Chris Rock & Adult Movies

“Most parts in comedy, they’re not written for men. They’re written for, like, boy-men. So it’s cool to play a man-man. They don’t make adult movies anymore. Go to a multiplex. If Sydney Pollack was around today, he’d be directing episodes of True Blood.“
Chris Rock on the film 2 Days in New York
New York Times Q & A with Dave Itzkoff
August 5, 2012

If you’d like to emulate  Sydney Pollack (Out of Africa, Absence of Malice) , Sidney Lumet (The Verdict, 12 Angry Men) , or even Sydney Greenstreet (Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon)—those kinds of “adult movies”— and you’re not an A-list screenwriter or director getting ofters to write or direct movies like Moneyball then small independent films is your haven—or cable TV.

Related Posts:
Writing and Directing “Out of Africa”
Screenwriting Quote #162 (Billy Ray)

Scott W. Smith

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Writing Killer Screenplays

“Unless you’re trapped on an airplane or enjoying movie night at the penitentiary, you have no excuse for watching Killers.”
Jeanette Catsoulis
New York Times

Reading the reviews of the new Ashton Kutcher/Kathrine Heigl film Killers is a little like watching a boxing match where one boxer is delivering one punishing blow after another and you just want the defenseless boxer to drop and end the bloodbath. I’m sure Killers is not the first film on Rotten Tomatoes to get a 0% from top critics…but it’s the first I’ve ever seen.

No need to rehash the reviews except to say they all generally agree with the New York Times evaluation; “A brain-deadening collision of high concept and low standards. The Consensus: “Dull, formulaic, and chemistry-free, Killers is an action/comedy that’s largely bereft of thrills or laughs.”

Here’s the good news for screenwriters—it got made. And it got made with two name actors. I know that may not be inspirational to you at first glance, but trust me it is good news. And it’s good news for a few reasons.(Beyond the salaries that were covered in the $75 million budget.)

#1) Everyone knows how the statistics are stacked against screenwriters. There are upwards of 50,000 scripts written every year and only about 500 feature films produced. (And keep in mind that means that there are 49,500 scripts rolling over into the slush pile every year.) So the screenwriting gurus tell you that your film has to be perfect to get made. No it doesn’t. It just needs to be as good as Killers.

Sure, everyone wants to write the next Chinatown. Sure, it’s good to study Chinatown. But the gold is in Killers. That’s the poster you should have above your computer where you write. That’s the film that should give you hope for the screenplay you are currently writing. Killers is the film that should take your mind off of oil currently pumping into the Gulf of Mexico, it’s the film that keeps you up late writing your script–and makes you wake up early to continue writing.

Because Killers is the film that makes you scream, “Dammit, I can do better than that!”

#2) Killers is also an example of a screenwriter who just keeps plugging away. The original story and script was written by Bob DeRosa who comes from my old stomping grounds in Florida. I’ve never met DeRosa but he comes from Orlando and is one of the survivors of Hollywood East back in the 90s. He wrote his first short story when he was 6, made videos and wrote scripts as a student at the University of Florida. He spent ten years working with an improv group, worked on commercials and corporate projects, and as an assistant programmer for the Florida Film Festival (during The Blair Witch Project glory days).  All the while writing scripts, watching films, meeting people and learning the business.

When he was 31 he moved to L.A. and basically started over with the help of manager/producer Christopher S. Pratt (also from Orlando).

“There were some pretty lean times. There were those big gaps between the jobs, and I was floating myself on credit cards. Then I’d get the next job, but I’d be scared to pay off the credit cards because I needed the money to live for the next eight months. It was a very precarious six years.”
Bob DeRosa
Interview with Jim Cirile

DeRosa ended up landing some studio writing gigs based on some spec scripts and eventually had the script The Air I Breath produced (written along with director Jieho Lee). In 2006, he wrote the script Five Killers and with the help of Pratt landed a big studio deal just before the writer’s strike. Credit cards finally paid off.

DeRosa was stoked when Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat came out and made some revisions based on it.  A top comic director (Robert Luketic/Legally Blonde) was attached to the script, and a top screenwriter (Ted Griffin/Oceans 11) was brought in to amp up the movie that became Killers. And yet here we are staring down the barrel of a big fat 0%.

At least, DeRosa can say (not that he has) “they took me off the picture and ruined my script.” (But that wouldn’t be the first time or last time that happens to a writer.) I will vote DeRosa’s title Five Killers is more intriguing than Killers. (And even with that 0% it still came in third this weekend at the box office pulling in almost $16 million. It doesn’t hurt that the Iowa born and raised Kutcher has over 5 million Twitter followers. But that film still has a long way to go to recoup its costs.)

All that to say that DeRosa’s long and winding road to paying off his bills and getting a studio script made should be of inspiration to you. On his blog he has a post written back in January of ’09 called How I Write a Spec Screenplay that’s a good read. And just to keep this all in perspective, despite the reviews, DeRosa is living the dream.

