcribe Patrizio Bertelli’s party line about how unprofitable Lang’s line had become, thanks to his “reputation for being stubborn, refusing to work with fabrics or techniques he deemed inferior even if lower costs would help the bottom line.” Meanwhile, Bertelli, who has clashes with any designer not his wife, is “an intense and uncompromising businessman dedicated to improving the performance of the brands Prada acquired.”
The magic formula, of course, was–and still supposedly is–high-margin accessories and fragrances. Um, yeah, but that’s the same story Prada was telling when they bought control of Helmut Lang’s business six years ago. And didn’t I buy Helmut Lang fragrances several times in a Helmut Lang Fragrance Store across Greene St from the original boutique?
These multi-luxury brand companies are managed like portfolios, with their different brands positioned to complement and offset each other. Problems arise when these brands are highly correllated, and they end up competing instead. That can throw a portfolio’s performance out of whack.
By buying Jil Sander and Helmut Lang, Bertelli wasn’t just expanding the reach of Prada’s empire; he was co-opting any potential rivals for Miuccia’s own throne. If Lang’s sales suffered under Prada management, maybe it’s because they forced his brand down market and out of direct competition with Prada both on price and quality. After the 1999 deal, Lang’s clothes dropped 20-30% in price, but the quality easily dropped in half, especially on the menswear side. I tried for a couple of seasons to keep buying his suits, but they just sucked. Lang had been transformed into basically a Prada bridge line, Prada University Club. The kicker, of course, was that even though it cost more, Prada’s menswear also sucked, thanks to Bertelli’s commitment to the bottom line.]
Given Bertelli’s evident management biases and track record, is it any wonder about why Prada has such a hard time going public? Damn, but that company pisses me off.
Helmut Lang to split from Prada [IHT]
Question for Prada: Now What? [NYT]

When Richard Hatch of Survivor fame [sic] got busted for failing to report his $1 million prize to the IRS, my mind raced back to some of the first tax advice I ever heard:

You.. can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You say.. “Steve.. how can I be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes?” First.. get a million dollars. Now.. you say, “Steve.. what do I say to the tax man when he comes to my door and says, ‘You.. have never paid taxes’?” Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language: “I forgot!”

The title of this post pays homage to Mr. Hatch’s previous appearance on this website, which is hella funny.
Richard Hatch Hit With Tax Evasion Rap [thesmokinggun.com, via towleroad]
Steve Martin’s Monologe [snl transcripts]

The shows are almost entirely presented as direct addresses, and the actors will often talk to one another between plays, using one another’s real names. Every performance of “Too Much Light” begins like a political stump speech: someone stands up, looks at the audience and says, “We’re not going to lie to you.”
Rob Neill, the managing director of the New York branch, said: “There’s not a lot of pretense in what we do. We’re not playing characters. We’re relating things we feel and stories from our lives.”
Since cast members build shows around their own break-ups, feelings of depression or idiosyncratic theories about life, the show can occasionally feel like a clever and deeply felt blog performed onstage.

“Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind,” the long-running production by the Neo-Futurists of Chicago (whose founder, Greg Allen, ‘wrote’ the original) has returned to New York City. The show plays at the Belt Theater,336 West 37th Street.
Don’t Blink: You May Miss The Show [NYT]

“As we discussed Beth’s bizarre ability to speak the Klingon language, it suddenly hit us: Why not translate the Book of Mormon into Klingon? It was just quirky enough to be interesting. So Beth whipped out her two volumes of the Klingon Dictionary and James pulled out his scriptures and we set to work.”
The Book of Mormon, translated into Klingon.

There are some habits that are hard to break. For example, when I get lost driving, it’s usually because I’ve exited or turned too early, not too late.
In writing, meanwhile, my tendency is to overwrite. Reading back through scripts I’ve shot–those’d be Souvenir installments at this point–I find they lay absolutely everything out, with no insinuations or hints.
But then when I look at the footage, I see I’ve corrected for that, but then I still overshoot. I cover nearly the entire script, but with more restraint, more naturalism, less intentionality than the script contains.
It’s only when I edit that things get pared down, cut back, cease to be so didactic, almost, or overly melodramatic. I remember, for example, listening to some raw Bjork song while writing, thinking of it as the soundtrack while shooting, and then being repulsed by it during editing, where we replaced it with an almost-silent ambient drone.
I’m reminded of this because I turned in a draft for an off-site writing gig yesterday that was easily 2.5 times longer than I knew the final product would be. Which left my poor editor to crank on it in a day and give me back a version that’s only 25% too long, I’m guessing.
I feel/cause your pain.