#3) Lastly, maybe, just maybe, Killers will be the film that makes some Hollywood studio executive reflect on the kind of films studios are making. Just long enough for him or her to walk over to a window in their office, open it and, in the tradition of Howard Beale in Network, yell out— “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

And, just maybe, we’ll all look back as that being the day that changed the kind of movies that got made. Don’t hold your breath. But do keep writing that killer screenplay you’ve been working on.

Related posts:
Screenwriter’s Work Ethic
Screenwriting from Florida
Jack Kerouac in Orlando
St. Pete Screenwriter (Michael France)
Screenwriting & Florida Surfing

Scott W. Smith

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Vincent Laforet (part 1)

“The truth is – our way of doing things – not only the way we gather our content, but also the way we package, deliver and the way we expect to be remunerated for that work – is being shattered by a variety of internal and external forces that simply aren’t going to go away.”
Photographer/Filmmaker  Vincent Laforet

If you’ve never heard the name Vincent Laforet—welcome to the future. Three years ago Laforet walked away from a staff photographer position at the New York Times. He says that, “One colleague actually called me ‘stupid.’” But he walked away because he saw the writing on the wall. The newspaper and magazine business was being forever changed. As newspapers began to fold and downsize jobs, Laforet decided the answer was to diversify.

“There is ABSOLUTELY no doubt that every photographer out there should be actively developing their video shooting and editing skills today and learning it at their schools/universities.”
Vincent Laforet

Laforet continued to do contract work with the New York times, but was also able to begin doing commercial work. With one advertising agency he was working with as a photographer, he wanted to be considered for some interactive content they were producing, but he had no film or video demo reel. Having connections at Canon he was able to borrow a prototypes of the Canon 5D Mark II for a weekend in hopes of creating a demo reel. He had 12 hours to shoot what became Reverie. (What he later called, “a bad cologne commercial.” )

He posted the Reverie video online and within 3 days passed the million view mark and by the end of the first week it had passed the 2 million mark. He not only got his demo reel, but it spun his whole career into a new direction.

PDN magazine said, “Seven hours after he posted Reverie, a representative from photo sharing site SmugMug offered to sponsor his next video. Two days later the manager for surfer Jamie O’Brien contacted Lafort about shooting a project together.” Calls from Disney, Industrial Light & Magic, and other big names followed.

In the coming days, I’ll unpack what this means to writers and filmmakers. The video to Reverie is linked below, but the important thing to remember here is this video was made on a 35 mm digital camera that shoots still photos as well as HD video. It was shot in less than a day by a photographer who was hoping to build a video demo reel. (To watch an HD version of the video check out Vincent Laforet’s website. You can also connect to his blog there.)

Scott W. Smith

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Puff the Magic Dragon

Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called honah lee
                                                           Puff the Magic Dragon 
                                                            Performed by Peter, Paul & Mary 

 

While the song Puff the Magic Dragon peaked on the Billboard charts at #2 in 1963 it’s remained in people’s hearts all these years later. I’m not sure when I first heard the song, but it was the first song I remember memorizing. And my love for stories flowed from folk songs before movies. So it was sad news to learn that  Mary Travers of Peter, Paul & Mary died yesterday. (If 1969 was the summer of love, I think 2009 is going to go down as the summer of death.)

You may remember the Ben Stiller line in Meet the Parents; “Well some people think that ‘to puff the magic dragon’ means to… puff… smoke… a marijuana cigarette.” That’s been several decade old debate about the true meaning of Puff the Magic Dragon. Snoopes reports the original writer of the poem, Leonard Lipton, as saying the song is about the “loss of innocence, and having to face an adult world. It’s surely not about drugs, I can tell you at Cornell in 1959 , no one smoked grass. I find the fact that people interpret it as a drug song annoying. It would be insidious to propagandize about drugs in a song for little kids.” (Lipton’s inspiration was the Ogden Nash poem The Tale of Custard the Dragon).

Peter Yarrow (the Peter in Peter, Paul & Mary) was a classmate of Lipton’s at Cornell University  and wrote the melody and additional lyrics.  Peter, Paul & Mary formed in 1961 and began performing live. I found the clip below on You Tube that was recorded in 1966. Like American Pie, it’s one of those songs that seems created to sing along with. 

Though Peter, Paul & Mary look tame (even quaint) on that video one must remember that this was 1966 and the group had its roots in the bohemian influence of Greenwich Village where Peter, Paul & Mary was formed. Goatees at that time were the tattoos and piercings of the day–part of the beat generation that rose up in the 50s. Producer and arranger Milt Okun, who worked with Peter, Paul & Mary, is quoted in the New York Times saying about the group, “They looked like Greenwich Village to the rest of America. They were the first to go mainstream with an artistic, intellectual, beat image.”

And despite the cheery lyrics of Puff the Magic Dragon it really is a sad story.  Ever since I was six years old I’ve felt sorry for the dragon and been drawn to stories of once mighty dragons who’ve seemed to lost the magic and  have slipped into their caves.

A dragon lives forever but not so little boys
Painted wings and giant rings make way for other toys.
One grey night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more
And puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar.

His head was bent in sorrow, green scales fell like rain,
Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane.
Without his life-long friend, puff could not be brave,
So puff that mighty dragon sadly slipped into his cave. oh!

 

Scott W. Smith

 

 

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Norman Borlaug (1914-2009)

The life and death of Patrick Swayze will get plenty of press the next couple days. Movie stars get that kind of publicity. But let me get in a plug for a man who was said to be “one of the greatest people of the 20th century” and another called him the “greatest human being that ever lived” and of who it was asked of three years ago, “”Is Norman E. Borlaug the greatest living American?” You might be asking–”Norman,who?” 

That’s probably what I’d be saying if I hadn’t of moved to Iowa and had the good fortune or meeting him when I shot a video interview with him last year. Borlaug was born near Cresco, Iowa in 1914 and after seeing people in need of food during the great depression dedicated his life to fighting famine via developing high yield crops. Granted not as sexy as making pottery with Demi Moore, but he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 and is credited with saving hundreds of millions of lives in developing countries.

Borlaug died Saturday night in Dallas and the New York Times had a front page article on him Monday (Sept 14, 2009). In 2007 he was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. To learn more about Borlaug Google his name or simply check out the New York Times blog by John Tierney title “Greast Human Being, R.I.P.

Here is what United State Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack wrote about Borlaug:

“Dr. Norman Borlaug was simply one of the world’s best. A determined, dedicated, but humble man who believed we had the collective duty and knowledge to eradicate hunger worldwide. His efforts saved millions of lives and inspired thousands to dedicate their lives to doing the same. The World Food Prize, which he founded, will continue to acknowledge those who carry on the work of providing food to feed the world. Dr. Borlaug will be missed.”

Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said this:

“Thanks to Dr. Borlaug’s pioneering work in the 1960s to develop varieties of high-yielding wheat, countless millions of men, women and children, who will never know his name, will never go to bed hungry. Dr. Borlaug’s scientific breakthroughs have eased needless suffering and saved countless lives. Dr. Borlaug has been an inspiration to new generations across the globe who have taken up the fight against hunger.” 

And to somewhat keep in line with this blog about great things coming from small places comes this quote from U. S. senator Tom Harkin:

“Because of his vision and tireless work, upwards of one billion lives have been saved. Not bad for a farm boy from Cresco, Iowa.” 

 

Scott W. Smith

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The Story of Men on the Moon

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”
                                                 John F. Kennedy 
                                                 Rice University
                                                 September 12, 1962 

 

Ever heard of Wapakoneta, Ohio? 

It happens to be where screenwriter Dudley Nichols was born. He wrote over 70 screenplays including Bringing Up Baby which is a classic Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant film.  He also served as the Screen Guild President in 1937-38.

His first film credit was in 1930 which just happens to be the same year that another fellow was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio who would go on to eclipse Nicholas’ fame.

Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, was born on August 5, 1930 in Wapakoneta, a small town just 59 miles north of where the Wright Brothers designed the first airplane (that would fly) in Dayton, Ohio around the turn of the 20th Century century.

If an Eagle Scout from a small town in Ohio becoming the first person to walk on the moon isn’t inspiration for you to pursue your dreams from wherever you live, then nothing I write can help.

I was eight years old when Armstrong uttered those famous words as he walked on the moon, “That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.” Big moment. One of the greatest achievements in modern history. If it was symbolic as some have said, then it was symbolism at its finest. 

I have the original New York Times front page–MEN WALK ON MOON– hanging on my office at work (along with the Sebiscuit movie poster and Don McLean album I’ve mentioned in the past).

Along with wanting to be a fireman and a professional baseball player I added astronaut to things I wanted to be when I grew-up. Growing up in Central Florida in the 60s was a fascinating place to be for the single reason that it in an age before cable TV,  Disney World, and video games (heck, pong wasn’t even invented until 1971)  you could watch a lift off on TV and then run outside and see this small glow rising into the sky on its way to space.

Today is the 40th anniversary of man landing on the moon. And while I remember sitting around the TV watching the event on a fuzzy screen it is the years leading up to it that I remember more. It was a feat that many thought could not be done. And there was plenty of evidence that it was not going to be an easy effort. At one point it is estimated that 400,000 people were working on President Kennedy’s dream to put a man on the moon by the end of the 60s.

It was an endeavor where there would be years of failure and the loss of lives.

Beyond making history the events remembered today are textbook storytelling that has a clear goal at the start, full of interesting characters, plenty of conflict and a fully developed and satisfactory ending. I’m not sure anyone born from 1969 on didn’t grow up thinking that technology could do just about anything. But that wasn’t always the case.

The space program as a whole has resulted in many great books, movies, and television programs on the subject. One of the best is Apollo 13 which was based on a book Lost Moon; The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 by astronaut James Lovell and Jeffery Kluger.  Kluger  wrote the recent Time magazine article on the historic event and touched on one of my favorite themes; what happens after you’ve been to the top of the mountain. Once you have the t-shirt that says, “Walking on the moon –been there done that” then what?