Over at TMN, “Rick Paulas has tips for turning your art-house script into big money.” The future? In one word: product placement.
Of course, unlike, say, American Pyscho, which placed so many products it could’ve been a Bond film, [wait, didn’t American Psycho come first, so the era of Total Bond Sellout could’ve been a Bret Easton Ellis novel? But I digress.] Anyway, Paulas’s “art house script” sample sounds suspiciously–and promisingly–like a spec script for CSI.
I think this boy’s got a hi-res future, Wednesdays at 9.

Using Product Placement In Your Serial Killer Script [TMN]

That whole “Canadian Flags On Backpacks” craze is so 2003.
If you’re gonna be all embarassed by American folly and all weary of explaining the Bush administration to every foreigner you meet, at least try to look like you’ve been doing it for a couple of years already.
Uh-oh, Canada: unpacking the CFOB phenomenon [feb. 2003]
Tom Ford and Matthew Barney on CFOB

So I’ve been writing a few pieces for The New York Times lately, which is great, but I can’t read them. Or almost any stories at the nytimes.com site, for that matter. Whenever I click on a NYT link, the login screen pops up, then refuses to log me in because my browser (Mozilla) doesn’t accept cookies.
The problem first popped up [sic] a few months ago when the Times hired a Utah research/survey firm to monitor user activity via their own cookies, which were rejected by my Moz “accept cookies only from the originating server” restrictions.
But lately, even after I thought I’d already laid back and thought of England, cookie-wise, I’ve still been rejected. Turns out that I still had the “cookies expire after 90 days” setting , and the Times wanted to place one 6-month, three 1-year, and one 10-year cookie in my browser.
To which I can only say, “Um, yes ma’am?”

a couple of the things I would’ve missed had I not actually read the printed version of the Sunday Times:

In her interview at Cannes, a thoroughly justified Manohla Dargis somehow manages to not point out to Jean-Luc Godard that, if it weren’t for America, he’d be busting on Abbas Kiarostami in German right now. [Plus, how do you interpret the karmic justice that, someday Michael Moore will look like Godard looks now?]

A.O. Scott cannily unpacks the audience for Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge [“But in New York!”] Chanel No. 5 commercial, without pointing out that the allegedly cutting edge Karl Lagerfeld ordered up a remake of a 3-year old movie (which itself was seven years in the making). Methinks those 40 iPods are somehow full of one soundtrack.

Is the “O Holy Night” mp3 discussed in the “Best of the Very Worst” music story really “said to be Adam Sandler” by many? Or just by the people who don’t know the Eric Cartman version?

The artist/filmmaker Alfred Leslie (who inspired Jonas Mekas, who founded Anthology) collaborated on a 14-min. film in 1964 called, The Last Clean Shirt. It was a one-shot of a couple in a car, played three times. Three Leslie friends, O’Hara, Jackson Pollock, and David Smith, all died in car accidents. [Two of them after 1964, btw.]

Choire’s weekly full page [!] is Times Out.

It’s about time someone reviews the Eisner-Ovitz courtroom drama as drama. Bruce Weber wonders if it isn’t Shakespearean.

Pepe Fanjul keeps the family tradition of exploiting sugarfield workers alive, even after fleeing Cuba for Palm Beach. But this story is about tracking down a painting his family was forced to leave behind, which turned up for sale in Switzerland. Making a cameo: Fanjul’s “old friend, Ms. [Katherine] Harris.” Before breaking bread at Casa Fanjul, go watch H-2 Worker.

So now some guy’s drinking only Pepsi for 45 days and blogging about it?
45 days? Call me when you get to three years, pal.
This entry, like the 1425 before it, was brought to you by Diet Coke. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to pee. Again.