Kluger remembers Lovell’s warning when their book was a best seller and Apollo 13 was in theaters; “Remember where you’re standing when the spotlight goes off, you’ll have to find your own way off the stage.”

That’s wise advice for anyone.

Scott W. Smith

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The Twitter Screenplay (part 2)

“Twitter is on its way to becoming the next killer app.”
                                                                         Time Magazine 

 

I’m so behind the times (and Time magazine). Yesterday I mentioned something about screenwriting and Twitter and now I find out that just last month Southwest Airlines asked Twitter followers to help them write the first Southwest Airlines Script. Here are the results. (It’s not art, but remember that one of the first images caught on film in 1894 was Fred Ott’s Sneeze. That’s the kind of stuff you learn in film school.)

But now I’m catching up; http://twitter.com/scottwsmith_com

For a list of Hollywood producers, directors, screenwriters and actors using twitter go to /Film.

And congrats to actor/director (an Iowa-native) Ashton Kutcher  on just last week being the first Twitter member to have 1 million followers. (And for pledging $100,000 if he won to fight Malaria. “I’m calling to have a check made out for $100,000 to the Malaria No More Fund,” wrote Kutcher. Second place was media giant CNN. I don’t know how much a threat swine flu is to North America (and, yes, in Iowa we don’t care for that name), but I do know the foundations are shifting in how we are processing our news and entertainment. 

And just to totally try to keep up with the changes, I know The New York Times called Twitter “One of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet,.” but just yesterday Michael Liedtke at Yahoo announced that Twitter quitters outnumber those flocking to Twitter. 

 

Scott W. Smith

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Screenwriting from Michigan

“Why does New York have a monopoly on theater?”…I have no vested interest in New York, I don’t live there anymore. It’s all the same to me. But that is where the talent is collected, and if it doesn’t happen there, generally it doesn’t happen anywhere else. I wish it would happen in Ann Arbor, when you get a new theater.
Arthur Miller
February 28, 1967
The University of Michigan

Writing is core to everything we do. Yet good writing is becoming a lost art, and a lost value. I am looking forward to watching Michigan invest in what it takes to create the best writing program in the country.
Helen Zell

As I’ve said many times before Screenwriting from Iowa is not limited to screenwriting or Iowa — but it represents movies and people coming from a place beyond Los Angeles. Today we’re going to take a look at talent from another Midwest state as I turn the spotlight on Michigan.

It was no mistake that the great New York born writer Arthur Miller got his college education at the University of Michigan. Even in the 1930s UM was already know for its high literary output and in the 1920s playwright Avery Hopwood created an endowment for UM writers. Miller was an early recipient of the Avery Hopwood Award award in 1937. It was just the first step of recognition for the writer that would go on and write Death of Salesman and The Crucible as well as many other plays, screenplays, short stories and novels in a career that would span 70 years until his death in 2005.

He is considered one of the greatest American dramatists and supported the University of Michigan his entire life. Last year the Arthur Miller Theater opened on the UM campus keeping his wishes as being the only theater bearing his name. That was a tribute to the education he received in Ann Arbor.

But even before Miller became famous the University of Michigan had tradition in Hollywood. Dudley Nichols, a UM alumni  wrote the 1939 John Ford and John Wayne classic Stagecoach. The long train that followed include:
Valentine Davies (Miracle on 34th Street)
John Briley’s (Ghandi)
David Newman’s (Superman, Bonnie & Clyde)
Kurt Luedtke (Absence of Malice, Out of Africa),
Richard Friedenberg (A River Runs Through It)
Adam Herz (American Pie)
Josh Greenfield, (Harry and Tonto)
Roger Lowenstein (TV’s L.A. Law)
Judith Guest (Ordinary People)
Lawrence Kasden (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Grand Canyon, Body Heat)
Laura Kaisischke (The Life Before Her Eyes)
Jim Burnstein (D3: The Mighty Ducks)

Burnstein who also wrote Ruffian starring Sam Shepherd has taught at the University of Michigan and gave a presentation this year titled “Wolverines in Hollywood.”

I’m not sure where this Michigan writing legacy started but chances are famed Hollywood screenwriting teacher (and Detroit native) Robert McKee does know. He also attended the University of Michigan where he earned his undergraduate, masters and Ph.D. degrees.  Studying under Kenneth Thorpe Rowe where he learned a good deal about story structure that he promotes in his famed three-day screenwriting seminar and book Story.

Rowe wrote Write that Play and also hooked former student Arthur Miller up in New York that helped Miller start his career.

And though not a writer where would Hollywood be without the talent of former UM pre-med student James Earl Jones? A big voice (“Luke, I am your father”) who was born in a small town of Arkabutla, Mississippi, raised in a couple small towns in Michigan where he overcame a stuttering problem that caused him to be a functionally mute from grade school until high school.

In an interview with Michael J. Bandler Jones mentions Donald Crouch as the teacher that helped him overcome stuttering and find his voice. “I credit him with being the father of my voice. He said, ‘You have a man’s voice now, an impressive bass, but don’t let that impress you. If you start listening to your voice, no one else will.’ It was a good lesson in general. I [try] to be devoid of self-consciousness.”

According to Wikipedia his career in theater began at the Ramsdell Theatre in Manistee, Michigan where he was a stage carpenter before his role in Shakespeare’s Othello. Again to quote to old expression; “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” (And no, I won’t pass up the opportunity to mention that Jones brought his booming voice to Iowa in Field of Dreams.)

And just so we don’t leave out UM rival Michigan St. — that’s where Top Gun screenwriters Jack Epps Jr. and Jim Cash first teamed up. The academy-award nominated screenwriter of Finding Neverland and 48 hr director Walter Hill also graduated from Michigan State. Peter Gent was an athlete at MSU and went on to write the novel & screenplay for North Dallas Forty which impacted me greatly when I saw it as a high school football player. Spiderman director Sam Raimi also attended the school in East Lansing.

Grand Rapids is where Paul Schrader was raised and attended Calvin College to become a minister before eventually writing Taxi Driver and having a long career in Hollywood.

Flint, Michigan native and current resident of Traverse City, Michigan is Academy-Award winning filmmaker Michael Moore who has made three of the top five grossing documentaries of all time. In 2005 he started the annual Traverse City Film Festival.

Michigan native Mike Binder was the writer/director of The Upside of Anger. In a talk he gave in Ann Arbor Binder told students, “If you’re looking for respect don’t become a screenwriter.”

And batting clean-up is a writer who has been called “the Dickens of Detroit” – Elmore Leonard. His novels and short stories often find their way to the big screen with big talent: Get Shorty (John Travolta), Jackie Brown (Robert De Niro) 3:10 to Yuma (Russell Crowe), Hombre (Paul Newman), and the upcoming Killshot starring Diane Lane. He graduated from University of Detroit Jesuit High School and the University of Detroit.

Back in 2001 Leonard had an essay published in The New York Times called Writers on Writing where he offered ten rules for writing. It’s well worth a read. Though geared toward writing novels most apply to screenwriting such as rule number 9: “Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.”

“Oh, I love Elmore Leonard. In fact, to me True Romance is basically like an Elmore Leonard movie… I actually owe a big debt to like kind of figuring out my style from Elmore Leonard because, you know, he was the first writer I’d ever read.“
Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction)
The Charlie Rose Show 1994

Leonard lives in Michigan these days, and though in his 80s has a website (www.elmoreleonard.com) complete with a blog and podcasts. From the man who inspired Tarantino, here’s Leonard’s advice on how to get an agent: “My advice is to learn how to write and the agent will find you.”

Of course, Michigan also has a long history of real life characters who were interesting enough to have movies made about their lives (Ty Cobb, Jimmy Hoffa, Eminem, and most recently the intermittent windshield wiper guy Robert Kearns).  Then there is the storytelling history through music from Michigan which is way too long to list but covers probably every form of American music; Jazz, blues, soul, gospel, rock, country, hip hop, rap, punk, techno.)

The rock and roll hall of fame has a little space taken up with artists from Michigan including Aretha Franklin, Bill Haley, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, Glenn Frey, and Bob Seger.

I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to connect Michigan’s creative success to one man — Henry Ford. With his cars and factory line he brought prosperity to the area. Some of the people coming to Detroit were from the Mississippi Delta and they brought their music with them. That’s the short history of the Model T to Motown. But again you can’t ignore the part economics plays in its connection to the arts.

These days are lean times for those in Detroit. (Heck, these days they are even lean times for Toyota and Honda.) As the Michigan prophet Kid Rock sings; ”Now nothing seems as strange as when leaves began to change, or how we thought those days would never end.” (All Summer Long)

One thing Michigan has recently done to rejuvenate the area economically is to pass one of the largest tax incentives for the film industry. Late this past spring I did some location scouting for Mandate Pictures for Whip It!, Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut. But Iowa lost out to Michigan and I’m sure the incentives played a part. The roller derby film staring Ellen Page and Juliette Lewis began shooting in Southeast Michigan in July.

The WNEM TV station reported this on their website: In April, Gov. Jennifer Granholm signed legislation aimed at giving Michigan a bigger role in the film industry. The key bill in the package gave film studios a refundable credit of up to 42 percent on production expenses in the state. The bills also cover commercials, TV shows, documentaries, video games and other film work.

Landing the Barrymore film is a nice start out of the gate for Michigan and there is talk of three film studios being built. It would seem like a good time to be writing Michigan-centered screenplays. If you don’t have any ideas you can start here: A popular mayor in Detroit has an affair…

P.S. If you are interesting in shooting in Michigan or in learning more about their incentives contact Janet Lockwood at the Film in Michigan office.

Copyright 2008 Scott W. Smith

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Don’t Waste Your Life (part 3)

“Trouble, oh we got trouble, Right here in River City!”
                                                  Music Man, written by Iowa native Meredith Willson

How high’s the water, mama? 
Five feet high and risin’ 
                                                   Johnny Cash
                                                   Five Feet High and Risin’ 

 

I was supposed to get my haircut today…that didn’t happen.

When the morning begins with a segment of the NBC Today Show in Cedar Falls, Iowa you know there’s trouble in River City. Just two blocks from my office the Cedar River flows. In fact, we chose the name River Run Productions for our company because we saw the river as a metaphor that runs though Iowa and eventually into the Mississippi which eventually runs into the Gulf of Mexico and around the world.

Little did we know when we launched in January of ‘07 that just four months later I would be doing a shoot in Brazil including flying in a seaplane over the meeting of the waters where the Amazon and Rio Negro Rivers meet. 

But back in Cedar Falls today it was a long day of partaking along with hundreds (thousands?) of volunteers (including my partner who lost his home in the Parkersburg tornado two weeks ago) filling and placing sandbags trying to keep the river at bay. So far it’s been working to protect the downtown area, though many people in the low lying areas have evacuated and much of their homes underwater.  And the river is not supposed to crest until sometime tomorrow. 

 

Somewhere between moving boxes of photographs and memories to the basement Saturday night due to a tornado warning and taking the same boxes upstairs this morning in case of flooding, one can’t help but examine what you really need in your life.

I took all of these photos today and will give updates in coming days and then bring it full circle in regard to screenwriting and life.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday June 11, 2008 Update

The sandbagging on Tuesday paid off in Cedar Falls as the river crested at 2 AM with the downtown being spared from any flooding despite a record level of 102 feet. I drove over to Waterloo to help artist & friend Paco Rosic with his battle to hold back the flooding there from his restaurant/studio. Without much sleep in the last two night he and his father are winning the battle when most have given up.  Here are some shots of the front, inside (the multiple cords going to several water pumps), and view from the back of Galleria De Paco (voted this year as the #1 attraction in Iowa).

 

Thursday June 12, 2008 Update

Where’d all the good people go?
I’ve been changin’ channels
I don’t see them on the tv shows
Where’d all the good people go?
                                                                                                 Jack Johnson
                                                                                                 Good People

The secret’s out, Jack. A lot of those good people are in Iowa. They’re even on tv. NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams showed some of them in last night’s broadcast, including a nurse who volunteered in the morning after working an all-night shift in an intensive care unit. All told, I heard 5,000 people and 250,000 sandbags filled and placed on the levee helped keep the river back in downtown Cedar Falls. (Not that I put myself in the good people category, but I did make a brief cameo on the NBC segment in a non-speaking role as “Volunteer passing sandbag in white long sleeve t-shirt and camera strap around front.”)

It appears the worst is over in Cedar Falls but problems continue to mount in Waterloo, Cedar Rapids, and Iowa City and in other cites across Iowa and the Midwest. All of this reminds me of a quote from Steve Brown who I produced a video for in Nashville a couple years ago:

“The one thing I’ve learned is every day the world rolls over on top of someone who was just sitting on top of it yesterday.”

I don’t think a week goes by when I don’t think of that quote. I used to keep a list I called the roll over club. It contained names like John Kennedy Jr., Princess Diana, Mike Tyson, Kenneth Lay (Enron), Michael Vick, Britney Spears, Barry Bonds…you get the picture.

The point is things change quickly when your sitting on top of the world. I’m fond of pointing to Jon Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air where after reaching the peak of Mount Everest exhausted he took a few pictures and then began his decent. Krakauer writes, “All told, I’d spent less than five minutes on the roof of the world.”

Over the years I’ve seen many people who were at the top of the world before it began to roll: Muhammad Ali, Christopher Reeves, and Michael J. Fox come to mind. Ali continually reminded us that he was “the greatest” though he had to recant that later, when Reeves died due to complications from a horse riding accident that had left him paralyzed one headline read, “Superman Dies,” and Fox had an amazing dream year in his early 20′s when he was the star of the top rated TV program that he shot in the day and then went to his night job shooting “Back to the Future” that would become a #1 box office hit long before his career and life took a blow as he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease.

And in 1990 The New York Times  ran an article on The Man Who Own Prime Time about Brandon Tartikoff who had become the youngest person ever to be chosen the head programmer of a network at 31 and rose to become president of NBC Entertainment. Under his leadership NBC flourished with a string of successes including Cheers, The Cosby Show, LA Law, Family Ties and Seinfeld and for one incredible five year run NBC was the No. 1 Network for five consecutive seasons. Seven years after that article appeared Tartiloff died at age 48 from Hodgkin’s disease. 

Despite human’s great accomplishments, the above stories and this recent flood are reminders of how fragile we are. 

Whatever mountain top you are reaching for know that if you are one of the fortunate ones who gets to the summit you don’t get to stay up there very long. An acting teaching once told me “When your feet hit the ground in the morning if you don’t want to be an actor more than anything then don’t pursue it because it’s too hard to make it and too hard to stay if you do make it. So unless you love acting it’s not worth it.” That’s great advise for the screenwriter as well.  

In the June 5 issues of Time magazine there is an article called “How to Live Live With Just 100 Things.” Lisa Mclaughlin writes, ‘Excess consumption is practically an American religion. But as anyone with a filled-to-the-gills closet knows, the things we accumulate can become oppressive.” Dave Bruno started what he calls “the 100 Thing Challenge,  a grass-roots movement in which otherwise seemingly normal folks are pledging to whittle down their possessions to a mere 100 items.”

Maybe trading in your multiple piece spoon, fork and knife set for a spork won’t bring the Jewish concept of Shalom or peace (what Cornelius Plantinga Jr. calls “universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight…Shalom, in other words is the way things ought to be.”)  But maybe it’s a step in the direction of that happy ending we all seek.

I think that is the single greatest reasons why movie audiences yearn for (in some cases demand) a happy ending. Because one of the deepest longings in life is to find shalom. Look at many of the films people return to again and again (The Shawshank Redemption, Titanic, The Princess Bride, Star Wars, Finding Nemo, Rocky, The Wizard of Oz) and you will find this concept over and over again. Most (all?) films at least show a small corner of shalom or it’s opposite, a world lived outside the garden.

Who doesn’t want to have that moment of clarity that Tom Cruise as Jerry Maguire has as he writes his mission statement and says, “It was the me I’d always wanted to be”? 

Often it takes an event like a flood, 9-11 or a death in the family, or a personal illness to get our attention. Out of difficult times we need to have hope that there is a purpose and meaning to our suffering. Let’s not forget those who have lost greatly in the recent tornadoes and floods and pitch in where we can. And in time we’ll hear stories from this flood about how good things came out of the calamity.

Just like the Johnny Cash song Five Feet High and Risin’:

My mama always taught me that good things come from adversity if we put our faith in the Lord.
We couldn’t see much good in the flood waters when they were causing us to have to leave home, 
But when the water went down, we found that it had washed a load of rich black bottom dirt across our land. The following year we had the best cotton crop we’d ever had.

Sunday June 15, 2008 Update

This morning’s early morning lightening storm was kind of an exclamation point to two weeks of strange weather for the area.

And all the flooding in Iowa proves one thing: Jay Leno was wrong. Back in the first week January just before the Iowa caucuses he said that the word caucus was an Indian word meaning the only day of the year anyone pays attention to Iowa.

From two weeks ago when Parkersburg and other towns where hit by a tornado to the flooding of last week has provided the national press with lots of dramatic images.

Things began to return back to normal in Cedar Falls on Friday when the downtown ban was lifted and the national guard moved on. By Friday night hundreds of people had gathered in Overman Park to watch a movie in the park. Late Saturday afternoon I rode my bike downtown and saw Cup ‘O Joe was open on Main St. and the distinct sound of a Bob Marley song was being performed live at The Hub: 

Don’t worry about a thing,
‘Cause every little thing gonna be all right.
Singin’: “Don’t worry about a thing,
‘Cause every little thing gonna be all right!

                                            Bob Marley
                                            Three Little Birds

 

 

Wednesday June 18, 2008 Update

It’s tough out there
High Water Everywhere
                                                                               Bob Dylan   
                                                                               High Water (For Charlie Patton)
 

It’s hard to believe that is less than a week that flooding in Iowa alone as displaced tens of thousands of people and caused over $1.5 billion in damage. It’s a classic man vs. nature battle that will also have long a term economic impact.

Just about a month ago I did a couple days location scouting for Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut Whip It in the very areas being hit by flood waters; Waterloo, Cedar Falls, Vinton and Cedar Rapids. Probably a good choice by Mandate Pictures to shoot their roller derby film later this summer in other states. 

But those areas will rebound because that’s what good Midwestern people do. And I thought I’d share with you some photos from this part of Iowa that I hope will be a refreshing break from the images you are seeing on the TV day after day. 

  

 

 

Photos and text copyright ©2008 Scott W. Smith

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Sleeping with the Enemy

 “Looking back, I can’t believe that I—a housewife in Cedar Falls, Iowa–saw my poems and short stories appear in magazines, newspapers and books.”
                                                                                   Nancy Price
                                                                                   Sleeping with the Enemy 

How would you like to have something you’ve written be made into a movie, starring a major Hollywood actor, and see that film make over $100 million at the box office?

Sure that happened recently with University of Iowa graduate Diablo Cody and her Juno script, but it also happened to a writer with deeper Iowa roots when Nancy Price’s novel was turned into the Julia Roberts’ film “Sleeping with the Enemy.”

In case you’ve forgotten, the sleepy little town that Roberts’ character ran away to in order to escape from her abusive husband was Cedar Falls, Iowa. Price wrote the book in Cedar Falls where she has spent a good deal of her life.

I heard Price speak this week at the Waterloo Public Library and I thought her story would encourage you in your writing. But beware her story is one of not only talent, but one of patience.

From the time she won a poetry contest at age 14 to when Sleeping with the Enemy was released 50 years elapsed. As in five decades.  While the movie differs from her novel she is thankful that it brought many people to her book, and that has resulted in the book being translated into 18 languages.

Her book is actually a more complex look at spousal abuse and in her words “really about people helping people.”  She still gets letters from women who say the book “changed their lives.” “It’s wonderful to get those letters,” said Price.

Price, who also does illustrations,  understood the Hollywood game and their desire for more of a blockbuster film. She said she had nothing to do with writing the script. 

Her book was published the same year Fatal Attraction was a huge hit and she also had the good fortune of having Julia Roberts commit to the project before Pretty Women was released which pushed Roberts to the top of the pack. “She really did help me out,” said Price.

Though as is often the case many people feel the book is better than the movie but she was also fortunate to have Ron Bass write the screenplay fresh off his Oscar as one of the screenwriters of Rain Man.

The strength of novels is you can reveal what characters are thinking which is hard to translate onto film. I found this quote from Bass explaining his process of adapting a novel into a screenplay: “My basic view of film is that, literature is about what happens within people, while film is more about what happens between people. So the basic tool for me is the two-shot, a scene between two people interacting in a way that illuminates for them and for us who they are, what they want, and where they’re going.”

Of course the strength of movies is visual story telling. So while Price could write 30 pages on how abused the wife has been over the years the movie can condense that into two shots. One where we see the obsessive-compulsive husband upset that the bath towels aren’t lined up correctly and another where the wife flinches at dinner table like an abused puppy does when you try to pet them. With those two shots the audience gets a strong glimpse of what she is going through.

The movie as a thriller is a melodrama but its theme of abuse is just as meaningful and relevant to address today. If you’re looking for a story to write here’s a challenge, take the abusive situation in Sleeping with the Enemy and add a couple kids to a story. That will amp up the conflict and choices the wife has to make. (And that is what many women face today and the core reason why they stay in those relationships.) Show that women’s strength emerge and you’ll be on your way to getting letters from women thanking you as well.  

And if you write that as a book first you increase your odds of getting the movie made. Not only because women buy 68% of books (according to Publisher Weekly) but because there are over 150,000 books published every year verses less than a thousand feature movies made each year. If your novel is good it may get bought by a producer even before the book is published.

But getting a book published is no slam dunk to getting a movie made. Price said that only 1 in 800 books get made into a movie and that she was fortunate her agent became the head of 20th Century Fox. “It’s just a matter of luck, it really is.”

I think it was Samuel Goldwyn who once said, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

Price paid her dues. Between writing as a child to when the movie got made in 1991 she earned a B.A. in English and art from Cornell College and a Master’s Degree at the University of Northern Iowa, studied writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop, raised three children, had her work rejected by the New York Times 75 times, had a string of 60 short stories and poetry published, and had three novels published.

She was 53-years-old when her first novel was published and 62 when Sleeping with the Enemy was published so she was far from an overnight success. The idea for that book came to her as she thought, “If you’re going to be chased by someone, who would be the worst—someone who knows you.”

The book took three years to write and she usually rewrites the first few pages of her books 30-40 times because “that is where you need to make it clear what the story is about and who it’s about.”

Price explained that one of the biggest differences in the movie from the book is “all the characters in the book are poor and in the movie they’re rich.” So in the movie when Julia Roberts’ character gets caught by her neighbor plucking apples it’s because she had a late night desire to bake a pie, where in the book she steals the apples because she is broke and hungry. Maybe another concession to Fatal Attraction where everyone is also rich.

 

Price is still writing. She laments the lack of places for new writers to have their writings published because magazines no longer buy and publish short stories like they did back in the day and most of the major book publishers are looking for the blockbuster sellers from a small list of writers. (Many of who have ghostwriters writing their books.)

Price is self-published through Malmarie Press. You can purchase her books and learn more about Price at her website Nancy Price Books. On her site you’ll find some writing tricks she shares:

Do you stare in despair at the blank first page of your new novel? Don’t. Find some 4 X 6 cards and begin to put down scenes from the new book that you’ve imagined…characters that have seemed real to you…places you have wanted to describe…conversations you’ve heard in your head…each on a new card. When you have a collection of these, put them on the floor and push them around with your toe. Do some of them seem to clump together and act friendly? Can you imagine putting some new writing between this one and that one? You’re on your way.
                                                                                                           Nancy Price

And perhaps you can help solve a little mystery for Nancy Price. Remember that poetry contest she won when she was 14? Well, part of the prize was she got to attend a Detroit Tigers baseball game and meet one of the players. If you know who the player was email me (or Nancy via the email on her website) and she can put that mystery to rest. (There is a photo I’ll try to track down that would be a key clue.)

 

Words and Photos Copyright 2008 Scott W. Smith 

 

 

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